“Since childhood, I’ve been faithful to monsters. I have been saved and absolved by them, because monsters, I believe, are patron saints of our blissful imperfection, and they allow and embody the possibility of failing.” – Guillermo del Toro

Horror is so historically queer because it is where our darkest creatures roam, where the shadows of society are illuminated. In the monstrous, there is salvation. Our most evil desires, our most frightening proclivities, are all worth depicting. There is an inextricable link between those we fear and those we admire, between our most damning desires and our most freeing, the way we often feel such similar guilt for both, the way they can be so difficult to pull apart.

Queerness has often been a secret, the creature slinking in the closet. But horror, horror is where we live openly. It’s where our contorted forms, pressed tight under heteronormative conventions, can untwist themselves. Often viewed as an abomination, in the literal and religious sense, and yet so absolutely and undoubtedly liberating, queerness illustrates the mutable line between salvation and damnation. It teaches us that that which frees us might just be what ostracizes us most. It demonstrates that much of the difference between a gift and a curse is choice, a truth shared with vampires, werewolves and the monstrous like.

This link between monstrosity and queerness, this dichotomy within desire, is perfectly captured in the AMC horror series Interview With The Vampire. In a story riddled with truly abhorrent behaviors from characters who commit unforgivable acts with the ease of a morning stroll, there is somehow also a story of love, of acceptance, of growth. There is the possibility of holding multiple, conflicting truths in a way that resembles the refusal of sense-making that is being queer in an anti-queer world. Most notably, the way our protagonist Louis Du Pointe Du Lac (Jacob Anderson) acquires the dark gift of vampirism and the way he grapples with his new affliction act as perfect metaphors for queerness.

Their story begins like this. After his first sexual tryst with his vampire lover Lestat (Sam Reid), Louis vows never to see him again. But Lestat calls out to Louis on his most vulnerable night, the night of Louis’ brother’s passing. Louis is unable to focus on anything but the accented voice bellowing in his head, a voice demanding his acquiescence with an incessant “come to me.”

In all his fear, even Louis knows that what calls out to him is the life he’s never allowed himself to desire, the picture his heart paints but he’d never allow his hands to touch. We can see it in his inability to ignore it, in how he struggles to quell a gripping need to give in. A life with a man as a lover, a life with a vampire, promises an emancipation that is as utterly frightening as it is tempting. As a man who has lived caged in numerous tightly packed boxes — “all these roles you conform to and none of them your true nature,” as Lestat later puts it — he both craves a release and fears it.

In his attempt to run from it, Louis rushes to church to confess. His brother’s second home, it’s fitting he’d run there to beg for redemption following his death. As he confesses, as he pours out his remorse for his life as a pimp, a dealer of all that’s unsavory to the men who crave and pay for it, he saves his biggest guilt for last. In his last sentences, he shakes and chokes on the guilt and shame of having laid with a man, on having laid with The Devil himself. He prays for his own life to end swiftly. In the end, there is nothing worse. There is no worse affliction or condition, no worse behavior, than being queer.

His confession is rudely interrupted by Lestat’s vicious murder of the priest on the other end. Soon, the entire place of worship is covered in the blood and limbs of its leaders, with no difficulty on the part of Lestat, no inability to enter the house of God. Lestat refers to its leaders as charlatans, as unworthy. He puts his hands through skulls and his teeth through skin with abandon, shamelessly putting his worst impulses on display, all for Louis’ enjoyment.

And yet, Lestat’s capacity to embrace the monstrosity within himself, the ability to hold his own brutality gently in his arms and welcome it, is powerfully compelling. In the same way he accepts Louis’ queerness, he accepts the harm Louis has caused, the darkness and the sorrow within him. He understands the difficulty in the life he’s lived and the rough edges he’s created to survive it. Lestat has always shared that the moment he knew he’d stay in New Orleans was the day he watched Louis pull a knife on his own brother. He accepts the monster within him, be that the societal abomination known as the queer man or the brute vampire capable of unimaginable harm. As he begs Louis to say yes to him, to nod his head and accept the dark gift, to become his vampire companion, he confesses his love.

