Call Me Old-Fashioned

Originally written Thursday, January 5, 2006

Darn it. “Huh. I don’t know. I was mostly noticing what was going on below the waist rather than above the neck.” Which was actually true. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m somewhat more accustomed to seeing people “play vampire” than seeing them have sex in semi-public places. At any rate, I had been uncertain before about whether she was studying me for my responses, and at this point it was undeniable. We seemed to have taken a different and very rapid turn. In only a moment, I realized she might be about to push me out of the realm of selective information with her and into the zone of willful deceipt. Having mixed feelings about it, I decided to skate a finer line between the direct and the allusive. I don’t ordinarily take such risks, but I almost felt I owed it to her in the economy of knowledge for what she’d just given me about the junkie cult. Also, she seemed very likely to be on the verge of her own investigation, and I did not want to be discovered lying through my teeth. “So, you said some of the club people are convinced there are real vamps around the place? What’s your take on that?”

“I don’t know. What’s yours?” She was smiling as she said it, as if ready to use the conversation to broach a forbidden topic while leaving herself a way out through humor if I thought she sounded nuts. I knew the discursive technique well, having used it numerous times myself. From experience, I also knew that the only way not to get caught by it is to address it head on, so I responded:

“You sound like you’re trying to broach a forbidden topic while leaving yourself a way out through humor if I think you sound nuts.”

If she’d been someone I didn’t like, I would have felt maliciously triumphant about calling her ruse. Since I like her, though, my triumph was not malicious. She said, “Hm. I hadn’t really thought about what I was doing. You might be right.”

“I’m always right.” And more honest than I am modest. “So. Are you trying to have a serious conversation about vampires?”

She yielded to the direct approach. “Someone at the club said Trudy’s a vampire. Is that true?”

“Did you plan this whole conversation just to get to that question?”

“No. I think you started talking about the club first.” She was right. She continued, “Your turn. Is it true about Trudy?”

I looked her in the eye, saying nothing for a moment. I turned my eyes to the side, to the floor, to the ceiling. I opened my mouth a few times, only to take a breath and close it, trying to look as if I were thinking through my response, as if the answer were a whole lot more complicated than it needed to be. Eventually, I said, “I can answer that question, but it might be best if I didn’t.”

“Then the answer’s yes?” she asked, but she was still trying to maintain an escape route through her expression of disbelief.

“Sort of.” I’d give her what she wanted, but I needed to frame it very deliberately. And I needed to make it clear that there was a reason for my reticence besides condescension. “It sounds like the Crypt kind of benefits from having its vampire theme, right?”

“Sure. That’s why a lot of those kids come. It’s a whole scene.”

“And if vampires are real, it would be a good idea to keep that kind of hush-hush?”

The events of this day to be continued...