Crushes on Vampires (was: from an older main list post)

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Sister Mary Lunatic" <klaatu at p...> 
wrote:
> What IS that whole thing about vampires and sex?  All the vamp 
> stories I read nowadays, the undead are irresistibly sexy
> and fantastic in the sack.  Having sex with cold dead people... 
> really?  Why is there that paradox?

Sex and death...  There is always the La Belle Dame Sans Merci 
archetype, with her dead white skin, black hair, and very red 
mouth --- sometimes she flushes red in excitement, which some lit 
crit said was a portrait of a person dying of tuberculosis -- 
which was the fatal and largely incurable epidemic of the 19th 
century and accused of being the origin of the literary movement 
Romanticism via necrophilia...

But anyway, vampires being sexy isn't exactly 'nowdays', surely it 
was part of all the golden era vampire movies! Was it part of Bram 
Stoker's Dracula novel?

Some of the original vampire lore had vampires being sexual, if 
not sexy... I think it was in France that they returned from the 
grave to have sex with the living rather than or as well as to 
drink blood.

IIRC the Slavic vampires (from which we are supposed to have taken 
that word) come back to 'life' to go to another village, where they 
are not recognized, and get married and get a job, and if they ever 
cut themselves even a pinprick, all the bloods spurts out like a 
gusher, a lot of blood, and nothing is left behind except an empty 
skin like a deflated balloon. I don't recall them biting necks, 
tho'