I was 18 years old and friends with a rock star. He wasn’t famous, but he was dangerous with a set of drumsticks and every chance I got to watch him perform I truly believed he was destined for greatness.

I also believed I would always have a 24-inch waist and an ass so tight you could bounce marbles off it. I was a tad naive. What can I say; I was young and stupid as are most 18 year-old girls.

I had known this rock star my entire life. He was the eldest son to one of my father’s best friends and he was five years older than me. He taught me how to swing from the barn loft from a rope, how to catch frogs by the local pond and later, how to sneak into the racecar track to watch the weekly drag races.

As I grew up, we grew close. We became friends. There was never ever any romance involved with our friendship, we had known each other far too long for that and I was already in love with someone else. His cousin, named Boo. We talked on the phone almost daily and managed to see each other the odd weekends when neither of us had a date or had to work.

One such weekend I twisted his arm (which was no easy feat since he had massive biceps from all that drum beating) into taking me out to the bar. Rockstar, or Rocky for short, was often taking me places as I sat beside him in the passenger seat of his pimped out pick up truck, but he didn’t like taking me to night clubs.

Rocky didn’t like having to watch my sorry ass get pickled drunk off of two beers and then spend the rest of the night beating off the hormonal males that inevitably sniffed around a young intoxicated blonde. It was like waving a raw steak in front of a pack of wolves. Rocky had better things to do with his time than to act like my bodyguard.

It’s hard to pick up chicks when you constantly have to baby-sit another girl. I was lady-repellent. I was a horrible wingman for Rocky.

Still, I was Rocky’s friend and as his friend he agreed to pick me up for a night on the town. Because I knew I was just lucky to be out of the house and with Rocky, I agreed when he suggested we go to this little hole in the wall bar, a rock bar. This suited Rocky’s sensibilities for several reasons. It played primarily hair rock, which Rocky loved and played himself on his drumset as he dreamed of becoming the next Bret Micheals. It was also a rather dinky bar, with an older clientele so Rocky wouldn’t have to beat off a hoard of young men when I became a slobbering drunk and starting dancing wildly on tabletops. And the biggest reason, the most important reason, was this bar was next door to a skeevy strip joint.

It would be like killing two birds with one stone. 

(Yes I’d go to strip joints. I love strippers. One day I’ll write about my love of the pole. But not today.)

Well, the inevitable happened. I drank one beer and morphed into a raging wild thing, hauling every man who dared glance at me onto the dance floor to thrash along with me to whatever 80′s rock song was blaring from the speakers.

Rocky just rolled his eyes and focused on trying to keep a watchful eye on me while flirting with any woman in the bar that wasn’t over the age of forty and still had all her teeth. (Ya, it was a classy establishment.)

Eventually, Rocky decided the night was over when he noticed there was a dark, longhaired dude who was almost seven feet tall watching me from the corner of the bar. Rocky didn’t feel like having to fight off this goliath to protect my honour so he bundled me up and ushered me out of the bar while I laughed and giggled at his over-protectiveness.

In my drunken state, I didn’t pick up on the bad vibe from the dude wearing a long leather trench coat with beautiful black hair. I hadn’t really noticed him because I was too busy dancing (either by myself or with whatever perverted letch who wanted to see how far he could get with me) but I trusted Rocky’s judgment enough to allow him to take me home. 

Besides, the world was starting to spin sideways. That always seemed to happen to me if I drank more than one beer at the time. (Oh to be a cheap drunk once again…)

As we made our way outside of the bar, Rocky ran into some old high school buddies and struck up a conversation while making sure I didn’t run down the street half naked, singing the chorus of Warrant’s Cherry Pie. Meanwhile, the mysterious giant with long black hair and the leather trench coat had followed us out of the bar and was standing back at a distance, watching us, watching me.

When Rocky was distracted with his friends, my new admirer decided to approach me. He introduced himself and told me he thought I was beautiful. I was surprised by his attention, for this man was obviously older than my 18 year-old self and he was striking looking. Not handsome, nor beautiful but he had beautiful green eyes and his hair just begged you to run your hands through it.

