Ending the Masquerade

"It was not Elena that after having stayed up to 3am teaching me to dance crashed in my guest bedroom. Nor was it Elena that screamed and yelled so violently at the friend who arrived the next day to pick her up that said 'my god Katie, did you spend the night with this nerd?'. It was not Elena who chose to sacrifice that friendship and instead ride home with said 'nerd'."

"She was a bitch," Katie muttered. I continued to ignore her.

"It was not Elena who came over for regular Saturday afternoon viewings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show demanding that I sing supporting roles so she could practice, and then giggled uncontrollably at just how terrible of a singer I am."

Katie smiled at me in the mirror in response to this.

"It is not Elena who secretly enjoys listening to sappy ballads and romance songs while proclaiming to her friends how cool she thinks all the new alternative music is. It is not Elena that dutifully plays the part of vain and self-absorbed college cheerleader with all of her friends because she thinks that is what they expect."

And just as quickly, she frowned. I threw aside one wipe and picked up another to continue with.

"It was not Elena," I continued as I ignored her, "who I watched at every one of her dance, theater and musical performances. And it was not Elena I hid this from because I was terrified she would think I was a stalker when I simply loved to watch her perform."

Katie looked at my reflection sharply at this, as she knew of only one show that I had attended out of the dozens she had done in the last seven months. But again I ignored her. She also didn't know that at one such show, the second I attended, I sat next to two theater company representatives from New York that were scouting talent. I put in the good word for her, but they both agreed that Katie would need to mature and learn to step beyond just playing a part to be truly good. She would need to learn to make a part her own and fill a performance with emotion. And it was this that set me on my current path of destruction.

"It is not Elena who assumes the role of the ditzy blonde every time she meets an attractive guy. And it is certainly not Elena who cries angry tears when these attractive guys wind up treating her as they would any other ditzy blonde. And it is definitely not Elena that continues to hide behind this façade, despite being so very much more than that. So terrified is she that all of those guys would think her just a theater nerd or musical geek if she showed her real self."

Again, Katie looked at me in the mirror and I could see moisture in her eyes now. And again I ignored her as I wiped away the last of her makeup.

"It was not Elena that drunkenly gave a cab driver my address at 3am when her boyfriend abandoned her in the middle of downtown. Nor was it Elena who puked out a stomach full of alcohol on my feet as soon as I opened the door and then promptly passed out. And it was not Elena that I covered with a blanket before I undressed her so that I could not take advantage of her, even with my eyes. And it was not Elena who I tucked safely into my guest bedroom that night."

I glanced in the mirror and tears were starting to streak down Katie's face. She hadn't remember anything from that night.

"And yet here you stand with me, stark naked, and you think all I see is Elena. Yet it certainly was not Elena that drove me to track down that same boyfriend, spend a month of planning, and publicly humiliate him for abandoning you drunken and alone in the middle of the night." I angrily threw the last makeup wipe in the trash can as I said this.

"That was you," she whispered incredulously.

"You think Stefan is the cunning and devious one," I asked angrily. "You haven't been paying attention! I told him if he ever went near you again things would be much, much worse," I hissed at our reflections in the mirror. There was my ugly side peeking through, but Katie did not flinch from it or pull away.

"It was not Elena that went through my notebook and found my writing while I was out picking up breakfast the next morning."

"How do you know..."

"Why did you pick 'Fallen Angel'," I asked interrupting her.

"I liked the chorus, and it seemed to speak to me somehow, even though your poetry is nearly as bad as your singing."

"Well, I am not surprised, since it was written about you, for you, though it may be a while yet before you understand it." I had planted that notebook of course, but the writing was true and honest.

Her mouth was hanging open as new tears began to run down her face.

"It was not Elena who I heard signing those words when I returned with breakfast, and it was so painfully, heart wrenching to hear that it reduced me to tears in my own driveway. It is not Elena who wishes she had a bigger, more powerful voice, and yet is blind to the gentle precision and clarity she does have, and how effective she can be with it." Katie's tears were flowing more freely now. I carefully started removing the hairpins that kept her black wig in place and removed it, placing it in a heap on the counter. I set her blonde hair loose and gently combed it out with my fingers.

