The Scurge of My Life - Part 1

There is an enemy among us. He is a patient and dangerous combatant. He knows not the meaning of the word quit. He will not cease. He will come forth with all the anger and the fury he can muster. He is deadly, he is terrifying. He is… La Cucaracha.

It was a slightly cooler than average summer night in Queens, NY. With windows open the breeze is relaxing and cleansing. I am mulling around my apartment shirtless and barefoot as any man is allowed to do in his own home. I watched some Olympic diving, listened to a record entitled “The Best of Bread” and I was feeling okay. I have nothing on my mind but the sheer fabulosity of my life. I walked from my living room into my bathroom and my heart stops because what do I see in the bathtub but a god damn tyrannosaurus rex.

And this isn’t some sort of petite dainty bug. This is a bug that has been to the gym. He is massive. This creeper is so big I swear he is on steroids. There is no way he got as big as he did eating trash and pipe mold. No, this bug has been juicing. In fact I started to refer to him as Barry Bonds.

I am frozen. I am petrified. I can’t think of a single good idea. Never mind the fact I am 37 times bigger than the Barry Bonds in my bathtub, and weigh a trillion times more, I am still terrified. And something about being without a shirt makes me feel even more vulnerable. Barry Bonds is lying on his back in my bathtub. He looks a little bit like he is relaxing, with his too many legs in the air. Like he’s saying “Ah yes, this tub will do.” But my better judgment tells me he is at least wounded, so I have a chance to defeat him.

My weapon of choice is not one of violence or physical force. No, this calls for chemical warfare. I go to my closet and grab a bottle full of borax, a known cucaracha killer… and I pour it on him. Not a spoon-full or a heaving spoon-full, I bury him. Die! Dehydrate! Suffocate!

And do you know how Barry Bonds responds? HE FRIGGING KICKS HIS LEGS! As if to say “Oo hehe that tickles you silly topless giant!” Every hair on my body stands up and I shiver. I am so far beyond grossed out I can’t even handle it.

I throw more borax on him. And then I do a lap around my apartment putting it everywhere. There is no crack or crevice I do not investigate. The way I was throwing borax around my apartment you would have thought I was fumigating for Jabberwockies.

I went from relaxed and mellow on a cool summer night to a constant state of alert. The casa of cool breezes had been infiltrated by the KGB. Killer Gross Bugs. They had sent forth a scout and he had reached the inner sanctum of my…sanctum. What was I going to do? How would I fend them off? They had found my favorite room to be naked in.

The whole scenario makes me so paranoid. I can never relax. Every piece of dust becomes an ant. Every fuzz becomes a baboon with a shotgun. Nothing makes sense. Everything is a bug. There is no thing in your apartment that could not be a bug. This is not the cold war. This is the Vietcong, the French and Indian war, Sparta. It is every horrible terrible gross bloody destructive epic battle in history taking place 1 soldier at a time… in my bathtub. It is hell.

The cucaracha does not fall for those tiny little “Raid” traps. When I first moved in I put down about… 92 as a preemptive strike. You know those commercials where the cartoon bugs see the traps and spontaneously explode? Not true. Barry Bonds is no cartoon. In fact Barry Bonds is so enormous that there is no way he could fit in those traps. He probably uses those traps as toilets before he goes to wreak havoc on the rest of my apartment. This makes me sad, I could have had put out 92 ham sandwiches in my apartment. Do you know why? Because those don’t kill the cucaracha either!

So there I am shirtless in the bathroom. I have no restitution. I have no power over this gross piece of grossness. All I can do is stare at it with as much hate and sweat as I can muster. That doesn’t make me feel any better. So I call Barry Bonds an asshole. That doesn’t make me feel any better either. I’m paralyzed. This upside down KGB agent is ruining my night.

Lord knows I’m not going to sleep now. I’m going to lay in bed with karate type alertness and the sheet pulled up to my nostrils, as though it is some impenetrable force field against the cucaracha. Like somehow, if no skin is exposed, I will be safe.

How can I be safe? This 12 legged trash eater has survived millions of years. MILLIONS. Some people think that dinosaurs turned to birds. I don’t think so. I think they just shrunk down infinitely until they became cucarachas and that’s why their still alive. They are highly evolved. Do you know they can live for a month without food? I can’t make it until noon without a snack, and this guy could have ruined lives all over the city by then.

I hate you cucaracha, do you know that? I HATE YOU!

To Be Continued…