"How lucky poets are, who can nail themselves to their pain for all the world to see. There's much to be said for hanging on a cross, Clare; you need not look down at the people weeping below. You can gaze instead at the sky."-M. Shelley, The Invisibles
Socializing. This is the battlefield of the Toreador. You have to be able to destroy someone with compliments. A well-placed stare or a turned word are more powerful than the biggest Brujah. Always have something witty to say. Never get caught speechless; it is the impotence of conversation, showing everyone listening that you have been shown up and defeated.
"COULD YOU NOT SING? PLEASE?"
How to be a different kind of Toreador, by
Jen Raffesnperger (Carol Reid)
When I came out into society I was 15. I already knew then that the role I was condemned to, namely to keep quiet and do what I was told, gave me the perfect opportunity to listen and observe. Not to what people told me, which naturally was of no interest to me, but to whatever it was they were trying to hide. I practiced detachment. I learn how to look cheerful while under the table I stuck a fork onto the back of my hand. I became a virtuoso of deceit. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think, and novelist to see what I could get away with, and in the end it all came down to one wonderfully simple principle: that happiness and vanity are incompatible.
-Marquise De Merteuil, Dangerous Liasons
Interpretation:
Paul M. M. Jacobus (vampire@digex.net)