"Most of us, perhaps all of us, wear masks of our own devising. And every one of us that does is terrified of removing the last one, so that someone might see the reality beneath. But I am removing the last of mine. It is not Stefan that makes me this way. It is not Elena that makes me this way. It is you, Katie, that makes me this way. More importantly, it is Katie that makes me want to better in every possible way." I moved my right hand up across her stomach and let it come to rest over her heart. "This, in here, all of it, every bit, is miles and miles sexier than anything at all you could ever possibly do as Elena."

Katie sobbed and looked down and away from my gaze in the mirror.

"I am sorry if you feel I've deceived you or lied to you. I will love you as much as you let me for as long as you are in my life. I'm just a skinny game nerd, but my name is not Stefan, it is Thomas, and I love you. Not Elena the cold and aloof vampire, not the ditzy blonde who swoons for the football players, not even the vain and self-centered college cheerleader, just you... just Katie."

She was crying openly now, and I realized that she finally understood, but then I did kind of just spell it out for her. She put her hands on the counter and started to sob. She tried to run from me then, but I quickly grabbed her around the waist and put her back in front of the mirror.

"No," I shouted angrily and it echoed through my dark and empty house. "No," I said softer. "You will not run and hide this time like you've done with everyone else." She still wasn't looking up as I wrapped my arms around her again and hugged her closer. "Accept or reject me, but it will be you that does it, and I will not allow you to hide from it. No more masks." I lifted up her head to make her look in the mirror. I looked straight into her eyes and said. "Look at her," I whispered. "Look at all the good, look at all the bad, the light, the darkness, the joy and despair, the tenderness and cruelty... all those things I have seen... all those things I love. Look at how beautiful she is." She cried anew with great wracking sobs and turned in my arms. She wept into my chest for several minutes. When she finally started to calm down, she suddenly kissed me, and then drug me back toward the bedroom. When we made love the second time it was not Stefan and Elena, but Thomas and Katie.

We never went back to another Vampire game. When I called Julie to cancel, she asked about Katie, and I declined for her as well.

"Ah, then it did work," she said. "You're welcome," she said with a chuckle.

"Pardon?"

"I know you love her, it's been obvious for a while. It was equally obvious that Katie was blissfully blind to it. When the group cancelled, I decided not to call and let you know so that I could perhaps help give you a nudge. I hope you will forgive my meddling, though I am glad it worked out."

I sighed sadly into the phone. "Have you heard Katie perform before," I asked Julie.

"Of course, I was the one that invited her to the game. I've watched her since she was a freshman. You know I love my plays and musicals. Why do you ask?"

"Go see her again in a few months. Then, if you get the chance, go see her in several years if she establishes a career, and then you will understand. Also, you might want to ask the others why they cancelled. You might find their answers interesting." I said my goodbyes and promised to keep in touch occasionally in case either of us wanted to rejoin her troupe, but, of course, that never happened.

I know what you're thinking. How is this a bad ending? How is this destructive? Don't get me wrong, the seventeen months I spent with Katie were wonderful, and I enjoyed every single day and night. I loved her fiercely and recklessly, filling her heart to overflowing as often as possible. But while she did not realize it at the time, I knew from the beginning where and when it would end. It was a gentle end, at least for me, but an end none the less. She graduated and moved to New York to pursue her life and career. Could I have gone with her? Perhaps, but I doubt it. She railed at me to do so, insisting I give up my career and follow her to wherever she went. I broke her heart that day, as I knew I would from the beginning, and it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. When she screamed at me, told me she hated me, and cursed the day she met me, when the tears came like rain and sobbing made her incoherent, then I knew I had succeeded. Today she travels the world performing a wide variety of dance, acting and musical shows and works with several top name performance companies.

