Always Hungry

By Inez Baranay

Described in reviews as "refreshing, sophisticated, playful, beguiling, horrifying and sexy" this is a vampire story for literate adults.
Yearning for the lands of the old gods, escaping the pressures of New York, controversial cultural commentator Marisa comes to Amsterdam in search of escape and inspiration. A fiery transsexual cult figure follows her intent on a showdown. A mysterious blonde beauty has waited centuries to be ready for this.
The tenth book in Inez Baranay's lively and varied career, Always Hungry is an erotic entertainment about ambition, mortality and relationships, a social comedy with a chilling edge, with questions about the rationalisations we all make when our way of life is based on the suffering of others.
Other reviews say "The reader keeps wanting the vampire theme to be a metaphor of sorts, an allegory for the nature of relationships, of love, of sex-change, or perhaps of how the publishing industry treats writers, but the taste of real blood seeps in, ineluctably" and "The text takes pleasure, as will its readers, in ironie, which are grounded in social commentary about monstrosity and the writing industry, fandom and fame, slippery genders and shifting categories of identity."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inez Baranay
• Release date: Apr 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476341859

Inez Baranay

Born in Italy of Hungarian parents Inez Baranay is an Australian writer; she has published over 12 books, seven of them novels, as well as short stories and essays in a range of publications. More biography and details of her books can be found on her website.

Book preview

Always Hungry

Inez Baranay

With a new Afterword by the author

(c) Inez Baranay, 2012

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition

Much as the reader might like the vampire to remain within the realms of metaphor, this playful, beguiling, horrifying and sexy book is also about the real thing.

Kerryn Goldsworthy, Sydney Morning Herald

Visit inezbaranay.com for full text of this and other reviews of Always Hungry

Click here to buy a paperback copy of Always Hungry

Other books by Inez Baranay:

With The Tiger

sun square moon: writings on yoga and writing

Neem Dreams

Sheila Power: an entertainment

Rascal Rain: a year in Papua New Guinea

The Edge of Bali

Pagan

The Saddest Pleasure

Between Careers

inezbaranay.com

For more about these books please go to the end of this book.

Always Hungry

Dedication

To Carlos Contreras and Daniel Stephensen

PART ONE

01 She's done this before

Marisa strides along the shiny corridor swinging her arms and rhythmically rolling her head on her neck. She's done this before, she's turning herself on, the self that exudes vitality, natural assets, a hip fashion sense, an answer for any question they're going to throw at her. Part sexy librarian, part brainy hustler. She's about to step onto the TV sound stage, she swings past a screen, that's her he's talking about.

'Does she belong to popular culture or the intelligentsia, does she tell you what to think or make you mad?...' He's calling out to the people in here and the people out there, and as per usual he's starting off in hypermaniac mode, he does that all the time, he eventually settles down and gets serious. Everyone watches Jon Guildenstern's Show To Watch. Everyone talks about how he has eliminated the difference between [watching] news programs and comedy shows, between current affairs and satire, between sincerity and irony, between a democratic reach and a sense of cultiness; his audience demographic spans age groups and classes, liberals and libertarians, CEOs who make burdensome influential decisions and cynical youngsters who see through them all.

Marisa stepping into the public view snaps into toned-down mode, a simple normal stride across the stage over to him, breathing in slowly she gets a sense of what the sound of the applause means, nothing bad. Jon Guildenstern has risen from his seat and turns towards her, calling with enthusiasm to her, to them, 'Please welcome Marisa Steiger'.

They air kiss familiarly on each cheek and he is hitting the ground running and before they're even quite settled into their chairs, he's behind his desk, she's at right angles at his right shoulder, having to turn back and forth from him to audience, he asks as if he's been dying to know, holding up a copy of her book in one hand, stroking his tie with the other, using an intimate tone of voice, asking, 'C'mon, did you expect this reaction to Monstrous Women?'

She's ready, begins to reply with assertive zestiness, saying, 'I did know a lot of people...'

But he hasn't finished his question and talks over her with rising energy, asking with mock hysteria, 'What gets everyone so upset?'

A lot of people have been thinking these things, is what she was saying, but Marisa is ready for this too, plenty to say. She begins to reply, 'The idea that women...'

But he's still talking, he has things he's making sure to say. Mock aghast, he asks, 'Are you really saying ...'

Even funny guy here, they are all telling her what she's supposed to be saying. They're all like this now. She mimes her inability to finish what she's saying, at least she gets that in. If he wants to do his all hysterical schtick, she's going to let him, she's just waiting till someone will listen.

02 It's not her fault

'What you're really saying', is the proposition at the next interview, radio, the next day, 'is that no matter how bad what any woman did is, it's not her fault?'

This is worse than last night. Marisa's sitting in a studio with headphones on, all this way she came, why couldn't they just call. Marisa is here to explain her actual position. She keeps trying to explain this actual position that she does have, saying, 'What my book actually…'

Another boy talking over her, this time she knew what to expect, knew about going on this show, and still thought she'd have her say. But he's drowning her out, saying, 'Why do liberals always blame society?'

That is not what she does and she begins to say, gently, firmly, 'That is not at all what …'

He's still talking over her, and she draws another breath ready to counter him. He's actually saying, 'What about decency? Responsibility? These concepts mean anything?'

She's going to keep on trying to say what she wants to say while he is going to keep on playing to his audience, goad her until she will explode and have a go at him, turn her into the fool, but first, she's going to make sure someone somewhere notices at least that she is trying to say something else.

She has no idea who could be listening to this.

