I spent some time with Dracula Sunday night at a local art center. He was so dashing and such an elegant gentleman in his fabulous cape. Then, with a wickedly sexy smile, he started teasing me by calling me “Buffy” and “Slayer” as terms of endearment. I was immediately mesmerized by his exotic charm and became moonstruck. I am now intensely compelled to explain why you should hang out with Count Dracula.
- Dracula is a friend who keeps the same hours as you do. Stay up all night and sleep all day.
- Keith Richards keeps sending you a Facebook friend request, but you know he really just wants to be friends with Dracula.
- No constant obsessing over trying to take a good selfie. A selfie with Dracula? Cannot happen.
- You have wonderful discussions with Dracula about the great literary classics, especially the extremely underappreciated epistolary novels. Dracula’s favorite is The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, a satirical novel in the form of a series of letters from a senior Demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, a junior tempter, dealing with securing the damnation of a British man. This is an absolute page turner! I love it that Dracula is so well read. Of course, he does have the luxury of time.
- It is so funny to watch the middle-school boys who are not wearing costumes yet still go trick-or-treating run screaming in overpowering adolescent fright from your house when a leering Dracula answers the door and says menacingly, “I vill make you immortal! Please come in.”
- You will never again have to see the resting bitch faces of sparkly Twilighter Bella and evil Volturi vamp Jane. No way will they flash that face at Dracula. All mean girls turn into simpering wimps in his presence. Yes!
- Dracula will definitely not drink all your beer and single malt and then vomit on everything and pass out.
- Dracula is mildly bemused but mostly bored with the obsession many Americans have with zombies. “Don’t they know that zombies do not exist?” he asked me. “And vhy do all these foolish people fear such mindless creatures vith no fangs?” Smiling wryly, he continued, “People should not believe everything they read or see in movies and on television.” He is completely knowledgeable, though, about zombie lore. Dracula gleefully explained, “If zombies did exist, all vampires know how to defeat them. Impaling them on stakes does not actually vork. Zombies shudder in sheer horror vhen they hear my name. They know that I vill summon my loyal minions of the night; they vill attack the zombies and drive them to their death. Picture this, if you vill: vhen brainless, pathetic, smelly, shabbily-dressed zombies become covered vith clawing, gnawing, biting, and squealing rats or fluttering, biting, screeching bats, they stumble senselessly, moaning in uncontrollable terror, into the nearest lake, pond, river, ocean, cesspool, or sewer to escape from the rats and bats. And then they drown. Ah! It is indeed a beautiful sight. I vin! Vampires vin! Zombies die—permanently die! Once again, blood conquers decaying idiocy!” Dracula was quite emphatic when he made this dramatic pronouncement.
- Dracula completely understands your appetite for delicious medium rare steak. He will tell your vegan “friends” to back off. He also will compel them to read Laura Fraser’s essay, “Why I Stopped Being a Vegetarian.” He is remarkably persuasive.
- Come on! It is Count Dracula! As his “blffa” (best living friend for awhile), you get to accompany him to DraculaPark, a Dracula theme park, in the town of Snagov, just north of the Bucharest airport in Romania, once it is constructed. DraculaPark will have a medieval castle. Inside the castle will be a torture chamber, alchemy laboratory, vampire den, initiation hall where young vampires can be dubbed knights (according to the publicity brochure), and a workshop for teeth-sharpening. There is even a plan for an International Institute of Vampirology. As Dracula’s “blffa,” you also get all you can eat for free at Dracula Club, a restaurant featuring such mouth-watering fare as blood pudding, brains (species unknown), a variety of “stake” dinners, chicken Kiev made with butter that is colored deep red, and “fright-jellied” meat, a concoction made from scraps of meat and gelatin. Yummy! All you can eat!!
Hanging out with Count Dracula is truly the experience of a lifetime. He can introduce you to so many new thrills. You, too, will become moonstruck. I invite you to join me on the evening of Thursday, November 6, during the full moon.
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Cheryl Ray is a writer and educator from the Colorado Springs area.
