A Vampire's Life? It's Really Draining

On Friday afternoon, Collins, who goes by the vampire name Merticus, was fielding media requests for interviews with vampires. He casually rattled off the schedule of just about every major vampire in the United States. Father Sebastiaan was in New York, briefly, before heading off to Paris. Don Henrie, a "lifestyler" who really does sleep in a coffin, just taped Maury Povich and was heading back to Las Vegas with his manager. Belanger was giving a lecture on vampires at a college in Florida.

"We really hope that the fruits of what we're doing now will lead to us being understood later," he said. The VVC exists to help vampires form a cohesive community, present a united front.

Of course, as with any community, there have been internal struggles:

Psychic vampires have perceived sanguinarians as rudimentary brutes, while blood vampires "had a very hard time accepting that psychic vampires are legitimate," Belanger says. She sighs. "It boiled down to: Oh, sure, 'I'm taking your energy, I'm taking your energy.' [Sanguinarians] have a hard time wrapping their brains around the psychic stuff."

Anyway. That hatchet was mostly buried a few years ago, Belanger says, especially after Sanguinarius, a respected blood-drinking vampire (and founder of the resource site http://Sanguinarius.org), changed an earlier antagonistic position and came out in support of unity.

In a phone interview, Sanguinarius, whose real name is Elizabeth, wholeheartedly expresses solidarity, but goes on to say that psychic vampires "concern themselves as much as we do with ethics . . . but all ethics aside, they could just walk into some place, and pick some person, and feed on them until the person flops down and twitches. The cops can't do anything because it's not illegal. Now if I did that . . . "

You can understand the frustration.

You can also understand the inter-community annoyance, which sounds pretty much like run-of-the-mill interoffice tension (Oh, sure, she has kids, so she gets to leave at 5. Now if I tried that . . .).

It's all so borrring, so very borrring. Deep down, deep way down, we don't really want vampires to be just like us, because we are pretty lame. Deep down, we know that if we really have nothing to fear, then we also have nothing to be titillated by, nothing to make us shriek, then laugh, then shriek again. No, no, don't suck my blood! Or do. Okay, do.

It's doubly depressing to learn that some academics are viewing vampires as less mythical creature, more identity group. It's the next step in society's evolution, says Joe Laycock, author of the forthcoming "Vampires Today: The Truth About Modern Vampires." See, "in the Middle Ages people didn't really consider themselves as individuals," Laycock explains. "These modern 'Who am I?' questions are very new. Self-identified vampires take it to the next logical progression: Maybe I can't take for granted that I'm human. Maybe who I am is not a person at all."

In the future, we will all be vampires.

In "Twilight," the sensitive vampire Edward can scale trees in seconds, can stop moving cars with an outstretched hand, can read people's minds, and gets all glittery when he stands in the sunlight.

When Rabinowitz is asked whether she possesses any of these skills -- any at all -- she thinks about it for a second. "I do have a heightened sense of smell" when she feeds, she says. And, of course, she can read people's energy, which is not exactly like reading people's minds, but it's something.

The energy in the movie theater, for example, was really happy. A lot of people overcome with excitement and emotion. Personally, she loved the movie. Unlike previous vampire movies, she thought this one went a long way toward showing that vampires are complex, multifaceted beings. Regular folk.

Vampires should be pleased.

We average humans are a little disappointed.