July 27th, 2010
Metamorphosis East
So last week the exterminator was supposed to come to my building, and oh, he came alright. Except guess who left the wrong lock unlocked on her door — after emptying all her cupboards and clearing off all her half-inch of counter space — and prevented him from being able to get into her unit? I’ll give you a hint: it’s the same person whose unit is closest to both the restaurant downstairs and the garbage. Oh, and the recycling, which is basically the garbage since people toss unrinsed plastic cartons that once contained, like, raw fish heads into it.
No, I did not personally call an exterminator to deal with my cockroach problem — which really isn’t as much of a “problem” as it is a “confusion over rights of cohabitation,” anyway — as I’m really not that much of a prima donna, and let’s face it: I’ve lived in six other neighborhoods in the city and have encountered a total of five individual cockroaches, one mouse, and zero rats — over these nine & a half years — so I consider myself quite lucky on the apartment pest front. But apparently “certain tenants” were having a “rodent” issue, and therefore the entire building needed to be dealt with.
I was off from work all last week, so technically I could have stuck around to see exactly what it is that an exterminator does, but (a) I didn’t want to be sad when it didn’t turn out to be John Goodman, (b) I didn’t want to “acknowledge” the fact that this guy would most likely be spraying the shit out of my entire apartment with the most toxic chemicals imaginable, and (c) I didn’t want to have to admit to myself that I was secretly okay with (b) as long as it would silently solve my roach problem, and as long as I didn’t actually have to witness it happening.
So I got up early, readied the apartment for extermination, and then left to go find a library to hang out in, except that was my first mistake, because guess what? Remember how there was a big stink about cutting library funding awhile back, but nobody really paid any attention since they didn’t think it would affect them? Well, P.S.: Libraries don’t open until, like, 11am now. I’m not kidding! I gave up on the one closest to my apartment immediately, eventually locating another, bigger one that opened at TEN, and proceeded to hover around the entrance, biding my time with the rest of the homeless people and crazies who have to deal with this travesty every day, god bless ‘em.
And then of course they didn’t have the book I wanted — Margaret Atwood, hello! What library doesn’t keep all Margaret Atwood books on hand? — so I ended up just going to the bookstore around the corner — which had been open since NINE, thanks! — and I sat down in a comfy chair in a nearly-empty room with faint adult contemporary music piping in somewhere off in the distance, thoroughly unintrusively. They had the book I wanted, and that book was on sale, and as a lifelong pusher of Libraries Being a Good Thing, I am pretty traumatized to report that the city’s most pleasant summer reading experience can be found at the Borders on 57th and Park.
After awhile, I was like, “Okay, this is almost TOO pleasant. It’s 95 degrees out. I should be SUFFERING!” So, where does one go during the day to suffer on the Upper East Side? Answer: a park. See, one major thing I’ve learned about East versus West is that the West Side does its parks entirely differently, and by that I mean that they incorporate grass! And trees! And, and… other elements that are supposed to comprise a… park! The East Side throws down a slab of concrete, puts up a playground, plants some shrubbery that only attracts the kinds of birds that will eat its berries and crap them right back out onto the benches, and then looks the other way when people don’t pick up after their dogs. I cannot convey in words how much I miss the West Side Greenway or whatever it’s called. I would risk my life crossing its bike path just to lie down on any of its grassy knolls anyday, hands down, rather than sit upright on a stiff-backed bench watching a nanny hold a twentysomething’s newborn so that mommy can primely situate herself in a cooing position before getting bored in .5 seconds and darting off to go pick up lunch at Subway while the nanny resumes raising her child for her.
When I finally went back to my apartment, I was like, “Wow — exterminators must use some crazy-ass advanced, invisible/scentless extermination products nowadays!” Because everything in my apartment was exactly as I’d left it. There was zero sign that anyone had entered. And then I realized: I am a moron. The top lock has one of those little extra levers that, if pressed down, makes it stay locked from the outside no matter what, and I had forgotten to disengage it. The exterminator hadn’t been able to get in.
After I collapsed on my bed in defeat, I looked up and noticed something marching directly toward me across the floor: one of my resident cockroaches. And I say “resident” because I firmly believe that this is the same family of cockroaches that has resided in the building for generations, laying low briefly each time a new human tenant takes up residence in a unit, and then dispatching the friendliest of its welcome wagon reps at a certain point to be like, “Hey! We’re more afraid of you than you are of us! We’ll stay out of your way if you stay out of ours!”
This particular roach, though, is a little too friendly. One of the first nights in my apartment I had the a/c off — even though it was 1,000 degrees — since I was living in constant fear of how much my bill would be, and I swear I woke from a delirious sleep to this cockroach perched on my leg. I shrieked, jumped up, swatted it away, turned on all the lights, and stood in the middle of the room for about nineteen hours, remaining on the alert until I was sure it was gone and I’d fully caught my breath and was calmed down enough to go back to sleep.
I’m still not sure if that really happened, or if it was just a nightmare. I mean, why would a cockroach come anywhere near a nice, brand new, clean, dry bed, with a nice, clean, dry, freshly bathed person in it, when there is a restaurant downstairs, and lots of delicious, fresh garbage EVERYWHERE within a .5 block radius?! Either way, something in my subconscious is preventing me from fully believing it was real, BLESS MY SUBCONSCIOUS’S LIL HEART.
But then sitting there in total defeat on my bed — after a day of everything that could possibly have gone wrong going wrong — and seeing this cockroach coming toward me, I couldn’t help but think it had to be the same one. I mean, it acted like it was on familiar territory — waltzing across the floor, AWAY from the kitchen, AWAY from the garbage can, TOWARD NOTHING EDIBLE OR OF VALUE TO IT — and looking up at me, like, “Oh hey! You’re back! I thought we’d chill for awhile again. Is now a good time? Yes? Okaygood!” The thing didn’t even break stride, and I’m sorry to have to do you like this, dear readers:
(Lara and Elliott, cover your eyes)
But without a second thought I took three steps across the room and stomped on the mo’ fo’ with all my might, squashing it into the ground with all my weight until I was positive it was 3,000% dead. And then I wiped up its carcass with a papertowel and tossed it in the garbage, should its relatives discover it there and decide to resort to cannibalism.
And now every night when I turn out the lights and get settled into bed, I think, “Okay, guys. Darkness has fallen! If you’re going to come out, there’s not a whole hell of a lot I can do about it, but please proceed in the direction of ACTUAL FOOD/WASTE… INSTEAD of toward ME. Got it? FOOD/WASTE = good. INNOCENT SLUMBERING HUMAN FORM = bad.” I haven’t encountered a single roach since the ill-fated stomping, and perhaps they’re in mourning for the guy, but something tells me we’ve reached a certain understanding, and we probably won’t be seeing much of each other in the near future.
