Thursday, July 10, 2008

DEAD!


It's come to this. I'm gonna tell you about my bugs.

I've had a recent, extreme and life-changing encounter with a swarm of roaches, little black bugs and even littler black bugs in my apartment, specifically the kitchen. I've never had any roaches in any of the 14 apartments I've lived in in Manhattan, and now they had taken over the counter, sink, three cabinets, the floor.

The little black bugs were dwarfed by the size, ferocity and speed of the roaches, so the roaches were what I became obsessed with.

Obsessed with their lives, first. Eyes, ears, nose, lungs, excretory organs, sexual organs, antennae. A perfect insect, alive as you or me, seeking fortune and survival in the world like anyone.

Obsessed with their deaths. I put out traps, waited for 'em to work, and they didn't do anything.

I started compulsively windexing them. I rained a shower of toxic stuff upon their little bodies, one at a time, drenching them in poison and watching them run, freak out, wither, and die.

Killed dozens.

I'm not an idiot. This, I said to myself, has to counteract the veganism I began to counteract the pollution I spew and the Middle Eastern oil businesses I support with the cars I joyride in, for money and fame.

But it made me happy to see the roaches die.

Two weekends ago, I bought WMD---a can of Raid. I knew it was toxic, but I was getting desperate, and liberally sprayed cracks and crevices in corners and such before Mrs. M and I left for the weekend.

We didn't really get out of the house in time, and so my throat closed and my eyes burned a little. We drove straight to a service station and splashed gasoline on our faces. Better!

Got home 30 hours later and the roaches were still very much alive, and the can of Raid had dents in it. It was the Windex, then.

And so life went on. Other things had to be seen to. Each night, I left the kitchen light on (I heard roaches hate light) and all the cabinet doors open, and every morning upon awakening, I'd dash into the kitchen and spray, spray, spray, watching them writhe, writhe, writhe, and die, die, die.

DIE!

I had mental images of being reincarnated like Kafka's roach and being showered with sky-blue, toxic drink that would clog my pores, run into my lungs and make me die.

Thursday, I got a physical glimpse of it. I took my car into a car wash.

The jets rained death upon me as my car inched forward, pounding me with water, cruel, relentless water, not one mirror or bumper left unsoaked. My world, temporarily, was a nightmarish modern trench, and I got a glimpse of what the roaches experience.


I drove 120 MPH out of the car wash and 160 MPH over the George Washington Bridge and 80 MPH into my garage. I sat there, panting, panicked.

But alive. And I will remain so until some foot or giant palm finds me when I cannot squirm into a crack, crevice or under some counter, and finishes me.


I bought a tube of Combat Platinum, and applied it into many, many cracks in my kitchen.
The next day, invasion completely halted. It's been 5 days and not a single bug is to be seen.


All quiet on the Inwood front.

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