I’ve been at play in the fields of the law for a very long time
now and I’m thinking that this might be a good time for a new
career path. I mean, it was one thing back when TV was bulging with
lawyer shows and almost every night you could see handsome guys in
three-piece suits fervently mesmerizing a jury about the justice of
their cause and the innocence of their tragically victimized
client, culminating in a spectacularly successful outcome; that was
a cool role to want to play in the real world.
I’ve been at play in the fields of the law for a very long time now and I’m thinking that this might be a good time for a new career path. I mean, it was one thing back when TV was bulging with lawyer shows and almost every night you could see handsome guys in three-piece suits fervently mesmerizing a jury about the justice of their cause and the innocence of their tragically victimized client, culminating in a spectacularly successful outcome; that was a cool role to want to play in the real world.
Unfortunately, in the real world it doesn’t quite go that way, or even close, so after decades spent in a long series of distinctly drama-free courtrooms I want to be cool again, to be able to say to myself in the morning, I’m on the edge, I’ve got the happening job; other people wish they were me.
So I’ve decided to be a vampire.
I mean, in this there is no current competition; as a growth industry sanguinarianism is bigger than iPhone apps; it’s everywhere you look and it is the skyscraping height of cool.
Vampires are all great-looking, they’ve got the clothes and the hair and the black eye-shadow and they’re all in tremendous shape; apparently they work out night and day – well, night. Who wouldn’t want to put in an application to join an upscale coven and be in with the In-your-neck Crowd?
It could save the job market; it’s a whole new untapped world of potential commercial activity. I’m just waiting to see the ad campaign for Colgate Fang-Whitening Strips. Tattoo artists will do land-office business inking little pairs of bulls-eyes on people’s necks.
Orthodontists will have a new angle: get your kid braces because if his fangs are crooked he might miss a vein and embarrass himself.
A new genre of hemoglobin connoisseurs will develop, exchanging obscure snooty blather about blood types the way people now exchange obscure snooty blather about the nuances of single-malt Scotch.
Think of it: the night shift becomes the preferred work time; rush hour is turned upside-down as the 9-to-5 grind become the 11-to-7 grind. “Gonna Wait Till the Midnight Hour” replaces “Good Day Sunshine” as the wake-me-up anthem. Big changes, and I want to be a part of them.
Also, as I find myself getting old living forever starts to sound better and better.
And besides, it meshes so well with my current employment. I mean, I already can bring so much to the table. Have you ever wondered how vampires acquire all the dark knowledge required to be a smoothly-functioning vampire? Me too, and I have always assumed that somehow in that brief moment when the fangs sink into your jugular a huge wealth of information passes into you so you just immediately know all this cool stuff.
Well, for us lawyers it’s not so simple, although we end up with basically the same underworldly wisdom. In order for us to become expert bloodsuckers and pied pipers of the Nether Regions – well, imagine if one of those princes or princesses of the night sank their choppers into your collar line, but then they left them in there for three years while you died a thousand deaths, mostly of boredom, at the end of which you had to pass a multi-day test devised by the Prince of Darkness himself to drain from you volumes of arcane material almost none of which you ever needed to learn.
Unlike the undeniably appealing Hollywood version, joining the minions of Nosferatu the jurisprudential way is slow, stultifying, and of all the words in the vast English language, “romantic” is the one it is most not.
But damn, it makes us good at it, and that’s why I think the skill-set transition from counselor to vampire should be smooth and easy.
Now obviously I’m going to have to reverse my sleep-wake cycle, but with my insomnia, no problem. Resurrecting my hair, getting the face lift, the six-pack abs and the deep eye-sockets will be more problematic but fortunately Beverly Hills is positively overrun with just such problem-solvers if you have the cash, and no price is too great to be born-again cutting-edge.
And when it’s done I won’t have to work, I’ll look better, be cooler, have a more active social life, and I’ll get to sleep really, really late. You know, I never realized that “vampire” and “college student” are practically synonymous. Â
