The Transformation, part VII

originally posted April 20, 2007

The next several hours were spent doing the sorts of things you do after this kind of morning. First, I washed my hands. Unlike my reputation, my hands had not emerged unscathed from my bout of debauchery. To be more accurate, it was really only one hand, and it smelled like a sewer. The other hand was merely along for the ride, still holding the bottle of vodka but trying otherwise to appear innocent.

Standing at the kitchen sink, I was caught off-guard by the appearance of yet another cockroach. It might have been one from earlier, but there's no real way of telling. The cockroach in the poems had worn a hat much like the one I still was still wearing, and also had a pocket watch, none of which had ever made any sense to me. Where would a cockroach even procure these items? I'd found the notion of a cockroach haberdasher to be preposterous. Now it seemed I'd been wise to doubt, as this kitchen cockroach, like the others I'd encountered this morning, arrived completely unaccessorized. Climbing up from the drain that housed the garbage disposal, it wasn't even wearing shoes.

Despite my display of confidence with the voyeuristic trio, I was becoming increasingly apprehensive about the repeated visits from cockroaches. My skin tingled, and I felt a growing need for a larger, more protective hat. I overturned an empty pan into the sink, covering the drain and corralling the cockroach. "Go home," I told it. From within the pan came the faintest sound of hissing, and then nothing. Peeking under the pan I saw the cockroach was gone.
I gathered some supplies, and then pulled a chair into the center of the living room and sat. From here I could monitor the bathroom for sounds of activity. I felt reasonably safe here, as there were no drains in the room. I had cigarettes and a lighter, and a bottle of Southern Comfort fetched from my closet. This I kept hidden because my husband was a drunk, but not because it fit with any particular personification of competent writing. I also had a can of aerosol hairspray, found high on a shelf on my husband's side of the closet. His days as F. Scott Fitzgerald focused primarily on cultivating what he deemed an appropriate hairstyle, and on constructing a monocle from supplies found around the house. I didn't think Fitzgerald wore a monocle, and when I pointed out to my husband that he might be thinking instead of the little Monopoly man, he threw a roll of saran wrap at me. This period passed without any writing to speak of, due in part to his asthma symptoms resulting from his heavy handed use of Aqua Net, and in part to the difficulty he had writing with one eye shrouded in plastic. Now I had the hairspray ready beside me, lighter in hand, in the event I was suddenly besieged by cockroaches and needed the aid of an impromptu flamethrower.