ham fisted theatrics

“They’re my roommate’s,” I tell him. “She’s like ULTRA Catholic.”

“That’s cool,” he says.

“Anyway, who cares what she is as long as she’s not here, right?”

“Mmmm” he says, because now we’re kissing.

He brought his John Mayer CD.

You guys. It’s awesome.

I mean, it’s not like I, y’know…and it’s not like he makes any attempt to y’know…help out with that, but still, he’s so sweet afterwards and he’s so hot with his hair all messed up like that.

“Are you on the pill?” he asks, after he says all the really sweet stuff I was talking about.

“We don’t um. Get pregnant. Don’t have to ‘cause we do like, the biting thing.”

“Oh, right,” he says. “Sweet.”

And he says he’d totally stay if he didn’t have to get up for a Statistics test the next day and after he goes I lie in bed whispering his name and fall asleep thinking that with him around, I might not even need blood.




I don’t see him that Friday because he’s on a paintball trip with this fraternity he’s thinking about pledging and he doesn’t call on Saturday night and when he answers my call he’s somewhere loud and says he has to go and hangs up like, completely without explanation.

Then on Sunday morning he sends me a text message that says: i dont think its gonna work out see u around.

A text message.

I call Nicole, crying. As bad as she is for happy stuff she’s great for disasters.

Then I turn in to a bat. (Some of the stereotypes about us are true.) I fly across campus and perch outside his dorm room window, but I barely have to look: my super-sensitive bat hearing picks up John Mayer when I’m still three blocks away. He’s in there with some girl who’s wearing the same “New Jersey: Only The Strong Survive” t-shirt I have, only in a different color. He doesn’t even hesitate to bite her and she doesn’t even cry.

I would, if I weren’t in bat form.

I screech “fucking asshole” in sonar all the way home. I seriously think about flying into the engine of some plane.

Back in my room in human form, my roommate isn’t there. Most of the crucifixes on her wall are like, big Vatican style things but one of them’s small and wooden. It’ll work. I slip on one of these really cute gloves I bought in the city this one time, I grab the cross with that hand, and I put it in my purse.

Like I said, some of the stereotypes about us are true.




Ashley this girl I know from home also lives in Rex’s dorm and she lets me in. She asks if everything’s okay and I tell her I just left something in his room last time I was there and I really need it.

I get off the elevator. I go to Rex’s door. His fucking hat is still on the doorknob. I put the glove on again. I take the cross out of my purse and I knock. Wooden stakes are bad and crosses are bad so you should see what kind of damage a wooden cross can do. O-M-G, to say the least.




Sometimes it’s just about blood, but sometimes it’s about love, or what you think is love at the time. But it’s probably just the post-bite rush. It’s probably just the beer.