Being a Vampire Host: A Special Halloween Blog

Oh my my my my. If All Hallows’ Eve wasn’t falling on a Saturday this year and if the couple I had been envisioning weren’t magically available for this year’s Saturday Halloween four course vampire-hosted dinner…

I would be feeling somewhat crushed by life.

I know, join the club.

But the usual stuff plus the jarring genetic results news and the start of all the new neurological testing and…

too much.

But… it’s happening. The vampire dinner is happening!!!!!

Directly after disconnecting from the distressing phone call from the super nice genetic counselor, tears stuck in my eyes because it was as if I had lost the energy to push them out… the only thought in my brain was:

YOU HAVE THE VAMPIRE DINNER.

And, also, David please get me wine we are out (and he dutifully did).

Since I still have no purpose-giving job at present I am fully investing myself in this upcoming Halloween.

In a similar way to how I invest myself every single year but this year… I have an actual EVENT!

Every single year I dress up for trick-or-treaters but… we never live in an urban area which is apparently safe enough or friendly enough or “family-oriented” enough to ever have trick-or-treaters.

So every year I dress up and then feel disappointed by the lack of children.

And shortly after I eventually fall into music to blanket my darkness.

I suppose I’m just trying to recapture the magic of my childhood.

FLASHBACK

My love for Halloween originated with me being assigned the amazing parents I was given. They loved all the holidays but they especially loved Halloween.

On Halloween, my dad would sit on my childhood home’s front porch and pretend he was a scary stuffed “mannequin” until trick-or-treaters got closer and…

then he would twitch.

What was funny is how the youngest children would see the small movements of the mannequin and then they’d continue to eye it warily but their assigned adult would not notice any of this, oblivious, and keep on chatting away with my mom at the door.

My dad was a kind soul and would never do more than twitch a finger or move his foot for the little ones.

And, in turn, they’d just keep their child eyes on him, clutching their adult’s hand, until they were well away from our house.

I remember one little girl kept watching my dad the mannequin, her head turned halfway around to keep her eyes on him over her shoulder as she walked down the road to the next house, her cautious child imagination aglow within her.

But, when a teenager or an older child would come trick-or-treating at our house, they’d often obnoxiously grab their candy and then my dad the realistic mannequin

would suddenly just stand up.

One teenager got so scared by my dad not being an inanimate object and suddenly coming to life with a

ROAR

they fell backwards over our front of house shrubbery to get away.

It was amazing.

So I have a great tradition to maintain.

Thus, every year I dress up. At first, as an adult on my own, I’d procrastinate and try to put together a costume from my own sad collection of clothes at the very last minute.

😬

One year I was a cheerleader.

I wasn’t even dead or anything.

So embarrassing.

But one year I put a lot of thought into it, crafted some horns in probably my most ambitious craft project ever and won first prize at a local music club’s annual Halloween party.

I had even drafted a sketch of what I wanted to look like.

And then I didn’t look anything like either sketch.

😺

But it was a success.

And then the next year I went back to simply being scary and dead and this is what I have been for many Halloweens since.

My husband is good with stage makeup so for a few years we’d dress in our regular clothes but have a realistic gunshot in the middle of our foreheads or else our throat slashed or something else rather tasteless and fun and then go out to bars and Walgreens and catch unassuming people off guard.

David really got into it. I often just wore my regular clothes as I didn’t want to be dripping with goo.

But every year for Halloween my other half and I are scary and/or dead or scary and dead. I feel this is important because I respect the tradition of Halloween. In particular, earlier folk dressed up as scary entities in order to fool the real bad which were actively floating around and stalking the streets.

Dressing in a scary way is a form of protection against the evil spirits who are out and about on Halloween.

Scaring the scary.

I enjoy that concept: “Be away, evil ones! Go elsewhere…nothing to see here! ROWR!”

So I’d also dress up the dog because she had to be festive as she was a participatory member of our family and because she also got into pretending to be scary.

When my husband and I bought our first home, I also had an entire house and small yard to decorate.

But then my mom grew really ill and I brought her home to our first house so I could care for her and Halloween continued but my feeling was appropriately dimmed.

And then my mom died and I again tried to up my Halloween game in honor and memory of my parents and our familial tradition.

So I decided to delve into the world of homemade crafty accessories and used the internet (a big move for me at the time) to order Halloween eye contacts.

And that changed Halloween forever!

A year after my mom’s death, my husband and I moved from our somewhat pleasantly haunted house in Madison to a more maliciously haunted rowhouse in Pittsburgh.

At first, the rental rowhouse didn’t feel haunted so I went about decorating it for Halloween.

We had no Halloween plans but I again dressed up in the hopes of having trick-or-treaters in a new urban context but… sadly, very few children came.

As a result, I mostly just sat on my own in the festively spooky room I had created.

But that year started my commitment to move from simply being dead to being undead. Thus, I am now a vampire every year for Halloween unless I have some reason to be something else. It’s a simple costume and I can largely just wear my own clothes.

At the same time, I’ve always been a bit fascinated by vampires.

Probably because one of my only Facebook “life events” was when I turned into a vampire.

That was a big day.

Having no reflection takes a little “getting-used-to”.

But it wasn’t any real surprise.

THE HAPPENING

It all started when one night I came home and couldn’t remember where I’d been and also saw rather distressing marks on my neck when looking in the bathroom mirror.

Now they don’t often share this in the movies but transitioning to being a vampire can take years.

Consequently, I’ve been in transition for some time.

For example, at the beginning, I started to strongly prefer dark corners, but I didn’t think much of it.

Because I found many other like-minded souls who also enjoyed dark corners.

But then I started to get a little more creepy with creepy company in creepy places.

It seems my transition was accelerating.

THE BECOMING

Well, it got more difficult to hide things when I started to draw on the walls.

That was a little awkward to explain to the husband when he came home.

And then, sure, for a time I had a best friend who was a black cat.

Milo.

And unexplained things started to occur.

For example, I’d suddenly wake and find myself in the middle of a wood, apparently visiting old friends’ long-forgotten homes, and having no idea as to how I had arrived there.

Uh-oh.

Because then black light got tricky for me.

That was pretty much the last straw. I was on the verge of becoming a full-fledged vampire.

Luckily, my friend Jesse had noticed my transition years ago, back when I was early in my vampire development…

so he gave me something to hang on the wall which warded off evil spirits.

I guess he felt I needed it.

That was thoughtful of him. I keep hanging it on the wall every time we move houses.

But lately I’ve started to embrace my vampirism. So last year, after we left that scary Pittsburgh rowhouse to move back home, I got my fangs and just let my true colors show.

And last Halloween I also found I could behave myself when out in public with favorite humans.

And, in celebration of being out in the open, this vampire is hosting a proper four-course dinner and on All Hallows’ Eve no less.

It’s all coming together, my familial origins and my present reality are meeting to form a delightful circle.

For I will be using for the first time my parents’ best dishware and also the silverware they had received as a wedding gift. I salvaged these objects from the ruins of a former life, cleaned them up and then carefully packed and carried these precious objects along with us as we moved from place to place.

And this Halloween they will finally be unpacked and utilized once again as part of my Vampire Dinner.

The two invites have been delivered and the two guests are confirmed.

I included the menu/drinks so that they know they should surely reserve an Uber.

It will be a night to keep to the light of good company and warm illusions so as to stave off the darkness of the abyss.

After all, life is short, especially if you’re a vampire and have been robbed of your days.🖤🎃