Sookie and Bill have a good deal of unnervingly realistic sex, not only heating up the cold open but also turning his hair super cute again, and causing Sookie to spend the episode acting like Gidget on Fizzy Lifting Drink. Sookie is slightly bummed out that cashing her v-card brings up the memories of Bartlett's molestation -- and "unknowingly" gets the old shithead killed, courtesy of Mr. Compton -- but does her best to firmly reclaim her sexuality, to the point of giddily telling a bar full of Merlotte's patrons that sex with vampires is, as a matter of fact, intensely awesome.
Less awesome? The continued issues with Jason, as he raids Adele's house -- now Sookie's -- for stuff to hock for V. Lafayette having dried up as a source, deaf even to Jason's offerings of "weiner," Jason takes the inordinately retarded route of visiting Fangtasia! looking for vampire blood. Several people -- dead and undead alike, and including the deliriously awesome Vampire Pam -- try to explain how tacky that is, but he seems determined as ever to get his cute ass killed. Kinda like his sister, announcing her new fangbangertude to the entire town while they're drinking.
Enter Amy, who turns being a refugee from the self-absorbed intellectualizing Seven Sisters corner of Six Feet Under into art. She loves Jason because he's "authentic," digs on the retro semiotics of his truck and house, instructs him in the Gaia theory and basic chemistry, and basically bores the shit out of him, but at least she's holding. Of course, that all changes after they fuck on V, because it's totally meaningful. Thank God she's played by the inhumanly perfect and delightful Lizzy Caplan, or she'd be fucking unbearable instead of grimly hilarious.
Oh, Sam Watch. Well, he's even hotter this week in the Tara scenes, but his requisite weirdness involves running naked through the trees. If he's not a werewolf or something, I'm going to be bummed out, because if you add it all up any other way he's just, like, a total weirdo.
Tara is content to ignore all her mother's demon talk until a couple of super-intense freakouts -- including an unbelievably distressing breakdown in the middle of a bank -- convince her to pay a beautiful, crooked forest witch to exorcise the thing by putting it into a possum, then drowning it. After a few false starts with Sam, though, I think she's going to be tempted to take a look at her own demons, and possibly put them in a possum.
Also attempting to scapegoat their shit into dead things are cutie-pie Royce and his white trash brethren, last seen getting their asses handed to them by a juiced-up Lafayette and chowing on AIDSburgers. When their vampire opposites -- Diane, Liam and dear old Malcolm -- move into town looking for some affection from Bill, he's forced to go with them as a ploy to keep Sookie and Merlotte's safe. The rednecks retaliate for their Tackiness by napalming their nest. The bad news? There was a fourth man in the fire: presumably, Bill Compton.
Anyway, amazing episode. week: I'm so sure! Bill is in no way dead, Longshadow and Eric continue to act like dicks, and Pam finally gets to show off one of her impressive collection of adorable twinsets.
"Show me how you do that trick," she said. And he did: and all the fear, and pain, and loneliness, drained out of her and into him. Like a possum in a witch's cauldron: strange as angels, dancing in the deepest oceans, twisting in the water. When we talk about the sacrifice, about the deepest magic humans ever know, we're not talking about expelling, banishing, fear, ugliness. That's just a byproduct. What we're talking about is reclamation of what we already have. What we've always had. Your body is your playground and your temple, and it is your home. Just like Heaven.
Bill licks at her blood and buries his fangs deep. "Do it," she said. She wanted him to. She wanted to know that her body was her territory, that she could with it what she wanted. She needed someone to remind her that they never took it from her; that it was hers all along. Her beautiful body, and her beautiful soul: only remember that you are clean, no matter what happens. You are pure, and you deserve happiness. That nobody can take away your body: they can only fool you into thinking that they've won.
The soul is not found within the body. The body rests inside the soul. And no matter what they tell you, no matter how they try to take it from you, mark it, burn it black, turn yourself against yourself, that's one thing we will always know. Somewhere quiet and secret, saying, "You can come home." That there's not a room in your house that remains locked to you; there's not a place in your soul or in your body that doesn't completely belong to you. It is impossible to mark a soul or take it for your own. There is no devil that can do that; no demon that can take possession, that doesn't know the truth and fear always that we'll rout it out.
He looks into her eyes, with his fangs out, and takes her virginity. Finally, finally home. She arches up against it, kissing him hungrily; after a moment they relax into the memory and the knowledge of home. They are strange angels, lit by the fire, redrawing maps and marking out their territory. He is just the guide: he shows her where she could have lived, inside that lovely little house. The infinite landscape between his teeth and her hands, pulling hard at him, pushing him deeper: an expanse of skin, a territory of desire, a country she'd forgotten about. They are lovely in the firelight. I think there are two kinds of people: those that know this story -- knew it the second Sookie tightened her grip on Tara at the funeral -- and the lucky ones that don't. But no matter how weird you find Sookie's behavior in this episode, you should know this: She is unmarked and was never otherwise. The only tragedy is that she never even knew it. This -- the blood, the fucking, all of it -- it's not pollution, it's a reminder of our purity. No ritual is empty. I don't know how else we heal.
When we talk about the sacrifice it's not about what you lose: it's not about the scapegoat, or the blood, or the possum or the sparks between your body and mine. It's about reclaiming what we forgot; what we already, always, eternally have. The body rests inside the soul, and the soul is beautiful and without blemish. No matter what they tell you. This is war; this is an act of war.
I know God looks different for everybody, but I'm an Aries and I don't have time to sugarcoat it: we're taught, as part of being good little boys and girls, that war is bad and wrong. And if I tell you this is war, you might find that harsh. Especially if you -- and you did, and that's fine -- find it sexy, a turn-on. If it's an act of pure war then it cannot be an act of pleasure. And this is where Lafayette, and his double Jeanette, can teach us; it's what Jason keeps learning and forgetting, which is that any two absolutes can -- and must -- exist in the world, if the world is big enough. Sex can be purely war and purely pleasure, and for proof we must only look at nature: all it is, is pure war and pure pleasure. That passion is where they meet, without fear: That nature is all we have, and it is pure, like you and me.
Sookie rests in a candlelit bath, laughing and watching as he wipes steam from the mirror and looks at himself. "I thought you were supposed to be invisible in a mirror!" He admits the mirror thing, like most of the myths, is just careful PR: "If humans thought that we couldn't be seen in a mirror, it was another way for us to prove that we weren't vampires. And that way, we could stay hid." His hair is looking totally cute, for which we can apparently thank intercourse; his flat, silly ass is lovable as he climbs in with her. "So what about holy water?" Just water. "Crucifixes?" Geometry. "Garlic?" Irritating, but that's pretty much it.
Sookie laughs, woozy in the water: "I feel a little weak." Bill points out, leaning close to touch her shoulder, to touch the skin of her body with the skin of his hand. "Of course you do. I fed on your blood. You should take some vitamin B-12 to replenish." Sookie asks if that's something she needs to do every day, but the implicit promise lights his eyes: he will be feeding every day, because there is nothing like that feeling of being known and loved, in just that way. If, as Jason's learning, the V is life in a liquid because they run entirely on it -- that what animates them is not what animates us -- then to give them what they need is the same, but in reverse. V, for us, is life squared. Blood, for them, is all there is.
"If you don't mind, yes. And no garlic." (I have to admit that was going to be my question.) They smile and he leans back; they have struck a deal. The pieces of her soul she thought she'd lost forever are arranged in a precise new order; they are redrawing maps of territory long-ago relinquished and they are creating a new way of living. They are engaging in each other. He sits back and smiles at her, full of love. All we ever give each other is just like this: pieces of our souls, pieces of our bodies. There's a reason it's called making love. "Is it always like this?" she asks, and he smiles with infinite tenderness. After a certain length of life there is no regret, just an understanding of how big the world really is: "No, it is not." And that is what it means. They have created something wonderful, tonight, and all the benefits of that, the pieces of their souls they have knitted back together, it stands apart from them. No ritual is empty.
