june 25 2000
i've always been what amounts to a peaceful person. not physically confrontational, good with kids, etc. when i see spiders in my apartment, i try to find a way to get them out peacefully, or just let them go about their business and trust them not to inject me with their fearful arachnid venom. so far so good. even on those two or three occasions in my young life when i've found insects who have decided that on me was the perfect place for their afternoon nap, i've tried to employ the two-pronged pacifist pluck-flick offense rather than the more warmongery crush-kill-destroy tactic. of course, until friday night, i'd never had an enormous cockroach crawl onto my face; such a thing catalyzes a bruce-banner-type transformation. nun becomes hun, origami thug becomes screaming bloodthirsty savage. that sort of thing. [note: we apologize for the excessive use of the hyphen for adjectival purposes. thank you--the Eds.]
in prefacing the description with the event, i realize i'm abandoning any hopes of dramatic tension, but it's the kind of thing that has to be put out there. i guess something like "caveat: nocturnal thoraxed terror up ahead" would be a more economic means of foreshadowing, but, as i always say, fuck economic foreshadowing. i ain't alan greenspan. in instances such as this, one should by all means feel comfortable with saying, "hey. a huge cockroach crawled onto my face. it was horrific." so, basically, that's what i'm doing. granted, it's in a phemonenally long-winded fashion, but since that's what i pride myself on, that's what i'ma do.
as mentioned in the previous entry, i had to get up early yesterday to catch a train to new haven for a barbecue and a kool and the gang concert. staying in on friday night thus seemed like a pragmatic measure, and since i don't take many of those, i, well, decided to. paid bills, made dinner, lived the adult life. or, at least, what i imagine the adult life to be. sometime around 10-ish, my peripheral vision poked my regular vision in the side and said "ay yo, there's a blob on the floor over there, and it's moving." my regular vision poked my head and said "ay yo, you might want to check out this tip i just got." i turned, i looked, and i saw rhode island crawling across the floor in my room. the weird thing was, rhode island isn't supposed to have legs (or at least that's not what the grafted devil tells us in his his-story books). closer panicked examination revealed that it wasn't actually a small new england state, but a cockroach.
in my new york cockroach experiences, the vermin fall into two categories (and here i employ steve's typically shrewd insight that milan kundera appeals to late-teen/early-twenties readers because he bisects most wordly phemonena into two equally thick but navigable sub-phenomena): "normal" and "fucking huge." most, thankfully, fall into the former category, but i've happened upon a couple of examples of the latter, and they ain't to be fucked with. the most notable one, last summer, found itself on the business end of a half-can of raid and still stumbled around my kitched, keening, for a good ten minutes. the one that i thought was rhode island was roughly this size. ass to antenna-tip, at least three inches. this means close to two inches of of raw cockroach power. and it was crawling toward a corner of my futon comforter that touched the floor. my brain said to me "ay yo, that cockroach is about to crawl all up on your futon, yo." i flipped the comforter corner up, and the thing just took off.
now, if you've had good roach exposure, you know they some fast little thangs. judging from this one, it probably got picked first in cockroach gym class. i ran out into the kitchen, grabbed the raid, and conducted a fruitless search. wherever it was, the thing was laughing. so were my roommate and his friend, who were making dinner and were a little surprised by my girlish yelps. being thwarted, though, i was pissed enough that my brain forgot to poke my hand and say "ay yo, maybe we should spray things down anyway, yo." so i didn't. i put the raid down in the living room--within easy reach, i thought--and continued with my business until about 12:30, when i tried to be a good little early-riser and go to bed.
as i was finishing my nightly ablutions, i thought "yo. hold up. could that thing come get me tonight?" i realize this is a hysterical breach of rational thinking, but if you saw this damn thing, you'd be thinking the same thing. wait, i thought--an ounce of prevention is worth a 40-bottle of raid, or something along those lines! so i wedged my futon tight against the wall, turned off the light, and laid there in the dark. which is when the nightmare scenarios started scrolling through my mind. 1) if i fall asleep on my back, my mouth may open, 2) the roach could crawl in, 3) lay eggs!, and 4) i'd be one of those urban-legend thinking human hosts. thankfully, my rational thinking poked my hysterical id in the side and said "ay yo, you're not an infant in the slums of mexico city. you're an adult. roaches have no desire to get all up in yo' bidness [yes, this is how my mind talks]. relax, yo." true enough, i reasoned as i turned onto my side.
sleep crept under the door, as it always eventually does, and began its dance up the body [before i fall asleep, i first become aware of the fact that more and more of my body not only hasn't moved in some time, but probably couldn't if i wanted it to. this is always a sure sign of impending slumber.]. sometime during that process, it also started to dance down from the top of my head toward my left temple. "ay yo," said my brain, "yo! sleep goes from bottom to top, not top to bottom! that ain't sleep that's dancing, that's something with legs, yo!" i don't know that it would be possible to gauge the quickenss with which i sat up in bed, nor the ferocity with which i slapped repeatedly at my face and head. i imagine that i looked a lot like an autistic child being forced to play with others.whatever was on my head and face fell off onto my bed, and i yanked the lamp on. and looked right at that rhode-island-looking fucking roach right there next to me, chillin' on the sheets. what happened next is a little hazy, which i think is excusable, given the psychotic rage that was permeating my body at the time. what i'm sure of is this:
i smacked the roach into the wall, then ran out of my room yelling about "yo, that roach just crawled onto my face!" my roommate and his friend, who were in his room with the door open, made choked noises of simultaneous horror and amusement. i grabbed the can of raid, turned on my overhead light, and turned into travis bickle. pulling shelves and beds from the wall, spraying all along the baseboards, yelling "you want war, motherfucker?! it's on for real, see!" just getting my yell on, for real. spraying raid everywhere, probably taking an unhealthy amount of it into my lungs. "you 'bout to get got, roach! i hope you want some more, 'cause i got plenty more for yo' ass!" it was pretty disgusting, really. but i couldn't find the roach. i can tell you this, though: it wasn't laughing now. hells no. that thing ran somewhere dark and put its nasty little head between its nasty little rear legs and cried nasty little roach tears.
and when i woke up in the morning and walked out of my room, it was on its back, nasty little roach legs and antennae waving slightly. whether it was because of my air conditioner or because it was still twitching in the throes of death, i didn't care. i just stood over it and taunted for a good long time, left it there as an example to its nasty little roach brethren, and took my shower. went to new haven. ate. saw kool and the gang. came back--no roaches in sight. they know who the mayor is now.
to recap: two-pronged pacifist pluck-flick offense. nocturnal thoraxed terror. thank you.
p.
and yo. my full-on venture kneejerk.net is up and running, though not nearly full. go and getcha read on. for me.
props to darkcounter.com
and sitemeter