What I originally had posted here was an early draft of a chapter from my memoir-in-progress. Since then, I am happy to announce, that chapter has been accepted for January 2012 publication, as a nonfiction essay, in Sweet: A Literary Confection !
So, if you're viewing this any earlier than that, sorry! You'll just have to work up your appetite and check the link again when the time comes! Surely I will post a blog entry about the whole thing then (to toot my own horn, since that horn ain't gonna toot itself!)
And please, by all means: be an agent who wants to publish my book and make me famous! Seriously, I could use the money.
And I'm not referring to the naked men in my last post but, rather, my perhaps insensitive (at worst) or ridiculously melodramatic (at best) reference to Auschwitz.
Perhaps my heart having been in the right place is utterly beside the point, but let me at least just explain where my mind was when I wrote what I did, lest people just assume I'm a horrible person.
And before I get any farther with this, let me just say that I really did not mean to be offensive, so please accept my apology if it touched a nerve for you.
Honestly I did think long and hard about it, for the very fear that people would be offended (if for no other reason other than the mere mention of such an atrocity, especially in a post where I was being such a smartass and making jokes).
I was not in any way intending to imply any triviality whatsoever in the horrible things that happened at Auschwitz. On the contrary, I was (unsuccessfully and stupidly, I suppose) merely trying to explain that people who haven't been through this have NO IDEA how horrible and utterly life-changing bedbugs are.
Personally, I had to deal with the whole thing completely alone, lost 12 pounds in 10 days (110 lbs, we're talking; it felt was like I was literally dying) and really did want to die. My husband, who, of all things, had bought this house with me, had left several years earlier, and we were embroiled in divorce settlement discussions (including property disputes, if that doesn't just drive the nail into the coffin) when this all started.
I really felt as though I had died. I had never felt so alone, scared, and completely overwhelmed in my entire life.
People who haven't gone through this don't understand how demoralizing it begins to seem to have to be alive every day, not only to be told that the exterminator's warranty will be no longer valid unless everyone involved agrees to basically have everything they own taken from them (and either put it through the dryer or wipe it down with rubbing alcohol) and then agree to keep it sealed away for at least three months -- but to ALSO, as Saturday's NY Times article indicated, be treated (or fear being treated) as some kind of filthy sub-human entity.
I was thinking of, specifically, when I wrote that last post (and had been haunted for some time, actually, by) a blurb on Barnard's College's website that I'd happened to stumble upon and found downright creepy in its draconian description of what a student who finds bedbugs in her dorm is required to do, down to when and how she must take a shower, immediately before she is escorted off campus -- and how she may take nothing with her, save a single change of clothes.
I meant to be neither melodramatic nor offensive in reflecting on the creepy undertones in the way I hear people talk about the pariah that we become -- and how begin to feel about ourselves and even being alive any longer.
Obviously, that's not your problem, and I certainly didn't explain, in my post, what I'd been thinking (and that wouldn't probably change the effect of what I wrote). However, I like to think that I write about these things, largely, in part, to help others get through this, now that I'm in a better position to help others; I don't want to hurt anyone.
But no one be hot, okay? Photo by Antonio Petrozio, stolen from The London Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1935321/Naked-sportsmen.html
As we have long been advised, when it comes to "the terrorists," it now seems as though we, as New Yorkers (and Americans more generally), are being expected to (when it comes to bedbugs now, in this case) simply go on living our lives as usual and not be afraid that the worst will happen when really, to a large extent, it already is happening.
Recent headlines suggest that even doing something as innocent as going to a movie theater is like sending a personalized friend request to Mr. Lectularius, beseeching him to snuggle up to us in the dark, making his way, quietly, finally, into our pocket or pocketbook, or that probably already-infested shopping bag we've brought with us from Abercrombie & Fitch. And yet, despite all of this, the cheerful blinking of the AMC Empire 25 sign that I couldn't help but notice just days after it reopened (having been shut down for bedbug treatment and seat replacement) suggests that we should just go about throwing down our 50 bucks (or whatever ridiculous price it's up to by now) for that very privilege.
