It was only then that you became interested in zombies, after you discovered that zombies are made from the living, because who cares about the walking dead when the living walk with such perplexing self-importance. You realized that zombies are not made from poisons or voudun houngans or Papa Legba, Baron Samedi, or any other provincially named loas and have nothing to do with New Orleans(while your intellectual, libertarian side, that conjoined-at-the-genitals twin of capitalist imperialism, protests your appropriation of Afro-Caribbean culture and who are you to say that zombies aren't authentically Creole or Kreyol or Criollo, and you tell it shut the fuck up and go listen to some zydeco) and furthermore, that zombies will not be spawned from rage-infected monkeys, or microbes on an asteroid, or the Necronomicon, or even the cursed gold of Cortez, Captain Jack Sparrow, if you please.

No.

It comes to you as you come, idly arching your back into the grey, climate-controlled air of your apartment. There is no sudden flash of understanding, no metaphorical homage to Thomas Edison's persperation, just the omnipresent, lukewarm knowledge that jism cooling on your belly does not come with a guarantee that it will make you feel any more alive than when you are watching Love, Actually or eating a potato salad. It's the resigned franticness that sucks the color from masturbation as you wheel from fantasizing about a lover, or an ex-lover, to your girlfriend or boyfriend, then your single friends, then your friends' girlfriends and boyfriends, then your friends in relationships, then a pornstar you like, then a pornstar you don't like, then anyone whose face you can hang onto for longer ten seconds, then just a general hodgepodge of everyone you've ever known mish-mashed into something with a cock or a cunt or mouth or an asshole just as long as they could make your fucking genitals feel something. Of course, eventually your body catches onto the message that your mind has been trying to send for the whole night, and you come with about as much meaning as an old car's engine catching on a winter morning: you spew some exhaust, shudder a few times, and creakily get on with your life.

So, maybe you slip into hedonism, start watching increasingly bizarre niche pornography, or experimenting with auto-erotic asphyxiation(drawing out the syllables, it would sound like awwww toooowww eeeeaaarrr awwwww ttiiick asssss fiiiix eeeee yaaaaayyy shhhuuunnn, which might make you smile, if nothing else), and then you throw alcohol and drugs into the mix until one morning you realize you've spent the whole night high on Lorazepam and bad tequila, watching "voyeur" videos of people squirting cum out of their asses while you choke the shit out of yourself with a dog chain, and your sex organs still don't feel a damn thing, except maybe sore in an hour, give or take, while in Burma they're killing monks, BUDDHIST MONKS, and you don't give a flying fuck because somebody who is that isolated from the visceral act of living probably doesn't even remember how to spell empathy, but they can tell you the names of the fifty most popular pornstars on the internet as of yesterday.

All that because you wanted to feel alive, because you realized that being a zombie is the end result of trying to live in a country that has the audacity to call itself the United States of anything, and that, somehow, you were led to believe that giving up your life signs as ransom for a citizenship number is easier than just leaving and taking them with you. It sure feels easier, doesn't it? But that's only because you've gone numb. Your senses have been raped and assaulted for so long that you've become a walking collection of calluses, immune to the piddling effects of anything that doesn't involve bold colors, loud music, or hot, hot cocks.

Zombies. While you're sitting in the grey of winter, idly wondering what to do with yourself, try finding some inspiration. I suggest focusing on the feeling of shitting, the round smoothness of a good clump of fecal matter sliding past your buttocks. For further exercise, try doing it on an American flag. It's the least you could do to show your appreciation for the life it represents.

08/22/2008

Author's Note: The walking dead.

Posted on 08/22/2008
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