‘He comes out of the darkness – all brooding male with the dangerous eyes and the sexy hair and sexier body. He is perfection and will be forever… The moment is perfection. Then he asks you to join him in immortality and perfection is eclipsed…’
Which female has not dreamed in the darkest of nights for the man of danger – for the immortal vampire who will whisk her away into the land of immortality? And magick?
What’s not to like?
HE will never grow old…never end up being the pot-bellied, beer drinking version of the man you thought you loved…never whine about poker night…or the fun he used to have…
YOU will never have to scan for wrinkles in the mirror, obsess about your diet, worry about safe sex or cellulite…
Of course, I am pretty sure that the males out there would like nothing better than for the sexy female vampire to fulfill their fantasies!
Yet while our literature (and now our movies and television shows) are full of examples of the soulful and brooding variety of vampires – the evil version is equally represented.
On the one hand we have dark tales of the creature that steals your soul, not just your blood, in order to retain its immortality. The one with no remorse… There is the one who cannot or will not pass on this gift of immortality – saving it for the select few… It is not a ‘disease’ that gets passed on to every person bitten (since that should have meant lots more vampires than there currently seem to be).
These are the tales that dominate the older lore. Tales that somehow exist in almost every culture of the world – the immortal blood-drinker…
So, who then, is this brooding sexy symbol that we have come to lust for?
Is he, finally, the truth about the vampires? A truth that the poor, misguided fools of earlier centuries just could not see?
Or is he something else entirely?
Whatever he is, he has certainly livened things up a lot, huh?
There is Lestat – the epitome of bad boy ‘I am what I am, so deal with it’ sexiness… who wouldn’t want Lestat to come knocking at their window one night?
There’s Angel – Buffy’s paramour who had teenage (and older) hearts going ‘thump thump’ at double time…
And wasn’t Mick St. John of Moonlight just a dish?
We won’t even get into what’s going on with the ‘Twilight’ phenomena.
It would be safe to say that the vampire as sex symbol and romantic interest is here to stay. Wouldn’t you agree?