Well, I say we let the government know that no, we're NOT going to go on acting like everything's just fine. I say, why not show up to the movies in droves, naked, just to make a point?
Think about it: a bunch of us concerned citizens arrive with no clothing or belongings (nothing for the bugs to get into or lay eggs on). Maybe we make some picket signs or something, and then burn them afterwards just to be safe?
We could do this at whichever movie theater is the closest to City Hall. Who's in?
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad that Gail Brewer cares, and that even the mayor cares now (now that his rich friends all have bedbugs). I'm glad they finally created that whole advisory board. Now we have a law about refurbished mattresses, and the governor's signing a disclosure law stating that landlords have to tell potential tenants about the building's one-year bedbug history. There's even going to be a portal on the city's website, listing buildings where there have been complaints.
Don't get me wrong. Personally, I hate it when people complain about how I'm doing my job, especially when they don't know how to do my job and I'm working my ass off -- even if what I've been doing has been completely idiotic and misguided.
But hell, I pay taxes, so I'm going to ask anyway: how many entomologists did our local government consult to arrive at these (excuse me for saying this, but it's true) pathetic, misguided, and completely inadequate actions?
Spraying some Sterifab on a mattress doesn't kill bedbugs or their eggs if they're inside the mattress, and they definitely are. Enough heat could, but under this fantabulous new law, mattress refurbishers are not required to use heat, only these pathetic kinds of surface "sanitizing" methods. So people will continue to buy "new" pre-infested mattresses. Only now they'll be convinced that they aren't.
Also, companies that use the same trucks to deliver new mattresses and pick up old mattresses are now required to wrap stuff in plastic. Umm...right...because plastic certainly would never tear! Especially when you're, say, dragging a huge, awkward thing like a mattress off of or onto a truck and up into or out of someone's home. Plastic is made of kryptonite. And a hungry bedbug certainly would not have any reason to find its way out through the tears.
About the portal: funny, but I thought there already was a portal. It's just called bedbugregistry.com instead of "portal" or "beam me up, Scotty" or whatever, and is already equally incomplete and pointless. Why do we need two of these? In case one develops a tear?
Oh, but wait! landlords who actually know that there have been bedbugs in their buildings are now required to tell potential tenants. Never mind that roughly half of all people don't react to their bites and may not know a bedbug if it bit them on the ass -- or that they may be keeping this information to themselves out of shame or the desire to not have to relive their ancestors' trip to Auschwitz as they prepare their apartments for treatment?
So, yes, I'm glad all of you in City Hall or wherever give a crap, but there's an old saying, "don't work harder; work smarter," which translates into, why don't you try talking to someone who knows what the hell they're doing? You know, before passing misguided laws that encourage dangerous behavior and give people a false sense of security?
We need tosend the message that we expect more from our leaders than an online big gaping hole that will soon contain information adding up to, "basically, the whole city has bedbugs." We need more than laws that force landlords out of business for lack of helping them with the exorbitant expense that effective treatment currently costs (I can tell you from personal experience that this is happening, and at this rate, we are about to replicate the Burning of the Bronx) or the draconian preparation instructions that make overwhelmed tenants who don't get itchy from the bites refuse treatment or simply look the other way.
So what the hell do I think we need to demand, exactly?
The government needs to make the funding of bedbug eradication research (research that's not in bed with profiteers; ha!) a number one priority.
After all, what happens when Hollywood starts to suffer because no one will go to the movies? What happens when people refuse to contribute to NYC's economy as tourists and shoppers?
So maybe a bunch of us going to the movies naked would get their attention.
Alternatively, since it's always too cold in those stupid theaters anyway, and since management probably wouldn't let us sit on their seats naked for hygienic reasons, why don't we all just strip out front of the theater after the film -- and put all of our stuff in prominently-displayed plastic bags (except our picket signs, which we will set on fire afterwards, of course).
