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.