I'm two weeks into my internships and I have to say: This. Is. Awesome. I keep waiting for all the drudgery and angst and Dilbert-like ennui I've been hearing about from my working-world friends, but I've yet to cross it. Maybe it takes a few years. Wait until 2013 and I'll be singing a different tune. But for now, I can't get over how unfathomably sweet my new life is. It is making me think that everyone only talks about how terrible the non-academic working world is so that they get to keep all the goodies to themselves. And people in academia keep telling us that we are waaaay better off than the non-academic working world so one day we can take their spots and they will jump ship for the goodies, too.
Clearly this isn't true. There is no sharp academic/non-academic divide, and there are darts and laurels to both career paths. But dang! Why didn't anyone tell me how awesome this was? I have so been missing out!
I get up and have my quiet breakfast in a beautiful apartment every morning. Then I commute with my "boo," as it were. (This has its downsides - I have to force march her up the hill to catch the 9:01 metro with a few minutes to spare, which I feel only vaguely guilty about. I've been pretty clear all along that I'm going to prioritize making it to the metro over a companionable stroll - nobody makes Baby late for work. Still, I can't help but feel a teensy bit badly when a sleepy voice behind me calls out every morning, without fail, "you're walking so faaaast.")
Then I'm marching up 17th Street, and it's just, wow. This is really my life now. Upstate New York is a faded memory. I pass museums and homes and coffeehouses just going to work. I use my little swipey card thingy to get in to my building and I put my lunch in the floor fridge. At my morning internship, there is a room specifically for interns called an I-Pod (the Intern Pod), and I have my own desk and friendly neighbors. People send me emails and want to include me in team meetings, department meetings, staff meetings...lots of meetings. They appear to value my insight and trust my capabilities. They give me substantive tasks and ask me to make the most of it. When I complete tasks, they thank me. They thank me! Wow!
Most days, I get to have lunch with my partner, who is now generally awake. I get to eat lunch with her! Wow! Then I have to go to another meeting, or, three days a week, I head to my other internship. This one is made up of a very small staff and there are no meetings, but I have considerable autonomy over my tasks. Sometimes I make up stuff for me to do - whatever I think might be the most helpful. I have all this unharnessed energy that has long been missing a direction to channel it into, and now I have one. I spend all day doing little things to make these organizations run better. All tasks are measurable, direct, and have specific outcomes. Even if it's just updating a database, it's enabling a more effective large-scale operation, and that is surprisingly fulfilling. I don't have to do much to make things better - I just have to do what I do best. My life right now is made up of full-time volunteering, I guess - I'm not paid for it yet, but I can't wait for that to happen. It'll be like the cherry on a ridiculously delicious sundae.
Then, when it's over, it's over. Just like that! It's over! Wow! At the end of the internship, I just...go home. No ruminating over theories. No cramming through piles of books. No stacks of papers to grade or papers yet to be written. No dinner consumed over my laptop. No deliberations as to why I am where I am or why I'm doing what I'm doing or whether I really am going anywhere at all. No belaboring what this is costing me. It's perfectly clear where I'm going and what I'm doing and why I'm there. The clarity is bewildering to me. The presence of love is equally as stunning. It really is more than enough.
Most times in life we make drastic life changes and there are second guesses, regrets, would-haves and could-haves and should-haves. Really, when is the grass ever actually greener on the other side? For perhaps the only time in my life, I have the rare experience of a far greener pasture. I doubt the euphoria will last long - unbounded enthusiasm always burns out quickly. Maybe in a few weeks, or next year, I'll be recognizing more of myself in a Dilbert cartoon, instead of Piled Higher and Deeper. Updating a donor database won't seem so fulfilling anymore. Nor will sending out yet another bimonthly newsletter, or attending the gazillionth meeting, or getting up on Monday to do the same thing I did last week all over again.
But for now, it's like I just got paid, it's Friday night, the party is hopping, and I'm feeling right! With, um, the small exception of the "just got paid" part. So it's on! At least until the money runs out...
