That Which Shall Never Be Spoken Of

I was walking up the steps from the subway station when I saw it. It was straight out of a scene in a movie about the perils of big cities. Where the heroine looks away in disgust and realizes that city living isn’t all high-end dining and swanky clubs and affording a cute little one-bedroom in a safe, affluent building that is nice and quiet b/c it’s off a noisy street, yet is somehow enough of a thoroughfare to always have cabs driving down it to hail at a moments notice. I know it’s a TV show, but Sex and the City has to be based in truth, right?

Carrie Bradshaw is a fucking liar. Living in a city is downright dirty most of the time. As evidenced by the mammoth roach I saw outside the train station today. Straight chillin. Like he hadn’t a care in the world. And he probably didn’t. Because people take one look at him and scamper in the opposite direction, lest he fix his buggy eyes on them and hitch a ride to their apartment and subsequently ruin their life.

In defense of my lovely city, this was the first time I’ve seen a roach outside of the train station; usually they’re scurrying into cracks in the wall 1,000 leagues under Boston. And it was my first encounter with a roach after That Which Shall Never Be Spoken Of.

Now that your curiosity is piqued, I can stop w/ the dramatics. That Which Shall Never Be Spoken Of refers to when my sister and I were living in roach Motel 6. Actually, this was way nicer than a Motel 6, evidenced by the fact that those little shits never wanted to leave. It was more like the Plaza for roaches; except none of them were checking out. Ever.

Living with roaches does something to your sense of self. You begin to live shrouded in shame and embarrassment. There’s constant anxiety when a guest is over, which leads to never having anyone over, period. And don't even get me started on the issue of having to get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I'm not even exaggerating when I say I was living in fear (okay, maybe exaggerating slightly).

The worst thing about having those little fuckers in my apartment was that they began to dictate my life. My sister and I would have to schedule work and appointments around the exterminator. I never wanted friends to visit b/c I was too ashamed of my living circumstances. And I began seeing them everywhere. A speck of lint on my clothes was cause for alarm b/c I always assumed it was one of them.

In an extremely out-of-character act of humanity, our slumlord landlord let us out of our lease early. But not before I had some serious doubts about ever living pest-free again. Fortunately, our next apartment was roach free. We saw a mouse once, but I’ll gladly take Mickey over the only creature that can survive a nuclear holocaust.

Moving in w/ B was not only exciting b/c it was a step in the right direction for us, but b/c it meant no more creepy-crawlies. And if I do see the occasional fruit fly, I make B deal w/ it. I’ve killed more than enough bugs in my lifetime.

At least that’s what I thought until I spotted that smug little shit outside the subway this morning. Normally I would have looked the other way like everyone else does. But seeing him brought back all these disgusting memories, and before I knew what I was doing, I was stomping around so much people didn’t know if they should hightail it out of there or throw coins at the maniacal lady doing a half-cocked Irish step dance.