A Sense of Doubt blog post #1594 - This book Queered me: Vampire Lestat: TOR
A little past PRIDE month but still worth sharing. I left in some of the comments that followed the article because I thought some made good points, even though I spotted a horrible misspelling of "chronicles."
There's a lot to unpack here, and I want to riff a little on my share before I share it. After all, if I am going to post a day late, then instead of being short a dollar, as the cliché goes, I want to add some value. By which I mean that I cannot always generate original material -- as I just confessed in a cover letter for a job application -- but I can at least vet and curate my material and make some commentary, unlike yesterday's collection of music with very little guidance in my text.
This article caught my eye immediately, and I knew I would post it. The books didn't speak to me as gay but as omnivorously sexual. Lestat seemed to want to devour the world. There was a reckless abandon and wanton lust to these vampires while also, for some, a strict control.
Vampirism is a metaphor for sex after all. From the Dracula-style rape fantasies to Anne Rice more carnal, a times orgiastic tales and at other times tales of guilt and shame versus passion and blood lust, the central conflict people have with their humanity and their religious upbringing.
I see this author's point. The gay content is there. But really the books are sexual while at the same time being grounded in history.
Hmmm. I probably can go deeper with these thoughts if I spent time on them.
I have Rice's newest novel, Blood Communion, on my book shelf, but for the last two -- Prince Lestat and Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis -- I need refreshers. I have thought of perusing plot summaries, though I am tempted to re-listen as a reread to each, so steeped are they in history both of our world and of Rice's as she has set in stone so much of her canon and mythos.
That's all.
On to the share.
https://www.tor.com/2019/06/20/something-with-teeth-finding-my-identity-in-anne-rices-vampire-chronicles/
Something With Teeth: Finding My Identity in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles
K.M. Szpara
Author photo: Karen Osborne, 2018.
When I was a teenager, my mom gave me a book with a royal blue cover, raised silver lettering, and a spine so broken as to be almost illegible. A mass market paperback with yellowed pages that threatened to liberate themselves from the glue binding them and the distinct scent of old paper. Its outsides rich with phrases like “a voluptuous dream” and “unrelentingly erotic.” Its insides with blood and wine and teeth. With vampires.
I was probably too young to be reading Interview with the Vampire, but I devoured it and the seven other extant books of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles with only one lingering question: did my mom know how gay these books were?
She kept giving them to me—from her bookshelf. From beside the complete works of Michael Crichton and The Lord of the Rings books we’d attempted to read as a family, in advance of the movies. (We didn’t make it through The Two Towers, and can you blame us?)
Unlike our other books, Rice’s vampires were sexy, their world lush. The charismatic dandy Lestat and his emo boyfriend Louis traveled the world from New Orleans to Paris. They slept in the same coffin—they adopted a child together. I dog-eared scenes where the vampires Marius, Master of the household, and Armand, his beloved Amadeo, kissed and caressed—definitely naked and definitely in love.
I remember reading The Vampire Armand and thinking, is this allowed? I’d never read a book where men loved and made love to one another. Voluptuous and erotic, as promised. Did no one else know about this? Did my mother, a certified grown-up, know these books were full of gay vampire fucking?
Back in the late nineties and early two-thousands, I didn’t know any words besides “gay.” Not queer or bisexual or non-binary—any of the words I might use while attempting to describe Lestat de Lioncourt’s gender expression and sexuality, today. He was nebulous. Alluring. I wanted to be his Louis, to be Marius’ Amadeo. I didn’t know that was a thing I could sort-of be until after graduate school. Queer, that is, not a vampire, though, I’d have accepted the Dark Gift in a heartbeat. What was it if not a transformation? One that immortalized their bodies, gifting them supernatural abilities and beauty—I wanted that. I had no idea what to call it.
I’m sure my mother knew the contents of those books. They were used, after all, and she’d handed them to me, telling me generally what they were about. I knew she knew and still it felt like a secret.
Early in my transition, I bought a pack of men’s undershirts. I used to wear them underneath one of the two (women’s) dress shirts I owned and, after work, would unbutton the outer shirt, letting it hang open to expose the clean white cotton beneath. I never felt more masculine than walking through Baltimore City like that. No one else knew, I was certain. I wasn’t injecting testosterone, hadn’t cut my long curly hair, was wearing flowy women’s slacks and black flats.
