THE VAMPIRE L.

Talking to Reinhard - @reinhard-schmid - the only real artist I know in person, possessing happily two of his art pieces - often cheers me up and gives me the thought: Come on, Erika, take life not so serious! Our latest encounter, which was here, made me writing this reading memories of mine.

I made many (!) earnest comments in the recent days. Time for some romantic rubbish! ... Well, maybe not overall and to some extend adorned with a deeper meaning. As always ;-)

But enough of me.

Let's talk about a vampire.

His name is Lestat de_Lioncourt and he is created by an excellent author, Anne Rice. For a while I was actually eating her words and obsessed with what she wrote.

Now, Lestat is the most handsome, the prettiest, most elegant, most convinced of himself undead that women can imagine. The sharp, sexy teeth and the idea of giving in to his red kiss... sigh... Can you imagine a nicer death? Well, I don't. In earnest. I don't know of a single kind of death that would be more romantic or better than being sent to the realm of the dead by a vampire. But of course I never cared about the health of a vampire, but always only selfishly pursued my immortality fantasies and little girl dreams.

That this charming vampire of such a long life was just one human being and could suffer human world sorrow... if I would have thought more deeply about it, then I would surely have come to the conclusion that nobody, even no supermodel vampire, can be joyful for all eternity.

At some point, everyone's got a hangover.

So after Lestat could have the blood of every fair maiden, wicked, beautiful, he soon took the ugly and used, too, but could find no taste in those whom he - several hundred years after his initiation as a vampire - regarded as innocent. Yes, the whole human race seemed to him as fragile and basically as good. The few bad fellas among the many good folks determined his diet from then on and he went out at night like a good hunter to kill the charlatans, violent criminals and psychopaths, the human waste.

Did he develop this strategy before or after his attempted suicide? I can no longer remember the order, but at least he was overcome by a great fatigue, an all-covering un-lust, a great grief, after he handed over some other undead to the sunlight and they were gone, crumbled to dust. Murden was part of his business, but Murden wasn't always fun and other undead denied him his shepherds' hour with the man of his choice: his beloved Louis. Whom he lost in space and time.

Our brave Lestat underwent the hardest and most unspeakable trials and acquired a very special kind of vampirism. Through the blood of the elders - unimaginably old vampires of the first kind! - his already white flesh changed into shining alabaster. Immortal he became from the infusion of the oldest vampire on earth.
Of course, he used his charm, carelessly towards those who told him it was taboo to kiss the eldest. He couldn't resist the temptation, offered his throat and was himself rewarded with a blood sacrifice. Then cast out and hunted by his own kind. But who could still harm him?

What torments he endured after lying in the Gobi desert

(I believe that was the name) and offering himself deliberately to the insanely hot sun to burn his life in it!

Only to wake up after each new suicide day the following night, crushed and smoldering of smoke, and find that the vampire body had cowardly surrendered to the survival instinct and buried itself in the sand.

Crying hot and red tears, Lestat realized that he was more powerless than any other vampire! At the same time indestructible. Overwhelmed by grief and shame and sad, he returned to his old house in New Orleans to lie down to die alive and in a kind of vampire coma. Sleeping, here and there reaching for rats and rabble-rousing, that nourished his body, which had emaciated to the bones, but nothing more either.

It still had to be death!

Do you understand?

Death and infirmity, infirmity and death. And even if it was only an imitation of death, but the years of sleep as a kind of cure to give up the experienced and the old, to be able to leave behind an epoch in order to even keep a new one in the face.

How I suffered with him! And how I missed the 17th century Vampire, with the frills on the sleeves, the playful clothing style of this century, where powdered wigs and stockings also decorated the body of the man. Lime green velvet and skirts, heels.

Lestat in jeans and sneakers? Twentieth century?

Nah ... what a loss!

For quite some time I mourned the loss of the beautiful baroque time. The cheeks of the people, adorned with immodest beauty patches and rustling frock coats. This sensual, decadent time of the aristocrats, this depraved waste of beauty and elegance on the pomp and the zampano. This obscene difference between the courts of kings and those of servants. What a sight for sore eyes.

Let go. So I let go of the past and had to wonder a little about myself that this had been so difficult for me. Why this exaggerated connection to the powdered ones?

Lestat is on the road in the new age. The author left his old chic to him a little and honored the grain of longing that at least a few lace shone through at the end of a leather jacket sleeve. Modern Lestat had nothing better to do than to take an interest in rock music and aim for a career as a rock star. Did it work? Read it yourself.

Our vampire experiences an unbelievable number of adventures in this spawn of multiples.

But I really like the part where ...

Lestat meets a body thief!

Once again my vampire roams the streets and finds himself in a restlessness, a discontent, a yearning and a boredom with this steel indestructible body.

