new roommate
I'm sitting at home, waiting for Saturday Night Live to come on (SHUT UP, I WAS OUT EARLIER BEING VERY COOL AND SOCIAL) and this hugeass cockroach scurries in the apartment through the crack between the floor and the door.
I leap up and go to kill it. I'm too slow. Fucking asshole is under the stove. I grab my cat, who's asleep on the couch, and dump her down in front of the stove. HELP ME. She looks at me like I'm nuts and goes back to where she was before. I get my dustvac and shove the skinny part of it under the stove. Fuck. I don't hear any crunching. I move the stove back and KABLOW. There's the roach. I lunge and miss. AGAIN.
Time to get serious. Light. Roaches hate light. I will smoke you out of your hole. I put on slippers (no way I'm doing this in bare feet) and find the flashlight. It's under the sink and has kitty litter crusted on it. I turn it on. It's dead. Fuck. Batteries, where do I have batteries? MY VIBRATOR. She made the ULTIMATE SACRIFICE for her country. I swap 'em out and spend the next 20 minutes shining the flashlight and moving the stove back and forth, stretching the gas connection to breaking point and tearing my piece-of-shit linoleum. That's gonna come off the security deposit.
So I didn't get him and I am FRUITING OUT. I am fine with all bugs except roaches. Spiders, even. FUCK. I am going to go buy some roach shit right now, even though that means putting my clothes back on and going down to the bodega, which at this time of evening I normally avoid because it's thronged by obnoxious drunk people.
What if the roach goes on my face? My mouth? What if it crawls on me? The worst was seeing it crawl under the door. If it just randomly appeared it would be so much less disturbing. There are many apartments in this building and roaches like this one. I think I am going to buy aluminum foil and use it to create a barrier. Is that psycho? I am trying to calm myself with thoughts of how bad other people have it in the Third World and how poor people have to put up with much worse in low income housing and I should thank God it's only one roach and stop being such a pussy but it's NOT WORKING.
Bjork is on SNL. I wonder if she likes roaches. I bet she does. I bet she has one in her band. It plays trumpet.
6 comments:
I grew up in the Bronx, and cockroaches were a part of life, no matter how clean our apartment was... You should look into this chalk they have...it's supposed to repel them. Or get one of those sonic things. I have one and I haven't seen a cockroach, or been robbed ever since...
Also, I met Cockroach (cosby show dude) once at the Apollo theatre in like 1986. He was chatting with Bizmarkie (80s rapper) and I asked for their autograph and they both were SO rude. So I called them out, and almost got kicked out.
About 13 years later, I was in CT at a gas station and Bizmarkie just happened to be there in his Hummer. He immediately drove off. I think he recognized me.
ew. i remember this time when i was reading a book called the roaches have no king, and i put it down to go get something to drink in the kitchen, turned on the light and like 10 of them scattered. i freaked, but i went back to the book and kept on reading anyway. that is, until it got to the scene where the roaches give this hungarian woman head while she's sleeping as part of an elaborate plot that i won't go into here. the roaches went fucking down on her! i went ape shit. i have no idea how the book ended because that is exactly where i threw it down.
p.s. you can have my copy if you want.
mommy that rachel lady reads some weird shit.
I read somewhere that roaches don't like catnip (I know, sounds weird...), I sprinkled some around the kitchen and, aside from a permanently stoned cat, it seems to have worked.
Good luck.
Just for anyone else besides Erin who's wondering: Boric acid powder, weather-stripping, and a caulking gun (steel wool for larger holes).
If they can't get in, you won't have roaches.
I had a cockroach run across my neck in Athens. Right after my ex-hubby walked out unexpectedly. Boy howdy, that was a banner month.
Three years later, I recovered sufficiently to snark about my impromptu divorce-roach odyssey in an anthology, entitled "Greece, A Love Story".
http://greecealovestory.com
Points for irony?
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