"I never thought I'd be able to..." It never seemed entirely realistic that the reason she kept this to herself, so close to the vest, was because men are beasts and she could hear them. You can learn the horrors and the beauties just as easy watching their bodies and their eyes, anybody knows that. Even Bill. "I am honored that you chose me." The loveliest sentiment; the continuation of her princess earlier in the evening, lost and lonely, soft and tired and running out across the fields in a gown. The thing we want them most to understand: what we've given, what it cost, how long we've held it tight. And her face falls, because that was a choice, but it wasn't the first choice in history. That was taken. She remembers Bartlett briefly, prisoner of war in a vampire's lap, but not briefly enough, and Bill watches her face, not old enough yet to see that face and not be stricken by what it says and what it means.
Back to Heaven. She sits in the tub, knees pulled to her chest, covering what she's got; curled in the warm water of the tub. She compares her experience to other girls' and boys', all the different ways they have to try and take away your body from you. "It was just touching," she says, which is heartbreaking. As though it's anything but asymptote. As though she has claim on only so much pain and no more. As though she doesn't deserve the gift she found tonight. Like her pain is less worthy. "Did you tell anyone?" Sookie nods. "Gran. She ran him off and never spoke to him again." Her voice is sickened, for Adele as much for anything: "Her own brother." But brothers, they can disappoint you. Just because you draw the lines of family like so doesn't mean anybody else has to follow your lead. We all have lines.
Bill, sweetly, assures her it wasn't her fault. Her voice is sharp: "I know that. But..." He nods. He's old enough to know the pain, when our history refuses to cooperate. "Here I am. I mean... Just had one of the most important experiences in a girl's life." She means it, every word. "It was so, so perfect. Great." His fist curls, against his knowing. "I hate that... I can't not think about him." He could squeeze blood from that fist. He pulls her back, tenderly, against him, reclining against him. Like a lap, but safe from harm. She relaxes, and he's perfect. The world is big enough for all of it; her world is big enough for all of it. "You think about whatever you think about. It's okay." He makes a decision. "You're safe with me." She thinks about safety, closes her eyes; she breathes with the enormity of war. If only every part that we retrieve could feel so good.
Lafayette grins on camera, playing that bad boy black man role, living the face: take all that fear and loneliness and uncertainty and put it in me, like a possum. He wears a zippered hoodie like a TV rapper, he wears a golden trucker cap that dwarfs his head, he wears a ghetto fierceness that is not fabulous, but dangerous. All those layers, coming off one by one: put it in me. Whichever me I am to you.
"You motherfuckers're gonna have to be... patient. There's good things coming your way. This ain't Christmas morning, and you're all jacked up on --" he jerks his hips, topping the camera with his eyes, putting on a piece of his soul that lingers in the background usually "-- caffeine, ripping off that cheap WalMart paper to get your blender... No." He turns, revealing a shining golden thong, sparkly and cheap. The secret they wanted: here it is. He is a marketing genius; lots of creativity in this package. Watch them fall away. Behind him, the door opens as though of its own accord. "Whole lot of creativity went into this package and I want you to enjoy..."
"Whoa!" squeal Jason. "Back up the truck, man." Lafayette, who has more jobs than I do, is none too impressed with this interruption. "Don't fucking creep, bitch. You're fucking creeping. What the fuck you doing here?" He just wants more V. The part of Jason that registers appropriate behavior is all gone right now; his life is no longer an appropriate event. "I need you to run your ass out my goddamn doorway, because I'm fucking working." Jason stares, sweaty and dumb, forgetting this part of Lafayette, too edgy to be sexy. "Come on, buddy. I-I just need a little..." Lafayette recaps: how he said not to take too much and Jason wound up in the hospital, how he said to stay schtum about his source and he ran to cousin Tara, how he got vamped up and fucking threw Andy across the yard. "You can't handle the shit, buddy." But it's handling him.
"Look, I will pay however you want. I'll even show my wiener on your website." Lafayette tells him to take his "little stumpy white dick" and get the fuck up out his joint, and that's what he "wants." Jason starts getting weird, in that redneck way he always goes for, when he's cornered, which is straight-up white boy entitlement: "And what you gonna do? Hmm?" Lafayette dares him. "You gonna call the law?" Before he can do much more than get the minifridge open, Lafayette's got his arms behind his head. "Don't fucking fuck me, motherfucker. Hear me?" Jason submits. "Because I will fuck your ass up. You get me?" Lafayette throws him across the door, against the frame. "Get the fuck up out of here." One source down, and Jason can't even see the lesson he's being taught. "Aw, can you at least tell me where I can find some more?" Lafayette tells him honestly, as a guide will. "Go to the fucking morgue, because that's where you're going. Get the fuck outta here." Jason slinks away. "Bitch." Man, I really thought Jason would at least let him go downtown like one time on this little junkie journey, but that would damage Lafayette's character way more than poor Jason. We don't shit where we eat.
Well, sometimes we do. Bill opens his secret compartment, pushing open a clicking wall and showing her a ragged carpet, and the tiny place beneath it: "This is where I spend my days." Sookie asks if anybody ever gets in there with him: it looks tight. "This is not a place for you," he says. It's where he's dead. Every dawn he dies, and he's dead until dusk. "So we can never sleep beside each other," she says. The meridian. She belongs to the day; you can smell the sunlight on her skin. It's not about wearing white or anything like that: we live in a day world. She doesn't belong in his place of death. Sleep there, eat some pomegranate seeds, stay down there forever. And then they wouldn't love each other anymore, because they'd be dead together. Giving up the sun, even if she stayed human, is not an option. Consolation? "No one else knows where I rest." Not a bad trade, all things considered. He kisses her, and hilariously keeps his eyes on hers, super intense and silly, as he's lying down in his hidey-hole, in the cold ground. (He is vampire!) She's sorry to see him go, but once he's gone, with his creepy-funny googly eyes, she looks around the world with a new sense of herself. While he's dead she owns this house; while he's gone she owns the world. Without someone else in the room she can feel her soul, how it stretches out around her; the enormity of the world, and territory hard-earned. She owns this part of him, and of herself, and she's wearing his shirt, and the day has just begun.
Lettie Mae Thornton pours herself some coffee. Sensible, at the beginning of the day. As the TV asks, quite seriously for once, exactly what it means to accept Jesus as your personal savior, Tara does the bills. "We'll write a check for the electric and put it in the water envelope then stick the check for the water bill in the electric envelope." Two possums, she's saying: two fears and hates, mix them up and toss them in the water. Lettie Mae pours vodka in her cup, down to the last drop. The mug is child-made and daughter-decorated: A cow, wearing a crown, celebrating its birthday under a childish scrawl: "Party!" Sad enough but there's sadness to spare. "They'll both think it was a mistake and call about it. Then we'll be in the clear for another month." And that's the possum secret right there, isn't it? You're only clear for a month at a time. The second you start thinking you're done, that you've solved it, that you're allowed to be happy, festive scarf around your neck, they fucking come at you from a whole other angle. Our joy in reclaimed territory is only mania, doomed to pass and futile, but: it is still joy.
"I need four hundred and forty-five dollars," Lettie Mae says, wearing grey and a white, white robe, like a sacrifice. Like a baptism on the way. "No way, Mama. We are broke." Momma sits and sips at her coffee, reiterating that she needs it for her exorcism. "You need to do what normal people do. Stop drinking and go to AA meetings." Lettie Mae tells her that, as they both know and the demon too, that she's not exactly a "group person," and Tara asks if the demon's aware of her vodka-soaked coffee habit, which by the way is not fooling anybody. "I can't help it. The demon told me to finish off everything in the house today. It doesn't want me to get exorcised." Tara wonders if maybe Lettie Mae can get the demon to get a damn job. Lettie Mae says the most intelligent thing she's ever said: "The demon has a job. Going after people that are weak but still have faith." Which is to say: the living. Every single one of us.
