My name is Steve, and I am a zombie.
Yes, while you all were busy rehashing the definition of a hookup and explaining to each other what DFMO stands for, I was busy scavenging this campus for brains. I figured this would be the place to look, since this is a campus full of quality brains. But my journey has not been easy. Allow me to explain.
It’s awkward for me to have to go to precept and see the girl whose brain I tried to eat sitting across the table, glaring at me over the screen of her MacBook. It’s uncomfortable to go home with someone and there’s this assumption that you’re going to just want to mess around, and then you just go right for the occipital. I don’t like having to be that guy. I respect her, honestly. But I can’t really fight the urge to just eat her brain after a long night at the Street. It’s like a slice of Frist pizza that also dances with you.
Because, please, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think a girl’s asking for it. Really. My friend Fred and I get into this all the time. He goes on about how a gal is wearing a headband, and so she’s clearly trying to attract his attention to her brain by accentuating it. So, I have to be like “Man, you can’t just say stuff like that. You can’t just let that be a thing.”
He’s the kind of zombie who doesn’t really get the notion of agency. Which is sort of understandable, because there’s really little agency you can afford people when you’re about to eat their brains. But he uses all this sort of self-loathing language about using her brain for his needs and how he feels like he’s on some kind of nighttime prowl looking for his next kill, and I’ve got to sit him down and just tell him to chill. He goes on and on about how he needs to take a girl out to Starbucks because it’s harder to inconspicuously try to eat somebody’s brain when you’re on a coffee date than in the darkness of the TI basement. And if you let him keep talking he gets on about putting his hands all over her frontal lobe and how he’s got to ignore the burn of his body. Seriously. Nobody’s self-castigated like that since Augustine.
Unlike Fred, I acknowledge that women have their own sex drives and are totally entitled to them. When you ask me to come to your room, you are not attempting to appease me with what the patriarchy claims to be your only thing of value, your womanly form. You’re also not guaranteed to actually even want to sleep with me. I know an invitation inside does not equal a proposition for sex. It also probably does not equal a proposition for me to eat your brain. There’s about a zero percent chance anyone is going to give you enthusiastic consent to just chomp down on their noggin. And for this, I apologize.
Though I’d appreciate it if you all cut me some slack here. I’m a good guy, I think. I identify as a feminist, but don’t assume I just go after women. I’m more pangustatorial. I mean, I wouldn’t date a guy, but I’d eat his brain. And, whatever, that’s not a big deal, right? It’s college.
But, please, Princetonians, continue to beat this debate into a pulpy mess on the dance floor, grind it up like Small World coffee grounds, proclaim the words “agency” and “problematic” from the proverbial hills. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. And in a campus full of knights, queens, damsels and all the king’s men, there’s bound to be a lot of feelings.
But there’s also bound to be a lot of brains.
Lauren Prastien is an anthroplogy major from Fair Lawn, N.J. She can be reached at prastien@princeton.edu.
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