It is 2:34 AM, and I've just returned home from a busy night...
We had nothing good to do this evening, so we decided to go over to the college and look for freaks. We did locate a great abundance of freaks, all of whom were involved in some bizarre vampire role-playing game. It didn't look that interesting; all they did was sit there and talk about character sheets. There was no biting, no chasing, no howling at the moon. And -- this is one of my pet peeves -- none of them appeared to have the first clue about vampire lore. If you're going to pretend you're a vampire, f'gahd's sake, please don't tell me about vampires with "multiple personality disorder," or people who can read things by staring at their own palm. If you want to talk vampires, we'll talk about "Camilla," (a lesbian vampiress from a short story, and one of the first female vampires in Western literature), or the old custom of using poppy seeds to thwart vampire attacks, or the specific reason why a wooden stake (not a metal one) must be used to kill a vampire... I hate that fake shit.
I REALLY hate it.
I mean, come on; vampires are fascinating. It's the ONE topic I know something about from research I did in high school. It sort of grosses me out when people modernize and dramaticize vampirism to such a dumb degree. Yeah, like vampires have EVER worn huge gobs of glittery eyeshadow and walked around proclaiming that they're vampires, and that they once worked at Arby's? Even worse, they weren't even PLAYING their dumb game. They were just there because it gave them an excuse to dress in stupid clothes (none of them was even properly gothed-out; they all just sort of looked like Goodwill rejects!), and sit around shooting the shit.
Duh.
[For whatever reason, Jake is obsessed with getting as many weird people as possible involved with his films. But these weird people wouldn't even talk to us, "because it's so hard to know that you can trust the 'outsiders,'" explained one girl. I felt like slapping her. I pouted for awhile until Jake decided he'd also had enough of watching flaky weird people. So we wandered around campus.]
We came across the sprinklers well after the sun had gone down. It wasn't exactly cold, but it wasn't warm, either. It was probably a dumb idea to go running around in the sprinklers. But once I saw them, I couldn't resist. We ran through them. I shrieked. Jake stood under one proclaiming his love. Just when it seemed the night couldn't get any better, we saw three drunk kids rolling down a hill behind the theater building. Well, that looked like great fun, so we rolled too. We rolled again. And again.
I'm well aware that it's kind of stupid for sober people, over the age of ten, to be rolling down hills. It's also kind of stupid to run around in sprinklers in the middle of the night. Ah, but I had such a lonely childhood, you know? I did all the weird hill-rolling, sprinkler-running activities. But I often did them alone. What fun is laughing when there's nobody to laugh with you? What fun is it to do stupid crap when there's nobody there to laugh with you? Sure, hill-rolling has a certain sensuality to it which is undeniably enjoyable, but it's so much easier to laugh at yourself, to play, when there's somebody else to play with.
It is infinitely more fun to role down a hill than it is to dress in black and pretend you're a vampire with "multiple personalities." People don't know what vampires are, what they represent, anymore. People ought to find simpler pleasures: rolling down a hill, or getting soaking wet in a dark field, for example. Those things seem so much more intelligent to me. After all, it's easy to understand the meaning of a hill. People invent so many complicated games that are so ignorant; what the fuck is wrong with just rolling around in wet grass with your lover? The meaning of that is so very pure. When I roll down a hill (which I haven't done since I was about eight), nothing matters except getting sort of dizzy, hoping I don't slam into anything, and avoiding possible dog poop.
As I sit here, thinking about it, it's incomprehensible to me that people could be doing anything else, and calling it "fun" or "a game."
I'm exhausted and happy. And soaking wet -- still. Off to remedy this situation...
~Helena*