"It's a jealous demon and knows how close I am to Jesus," says Lettie Mae, completely missing the point: "That's why it picked me." Tara is disgusted, but Lettie Mae comes down on her for taking the Lord's name in vain. Tara's sad; the demon moves in. "Tara, honey..." Lettie Mae leans forward, staring at the floor. Playing a complicated game, a war, of which we only see the most scenery-chewing fucked-up part. "I know I wasn't the best mother. I fucked up a lot and I'm sorry." Her face goes coon-cat mean, slippery, manipulative; Jason could learn a lesson just now: "I want to do this for the both of us. That's why I talked her down fifty dollars." Tara rolls her eyes, but all she's doing is spurring the demon on. "Please help me with this. Please." She sips at it: coffee bitter and hot, vodka cold as nails and kicking at the throat.
"Mama. Put down that coffee and look at me." Not happening. "It's the demon drinking, not me..." she says, and Tara reaches for it, but her hands go crazy and she screams: the hot coffee spills itself all over her, scalding hot, ruining her pure white shirt and robe. She's dirty. She has become dirty. She sucks at it, from her shirt, holding fire-slicked hands to her mouth, sucking at them like a hungry thing, every last drop. The very drops of it, the demon wants. Tara shakes, near weeping; near falling on her knees. "It's the demon! It's the demon!" Tara cannot hold this inside herself.
Sookie comes home in Bill's shirt, holding her bridal, her sacrificial, her virgin garment in her arms and her panties and his shirt on her back. A new girl. She hears a succession of fumbling noises in the house that is hers. The killer is back. The killer always wears a mask, and you will never guess. It's always Jason when it matters: he comes stumbling out, with a paper shopping bag in one hand and silver candlesticks in the other. "Fuck," he whispers to himself, caught hungry-handed. "What are you doing?" she asks, but in his search to deflect blame his gaze falls upon her body, the territory of war. He is dirty, and she cannot be dirty. "You went ahead and did it, huh? My own sister. Nothing but a damn fangbanger. Now, you saved it all these years for a fucking vampire?" He thinks dirty is possible; he thinks "dirty" is something our bodies are capable of being. His most of all, and then everybody that reflects him. He looked right at Bartlett and never figured it out, because he lives in the daylight world where our histories are our faults, and we must ignore our history to say clean. He still doesn't know, when a monkey would know. He just knows where to assign it; who the possum must be for his ugly desire.
"Bill is a gentleman," she protests, and he answers, "He bit you." The thing Jason will never admit he wants most. "He doesn't hit me, which is more than I can say for you." Jason whines that he tried to apologize and she wouldn't let him, but that's because his offense was not what he was apologizing for: he wanted to say he was sorry for the slap, but she wanted him to apologize for Bartlett, and he can not know that, and she cannot tell him, so she changes the subject: "What are you doing with Gran's candlesticks?" He swallows and says, post-funeral, that he's just taking what's his, half of the world. "They were her wedding present. From her mother." Jason doesn't care: he needs the money. "For what?" The question you only ask when you know the answer; he's dirty. "You have a job. And a house." I like Jason's house, I like that when he was old enough he left the nest, and Sookie stayed home because she needed Gran, and was growing. And now they both have houses, and they have to live there. Among the memories and the pain. He tells her to fuck off, and she's not having it. That Alice/Sookie bending place I love so much more than anything else: "Uh-uh. Gran might have spoiled you rotten, but I won't. This is my house now. You put those things down and get out." He goes redneck again, blowing past her, and she grabs at the shopping bag; it rips and everything falls to the floor. Silverware, pearls, jewelry, cameos, memories. Disgusting. "You were gonna sell her jewelry?" All these memories. He runs away.
Sam's brother-dog lies on the lawn outside the trailer, groaning softly and lying on its side, impatient with his mood. "Hey, dog!" Tara says joyfully, chuckling, and lets herself in, as is a man or woman's prerogative. Inside, Sam's worrying at the folding table that is part of his trailer's furnishings, with his opposable thumbs and all. It smacks him on the hand as she's coming in. "Goddamn son of a bitching shit-ass fucking trailer!" (In the shower the other day I let my mind wander as I often do and I thought about the Proust Questionnaire, and what is your favorite curse word. And I know that I would say "cocksucker" like everybody else, because it is awesome, but I can't say my real answer and maybe it's closer to "your favorite sound," and it's just that: random clichéd Tourette's yelling like that. So when he said that I was like, "Lipton, that is my most perfect music right there!" Like, once you look at it you have to laugh because what on Earth is a "bitching shit-ass fucking" anything? Or how can you do anything in a "son-of-a-bitching" manner? I love that. But I mean: "cocksucker." Undeniable.)
Sam bitches at her walking in on him, and she laughs, pretending to knock at the door retroactively. "Or you want me to call? 'Hi, Sam, it's me, the girl you've been fucking. Mind if I drop by to interrupt your cussing spell, say hi to you and your cute little dog?'" This is her demon. She's laughing, but watch out. You can be honest or you can be funny, but it's rare that you can do both in the same moment. And I should know! "Uh, yeah, I do mind?" Sam is, by the way, ten times hotter than he has ever been, which is ten times hotter than one single motherfucker has a right to be. "Last time I saw you, you left me high and dry in some fleabag motel in the middle of the night." She tries to say, but she can't say: too many demons between him -- the possibility he represents -- and the iron prison she finds herself into. The sunlight world of Sam, his infinite tenderness, and the darkling world of Momma's terror, thirty-some years in the making. Bring them together with your fists, you can't. Too many demons and fears and shames between.
"...That wasn't the first time. I don't have time for that kind of bullshit." She protests, to save time, that she doesn't want to "get something going" with her boss. It's the opposite of why, and how, but it's reflexive: a shield she learned from her mother (just watch) -- find the powerlines, find the ickiness, and if you lay hands on it first it's yours to command. He reminded her he was his boss, and she laughed in his face. But he's getting close to the sparks now, and the demon won't have it, so she throws that in his face. "Then why the hell are you here? And it was your big idea to have sex, not mine." She tells him, rationally, not to act like he didn't want it, but her mistake was putting the job on the table, because it's what he's afraid of -- especially since Bill, with 150 years of authority, poked him with it.
You give me this power and say you win? I'll show you authority. "I hired you after you got fired from every place!" And back to the sweet boy he is, 27 days out of the month: "Now you throw being your boss in my face? Don't treat me like I'm some kind of asshole!" We all just want to be seen. We all want to matter. We retreat to a place she can be honest: "Did you honestly think I'd sleep with you if I thought that?" She can say that without risking anything, because it's nice at the same time it's true, and the same time it's a reiteration of our territory: I wouldn't fuck you if you didn't matter, but I did, so don't tell me it didn't matter but especially don't tell me I don't matter when you say it, because you do, which means I do. It wasn't just sex. No ritual is empty.
"I have no idea what the fuck you think, Tara. But I'll tell you what I think: I think you better give me one good reason not to throw you out of right now." Barking at the lawn, at the postman: either you belong here or you motherfucking don't. Tell me now. She hears him, she hears it: this is real. This is one part where we're real. Your home, your life, and I invade like a demon, push you this way and that, like you're not a person. Like you don't have sovereignty over the united states of Sam, whatever they may be. "I'm no good at this..." she says. It's like bleeding for him. There are so many kinds of virginity. For something that's both biologically self-evident and culturally, hatefully constructed, we know it when we see it: "Try harder," he begs. And she does. Heart straining against body, heart speeding up, mind controlling that sovereign state, she speaks past the demon, past fear and history and standing firmly in her space: "...Sam. I'm sorry. I don't know how to be with somebody. I never..."
He looks at her, almost loves her. "Maybe I'm unboyfriendable," she says. Clever line, clever way to slice right through the shit. She's naming the demon. Once you name it the war can begin. He nods, almost guilty. "Naw, I'm just in a shitty mood." She doesn't move, except her eyes, and you have to listen: "Because of me? I don't want that." The sweetest thing she ever said: I don't want your pain to be coming from here; I want to be what we are. I want to be home, even for a moment: just like Heaven, for just a moment.
