by Adam Selzer
It’s still weird to think that my boyfriend’s heart doesn’t beat, and there are some things that couldn’t go on our menu of things we can do that I’m kind of disappointed about, but it’s not like I need them to be happy with my life. I’ve done a lot of things on the menu with other guys, and they were nothing to rearrange your life over. Half of my persona as the Meanest Girl in the Vicious Circle has been based on being underwhelmed by guys.
Then again, all of the things I’ve done would probably have felt different if I’d been with someone I actually cared about.
On Tuesday night, Doug and I go to the Noir Café again. It’s a big step for us, because after the date, we do #4 from the menu. It’s not as big a step as doing #6, #7 or #8 would be, but it’s a step. And it’s the first time I’ve been out with him knowing that he’s a zombie.
Even though I feel like I’m floating sometimes, the Vicious Circle does their part to keep me grounded—in between chat about the prom.
“You know what would be awesome?” asks Marie on Wednesday. “If you went dressed as a zombie yourself.”
I chuckle a bit. “I don’t know,” I say. “He might find it kind of offensive, don’t you think?”
“Why would he?” asks Sadie. “He seems to have pretty thick skin.”
“And you know you have a shot at being the king and queen of the prom, right?” asks Marie.
I look at her. This has honestly not occurred to me.
“No,” I said. “You really think so?”
“Of course,” she says. “There are only two girls in school dating a dead guy. Michelle and Fred probably have the edge over you, but if you show up dressed up in zombie gear, that could put you over the top!”
I take a second to think this over. I never, ever in my life would have thought I’d even go to prom with a date, let alone have a shot at being prom queen. I would have said that I didn’t want to be queen, in fact. But I guess it’s like being one of those musicians who say they don’t care about awards until suddenly they get nominated for a Grammy—all of a sudden, they realize they do want awards. They just never thought they could get one before.
When I think back to where I was just a week ago, it’s almost impossible to believe how much I’ve changed. A week ago, I wouldn’t have believed that anything could make me consider going to Drake instead of moving to Seattle. But I’m considering it.
And I sure as hell wouldn’t have believed that I might be thinking about becoming a zombie myself. But I find myself thinking about that. Like, constantly.
I know it’s a massive decision, but I kind of think that if I want to be with Doug forever, I’ll have to go zombie sooner or later. I can’t be sixty and dating a guy who looks seventeen, even if he is actually older than me. And anyway, the brain doesn’t mature too much after death. He’s probably past the teenage mentality by now (he’s totally mature, after all), but he’s not going to get much more mature. If I want to stay with him, I can’t get too much more mature myself.
Obviously, being a zombie wouldn’t exactly be fun. It hurts just to move around, and you never get a full night’s sleep, because you have to take the fluid every four hours. Eek. And even though times are changing and there are more options out there for post-humans, your career choices are always going to be limited.
But I don’t see any reason why a zombie can’t be a music critic. Or produce another zombie’s tracks.
And there’s another thing to consider: even if I take care of myself as a human, I’m still going to get old and die eventually. As a zombie, I can live forever as long as I’m careful. Doug says he doesn’t think zombies go nuts from being alive too long, like vampires do, probably because they at least get some sleep now and then, which vampires don’t do.
In fact, he thinks that if I have the operation right after I die, instead of a few days later, like he did, I won’t decompose at all. I’ll still look totally alive. There’s something to be said for that lifestyle, don’t you think? Everyone knows your heart dies (in a figurative sense) when you’re thirty anyway. We’d be the two most alive people on the planet, if you think about it.
But that’s a step to consider another time. Not something I really have to worry about a week into a relationship. I have a few years to figure it all out.
Our biggest step for the moment is having dinner with my parents tonight.
I’ve told them that the guy I’m dating is a post-human, and they’re cool with it. Or they’re trying to be.
“I have to admit it’s hard to get used to,” says Mom. “It sort of puts some limits on your relationship, doesn’t it?”
