1. Diseases. Love you psy-vamps, but it's not like you're going to be contracting Hep C anytime soon by your feedings. At this point, Planned Parenthood becomes your best friend.
2. Maintaining donors. The term "never enough" seems to apply here, as it becomes a fixation to get more and more. And with the disease scares that there is, just how much can you get away with on feeding from one person? After a while they'd like to not have to explain to a coworker or mom that their "cat" is just really vicious.
3. Clean up. A vanity mirror, despite the contradiction this has towards the ever so popular "I have no reflection" myth, this little doohickey will save you many embarrassing moments of walking out wearing your previous meal. It should be a really clean process, but accidents happen; the donor might move, you might laugh or giggle. God knows it's a charming trait perhaps at a club or for a Halloween party, but when you're walking out of a dark room at someone's party with it on your cheek (You just have to wonder how this was accomplished, btw), having someone have to direct you to the bathroom is a bit belittling. Next they'll be handing you a bib. (I actually did this to someone once, giving him a bib that read, "Caution, I throw food.")
4. Secrecy. Kind of hard finding that balance between keeping it a secret and yet open enough to pull in new donors. This isn't exactly a redeemable social flaw in most circumstances. You don't tend to bounce back after your cover is blown very easily.
5. Clotting. To quote the conversation last night, "about ready to have her take a few aspirins before feeding. She's got this strange clotting thing going on where I'd feed and five minutes later there'd be this coagulated sheet of blood in my throat, that I'll be coughing to clear afterwards. Vampire "hair balls", my god. Of course I've never had this happen before, though prior all my donor except for one were male. Is this a female thing?" Good question. Is it?
• If the woman is on the pill, she is more prone to clotting.
  ~~ Denalura
• for those who are truly repulsed by garlic, may I suggest that donors consume other types of spicy foods or condiments (ginger, onion, wasabi, pepper) or aspirin or Advil to decrease clotting factors in the blood.
  ~~ Nuala
• Alcohol and hot baths are also effective blood thinners (but will, if combined, turn your donor into a comatose squid. Forewarned is forearmed.
  ~~ Sarah Dorrance
• Asprin, Advil, etc. may leave an unpleasant aftertaste in your donor's blood. And make sure YOU don't have any allergies to such medications, as well. Remember that ANY medications your donor is taking can and will affect you!
  ~~ SphynxCat
6. Clothing. You wonder why it seems like most people into blood vampirism are also into that all black goth thing. The white T-shirts with little brown stains that seem to be multiplying will cause questions to be asked. It's not exactly the easiest habit on your clothing. Unless you're into wearing a poncho or something.
7. Masochists at S&M clubs. Run. Just run. If they find out, it's over for you. You will have a line around the block of people begging you to cut them and feed from them and half of them would sooner forge a health card that actually test themselves.
8. Doms at S&M clubs. Again, run. These people like to think they've seen everything, but you'd be surprised at just how many have never seen an actual bloodletting AND feeding. More masochists/subs than sadists/doms out there, and they got that buddy buddy/predator thing going on, where you're the cutest thing they've seen in a while...and the kinkiest.
9. Gypsies. For some reason they like to hang garlic everywhere and think you're a century or two older than you say you are. They stopped coming in altogether on Tuesday nights when we take over their bar for Near Dark.
10. Drugs and alcohol. You are what you eat. Your donor is everything they do. Vicarious alcohol and drugs, although it might be entertaining to someone else, might not be so funny for you. Or the individual you end up hurting when you decided it was a good idea to drink from someone tripping, tweaking, whatever. Of course, them tripping and you feeding on them is only asking to send them into a bad trip.
11. Vampire jokes. They're either stupid, really funny or embarrassing (because it happened to you or someone you know). Not like turning into a bat and ramming into a tree would be cause for more than a mild chuckle, although certainly slamming into a tree because your sonar location was off (sunglasses on at nighttime) might account for making it funnier. Rather, there's something just wrong about cracking a tampon tea joke and having someone else turn red because they tried it.
12. Role-players& Lifestylers. You either want to bitchslap them or...bitchslap them. They either A. think they're all that and put on such a vampyric display that they're the ones getting all the would be donors coming at them. Only to later disillusion them when they realize these "vampires" are only RPers in the first place. So you coming up later on over such matters, in more "mundane" dress, gets them rolling their eyes and doing a hand gesture surprisingly familiar; a cross between rock/paper/scissors and the ever so popular "jack off". B. Casual comments on vampyric common sense somehow turns them into the talking encyclopedia where they lecture you on "vampyric lore and laws and character sheets" and all the wonderful exceptions if the dice fall just right. Again you want to bitchslap them. C. The fangs. The absurdity alone. But secretly inside you know that although you'd never use them for favor the far more convenient lancets and razors, you have that inferiority "little fang" complex going on. And you hate them for it. (Another quote, "Something about being called a "flat tooth" really pisses you off and you either can swallow it or go "oh yeah" and completely blow your cover. Lee press on vampires. ::with a flip of the wrist and valley girl laugh:: Regular, or glamor length? Oh they just piss me off sometimes.")
13. Hunger. What you start sectioning off a person and bleeding them one by one using all known methods with one hand, two hand, various instruments, all in your head, you're unsure whether you should lock yourself up till you calm down or quickly take care of the problem. Catch 22 as you might react adversely to either situation.
14. Vampire Fan Clubs. Following the precedent held by the Germans back when they weren't so nice, you wonder how difficult it would be to acquire or brew up some Zyclone B for the next meeting.
15. Vampire Organizations. Everyone and their mother is the 17 year old Elder or the Alabama ex attorney Uber Master High Priest God AmonRa Elder. And half the time they have no practical experience or common sense and your head sort of tilts when they begin blithering their "in the beginnings" and spouting their latest astral conquest over the demon watchtowers of Never Never land. Zyclone B again sounds like a really good idea whenever you see one of the three letter acronyms.
16. Authors & Script Writers. Polidori, Brite, Rice, Lumley, Johnson, Riccardo, Konstantinos and the script writers for Dark Shadows, Buffy and Angel, Forever Knight, Kindred, Los Boys, the Addiction. You hate them and you love them. Bad press, good press, misconceptions. All these can be positive and negative depending on how you use it. But you agree on one thing, the cheesy contacts and Neanderthal brows have got to go.
17. Family.
18. "Family". (If you have to ask, you DON'T want to know!)
19. Supplies. Maintaining a well stocked supply of razors, lancets, antiseptic/alcohol swabs, gauze, tape, and for the more profession/educated/extreme types, IV kits and needles requires learning about all the local medical supply stores and rotating your shopping so they don't know you. Otherwise, if you're a small town vampire, you've got to come up with an excuse as to why you're constantly buying razors and Exact-O blades and so many Band-Aids and bottles of rubbing alcohol with cotton swabs.
20. Supermarkets. No matter how casual you try and pull it off, standing in tinted glasses at your local supermarket at three in the morning, drooling over the meat section (or as some of my friends have done, lifting the liver containers and tilting them to see which has more blood in it), does not in any way, shape or form appear normal!

This article is presented as part of an ongoing effort to present other views outside of, as well as within, the online vampire community. Those of us who consider ourselves vampiric don't always look at things from the same viewpoint due to our life experiences. As such, the views and opinions contained in this article are entirely those of the author(s), and may not necessarily be shared by SphynxCatVP. The webmaster is not under obligation to update or otherwise keep current the contents of this article. Most importantly, only you can decide for yourself whether this article or any of the author(s) other views are useful or applicable to you - you are responsible for using your own reasoning and judgement, so judge wisely.

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