More Vampires

I finished Twilight and now I am reading New Moon. In form at least, this series is a traditional bodice ripper. The same male narrative; the brute male force who enters a woman's life and completely takes over every thought in her brain, every muscle in her body, he invades her clit and her heart. Bella Swann is the typical protagonist. She'll give up everything including her life. She swoons when he kisses her, but his lips are cold. She shivers when he touches her but his flesh is frozen, it's dead. I thought what's gonna happen in the bedroom for god's sakes when they are naked, what is his cock going to feel like? Can she have an orgasm with dead cold flesh--- no matter how beautiful that flesh is? I don't get the attraction.

Yes, I know Edward is beautiful. I know that he looks like a model, like a god, but that doesn't mean I want to get in bed with a marble statue. His breath is intoxicating, I get it, but what will that tongue feel like on her labia. I can't help it. I keep going there. She tells him over and over, that she's not good enough for him, and I think, but at least you're alive, you're 17, you're young, what are you talking about? She insists she's ordinary and after awhile frankly I agree. Edward on the other hand is not normal, he is extraordinary, he is supernatural! He can run like 80 miles an hour (I'm guessing), he can growl like an animal, he knows what other people are thinking. But I've read 700 hundred pages and they have yet to do anything but press their lips together. I haven't seen a real kiss. What is the attraction? Just his absolute male beauty, the perfection of his form? He's not even alive. I don't think he can fuck her. It's as simple as that.

It's hard to believe that women in the 21st century, myself included, still buy this narrative, and furthermore find it compelling. Yow. I have all four books sitting in front of me on my desk and I will read every single of one of them. Because it is a good story. This is not as paradoxical as it seems. I can still appreciate a well plotted narrative. There is something very eerie and beautiful about a group of vampires playing softball in the middle of a forest. The author is in complete control of the myth she has refashioned. It's a male myth, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work. Male myths are in the air, just reach out and grab one. Once upon a time a young man set out on a quest. Jason and the Golden Fleece.

We love the dark and crazy man. The vampire, the hoodlum, the golem. He can awaken desire, the hot fire that burns in every woman. He takes us to brink and beyond. He is what we need to be complete. He is the man that is destined to be ours for all eternity. We would do anything for him. Intellectually, I don't buy it, but I do emotionally. There is part of me that wishes this was true. The White Knight, our soul mate, our animus, our demon lover. I wish Bella was the vampire! I love the other vampire women, I like their feral presence, their strength, their grace. But ultimately Bella's a cardboard cut out. Heidi in the Pacific Northwest. I'm not the audience, I know. I'm not the demographic. When I was a teenager I worshipped Dark Shadows. I lusted after the Quentin. Angelique was my first role model. Come to think of it, it's probably the same story.

All that aside, when I finished Twilight last night, I re-arranged the little white goddess who sleeps next to me, and turned out the light. I drifted off to sleep. But then I thought I heard something. Dismissed it, rolled over. I heard it again. A voice from outside my bedroom window, saying, I can see you.