“Well, yeah,” I say. “Though the fact that he’ll be young and hot forever is nice, as long as nothing falls off of his face or anything.”
“He sounds like he takes good care of himself,” says Dad. “That speaks well of him.”
“He sounds more responsible than I was at his age,” says Mom. “And anyway, it’s not like I have to worry about you getting pregnant, huh?”
“Nope,” I say. “It’s beyond the realm of science.”
“If you want to tease him a bit, I can do the Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner thing,” Dad says. “I’ll be all, ‘No daughter of mine is dating a dead boy! What will the neighbors say? I’ll get kicked out of the country club! Property values will go down!’”
“Please don’t tease him!” I say. “He gets kind of embarrassed by that stuff. And don’t mention the smell of the embalming fluid. You’ll get used to it fast. Trust me.”
“We’ll do our best,” says Mom. “But I haven’t spent much time around post-humans before. I’m a little worried that we’ll say the wrong thing and he’ll get offended, even though we’re absolutely not prejudiced.”
“Just be yourselves,” I say. “Dad, you can show him some of your scrapbooks. He loves music.”
“Cole Porter, right?” asks Dad.
Dad’s Cole Porter scrapbook really isn’t all that great, so I steer him toward some some others.
“He likes Cole Porter, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, the Rolling Stones, the Ramones….”
“Ramones!” says Dad. “I have a great Ramones scrapbook.”
“Perfect,” I say. “And Mom, you can talk about how much you hate Megamart.”
“Was he one of those poor zombies who had to work there?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Oh, that poor kid!” she says. “As if dying weren’t bad enough, but to have to work at Megamart on top of it!”
“He loves to talk about how much they suck,” I say. “You guys can have a whole Megamart hate fest.”
“I’m always up for one of those,” says Mom.
Perfect. It’s nice to feel like you have your parents under control, though I’m honestly a little bit disappointed. Every girl sort of wants one of those boyfriends her parents can’t stand, even though she knows he’s awesome. Having your parents totally understand that you’re dating a dead guy right off the bat instead of coming to terms with it gradually takes some of the fun out of it.
I set the table carefully. It’s a little awkward to set up a dinner when the guest of honor can’t actually eat anything. Doug can drink a little, like iced coffee or soup, but most solid food is basically impossible for him. He worries that he’ll bust one of his teeth or something, and plus, there’s the bathroom issue. There’re some things he has to be really careful about in there (this is a lot more information than I ever thought I’d want to know about a guy after knowing him less than a week, but it’s kind of important to know these things when you date a dead guy). And anyway, he gets all his energy from whatever spell or operation or whatever it was that made him a zombie, so he doesn’t have to eat, really.
So we set up a light dinner—matzoh-ball soup, a Jewish comfort food. Doug thinks he can probably even eat a little of that. Matzoh balls are sort of like meatballs made of bread. They’re a lot better than they sound. Trust me.
Doug arrives at seven—rig
ht on time, as always.
I step outside to greet him, and we kiss a little in the driveway. It’s weird how someone so cold can make me feel so warm. It’s magic, is what it is.
Once again, the old Alley would probably kick the new Gonk’s ass for thinking that, but it’s true.
“You ready for this?” I ask.
“I suppose so,” he says. “I haven’t really sat down with adults much since I was alive.”
“No chatting in the break room at Megamart?”
“We didn’t get breaks,” he says. “If we were caught up on work, they’d find something for us to do. We’d sweep the floor over and over, even after it was already clean.”
“Well, it’ll be fine,” I say. “They’re totally cool about everything.”
“I’m gonna be okay, right?” he asks. “I mean, I don’t know much about how you eat a Jewish meal.”
I chuckle. “You put the food and drink in your mouth, chew and swallow,” I say. “Pretty basic.”
“And I don’t speak a word of Hebrew,” he says.
