KISS KILL: A Vampire's Tale

By Michael Karol

Ray Abreu just met his forever guy: a handsome New York detective who's a cool, hot piece of man candy. But someone — or something — else is after Ray, and he’s not used to losing. He's killer. And he'll redefine the meaning of forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 5, 2009
• ISBN: 9781440184192

Michael Karol

Michael Karol is an award-winning New York-based entertainment journalist and author. His books include Lucy A to Z: The Lucille Ball Encyclopedia; The ABC Movie of the Week Companion; Sitcom Queens: Divas of the Small Screen; and The TV Tidbits Classic Television Book of Lists. He has interviewed a long list of performers, producers, and writers over the years, including blues legend Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson; artist, writer and producer Peter Brown (he sang “Do Ya Wanna Get Funky With Me?” and wrote Madonna’s “Material Girl”); songbird Phyllis Hyman; actors Gale Storm, Susan Lucci, Denise Nickerson, John Noble, Jane Connell, Kaye Ballard, Eva La Rue, Doris Singleton, Kathryn Joosten, Cameron Mathison, and David Hedison; and behind-the-scenes movers and shakers like Wonderfalls creator Bryan Fuller; House, M.D.’s creator and executive producer, David Shore; I Love Lucy’s film editor, Dann Cahn; and director William Asher, who helmed I Love Lucy and Bewitched, among other classics. Michael is currently editor of Soap Opera Weekly and copy chief of Pixie, a fab tween magazine.

Book preview

By the Same Author

Lucy A to Z: The Lucille Ball Encyclopedia, (Fourth Ed., Revised and Expanded)

Lucy in Print

Sitcom Queens: Divas of the Small Screen

The Lucille Ball Quiz Book

The ABC Movie of the Week Companion, (Second Ed., Revised and Expanded)

The Comic DNA of Lucille Ball: Interpreting the Icon

The TV Tidbits Classic Television Book of Lists

For more information, visit www.sitcomboy.com.

KISS KILL

A Vampire’s Tale

Michael Karol

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KISS KILL

A VAMPIRE’S TALE

Copyright © 2009 Michael Karol.

Portions of this novel were previously published as Kiss Me, Kill Me and Sleeps Well With Ohters

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

iUniverse

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Cover background photo ©2003 by Craig Hamrick; Digital

Manipulation and Type Design ©2009 by Michael Karol & Ronald White

For more on Craig Hamrick’s photographs, visit

www.craighamrick.com.

Back Cover Design: Michael Karol & Ronald White

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-4401-8418-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-8419-2 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 07/07/2023

Garconniere.jpg

Garçonnière (gàr so nyer´) a bachelor’s apartment or quarters; also, a traveler’s room during the plantation era, when hotels and inns were scarce.

Acknowledgements

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for sending me to sleep-away camp, despite my extreme shyness.

Thanks to my bunkmates, those who supplied me with grist for a lifetime of fantasies, and those who readied me for a world which is inhabited mostly by small-minded people.

To my lovers over the years, at camp and elsewhere, who helped me grow into the gay man I am today … you know who you are … and especially to GER, who pushed me out of the wings and put me on center stage.

To my best friends Mark and Robert, for putting up with my michegas, loving me anyway, and for listening and being there when I needed them.

To Dr. J., for bringing back my sanity.

To the two gay writers who made me want to write, George Baxt and Richard Hall: I remember.

To Craig, my constant muse and inspiration. Thanks for pushing me to write, for the use of your incredible, atmospheric photo on the cover (and throughout the first edition of Kiss Me, Kill Me), and the generous amount of time you spent with the original manuscripts; most especially, thanks for your friendship, and the privilege of having known you.

Finally, this is for my partner, Ronald White, who makes me want to live forever.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another;

there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

— Carl Jung

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

Book One: Sleeps Well With Others

Book Two: Kiss Me, Kill Me

About the Author

Author’s Note

In the beginning ... there were men, and they were animals, and they loved to fuck.

In fact, according to some distinguished geneticists, the urge to mate is built in to our genetic code, in order to procreate the race. Men are also the traditional defenders of home and hearth. So we fight, too. Fighting and fucking pretty much covers it.

If men can’t help being animals, women, on the other hand, are programmed to love, nurture, and be the glue that holds the family together. It’s built into their genetic code. Many times I’ve heard female friends lament, Men are pigs. They ogle everything in sight and they’ll screw anything that moves.

I try to explain that if it weren’t for women, men would have fucked and killed the human race out of existence long ago, not necessarily in that order, and probably at the same time. But that doesn’t make them feel any better, for some reason.

So do you have to ask why, within the subset of male homosexuality, there exists a universe of men who spend ninety-nine percent of their time thinking about fucking or looking to get fucked? Or actually doing it? Or jerking off until they can find someone to fuck?

Indeed, while I’m writing, on an early summer morning in my New York apartment, there’s a guy on the matching floor across the street, in the small boutique hotel, tooling his noodle. Just lying stretched out on his bed, naked, with the window shades up, cranking the juice. He’s hot, too. Can you blame him?

