By Jane Calton "In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech" -- T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men You ask me about the Toreador and love. Well, I can't give you the outcome of years of careful thought. But I am prepared to act as, a witness perhaps, to our experience of love. I will tell you of the people I have loved, I will try to describe the experience and I will try to account for why I loved them and my testimony can be thrown in with all the rest. I have three men to discuss: Martin, Adam and Peter. No women? you ask. Well I can't help that, I can't determine who I happen to bump into except perhaps that I have a leaning towards the Tremere and they tend to be terribly straight-laced about this sort of thing. I doubt I could persuade a female Tremere to love me, even if I had ever met one in the flesh and I have not. So perhaps I should start with this so you can weigh what follows in its light. I am told that I am, in some way, pre-programmed with a disposition towards the Tremere -- it is their way of "keeping track" of me. Maybe this is so, if I were to desire a way of controlling a Toreador, then that is probably the way I would choose. Martin "The worst crime passion can commit is to be joyless" -- Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night The first time I saw Martin he shot a mortal friend of mine dead, practically at my feet. It is a long and not terribly interesting story except that in some way it seems symbolic of our whole relationship. Take one Tremere archon and one amnesiac Toreador and mix well. Not really a good combination and I still can not tell you what his motivations and intentions were. I know what I believe, but self-deception is easy and it is all too possible that he never really cared for me at all and was merely following his instructions to "keep track" of me by exploiting that built in flaw. If I look back on those first few months then I can say that the first moves were his: a letter here, a conversation there, the odd confession, then a surprising request that he might become blood bound to me. That is why I truly believe he loved me, because I think I could have been kept track of without that step, without placing himself entirely within my power. I was already in love with him at that point. Arguably I would have fallen in love with anyone who had some time to spare for me, anyone who could lead me through the minefield of being a kindred. After all I had had no sire, that I remembered, I was more lost than even an abandoned Childe would have been for I remembered nothing at all of what had gone before. I was looking for love and for protection. I loved Martin because he loved and protected me. I also loved him because he suffered and because he cared so desperately about his own soul, because he believed in the same things that I was beginning to believe in. This is when the trouble started, a desperate period when Martin was dragged between Vienna and Edinburgh until he no longer knew what was himself and what was conditioning. And at the end of all this he gave me a ring he said he had once intended to truly give me and then tried to kill himself. The solution our elders came up with ? We were to become mutually blood bound. Three days later he was summoned back to Vienna and all conditioning was removed. Martin discovered that he was 300 years old, not 50 as he had supposed, a wealthy spanish land-owner and married (though estranged) to a high ranking Tremere. Then in those last unhappy months he moved me, his goods and chattels, pet, mistress, however you choose to regard my position into the Chantry and we clung to that blood bond in a sort of desperation knowing, I think, that that was all that now held us together. What does a 300 year old have in common with a child of barely a year ? I look back upon that time through a kind of blood tinged haze. I can remember the sensations of my blood flowing into him and his into me. I also remember even through that, the knowledge of how I was, indeed, bound. How I was, indeed, his property for it was not in my power to leave him, even when he tested me and even that once when he beat me. "She is mine to beat," he said, "and she must learn submission. She won't leave," and he was right. It was beyond my power to leave, as it was beyond his. I suppose he saw that more clearly than I. Sometimes I think that with time, we could have learnt to accommodate each other. I still believe that the man I first fell in love with had not been completely destroyed by the interference of Vienna. But Martin did not believe that, he believed finally and irretrievably in his own damnation and with his eyes fixed on that goal he rushed headlong towards it. Anyway the night he beat me, he fired the chantry with himself in it. The bond broke and he was pronounced dead. Some believe he found some way out, that he found a way to leave me. I don't know and I can't say. I would like to believe that he saw what he was doing to me and took what his fevered brain perceived as the only option. So this is my first piece of evidence on the Toreador and love. I have told you how it was I came to love Martin and why I believe I did so. I have also told you of what came after we rode away into the sunset, the terror of a blood bond even when it binds two people who do love each other if that love is in the process of being destroyed. It can let a man boil your blood in your veins and still have you crawl to him afterwards and beg his forgiveness. Adam "I can resist everything except temptation" --Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan I have never believed myself in love with Adam, though he would appear heart-broken at the suggestion. Maybe he would actually be heart-broken, but I suspect that Adam believes himself in love more often than he feels any genuine emotion. However I feel I should include him as the only kindred with whom I have actually had sex. This may