A New York Experience-- #1 in a series: On the bed, on the floor, on a towel by the door, in the tub, in the car, up against the mini-bar

Most creepy-crawly things instill in me a sense of curiosity. Thanks to my brother Dan, I have no problem picking up (small) house spiders, and went chasing after tarantulas in both the Australian Outback and Costa Rica. I love snakes and took pride in handling mildly poisonous species in Malaysia.

Show me a cockroach, though, no matter the size, and I break into a spontaneous and unstoppable dance, whereupon I flap my hands like a crazed chicken and hop from one foot to the other all the while exclaiming, "Ew ew ew ew oh my god ew ew ew ew." And, of course, here in New York, cockroaches are the fabric of our lives. I was warned as such, but never did I imagine how intimately they would become entwined with my daily activities. I step over them on the way to the subway as they sidle along lazily (New York cockroaches, in the summer at least, are not really into the whole scurrying thing). I check the railing before I put my hand on it at work at the restaurant, due to prior unfortunate incidents. I go running out of the conference room as I discover a dead one in front of the TV at my other job. I pause in my sushi eating and jump quickly onto my chair during lunch at Wholefoods (a New York experience to the nth degree-- a celebrity spotting-- Miranda from Sex and the City-- followed by a gigantic cockroach sighting). They are so ubiquitous that everytime I see one I get that Sarah Silverman song, the lyrics of which grace the title of this post, stuck in my head, except instead of f-ing Matt Damon, I'm cursing f-ing cockroaches.

Still, though, I bragged to my coworker one Friday night, my apartment is a haven. A fairly modern, clean brownstone, not some huge pre-war apartment building with decades-old heating ducts. No restaurants anywhere on the block. A well-heeled, young landlord and young, professional tenants--none of whom would put up with a roach infestation. I scrubbed the place from heating duct to depths of cabinets to behind the toilet (having time to do so was one positive of waiting forever for our stuff to get here)-- no evidence, ever, of roaches.

The thing is, though, you really shouldn't brag about these things. That same night, after bragging to my coworker, while lying in bed, I glanced over to the bookcase.

"Oh my god. Karel. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god."

"What?"

"Oh my god. Bookcase. Look. Oh my god."

There, on top of the bookcase: a gigantic mutant cockroach, 2 inches, huge enough to make its Southeast Asian cousins proud (had it in fact been incubating in my backpack since Vietnam??), just hanging out, enjoying the breeze from the fan as its antennae waved in circles around its head.

Karel jumped up, ran right by it (causing no movement on the part of Giganto-Roach-- these roaches are lazy and have no fear of humans), grabbed a paper towel and flushed it.

I cowered in the middle of the bed, afraid to touch the walls, the sheets, the pillows.

Ok, on the plus side, the bigger the roach, the less likelihood of infestation. Maybe it just came in the window. Let's hope they didn't get into our stuff while it was in storage (one less f--- you from the lovely folks at SAM). I decided to give it a few weeks, if we didn't see another, it was probably just a random roach drop-in.

Fast-forward to this morning. I get out of the shower. I grab one of my two bathrobes hanging from the door and put it on. I hear a distinct buzzing of wings to my right, something land on my shoulder for a moment, and then buzz back to the door. Please let that have been a hornet or something. I look over at my other bathrobe. Gigantic mutant FLYING cockroach, crawling right up the inside of the other, lighter bathrobe I almost put on. Why can't we just have nice, normal, non-flying cockroaches like everyone else? Oh my god, maybe there are more. I rip the towel off my hair and the bathrobe off my body and run, screaming and buck naked, into the bedroom, where I abruptly rouse Karel from his just-a-half-hour-before-I-have-to-get-up-and-I-just-need-a-bit-more-time sleep.

"Giant cockroach giant cockroach giant cockroach! Landed on me! Kill it kill it kill it!"

Whereupon a spray-and-hide-and-seek game ensued in the bathroom, with the roach almost escaping into the heater after pulling a disappearing act from the bathrobe to the inside of the tub and then back out. Fortunately, Karel won. What would I do without him?

This was, of course, followed by a rat scurrying across the stairs in front of me as I emerged from the front of our brownstone.

Ah, New York.

Swallowing my pride (dedicated to Adrian :) )

I am a 28-year-old intern. As in, I am doing the thankless work usually relegated to those 22 and under (aka, my former students' peers). For free.

And while I have to swallow my pride and giggle slightly ashamedly when my... what do I call them? Coworkers? Mentors? Masters?... ask me about my background and I watch the concerned surprise manifest in their eyes, it's honestly not that bad. It's a great, small company, and I'm getting a lot of hands-on work and exposure. The bad part, however, is the fact that, as I am unpaid and as we just moved in (lord, now THAT'S a story) to a very expensive apartment, this will be a very busy summer of trying not to fall asleep in front of the copier in the morning and slinging drinks behind the bar at night and on the weekend (yes, I have actually gotten good enough behind the bar that they have promoted me to a few primo shifts). But, hey, in the past 24 months, I have worked about 5, so I obviously have zero to complain about.

The eternal teacher, however, I want to use this as a teachable moment. Kids, always follow your gut instinct. The funny thing about me and Karel is that, among our many similarities, we chose not to pursue what interested us at an early age and spent a good amount of time being aimless before finally settling into what we really have wanted to do since we were kids. Karel always loved to cook. When his father suggested applying to cooking schools as he prepared for college, he laughed him off, saying, "Dad, I want to work in an office when I graduate. I want to wear a suit. Besides, cooking's not serious." (I swear, that's really what he said. Fortunately, he changed.) After graduating with a degree in economics and spending some time in San Diego working with sailboats, he finally decided to listen to his father and his gut and go to culinary school. As for me, my mom can testify that I've wanted to be a writer my whole life. Yet in college, I thought Communications was too frivolous a major. So I studied... International Relations. And... Wait for it... Anthropology. Obviously highly useful. I should point out, however, that at Tufts at the time, Communications as a major was only offered through the Experimental College. Would you have been comfortable with a degree from the Experimental College? Don't they train clowns there? Instead, I experimented on my own, teaching (which I did love, but not as much as writing) and traveling, before I finally came here to New York and decided to try out the whole thing for real. My internship is at a book publishing house, which is not exactly writing per se, but it's books, and I love it.

I am, however, very poor. And very over-worked. And very tired. Especially this week, after Tuesday night's game (yay Celtics!). So, kids, learn from me (perhaps your former teacher. Any former students out there? Hi! Miss you guys!) and follow your gut. Unless you, too, strive to one day be an unpaid intern pushing 30.