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Monday, August 15, 2011
Should I be a tool, or a tool?
I'm 25, and I think I might be in a bit of a career muddle. I'm not talking about one of those ridiculous quarter life crises. I don't have a problem with mindlessly working my bum off till the end of my days, seeing as how I am currently doing that for something I'm not sure is going anywhere. My problem is deciding which path to subject myself to mindless, endless, bum-working-offage. I feel like I'm up against several options, all of which would credential me rather finely as a tool.
I've been working on my dissertation proposal, and as I was editing it the other day, the strangest thought went through my head: This is the last book I'll write. I'm not sure where that came from, especially since my dissertation isn't even a dissertation yet, much less a book. But it's true that I once aspired to be - and believed I would be - a writer. Turns out I'm not (unless this blog counts...since it's not listed on Amazon.com, I'll go with 'no'). Nor do I longer wish to be - I had my couple of years with the tweed-jacketed, smoking hipsters pontificating existentialism for me to know I couldn't stomach any more ironic stories involving excessively dense prose or excessively minimalist prose, whiskey flasks, and references to masturbation and bowel movements. At some point we all need to stop thinking it's cool to write about poop.
So that toolish option was checked off the list, and I started thinking I'd be a professor so I could teach and write. After some short-lived dreams of talking about Kate Chopin for the rest of my life, I went for a more umbrella-like degree with Sociology. In doing so, I got the master's I always wanted but would never go in debt for because I'd end up defaulting to the government - Women's Studies. Not sure where it will get me, but sure was fun while it lasted.
I don't regret going to graduate school, but instead of confirming my career path, it only muddied it. Turns out teaching is as awesome as I imagined. In fact, I love it - and I think I could be really great at it if I spent thirty years honing such a rewarding craft. But it's also a sure path to a nervous breakdown, and I just didn't see how I could keep it up for a semester, much less years on end. Employment was uncertain unless I was content to be vastly underpaid the rest of my life, and even if I did secure a position, I'd continue to battle the profession versus what I wanted to do with it. I still struggle with how the discipline strives to discipline me. My dissertation, which I want to be a fun side project, is laden with so many other things that make it awfully sad sometimes. My expectations, the expectations of committee members, finances and tuition costs, question marks, a lingering sense of inadequacy, and fear, always fear. I'm very good at being afraid, but I'm also pretty good at reading the signs. In the end, it became clear that the kind of public sociology I'd like to do won't be happening at a university or college...at least not right now.
So the question of what to do remains open. Like Monty Python says, and now for something completely different! On to the nonprofit sector. I start a part time internship with a focus on events and fundraising today. Next week, I'll start up another internship with a focus on communities and volunteer relations. I never thought I was much for development, but both are housed in development departments. Maybe they will help me refine my career directives, or just cross another toolish option off the list.
I keep feeling like I should know more specifically what to do, but, like my partner says, perhaps ambitionlessness is something to embrace for a while. We've been so goal-oriented our whole lives that maybe we need to let go of the goals, at least for a little bit, and coast, just see where the river takes us. Sometimes, usually in the morning, that sounds wonderful. Sometimes it sounds terrifying...especially at night. I am one of those unfortunate people who has defined herself by what she does. Maybe it's Americanness, maybe it's upper-middle-classness, maybe I can blame it on the way my parents raised me, maybe it's the "J" in my Myers Briggs type - whatever it may be, I like to have a clear sense of what the hell is going on in my life.
But, shockingly, I find myself at a point where I feel like I could do just about anything, with the exception of politics and finance. If it will make us safer or more loving and won't require me to add, then sign me up. What matters more is the salary, health insurance, a vacation package, a contained work day...and that it be on my metro or bus line. The commute is seriously outranking the content right now.
