By Beauty Damned

Ballad of the Cockroach

This one is for you Jen. You wanted the details, and here they are....

I wonder how Howard would react - or if he would revel in the irony - knowing that I used four of his precious books - books that I took from his apartment during the poignant aftermath of his death - to kill a big, huge cockroach that was roaming my apartment. "The Norton Anthology of English Literature," "Seven Plays by Bernard Shaw," "Roget's Thesauras," and of course, the icing on the murderous cake: "The Works of Oscar Wilde." I only stacked the other three on when the uncannily resilient creeature was still alive and apparently squirming after three hours beneath the Anthology of English Lit.

I saw this same roach for the first time a few days before while I had company for the weekend. Nothing like having houseguests witness a massive cockroach running across your living room floor. Luckily, my guests were old friends from Oregon, and were not the least bit prissy about it, though Kate was clearly as skeeved out at the thought of it running over her foot as I was, since we both jumped up onto the furniture as soon as we saw it scurrying around. I sent Matilda after it. Of course, Matilda played the whole catch and release game until the fucker escaped under the couch. Matilda camped out vigilantly for a long time, but it looked like the beast had given her the slip for good.

Now here I was four days later, sitting on my sofa, when I saw it again. He looked fatter than last time I spotted him, and that hideous shadow larger, quite like a blimp atop those horribly long legs, as he waddled across the carpet carrying the extra girth that he'd acquired during his stay in my home. This time I wasn't going to take any chances with the cat or this creature escaping into my closet, so I grabbed the nearest, largest book I could find, which happened to be the Norton Anthology, and I slammed it down on top of the roach with a vengence. You have to understand that this is one of a few creatures that I have an incredibly difficult time mustering any compassion for whatsoever. My Buddhist roots fly straight out the window when it comes to cockroaches, and if they get near my shoes, then things get personal. I want them dead. I know that sounds so wrong, but it's honest.

After slamming the book down on it, I got on top of the book and stood on it, using all my might to press every last one of my 125 lbs. into my feet and down onto the book. My weight has never felt so meager as it did at that moment, feeling like it would be impossible to put enough pressure on the sonofabitch to kill it properly. One thing I don't like is terminator bugs that require a great deal of effort to kill. I like to know that if I'm taking another sentient being's life, it's quick and painless for everyone involved. Roaches are of a unique caliber of sentient being. They are not fragile like other living things. They are highly evolved and adept at protecting themselves against demolition, and that could possibly be the thing about them which is most disturbing.

I left the bug under the book for a few hours while I went to have dinner at the cafe down the street. When I came back, I scooted the book a bit to check on the status of the cockroach's demise. As soon as I moved the book, I saw the long, slender feelers and part of its body, the color of which might be one of the few colors in nature that I find absolutely repugnant - an oily blackish-brown - squirming. The feelers reached up languidly - not so much grasping for life as dancing tauntingly, as if to say, "look at me! I'm still alive!" Not a single atom of my being felt merciful. I was sickened by the mere fact that any creature could survive that kind of blunt force impact. Anything else would have died. But not a cockroach, especially one of this size. He just laid himself right down flat and lived on. When I recounted the story to my father on the telephone later, he said, "well you know that it is in a cockroach's nature to enjoy being squeezed, which is why they like to live in tight spaces. You probably gave him the thrill of his life." This revelation only sent another tremendous shudder down my spine.

After piling on the other three books, I got ready for bed. Under the covers, trying to stop my heart from palpitating about the hideous creature that lay "suffering" beneath that stack of Howard's books, I knew it was silly to feel grossed out and even a little bit guilty - a totally selfish guilt though, not merciful guilt, because that would have been beyond my capacity at that point - about the idea of going to sleep with Mr. Cockroach dying slowly underneath a stack of books. It's not like I parked my car in my garage with a homeless person lodged in the windshield, but for some reason, my conscience still drew a comparison. It bothered me to know that the cockroach was likely to still be alive. It bothered me in a weird, Dawn of the Dead kind of way.

This incident occurred last Thursday or Friday. I have yet to lift the stack of books for fear that the beast is just waiting to be let out. It's not possible. Is it? There is something definitely wrong with me. For all I know, the thing has turned to tar under there.

Posted by Maria at August 29, 2006 02:56 PM | TrackBack