"No, it's not you. It's just... This trailer's falling down around me!" Happens; happening right before your eyes, if you knew her tells. "Well, at least you're not living with your mother." She opens the door to the demon: "Hey, do your folks ever ask you for money for some stupid ass shit they dreamed up that you think is crazy?" He reiterates that his family's not close, and slides back under the table. "You need a Robertson screwdriver," she says, peeking. A house is never simple; even a motel room is home, for a moment. "How would you know something like that?" he laughs, as though there are things Tara Thornton can't do. Have you learned nothing? "No daddy and a drunk mom? All the fixing fell to me." She looks around at the place as though it's real, for the first time: as though it's home. Home for somebody, home for a man with a heart; not some kind of asshole. They want to lay claim to that territory and neither of them can say okay. He grins. "Place would look good with a... With a little work..." For a moment, in the sun, he could love her. She meets his eyes, in a house that could be home for them, for just a moment. Sometimes it's just a moment: does that make it any less real? She's all about territory, in a way Sookie's only learning: get her hands on it, touch it, make it work, make it beautiful, burn off what doesn't work. Something they can share. There's a reason they call it making love. They lock eyes, and the phone rings. The demon. "Hello? Speaking, who is this?" Sam can smell fear: "What?"
Mr. Gus Bankerman apologizes to Lettie Mae: it's against bank policy to extend a loan for an exorcism. She looks, of course, totally nuts, even as she's leveling with him: "We both know what's going on here. You won't give me a loan because you're a bigot." Do what? Okay, when you're powerless -- which is to say, when you perceive yourself as powerless, whether or not you're correct, which in this case is not realistic but often is -- you do the junkie thing. As a wildly addicted addict, she's going to play the card, and it's not a black thing -- as she's about to demonstrate, with her code-switching ass, it's nothing to do with that -- but a hungry human thing, which means whatever you've got to play, or think you can, you will. It is embarrassing more than anything, that consideration of angles: what she's saying is, she'll show her wiener on your webcam.
"Oh, uh, many of our clients are African-American..." says the white man, and she pushes: "You saying that just proves my point. I ain't talking about the color of my skin, but you is." Whatever you've got. "Well, now that is simply not the case. We have recently accepted a client who is a Vampire-American..." But of course Lettie Mae doesn't give a fuck what subprime motherfucker is getting loans if their name isn't Lettie Mae Thornton, broke-ass black lady Christian, possessed fuckup, and general menace: "You are prejudiced against me because I am a Christian!" He protests that he teaches Sunday School, and she switches the script again, jumping up and screaming: "Uh-huh. Then you know what I'm talking about! The whole world is against us, they even try and take away Christmas. This is your chance to stop that persecution in its tracks. Show Jesus you have a charitable nature." Show Jesus you have a charitable nature. Without a blade to your throat or a madwoman in your face. Understand the translation of need to words, show that you can love. And his answer? "Well, a bank is not a charity." Which is true, and which is honorable, but his joy in having wriggled out of her web of not-so-hard-to-figure bullshit? Not so much.
"Maybe Mister Gus just don't like women, is that it?" Christ no! She comes around the desk, scaring both the bejesus and the regular-Jesus out of him: "Then let's you and me work something out. My landlord don't mind if a get a little behind in my rent..." And wow because that is not what he was going for. Just as he's begging to terminate this convo, and she's screaming, "There may be snow on the mountaintop, but there's fire in the valley!" Tara walks in. "This white devil tried to sexual harass me!" That would be that demon talking, I think. "I'm gonna sue his narrow ass!" Everybody stares; he tries to make good, but no. No ritual is empty.
Tara goggles, almost crying: "What are you doing here?" Um, duh. What she's trying to do is borrow money, because of her unfortunate habit of having a daughter who wants her to live with a demon all up inside her. "I can feel it in me right now! Nobody believes me!" Shaking, jerking. "I do not want to live like this no more!" Tara is scared to death, close to tears. So much closer to her own initiation. "I can't!" Tara's lips shake, with love and something more. She walks her mother back home, like a crooked house, like a broken building. "I gotta go lay down," Lettie Mae says. "That demon's gnawing at me something awful." Tara sends her to drink and turns on the sink so she won't hear the tickling sound of a box of Brillo pads and the cash she keeps hidden there, like the child of some kind of damned alcoholic.
Sookie's running food in an adorable green-and-white scarf, like the first day of spring, bouncing and grinning; Sam sees Royce and his rednecks enter and strikes a casual pose, watching Lafayette to see what he'll do. Of course, Lafayette takes off his earrings and nails again, because it's time to fuck them up, but Sam stops him. "Whoa whoa whoa, I'm paying you to cook, not beat on customers." Lafayette says, then, he wants a motherfucking raise, which ... Is not how employment works exactly, and Sam tells him to pull it together because they're getting busy. Terry relates Tara's message, which is that she's calling in sick with demon possession, and Sam whines for a second before Sookie hopscotches joyfully over all his worries and tells him they'll work it out. Lafayette notices that certain bounce in her step that means something it's never meant before, and giggles. "Well goddamn! Look at you, all pornalicious. What kind of crazy mix you done got yourself into?" Sookie's smile is blinding and manic. "Can't I just be in a good mood without it being a big deal? It's a pretty night outside, and I'm glad to be enjoying it with my friends!" Like, who says that? The part of her self that she got back. Lafayette nods.
Randi Sue's in the Merlotte's phone booth, looking whorish and desperate, calling Jason and saying shit like, "It's Randi Suuuuuuue. Like you don't knnnnnnow." Jason's more interested in changing clothes and popping a slice of pizza in his mouth, because he is a total junkie freak and he's taking his wiener where it can buy him something. Randi Sue notes the blank, distracted disinterest in his voice, which is so different from the usual blank distraction that is his lot -- on those occasions, of course, he's not already busy weeping while you fuck him. He tells Randi Sue that his hot self and a beer for her are not forthcoming, because he's going to Shreveport. She asks to come along, and he couldn't care less, and mentions that he's "thinking of" going to Fangtasia! and is that something she'd be interested in. And it's funny, because the first few episodes this was Jason's life: find a girl, turns out she's a fangbanger, and all we know about Randi Sue is that's just her luck now. First Hoyt and now Jason, who can't even be bothered to hang up when she starts screaming. "Uh-uh. I may not know much, but I do know better than to associate myself with people of low moral character!" she says, rearranging her desperate breasts and remembering that time she got fucked doggy-style in a pile of garbage, and how classy that was.
Over in the kitchen, Terry shares a private joke with Lafayette: the spoon in the soup that's going to Royce, heated over an open flame. Sookie's giggly and funny, complimenting Arlene's hair -- which to be fair does look particularly cute, in a Saving Grace kind of way -- and she squeals about how the scarf around her neck, hiding the mark she gave herself to take away the marks she didn't, is "double cute." Which is, after all, exactly what it is: it's cute because it's cute, and it's double cute because it means she's free. "There's something different about you. You need to tell me what is going on." She searches Sookie's face and gasps. "...Is it a man?" Sookie pulls back on the reins a bit, and says she's not comfortable discussing her personal business, especially at work, where everybody wants inside. "Well? Everyone else's personal life is open to you," Arlene laughs, in a dorky and loveable way, and demonstrates her moral fiber: "I forgive you because I know you can't help that, but it does make being your friend kinda lopsided..." Or does it? We're all books that take a moment to read; her mouth drops open. "Please tell me it was Sam, not that vampire!" But the girl is gone: "Yes! It was Bill! And I think I might be in love with him! Don't tell anybody!" Um, have you met my friend Arlene? She works fast. Royce throws the red-hot spoon to the floor, and Lafayette grins: "Sook, order up."
Arlene runs straight to Rene with the news, but he just blows her off. I wonder if she's told him about the baby yet: "Oh, my Lord! Suppose she gets pregnant, how in the world can she nurse a baby with fangs?" Sam's not happy about any of this. Not happy at all. But Rene is his usual level-headed, normal, supportive and caring self: "Uh, you just be her friend. She need one now more than ever."
Sookie babbles at a customer about the okra special, and as she's turning over an order to Sam, he jumps at her like a beast, ripping the scarf off. Marked. "Hey! You keep your hands to yourself, Sam Merlotte. You have no right to touch me!" He tells her she's stupid, and the bar goes quiet. "What I do on my own time is no concern of yours. Or any of y'all's," she shouts at the patrons. "Yes, I had sex with Bill, and since every one of y'all's too chicken to ask, it was great! I enjoyed every second of it! And if you don't like that, you can just fire me," she grunts at him, shoving her tray into his chest. Lafayette is loving it, the crowd does that talk-show ooh, Sam realizes he's fucked up, Sookie still doesn't understand that she's signed her own death warrant for the tenth time, Rene drinks his beer, Arlene stares.