I was an innocent blue book with Gothic lettering and high-profile blurbs. A mass market paperback, like you might find in the grocery store. I interacted with respectable people, worked in an office with cubicles and a pod coffee maker. I was not a man; my pages did not contain monsters.
That was my secret: like The Vampire Chronicles, no one knew I was gay on the inside.
I did eventually tell my family and friends, did begin those hormones and buy a whole new wardrobe—a shopping spree that would’ve made Lestat proud. Even though I was supposedly freer, the loss of my secret came with restrictions. I had to answer questions. Justify myself. If I was a guy, why was I wearing a long feminine necklace? Was there a reason I decided to wear an undershirt? I couldn’t just wear it, anymore. No one asked my dad why he wore an undershirt and the answer was I didn’t have one. I wore it because that’s what men did and it made me feel masculine.
Because I fucking wanted to.
BUY IT NOW
I didn’t encounter any other queer literature outside of fanfiction for almost a decade. I didn’t know it was harder to publish or where to look for it because, like many readers, I heard of good books from friends or browsing Borders (may it rest in peace) or Barnes & Noble. Most of my friends weren’t queer—I didn’t know I was queer until after I finished writing my first novel (gone but not forgotten).
Working on it, I didn’t know what queer literature could look like. I’d forgotten Anne Rice; all I remembered was fanfiction. I wrote what I thought gay fantasy was supposed to look like—a slow burn with unresolved sexual tension and some chaste making out at the end. Nice soft gay content that follows the same trajectories as many novels I’d read since high school. I put it aside because something was missing. Something with teeth.
I wrote—a new book that was lush and thorny and queer like I remembered of Lestat’s world, but flushed red with what I’d learned from fanfiction. That no trope was sacred. That they didn’t have to wait until the end to kiss; they could fuck in the first chapter, if I wanted them to. I was Akasha, Queen of the Damned, the one from whom all the blood flowed. I had power over my words and myself and my genre.
Years later, I no longer wear undershirts. I stopped once I bought dress shirts from the men’s section, no longer needing a secret to feel validated. I don’t even identify as particularly masculine or A Man unless I’m updating my driver’s license or using a public facility. I use words like queer and femme. I read books with covers that betray their luxurious gay interiors. Write about angry trans vampires who have a complicated relationship with blood. Traumatized debtors who have complicated relationships with trillionaires. Gatekeepers and virtual realities and quests—and they are all queer. They are all me.
When I was reading them for the first time, you couldn’t find Vampire Chronicles fanfiction on the Internet because, as I read on a message board, Anne Rice didn’t approve of it. I never got to write those stories, but that’s okay because I wrote mine. After devouring hers—after desiccating like a vampire who hadn’t fed for a decade. When I wanted more, I didn’t wait for the Dark Gift. I wrote my own.
Hugo and Nebula finalist K.M. Szpara is a queer and trans author who lives in Baltimore, MD. His debut novel, Docile, is coming from Tor.com Publishing in 2020; his short fiction and essays appear in Uncanny, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, and more. Kellan has a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, which he totally uses at his day job as a paralegal. You can find him on the Internet at his website and on Twitter at @kmszpara.
CITATION
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1907.02 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1459 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
I know it’s hard to make too many comparisons between these two authors (other than both being good at their particular craft), but one thing I did find comforting in both the works of Anne Rice and J.R.R. Tolkien: the ability for two male characters to be close without it requiring a particular orientation. With Rice, the excuse was they weren’t really men, or male, anymore at all—they were something else, something transcendent and asexual. Non-binary for sure! With Tolkien there was no excuse; men could just be honest and speak of love plainly. In both cases, I found this to be a consolation because in my experience, this was so lacking in the real world. And I read these during a fairly formative time in my life, too. So now they’re important to me.
Obviously, that wasn’t exactly your experience with Rice, K.M. Szpara, and that’s totally cool. I like reading your account and I’m happy when someone gets something good from books that’s way beyond mere entertainment. Anyway, I miss vampires of this sort.