Vampire Kisses

https://i.imgur.com/8jiEr51.jpg
I was conceived on my dad's water bed--or

https://i.imgur.com/EXbX3Kd.jpg
on the rooftop of my mom's college dorm under twinkling stars--

https://i.imgur.com/bqEP8RY.jpg
depending

https://i.imgur.com/x0wsEW1.jpg
on which one of my parents is telling the story.

They were soul mates that couldn't part with the seventies: true love mixed with drugs, some raspberry incense, and the music of the Grateful Dead. A beaded- jeweled, halter-topped, cutoff blue-jeaned, barefooted girl, intertwined with a long-haired, unshaven, Elton John-spectacled, suntanned, leather-vested, bell-bottomed-and-sandaled guy. I think they're lucky I wasn't more eccentric. I could have wanted to be a beaded-haired hippie werewolf! But somehow I became obsessed with vampires.

https://i.imgur.com/AYR3ZRr.jpg
Sarah and Paul Madison became more responsible after my entrance into this world--or I'll rephrase it and say my parents were "less glassy eyed." They sold the Volkswagen flower power van that they were living in and actually started renting property. Our hippie apartment was decorated with 3-D glow-in-the-dark flower posters and orange tubes with a Play-Doh substance that moved on its own-- lava lamps--that you could stare at forever. It was the best time ever.

https://i.imgur.com/DJCMxPs.jpg
The three of us laughed and played Chutes and Ladders and squeezed T(w)inkies between our teeth.

https://i.imgur.com/Xx5VgBG.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/mSnhC0E.jpg
We stayed up late, watching Dracula movies, Dark Shadows with the infamous Barnabas Collins, and Batman on a black-and-white TV we'd received when we opened a bank account.

https://i.imgur.com/F0fhoXE.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/GddOGU0.jpg
I felt secure under the blanket of midnight, rubbing Mom's growing belly, which made noises like the orange lava lamps. I figured she was going to give birth to more moving Play-Doh.

Everything changed when she gave birth to the playdough--

https://i.imgur.com/DouwD0G.jpg
if only it wasn't Play-Doh.

https://i.imgur.com/6YP6Lcm.jpg
She gave birth to

https://i.imgur.com/y2SwAza.jpg
Nerd Boy!

https://i.imgur.com/fKjXPoW.jpg
How could she? How could she destroy all the T(w)inkie nights?

https://i.imgur.com/U8Cajrk.jpg
Now she went to bed early, and that creation that my parents called "Billy" cried and fussed all night. I was suddenly alone. It was Dracula--the Dracula on TV-- that kept me company while Mom slept, Nerd Boy wailed, and Dad changed smelly diapers in the darkness.

https://i.imgur.com/SQUqlRs.jpg
And if that wasn't bad enough, suddenly they sent me to a place that wasn't my apartment, that didn't have wild 3-D flower posters on the walls, but boring collages of kids' handprints.

https://i.imgur.com/oAoN7Ao.jpg
Who decorates around here? I wondered.

https://i.imgur.com/UCEHoVe.jpg
It was overcrowded with Sears catalog girls in frilly dresses and Sears catalog boys in tapered pants and perfectly combed hair. Mom and Dad called it "kindergarten."

https://i.imgur.com/Hi4PsKh.jpg
"They'll be your friends," my mom reassured me, as I clung to her side for dear life. She waved good-bye and blew me kisses as I stood alone beside the matronly Mrs. Peevish, which was as alone as one can get. I watched my mom walk away with Nerd Boy on her hip as she took him back to the place filled with glow-in-the-dark posters, monster movies, and T(w)inkies.

https://i.imgur.com/PleAo9S.jpg
Somehow I made it through the day. Cutting and gluing black paper on black paper,

https://i.imgur.com/fgijxP8.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/ypeqLVU.jpg
finger painting Barbie's lips black,

https://i.imgur.com/n2vQlJz.jpg
and telling the assistant teacher ghost stories, while the Sears catalog kids ran around like they were all cousins at an all-American family picnic.

https://i.imgur.com/SPml48z.jpg
I was even happy to see Nerd Boy when Mom finally came to pick me up.