Fantasy

When I was a kid I went through a lot of phases. I went through a chess phase where Bobby Fischer was my idol, I went through a physics phase where Einstein and Michio Kaku were the shizz and then there was my Anne Rice/ Vampire phase.

I think it all started with Queen of the Damned. I thought LeStat was so cool and Aailyah as the Queen was just too damn sexy. I thought that it would be cool to be a vampire. So I combined my two favorite things at the time: reading and vampires. I found Anne Rice novels and devoured them. Reading about LeStat and Maurius and a bunch of other characters that I cannot remember now was great to me. I felt like I had knowledge that very few were privileged with; the inner nature of the vampire.

Every year I would go down to Florida to visit my cousins and paternal grandparents. It was always a great time because I was sort of a novelty to my cousins in the sense that I was a novelty to them. We were from two different parts of the country even though our family was relatively close knit. This meant that there were always new stories each summer as well as new trends and styles from each region. One summer I brought down my vampire fandom to the Sunshine State and got my cousins to believe that were all vampires. I remember pretending to have the super speed of the vampire as well as the fangs because I had already lost those teeth which were neatly replaced. It was all believable and it was sure great playing pretend. But we all knew it was a fantasy and by the next summer we were on to something new.