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Words by: Adam Weinmann

Image by: Cristina Gardeazabal

I had recently moved to Toronto to start life as a professional musician when I ended up in Toronto‘s gay villlage. I looked smoldering, in my Italian wool jacket and my Guess jeans, with my hair perfectly fashioned into my signature Mohawk.
As I crossed Wellesley Street, I became aware that a slick-looking older man was checking me out, his eyes gliding from my forehead to my toes, and lingering just a bit right below my belt. He caught my eye and, not knowing how to react, I smiled at him.
He had to be about fifty years old, with pale skin and slicked-back black hair. His black overcoat and black eyes, along with his dramatic widow’s peak, gave him a resemblance to Count Dracula. There was no way I would ever want to run into him again, but after three hours in a rehearsal, fighting against the poor intonation of the ensemble, I was tired and in need of a boost to my ego.  He may have been twice my age and as creepy as all get-out, but  someone had just checked me out and I felt damn good. I continued forward feeling better, confident and ready to go home and watch Golden Girls with my roommate Rebecca. Perhaps we would make cookies.
It had begun to drizzle, and I took a deep breath of cold, wet October air. As I started down Wellesley Street, I became aware of a cloaked figure in my periphery. I glanced to my right, and saw Dracula, walking quickly to keep up with me and trying to make eye contact with me. He had  obviously misinterpreted my smile as a sign of my reciprocated interest and was now coming to claim his prize. My blood ran cold. Wellesley Street was strangely quiet, and although the subway station was nearby, this man was bigger than me and had a strange look in his eyes. I realized I was going to have to be diplomatic and politely turn this man down.
“Excuse me hello,” he said, in an Eastern European accent, “ you are student?”
“No,” I said walking faster and staring straight ahead. Dracula continued to  stride along next to me.
“You are gay?”
I panicked. “No.”
I was walking as if my thumb were up my ass, and  I looked down at myself, cursing my stupidity at telling such a bold-faced lie. My Italian wool coat, my tight sweater, my Guess jeans: all of them betrayed me. I looked gayer than a Janet Jackson back-up dancer. Dracula’s face took on a perplexed twist.
“But you like pennis, yes?” In what was like a Transylvanian accent, he pronounced the word ‘penis’ as if it rhymed with the word ‘tennis.’
Not his. Not ever. I felt nauseous, and the subway still seemed so very far away. Would he follow me home? Perhaps he would hop on the subway with  me, and drag me back to his castle, where I would be placed in a dungeon, and my horrific demise would be filmed and broadcast on the web for snuff-film fetish creeps sitting at their computers in dimly lit basements everywhere.
I pulled my collar in tighter to protect my neck, I looked him in the eye, dropped my voice low and said, “No. I like tits.”
The hunger in his eyes died. “I’m sorry,” he said, “Have a good day.” He swirled around in his trench coat and was gone.
On the subway home, I shook off the adrenaline rush.  We all search for contact, for validation. After moving across the country and fighting my anxiety about starting a new life as an adult, I had neglected the important concept of connection to others. I was obsessed with getting it right, being an adult, and appearing like a professional. I had been so hard on myself that I had developed a craving for validation.

Dracula had satisfied that need to be appreciated in some way, after I had spent a week feeling lousy.
Opening to door to the warmth of my house, I felt better. There would be better rehearsals, better days. There would be ups and downs, and none of them had to include a date with the King of the Undead. Rebecca was in the kitchen, and the smell of baking cookies wafted down the hall…

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