Please get back to me on this a.s.a.p.! There's a definite chill in the air, so if we're going to do this, let's make it soon!
Also, lest we inadvertently muddle our message, I ask only that no one be "hot"; we want legislative passersby to take notice, but only in a way that quickly makes naked protests a thing of the past, not in a way that makes them something that the pervs in City Hall would like to see happen over and over again.
It's gotten so that the only thing I dread even more than bedbugs themselves is the possibility that I might have to look at either of these two photos, even one more time, ever again.
Actually, no, that's a lie. (Just kidding, God, really! You know -- joke?)
Just trying to make a point here. Work with me.
I mean, okay, I get it. Just because bedbugs are all of the place (or at least all over NYC: Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, the New York Public Library -- though a library has them in Cincinnati too now, I understand -- the Time-Warner Building, city agencies, the big 25-feature multi-story cinema in Times Sq.), doesn't change the fact that they're so good at hiding that you're unlikely to ever actually see one. Since they're also so clever about injecting you with their special bedbug novacaine, you're also unlikely to know you've been bitten until the bug has returned safely home to kick off its shoes and wash down its meal with a nice cold one -- if even then). I understand perfectly well that you may in fact be getting eaten alive on a nightly basis and still have a devil of a time finding the evidence, nevermind recognizing the bites, and that there's even a chance that a scent detection canine might miss the suckers. Fine.
But seriously? Are you telling me that these are the only photos of the complete life cycle of the bedbug that anyone in the entire universe has had a chance to capture? For that matter, it has not escaped my notice that these aren't even, in fact, two different sets of photographs. Just because one person preferred Photoshopping them in a neat little line, while another preferred to put them into a circle doesn't make them different pictures. I mean, look at the blond one in the middle -- shot from exactly the same angle as the blond in the other picture. Granted, the big, long, overfed, bloated one is curved in one direction in one picture and the opposite direction in the other, but notice that they are perfectly symmetrical, right down to the way the light reflects off of them. But that's a simple matter of exactly two clicks in PhotoShop.
I'm not saying there are no other pictures of the bedbug life cycle out there. But I am pointing out that they're all drawings, some of which look like cartoon illustrations of ticks, colored in red and displayed in 6 different sizes like the identical parts of some Russian doll.
And just how many years ago did bedbugs start reappearing in droves? And just how long ago did Al Gore invent the internet? This is the best anyone can do?
I thought that pest control professionals farmed these things (for the purposes of research and keeping their dogs' detections skills sharp). You're telling me there's not one complete extended family of bedbugs anywhere in this entire city, aside from the billions living inside the walls of every single building in central Brooklyn?
Now, I don't mean to sound crazy -- but what the hell; it's too late for that, right? So...I start to wonder if the supposed existence of bedbug infestations is just some huge conspiracy. Think about it: I pay a company thousands of dollars for the privilege of being ordered to take everything I own and either a) put it through the dryer, b) wipe it down with rubbing alcohol, or c) throw it out -- and then keep everything, including my toothpaste tube, sealed in plastic when not in use for at least THREE MONTHS? And vacuum every day for four weeks?
For something I will never see? And possibly never even feel? And just because someone trained a beagle to stick his paw up whenever he sees a mattress, suitcase, or piece of upholstered furniture?
No, no, no -- you're right; you're right. You saw where I was going with this. True, I was about to say that maybe bedbugs don't even exist, but I take it back.
They exist, alright. But not after I pay someone all of that money just so that I can do ALL THE WORK,while they simply mist my apartment with peppermint-scented snake oil. How could any living thing survive being sucked into a vacuum, put through the dryer, suffocated in plastic, or drowned in rubbing alcohol? Pretty clever racket.
However, as you can see, I'm starting to doubt even that much. I need some convincing. Something a little more current than this set of photographs from the Museum of the History of All Things Nasty.
It's a simple request -- someone, please, I beg you: do another lineup of the perps. Maybe put a dated newspaper heading in the background so I'll know it's legit.
