Suck ’em & see

We saw several mini versions over the Halloween period, tripping over their black capes and up our garden paths, burying their fangs into apples and monkey nuts. And now that they’ve been scrubbed and school-uniformed and transformed back into normal human children, now that a fresh new year has begun, we tend to forget all about the Vampire – never imagining that, although Halloween may be long over, the real creatures of the night live on.

Lily is one such creature. A strict vegetarian, she cringes at the thought of eating meat. And yet, once every while, when she begins to feel “the hunger,” she will partake of a mouthful of human blood. Lily is one of a tiny minority of people living in Dublin termed Human Living Vampires or HLV’s.

By definition, HLVs are people who feel a need to feed upon other living things, primarily other people. They do not morph into bats at night-time, nor do they suspend themselves from the rafters and pick off trembling virgin wenches as they go by. In fact the Vampires that live around us today are a far different breed to those that live in the movie theatre and the paperback novel.

“Real vampires are mortal,” Lily confirms, her black fingernails dancing in the air as she gesticulates, “we know that we’re going to die some time, we don’t change into bats, some of us sleep in coffins for aesthetic reasons but most sleep in a bed, we have to eat food to live, we have families, we have friends. We are just a subcategory of human life.”

Lily is speaking to me in a city-centre café on a dark, rainy night. It is the second venue that we have visited, the first place not being “discreet enough” for the interview. This place is quiet and dim and, once Lily has found a small booth turned away from the main section of the café, she informs me that she will need to use a false name for the article and that she can not have her photograph taken.

All this cloak and dagger mystery and intrigue is for good reason. Lily is extremely secretive about her lifestyle and is always wary of people finding out “because there are some nut cases going around who probably watch too much Buffy,” she explains, “who think that all vampires are evil.”

And it’s not just the nutcases from whom Lily now guards her secret. “My best friend is no longer my best friend,” she says. “I made the mistake of telling her and she was completely freaked. She was of the opinion that I wander the streets and choose victims and all that is rubbish.”

She cuts a striking figure as she sits there, explaining. Her black hooded cloak is thrown over her velvet dress, her ripped fishnet stockings tucked into big black boots, her ebony hair framing charcoal circled eyes. She is the subject of many curious glances and, at one point, a passer-by who stares through the window, grinning and making ghostly noises. Yet, whilst Lily may look as if she has just stepped from the pages of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, she is anxious to point out that she, and the Vampires of today, are not what they seem.

“It’s true that I dress in gothic style,” she admits, “yet there are also people who appear very normal, that you wouldn’t think to look at them that they are vampires.”

This normal-seeming appearance may disguise the reality that Vampires are, in fact, a growing breed. In fact, in places such as New York, London, and Berlin, they have become so established that there exists a Vampire ‘scene’. Vampires may attend exclusive clubs (called Havens), contact each other via their computers, and gain access to an extensive support system of dedicated organisations and websites.

The practice of most is to seek each other out through the internet, through visiting havens, or by organising private parties. They converge to feed upon Donors, those involved in the subculture who provide blood by agreeing to be cut and fed from. Sometimes, in vampire clubs in places such as the East Village in New York, there exists a small backroom where a vampire and their donor can go. Here a little razor blade incision is made on the body of the donor, (avoiding nerves or major blood vessels), so that the vampire can drink. This is a completely voluntary action on the donor’s part. In fact, vampiric practises are, in the vast majority, kept within the subculture, not causing any harm to the wider community.

Officially, Vampires fall into two main classes: Sanguinarians, who experience blood lust and Psychic Vampires, who drain energy. Also attached to this subculture are Lifestylers, (who dress in vampire-like clothes and frequent havens but who do not feed) and the Donors.

Lily, a Sanguinarian, has been “feeding on regular basis ever since my first drink about a year ago”. She remembers the period leading up to her first drink well. “I remember,” she says, “at first experiencing a tiredness, a lack of zest. I also started craving things with high iron. I went to the doctor to check my iron levels but they were fine. There seemed to be no explanation for how I felt.”

Then Lily came across a Sanguinarian website, one that described the same symptoms in those who experience blood lust. Around this time she also started to hang around with “a guy who was into the same music scene as I was.” And one day she mentioned the Vampire site.

“It turned out that he himself had recently ‘awakened’ and he started telling me more about it. His girlfriend was also a Sanguinarian and had been for years. The three of us met up regularly after that.”

To be “Awakened,” according to Lily, is to first realise that you are a vampire. And Lily’s own awakening was just around the corner. “My two friends said ‘don’t do anything you don’t want to do’,” she remembers, “but I watched them feed. And the offer was there: ‘if you feel the hunger we’re here’.”

During this period Lily’s craving for blood became overwhelming. “One night it really hit me,” she remembers. “You don’t know it until it does and then it’s like a boulder. You become hyper-aware, your heart rate changes, you start thinking of the taste of it.”

A few nights later Lily’s friend cut his arm. “He didn’t do it in a very safe or sanitary way,” she says, “But the blood came and he put it into a cup and there I had it. I remember just looking at it thinking ‘Is this normal? Should I be doing this?’ I took a sip and then I downed it.

“I noticed a change,” she remembers, “like something clicked. After that we would feed off each other regularly.”

And so it continued, up till today. “At this point when I’m drinking I can tell whether that person has drunk alcohol that day, whether they’re anaemic, vegetarian, or a meat eater. You see, it tastes different.”

But why the compulsion to drink? “It gives a rush of energy,” Lily replies. “You feel pepped up and ready for everything. After that, it’s the feeling that you’ve shared somebody else’s blood. It’s quite a spiritual thing.”

At this stage, Lily admits, “I’d call it an addiction. I tried to stop for five months and got very acute pangs of hunger or whatever you like to call it. So, yeah, it probably is something I’ll be doing for the rest of my life.”

It’s a prospect that often fills her with regret. “There are huge risks here. Cutting somebody can be very dangerous if it goes wrong, and you’re in danger of catching blood-borne diseases like hepatitis and AIDS.

“This is also a very lonely existence, especially in Ireland where there’s no Vampire scene. The lifestyle is different to 99.9% of the population so you have to be extremely guarded about who you tell.”

Regardless, it’s a destiny that Lily has now had to accept. “I’ve gone through phases of wishing I had never delved into it,” she says, “because it can be very hard to turn the craving off. It is a physical and psychological dependence and part of it is due to the choices that I have made.

“I sometimes wish that I hadn’t made those choices,” she finally announces, “but, I suppose, that’s life.”