CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

TWENTY SEVEN
I was thrilled to be part of Belasco’s world,
to be able to observe this unique creative force up
close. Theatrical magic supplied balance to my life, an
antidote to the inescapable and relentless destructive
drive at the basis of my existence. To become part of
the theater was to enter a new realm, a new reality
that allowed me to be a creator when all I had ever
done was destroy. I became David Belasco’s silent
partner.

It started out with a modest investment in his
first show as an independent manager, and grew
to me backing him as he led the way uptown to the
present day theater district, and opened the first of
two theaters to bear his name. I was with him when
he discovered Mrs. Leslie Carter, the former wife of
the manufacturer of Carter’s Little Liver Pills, and
molded her into the great talent she became. I was
there again when he chose Mary Pickford out of a
crowd of youngsters at a casting call and gave her a
start in show business, her first stage role. She went
on, of course, to a career as a great star of silent films.
One night, not long after the turn of the 20th
century, I changed Belasco’s existence to somewhat the
same degree that he changed mine. My impact on him
was unintentional. We were in the newly christened
Belasco Theater. A decade had elapsed since our first meeting. Once we became close, David took to teasing me. It was the sort of good-natured ribbing that many heterosexual men still employ to mask genuine affection for other men.
David was teasing me once again about my hours of availability for engaging in discussions that began as business but ranged far beyond. I decided to avail myself of my powers in an effort to end the taunts and jibes about my night time hours and my ever-present dark glasses, for I sensed a growing suspicion beneath the pleasant delivery that David employed.
It was becoming evident that he was growing older while I was not. When someone begins to doubt me, it is often a prelude to my feeding on that person. I wanted to avoid that with Belasco no matter what.
We were in his office above the cobblestones of West Forty Second Street, over the first Belasco Theater, now known as the New Victory.
I crossed to the windows and drew the shades. Then I removed my glasses and looked straight at David. He gasped. Within milliseconds, he entered the thrall that my gaze imposes on the conscious human mind.
I began to speak in my real voice, the one that it is second nature for me to mask with mimicry of human tone and delivery. My preternatural voice is deep and vibrant and penetrates to the farthest recesses of the subconscious mind. I revealed myself in full to David that night.
I knew that he would not remember my words on any conscious level, ever, and if some piece of recollection presented itself it would be dismissed as the stuff of dreams. So I told him everything – the thousands of years of feeding on human blood, the superhuman strength, the ability to fly through the night as an angel of death, the ability to adapt my appearance to a surrounding population by feeding on them repeatedly and exclusively.
I demonstrated the elasticity of my body. I showed him my capability for self healing by ripping open the flesh on my forearm and then repairing it with a splash of spittle from my tongue. I bared my fangs to him. I made my monstrosity evident and unmistakable.
When I was done with my presentation, I left him in a stupor which would lead to restful sleep before it led to wakefulness. He was out for the night and would not be able to consciously recall anything that I had said or done.
The next evening I did not see David until after all the shows let out. We ran into each other on Broadway at Thirty Fourth Street. David was dressed like a priest, all in black with a stiff white collar and a cross. He smiled and greeted me, making no mention of either the previous evening or his costume, which he would wear from that time forward.
There can be no doubt that when David Belasco heard me tell him about what I am and what I do, it was so disconcerting and frightening that it translated from his unconscious mind into this outlandish way of dressing, making an already colorful personality even more eccentric. He once told me that his father, a professional clown in England but a Jewish shopkeeper in San Francisco, had placed the young Belasco with a Jesuit priest for educational instruction for two years when he was very young. A long dormant Jesuitical impulse must have reared its head as a defense mechanism. And so the Bishop of Broadway assumed his character due to the subconscious knowledge of the way of life of the Broadway Vampire.
From that time forward, likewise, Belasco held all his meetings and rehearsals at night. For all intents and purposes, he became as nocturnal as I am.
I sometimes wonder if David had not donned the garb of a priest, whether his reputation would be at a place of higher esteem, based on his work rather than this sartorial quirk, which I know was the manifestation of an unsettled mind attempting to protect itself from something known on the deepest subconscious level to be unstoppable and destructive in a way that no human fear could ever encompass or comprehend.
Would David Belasco be recognized for the genius that he was if I did not reveal myself to him? Did my spontaneous revelation provoke the eccentricities which led to him being remembered, when he is remembered at all, as a weird personality along the street of dreams, rather than as the greatest man of the theater to ever spring forth from the American hemisphere? The answer seems self evident to me.