In Bed with Buffy or The Fight For My Soul

This article first appeared in The Age, October 11, 2000

I'm sure many of you will have been acquainted with Buffy the Vampire Slayer for sometime. I became addicted last season, long after most. Meeting Buffy at college has meant that I didn't know her history. How she got together with Giles, Xander and Willow. How she'd ended up in Sunnydale. Most importantly of all I didn't know the history of her relationship with that brooding good-guy vampire, Angel. All that changed when I was hit by the flu that had been laying waste to Sydney. Eight days, in bed, with a fever and only Buffy to keep me company. The world of Buffy is a wonderful place. It has its own name: the Buffyverse.

As the virus spread through my blood as surely and suddenly as if I too had been bitten, my fever began to rage. Anxiety began spreading exponentially like so many demons multiplying at the Hellmouth. I discovered that Sunnydale was built on 'the centre of a mystical convergance.' And that Buffy and her Watcher Giles 'may in fact stand between the earth and its total destruction.' I also learnt that demons had once ruled the earth, but humans drove them away. The last demon to leave this reality fed off a human, thus creating vampires: humans with demon souls.

The inevitable flu depression hit me. I would, to quote Bridget Jones, die alone in my flat and be found days later, half-eaten by an Alsatian. My demons rose. Glitches in my childhood, failed relationships, arguments I had ten years ago and the prospect of steamed vegetables for the sixth night in a row all began to haunt me.

After a few days of my absence friends began to ring. 'Do you want any chicken soup?' they all asked. What is it with flu and chicken soup? Never in my life has there been so much talk of chicken soup. Never have I seen so little of it. But I diverge. Buffy began to act out my delirium, killing demons as they burst out from behind bushes or danced at nightclubs, putting Jackie Chan to shame as she kick- boxed guys with flat demon faces, all the while looking unbelievably sexy in a range of kinderwhore outfits. I don' t just want to watch Buffy, I want to be Buffy.

In between Buffy I'd watch a bit of TV. Things began to morph. At one point I could have sworn Buffy stabbed John Howard through the heart with a wooden stake when he started banging on about lesbians and single women,though perhaps I was hallucinating. Actually, Willow becomes a lesbian in later episodes. But that's another story.

These are some of the things that happened over that few days. Buffy had a curse laid on her by a witch, failed to make the cheerleading squad, was racked with lust for Angel despite his descent into the dark side, did regular calisthenics, was tattooed with the mark of Igor and went on a date(episode title: 'Never kill a boy on the first date') which went wrong when she and the date dropped by the morgue. I watched a later episode in which Buffy had to decide whether to kill Angel, the vampire she loved, because the future of the human race depended on it. Now that's what I call a real moral dilemma. She also had to tell her mum she was not actually hanging out at nightclubs but battling the dark side.

The inter-generational sexual tension between Buffy and Giles the Librarian perhaps explains why I fainted when I tried to make a cup of tea. I was overexcited: it was the Bronte Sisters all over again. ('Have I ever let you down?' Buffy asks Giles. 'Do you want me to answer that?' he says,'or will I just glare?') Then there is the love that cannot speak its name: the love between Buffy and Angel is so impossible he physically transforms into a demon when aroused. Put literally: if they have sex they go to hell.

Another friend rung. 'Tomorrow,' he said, 'I'm going to make some chicken soup. Do you want some?' 'What is it with chicken soup?' I asked. 'Scientific tests in Israel,' he told me, 'Have shown that chicken soup acts as a natural antibiotic. It helps make you better.'

That's all very well, but where are the scientists to prove the existence of vampires? Or demons? There was a battle for my soul going on and if I had to choose between chicken soup and Buffy to save it I knew which way I was leaning. Buffy's normalizing of extremes, of dysfunction and unrequited love began to be the only thing that made any sense.

Then, after three days, the unthinkable happened. I had watched 10 hours of early episodes - all the video store had and now I had run out. I rang another friend. 'I'm sick,' I said. 'Oh,' he said. 'Would you like some chicken soup?' 'That's not what I need,' I replied. 'I need Buffy.'

The answer was worse than I had feared - he hadn't been taping. This was a tragedy. It seemed I was just going to have to struggle through the next few days fighting demons and infected blood on my own.

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