I understand there is nothing of interest to behold, should one ever have the foolish inclination to look at me for any amount of time. But recently it came to my attention that a television show called “What We Do In The Shadows” features a character who wishes to be a vampire. He is a portly, awkward sort who happens to be named Guillermo… I froze a bit upon discovering this. This was one of those moments where I genuinely thought the feds had found me. Or whoever else would care that I exist. I know, it was shocking to me too. The idea that someone actually cared to notice.
I tried to compare details of this character with my own attributes. If this character was indeed based on me, it would be a tragic misrepresentation of the plight I endure without end. I absorbed the entirety of this show, and even found myself shouting at the screen, trying to coax the actor into abandoning his goals of unholy conversion. My parents saw me doing this, by the way. They had no reaction. Unlike the times they caught me touching the screen while Baywatch was on. Those times they made sure to make me inescapably aware of their laughter and mutual revelry in the openly verbal reassurance that they had no confidence I could ever touch any living thing the way I was touching the TV screen. I don’t even feel bad when they do this anymore. It is sadly a more frequent occurrence than you’d think.
But every now and then, I see something on the show that coincidentally reflect some thing that happened in my life. Like the raw chicken thing. Guillermo sleeps in a cell his master keeps and is given packs of raw chicken for feed. He doesn’t eat it, but instead just sneaks out and eats normal food while vampires in the home sleep. An otherwise comical illustration that clearly reflects the depths of the vampire’s awareness of creatures outside of their own species. The only reason this was striking to me is that my parents used to do that same thing to me. Almost literally. I believe in my late 20’s they had a habit of buying packs of raw meat and leaving it inside my room just by the door. You know, the door I am not allowed to lock unless I want to be grounded. I don’t know what they thought I would do with this meat. They never asked me to cook it. They never offered to cook it. They just sat it there with the assumption that I would figure it all out on my own. I mean, I was an adult so obviously I know what to do with it. But I had no idea why it was never put in the refrigerator like any sane person would do. It took years before I came up with a way to break this strange habit of theirs. I would leave a pair of very clearly dirty tighty whities by the door, smeared with nutella. I knew they wouldn’t touch my laundry, and I was right. First night of open face feces sandwich they feasted their eyes on was the last night I had chicken left in my room. They never brought this up.
So how could the writers of the show know of this? There’s no way, right? Unless it actually is a coincidence and nobody is watching me or digging through my past. It does occur to me that this would be a pretty silly way to expose my evil. I know there’s no way my paranoia is justified, but every now and then I get spooked and descend back into a good week of peering out the blinds and scrutinizing everything around me. I almost feel alive when I have something to hide from.