Andrew Fox - Fat White Vampire Blues

“We… were we all asleep?”

“I remember laughin‘ like the dickens about somethin’ or other…”

“What’s with theseholes in everybody’s neck?”

“Red gravy in pans all over the floor-?”

“Hey, Waldo, you’re white as a brand-new bedsheet!”

“Boy, am Ithirsty — ”

Jules stepped smartly to the podium and shoved the ex-moderator aside. He beamed with triumph. “Welcome, everyone! Welcome to the happy and growing ranks of the undead!”

The ex-moderator slumped into a chair and rubbed his sore neck. “And who the fat fuck are you?”

“Me? I’m your new leader. My name is Jules Duchon. And I”-he struck his puffed-out chest like a Roman centurion-“am avampire! Now, thanks to me, all ofyou are vampires, too! I can see from your faces that some of you are havin‘ a hard time believing me. Well, just look at the fang marks on each other’s necks. The mark ofmy fangs! You feel thirsty? It’sblood that you thirst for! In just a few minutes, you can exchange pans and have your first drink. Feel each other. Go ahead; don’t be shy. Your skin is the temperature of this room. Since the air conditioner’s been running all night, your hides must be pretty darn cool by now.”

“He’sright!” the pregnant woman shrieked. “I’mcold! I ain’tnever been cold in July in south Louisiana before!”

“You’ll get used to it,” Jules reassured her. “Just drink plenty of hot coffee.”

“But-but wait a minute!” TheTimes-Picayune reporter stared at her white arms with horror. “Ican’t be a vampire! I’m a rabbi’s wife, for God’s sake!”

“Holy mackerel! My skin reallyis white!” The man wearing the Buchanan T-shirt lifted it up and insisted that his neighbors take a look at his alabaster belly. “Look at this! Is this incrediblyexcellent or what? I’m the whitest man on the North Shore!”

Immediately, all members of the audience began comparing each other’s skin tones and arguing over who, in fact, was the whitest of them all. This contest went on for a few minutes, rising in volume and vociferousness, until the ex-moderator grabbed the gavel from the podium and banged it against the seat of his chair.

“Now simmer down, people! Just simmer down!” He waited until the last arguments died away, then turned toward Jules. “I think it’s high time we asked this man why he came here tonight and did this to all of us.”

Jules took a deep breath and expanded his chest to its maximum diameter. “I have recruited all of you to fight in a great crusade! A crusade that all of you will have big-time enthusiasm for. The great city of New Orleans has become infected with the foul, nasty, horrible,foul plague of-Negro vampirism!That fair city, so historic, so important to good white folks everywhere, is practicallyoverrun by colored, bloodsucking hordes! They pollute the air with their so-called rap music and destroy all that is good and pure about white culture! We MUST put an END to this ABOMINATION! Are you allwith me?”

The rousing cheers Jules fully expected to hear never came. Instead, the man wearing the Buchanan T-shirt said, “So you want us to go back over the Causeway with you to New Orleans and clean that place out?”

“Well…sure! ” Jules smiled as brightly as he could.

The self-proclaimed Whitest Man on the North Shore laughed so hard that his dentures, already displaced by his new fangs, flew out of his mouth. “You… wantus… to go back to that cesspool of miscegenation and niggraism? After we spent half our lives making enough money to get the hellaway from there?”

“But-”

Others in the audience vigorously nodded their assent. “Let New Orleansrot!”

“They can all kill each other off for all I care!”

“Damn rich white folks over theredeserve it for lettin‘ those niggers breed out of control!”

“FuckNew Orleans!”

Jules waved his arms wildly. “Wait! Just wait a minute! Look over there!” He pointed dramatically at the window on the eastern side of the building. “In just four or five hours from now, thesun’s gonna rise over the horizon and come through that window, andnone of you know what to do about it! You know what that sun’ll do to you? It ain’t nice!I’m the only one here with the know-how to teach you how to escape the sun-how to live asvampires! And if y’all don’t do exactly as I say-I ain’t teachin‘ none of you doodly-squat!”

The new vampires stared at each other, their pale faces twitching with uncertainty. But then the ex-moderator stood and strode to the podium. “Listen, folks! We don’t need this man! I’ve read every book Agatha Longrain has ever written, cover to cover, three times! I know everything there is to know about vampires!”

The man in the Buchanan shirt shot to his feet. “More good, Christian white folks are moving to St. Tammany every day! Who’s to say we can’t form our own colony of white vampires overhere, where there’s an endless and ever-growing supply of pure, unpolluted white blood?”

A man in a black suit, who hadn’t said a word previously, was the next to rise. “I own a funeral home in Mandeville, folks! I have, in stock, a full line of magnificent coffins that I will be happy to sell for one penny over invoice to every person in this room!”

It was all slipping away. Jules looked beseechingly at Doodlebug, still sitting in the back of the hall with hisNew Yorker on his lap. Doodlebug slowly shook his head and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Then he put his magazine aside and stood on his chair.

“Whatgreat ideas everyone has! I can justfeel all the positive energy flowing in this room. But I’m sure you’re all terribly,terribly thirsty. I remember how it was whenI first became a vampire. Well, I know just the thing! Nothing, butnothing, beats the zing of drinking yourown blood. It’s incredibly reviving and refreshing! Everybody, check the floor next to your chairs. There’s a baking pan there that’s filled with your own blood. Trust me, it’s a treat like no other!”

Like a pack of ravenous hyenas, the newborn vampires grabbed the pans of blood off the floor and lifted them to their thirsting lips. The red gore ran freely down their faces and necks, staining blouses and T-shirts and polyester neckties alike. The room was filled with the sounds of slurping, gulping, and sweetly satisfied sighs.

Those satisfied sighs didn’t last long, however. They were quickly displaced by surprised yelps of pain, then agonized screams, then the wails of dissolving banshees. Before Jules’s horrified eyes, twenty-three newborn vampires were reduced to twenty-three puddles of smoking, bubbling goo.

“So the conquering heroes have returned.”

Maureen didn’t even bother looking up from her copy ofLadies’ Home Journal as Jules and Doodlebug stepped into her dressing room. “Where’s your glorious army, Jules? Out in the club watching the floor show? Or did you recruit so many soldiers that you had to leave them outside?”

“Don’t ask,” Jules said, staring sourly at his companion.

Maureen swiveled around on her stool. “Oh, but Iwant to ask! I want to heareverything! Jules, how did your brilliant plan work out? I assume from your happy expression that it was asmashing success. And, Doodlebug dear, I justknow you’re feeling a warm glow of satisfaction from backing your friend to the hilt.”

“Maybe if hehad backed me to the hilt,” Jules said, “we woulda accomplished somethin‘ tonight. But thanks to Penelope Pukehead here, all I got to show fer the evening is eight gallons of wasted gas and a sick feelin’ in the pit of my stomach.”

“Jules is a little peeved at me.” Doodlebug reached into his purse and applied a fresh coat of imported French lipstick. “I’m afraid I had to pull the plug on him before things got out of hand.”