First it was Buffy and her ongoing affair with the vampire Angel. Now it’s the Twilight insanity that has teenage girls (and boys) everywhere going crazy for emo blood-suckers. What is it about vampires that does this to people?

We think it’s the oldest motivation in the book: Sex.

Vampire stories have been around since before books. Fire-lit tales spun to haunt the imaginations of children and inflame the desires of adults. In a world where sex is not easy to speak of in plain terms, erotica must find a new path. And the vampire is the perfect outlet.

Let’s look at the classic elements of the vampire story: Our Vampire is usually male (but not always, we’ll get to that soon). Vampire hungers for the flesh of a woman. In modern vampire tales, this is usually a woman who hungers for him too – although we like to call it love, instead of lust. It’s just nicer that way. Vampire is constantly tempted to drink deeply from the throat of the woman he loves, yet must hold back to preserve her purity and innocence. Those big phallic teeth are just itching to penetrate the warm skin of the throat. He is the ultimate undead bad-boy, with a heart of gold. Vampire and beloved are in a constant state of torment – should we, shouldn’t we, yes do it, no I must control myself.

You get the drift.
In the modern Twilight tales, it is the human girl, Bella, who is begging her vampire boyfriend to ‘turn’ her. This is about the only socially acceptable way that a woman can express sexual desire without being labelled… well, slutty.

And it is this that has made the Twilight phenomenon what it is. The actor who plays the vampire character Edward has often said he is amazed at how many times young women have asked him to bite them. Not just asked – begged. Is this really the only way that a young woman can safely say “I’m into you, let’s do it”? It seems so.

The she-vampires are a different story. These are the nymphos of the undead. Bloodthirsty, brutal chicks (who are usually pretty hot) who take what they want with no regard for the feelings of those they attack. Bathing in the blood of virgins to retain eternal youth, leaping on unsuspecting good guys in alleyways (have you noticed they don’t really like the blood of drunks and old people?). She-vampires are often the ones who end up with a stake through the heart, so the moral lesson is something like “don’t get too comfortable with your power, you’re likely to get impaled in the nastiest way.” There’s a euphemism in that for everyone.

And just so you know, Stephanie Meyer (the author of the Twilight series) is a Mormon. No sex before marriage. Or biting either. Still hooked onto the myth? Rent the best Apartments in Budapest, a city close to the birthplace of the vampire legend – Transylvania.