“We’re not that observant,” I say. “Sometimes my mom says a prayer in Hebrew before we eat, but that’s about it, and Jewish prayers are pretty short and to the point. Just smile and nod if she does it tonight.”
“Okay,” he says. “I just don’t want to give away that I don’t know much about your people or anything. I’ll look stupid!”
“You’ll be fine!”
Doug is never cuter than he is when he’s nervous.
My parents are waiting on the front porch.
“Hi!” says Dad, extending his hand. He shakes Doug’s hand just the way I told him to—very lightly. Firm handshakes aren’t very safe with zombies. Doug gives a similar handshake to my mom, who invites him inside.
I’ve always dreaded having to do the “meet the parents” thing with a guy. Like, I have nightmares about it. None of the guys I’ve made out with in my bedroom in the past would have been worth introducing to them, though, so I’ve always been spared this particular ritual. But Doug is a perfect gentleman.
“So, Doug,” says Dad. “I hear that you like Cole Porter.”
“Sure,” he says. “I like any kind of music that doesn’t suck.”
“My kind of taste,” says Dad.
“Alley’s never brought a boy home to meet us, you know,” says Mom. “But from what she tells us, the way you sang ‘I Get a Kick out of You’ really swept her off her feet.”
“I’m not sure which is the bigger accomplishment,” says Dad. “Singing after you’re dead, or sweeping Alley off her feet. A while ago I would have thought both of those were impossible.”
I blush a little, probably. Doug looks like he’d be blushing, too, if he had any blood to rush to his cheeks.
I get a bit nervous when I realize how much my mom’s matzoh balls look like brains (the kind of thing I never would have stopped to think of before), but if anyone else notices, they have the good sense not to say anything. Doug’s soup has an ice cube in it to keep it cool. He looks kind of weirded out by the matzoh balls, but he nibbles a bit of them in addition to drinking the broth, and seems to like them. It was a good choice. I wouldn’t have subjected him to gefilte fish, which is so close to liquid that he could probably handle eating it but is also an acquired taste. Not something you give to a person who’s still afraid my parents might pick on him for not wearing a prayer shawl or something.
“Well, Doug,” asks Dad. “We haven’t really done this with Alley before, but I believe I’m supposed to ask you where you see yourself in five years, right?”
“Good question,” he says. “Just the fact that I’ll still be here at all is pretty major.”
“So you aren’t thinking of college?” asks Mom.
“Only if they pass laws making the undead eligible for scholarships,” he says. “We think we have the votes in Congress, but you know how it is. Things move slowly, and there aren’t a lot of zombie lobbyists.”
“We’re going to get his album recorded and for sale online this summer,” I say. “If all goes well, he’ll be able to afford any college he wants pretty soon!”
I do my best to keep Mom and Dad talking about themselves, and direct the conversation so the only things they say to Doug are yes or no questions he can answer by nodding or shaking his head and not hurting himself. I’m getting the hang of all of this fairly quickly, actually. I’m pretty proud of myself for it.
At the end of the night, I walk Doug out to his car and give him a good-night kiss. I would like to do something else off our menu, something we haven’t tried yet, but none of them are really things you can do in a driveway, especially when your parents are probably watching.
“Have you told them you’re thinking about becoming a zombie?” he asks.
“Not yet,” I say. “I don’t know how well they’d handle that. I have to sort of ease them into things.”
“It’s not urgent, anyway,” he says. “I mean, we’ve just started going out.”
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s almost like being one of those dumb couples who start naming their kids on the second date.”
There are a lot of girls at school who do that sort of thing. The Vicious Circle calls them Junior Mommies. They have all their kids named, they’ve picked out what color house they want to live in, and they read parenting magazines. They’re mostly smart enough not to actually want to be teen moms or anything, but they can’t wait to start having kids. Most of them are just dying to get married, not so much because they want a husband but so they can start right in on parenthood. I realize that thinking about dying is even worse than that, but when you date a dead guy, you have think about whether these things are an option, at least, early on. You want to know what you’re getting into in a relationship, right?
