The Ring 💍Paris

Lestatique

Kenneth suspected that Martine was patronizing him, pretending to be interested in his theories about probability. So he decided to turn a few screws. “Let’s see if I can explain this in terms of Antoine’s scholarly interest in Michael Jackson, manga artists, and Japanese schoolgirls.” Martine bristled, but was curious.

“Let’s start with a scenario that I’m sure Antoine would appreciate: a vampire stalking a wide-eyed school girl. Both of these characters are ruled by essentialism: one’s a crippled soul that lives forever and the other’s a stereotype that can’t seem to die.” Martine made a little face, but Kenneth ignored it. He’d listened a dozen times to Antoine talk about how the wide eyes represented the Japanese cultural reference to something or other. He figured it was his turn to turn Japanese culture into whatever he wanted.

“Let’s call him Lestatique and let’s call her Alikiko. She lives in a little apartment and walks to the nearby university. I won’t draw a picture of her, as you know it already: her eyes are anatomical impossibilities, since they cover about two-thirds of her face. She looks about ten years old, but has enormous breasts and acts like a suppressed nymphomaniac. When she eats seafood, octopi reach up from the plate.” Martine’s jaw tightened, and a slight pink flush brought out the beautiful vein on her forehead. The vein reminded him of Julia Roberts. 

“Tired of trolling the Paris subways for fresh young bodies to feed on, Lestatique decides to create a new life for himself in Japan.”

“Yet the city is too crowded. It doesn’t have the dark underground churches and palaces of Paris. There’s no Brad Pitt and no Antonio Banderas.”

“Lestatique’s just another old vampire, past his prime, trying to make it in a world of iPhones and Instagrams, Hello Kitties and sparkling manga. He has to come up with a new way of enticing his victims. No one’s interested in the simplicity of the dripping fang anymore. He has to offer them The End of the World. It has to be a Cultural Apocalypse, a Ragnarok with VR head-sets and Radioactive Kitties with Super-powers.”

“So Lestatique tries a new strategy. He pretends to bump accidentally into Alikiko. His bright drawings scatter over the pavement next to a Jungian stairwell. Two of his most glittery drawings slide over the edge and down into the well. The drawings are of a girl in a red cape, but Alikiko doesn’t are for literary anthropology. It’s the colours she likes. Sparkling red. Like cherries frosted with golden sugar. One of the cherries is labeled, EAT ME.”

Kenneth sat back in the velvet chair and waited for a reaction. Martine was annoyed but asked nevertheless, “Fine. What happens next?”

“Well, what options does she have? She can keep her tartan skirt on and do her math tables, or she can let herself fall into the well, into a dark world of crimson borders. Down there she doesn’t have to swim like the other fish in the school. She doesn’t have to read dull books with no drawings or dialogue. She can refashion herself, and become exactly what she wasn’t supposed to be. She can wear black lipstick and have sex with the Devil himself.”

“So what you’re saying is that women are just like men. Predictably, they want security and they want escape. But what they get is a choice between a norm and a stereotype. It’s predictable that an overworked Japanese university student would fantasize about the blood-drinking demons of the Parisian underground on her way to her class in Business Management.”

“But what’ll make her choose? Is it random chance that she met a man who offered her what she thought she wanted? Or was she meant to respond to lace and crimson hearts, meant to find herself in the fantasy art that’s replaced Shinto sticks and Buddhist heavens? Or is there a third option — something incalculable, something that defies probability?” 

Kenneth looked again at the necklace between Martine’s breasts.

Martine thought again, And he thinks he’s Superman. He thinks he knows everything.

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