As Jason walks toward Fangtasia!, a truly hilarious conversation is happening in the parking lot. One dude is all, "I'm gonna bite you, I'm really gonna bite you," and the other guy is like, "That's totally what I want!" Is there anything weirder than when people start talking like a porno? I hate that so much; it's like, sex and porn are similar but one of them is actually happening and why would you put yourself inside the movie when sex is actually happening. They are homonyms but they are not the same thing, and Jason's still working that one out. He shivers and smiles at Pam, who looks at him like an old dead thing. "Your mama know you're out in the big city?" He admits his Mama's dead: "So am I." Jason, he does not know what to do with that. "Lemme see some ID," she continues, and he hands over his card. "Jason Stackhouse? From Bon Temps?" You're in my vault. "You related to Sookie, by any chance?" He's the brother, yeah. Wait, Jason asks, how does she even know Sookie. "She stands out. Do you?" Oh, Jason. He shakes his head because he knows what Pam means, but then gets his feet under him again: "Maybe? Uh, in other ways." I would love to know what he thinks his mutant power is. Not ever listening to very good advice? Sliding through on charm and those sick obliques? Using his body as a weapon against himself? What a useful fucking power that is.
Pam asks why he's there, and he acts like a total fucking junkie, jerking and staring at the gay fangbanger porno happening in the parking lot to demonstrate his open-mindedness. She locks eyes with him and something turns on behind them. He stares, fascinated. "Tell me why you came here." He nods. "I want some vampire blood." She cocks an eyebrow at him, offended. "What time do you get off work?" he asks, with the sweetest smile. God, Jason Stackhouse is the reason Jordan Catalano never learned to read. "You came for my blood?" She nods, and says the saddest, saddest thing: "Yes, you're right. You're nothing like your sister." Disappointed in him, like as a person, she pops her teeth out and welcomes him in, refusing to move out of his way. "And good luck getting out," she whispers in his ear.
When we talk about sacrifice what we're talking about is the fact that there are things moving in the deep; leviathans and strange angels, older than time, twisting in the water. You can feel them when they move past you, or through you. You can even talk to them, make deals with them, because they're implicit in the sparks that light your skin up. You give them something, your pain or your blood or your pleasure, and they pay you back in power. Their passage deforms the universe, like Einsteinian ripples in the fabric and curves in dimensions you can't see -- but you can feel it. My favorite description of them, the archetypes or Gods or characters in your dreams, whatever you want to call them, is Lynda Barry's: "And in my dream there was a creature. Not too friendly, not too mean. He closed my eyes and opened them." And of all the other things vampires signify, in this story, you must never forget that they are part of that deep magic: every one of them a leviathan, full of blood and demons and magic. So while Jason just made a serious social faux pas, an error in judgment during a specific time of political turmoil, he also just brushed past something that might as well be God's less lovely face.
And then there are the deals you don't even know you're making. Bartlett takes the garbage out, in his wheelchair, down a ramp outside a broken-down, ramshackle, sad little house. His broken, fucked up, worthless life. It's a lot easier to hate a pedophile than to feel bad for one, but that doesn't mean you can't do both. I mean, he's useless. There is nothing to his sad life. He is the difference between compulsion and following through, and he deserves what he's about to get, but it's still sad. He was a kid once. Probably a kid that got fucked with in his time. And now he's old and gross and lives in a wheelchair and inches his old painful way up that ramp and inch at a time and nobody likes him because he's a fuckwad. He sees Bill standing at the top of the ramp and his hands leave the wheels of their own accord: he rolls back. Into Bill's arms. "I'm not here for money," Bill says. "I'm here for Sookie." I mean to say that he reclines back against Bill, like a girl in a bathtub, like a girl on her uncle's knee, and Bill bites him. And all that care and worry and sadness and history flows out, into the sacrifice. All magic is substitution magic.
Tara bitches about the mosquitos, but Lettie Mae is telling truths she doesn't even know: "You want to meet the devil, you wait at the crossroad. For Miss Jeanette, you gotta go past where the devil's at." The only way out is through. "You're getting as bad off as Lafayette and his juju," Tara says -- and it's interesting that the Haunted Kernbread made an appearance in the Previouslies this week, don't you find? -- which Lettie Mae takes, as they always fucking do, the opportunity to "pity" her sister for "having to raise a sexual deviant," bless her heart. "That runs in families, you know. Like demons." Oy with the demons already. But she's not wrong: Jason and Sookie are the two halves of a very sad, very long history. Pain runs in families too.
And oh, Miss Jeanette. She's running full-tilt at the line between male and female on an opposite and equal vector to Lafayette: she's a witch, a wizard, a hobbling crone, a beautiful girl. Hairless, in a witch's robes, carrying the Hermit's lantern. He's like this. In the background is a wasteland: just beyond the wasteland is a mountain range. Diogenes the Cynic walked the earth day and night, barking like a dog, with his lantern bright even in daylight, looking for an honest man. It was more important to tell the truth than to stay sane. The Hermit is the old woman who gives us the maps and weapons for our journey.
By cross-sums she is woven with the Moon, who stands at the threshold of the darkness and churns the waters. But every guardian of a threshold is also an obstacle, don't forget: from one angle a strange angel guiding you to Heaven, and from another something dark and terrifying. Until you learn to tell the truth; until you learn your true name. In the old days, three men with animals' heads would come into your tent and rip you into pieces, put you back together with a diamond in your head. Now, see: Sookie and Bill and Jason and Amy and Lafayette and Tara and Sam are making new ways of doing it, new recipes and new rituals. The Hermit is the moment in which we're given time to obey the Oracle's only demand, γνῶθι σαυτόν, and the way that truth rips itself through your skin and your bones and never, ever stops.
"You showed up. I figured that demon of yours wouldn't let you. You must be Tara. I'm Miss Jeanette. You ready? Fully prepared body and soul for this exorcism?" If we do this, we did this. "I didn't eat anything all day, like you said." And has she made her peace? Tara stares at Miss Jeanette, and her mother asking if it's going to hurt. "Of course it's gonna hurt. It's like childbirth. Except the demon don't want to come out, and it ain't your body that could get ripped up, it's your soul." She is so beautiful it's distracting; she is so crooked and broken and strong. Tara is scared. "In the olden days, folks paid my grandmamma using tobacco and livestock. But today it's cash. In advance." Tara takes it out of her purse, scared to touch her, and hands her the money under a full silver moon. "That demon will not inhabit you after tonight," Jeanette swears, and puts the money in her purse. "Let's get this shit over with," Tara says, earning herself a look from those eyes, deep and deeper, before Miss Jeanette leads the way through the forest with her lantern, through the dark passages, on crooked legs, to a bus. Inside, it's all bones and stones and living leaves of ivy, dead things and alive, no boundaries between the inside and the outside, because nature's all we have. Lettie Mae undresses in the candlelight, before the eyes of long-dead skulls.
"It felt like every single care or worry or sadness I ever had was just flowing out of me, into him," Sookie explains to Lafayette. "And yeah, that hurt at first. But then when I relaxed, didn't hurt at all." He admits he is impressed. "I was always too scared to let 'em bite me..." He gets serious and looks into her eyes, leveling. "I don't know, Sook. I just think that when there's blood involved, a line been crossed." Crossed, recrossed, redrawn into a free nation of one. Just like Heaven. "Oh, I definitely crossed a line... But I'm glad I did!" she wiggles cutely, daring herself to play Lafayette's games, the hip and the look. "Well, you go ahead on cooking with your bad ass. Good for you. It ain't possible to live unless you're crossing somebody's line," he says. She giggles and runs off, as Sam stares sullen and sad, and Lafayette smiles to himself. "Skank."