Have I reached that level of toolishness that I am more invested in avoiding a metro transfer than the particulars of what I do all day? Dear readers, I'm afraid to say I am. Because my priorities are actually less and less focused on what I do for a living, and more and more on what I am able to do with the rest of my time. I spent three years trying to get here - to be with my partner under the same roof, waking up in the same bed. To be within driving distance of my parents and friends. To be back in warmer weather, where sweet tea is the default tea and no one is from Suffolk. To at last nurture my soul and my heart and my community more than my mind.
Goal-setting and goal-keeping was what made me being here and all of these beautiful moments possible. It's hard to let go of something that I needed so desperately for so long. Now that I'm here, I am afraid to waste this time, as if I've only earned it if I do something amazing with it. But now I'm also beginning to realize that clinging so tightly to goals does not keep me from being a tool - as that much is pretty much assured no matter which path I choose - but it does serve to keep me afraid. Since that is probably the most damaging way I could spend this precious time, I will settle for being a tool and striving, through fits and starts and falls along the way, to live and love as fearlessly as I can.
I've been working on my dissertation proposal, and as I was editing it the other day, the strangest thought went through my head: This is the last book I'll write. I'm not sure where that came from, especially since my dissertation isn't even a dissertation yet, much less a book. But it's true that I once aspired to be - and believed I would be - a writer. Turns out I'm not (unless this blog counts...since it's not listed on Amazon.com, I'll go with 'no'). Nor do I longer wish to be - I had my couple of years with the tweed-jacketed, smoking hipsters pontificating existentialism for me to know I couldn't stomach any more ironic stories involving excessively dense prose or excessively minimalist prose, whiskey flasks, and references to masturbation and bowel movements. At some point we all need to stop thinking it's cool to write about poop.
So that toolish option was checked off the list, and I started thinking I'd be a professor so I could teach and write. After some short-lived dreams of talking about Kate Chopin for the rest of my life, I went for a more umbrella-like degree with Sociology. In doing so, I got the master's I always wanted but would never go in debt for because I'd end up defaulting to the government - Women's Studies. Not sure where it will get me, but sure was fun while it lasted.
I don't regret going to graduate school, but instead of confirming my career path, it only muddied it. Turns out teaching is as awesome as I imagined. In fact, I love it - and I think I could be really great at it if I spent thirty years honing such a rewarding craft. But it's also a sure path to a nervous breakdown, and I just didn't see how I could keep it up for a semester, much less years on end. Employment was uncertain unless I was content to be vastly underpaid the rest of my life, and even if I did secure a position, I'd continue to battle the profession versus what I wanted to do with it. I still struggle with how the discipline strives to discipline me. My dissertation, which I want to be a fun side project, is laden with so many other things that make it awfully sad sometimes. My expectations, the expectations of committee members, finances and tuition costs, question marks, a lingering sense of inadequacy, and fear, always fear. I'm very good at being afraid, but I'm also pretty good at reading the signs. In the end, it became clear that the kind of public sociology I'd like to do won't be happening at a university or college...at least not right now.
So the question of what to do remains open. Like Monty Python says, and now for something completely different! On to the nonprofit sector. I start a part time internship with a focus on events and fundraising today. Next week, I'll start up another internship with a focus on communities and volunteer relations. I never thought I was much for development, but both are housed in development departments. Maybe they will help me refine my career directives, or just cross another toolish option off the list.
I keep feeling like I should know more specifically what to do, but, like my partner says, perhaps ambitionlessness is something to embrace for a while. We've been so goal-oriented our whole lives that maybe we need to let go of the goals, at least for a little bit, and coast, just see where the river takes us. Sometimes, usually in the morning, that sounds wonderful. Sometimes it sounds terrifying...especially at night. I am one of those unfortunate people who has defined herself by what she does. Maybe it's Americanness, maybe it's upper-middle-classness, maybe I can blame it on the way my parents raised me, maybe it's the "J" in my Myers Briggs type - whatever it may be, I like to have a clear sense of what the hell is going on in my life.