And please make sure these are clear photos, not cartoon illustrations or tiny little blurry brownish-yellowish blobs. I can't tell you how many types of bugs there are out there who bear some resemblance to these pathetic shots. Both the insect and human worlds await your action; until then, there are perfectly upstanding spider beetles, pill bugs, and book lice in my house who almost got the electric chair for a crime they didn't commit.
Well, actually, yes. Just this: whether the bedbug situation would have entitled me to even more in the divorce settlement, I don't know -- because I was too ashamed to tell my attorney.
And what? Risk having my file quarantined in a plastic bag for the next 18 months?
As it was already, New York was still one of the two remaining states in the country, at the time (a whopping 7 months ago) where no-fault divorce wasn't an option. Of course, that changed within six months after my divorce was finalized. Otherwise, the whole process might have only taken 2 years instead of 3.
But that's always my kind of luck, and it'll probably be no different when it comes to the bedbug situation. Now that an infestation shut down the AMC Empire 25 movie theater in Times Square this past week, the city will probably bring back DDT, the A-bomb -- something. Some time in the future, now that all those thousands of dollars of mine are long gone.
I did, at the time, finally 'fess up to my soon-to-be ex. I couldn't take it anymore; I felt like I had been left behind to care for our Special Needs child alone. All I wanted was for him to safely take his things, and so he did. And he felt just horrible about the whole situation, tried to help however he could. It had just gotten to the point where I couldn't take the weird, horrible irony of his saying he finally wanted to come get his junk after all of those years another minute. I had to tell him.
And oddly, I think we became friends again over the whole ordeal.
And then, something like four months later, he found out that his whole office at work had them too. (All kinds of office buildings in New York are getting infested these days). We came up with our own special jokes and code words about the situation, just like we always had about everything back when we'd been a couple. We referred to the problem as “the ants” -- or, sometimes, “the AIDS.”
Well, I guess we should all be grateful we have jobs and a place to live -- and no actual AIDS, only the house AIDS.
But I to tell you, I'd kill sometimes to disappear to nudist colony somewhere on a desert island – no furniture, no walls, no ceiling.
"Traumatic Insemination and Sexual Conflict in the Bed Bug Cimex lectularius"
Alastair D. Stutt and Michael T. Siva-Jothy, Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, United Kingdom, Edited by Thomas Eisner, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and approved February 28, 2001 (received for review September 14, 2000):
"The bed bug, Cimex lectularius, has a unique mode of copulation termed 'traumatic' insemination [Carayon, J. (1966) in Monograph of the Cimicidae, ed. Usinger, R. (Entomol. Soc. Am., Philadelphia), pp. 81–167] during which the male pierces the female's abdominal wall with his external genitalia and inseminates into her body cavity [Carayon, J. (1966) in Monograph of the Cimicidae, ed. Usinger, R. (Entomol. Soc. Am., Philadelphia), pp. 81–167]. Under controlled natural conditions, traumatic insemination was frequent and temporally restricted. We show for the first time, to our knowledge, that traumatic insemination results in (i) last-male sperm precedence, (ii) suboptimal remating frequencies for the maintenance of female fertility, and (iii) reduced longevity and reproductive success in females. Experimental females did not receive indirect benefits from multiple mating. We conclude that traumatic insemination is probably a coercive male copulatory strategy that results in a sexual conflict of interests."
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) is one of the world's most-cited multidisciplinary scientific serials. Since its establishment in 1914, it continues to publish cutting-edge research reports, commentaries, reviews, perspectives, colloquium papers, and actions of the Academy. Coverage in PNAS spans the biological, physical, and social sciences. PNAS is published weekly in print, and daily online in PNAS Early Edition. PNAS is available by subscription. PNAS is abstracted and/or indexed in: Index Medicus, PubMed Central, Current Contents, Medline, SPIN, JSTOR, ISI Web of Science, and BIOSIS.