With Lestat’s feelings filling the room, distracting from the bloodstained floors and broken pews, Louis realizes that he is, for the first time, seen. His previous wish to die, his previous guilt and shame, all seems to fade away. “Be all the beautiful things you are, and be them without apology, for all eternity,” Lestat says. Lestat promises him unconditional love, acceptance of all that he is. In what is certainly a wedding, they become bound in blood and something much deeper: an ancient sacred magic and a deep understanding of one another that the rest of the world has failed to provide. And what is queerness, queer love, if not exactly that?

In the very house that had forsaken them both, shamed their deepest most fearful desires, covered in the blood of God’s children — almost as though covered in the Blood of Christ himself — Lestat and Louis solidify their love, their marriage, and bathe in fearless monstrosity. ‘Til death do them part, but death shall flee from them in fear. To eternity, then.

However, loving and accepting one’s self has never been as simple as a single moment, as one beautiful overflow of love. Many of us who’ve been in queer relationships know this quite deeply. Queer love is like healing waters: You can be submerged, but you still must choose to drink. Unpacking internalized queerphobia is no small beast. Nor is unpacking internalized … vampire-phobia?

Throughout the show, particularly the first season, Louis struggles with the urges that come from vampirism. He is, ultimately, a traumatized Catholic at heart with guilt as his longest companion and old habits die hard. Louis grapples with his sexuality in the same way he grapples with vampirism: shamefully, looking for loopholes and ways he can avoid his truth. He spends nights with expensive female courtesans to mask his desire for men; he spends nights chasing rats and starving himself to avoid the hunger that pounds between his ears. He cannot understand how Lestat can embrace so many of his baser urges, from his hypersexuality to his murderous compulsions. Lestat, however, cannot understand how Louis can still chain himself to the useless and mundane customs of a human man when he sees them as so far above it, as vampiric beings free from unnecessary rules.

Queerness can be transcendent, can take us far away from the limiting beliefs in our society about what love can and should be. We are able to birth new ways of loving in dropping these constraints. And yet, that can be easier said than done. Not only that, but intersecting identities make a supposed ease often a position of privilege within itself. Louis not only has to accept being a queer man, or a vampire, but a black queer vampire. He faces societal expectations Lestat can never understand, exemplifying the discussions that happen in many of our very own homes. Lestat’s lack of awareness around this makes it that much more difficult for him to be able to support Louis.

Vampirism represents all that Louis must become at peace with about himself, his violence and his desires, his hate and his love, illustrated by both the pain and pleasure his fangs can bring. In the end though, Louis himself sees this. In his reconnection with Lestat, he thanks him for the gift he bestowed him with, for vampirism, for self-acceptance, and that he now sees it for the blessing it has always been. He has come to embrace all he is.

I will always have a soft spot for monsters as metaphors for queerness. Truthfully, I love being a monster. I love being so powerful it’s frightening. I love being so uncaring about this world’s conventions that it resembles the grotesque disregard of creatures shown only in whispered tales of horror. What an honor it is to be so unrestrained, so strong, so absolutely challenging to the world around us that we are just as frightening as vampires dripping in fresh blood and werewolves under the full moon. We, too, are mythical creatures that can tear the fabric of society asunder. People put crosses on their door and holy water on their skin to protect themselves from the freedom we so easily possess. They pray away the voices in their head beckoning them towards temptation. They fear the deliverance that comes with embracing the destruction of all you knew before, all you believed to be true. To be damned is to be free.

When shows like Interview With the Vampire draw parallels between queerness and horror they illuminate our societal pitfalls. If we are the monsters, then who are the so-called heroes? If love is damning, what hate must rule our world! As Guillermo del Toro once again puts it, “horror defines our boundaries and illuminates our souls.” We are able to see what we fear, why, and lift our own souls in the process. Queerness is a gift, a blessing, because we choose it as such, because we are able to sit with the transformative love that comes from our queer bodies and refuse to see it as anything other than beautiful.

If we are monstrous, then so be it. We will be beautiful, fearless ones.

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