But, shockingly, I find myself at a point where I feel like I could do just about anything, with the exception of politics and finance. If it will make us safer or more loving and won't require me to add, then sign me up. What matters more is the salary, health insurance, a vacation package, a contained work day...and that it be on my metro or bus line. The commute is seriously outranking the content right now.
Have I reached that level of toolishness that I am more invested in avoiding a metro transfer than the particulars of what I do all day? Dear readers, I'm afraid to say I am. Because my priorities are actually less and less focused on what I do for a living, and more and more on what I am able to do with the rest of my time. I spent three years trying to get here - to be with my partner under the same roof, waking up in the same bed. To be within driving distance of my parents and friends. To be back in warmer weather, where sweet tea is the default tea and no one is from Suffolk. To at last nurture my soul and my heart and my community more than my mind.
Goal-setting and goal-keeping was what made me being here and all of these beautiful moments possible. It's hard to let go of something that I needed so desperately for so long. Now that I'm here, I am afraid to waste this time, as if I've only earned it if I do something amazing with it. But now I'm also beginning to realize that clinging so tightly to goals does not keep me from being a tool - as that much is pretty much assured no matter which path I choose - but it does serve to keep me afraid. Since that is probably the most damaging way I could spend this precious time, I will settle for being a tool and striving, through fits and starts and falls along the way, to live and love as fearlessly as I can.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Being the wife
I'm over a month in to my six-week stint as a housewife, and I think I rock at it. While my partner makes the big bucks, works late, and juggles meetings, my responsibilities have been focused on hearth and home. What with trying to offload the old apartment and move into a new one, it's unclear how anyone with a full time job would have been able to do it all. For most of July, my part-time job was to conduct apartment showings, set up contractor estimates, and clean, clean, clean. Then, it was to unpack boxes, find a place for everything, and clean, clean clean. And organize. I've been doing so much organizing, I feel like my second home might be the Container Store. My life is bourgeoisie-fest summer 2011, and we are sleeping indoors on freshly laundered sheets. You're welcome.
So I know I got the second shift and emotion work down - what can I say, I'm from North Carolina and I had strong housewife-modeling. And for the most part, being a housewife is as compatible with my introverted personality as being an academic. In our big, scary world, sometimes it's easier to just stay home and clean out the linen closet, or bang out a dissertation intro (and in case you were wondering...check and check!). My cancer sign tendencies also incline me to be a homebody, nestled into my safe, warm, color-coordinated crab shell. It's quiet in here, and I know where the ice cream is.
But being a privileged housewife is also as remarkably underwhelming as Betty Friedan diagnosed several decades ago. I love solving the puzzle of where all the pot lids will go as much as the next professional Elfa installer, but it's just not very stimulating. Of course, coming up with a grocery list and running the dishwasher are all necessary and vital tasks to a fully-functioning household, and I would never begrudge any person who takes on housework as their full time duties. Lots of people (especially women, especially women of color from Global South nations) do this for their careers, although vastly under-compensated and under-appreciated.
But seriously...there really has got to be more to life than this. I may be glorifying the masculine work sphere when I say this, but I liked the second shift work better when it was actually my second shift.
So now I'm wondering...have I internalized the paternalistic attitude towards housework? It's not like my partner is putting any pressure on me to do any of this...God knows she wouldn't care if I waited another week to sort the Tupperware. (In fact, I should accept the fact now that I'll probably always be the one to sort the Tupperware.) I have that dual identity pulling me in both directions - the socialized training that has inducted me into the ways of sorting Tupperware (and you must sort it! Not sorting it is not an option!), and the socialized training that has me utterly convinced more fulfilling, stimulating, and important work rests beyond my front door. Fulfilling and stimulating...probably, unless I do Excel spreadsheets all day. More important? Now that's the socialization talking.