surprise you given what I have written of Martin, but Martin was a cold man. As I said, he believed in his own damnation and that means he believed in his own loss of humanity. Sex is no more than a remnant, a memory of humanity. It is pleasant but it does not compare to the kiss as we euphemisticly term that moment when we sink a predator's fangs into some living creature and attempt to suck out its life blood. Some bizarre quirk of fate has made the sensation of being drained as pleasurable as the draining and the sharing of blood has taken the place of sexual intimacy among our kind. Perhaps that is not a bad thing, in some ways, the nature of the blood bond means that you do entrust yourself to the beloved when you drink their blood, that you genuinely make yourself vulnerable to them. The sharing of blood indicates real intimacy. So can sex be ignored? no. We are, it appears, sensualists to our core. I've seen hardened cynics among the Toreador succumb to Adam's charms. Even now, knowing him for the self-seeking coward that he is, it is too easy to lose myself at his touch, to make love, as much a euphemism as the kiss. The danger is that Adam knows this, he knows that I can sit and simply watch the way his clothes move as he breathes (for he does breathe) for hours on end. He knows that if he strokes my face and body I will lose my place in any conversation and stumble to a halt. This is not love, but it is so bound up in our comprehension of the word, so that I must mention it here. Sharing of blood can not be casual, so we are forced by our predilection for pleasure to vent our casual desire in other ways, in this memory of humanity. Adam has a genius for exploiting a person's weakness. In those last dark days with Martin he came to me and offered himself to me. "I don't need you as an emotional prop," he said. He offered pleasure as solace to misery and I shared his blood. Once under the bond, even the sharing of blood may become casual. Curiouser still, I am fonder of Adam than most other people despite the scheming louse that he has proved to be. Maybe only because as I confuse emotion and desire, he confuses love and power. That is my second piece of evidence. Everything I do and Adam does, for whatever reason becomes confused with the concept of love and desire. We are not driven by the intellect but by the passions. Peter "His life was gentle, and the elements So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up And say to all the world 'This was a man!' -- William Shakespeare You may read this and think it odd: A Toreador who talks of offering evidence? of bearing witness? of weighing facts and drawing conclusions. Well this is because of the undaunted rational mind of Peter: Peter, the ultimately reasonable: Peter, the scientist: Peter, the knight in shining armour. What he sees in the melodramatics of a Toreador is beyond me! Except that he loved Martin too and he too has been cast adrift in our world without guidance. He said last night that he viewed me somewhat as the sister he had never had, though he couldn't really make up his mind whether I was older or younger (more experience of being kindred, less of the world in general). How do I love Peter ? I can't really say. It is mere months since Martin died and I haven't the emotional strength for the intensity I invested in him. Peter too, still mourns for the death of his wife. So perhaps siblings is a good term, both of us, in our own ways are Martin's childer. Do I desire Peter? After all I desired both Martin and Adam. Yes, I suppose I do, but neither of us is prepared to face the consequences of a blood bond. In fact, knowing Peter's fastidious nature, I imagine the very thought of consuming my blood would horrify him and I don't think there is any place for the sham that would be sex between us. Peter is my haven, the place where I may go and hide and be myself. He is the best friend I have, I have ever had. Many think we are lovers and it is true that we share a haven. But we have separate mattresses because Peter is terribly correct about these things (Tremere you know). Even my speech, "terribly" is one of Peter's words, has become imbued with him. He has never sought to bend me to his will or to teach me a lesson. He has treated me as his equal in understanding, ability and morals. That sets him so far apart from any other person I've allowed close to me that I am constantly amazed by it. I know I feel very deeply for Peter, yet in a way that is so different from my feelings for Martin that I hesitate to ascribe them to the same emotion. Yet who can say? Maybe, if we had had time, to both of us heal and mend then perhaps things would have been different. And he too has gone. He has been recalled to Vienna and appalled by Martin's fate he has chosen to deny them and flee to the Pentlands where he hopes the Gangrel will hide him. I fear his chances are slim. I fear that the next time I see him he will be wearing a dark heavy coat and carrying a cane and I shall know that he is truly dead. Conclusion What is the conclusion? I am a Toreador and I am pre-disposed to forming strong emotional attachments with people, especially the Tremere. As Crickhollow, our shady and menacing Nosferatu has said, I have "a pathetic need to protect and be protected." Perhaps he should have termed it "a pathetic need to love and be loved." At the same time I am also pre-disposed to seek pleasure and I will take it as I can, either through blood if I trust someone enough or through sex if I do not. Perhaps I am this way because I am Toreador, perhaps I am Toreador because I am this way. Perhaps my emotions and my clan are not connected. You asked me about the Toreador and love. This was my testimony. -- From Louise Dennis Le Salon de la Rose [ Front Page | Contents ] [ Grand Salon | Artistes | Poseurs | Amour | Milieu ] [ Voix | Célébrités | Couture | Personnages | Autres ] Webmistress: Trystan L. Bass URL: http://www.trystancraft.com/toreador/