A girl wearing a Fangatasia!-brand t-shirt approaches Eric, who's busily texting or something. She's terrified. Long Shadow is behind her and she doesn't even know it. Eric gives her leave to take a picture, and Long Shadow immediately confiscates and smashes her phone. "No pictures." She's confused, that's not fair. "I did not say you could keep it," he smiles, and Long Shadow laughs. This is what fate does to you: says "take a picture" and smashes your camera. They're leviathans. Jason watches the go-go dancers, remarking on the boy one's moves. "Can I get you another?" Long Shadow asks, and he starts to get himself into trouble. A girl in a soft, long hippie dress with a scarf around her forehead, Amy Burley, recognizes the trouble immediately, and takes a position nearby in case he goes too far.
"Not Tru-Blood, but really strong. You know what I'm sayin'?" Long Shadow better not. "We've got Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. Hundred proof. It'll turn the lining right off your stomach." Not really. "Somethin' stronger than that?" Amy rolls her eyes. "But you know, a different color?" Pissy Long Shadow is so much funnier and more appealing than any other kind: "Just tell me what the fuck you want, little boy." He's down to asking for "something closer to the color of the walls in here" when she finally drags him away from the bar. He's sweating, she can tell what it is, but he says the word again: "V." She tries to shut him up, he's not getting it, she finally whispers, grabbing his face: "Listen, they can hear really well, alright? So let's talk about it later. Let's get out of here before you get us both killed." Have you met Jason Stackhouse? Getting it is not in his wheelhouse: "I ain't going nowhere until I get what I came for." She taps her purse, amazed at how dumb his stubbornness and hunger have made him.
(What kind of stupid bitch would go and do something like that?) Royce thinks, and Sookie asks him what he means. "Fuck a vampire," he answers. I love how the simple fact of admitting her power has turned the tables. Nobody can tell her to stay out of their heads because she can't, but it's obvious now that she's not fucking around, so she's like this roving lie detector, a Diogenes with her lamp, looking for the truth. "Fuck a vampire? Hell, no. I like my meat alive!" The rednecks laugh, but their opposite numbers choose that moment to enter Merlotte's, scaring Arlene. Liam does the tongue thing, and Malcolm prisses around, and Diane climbs all over a kid in one of the booths.
At this very moment, several things are happening: vampires descend finally on Merlotte's, offering themselves up to anger and hatred. Death by fire, death by hubris: Amy is whisking Jason away from his death, and Bill is taking a body out of his trunk, like a possum in a cage. Death by water. And the possum in the bus whisks its tail about, smelling fear on Tara's skin, and the bitter, blunted, squatting smell of demon on Lettie Mae. If you ever admitted how many times in a day you put your life in strangers' hands, you would never leave the house again.
"Get us three TruBloods," Malcolm orders Sam, who tells him to vacate, it's a family place for locals only. "Well, we just closed on a place up the road, so that makes us official citizens of Renard Parish." Arlene and Terry stare at them; young leviathans, stretching new muscles, proud and stupid. "We're the new locals. Discrimination against vampires is punishable by law in the great State of Louisiana. Personally, I don't give a fuck. But I am thirsty." God, he's hard to take. The thing about the big stuff is that you can't even talk about it, because it's too big for words, which is why metaphors were invented. Except that also applies to TV shows, which is to say that you have to supply your own fear and menace and gravitas and glamour to the vampires, because mostly they're just kind of dorky.
When Sam uninvites them, Diane laughs from on top of that kid: "That shit only works in a private home." Malcolm gasps, having finally noticed Sookie standing there with her mouth open, and he and Diane advance on her. "You are looking delectable as always!" Sam's grossed out that she knows them, but it's clear she has less-than-friendly feelings towards them. Malcolm gasps again when he sees the marks on her skin. "It looks like little Miss Holdout has given up the goods! Brava!" She informs them, in no uncertain terms, that she is "his," which spooks Sam something fierce. Everything has its uses, even that, but not this time. Malcolm pops his teeth out and comes after her, because Bill's not around. Bill hears her fear, drops the body in the lake, and gets all zoomy.
"Don't you think for one second I'd ever have anything to do with you!" she shouts, shoving him away, unafraid and unglamoured. "You were trash while you were alive, and now you're just dead trash!" I love you, Sookie Stackhouse. "I'm gonna drain you so slowly, you're gonna beg me to kill you," he says, because gentility is his total thing and she totally insulted it. On an unrelated note, Terry comes flying out of nowhere having had some kind of Iraq-related break with reality, screaming "Jihad this, motherfucker!" and getting himself tossed through the air. Sam breaks a pool cue over his knee, creating a stake, which is like so offensive to do in front of a vampire. Once again, Malcolm's delicate sensibilities are being trampled! "You are a dead man!" Sam doesn't care exactly, but a second later Liam's got him pinned to the bar, choking him and offering to "reach down [his] throat and yank [him] inside-out by [his] dick." Which normally would be like a metaphor or a euphemism or an empty threat, but one of the more-awesome, less-talked-about abilities of vampires is that they can actually, literally pull you inside-out by your dick. It's due to their vampire strength.
Bill appears and hollers at them to quit it, and Liam immediately lets up on dear old Sam. "You're here for me, not them," he grits, and they all kinda nod. These poor old assholes, I mean seriously. You have eternity to realize that you're not that interesting and you need a cruise director, or somebody to order you around. No wonder Eric's so bored all the damn time. "You never call me back!" Malcolm whines. "Now, if I remembered what feelings were, mine might be hurt." Diane, as usual, crawls around all over Bill's face and tries to be sexy; Liam's like, "Mainstreamin's for pussies!" As long as you're getting your personalities off the rack, you three, you couldn't have picked something with a little more flavor? Ugh. Anyway, Bill locks eyes with Sookie and agrees to go away with them, and it's super embarrassing because she tells him he's different and better than them, and he screams, "I am vampire!" For real.
Jason's filling up his tank and is all about "let's do your drugs right now," which if you thought about it for five seconds you would have already known he's That Guy, obviously, completely separate from the jonesing: That "You're so funny and so pretty and we're such good friends and where are the drugs do you have the drugs can I look at the drugs what are we waiting for SnausagesSnausagesSnausagesSnausages" Guy. She starts in with this teahouse pussy philosophy about how you have to think about the sunrise or some shit and feel all relaxed and like a limpid pool of sensations and cosmic thoughts. He shoots her that look and hits on her for a sec so she will give him some drugs. No dice. Because now she has to geek out on the semiotics of his authentic experience of being Louisiana trash for one thousand years and make poststructuralist love to his so very authentic pickmup truck and when Amy Burley says she's from Connecticut, well, let's just say your first response is not to fall over from shock. She totally calls him out for being a day laborer, and he throws a bit of mystery on himself by claiming to be a "leg doctor." An M.D. in "leg." Jason Stackhouse, I adore you. Finally he's like, "ANYWAY WHERE ARE THE DRUGS," and when they drive away she authentically goes, "Yee-haw!"
Jeanette anoints Lettie Mae with oils and poultices, places stones on her heart, her belly, everywhere. Finally Tara asks where she learned to do this, and she explains. "I learned from my mama. And she learned from hers and so on, going back a thousand years. Now, we're gonna lure this demon out and then..." Tara shakes her head, snotting it up. "With a bunch of rocks? Uh-huh. Don't you need a Ouija board and some chicken bones?" Lettie Mae, in her bra and control-top panties, covered in magic rocks and staring up at like a raccoon penis bone or snake face or whatever's horrible, is fucking exhausted. She's like, "Tara. Shut up." Tara complains that it's her money and Lettie Mae's like, "It's my demon!"
"Look. I know you love your daughter. And I know you love your Momma, or else you wouldn't be here. But this is a serious situation for all of us. Demons can kill. And this one will, given half a chance." Tara's like, Oh hell no, and Miss Jeanette shows her fire: "Y'all need to calm down." Tara sits down, shoved there by her eyes, quaking. Miss Jeanette lifts the largest stone. "The sacred crone-stone. It's been in my family since Africa. My generation was twelve kids, but the stone chose me." She walks across her crooked house, and takes a sack off the possum's cage. Tara freaks out on her, thinking the possum is going to be added to the quickly growing pile of things stacked on her mom.