Or it could be that, just because I'm super awesome at something, it doesn't mean it's something I should take on as my life's work. Like most things, it's probably a bit of both. I read the Dykes to Watch Out For collection over the past few days, and while it's made me a little anxious about all the future issues I have to look forward to in my relationship (why do they always end up in couples' therapy?!), it's also reminded me of how complicated our problems are, and how applying our intellectual neurosis to them is usually more comedic than effectual at solving them. We all have to balance social justice inclinations with salaried work, our obligations to others, and, in the end, someone has to do the dishes. You're welcome.
So I know I got the second shift and emotion work down - what can I say, I'm from North Carolina and I had strong housewife-modeling. And for the most part, being a housewife is as compatible with my introverted personality as being an academic. In our big, scary world, sometimes it's easier to just stay home and clean out the linen closet, or bang out a dissertation intro (and in case you were wondering...check and check!). My cancer sign tendencies also incline me to be a homebody, nestled into my safe, warm, color-coordinated crab shell. It's quiet in here, and I know where the ice cream is.
But being a privileged housewife is also as remarkably underwhelming as Betty Friedan diagnosed several decades ago. I love solving the puzzle of where all the pot lids will go as much as the next professional Elfa installer, but it's just not very stimulating. Of course, coming up with a grocery list and running the dishwasher are all necessary and vital tasks to a fully-functioning household, and I would never begrudge any person who takes on housework as their full time duties. Lots of people (especially women, especially women of color from Global South nations) do this for their careers, although vastly under-compensated and under-appreciated.
But seriously...there really has got to be more to life than this. I may be glorifying the masculine work sphere when I say this, but I liked the second shift work better when it was actually my second shift.
So now I'm wondering...have I internalized the paternalistic attitude towards housework? It's not like my partner is putting any pressure on me to do any of this...God knows she wouldn't care if I waited another week to sort the Tupperware. (In fact, I should accept the fact now that I'll probably always be the one to sort the Tupperware.) I have that dual identity pulling me in both directions - the socialized training that has inducted me into the ways of sorting Tupperware (and you must sort it! Not sorting it is not an option!), and the socialized training that has me utterly convinced more fulfilling, stimulating, and important work rests beyond my front door. Fulfilling and stimulating...probably, unless I do Excel spreadsheets all day. More important? Now that's the socialization talking.
Or it could be that, just because I'm super awesome at something, it doesn't mean it's something I should take on as my life's work. Like most things, it's probably a bit of both. I read the Dykes to Watch Out For collection over the past few days, and while it's made me a little anxious about all the future issues I have to look forward to in my relationship (why do they always end up in couples' therapy?!), it's also reminded me of how complicated our problems are, and how applying our intellectual neurosis to them is usually more comedic than effectual at solving them. We all have to balance social justice inclinations with salaried work, our obligations to others, and, in the end, someone has to do the dishes. You're welcome.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Bugs
I am, all things considered, a rather fierce woman. My mother, whose parting words to my sister and I every morning as we left for school, were "kick boy butt!," carefully cultivated me to say "pardon," to write thank-you notes, to aspire to financial independence, and, most importantly, to not take shit from anyone. A dutiful daughter, I have tried to embody these formidable guidelines for life. Although "pardon" has unfortunately been replaced by "what was that?" and my financial independence is at present anchored to unearned wealth, I still do write thank you notes and, at all possible moments, don't take shit from anyone.
Except bugs. When it's me against the bugs, the bugs always win.
Even writing this is making me a little anxious, like my life is a horror film and the things I type into my computer will suddenly start happening in real life. But I am sorry to say that my gender socialization has left me woefully incapable of dealing with bugs. (Can I blame gender for bug-phobia? I blame gender for lots of things, so I might as well.)
I spent the last two and half years living alone in an attic apartment that turned out to have some...pest problems. My mother once described it as "a sieve for bugs." There were cracks and holes everywhere, especially in the bathroom, which had a fire escape door that, when I moved in, had a one-inch gap between the warped wood and the door frame. A bit breezy come winter.
