Love Means Never Having to Say I’m Sorry . . . for Turning You into a Vampire

by June Pulliam

01/27/2007

Van Scoyoc, Andra Dean. Michael. Fargo, ND: Ephemera Bound Publishing, 2006. 254 p.

Andrea Dean Van Scoyoc’s gay S & M horror novel Michael made me think about my pets, or I should say about the morality of having creatures around partly because they amuse me, meanwhile placing their lives so completely in my hands. Of course, I love my many, many cats and my ancient-as-the-hills dog (and hope that they love me), and I believe I treat them well. Nonetheless, they get vaccinations they don’t like, have been sexually altered for their own good, and are frequently kept in the house against their inclinations—all in the name of protection. And when it is apparent to me that their lives are irredeemably full of more pain than pleasure, I will summon the vet to help them to die. Moreover, since my intellectual capacity is greater than theirs, it can never be said that they entered this relationship of their own free wills, and I will also never know if the decisions I’ve made in what I believe is their own best interest are ones they would have similarly made if they had the ability to do so.

Michael’s relationship with his lover Taylor is in some ways similar to my relationship with my pets. Michael is at first a bodiless spirit who lingers in the graveyard where Taylor frequently visits. Michael subsequently falls in love with him. Longing to consummate his love for Taylor, Michael possesses the body of a young man who has been newly interred within the cemetery, quickly learns the rudiments of being human such as obtaining housing and having sex, and then kidnaps Taylor, bringing him to live in a house he has recently acquired to be their home. While Michael can be a considerate lover in some ways (permitting Taylor to have an orgasm first, for example), his pursuit of his own pleasure leaves Taylor unable to sit down, as he finds himself hemorrhaging from the anus. Taylor is Michael’s pet in many ways--Taylor is only permitted to leave the house as is necessary to keep him happy, is rewarded and punished according to how well he complies with Michael’s wishes, and is fed what Michael knows is best to prolong his new existence, the conditions of which have been altered when Michael first had intercourse with him.

You see, since he is a supernatural being, Michael has done more than just leave his sperm within Taylor after orgasm. He has left another substance which makes Taylor Empowered, a condition that means he’s now damn near immortal but requires the ingestion of human blood to maintain his new state. Michael believes that not only can he teach Taylor to love him by administering pleasure, but that he can also eventually condition Taylor to accept the new requirements of his existence.

But Taylor has not had a real say in his fate: while he enjoys some aspects of the sex with Michael, before he met him, Taylor wasn’t even sure if he could be physically attracted to a man. Taylor doesn’t enjoy the more painful aspects of their lovemaking. In addition, he is appalled that Michael killed one of his roommates on the night that he kidnapped him, and is completely repulsed at the idea of having to drink human blood, let alone what must be done to obtain it. In short, Taylor may be Michael’s pet, but he is not a house cat, and he continually fights to gain his freedom, while attempting to prevent Michael from hurting others in his efforts to control his “pet.”

The plot of Michael has the makings of a good story, but unfortunately, Van Scoyoc is unable to adequately develop her tale. While she is good at physically describing particularly brutal sex, other descriptions are inadequate. The characters are flat, existing completely in the present tense and not having enough of a history that might make them more fully fleshed. We come to understand them through dialogue and action rather than anything else, and indeed, it is difficult to even have a clear idea of what most of them look like. The dialogue is also problematic in that it is not nuanced. All of the characters have a fairly plain way of speaking about things that relate to the moment, and seem unable to articulate any more complex feelings. And Van Scoyoc's description of elements of the plot is equally flat. To create a compelling fictional universe is a difficult task. Regardless of genre, readers want the writer to create vivid word pictures that appeal to the five senses. Alas, Van Scoyoc isn’t doing this in Michael. It’s not enough to just describe characters engaging in things that might shock the sensibilities of most mainstream folks; if these characters and their world are not people and places we can vividly imagine, then it is difficult to care what happens at all.

Other problems include holes in the plot. Michael initially steals $250,000 from one of his new victims to finance his new life with Taylor, purchasing a house and two cars, and I assume drawing on the rest of the funds for recurring expenses. I couldn’t help doing a running count in my head, adding up what these purchases cost, and figuring that Michael should have run out of money really soon, for $250,000 isn’t as much money as you might think it would be, particularly if this “found money” is your only source of income. Anne Rice has to deal with a similar problem in her Vampire Chronicles in order to explain how her unemployed immortals are so often able to live lifestyles of the rich and famous, but Lestat, at least, takes the hoard of cash and jewels inherited from his maker Magnus and eventually invests it, returning occasionally as his own descendant to draw on the funds. Admittedly this scheme has its own problems, such as a sort of blind faith on the part of the author that the keepers Lestat chooses don’t abscond with the money, or the institutions in which it is invested don’t fail, but she has at least made a little more effort to permit the reader to suspend disbelief. 

Also disturbing is the lack of concern shown by others when characters go missing. When Michael kidnaps Taylor, he doesn’t let his new pet out much to go to his university courses or show up for practices with his school's lacrosse team. One would think that Taylor's absence would be noticed after a few weeks by someone who might make inquiries. While Taylor is relatively shy and unpopular, particularly among his teammates, most coaches take a fairly paternal attitude towards their players, so it is surprising that Taylor’s coach doesn’t get worried when one of his players misses a few practices, and do some investigating. At the beginning of the novel, when we’re first introduced to Taylor, we learn that he has a mother and a sister. Wouldn’t one of them get worried if they didn’t hear from him after a few weeks? But why file a police report in a small town when the authorities themselves are so slow on the uptake? It takes the police at least a week to begin searching when Taylor’s former roommate Fen has gone missing on the same night that Taylor abruptly left the house the two shared with two other teammates. Michael killed Fen during the violent struggle to bring Taylor to live with him, so there would have been plenty of evidence of foul play, yet the police are extremely slow in investigating. It's been my experience that small town police are far more proactive with this sort of crime than their big city counterparts, in part because they have a less onerous workload, and in part because a missing person is easier to notice in a smaller population, so the slow response of law enforcement here doesn't ring true.

Am I being too picky? As they say, God is in the details, particularly in fiction. Those details are important in maintaining the illusion that we are not reading a story, but almost living it. And when those details are missing, when we don’t experience characters as fully fleshed individuals or when things just don’t add up, the illusion is exposed for what it is—and the writer’s spell is broken.