This past Sunday I had a house full of people for Urban Family Get-Together. They drank a lot of beer and wine, and ate tons of cheese and cheese-based dishes. Guamaniac showed up with a sack full of McDonald's double-cheeseburgers. By the end of the night, our colons were full, and we were sated in that soporific, Sunday eve way. Wikus tarried long enough to help me clean up, and I was in bed probably before 9pm. I did not take out the trash.
And I blame this oversight or what happened to me on Monday night. After the longest day ever at work (as in I had no work to do, the wifi wasn't cooperating, and I neglected to bring my book*), I was doing some late-night dish-washing, all proud of myself for not sitting on them for days, when I turned around to throw something away and was confronted by a very large monstrosity. A 3” cockroach was staring at me, it’s antennae quivering disgustingly. He was hanging out by the trashcan full of cheesy goodness.
What happened next, I am not proud of, and some of my closer friends won’t even be shocked by. In fact, Wikus describes it as me “acting like a crazed infant.” To which I responded, “Infants can’t run, asshole!” He’s used to this behavior from our time we leaved together in our top-floor apartment with a flat roof. There were a lot of these 3” mofos flying around that place, especially in the middle of the night in the bathroom. I stopped going to the bathroom at night—a very reasonable solution, I feel.
I’m a squealer. I see a roach, and I am heading in the opposite direction while shrieking incomprehensible gibberish, which is kind of similar to what I do when I see a kitten, but the tone is of terror instead of joy. The sensible thing would be to thwack the damn thing with a shoe, and be done with it—at least that is what my friends tell me (72 comments follow my Facebook plea for assistance on disposing of this evil). However, every time I tried to get near it, this primal fear took control, and I started babbling something like, “Oh, fuck me, get out, get out, go away, leave me alone, why are you doing this to me, please, please, please go away already, I hate you, be gone with you, leave me be, out, out, OUT!” and I’d find myself in the bedroom shaking with fear, and sending off a slew of hatred toward my online friends because I could totally hear them laughing at me.
Since it was late at night, no one had the energy to come save me. I briefly considered sleeping in my car—no, I’m not being facetious, I really thought about it. In the end, I decided that the roach would probably spend his night dining in, and wouldn’t venture all the way to the bedroom where no cheesy deliciousness existed. My hope was that he would find his own way out in the morning, and we could agree to never talk again.
Tuesday night was going smashingly. I was in my amazing purple-leather reading chair, reading the most amazing book*, when I see something out of the corner of my eye near my arm. My initial thought was I was seeing the tip of The Bear’s tail, but no, that roach was on me. ON ME! It was walking on my arm. Before I knew what I was doing, I threw my book, phone and blanket in the air, screamed in a way that suggested I was witnessing a thousand kittens being brutally murdered, and launched myself straight at the floor. Why the floor? I have no idea. It’s where I went—barking my shin and racking my left breast something hard on the way down. Then I crawled off, freaking out that I had no idea where the hell the thing had gone to. It could be in my hair! What if it was in my hair? Frantically beat at my hair and screamed some more. I dove in to the bedroom, and texted various people, crying about my nightmare. Again, no one would come to help. Though, those dear friends of mine are full of suggestions. Really good ones like insect spray or use The Bear. There were some really bad suggestions (in particular using a little person as a bludgeoning object).
Here’s the thing about The Bear. He is gorgeous and content. He does not get off his lazy, ungrateful ass to help his mother through her time of desperate need. He won’t even flick his tail at an insect. He won’t look at me either. He knows my expectations, and he simply cannot be bothered. He’s useless. I still love him dearly.
Last night passed without event. Tonight I have a secret weapon. I don’t want to jinx anything so I am not going to say anything for now. I really hope it works out, though. For lots of reasons.
* It has been quite some time since I’ve read a book that I wanted to shove in me as quickly as possible, but won’t because I want to savor each word lovingly. If you haven’t read Karen Russell, then just walk away from the computer or whatever handheld device you have in hand right now, and go buy her books immediately. This instant. NOW. Please don’t make me repeat myself. It’s that important. Don’t dally. Her short-story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves is brilliant, but her debut novel Swamplandia! is genius. It is a pure pleasure to words placed in such succinctly perfect ways. I don’t think I have felt this way about sentences since I read Lolita (the opening of which still makes me melt a bit, “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”).
I opened the book at random, and here is just a small sampling of what Karen gives to you:
I took a final breath and I was flying. Water flooded my nostrils. When I opened my eyes, I could see the Seths’ dim shapes from below, their great bellies that look like prehistoric pinecones and their dinosaur feet. I could see the glint of a Seth’s claws, curled motionless at the mountains of its sides—an alligator’s tail does all the work of swimming. Little starbursts of teeth, pebble over lips. A three- or four-hundred-pound Seth sailed over my head, and I watched a thin jet of bubbles rising from my own nostrils. Far above me peach ovals opened on the water—a column of milky illumination from the stadium lamps. They seemed to gasp back their light as I swam for them, like good dreams on waking.
Sigh. Amazing. There’s fun and light in there that I want to trap, capture in my mind, and think back about those college days when I tried to write like this—sometimes succeeding but usually failing. This is magical. Go get yourself some.
