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My fatigue was a product of my girlfriend's temper. Her sexual talents were such that with my cock between her tits it was easy to overlook her weekly fits of alcohol-induced rage: a broken television, smashed glasses, personal items dismissed from the apartment via the window. In retrospect, the solution was simple: change the locks and quit answering her calls. However, as much as I hate to admit it, I was genuinely afraid of this woman, and not because of the threat she posed to my more fragile possessions: she routinely smacked the shit out of me. Because of my slight build, I learned early in life to extract myself from volatile situations with a quick wit or, failing that, a pretty quick sprint. Such tactics are fairly useless against an angry woman, as I discovered when Lorraine began ranting at me one night when I attended a poetry reading without her: "I know you're just out trying to fuck someone else!" She whipped a book at my head. Luckily it was Gravity's Rainbow, which is not at all aerodynamic. "Some fucking poetry slut!" (Oh, if only such a slut did exist!) I bore the constant humiliation of my girlfriend slapping me around in my typical manner: I got stoned. Whatever the drawbacks of marijuana, it's good for helping one forget the recent past. Alas, one of those drawbacks is that being high and being angry cannot occur simultaneously. During the days, though, I stewed with venom. I thought of men like Robert Mitchum, Humphrey Bogart. They weren't violent toward women, but by God, when a woman needed straightening out, they didn't hesitate to give her a solid slap. Sometimes two, if the occasion warranted. I dreamt often of slapping Lorraine so hard it would knock her earrings off. However, the fact that I wanted my slap to be an homage to June Allyson's bitch-slap of Joan Collins in The Opposite Sex gave me the impression that I was not the man for the task. All of this was swimming in my head when one of my students sat down beside me and said: "So, you ever had any Absinthe before?" The comment wasn't completely random. Gary was a student in my American literature class, and during a lecture on Hemingway I was prompted to explain a reference to Absinthe in a short story. He'd been the only other person in the room who knew what it was.
I told him a friend had brought some back from Europe several years before, and I'd tried it then. "Did it fuck you up?" His tone lacked the voyeurism of indulgence one might expect; it had a palpable clinical nature to it. "I didn't have enough." "Well, if you ever want some, let me know; I keep it around." "You like it that much?" "No, it's..." Gary took a drag from his cigarette and glanced around; we were more or less alone. "I practice vampirism. It's part of a ritual." I turned my head toward Gary: he was a stocky country boy with coal-black hair and muscles shaped by labor and not the ridiculous repetition of weights; he looked directly into my eyes, and his eyes were the color of slate. I'd gotten used to students telling me completely bizarre and personal things — people are always looking for an authority figure to heap their issues on for some shred of absolution. And even though this was quite possibly in the top three weirdo admissions of all time, I thought it best not to laugh at his confession. But it was hard to ignore the fact that I was sitting directly under the sun with a guy who claimed to be a vampire. "So what's with the absinthe?" I asked. "Oh, that. Well, you know it's potent shit. Most people it just fucks up. But it won't even intoxicate a vampire. It's a test, you know. To see if you've got the gene." "What gene?" "The vampire gene." A scientific debate with someone claiming the existence of a vampire gene seemed rather pointless. I let the matter slide. "So, do you like, you know, bite necks?" "Do I look like I have fucking fangs to you?" He flashed his teeth. "Uh, no."
"Yeah," and his face dropped. "It sucks. I just can't afford to have the work done. You'll meet people tonight who've got them. Some are quality dental work. Some just look like shit because people file their teeth — that's just fucked up. Some people just get lucky by birth. But if I could afford them, I'd have them." I wasn't sure how to respond to this, so I sat quietly. Then Gary said: "How old do I look to you?" "I don't know," I said. "Twenty-five?" "I'm thirty-eight." "You're older than me." "Get yourself a woman who treats you right. You'll feel the difference in your blood." He smiled, exposing a mouthful of beautiful white teeth. "Just think about it. If you want to meet a nice girl, I know the place." I wasn't sure what a vampire who attended the local community college might have in mind when he said "nice girl," but considering my own circumstances at the time, I didn't need to bring any more drama into my life. When I got home that night, I made the puzzling discovery that my apartment was littered with confetti. Upon closer examination I realized the confetti was actually the pages of my journals, which Lorraine had taken great care to manufacture into fantastically small pieces. Apparently, my private thoughts about her were not to her liking. I found a note in the bathroom that read: Fuck you. I also found my toothbrush in the toilet. The next day after class I asked Gary just what he meant by a "nice girl." "Come and see for yourself. I'm going there tonight." "Where?" "Purgatory." I considered this. "On a Tuesday?"
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