I was back at work a couple weeks or  later. Someone who knew I’d been punctured (I got harpooned with a great metal rod, like Moby Dick; not a long story, but some other time) said it was great to see me up, walking about and looking cheerful.

I said I felt great, but it was only because I had a couple of litres of someone else’s blood sloshing around inside me. 

She said, “Um.” Then she turned pale and wan, and walked away. Probably not a vampire fan. 

Actually, I’m not a vampire fan either. Vampires aren’t remotely scary, partly because I can’t suspend disbelief in them for a second (see also werewolves, zombies, etc), and partly because, like the original Daleks, they’re too rule-bound. 

You’re being pursued by a vampire? Well, cross running water: they can’t. Go home and don’t invite them in; they can’t enter your home, the first time, without an invitation. Vampires originated in a traditionally Catholic part of Europe, so they’re scared of crucifixes. So get your silverware, make the sign of the t, and wave it at them. They don’t like garlic. I do.

If I met a vampire, I’d probably just tell him to go back home and listen to his Nosferatu and Cradle of Filth records. And to take those silly red contact lenses out, unless he was going to meet another vampire fan through Fetlife, in which case he shouldn’t be loitering around anyway. 

Anyway, I was going to say something sententious in this post, about sex and death. But all I found is that there’s a period after you’ve nearly died when you can’t fuck. You haven’t got the blood, I suppose, and you’re concentrating on other things. 

A little bit later, lust comes in with a vengeance. I wanted to fuck anything – hospital sheets, nurses, passers-by. I got talking to a night nurse, who knew lust when she saw it. This isn’t some porno movie, so we didn’t have wild sex behind the curtains, and so forth. But we got chatting about injuries, and life, and lovers, and such, and for some reason by the third night she knew I’d like to see the bruises on her thighs. That involved wriggling pantihose about halfway down her thighs and shimmying the skirt up, so curtains were involved. 

The bruises were put there by a bicycle accident, not a lover. But she was right; I thought her bruised thighs were … life-affirming. She had a boyfriend. And she didn’t want her thighs kissed better. Or new bruises. She was just reminding me of life’s pleasures.

So sex beats death, at least in the skirmishes. Life is good.