Results of spring 2008 Greater Cincinnati Health Survey, conducted by U. of Cincinnati Institute for Policy Research & containing a series of questions from the Joint Bed Bug Task Force (JBBTF):
14.5% of City of Cincinnati resident respondents reporting that they had had a problem with bedbugs in the previous year(1)...
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Meanwhile, it has been said that "bedbugs are transported into homes by hitchhiking on used furniture, or in luggage, backpacks, pillows or bedding" (2).
According to news sources, the state of Ohio recently found a defendant guilty of having slain, thirty-seven years ago, a Cincinnati hitchhiker (3)...
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1. Corea, Renee. "Greater Cincinnati Survey: 14.5% of Cincinnati respondents (7.9%, Hamilton County) Report a Bed Bug Problem." New York Vs Bed Bugs. http://newyorkvsbedbugs.org/2008/12/22/greater-cincinnati-survey-145-of-cincinnati-respondents-79-hamilton-county-report-a-bed-bug-problem/December 22, 2008.
2. Pellitteri, Phil. Insect Diagnostic Lab Notes. University of Wisconsin Extension. www.entomology.wisc.edu/diaglab/labnotes/bedbug.pdf . Dec. 2008.
3. Ritz, Ian. "Michael Beuke Executed For Ohio Hitchhiker Murder," Epoch Times. www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/35359/ . 13 May, 2010.
But why, you might wonder, be so formal? I can call you Cimex, can't I? After all we've shared, after all we've been through together this past year -- the sleepless nights, the packing of belongings into slick black bags, tied in a knots in the unlit basement, the searches, in dark corners, with flashlights?
There's a coolness in the air now, and so I imagine that you are probably feeling sentimental about our time together, though really I suspect that you were around even before autumn, before I knew -- that you had come into the house while everyone was sleeping, that you were watching me even in the August heat. I know you said you couldn't live without me, that you would do anything to be near me, in my bed, that you would risk death, and that you did.
I confess that I think about you all the time. Of course I can't forget. All of those evenings on the phone, the hushed voice inside my office, my heart racing, my desperation for help, desperation to try to figure out how to end this. In two weeks' time, my clothes began to hang off of my body. Part of me went missing.
I will come out and say it, then: I think this time apart has been good, and I do not want you back. Soon I will be very busy with work again -- and I don't think I'll have the time or energy for this. You know more about me than anyone -- my schedule, my sleeping habits, everything -- so you realize I'll be working almost every day, even twenty-seven out of the next thirty-five weekends. How I made time for you last fall, winter, spring, I will never know. Mostly it felt like I just worked for you -- cleaning, sorting, packing up the things that had become yours, no longer mine.. No amount of rest, later, gets me back the parts of life I've lost.
But what am I saying? That's probably how you feel about being away from me. You must think this blood of mine has no heart through which it is pumped, that its warmth's just an illusion. After all, I realize that it's killed you to be out of my life this long. But that depends on what the definition of "it" is. And so perhaps it is more accurate to say you had to be killed in order for that to happen.
I've regained the twelve pounds; it is true. But it's not the same twelve pounds; I think I'll always wonder where I went.
It is possible this letter will never reach you. No one is more sorry about all of this than I am.
I mean, okay, I get it. Just because bedbugs are all of the place (or at least all over NYC: Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, the New York Public Library -- though a library has them in Cincinnati too now, I understand -- the Time-Warner Building, city agencies, the big 25-feature multi-story cinema in Times Sq.), doesn't change the fact that they're so good at hiding that you're unlikely to ever actually see one. Since they're also so clever about injecting you with their special bedbug novacaine, you're also unlikely to know you've been bitten until the bug has returned safely home to kick off its shoes and wash down its meal with a nice cold one -- if even then). I understand perfectly well that you may in fact be getting eaten alive on a nightly basis and still have a devil of a time finding the evidence, nevermind recognizing the bites, and that there's even a chance that a scent detection canine might miss the suckers. Fine.
