Kevin the Vampire's Date with Satan

 

When I was living in San Francisco, my friend Kevin the Vampire told us the story of his meeting with Anton Lavey. founder of the Church of Satan

Kevin grew up in Tulsa and then Enid, Oklahoma, two of the most dreary, depressing towns in the Bible belt, with nothing to do but watch sports and talk about girls.  His parents belonged to the ultra-fundamentalist Bible Missionary Church, where everything but breathing was a sin.  He went through life terrified that he would commit a sin without knowing it.  He used to pray for God to kill him, so he wouldn't have to die unsaved, and spend eternity in hell.

It was especially terrifying once he recognized that he was gay ("thou shalt not lie with mankind as with woman; it is an abomination") and that he was a witch ("thou shalt not suffer a witch to live").

Oh, he couldn't zap himself across time and space, or turn mortals into toads, but:

He knew what people were thinking

He could see what was going to happen in the future

He could make himself invisible. People would walk right past without noticing him, very handy for dealing with bullies and getting out of chores.

His favorite power was mind-control.  It didn't always work, but sometimes, if he looked at you the right way, you would do what he wanted.  His mother let him have two desserts; his teacher changed the grade on a paper; a high school jock agreed to a blow job.

A lot of high school jocks agreed to blow jobs.

As a teenager, he struggled to overcome his fundamentalist guilt. He forced himself to "sin," to go to movies and watch tv, to smoke and drink alcohol, to stay home from church on Sunday, to use profanity, to go to Catholic churches and Buddhist temples.

At the University of Oklahoma, Kevin majored in biology, partially in order to commit the "sin" of believing in evolution (a few professors changed his exam grades from C- to A+).

He dated a football star who later went pro, and who heterosexuals have probably heard of, but he was never sure if the jock really liked him, or if it was just his mind control.

After college Kevin couldn't settle on a career: he dropped out of medical school after one year, tried graduate school in biology but hated it, and worked as a hospital orderly, nursing home attendant, and phlebotomist.  Finally he trained as a medical technician, a job which allowed him a lot of free time to read and hook up with men.

In his ongoing attempt to rid himself of fundamentalist guilt, Kevin committed even more "sins."  He tried hashish and cocaine.  He read books on paganism, atheism, and New Age philosophy.  He attended a Wiccan ritual.  He deliberately blasphemed God, the Trinity, and Jesus Christ.

In 1996, Kevin finally achieved the life-long dream of gay men everywhere: he managed to move to San Francisco.  He found a job at St. Mary's Medical Center, and an apartment nearby in the Richmond district, a bit far from the Castro, but still Gay Heaven.

But even in Heaven, he worried about hell.  The nagging doubt just wouldn't go away: "Is there a God who is passing judgment on me?  Am I doomed to an eternity in hell?"

He determined to engage in one great, final gesture of defiance against the religious oppression of his childhood.  He was going to have sex with the Devil.

That is, Anton Szandor LaVey, who founded the Church of Satan in 1966.  Rituals were held in the famous Black House at California Street and 23rd in the Richmond District -- just around the corner from Kevin's apartment.

The Church of Satan was very popular among the youth counterculture of the 1960s.  Over a million people bought copies of The Satanic Bible, and there were dozens of famous converts or well-wishers, such as the Beatles, underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger, and actress Sharon Tate, who was killed in the Charles Manson murders in 1969.

In 1975, most members of the Church of Satan left for the rival Satanic Temple of Set, and LaVey fell from the limelight.  But he was still living in the Black House, still promoting his philosophy through books and magazine articles, still conducting rituals for a small group of loyal followers.

Still Satan.

 In December 1996, just at the start of the Christmas season, Kevin got an invitation through a friend, and made his way, trembling with fear but also eager, to the Black House.

To his disappointment, Anton was not at all scary.  He looked like someone's doting grandfather, tall, gaunt, bald, and smiling.

They sat in a perfectly normal-looking living room. A coffee table with a pile of People magazines.   Pictures of family members on the mantle.  There was even a Christmas tree, though Anton called it "a memorial to the Dying God."

He told Kevin that Satanism was about being true to your animal nature: "We are animals, not gods.  We should do what pleases us, what gratifies us.  Everything else is bullshit."

"What about helping others?" Kevin asked, playing the devil's advocate.

"If that's what pleases you, fine.  But never do anything just because someone expects it of you. Not your mother, not your boss, not some old guy sitting on a cloud.  More tea?"

"So, by that logic," Kevin said, "Satanism itself is basically bullshit."

"Exactly.  I'm a stage magician, a flim-flam man.  But name me one religion, philosophy, spiritual system, or ethical system that isn't bullshit.  There are no gods, there are no spirits, there is no heaven and hell.  There is here and now.  Eating, drinking, fighting, f**king.  Especially f**king."  

They eventually got around to the sex.  Anton wanted to top Kevin, but he settled for a blow job.  On his knees in Anton's bedroom, thrusting up and down on his thin spearlike dick, Kevin was surprised to find no sense of guilt at all.  Not even when Anton yelled "Ave Satanas" as he came.

No gods, no monsters, no heaven, no hell.  Nothing but the here and now.

Anton didn't reciprocate.  There was no cuddling or kissing afterwards.  But still, Kevin was elated.

 He left the Black House and walked through the misting rain, and looked at the Christmas lights shining red and green on California Street.  Never had anything looked so beautiful.