The Bite Club - Magazine Feature On Real Vampires

The Bite Club - Magazine Feature On Real Vampires - Express Tribune, page 1

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Topic started on 12-2-2012 @ 10:57 AM by Merticus

The Bite Club
Sunday Magazine Feature - The Express Tribune - Pakistan
Subsidiary Of The International Herald Tribune
By Annie Ali Khan - February 12, 2012

Full Story: tribune.com.pk...
Video: tribune.com.pk...

The invitation said no jeans or sneakers, but it isn’t exactly a black-tie affair either. But then that’s to be expected when you attend a bash thrown by Fixe magazine — a New York-based fetish and sadomasochism (S&M) magazine. This particular event is in the basement of the One and One Café in New York City’s East Village to celebrate Fixe’s anniversary.

Industrial music thumps in the background as a man wearing latex pants with cutouts over his buttocks, tied to a 6-foot ‘X’-shaped metal stand called a St Andrew’s cross, is being whipped on his behind by a woman sporting a sleek black bob. Along with the S&M fetishists, resident Goths and a variety of underground scenesters, the vampires too have come to play.

One of them sits in a corner of the basement, surrounded by a core group of friends. Wearing knee-high lace up boots and a patent leather corset dress which leaves her pale arms and neck bare, she looks the part of a creature of the night. This is Seregon O’Dassey, and while her official bio describes her as an actress, Seregon says that she is in fact a ‘true vampire’— one of those real-life nosferatu who consider themselves distinct from the Twilight, “True Blood” and other pop culture depictions of the blood-drinking creatures of the night.

Seregon — the pseudonym had been inspired by the games of Dungeons & Dragons she played as a child — is not alone. She is part of a New York-based community of vampires called “The Court of Lazarus”. According to the Atlanta Vampire Alliance (AVA), one of the oldest ‘real vampire’ organisations in the US, New York (or ‘Gotham’ as the vamps prefer to call it) is fang central for America’s Vampires. “There are over 1000 self-identified vampires in New York City alone,” says Merticus, one of the founders of the AVA. They are divided into 30 active Houses, Clans, and Courts, of which the Court of Lazarus is one. The others have equally exotic names, such as the Order of the Black Marble and Temple Sahjaza. Usually presided over by a Vampire regent and a council of Elders, these Houses conduct regular meetings, social activities and have concrete guidelines for members. In short, everything a lonely vampire needs to get by. But no matter what House they belong to, vampires have one thing in common: they need a little ‘extra’ energy to survive. Also, they like to dress in blacks and reds. A lot.

There’s the key word: energy. According to Merticus, “Vampires are individuals who cannot sustain their own physical, mental or spiritual wellbeing without the taking of blood or life force energy from other sources, often human.”...

Article Continued At: tribune.com.pk...