I have seen her perform twice since college. Though the city I live in is fairly large, it is not a frequent stop on the national theater and musical route. The first time was five years after she graduated, and she had the second-most important role in some musical I cannot recall. Her voice had changed remarkably and she was well on her way to the upper echelon of talent. I arranged to have a dozen black roses sent to her room with a card that read 'For Elena, the Toreador love of my life, from your Ventrue true, Stefan'. When the show ended and the crowd began to turn to leave I heard someone run back on stage and saw Katie carrying those flowers. She waved at the guys in the electronics box and got them to turn a mic back on.

"Stefan," she asked. "Stefan, are you still here?" I turned and continued to exit with the rest of the crowd. "Stefan, please," I heard her wail as I left. There was such sadness there that I almost turned back. Almost. I knew Katie was now married though, and nothing good would come of any reunion between us. But the flowers were needed, the last little touch.

The second time I saw her was twenty years after she graduated. I was also married, and Katie had two children, both of whom often performed small parts in the performances she was in so that her family was always with her when she travelled. She was a leading name in almost all of her performances, and in those that she was not, it was because she chose a different role for her own reasons. Her voice was perfect now, and had been for many years. She has travelled to all the corners of the globe touching countless hearts with that voice. Though my wife did not know it, I had once again arranged flowers and the same message for Katie. My wife was also a singer, but only an amateur that helped to teach the theater students at the university and ran a community theater troupe on the weekends.

When the show ended, we stood and stretched and began to file out. As I exited the row of seats and started up the aisle, Katie returned on stage and I stopped dead as if I had been punched in the gut. Katie had made her own plans it seemed. She was wearing a black miniskirt, a midriff shirt with paint spatters, black thigh boots, her black and red wig, and all the usual makeup. She was carrying a dozen black roses as well. Suddenly I wasn't in that theater, I was back twenty-one years ago in a house decorated for a Vampire game.

"Please don't," I whispered to no one in particular. "Please don't." My wife heard me and turned to find me looking at the stage again and also turned. Then Katie began to sing 'Fallen Angel'. I was a couple decades removed from that writing, but they were still my words... my words to her. Katie was also two decades removed from them, but her voice turned me inside out from the first verse. On top of all the precision and clarity she put layers of intertwining emotion that had not been there in college, could not have been there then.

Only an artist can fully understand this. Some performances, some creations, are made for an audience of one. While others may appreciate it, only that intended person can fully understand it. Katie now understood. She sang my song for an audience of one, and her voice was like a knife carving away at my heart piece by piece. In the second half of the song, she rebuilt it. For only the third time in my life I wept uncontrollably. Katie had more control, but by the middle of the song she was also crying as she sang, and yet she never faltered a single note. My wife stood looking at me in astonishment as Katie finished her performance.

"I haven't seen you cry since I sang the song I wrote for you at our wedding," she said. "She looked back to Katie and said, "I mean she's a phenomenal performer, but that song is all sorts of tacky and bad."

"Of course it is," I said sadly. "I wrote it." Several people nearby heard this and looked at me, but then Katie's voice drew everyone's attention back.

"For my beloved Ventrue, Stefan," Katie said. Then she looked straight at me before turning and leaving the stage slowly. And just before the crowd broke into an awkward applause, someone off to my left shouted a question at Katie. All I could make out was the word "Camarilla". Apparently Vampire LARPing was still alive and well. My wife turned back to me and I could see the question in her eyes.

"She is my Pierre," I stated simply. Pierre being the French artist my wife had had a torrid love affair with as an exchange student in Paris. I fled toward the exit and tried to put myself back together. As I approached the doors, I saw an older woman, perhaps sixty leaning on the frame. She waved at me, shouted "Thomas," and beckoned me over. As I got closer, I finally recognized Julie and I saw tears in her eyes as well.

She hugged me tightly and whispered in my ear, "You were right about her. Cunning Stefan, indeed! You would make a most excellent real-life Vampire. But you lied to us all. You were never a Ventrue. You are a Toreador and your canvas is the soul itself. It was gloriously and monstrously done, but thank you," she ended and then broke away from me, kissed me once on the cheek, and turned to leave.

My wife caught up with me again and asked, "and who was that my dear." I was unable to answer so she smiled and took me by the arm through the exit. "Come on, I can't wait to get home and hear this story."