I’ve started watching Showtime’s early 00s banger—the sex-fueled vampire soap opera, True Blood. Can’t believe I feel context for the show is in order, but it’s been almost 20 years since it first aired. I don’t know what people don’t know inre: pop culture anymore. The show premise is fairly ridiculous but there are pearls of dialogue and a lot of boobs. When Hoyt Bellefleur says racism doesn’t get rewarded, Jason Stackhouse immediately reacts: well, explain Europe to me then. Jason had just come out of a one-night stand with a “fang banger” in the previous scene. The show is set in swampy Louisiana, but the vampires come from around the world. As it happens, I am watching the show while looking at computer screens passively car-shopping these days. The 2007 Camry we inherited just died on us. And now that I think of it, the car and the show are pretty much the same age. Both, artifacts of the flip phone era, one could say. And it shows.
I know I’ve been doing too much of both of these things—car shopping and binge watching True Blood—because I dreamt last night that I was scheming to date Alexander Skarsgaard who plays the ancient vampire Eric Northman, except in the dream he morphs into Joel Kinnaman. They float in and out of my subconscious displayed like options in a first person shooter game. I choose the one with the longer arms at any given moment. Their avatars float on a circular dais and I get a 360 degree view of their exterior dings and flourishes unique to each model. Ryan Gosling appears as a “customers also viewed” option at the end of my perusal.
Car shopping demonstrates a tenet of economics for which I do not know the name. I’m certain it has one, though. It looks like this: you look for a car that’s dependable. Most people (I think), are looking for a car that’s going to give you the least headache, to say nothing of general safety; i.e. there are more Camrys than doorless Wranglers on the road. But in order for a car to feel dependable, you need the cosign of dealers and mechanics who can work on your vehicle affordably and with great experience. You can’t depend on a car that hasn’t been verified by shops, but the dependability of a car hinges on its unlikelihood it will end up in the shop.
These are the economics of valuating virtue, too. The logic applies to virginity, hygiene, and an admixture of those things in a show like True Blood. In other wrods, the value of breaking in ones virtue lies in the verification of those seeking to break you in the first place. Having said that, I do actually commend the show for showing us how little the mileage of a person’s sex life matters to their character arc. The moral barometer of each character is driven more substantially by their shortsightedness and palate for platelets. There’s no posturing about virginity-
Why am I writing a thousand word screed on True Blood on a substack largely meant for the tribulations of my literal and metaphorical libido? I think it has to do with the notion of value. What we want and why we want it. What has driven each of us to believe self worth is more important than external achievement? How is it that Jakarta matters less than Hollywood? Why are billionaires. Who would get under my skin. Will I ever stop thinking about A, B, or C alternate life. If we contain multitudes, why am I jealous of everyone else who has what I already have.
Should I get a Honda Civic or a Swedish vampire? I think both would find me a quite capable fuel source. What if engines led iron and industry to heart we go underground for answers to why anything expires with the consent of our masters of mathematics the force of a zero sum economy, the force of a ratio of desires to needs, a ratio of me to me, an immortality with incredible mileage.