He was charming and he made me laugh. (Granted, that wasn’t necessarily a laud-worthy feat since I was extremely intoxicated but still.) Rocky noticed the giant talking to me and started to move towards me to shove my sorry arse into his truck.

Meanwhile, my new suitor, a crafty fellow, maneuvered us so that he was between Rocky and myself and there was a throng of people in between us, thwarting Rocky’s attempt at rescuing me.

For a few more minutes my new goth-like friend charmed me and I flirted back.  Then the mysterious man in the trench coat smiled a coy smile and told me he had a secret he wanted to share with me and asked if he could whisper it to me.

Drunk and stupid and a bit curious, I agreed, flirting and laughing and watching Rocky try to get through the throng of people before us as the dark stranger leaned down from the heights of the sky where he towered above me to whisper in my ear, “I’m a vampire.”

I stopped laughing and looked up at the man standing before me and I realized just how stupid I had been to stray from Rocky’s safety. Rocky must have seen the look on my face because he started throwing people out of the way in his effort to reach me.

I suddenly fathomed what my drunken self had not earlier recognized. This man was a lunatic. Granted a good-looking lunatic but still a nut-job nonetheless. 

I laughed nervously while watching for Rocky to rescue me and politely declined to give my vampire friend my phone number when he asked for it. I was drunk at this point but not stupid. I bantered with him warily and tried to extract myself from his presence because suddenly I was all too aware of how large this man was and how tiny I was.

My vampire friend picked up on my nervousness and tried to calm me. He told me he had no interest in harming me, he was just captivated by my presence, my beauty. I rolled my eyes at him, recognizing a cheesy pick up line when I heard it.

Still, time seemed to stand still in those few seconds as Rocky tried to reach me and this delusional vampire stood between us and before I knew it, my new suitor bent down towards me, his eyes locked on mine.

I thought he was going to kiss me so I started to push him away, suddenly repulsed and scared by him. He grabbed me by the forearms, (so hard I had purple bruises on my arms for a week) and pulled me towards him. Before I had time to even breathe, his mouth was on me.

On my neck. That facker was biting my neck. Hard.

I screamed at him to get off me just as Rocky ripped him away from me. I grabbed my neck to check for blood as Rocky threw the man against the brick wall of the bar and punched him. Suddenly there was a throng of angry men surrounding the vampire lunatic and Rocky abandoned him to the the vengeance of the mob to attend to me.

I was shaking and near tears and my neck was on fire. Rocky grabbed me and asked me if I was okay and I shakily told him I’d live. But make sure you have a wooden stake to stab through my heart if I suddenly morph into the undead, I joked.

Rocky wasn’t amused as he hustled me into the safety of his truck and once the doors were locked he turned to examine the extent of damage inflicted on my flesh by my vampire’s love bite.

“Jesus, Tanis,” he breathed. “You’re bleeding. You can see his teeth marks.” I looked at myself in the mirror of his sun visor and was shocked to see just how bad the bite was.

“No wonder it hurt. I thought vampires were supposed to have sharp teeth. It felt like he was ripping my skin with a dull butter knife,” I half joked, half shuddered.

I ended up spending the night in the emergency room getting my love wound treated as Rocky had his hand bandaged up after busting it against the vampire’s face.

Hours later, we walked out of the hospital as the sun was just starting to rise. I laughed and told Rocky we were safe from any further vampire attacks now that the sun was up.

That was the last time I ever went to that bar with Rocky. We found a new stomping ground to visit, one with fewer crazy vampire lunatics hanging around.

After that night I became interested in vampire lore and the culture surrounding it. I read every vampire related book I could get my hands on and immersed myself in the knowledge of the undead. I couldn’t forget the brilliant green eyes that had earnestly declared he was a vampire right before he bit me.

I’ll be thinking of those green eyes and that long thick black hair as I take my children to watch the movie Twilight today.

I’ll be scanning the crowd for a tall old dude with crazy green eyes and a trench coat. And I’m going to make sure I’m wearing a turtleneck. With a clove of garlic around my neck.