Anne Rice suggests to me that I should imagine that just now, when I am reading this in the quiet light of my bedside lamp, Lestat outside, could pass under my house...

He itches - badly again - he finally wants to hear his silent heart beat again.

No bloodlust can really imitate the organic, no warming stream of life can really give it life.

A human body! An organic one!

How much he wants to feel like a normal man again after all this time! Once again he curses the one who made him a vampire and laments his fate, curses the old one, the pointy-toothed one, who never asked him if he wanted to be what he became. Unwillingly! How many times Louis had complained to him and Lestat had always replied: "I gave you the choice I never had!"

And now this! He has a once in a lifetime opportunity. The body thief has been watching him for quite some time. But Lestat, otherwise open-eyed and alert, lets himself be tricked, hears and notices nothing of the danger! Too tempting is the body thief's offer.

He meets him in the gestalt of a handsome young man.

Full of strength, in his best human years, brown hair, beautiful eyes, a soft expression in them. Tender and strong. Lestat falls in love immediately.

The pretty young man offers him an exchange of their bodies. A week, a weekend (?) and then back exchange again! Lestat, eager for this chance to finally be back in a perfectly normal male existence, agrees. Although Lestat takes or thinks to take some safety precautions, in the end everything goes wrong!

The meeting place for the body exchange: a house. It's winter. Late evening. Lestat and the body thief are sitting at the kitchen table opposite each other. A lamp provides light. Lestat, who a few days earlier had received a small sample of the body thief's ability to storm his mind, is now warned by the body thief and asked not to defend himself against the penetration of his mind into the vampire's form. He consents excitedly.

And then it happens.

Our vampire can't even prepare himself, because with a huge rush the spirit of the body thief breaks in on his and throws him out of his body after a short and very violent skirmish! Up and away it goes.

Lestat, now completely without any body, buzzes confusedly around the room and sees two men sitting underneath him. Quickly he tries to rush back into the blonde-haired one, who is pale and beautiful, but no chance! With all might he is kept out of his own body and bounces back. Now he reaches for the other man and descends into his existence. As soon as Lestat opens his eyes in the foreign body, the vampire (him?!) has jumped up, smashes half the furniture, a window piece breaks and he is gone!

Dazed and confused, Lestat must realize that he will probably not see the thief again so quickly, ... if ever?! Now the punishment is on its feet. Or at least it could be seen as punishment for the immortal Lestat's unwillingness to be taken for an idiot. Now he has to deal with the situation. And oh dear! What are his warm and soft fantasies bursting!

Ice-cold winter air blows through the broken window.

Lestat notices a great uneasiness. He looks down on "himself", sees, how little clothes the body thief has put on this man. He's freezing! He staggers high and swings back and forth because he is not accustomed to the height and weight of this male. He's bumping. It hurts!! Then another feeling, very oppressive, very strange... but...: his bladder! He really needs to pee. Running for the lavatory and then peeing in the bowl. How it works and splashes! And the smell! Not very pleasant.

To make a long story short: Lestat is not doing well as a human being. He catches a bad cold, has sex with a woman pitying him, who opens her door the same night, sleeps with her, while he feels a great disgust for himself for having given in to this sexual drive. He comes in touch with all the mucus, the excrements and the body fluids of human existence. He is overcome by howling misery. He accuses himself of stupidity a thousand times and then he laughs and cries. It's a good lesson to him! That's a hell of a teaching! And this body thief, Brilliant!

Lestat has found his master.

Eating, drinking, sleeping, burping: No! That was not what he was seeking for! After all those years, how could he have forgotten about how it was to be human? What was he thinking? This bloody handy work with pigs and chicken.

It could not even be hidden in the present: the craft of this unelegant death, only to feed oneself. No, this is not his!

And Lestat goes to regain his body, this divine, supernatural beauty, where from now on all death could remain stolen from him. Isn't it?

Or how may the story of Lestat continue?

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^{Ernst Stöhr - anno.onb.ac.at, commons -source}

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Title picture: From Mattheus Verheyden - www.rijksmuseum.nl : Home : Info : Pic, commons, source

Wig lady: Pixabay

Walking English couple 1785: From Thomas Gainsborough - Web Gallery of Art: Image Info about artwork, commons, source

Young man: From Unidentified painter, 18th-century portrait painting of men, uploaded from Joseph Martin Kraus/ Kraus Gesellscaft, commons, source

People scene / Various trades, early 18th century: File: Jan Josef I Horemans Workshop with shoemaker butcher lacemaker.jpg source

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Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Rice
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interview_with_the_Vampire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lestat_de_Lioncourt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vampire_Chronicles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_the_Body_Thief

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https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleidermode_des_Rokoko

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