Why vampires?

Why am I so into vampires?  I've always been into horror.  When I was a kid and other kids were watching cartoons, I'd watch this thing called Shock Theater which was all old horror movies.  See my father was a real ass (still is).  Now I can stop speaking to him, not answer the phone, avoid him when he's in one of his pissy moods, but as a kid, it was hard to get away from.  But, like most bullies, he was really a coward.  Anything scary would have him running for cover.  So when I'd put on the old horror movies, he'd leave the room and would leave me alone for hours.   I'd seen all the old classics, Bela Lugosi, the original Frankenstein, and such, all before I was 10.  Monsters were my heroes, my rescuers, because they drove the real monster away for a while.  That's how I got into Poe, watching Vincent Price in the Pit and the Pendulum and The Fall of the House of Usher.  The scarier it was, the safer it made me feel.  Twisted that.  And I tended to side with the monsters, because there were never as bad as the bullies in real life.

Guess that was where it started.  And vampires are certainly cool on the monster list.  They're invulnerable.  There's not much can hurt them.  And, with few exceptions, they're portrayed as beautiful, even if the original myths don't always match that, so its easy to side with the vampires.  Especially in Dracula.  The older Van Helsing's were never as handsome as the vampire.  And as I got older, vampires got sexier.  That whole biting the neck thing - Bram Stoker we no fool there, substituting that for sex.  How could I not be hooked?