"-- Soon as that demon leaves your mother, it'll be looking for a new place to stay." She shoves her back down again. "Come on. We're all gonna have to be still. Don't even breathe. Let it find the possum." She moves her hands along Lettie Mae's spirit, feelings its angles and its topography, the country she once owned. Lettie Mae gasps when Jeanette puts the stone on the demon, and breathes through it. Jeanette takes up her black drum and begins to sing.
Sing a crone-stone song
Sing what land made me
Dream-tinker is my drum
I hold the power of the stone
The water, the leaf, the dirt
Stone, water, leaf, dirt
Lettie Mae starts to jump, and jerk; it hears and it crawls up from the dark below her skin as the rhythm of the crone song stirs in them all, under the silver full moon: maiden, mother. Beautiful crone. And the demon, and the sacrifice.
Sing a demon song
Sing the night that made you
Dark and wet, hungry and cold
Trapped in darkness forever
Lonely for the light
You are safe here
Safe, safe
Safe and welcome
By the power of the stone
I bid you depart
And join the world of light!
The world is full of strange sounds, screams and cries, as Jeanette sings to the demon in its own language, shouting at the darkness; the possum begins to jump and squeal, and she puts its cage into a tub, holding it down as it struggles. And all that pain and care and worry flowed out, from me to him. She takes up her cane and pushes it down like Betty Davis with Narek and waits for it to go as Tara shakes her head terrified. Sing the night that made you.
Terry weeps, in the stockroom. All you want is to be seen: to matter. To mean something, to be more than a meaningless and broken object, oughtta-be-locked-up, crazy-running-through-the-night when it gets too big to hold. All you want is to do the thing that you do, and you can't do that: what's sadder than that? What demon took his territory from him? "I froze up. I let everybody down. I didn't do nothing." He shivers; Arlene puts out a hand to comfort him, and he jerks away. "This ain't Baghdad, Terry." He reaches for the hand he just jerked away from, and shakes with it. "It's Merlotte's, okay? Ain't nothin' anybody coulda' done." Not good enough. Sing the night that made you: "I'm supposed to." He weeps, and she shakes her head and hums to him, shushing away the pain and the fear, down back under the water.
"I know where that house they bought is at," Royce says, still hefting his pool cue like he did something. But he didn't do anything: he froze up, let everybody down. So now he has to go after them, to make it right. Sing the night that made you. "If you think you can sneak up on a vampire, then y'all are dumber in the head than a hog is in the butt," Sookie says. I remain unconvinced by the imagery in this case; plus, I think Royce is a total hottie and I don't want him to be eaten anytime soon. "Fucking a vampire don't make you no expert," one of the rednecks says, and Royce nods: "You're contaminated from normal people." That sentence? Makes no sense, literally. You know what he means, but come on, Royce. Her every moment is contaminated by normal people, but that's not what he meant. He is a dummy. Maybe it's Royce's authenticity I'm so very into. "What would you know about normal people?" They don't fuck dead things, for one. Nice burn! "You mess with Bill Compton, I promise, you will be a dead thing," she says, and takes off. Apparently having missed the part where she just, Natasha Lyonne-like, threatened to have sex with his corpse.
Sookie stupidly goes to Sam for help defusing the lynch mob (of three morons), but he is all about it. Even Arlene, still shaken from what they did and what happened , the tears in Terry's eyes, says she hopes Royce kills them all. Sookie explains that the leaving with them part was a smokescreen, obviously, and Sam's like, "Doesn't matter. He belongs with his own kind." Sookie is, as usual, appalled by the racist rhetoric, and Sam's like, "Whatever, do what you want, but I don't want him here." (Weren't for the little Stackhouse bitch, there wouldn't be no vampires coming around here at all. Round 'em all up at daybreak and shoot the sunlight into 'em...) Sookie's all OMG for about a million years more.
Get this shit right here: "I went to Wellesley. I was supposed to do pre-law, but I said screw it and I studied philosophy instead. And that pissed the parental units off bigtime. As if the meaning of life's just irrelevant, right?" Amy, you dickhole. Jason's like, "I got two years at Vo-Tech, studying ... landscape technology." (You know what's closer to the meaning of life than philosophy? Landscape technology. Diogenes said that we should all just act like Jason Stackhouse all the time and everything would be okay. True story. Then, he jacked off in the agora, which is old-timey for mall.)
"I couldn't take anymore of that artificial lockjaw lifestyle, so I hit the road." Jason of course thinks of rabies in this context, because he's authentically retarded, and she explains Connecticut Lockjaw to him, lighting a candle. "Amy, please tell me you're not having sex with that disgusting man." It's hilarious, because literally everything -- even the metric tons of bullshit here -- that comes out of Lizzy Caplan is hilarious, because she is a real-life wizard from Hogwarts. "People who talk that way around here don't want anyone to know they got their teeth knocked out," Jason authentics all over himself, and she's like, time to set the mood. Candles and Sarah McLachlan or some shit, I knew it. Fuck a buncha wanna-Blessed-Be bullshit. Nowadays every girl with a henna tattoo and a spice rack thinks she's a sister of the Dark Ones. "Where are your CDs?" she asks -- like people have CDs! I'm so sure! -- and he's like WHERE ARE THE DRUGS and she's all, "your space here is so unselfconscious, so off the grid, your parents being dead is so authentic, I love history because things are so fucked up now, and if you get me drunk or coked up at a party I will start talking about Armageddon, Ragnarok, 2012, Terrence McKenna, anything to imagine the relief of the world ending, no more worries and no more trying to figure out if I'm a grownup yet" and he's like WHERE THE DRUGS AT and she's like, "Your parents are part of Gaia, do you know what Gaia is?" He's like, "Totally. That's when I show my wiener on the webcam."
It's either the Cowboy Junkies album or the Natural Born Killers soundtrack, I'm guessing the latter since you physically cannot put an Alabama Thunderpussy CD on the same shelf with a Cowboy Junkies CD, but either way: "Sweet Jane." She's waiting in the alley for her drug connection to come, and thinking of ways to get back home. It's all we're ever doing.
"The Earth is a living organism... Makes weather, which is good for us... Plants give us the chemicals we need." He focuses on her, finally: he knows she's right about this, he's felt it, it's what he wants. It's what the V relates to him, every time: that all we are is nature, connected and full of life, God kissing herself like holy palmer's kiss, and he nods. That purity is a failed concept and a broken machine, which means we are all pure. "Everything is connected. But you know that." He nods, and begins to talk. About Sookie, his parents, and the movements of leviathans, changing the world below its skin. Talking about Adele, finally.
"Yeah... I don't like how they keep taking stuff away. Like Pluto's not a planet anymore and a brontosaurus stopped being a dinosaur." Amy is taken with his folksy wisdom; she doesn't notice him explaining this entire show, and story: "You can't say something stopped being what it's always been." Because that, too, is the ending of the world: the sun comes up on something different.
"Do you live by yourself?" He nods, and makes a sad, funny face: "Come on, let's do the V!" She assumes the posture of guide, tarot reader, but she's not a guide: it's in the eyes. She's just a girl whose world has ended, who thought herself into Armageddon with that powerful, flexing muscle of her brain, and thinks this is how you put it back together. Thinks that because it feels good, it must be the answer. The only way out is through, but making a religion of your addiction like this, it's saying: The only way out is to never leave. See, this is why I don't date boys like this because instead of Sarah McLachlan it's Sigur Rós, and I'm sorry but when I say "what language is this" and you say "it's made up language" you better be talking about Cirque de Soleil or some shit because if you're going to get that gay that fast you might as well go all the way.