But hearing him bring up the whole “me as a zombie” thing makes me a little nervous. Ever since I first asked about it, Doug’s talked a lot about it. Like, maybe even a little too much. He says he’d never ask me to become a zombie, obviously, but I can tell he really likes the idea. It’s not like he’s putting any pressure on me, but just knowing how much he wants me to do it almost feels like pressure. I try not to think about it like that, since it’s not really fair to him, but I kind of wish he would stop talking about it.
I decide to change the subject.
“I’m going to hate tomorrow,” I say.
He makes a sympathetic face. “I will, too. But we’ll survive. And Friday will be great.”
Tomorrow is going to be the first day all week that I don’t see him. There’s a newspaper staff meeting in the evening, and no real time that I can get away for a date. But the day after that is the party at 1518, which I’m really starting to look forward to. I mean, it’s my first real chance to show off my hot boyfriend! And the Sorry Marios are going to be playing in the living room, so Doug will probably sit in for a song or two.
Plus, I’m sure I’ll get material for a really wicked article for the school paper: “The Secret Life of the Popular Kids,” a parting gift to the school from Alley Rhodes.
After he drives off, I sort of float my way back to the house. I walk, actually, of course, but there’s something about kissing Doug that always makes me feel like I’m floating. Maybe the smell of the embalming fluid makes me a little light-headed. Or maybe I’m really just in love.
As a matter of fact, of course I am. It feels soon to say it, and neither of us has said it out loud, but I think we both feel it.
Inside, Mom has made coffee, and she and Dad are still at the table.
“He seems like a very nice young man,” says Mom.
I just smile.
“He’s smart, too,” says Dad. “It’s such a shame he had to die so young.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “There’s something to be said for staying young forever, don’t you think?”
“Not really, Alley,” says Mom. “I wouldn’t have wanted to be a teenager for one extra second, let alone forever.�
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“Could’ve fooled me,” I say. “As I recall, you kept acting like a teenager for several extra years! And Doug probably has the emotional maturity of at least a twenty-year-old by now. Wouldn’t staying in your twenties be kind of awesome?”
Mom and Dad both shuffle around uncomfortably.
“Algonquin,” says Mom, “please tell me you’re not thinking about becoming a zombie yourself for this boy.”
“Why not?” I ask. “I mean, I wouldn’t do it right away or anything. I’d wait a few years, till I’m really all grown up and in the prime of my life and stuff.”
Mom sighs. “But think of all you’ll miss out on,” she says. “You’d never have children.”
“We could adopt,” I say.
“Zombie adoption is almost impossible,” she says. “Most of the antizombie laws have been overturned by now, but I don’t think they’ll ever make a law requiring adoption agencies to let zombies adopt.”
“That’s terrible!” I say.
“Well, they don’t usually let people with terminal diseases adopt,” says Mom. “It’s not really safe to entrust a child to someone who might crumble into dust without embalming fluid every four hours.”
I pout for a second so I don’t have to agree with her, but I know she’s right. Emotionally, Doug would make a great dad—he’d be a better dad than I would a mom—but physically, I’m not sure any zombie could handle it.
“Well, I don’t need to have kids,” I say. “I know I’d miss out on a lot if I were a zombie, but if I don’t become one sooner or later, I’ll miss out on Doug!”
Dad looks like he’s trying his hardest to keep his mouth shut. Mom does the talking.
“Alley, I’ve always told you not to throw your life away over a guy,” she says. “I’ve always been proud of the way you’ve avoided getting tied down to someone who might make you reconsider going away for college.” She puts her hand on my shoulder, and I slither out from under her.
“It wouldn’t be throwing my life away!” I say. “It would be, like, immortality. It’s the opposite of throwing your life away!”
“Have you really stopped to think of all you’d miss out on?” she says. “Not having kids is just a small part of it, in the long run. You wouldn’t get to grow old. That’s part of life.”