Although I fixed that problem with some insulation tape, there was really nothing I could do to keep bugs out. I wasn't even sure where they came from, just that they did. The first year I was there, it was more of a spider issue, ones that were big enough to be slightly concerning to me. They'd pop up in the corners of the ventilation units, and as soon as I took care of one another one would move in. The next year I had mice, which only exacerbated the bug issue. Once the mice were dead and gone, I started to get flies. I never really had a problem with flies before, but now I think flies are a bit possessed. Sometimes I'd find two in a row in the same spot, and I was sure they had come back to life after I killed them. In a month's period, especially the spring and the fall when the season's changed, I would kill upwards of 20-30 flies, even with my windows closed. I started keeping a paper towel, cleaning spray, and a shoe beside me at all times.
By the end, I was killing strange bugs I'd never seen before. Beetles with funny flat feet. Some kind of six-legged freakish spider hybrid. And then I think some little momma spider had little babies in my bathroom, because I had to start squishing little spiders a couple times a day. Randomly, I killed two bees in my bathroom, both of which I presumed had come through the poorly-caulked window on the poorly-insulated fire escape door. I covered the corner of the window where the pane wasn't meeting the frame with eight layers of packing tape. My showers got shorter and shorter. I picked up the technique of shampooing with one eye open, just in case.
Over the time I lived there, I killed many of God's creatures, but it had to be done. There was no way we were going to co-exist in that apartment, although I was pretty sure by the end that the bugs were collaborating to slowly drive me to the brink of insanity. I know I was averse to bugs before I lived alone (especially tree roaches, which I have never been able to stomach, and have always reacted to with shrill helplessness), but I have memories of blithely killing pests when I was under 22. Now, I'm dangerously neurotic. It's like I have PTSD, except instead of scanning the room for potential assailants or land mines, I'm looking for dark spots that I might have to disable before they jump me. I literally do a room scan whenever I walk in. The sound of a fly buzz now instinctively makes me hunch my shoulders. I have jumped when people come around behind me to ask me a question, and not because I didn't know they were there, but because, for a fleeting, terrifying moment, I thought they might be a bug. I have come to associate all movements out of the corner of my eye with panic and horror.
So I killed many things, in an exhausting, adrenaline, profanity-filled battle that often ended with me having my arms wrapped around my chest, rocking myself back to normal breathing. I just don't have the masculine bravado required to do the deed with less shame. I was especially reminded of this when I encountered something I simply couldn't kill - a hornet. Or at least I thought it was a hornet, it was that freaking big. This hornet, for it shall forever be a hornet in my mind, was the Hulk Hornet, because one day I was heading to clean the bathroom, toilet bowl cleaner in hand, and I heard the sharp sound ripping tape. I peeked inside, and oh my god, the Hulk Hornet had busted through the eight layers of tape. Like the Kool-Aid man with blood lust, the Hulk Hornet was going to make me pay for trying to keep it out. I could see no other reason for its presence in my bathroom other than that it had been sent to kill me.
I tried to kill it first. First, I slammed the door shut and prepped for battle. I steeled myself, trying not to cry with panic. You have to take care of this, I kept saying to myself, you have to do this. But when I opened the door and took another look at it, I decided that this was where I draw the line. I was simply not fierce enough. Someone else was going to have take care of this for me.
And so, with very little pride and rather a lot of desperation, I opened up my phone and started phoning anyone who I thought could come and kill the Hulk Hornet, preferably someone who I felt I could be extremely vulnerable with, as I wasn't sure how much longer I could feign holding it together. Turns out this was four people. One was out of town. Three didn't pick up. I began to reconsider the depths of our friendships.
When I ran out of names, the panic started to take over, but a friend saved me by calling back. Turns out she couldn't come over (she was with her parents, who were visiting that weekend), but her roommate, another male acquaintance of mine, could. Even though he didn't meet the "I can fall apart around you and still look you in the face tomorrow" standard, I was so desperate at that point that I didn't care. Yes. Absolutely yes. I'm sure I'll never live down the guilt of this, but please send the man friend in.
