I hope you’re all proud of yourselves. You motherfuckers have made enough memes to ensure that there will be a second Morbius movie. I am just as guilty, replaying the episode of Buffy in which vampire Willow licks her mortal double’s neck, and telling Sean we are going to Doctor Strange when we have actually booked tickets to Morbin’ Time showing late at Porirua Mall on a Sunday night. This was the evening we took photos with my matching rainbow swords, and when I sliced my finger open on the blade my first instinct was to suck on it til I nearly puked up blood, hot red salt almost closing the loop on my iron deficiency……… I would do anything for the protein but I won’t do that! My mates’ Fringe comedy show was titled Blood Bag. I threw up when he pretended to do a shot of his own fluids from a syringe. The gig’s conceit was that he’d do a blood donation live – no nurse signed up to stick it to him so he drew the vein himself. His posters featured an email from the NZ Blood Service saying “we cannot condone someone being bled onstage for entertainment”. Neither could the creators of Morbius apparently, CGI-ing the splatters in and then out again, a vampire movie that has no blood and is not horny as redundant as these clip-on vampire dentures that will not adhere to my teeth. Despite being so blood-sick, I’m still vamp-curious…… doing my crunches at the gym I cross my arms over my chest to practice rising from the grave. I attempt to keep the plathtic vampire fangth in during thexth and gulp you down like the forbidden soup at the bottom of the sarcophagus. In this economy I may not save enough money for cemetery real estate but I am checking out the crypts in case I marry up in the afterlife………. don’t worry baby….. all the vampires are in polycules! they have so much time on their cold soft hands……. and so many options…… after several hundred years the sex is so good our souls literally leave our bodies and our girlfriends have to saddle up and ride back into hell and fetch us….. If you wanted to be a vampire as a teenager you’re gay now….. If you wanted to be a werewolf you’re also gay…………. but you don’t shave. Exercising this theory has led me to accidentally force many of my friends to come out as straight…….. in our era of mandatory bisexuality they are apologising to me for being hetero but just really into theatre……………. Walking around in their assless chaps insisting “some of my best friends are gay” while worrying whether they are appropriating my culture, my slightly broader repertoire of handjob techniques, my petroleum-based vegan leather textiles and monstrosity complex………… I used to wish to be a monster, or at least to receive a screenprinted shirt reading I AM A THREAT TO MYSELF AND OTHERS AROUND ME. I used to tell girls it was inevitable that I would hurt them, and then wonder why none of them wanted to go out with me, even when Twilight’s forbidden apple glared like an edible heart from every bookshelf. Those dangerous boys stalking the periphery of the schoolyard, fur or glitter on their skin, the tang of meat between their teeth. Any film director worth their ring of salt in that glorified manipulators’ cult should know what is so sexy about the vampire fantasy: someone who could wound you but chooses not to; someone who would respectfully savour your surrender; a fashion moment of high collars and corsetry; an option for when getting railed in a sundress is no longer enough and it’s time to get hit by a truck, when slick rainbows of diesel shimmer on a pool of black blood as you lurch up and walk away unscathed. At the very least it’s a socially acceptable vore type thing. But at Morbin’ Time, in the chamber of that darkened mall cinema, a half-boudoir bedecked in red velvet and mock-chalice lighting, I gazed upon the after-credits scene and felt nothing.
Featured image courtesy of brobible.
