Lake of Dracula
(Skin Graft)
by Nik Rainey
When I was five, my mother, unable to find a babysitter willing to abide my impish coprophagiac tendencies of the time, took me along to one of the Tupperware parties she and the other polyester-bedecked, housecoat-favoring moms in the neighborhood held once every 28 days or so. Shortly after we arrived at the perpetually-unfinished ranch house and I dutifully made the rounds, making well-rehearsed, adorably precocious statements to each of the assembled matrons and accepting a patronizing coo, an against-the-grain hair tousle, and a capillary-bursting cheek pinch from each as compensation, I was hustled off to the room of the ostensible peer who dwelt there (a junior homonculus with an affinity for self-administered nasal probes), with an admonition to “play nice.” I quickly grew bored with the lad, who responded to my extemporaneous parody of his favorite book (a pallid mock-epic poem involving a character of undetermined species unwilling to sup on verdant eggs and pork) in the style of Ezra Pound, by completely missing the satirically anti-Semitic mode of the juxtaposition and biting the head off of a tiny plasticine military figure he called “Joe.”
This is what the new Lake of Dracula record brings to mind every time I listen to it. I’m not exactly sure why.