Douchey Little Vampire Kids

If, however, you like dressing in black 'cause it's "fun," enjoy putting sparkles on your cheeks and following the occult while avoiding things that are bad for your health, then you are most likely a douchebag vampire wannabe boner.

You know what I kind of like? Interview With the Vampire. Before the Twilight craze hit in the late aughts, vampires had something of a resurgence in popularity around 1994, which was when I was nine.

Vampire movies that came out in the '90s:

Bram Stoker's Dracula (this movie is shitty)

Interview With the Vampire (we're gonna get to that)

Dracula: Dead and Loving It (this has an 11% on rottentomatoes, but I WILL DEFEND IT WITH MY LAST BREATH or maybe not my last but one of the last like sometime during my last day of life)

The release of the latter on VHS coincided with me being maybe the most annoying age possible: 11. Or maybe 12.

Any child between the ages of 11 and 13 sucks. They're hideous ages. I decided to pair this already-traumatizing-to-my-parents age with being way too into vampires. Nothing says "I'm 12" like going to Blockbuster, buying the VHS of Interview With the Vampire, which you have of course named your favorite movie, because you're a douchy little 12-year-old -- and then having a screaming match with your parents, who had forbidden you to buy it because it was rated R. Said screaming match might possibly have consisted things like "It's my money and you can't tell me how to spend it!" (yes, they can, that money came from them and you are 12)

I forget how I got the tape back, but I did. And then I sat in my room, playing it on a loop and looking up vampire sites online. Probably using Netscape Navigator. This being 1997, every website was on Geocities or Angelfire and looked like something your Aunt Cathy made.

this was probably on all of them

One of the sites had something called "The Vampire Creed," which I printed out and put in my vampire folder, because I was an asshole and had a vampire folder. I insisted on reading this aloud and upsetting my older, recently-turned-Christian brother, who told me I shouldn't get involved in that sort of thing. Which obviously just made me get more into it. Because I was 12.

I never dressed like a vampire. I never invented a vampire name for myself (I did have a Native American name in Social Studies -- "Running Deer," because I was a pudgy child who never ran but HAD DREAMS), and I certainly never actually pretended to be a vampire. True to the lifestyle choices of the lazy, I watched movies and browsed online.

And read Interview With the Vampire, the only Anne Rice I was able to make it through. This book is kickass when you're 12, and I've re-read it at least once as an adult. 

ahahahaha

It takes place in the past, which means it's got historical stuff (+1); it has an awesome female character, Claudia (+1); and it's not overly long (+5 billion). I can't handle any other Anne Rice (says my never-revised opinion from 1997), but that one is excellent.