I tossed some paper into the wastebasket basket under my desk, and was startled by a whiffft.
What?
It was a small rust-colored flash that bolted from the basket to the floor, and zipped under the sofa.
Jesus Christ! I shouted silently.
A roach! A waterbug!
Yaaaaaughh.
Yep — I skeeve.
Like nothing else.
You ever read “1984,” George Orwell’s masterpiece predictive of a totalitarian society that we seem to be approaching?
He wrote it in 1948 as a warning, reversing the last two digits of the year to create the title. It warned of mind and body control by the government.
In it, the Ministry of Love (all the concepts in the book are satirical) employs Room 101, a brainwashing and torture space to enforce compliance. The true horror — and effectiveness — of Room 101 is that the torture is tailored to each individual’s worst psychological fears.
In the case of Winston Smith, the novel’s doomed hero, it is rats.
Mine would be waterbugs, roaches, you name it. Bring one of those disgusting insects anywhere near me and my skin crawls.
It is a fear and a disgust that defy reason.
I know the damn things can’t bite me, or harm me in any way.
Doesn’t matter. Something about those wavy, seeking antennas, and those folded-up wings, just unhinges me.
Usually, they say, familiarity breeds contempt.
I have been living with them since childhood, and it hasn’t hardened me.
We lived in what was the “super’s apartment” in The Bronx tenement in which I spent the first 15 years of my life. Because the dripping water main for the tenement was located in a well beneath our vestibule, the apartment was often infested.
We battled them to a draw with Raid and other poisons, but the creepy crawlers were always around.
One night I got up from a deep sleep to find a giant bug on my pillow.
My scream awakened everyone in the apartment.
I had trouble going to sleep for days after that, and wouldn’t get into bed without a thorough inspection of all the sheets and blankets.
To this day, I can’t stand for the cover on the bed to be touching the floor. I call that a bug ladder.
If I ain’t over it by now, I never will be, although when I saw a second roach, this time in my bedroom, I tried to stomp it with my slippered foot.
No luck — he zipped under the armoire.
I called maintenance and put in an order for an exterminator, but in the meantime bought a can of Raid and sprayed it around the base of the armoire, just in case.
Two days later I found a dead roach on the floor, so it worked.
And then the exterminator did the rest of the apartment.
All’s been quiet since.
Writing about this has sparked a couple of memories.
When I was in junior high, my friend Jose Baez invited to a sleepover at his tenement, a few blocks away from mine.
We listened to rock and roll on the radio, played cards and went to sleep around 11, I guess.
My mattress was on the floor.
I awakened in the middle of the night to find it teeming with waterbugs.
I don’t know how I kept from screaming, but I dressed in a flash, slipped out of his apartment and walked home in the middle of the night.
At school, Jose asked me why I left so suddenly. I was too embarrassed, for him, to say his apartment was infested. How could he not know? I just said I couldn’t sleep.
Many decades later I was sharing a Jamaican villa with Jim Moran, my best friend.
Jim Moran in Jamaica at Dunn’s River Falls
We had come in from a night of carousing in nearby Montego Bay, drank some rum, and chatted, and then turned in.
I got into bed and looked at the wall over my head.
There was a palmetto bug, at least 4 inches long. (Palmetto bugs are roaches with better PR.)
Like a flash, I am out of my bed and standing next to Jim’s in the next bedroom.
“What’s up?” Moran asks.
‘Um. I need a favor.”
“What?”
“There’s this monster bug in my bedroom. Would you kill it?”
“Why don’t you kill it?”
“I sleeve,” I say.
Moran harrumphs, picks up a magazine, walks into my bedroom and splatters the bug on the wall.
“He’s dead — you clean it up.”
And oh! That reminds me of the deal I had with a wife — whoever didn’t kill it had to clean it.
I hardly knew which was worse.
Hmm. Yes, I do. Cleaning it was worse.
So that’s how I learned to hunt them with slippers and newspapers.
Never became proficient, but did learn to put on a brave front.
But I still skeeve.
And what makes you skeeve? What is in your Room 101?
Palmetto bugs, slugs, and dust mites in rugs.
More insects.
Spiders. Always spiders. I think it’s the creepy way they move. My son inherited my fear and the two of us scream like 9-year-old girls at a Backstreet Boys concert when we see one, especially a BIG one. My mother, on the other hand, a wisened Italian woman, would crush the largest of the large ones with her thumb and berate me. “What are ya afraid of??”, she would chastise. When a big one gets in the house, I miss my mom even more. Yeeech!
An insect. Yep.
My problem is not so much Room 101, but rather Area 101 – otherwise known as my back yard. I can handle and deal with most of the flying insects as I mow, etc. What I dislike most is accidentally stirring up a band of yellow jackets. Them little sumbitches are very aggressive when disturbed, and their sting(s) leave me feeling lousy for days.
Bees can kill.
Any insect that invades my indoor space is my Room 101. Outdoors, where I believe they belong, I’ll abide their existence along with mine. After all, didn’t they bring down in the aliens in War of the Worlds?
I think germs killed the aliens.
Oh man, bad memories, way back in the day, I worked for THE Aplliance service company everybody called. I walked into houses where the walls seemed like they were moving. The washers and dryers had to be kicked and hundred’s used to drop out. They got into your truck, and when you got home, many of us had a used washer in the garage to strip down and throw our uniforms into. Skeeve 2.0 . You could refuse the call, but they always would call back and say that they had the place exterminated ( knock off raid) and you’d be back the next day. Brrrrr still gives me the willies thinking about them!
Mine is mice. Anyone ever living in an apartment building or row house had seen them, no matter how clean your individual home is. I can kill any bug I come across big or small. Spider, roach, water bug. I still sleeve them but I can kill then. Mice on the other hand freeze me in my tracks. I have to call someone to kind of and kill it. My sons both know the drill and come to handle it. My younger son preached at me that it’s an irrational fear since they can’t really hurt you. I’m a cop so I shouldn’t be scared of a tiny mouse. That’s what irrational means. Doesn’t change it to have a name for it.
My granddaughter is a cat lover and says I should get one but I’m a dog person. There was a tiny stray outside my door one day and I brought it in.
Never saw another mouse. It’s been years now.
I love that cat but not all cats.
I was waiting for someone with a fear or cats. ☺️
Does a mother-in-law count?
As I used to tell a former wife, who said I never said anything nice about her family: “I like your mother-in-law better than mine.”
Is it possible the totalitarian state is already here. Citizens using Facebook and other web sites and applications that are monitored and grouped through the algorithmic processes. Information on the users preferences are fed to them. Information on the users negative views are fed to them. These processes place users in group like tribes. The government oversees these activities. Our present political arena are the results we live with today.
A roach story. Back in summer of 1974 a bunch of young men who grew up in West Philly were partying in Margate NJ. At 4AM. The topic of what we wanted most in the future. The one guy’s response was classic. He said “I just want a house without roaches.” Till this day we laugh our asses off about that response.
A- We are surely moving toward mind control. But more by the PC police than the government.
B- Happy to see my skeeve is widely shared.
These days, my skeeve is a Democrat in the voting booth.
Well, that was expected.
I remember 1984 was one of the required summer reading books when I was a freshman at West Catholic High School. Good book especially for young students.
It should still be required reading. Civics should also be taught, and logic, to help students examine what they are told, particularly by politicians.