A binder of vampire fanfic cast my mother’s struggle with AIDS in a new light

polygon.com:

I often joke to my friends that I’m a second-generation vampire nerd. My mom filled our home with Anne Rice, Vampire: The Masquerade, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, plastic fangs, Gothic art, and ironic pins declaring a willingness to suck blood. I was destined to become a vampire-loving geek — the first Halloween costume I chose myself was a Nosferatu-inspired black dress, ghost-white face paint, a trickle of blood applied by Mom, and red-pink hair to complete the look (I was 5). For years, talking about my vampiric lineage was a fun explanation for my growing fascination with Twilight. But in 2010, after losing my mom to AIDS-related complications, the inherited vampire obsession became a lens, one that helped me understand how she dealt with a world hostile to her existence.

My mom’s fascination with vampires predated her diagnosis, but not by much. She wrote her master’s thesis on the literary treatment of vampires in the 20th century. It was 1988, and only one professor in the department at Winthrop University believed vampires were worthy of literary study (an unbelievable claim today, given the continued relevance of Anne Rice’s work). Vampires became my mom’s safe space, and she cogently argued her points anyway, during a time when her own future seemed so uncertain. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, HIV was often a death sentence.

Her own fear of stigma and discrimination means I’m not completely sure when she contracted HIV. Her first husband, Peter, died of AIDS-related complications in 1991, but I only found out about her status by accident, and just two months before her death. So I never outright asked why she loved vampires; at the time, it would’ve been like asking a flower why it loves the sun. Her small