One Acquainted With the Night

This isn't actually Julian. It's John Taylor ...
but he sure looks like Julian!

Evening is his favourite time of day, so it seems appropriate that he suggests meeting to talk over dinner. He calls at 5 p.m. to tell me that he’s running late, but will be by to pick me up as soon as he can get free.

When he finally arrives, 2 hours later, he does so in a white stretch limousine. The driver holds the door for me and I, felling a bit like Cinderella, accept the long slender hand which extends from within the shadowy interior of the car. He draws me in to sit beside him on the soft leather seat, the door closes with a muted thump, and the limo glides away from the curb.

He is decked out in the trappings of a rock star: black leather trousers and a matching bomber jacket over a loose-fitting crimson silk t-shirt, complete with silver-studded belts knotted at his lean hips, and a pair of Ray-Bans over his eyes in spite of the limo’s tinted windows. He compliments me on my appearance and expresses genuine regret at keeping me waiting while he finished up at the television studio. “We’ve missed our reservations, I’m afraid,” he adds, pulling a battered cardboard box from the far corner. I inspect the contents at his invitation: paté, French baguettes, Edam cheese, petit fours and a chilled bottle of champagne. “I hope you don’t mind,” he says in his soft voice, as classical baroque music begins to mingle with the warm spicy scent of Paco Rabanne. He removes his sunglasses and tosses them aside with a smile. “We’ll have more privacy this way.”

I look at him, wondering whether this is going to be an interview, or a seduction.

copyright 1988 Ruth R. Greig

* * *

This is an excerpt from the biography I wrote in 1988 about a fictional rock band called Jazz. Painful as it is to read, it is also my first recorded encounter with one who has become my best-beloved character – the truly eternal Julian Scott-Tyler.

Classically-trained, born to wealthy parents, alternately temperamental and casually offhand, he was passionate, opinionated, brooding, and wildly romantic. He was also the bass player. Listening to Jazz will never see the light of day, but it was the first big project I ever completed. I was also reading Anne Rice at the time, envying her lushly textural style, and one day lamented to Ter, “I wish I could write a vampire story like her.” To which Ter reasonably replied, “Why don’t you?”

Bwahahahaha! It had never occurred to me that I could, let alone would, write a vampire story. But the idea intrigued me and I immediately set about scouting for my immortal hero. I can’t say that Julian put up his hand – like most of his kind, he was conscripted – but, boy, did he rise to the challenge. I worked with him and his world for years, finally producing a series of short stories collectively titled Stolen Seasons in which he, if not narrating himself, figured prominently throughout the larger tale.

He is one of those characters who stay with you long after the story is over. Seasons is set in the 1880s, but the cool thing about Julian is that he has moved with the times. He fits in the modern world as well as he fit in the old one. This flexibility makes me hopeful that he will one day have more to say – and based on a story I wrote last Christmas, there`s a very good chance that he will. But not yet.

Not yet.

Until he decides to talk again, I remember him fondly on his original birthday (vampires have two – the first to mortal parents and the second to immortality), so to celebrate May 27, raise a glass of cabernet or tomato juice – or O-negative, if you`re that way inclined – and join me in a toast to the eternally incomparable Julian Scott-Tyler.

Happy 378^th birthday, handsome.