This is a theme we’ll return to.

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of the supernatural co-existing with our natural lives, and, like many, by the idea of vampires. So it’s fitting that it was a real-life incident that began the long journey that led to this novel.

During medical leave to have gall bladder surgery in the summer of 1989, the magazine I was working on closed. I’d been there for ten years, so I got almost a half-year of severance (yes, those were the days…) plus unemployment. Mom insisted I have the surgery near my hometown, in New Brunswick, N.J., so I could stay with her and Dad in Princeton for the initial recovery period, about eight weeks. By the time I returned to my apartment in New York, I was in pretty decent shape.

That is to say, I had no job, plenty of money, and was not in any mood to work any time soon. So I spent a lot of time practicing my two favorite activities: getting high and having sex. Since I was single at the time, having sex meant going out, cruising the bars, and picking people up. On one of those occasions, a cool October night, I ran into a guy I’d met sometime in the recent past. We made out for a while in a Village bar when I was very drunk, and then I excused myself to go home and pass out.

The second time I saw him, he was leaning against a building on Christopher Street, checking out the street crowd, but I was already on my way home, alone. He recognized me, came over to me, and started chatting as we walked. At first it was harmless chatter. Then it became unnerving. He asked me why I didn’t like him enough to take him home the first time. Did I think I was better than him? Was I afraid he was going to harm me? (By then, of course, I was.) He swore all he wanted was a little nooky. But his behavior set off alarms. And realizing he was high and there was no point in arguing, instead of answering his questions, I said, curtly, Sorry, I’ve got to go, and took off, walking at a fast clip, toward Seventh Avenue.

He started running after me. I started running. I crossed Seventh and reached the Oscar Wilde Bookstore (now closed, sadly), frantically looking for a cab and keeping tabs on his progress. He was catching up. Finally, a cab turned onto Christopher Street. I tore into the middle of the street so it had to stop, hopped in and slammed door, shouting my address to the cabbie just as my pursuer caught up.

Unfortunately, the window was open, and my pursuer reached in, screaming that I was going to get what I deserved. The cab driver did not move for a second or two. Finally, I shouted, "Could you please go?! and he did. But not before my attacker reached in and tried to grab my arm. All I could think of was, Jesus. That could’ve been it. I could have been hurt. How many more times was I willing to risk it? And then, Wouldn’t it be great if I didn’t have to worry about being hurt or worse when I went out? If I was the one with all the power?"

I have been a writer all my life, but mostly nonfiction. Here was a chance to combine two of my greatest passions: sex and growing up gay, in particular, and the various horrors of life in general, as personified by the undead. Kiss Me, Kill Me sprang from that experience. I started writing it that fall, in 1989, but didn’t finish it until nearly 14 years later. It was my second published book. In 2006, I wrote a prequel, Sleeps Well With Others, about my sexual experiences at summer camp. In order to protect the still living, as they say, I made it Ray’s story—the hero of Kiss Me, Kill Me—and added a bit of vampiric punch.

The characters intrigued me enough to go back to them a third time—I felt that the two novelettes belonged together as one novel … the one you’re holding in your hands. I can tell you this: having some vampire friends to take care of those who’ve wronged you in life can be quite cathartic, even on the printed page. Try it sometime. In the meantime, welcome to my nightmares.

Obligatory Disclaimers This text has been published before, as noted above. But Sleeps Well With Others has been substantially rewritten; the narrative was changed from first person to third person in order to remain consistent with the style of Kiss Me, Kill Me. The latter has also been tweaked, with parts of it reworked. So this is, in many real ways, a first-time novel.

It is somewhat based on true events. Names and details have been changed. I’ve tried to protect the innocent and not so innocent who are living. The dead can fend for themselves. (Actually, they do, as you’ll see.)

— Michael Karol

New York City

Winter 2009

I. Sleeps Well With Others

There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be.

—Norman Mailer

A Bit, Too, Er, Sensitive

Raymond Arturo Abreu was born in New Jersey in 1953. It was a bizarre era, a time of bombs and suburbs, consumerism, Communism, and anxiety.

Ray’s dad was a handsome Portuguese who grew up in a tough neighborhood in Boston. Mom (Sylvia, Syl to her friends) was a Jewish princess from Long Island, who met Joe Abreu at Boston University; he was from a poor family, attending on a track scholarship. She was a Liberal Arts major, keeping an eye out for a husband. Ray liked to think his mother married his father partly to thumb her nose at her uptight family—which disowned her for marrying beneath them—and that maybe he got some of his moxie from her. They were together for 48 wonderful years.

Their kids started coming in the late 1940s. The first two were twins, Cheryl and Meryl, and the sisters grew up arguing—about who got the hair dryer, who got to use the new curlers, who spent too much time in the bathroom, who was allowed to do this while the other wasn’t…. Sylvia tried to intervene and stop the screaming, but all too often ended up in the middle of it. In short, there was a lot of yelling in the house. Joe, on these occasions (when he wasn’t away at a biochemical convention or venturing hundreds of feet below the earth into a mine as a consultant) would retreat into his bedroom, sit on his favorite chair, a Barcalounger, light up his pipe, and read. He’d emerge when the fighting was all over.