03 Why did you defend the baby eater?

Now it's a blogger, working at home in his pyjamas, and at least she can talk to him from home in her pyjamas, but he is videoing the whole thing, he'll put up whatever he wants out of that. Fine, privacy is not what it used to be, if it's anything at all. She tilts the camera eye to a better angle and distance. She's always always doing her best to be gracious, that is her policy, her MO, and she's sticking to it still, though she's already heard more than she feels like hearing of what he's asking.

He's asking, 'What is your responsibility as the commentator most people have gone to...?'

She says, 'I've really thought about...'

She really has.

She has thought about all the ways women have been constructed as monstrous, is what she is always trying to say. Ambitious women, driven, creative women, kinky women, independent women, disobedient women, rebellious women, women with women's knowledge, women's perceptions. Women like her, like her friends, like her mentors and role models, like women other women want to be like. Like women some women are afraid to be like or to be seen as if they are like. In a world where women still get rewarded for girliness, obedience, silence.

That's all she'd been trying to say when someone suddenly asked her to comment on the Baby Eater.

She did the work but she didn't control the timing. She can have nothing to do with what lurid tabloid human interest story captures audiences all along the wide range within any medium and across all types of media, a story that became one of those little viral waves, waves on the ocean of the mainstream and on brooklets of animated niche interests. Then the story is about why that story became one of those stories, widely discussed, the discussions making news, opinions solicited, opinions freely offered. And when all that was just surfacing, and her book coming out, Marisa had been asked by someone, someone as obscure as this blogger asking her about it again here and now, what her take was on this story they were calling the Baby Eater Case, a story everyone now has to have something to say about.

So guilelessly she said what she had been saying just the night before over a drink somewhere. That, more outrageous than what the woman had supposedly done was the automatic and ready-made language of condemnation, anathematisation: the tones of the patriarchal, moralistic, self-righteous, misogynistic. As if culturally sanctioned vile things were not being done to babies all the time … The obscure blogger has a following that makes him no more than two degrees of separation from anyone on earth.

And some of what she said went shooting off into the multi-dimensional rhizomes of cultural space.

And she can't complain about all this, all the attention that led to. Somehow this is all going to bring her more freedom in some way. She can't complain. But that doesn't mean it's all good. Marisa didn't sign up for this, being misunderstood, misquoted, misrepresented. Being called The Fiery Feminist From Down Under and The Oz Answer To What No one Asked. All the while trying to keep her cool and talk rationally. And as for that freedom, it's now out of sight, with the threat of nothing but more of the same between her and the horizon. She kind of knew you had to expect this but it's different when you're experiencing it. And these days everything is a link you can easily forward or embed. Then you get someone who develops a kind of obsession with her position in the Baby Eater case. And gets it wrong, totally wrong.

But these people get listened to, and provide people with phrases to hurl at her. A hostile reader is saying, 'Isn't your book exploiting crime and degeneracy?'

She's now signing copies of her book sitting at a table in a book store. And she has to restrain a what the fuck reaction, first at the question and then at the thought that a reader can be so hostile. Not a reader actually. Just a person in a book store. He didn't actually read it. She's again in a situation where she has to be telling herself, stay polite. Stay cool. That's Marisa Steiger, cool, rational, patient. Assured. Someone who decides that hostile readers are having ideas about the world not about her. Her mind is on ideas. Her mind is on her next project.

She takes in that several people are crowding in, with eager looks, with questions for her. She begins to answer the unreading reader, not that he will listen but those other people will, some of them are here just so that they will hear her say these things, say, 'I was only pointing out, all cultures have these stories...'

Some of them would have let her finish but some of them can't wait for her to reply to one person before their own pressing question has to be asked. Someone asks, 'So Monstrous Women is kind of an ironic title?'

Someone who might have even read it. More of them have by now.

People pushing to get close, arguing among themselves, calling their questions to her, a bookshop manager trying to keep some order here. Stupid questions, smart questions, hostile questions, fan girl questions, questions that beg questions and questions with no answer.

'Why did you defend the Baby Eater? What are you working on now? What can you do after this?'

04 Can you not rush away today?

The link everyone's sending around is where Jon Guildenstern is saying to Marisa, in his comic-but-serious tone of it's-them-not-me outrage, 'You're saying even the Baby Eater is not that bad or that some meme made her do it... ?' He is basically setting her up to have to defend herself by making big silly statements back at him.

Alicia is not a fan of his, she's going to say that basically all he's doing is repeating stupid stuff he's read and this is what they call good TV. She's going to say, Jon Guildenstern is on the record calling himself a feminist but does he have male authors on and distort their work like this?

Alicia is looking at Marisa's reaction on her iPhone, and at that moment glances up to see the actual Marisa arrive at the table. Alicia says indignantly at the phone, 'Why was he acting dumb? Did he even read it?' She has been dying to have this conversation.

Marisa leans over so they can both kiss all over at the air between them while she is also settling into her chair in a show of being very relieved to be able to relax at last, she's waving her hand as if to wave away any discussion of all that, it's same as it ever was only more so. Some things you go over and over, some things you don't want to talk about, Marisa is clearly saying, let's not talk about this.

Alicia is disappointed, but still, Alicia knows she is the only one to see Marisa allowing the stress and strain to show, no one but her therapist also really sees that, though from what Alicia hears, Marisa's having to cut herself loose from this therapist.

They're in one of their old favourite downtown places, not the coolest, not with the best food, not with the best service and cutest waiters, but rating second in all the categories they can think of including having lasted all this while. Exceptions are ignored, so they can agree that they have a favourite café when it's just the two of them; choosing here to meet is an affirmation