XII — Grandiose and Self-Exaggerating Vampires

The vampire is often a magnificent creature, full of ambition and confidence.

Their characters can often be imposing and impressive. The charming vampire is impressive and imposing, but the obnoxious vampire is only viewed as imposing. Later in the book, we will see why this is so.

Grandiosity is a yearning to be something that you are not. It is a pretentiousness to appear better than we are. We have all indulged in grandiose courting at some time in our lives.

When grandiosity is leashed and tempered, and we see it for what it is, it can be a positive mindset.

No one wants to see themselves as weaker or more feeble and inept than they are. Believing in such negative esteem strips away the positive from flourishing. There can only be a downward spiral if we think lesser and ill of ourselves.

Grandiosity tempered allows us to have ideals and dreams; it can give us ambition and the drive to be someone better than we are. This may be in character or career. It doesn’t matter.

Once grandiosity has given us the ambition and the drive to learn and better ourselves to reach our goal, then it will be that our actions will be much more propitious.

The key is to keep grandiosity tempered.

The vampire is unable to achieve this.

Grandiosity in the vampire is unbounded. There is no controlling it. The vampire will not only possess aspirations and dreams of self-worth, but they will believe in these fancies without reservation.

We have all encountered this vampiric trait and inwardly smiled at how pathetic it is. Take time to strip down grandiosity in the vampire and see it for what it really is.

One would find nothing remarkable beneath the outward ostentation. Probe a little further, and you will find almost nothing to support the vampire’s deluded belief of superiority.

But most people assess character by the outward show and first impressions, and this fault, in all of us, the vampire exploits and builds upon. This ability to appeal in the workplace and relationships allows the vampire to succeed in its unfounded aspirations.

First impressions are a potent tool for creating an image. First impressions are predominantly physical: dress, looks, handshake, eye contact, tone of voice, language, walk, demeanour etc.

The vampire, by its very nature, is an empty creature. It does not possess the ability to create positive energy within itself. This is why it must feed on the positive energies of others.

The vacuum of positive energy within the vampire is shallowness. Beyond outward ostentation, the vampire has no profundity: only hollowness. The hollowness of zero positive energy.

Thankfully, for the vampire, a human weakness for first sensory impressions is the saviour.

For the vampire to survive and flourish with its brandishing grandiosity, it needs a persistent preoccupation with success.

This will generally come in the form of self-exaggeration.

Exaggerating one’s own skills and experience is a fault we have all certainly entertained at some time. Often, it is necessary to gain an advantage in business or competition.

It is said that over 40% of self-narrative about one’s past experience is either lies or exaggeration. It is the ‘big fish’ syndrome.

The vampire is a master at it. If someone has climbed 10,000ft, the vampire has climbed 12,000ft; if a salesman has made 10 sales, the vampire has made 11. There is nothing the vampire cannot beat.

Most of us temper the need to self-exaggerate our own importance. We do this because we are secretly aware that it is not true. We could get found out, and the mortification outweighs the need to self-exaggerate.

The vampire’s ultimate belief in itself does not allow for fear of being found out.

Even if the vampire is found to be self-exaggerating, it’s not the end. The vampire is never wrong and will find some deviant path out of the situation.

Self-exaggeration is a natural form of expression for the vampire. They have to be seen as necessary. They gain advantages from such deeds.

Walter was a colourful vampire character from the past.

I don’t know where he got his name, but that was the vampire’s name: Walter.

Walter resembled some spent porn star from the Seventies. He was lean, tall, had long hair and that sauntering gait which exuded confidence and a ‘couldn’t give a damn’ attitude.

He was a master at being grandiose. He didn’t care what massive levels of self-exaggeration he afforded himself. He believed he could deal with it.

The reality was he always carried around with him some new bruise on his head from the latest altercation he’d emerged from some pub.

Years of alcoholic hammering had given his voice a kind of permanent slur. However, he still possessed quite a remarkable memory, and I remember one night in a pub somewhere in Leeds hearing Coleridge’s Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner for the first time, which Walter could quote in its entirety.

His rendition was melodramatic and grandiose, which made the piece highly entertaining and charismatic.

He’d learnt the poem in one of England’s prisons, and the beautiful piece never left the fellow.

Walter had the remarkable ability, or disability, whichever you deem it to be, to never achieve complete sobriety in a single day. The moment the vampire rose from whichever sofa he’d fallen asleep on, he would crack open a can of cider and simply top up the alcoholic engine he ticked along on.

Throughout the rest of the day and into the night, too, Walter would simply keep the liquor pouring in, but without going over the top, never stopping either, and I never saw the vampire keel over; he simply went to sleep and woke the next day to recreate the image of the previous day, and year too.

Walter spent many a night on the sofa at 255. Still, eventually, due to alcoholic incontinence, the sofa took on a kind of musty-urinal smell, and even Colonel, the greyhound, who made his bed there on a night, refused to sleep on it in the end. The dog took to sleeping on the new chair we’d recently been given. In the end, the sofa was unceremoniously carted off to the back garden, given its final resting place and burnt.

After that, I made excuses to Walter and, upon my brother’s orders, afforded every strategy to avoid the vampire coming back to the house after a day and night on the cider and leaking urine all over the new, if not second-hand, settee.

The last time I saw Walter was on the night I met Sophie. We’d been drinking together in the Three Legs pub in the centre of town. Walter had gone to the toilet and, for some reason, never came back. I don’t know where the fellow had gone; perhaps he’d returned and thought I’d gone; perhaps the vampire had got into another fight. I don’t know. But I know I’ve never seen Walter since to this day.

As can be seen, Walter was not an evil vampire and could be pretty entertaining. But everything was for his benefit: the drinking partner, the sofa to lie on etc.

The self-exaggeration and grandiosity made the vampire prepossessing.

Vampires can be funny creatures of self-exaggeration and grandiosity, but they can often be annoying with unpleasant side effects. Walter was a colourful and grandiose vampire, but he also exhibited another characteristic trait of vampires: a lack of profundity.