"So the blood it carries oxygen to our organs, right? And that's what makes them function. So it keeps us going. It's like gas in a car engine." She lays out her works, her mortar and pestle, her flat scrying mirror, athame and vial full of blood. "Vampires, they don't need oxygen. Everything just runs directly off the blood." Jason nods, comparing it to "those cars that run on corn," and she smiles, noting that the blood is old, so she's gotta take some simple chemistry steps to keep it from coagulating. "Co-ag-u-lating," Jason says quietly to himself, because he is totally adorable. She puts two large tablets of aspirin in the mortar; he is drawn in by the sight of the blood as she puts one little drop on each. "You just know this is what Holy Communion is symbolic of. This is the real deal here. None of that lame-ass empty ritual." No ritual is empty. She grinds the pills against the stone, crushing them for the spell. It's relatively pomo, I'll give her that, but she's just aping the empty rituals before the empty rituals she's making fun of. If you you're your connection to the symbols and start wanting the "real deal," you are in danger, because the point of metaphors is to catch the leviathan gliding by, and to say, "This is what that felt like, translated through another dimension," and touching the real thing -- instead of its shadow, or marking its movement -- is how you get possessed in the first place. All magic is substitution magic, because we can't afford to get our hands dirty.
"This is nature's greatest gift," Amy says, which is bullshit but Jason's kind of bullshit, and Jason's like, "I thought they'd get all mushy!" Heh. She scrapes the powder out onto her black mirror, two red bumps. "See, the V adapts. It wants to be in us." He gets excited, but she starts all that made-up kludged together Amy Religion stuff again. "We honor Gaia and seek the deepest relationship to her..." To be whole. She says "Gaia" and it means "everything at once," without fear and without division: She's asking to be whole. She thinks drugs will do it. Amy makes me sad. She looks at him expectantly: "Oh yeah, uh, me, too. And Pluto can start being a planet again, connected to stuff." Just like Heaven.
"By taking the blood of the night into our bodies, we water the flowers of our souls..." Jason's had it, and I mean word, but she looks at him and steals another line: "Nothing is real. Everything is permitted." Saying that to Jason Stackhouse -- even if he doesn't know where it comes from or what it does -- is like handing a toddler a live grenade. He's still not onboard the "some things are real, some things are uncool to do" train, and you kind of have to ride that basic train before you start blowing your mind with that stuff. He nods, and she does a line, loses focus immediately. He takes the other rail and she watches as he's overcome. The world is so much with him, when it's with him. As bad as it's obviously going to get, it's almost worth it to see that look on his face every time. Like he's just realized he's not dreaming, and things really are this good. She smiles and watches him breathe it in; the sound of nature, no inside and no outside, nothing but life. Love, Love, Love. She is like the moon: one face somber and the other sweet; a third with a giant smile, as she leans in to kiss his mouth.
Sookie's mental link with Bill not doing the trick, she tries the cell but just gets voicemail: "Damn it, Bill... Bill, this is the third time I've called. A lynch mob is going after those vampires. You gotta get out of there. Call me back. Now." Not after this new country he showed her, not on the morning of the first day in this new world. Not after all the journeying they have yet to do, across those landscapes and in those depths.
Jason sits on his bed, with his shirt off, looking at his hand. The mirror on the closet door is made for visions and for dreams: he sits in a forest, dappled with sunlight, in a Heaven he can reach any time; no division between inside and outside. He is lit by the sun: Pluto, coming home. His amazed face as he whirls around to see if it's real, to get the real deal, to leapfrog the metaphor and catch a ride with angels, but it's just a bedroom. Authentic, unself-conscious. She climbs onto the bed behind him; her hand on his shoulder feels like heaven. She kisses his neck and he falls back into it, then onto his back. This is the first time Jason Stackhouse has ever had sex. The body, the skin, the way it doesn't constrict itself down to one point -- that you talk to like it's a person -- he never knew that. Not even on V with Randi Sue behind Merlotte's, it was still about fucking. But this is something different. And again: no matter how it goes south, I think it's great he's finally getting properly laid. It's Pluto, coming home to new territory he never knew he had. He can feel his body. She holds out one hand, and he meets it, and where they touch there is pleasure, and light. It's no time for war: just sparks flying out between them. He breathes with wonder. "I know, right?" she says, and they stare at themselves in the mirror, the sparks running all along their skin, meeting at everyplace. He runs a hand down her arm: it isn't Jason watching Jason anymore, in the mirror. It's only Jason.
"I can't believe I spent four hundred dollars to watch you drown a damn possum," Tara says, having gotten control of herself enough that she can turn back into a bitch. "You better not have done anything bad to my Momma." Lettie Mae stands there, vacant for a moment, feeling around for it: the pain, the worry, the care. Out of me and into him. What to do with all that recovered space? It's for people who are weak but still have faith: sing the night that made you. "Is my demon gone forever?" Jeanette says it is. "You belong to yourself now." You have been reminded that you always did.
"But we're gonna have to do something about your daughter," Miss Jeanette says, putting those Hermit eyes on her like lanterns. "You ain't gonna do nothing for me," Tara says under the moon. "Your demon isn't the same kind as your mother's, but it's definitely living in you." Tara snorts and flies off the handle, proving her right: "Now you think I got a motherfucking demon? Bitch, you as fucked up as your bus." Jeanette points him out, with her cane: "That's that demon talking right now. And deep down inside, you know it's true..." She is older than Lettie Mae; she is younger than Tara. Tara assures her that she neither wants nor needs the witch-woman's help, and couldn't afford it anyhow. "Do you have many friends? Do you have trouble keeping a job? You have your own place?" She's coming closer, on her crooked legs, leaning on her crooked stick. Tara won't meet her eyes. "You have a boyfriend? How long have you ever been with the same man?" Tara finally looks up; she is stuck in the hedge-witch's eyes. "Mm-hm," the crone says, knowing better: she retreats into the forest, away at last. "Find me when you're ready." Under the silver full moon, the maiden leads her mother by the hand, back home.
Sookie, finally off work, lets herself into his house. The electric lights are on, and dead candles sit with dripped wax on top of books. She calls his name and visits the hidey-hole, clicking the panel open and lifting the trapdoor: it's empty. It is only dust, and books, and the cold ground. She creeps through the house, leaving it open and unsecured, and looks down at the blankets by the fire: the red velvet where she became new. It's too soon for things to change; she sits on a couch, beside the bed they made. Not on it, because she is alone. And she waits.
Morning comes and Royce's goons make napalm, toss bottles through the windows of Malcolm's nest. The screams begin, loud and horrible, as they lie there, pinned to the cold ground, unable to move or lift themselves from danger. And all the worry, and care, and sadness of Bon Temps flows out of them, and into the house that Malcolm bought.
At this very moment, several things are happening: the new vampires of Renard Parish are sacrificed on the altar of anger and hatred. Death by fire, death by hubris: Amy is whisking Jason away from his death, and bringing Pluto home. Sam Merlotte has just woken up, naked, in the forest again. And Andy has taken Terry out fishing, like before. It helps us when we can find ways to connect the ones we love to the lives they used to understand. Andy offers that the problem with Iraq is jealousy: "No wonder they're so pissed off at us. We got channel cats and Shreveport poontang." I can assure you that this is not the case. "I missed this," Andy says, but Terry's spotted Sam Merlotte's amazing ass, running through the forest. He throws up some military moves and shows him to Andy, who is amazed. "Yup," says Terry, sitting down again. "I done that before." Andy wonders where he's going, and Terry says, "Where has he been? Nobody cares." Before Andy can ask him what that even means, his phone rings: Hawaii Five-0.
Sookie wakes up on Bill's couch, to the new morning. He's still not home. The old tintype -- Mr. W.T. Compton and family -- sits in a frame on a nearby table. This is his history. His son spotted him from the porch, like Pluto coming home. She is sitting in his history, and his humanity. He is a new country too.
Malcolm's nest is just ... gone. It's a pile of burnt up trash. Bud Dearborn, ever classy, points out that at least we know arson will get rid of them. Sookie arrives, all kinds of freaked out, and she pushes toward the . Past a guy laughing about the Special of the Day (Country Fried Vampire), and a cop pointing out that the Killer's still on the loose and now they're going to be tied up investigating a hate crime they're all secretly relieved happened. You can't say something stopped being what it's always been: that's the ending of the world. Andy crosses his arms at her, and she asks if Bill is there. Bud delights in it: "No way of knowing. They're awful messy..." But Andy tells her the worst bit: there were four of them. The men lay out the coffins: Nietzsche, Dracula, Erzulie, and the fourth man in the fire.
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