There were rare occasions when the fighting became so severe that Joe had to get up, leave his room, and end it. You never wanted to be around when that happened. Ray was usually hiding in his bedroom, avoiding the noise and fallout, in any case.

Ray was planned as the final child no matter what, but while Sylvia was pregnant, his folks prayed for a boy. He obliged them. Years later, Ray liked to tease his mother, saying that she had actually birthed three girls. Her response was usually something like, Come here, smart-ass, you’re still not too big for me to smack you!

Ray didn’t remember much about his formative years unless someone pointed out a specific incident, like when he broke his collarbone learning how to ride a bike, or when his best friend Johnny fell out of the back seat of the car. (Johnny’s mom was driving. Johnny opened the door handle instead of the window, and Ray sat mesmerized for a few moments by the sight of his friend plopped in the middle of the street behind them, fading in the distance, until he was able to tell their moms what had happened.) But he didn’t do well remembering on his own.

Joe tried his best to make Ray into a proper man, playing softball with him, forcing Ray to jog every morning, and buying his son a shot put. The results were less than successful; other than a bunch of holes in the lawn, there wasn’t much to show for it.

As the fifties passed and the sixties began, everyone in suburbia remained mired in a lifestyle fueled by material possessions and grabbing the good life. Of course, there was still the unease of the bomb, Communism, and the Cold War, always hovering in the background. Then Kennedy was shot, and the sixties began in earnest.

Ray was growing up into a shy, quiet, obedient kid. He loved his family, but sometimes the fighting that went on between his sisters when he was a kid was enough to … well, to turn a guy off to women, he guessed. But he also figured that mainly, he was born that way.

The fact is, when Ray was a toddler, he’d fantasize about naked men and boys. He loved rummaging through his uncle’s fitness magazines. Something about those strong, masculine bodies in their tight, brief posing straps spoke to him. Even today, muscle mags got Ray hot. When he was five or six, he used to sit quietly in the den—while Uncle Herb tinkered with his state-of-the-art stereo system in the living room—and pop little erections as he looked at pictures of glistening, bronzed, bulging men.

But that was a private world, and somehow Ray knew, even at age five, that he had to keep it that way. So real-world Ray sought asylum in his Etch-A-Sketch and Superman comics. The hunky superheroes who filled the comic panels also became the stuff of Ray’s fantasies. He palled around with the kids who lived on his block, especially his best friend, a cute Italian boy named Anthony, but one of the few things Ray did recall is that even then, all he wanted was to be part of the gang, disappear into the background, and not be noticed.

That’s because Ray worried that if someone noticed him, they might notice what he was really thinking about—sexual fantasies like playing doctor with Tony, and his other male friends.

Ray’s fantasies eventually became real, smoked out gradually over eight summers at an all-male sleep-away camp, starting when he was eight years old. Ray got a free ticket to Fantasyland—an all-male camp located under clear blue Adirondack skies, surrounded by a gorgeous natural backdrop offering mountains and towns with exotic names, like Schroon, Placid, and Onantocks, or Algonquin, Haystack, and Iroquois. It was late June, 1962 … time for circumstance to stoke some of the secret fires burning inside a shy little boy.

Camping It Up

From the 1913 Camp Onantocks advertising brochure:

"Camp Onantocks is situated on former Indian Territory [of course, what in our country isn’t?] along the shores of Onantocks Lake, in the eastern Adirondack preserve. The lake is seven miles across at its widest, and is known for its picturesque rock formations along the shore, and a handful of small rocky islands that it supports.

Onantocks is an anglicized version of the Native American word onontake, which means ‘at the mountain.’ It is an appropriate way to describe our camp, which is literally surrounded by small peaks. From almost any vantage point on the camp grounds, you can see mountains dotting the horizon.

Adirondack is a bastardization of an Iroquois word that sounds like Ha-De-Ron-Dah. It means bark-eater, and was used by the Iroquois as a contemptible word to describe the Algonquin Indians, their neighbors, who would eat the inside of the bark of the white pine tree (tree-jerky?) if nothing else was available.

But, to Ray, Adirondack came to mean all-boy paradise.

Summer camp. Activities. Boys. Teens. Counselors. Group showers. He saw more dicks there in his first week than he had in his previous eight years of existence. Did he like it? Duh! But there wasn’t much he could do about it as an eight-year-old, right? Wrong.

Ray’s parents had really wanted him to go to camp. They thought he was too shy and sensitive—a code word for gay back then—and (ironically) that he didn’t have enough male friends. Ray heard them talking about how camp would open him up to other possibilities. That sounded scary and interesting. The camp was half-owned by the brother of a good friend of his folks, so they trusted him to run a safe place. Little did they know how much their beautiful boy would open up. The camp was mostly Jewish; Ray was one of two half-Jewish campers that first summer.

But it wasn’t a religious camp. It was progressively run. A SUNY professor served as the camp’s Program Director — and chief of the