The Vampire Lestat
By
Anne Rice
Downtown Saturday Night In The Twentieth Century 1984
I am The Vampire Lestat. I’m immortal. More or less. The light of
The sun, the sustained heat of an intense fire-these things might
Destroy me. But then again, they might not. I’m six feet tall, which
Was fairly impressive in the 1780s when I was a young mortal man. It’s
Not bad now. I have thick blond hair, not quite shoulder length, and
Rather curly, which appears white under fluorescent light. My eyes are
Gray, but they absorb the colors blue or violet easily from surfaces
Around them. And I have a fairly short narrow nose, and a mouth that
Is well shaped but just a little too big for my face. It can look very
Mean, or extremely generous, my mouth. It always looks sensual. But
Emotions and attitudes are always reflected in my entire expression. I
Have a continuously animated face. My vampire nature reveals itself in
Extremely white and highly reflective skin that has to be powdered
Down for cameras of any kind. And if I’m starved for blood I look like
A perfect horrorskin shrunken, veins like ropes over the contours of
My bones. But I don’t let that happen now. And the only consistent
Indication that I am not human is my fingernails. It’s the same with all
Vampires. Our fingernails look like glass. And some people notice
That when they don’t notice anything else. Right now I am what
America calls a Rock Superstar. My first album has sold 4 million
Copies. I’m going to San Francisco for the first spot on a nationwide
Concert tour that will take my band from coast to coast. MTV, the
Rock music cable channel, has been playing my video clips night and
Day for two weeks. They’re also being shown in England on “Top of
The Pops ” and on the Continent,
probably in some parts of Asia, and
In Japan. Video cassettes of the whole series of clips are selling
Worldwide. I am also the author of an autobiography which was
Published last week. Regarding my English-the language I use in my
Autobiography-I first learned it from a flatboatmen who came down
The Mississippi to New Orleans about two hundred years ago. I
Learned more after that from the English language writers-everybody
From Shakespeare through Mark Twain to H. Rider Haggard, whom I
Read as the decades passed. The final infusion I received from the
Detective stories of the early twentieth century in the Black Mask
Magazine. The adventures of Sam Spade by Dashiell Hammett in
Black Mask were the last stories I read before I went literally and
Figuratively underground. That was in New Orleans in 1929. When I
Write I drift into a vocabulary that would have been natural to me in
The eighteenth century, into phrases shaped by the authors I’ve read.
But in spite of my French accent, I talk like a cross between a
Flatboatman and detective Sam Spade, actually. So I hope you’ll bear
With me when my style is inconsistent. When I blow the atmosphere
Of an eighteenth century scene to smithereens now and then. I came
Out into the twentieth century last year. What brought me up were
Two things. First-the information I was receiving from amplified
Voices that had begun their cacophony in the air around the time I lay
Down to sleep. I’m referring here to the voices of radios, of course,
And phonographs and later television machines. I heard the radios in
The cars that passed in the streets of the old Garden District near the
Place where I lay. I heard the phonographs and TVs from the houses
That surrounded mine. Now, when a vampire goes underground as we
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