Love in the Time of Zombies by Lynn Messina

Author:Lynn Messina [Messina, Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Shebooks
Published: 2014-02-11T16:00:00+00:00

According to the literature of the time, the best way to meet a single man in the waning days of the twentieth century was by accident. You would trip over his briefcase or pick up his cell phone by mistake or hail the same cab. This form of introduction was called a “meet cute.”

That’s a difficult concept to grasp, because I was six years old when the 99.9999 percent of men on earth turned into disgusting blobs of rotting, stinking flesh. Clearly, before the zombie apocalypse struck, the world was a far cuter place.

Women were far more adorable, too. Per my research, they frequently lost the ability to speak coherently in the presence of an available male, a phenomenon known as “babbling.” Similarly, they lost all coordination and the ability to properly control gross motor function. This stumbling around was called “bumbling.” In some cases, women were required to hide their intelligence, a process called “playing dumb.” This was done to appease the male ego.

There were tons of rules for dating in the late 1990s, some of them from a book actually called The Rules. In addition to The Rules, I spend days poring over relationship manuals, advice columns, and thoughtful novels confusingly described as women’s fiction. I also watch clips of pre-plague TV shows and movies. Sitcoms, in particular, offer illuminating examples of women playing down their abilities, usually proving how much smarter they are than their husbands in smug asides so that the men don’t have to know the truth. I get it: This total father-knows-least cluelessness is adorable.

A surprising amount of the literature focuses on the actual places you could meet a man—surprising because men were literally all around: behind you on the checkout line, beside you at a traffic light, next to you on the subway. There was such an abundance of human males, you’d think all you had to do was turn to your left to meet one cutely. In reality, however, you had to seek them out by, say, signing up for an auto-repair class at the local community center. The idea was to find a place where men gathered and gather there, too.

What works during times of abundance would seem to work twice as well in times of scarcity, so I stake out the closest sperm-donation center, which is located in Long Island City. The building is spare and squat, with yellow aluminum siding and a low roof. Before the plague hit, it was a nightclub called the Cathedral, which I presume was ironic, as there’s nothing grand about it. It was probably built in the 1960s to store loaves of Wonder Bread.

“I don’t get what we’re doing,” Cammie says, sliding down in the car seat next to me as she rests her sneakers on the glove compartment.

“We’re figuring out how to get in,” I explain, again. Given that all unzombified human males are required by law to pass on their H1Z1-resistant genes, a sperm-donation center seems like the ideal place to meet men.

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