Christopher Moore: You Suck

"Yeah," said Jody, "I thought you liked the pale."

"Sure, it looks good on you, but I look ill."

"Keep looking," Jody said. She was leaning against the door frame, dressed in tight black jeans and a half shirt, her hair tied back and streaming down her back like a flaccid red comet tail. She was trying not to appear too amused.

"Something's missing," Tommy said. "Something besides color."

"Uh-huh." Jody grinned.

"My skin cleared up! I don't have a single zit."

"Ding, ding, ding," Jody onomatopeed, signaling that Tommy had hit on the correct answer.

"If I had known my skin would clear up, I'd have asked you to change me a long time ago."

"I didn't know how to a long time ago," Jody said. "That's not all, take off your shoes."

"I don't understand, I—"

"Just take off your shoes.»

Tommy sat on the edge of the tub and took off his sneakers and socks.

"What?"

"Look at your toes."

"They're straight. My little toe isn't bent anymore. It's like I've never worn shoes."

"You're perfect," Jody said. She remembered finding out this condition of vampirism and being both delighted and horrified because now she felt that she'd always need to lose five pounds—five pounds that were preserved for eternity.

Tommy pulled up the leg of his jeans and studied his shin. "The scar where I hit myself with a hatchet, it's gone."

"And it always will be," Jody said. "You'll always be perfect, just like you are now. My split ends even went away."

"I'll always be the same?"

"Yes."

"Just like I am now."

"As far as I know," Jody said.

"But I was going to start working out. I was going to be buff. I was going to have abs of steel."

"No, you weren't."

"I was. I was going to be an awesome hunk of muscular man-meat."

"No, you weren't. You wanted to be a writer. You were going to have little stick arms and get winded when you hit the back-space key more than three times consecutively. You're in great shape from working in the grocery store. Wait until you see how you can run."

"You really think I'm in great shape?"

"Yes, I thought I made that clear."

Tommy flexed his chest in the mirror, which showed not at all through his flannel shirt. He unbuttoned his shirt and tried it again, with little effect, then shrugged. "What about the writer thing? Will my brain always be like this? I mean, will I get any smarter, or is that stuck in time, too?"

"Well, yeah, but that's because you're a man, not because you're a vampire."

"You spiteful harpy."

"I think I've made my point," Jody said.

Jody had put on a red leather jacket, even though she could no longer feel discomfort from the cold fog coming in off the Bay. She liked the way it looked with her black jeans and a low-cut black lace camisole she'd rescued from a Nordstrom Rack Store before some slut got hold of it. "Come on, Tommy, we need to go find something for you to eat before we run out of night."

"I know, but I have something I have to do. Give me a minute." He was in the bathroom again, this time with the door shut.

Jody heard the zipper of his jeans go down, then a slightly breathless man-scream. The bathroom door flew open and Tommy, his pants and underwear around his ankles, bunny-hopped in two great leaps across the bedroom.

"Look at this. What's happening to me. Look at this!" He was pointing furiously to his penis. "It's like I'm some radioactive mutant freak."

Jody went to him and grabbed his hands—held him steady, looked him in the eyes. "Tommy, calm down. It's just your foreskin."

"I don't have a foreskin. I'm circumcised."

"Not anymore," Jody said. "Evidently, when you turned, it grew back, just like your toes straightened and your scars all went away."

"Oh. You don't find it creepy, then?"

"No. It's fine."

"You want to touch it?"

"Thanks. Maybe later."

"Oh, sorry, I freaked. Didn't realize. I—uh—I still feel like I have to finish what I was going to do."

"That's fine," Jody said. "You're fine. You go finish up. I'll wait."

"You're sure you don't want to give it a quick fondle?"

"If I do, can we get out of here?"

"Probably not."

"Well then, back in the bathroom you go." She spun him around and gave him a gentle shove. He bunny-hopped his newly recovered foreskin back into the bathroom and closed the door.

Jody shuddered at the sound of the door closing. She hadn't thought about whether or not Tommy would retain his incessant horniness after he turned, she had just wanted a companion who could understand what she was, what she felt, what the world looked like through vampire eyes. If it turned out that he was going to be nineteen forever, she might end up having to kill him for real.

"So that was it?"

"Yep."

"Never again?"

"Nope."

"Not ever?"

"Nope."

"I feel like I should save them or something."

"Would you just flush and come out of there."

Jody walked a step or two behind Tommy, just watching him, as they made their way up Third Street toward Market. She was watching his reaction to his new senses, giving him some room to look around, whispering hints about what he was experiencing. She'd gone through this herself only a couple of months ago, and she'd done it without a guide.

"I can see the heat coming off the streetlamps," Tommy said, looking up and spinning as he walked. "Every window in every building is a different color."

"Try to just look at one thing at a time, Tommy. Don't let it overwhelm you." Jody was waiting for him to comment on the aura that each person was giving off. Not a heat aura, more of a life force. So far they'd only seen healthy red and pink ones—not what she was looking for.

"What's that noise, like running water?" Tommy asked.

"That's the sewers running under the street. All that stuff will fade after a while—you'll still hear it, but you won't notice it unless you focus."

"It's like a thousand people are talking in my head." He looked around at the few pedestrians who were out on the street.

"Televisions and radios, too," Jody said. "Try to focus on one thing, let the rest fall back."

Tommy stopped, looked up at an apartment window four floors up. "There's a guy up there having phone sex."

"Figures you'd zero in on that," Jody said. She focused on the window. Yes, she could hear the guy panting and giving instructions to someone on the phone. Evidently he felt the caller was a dirty little slut and therefore needed to apply varieties of hot salsa to her body. Jody tried to hear the voice on the other end of the phone, but it was too faint—the guy must have been wearing a headset.

"What a freak," Tommy said.

"Shhhh," Jody said. "Tommy, close your eyes and listen. Forget the salsa guy. Don't look."

Tommy closed his eyes and stood in the middle of the sidewalk. "What?"

Jody leaned against a "No Parking" sign and smiled. "What's just to the right of you?"

"How do I know? I was looking up."

"I know. Focus. Listen. Two feet from your right hand, what is it?"

"This is dumb."

"Just listen. Listen to the shape of the sound coming from your right."

"Okay." Tommy squinted, showing he was concentrating.

A couple of androgynous students dressed in black with severe hair, probably from the Academy of Art on the next block, walked by and barely gave them a look until Tommy said, "I can hear a box. A rectangle."

"Acid noob," said one of the students, who sounded like it might be a guy.

"I remember my first trip," said the other, who was probably a girl. "I wandered into the men's room at the Metreon and thought I was in a Marcel Duchamp installation."