Moonlight spills into the small third-story bedroom through a hastily opened window. Pouring across dirty laundry and discarded cigarettes until it finally puddles around the tangle of arms and legs sprawled across the bed. I know he is sleeping soundly. That deep contented sleep of someone who is satisfied, at peace. Like a corpulent uncle after thanksgiving, passed out because of his gluttony or the sleep of a small child who doesn't know to fear anything more than the boogieman yet. I wish I could still fall into that a contented haze, but I guess that tranquility has escaped me. Instead I lay and stare into the red glow of the clock radio. 3: 42 AM. 3: 42 AM. The red numbers boring out of its humble face into my own, and I wonder, how the fuck did I end here, like this?

It began like any other Thursday night. Even since things had settled down I had found a bit of a pattern for myself. A comfortable rut. Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays I'd go out cruising for blood and companionship. It made me feel good, powerful, in control. I could take whatever I wanted from the guys I met and never give them anything back. Sometimes we didn't even exchange names. Just smoky glances across a crowded bar. Other times I would lie, just for the hell of it. I'd tell them I was a college student from Canada with four days left on my visa looking for good memories to go home with or that I was a guidance councilor from Long Island, terrified at the thought that I'd run into one of my students. In either case it was just a way of keeping it…distant. That way there was no guilt. I guess some people hide from their condition. Taking their sustenance from metal kegs or plastic bags, promising themselves that it isn't blood. Some turn it into violence, equating the intimacy of feeding to the violence an attack, trying desperately to make only the dirty business of survival. I never could do that I guess. So I make feeding into failed romance. Every warm embrace a chance for love that invariably gutters into something merely hot and sticky. I figured out a game that worked for me. I wasn't happy per se, but it's effective. At least until now.

I guess that is what has brought me here. To tonight. I don't know what was different. I know there wasn't anything special about what was going on. Actually, I think I feel the least powerless I've felt in weeks. I haven't had to fight for my life any time recently, nor do I feel like some thousand-year-old evil out witted me. When I left my apartment and started walking those now familiar steps that take me to the city I can say that I felt a sensation of power that has alluded me since I got caught up in all this. Maybe it was that apparent contentment that allowed the pang of needs best forgotten to re-appear.

As I glance over at this man, this 'victim', this last entry into a guilty roster of one-night-stands I know that he isn't any different. Early thirties. Muscle maybe once but now invariably going to the softness of middle age. An easygoing manner his only feature left from a youth wasted. Was his name Chuck? No, Charles. He wasn't particularly special. He made all the same promises an older man makes to a younger one to lure him into his arms. The illusions of success, ease, and security that were supposed to make me lower my standards. He couldn't have known that though he picked me up that he was prey and I a type of predator he had never encountered before.

We went through the steps of seduction, things that once filled me with giddy excitement but now, faced with a eternity of such encounters, have begun to lose a bit of their luster. He bought me a drink. I shyly smiled at him. I told him about my ambitions, he told me about his achievements. We met in the middle somewhere. We created a false intimacy to mask our desires. His for my body and touch, mine for his blood. He invited me here, to his place. I accepted. Everything seemed to have gone like it always had. What went wrong?

It began normally enough. An exploratory kiss in the bar's shadow. A hasty retreat. More overt tactics as the elevator hummed once, then twice, and finally announced our arrival. He fumbled with keys and I smiled to assure him that every thing was all right. A performance that has become rote to me by now. Eventually we beat a trail here, past a moderately sized television, a simple kitchen, a short hallway lined with decade-old magazine covers, to his bedroom. He peeled off my tee-shirt, revealing my too-pale skin. I snarled his alarm with a sudden rush of lust and action. Again, a performance that has by now become rote. As his eyes took on that familiar glaze I leaned in, fangs descended, ready to complete my performance.

That's when everything went wrong.

I guess I must have looked too long into his eyes. I guess the memory of the petty ambitions, loves, hates, he shared with me earlier must have been too fresh; etched too vividly in my mind. I simply couldn't. I couldn't bite into this man, with a life, and a job, and friends and enemies. It was like I stuttered in the dialogue of consumption. All I could do was whisper a plea for him to hold me close into his ear. So now, here I am, staring into his cheap clock/radio as it boldly reminds me that it's 3:42 AM. Tangled up in his arms and legs. Unfulfilled. Hungry. I feel used. I feel used yet strangely exultant. I feel like the last two months never happened. I feel like a man, instead of like a vampire.