I had all of the necessary catching and killing instruments ready by the time the man friend arrived, a bit sweaty, twenty minutes later (he had jogged over, since he was already out for a run...killing the Hulk Hornet was but a mere diversion from his daily dose of cardio). He glanced at the battery of weaponry I'd assembled, and said, "hmm...do you have a container? I don't really want to kill it."
I stared at him in shock. Not kill it? Not kill it?! What the heck other option was there, keep it as a pet? But I gave him a Tupperware container, stood twenty feet back at the edge of the kitchen, and pointed vaguely at the darkened, closed-door bathroom. "It's in there," I whispered my B horror movie line. "And I can't look while you do this."
He opened the door, glanced at it, then - and I'll never believe this except I saw it happen with my own eyes - he turned around to tell me that it wasn't technically a hornet while the door was still open. Man friend turned his back on Hulk Hornet, and lived to tell the tale! Masculinity, apparently, makes one invincible. Also well-versed in bugs, as he told me it was actually a wasp. "Not even a very big one," he added, rubbing salt in the wound. "More like a small to medium sized one."
I'm telling you, readers. That thing was the Hulk Hornet, and I'll never take that back.
"Whatever you say. It's definitely a wasp." I nodded. "Yep, yep. Just please get it out of my bathroom!"
And in the time it took me to say that sentence, he had caught it in the container. I opened my apartment door for him, and he wandered down my stairs to the bottom floor, where we headed outside. He walked down to the street, just a few yards from the front door. Man friend removed the top of the container and, with all of the delicacy of launching a wedding dove, he released the Hulk Hornet into the sky.
The next day, I had a hard time looking him in the face. How could something that rendered me completely useless be so effortless to him? What kind of feats could I conquer if I had such unshakable nerves? Why the hell didn't I get those? And where I could I sign up to get me some?
The answer is to try to deprogram myself, but I even I know my ephemeral tactics and pre-kiling pep talks aren't fundamentally changing my response to bugs. If anything, I'm getting worse. Although I used to regularly kill house centipedes when I was a senior in college, now I am completely undone by them. They are pretty useless bugs and I know they can't hurt me, but I lose it when I see one. Anything with that many legs has got to be the work of the devil. One friend, a fierce woman who had a roach problem when she and her partner first moved to their current apartment, told me that the secret is a combination of force and speed. She described it, lifting her hand over an imaginary roach, "You get your paper towel ready, position yourself, and then..." She slammed her palm on to the table. "THE WRATH OF GOD!!!"
I know if she can do it and my partner can do it, I can't blame it entirely on gender socialization. I have to be an adult, take care of business, and start exacting the wrath of God. But that seems unlikely anytime in the near future, since I don't think I'll even be able to re-read this post.
Except bugs. When it's me against the bugs, the bugs always win.
Even writing this is making me a little anxious, like my life is a horror film and the things I type into my computer will suddenly start happening in real life. But I am sorry to say that my gender socialization has left me woefully incapable of dealing with bugs. (Can I blame gender for bug-phobia? I blame gender for lots of things, so I might as well.)
I spent the last two and half years living alone in an attic apartment that turned out to have some...pest problems. My mother once described it as "a sieve for bugs." There were cracks and holes everywhere, especially in the bathroom, which had a fire escape door that, when I moved in, had a one-inch gap between the warped wood and the door frame. A bit breezy come winter.
Although I fixed that problem with some insulation tape, there was really nothing I could do to keep bugs out. I wasn't even sure where they came from, just that they did. The first year I was there, it was more of a spider issue, ones that were big enough to be slightly concerning to me. They'd pop up in the corners of the ventilation units, and as soon as I took care of one another one would move in. The next year I had mice, which only exacerbated the bug issue. Once the mice were dead and gone, I started to get flies. I never really had a problem with flies before, but now I think flies are a bit possessed. Sometimes I'd find two in a row in the same spot, and I was sure they had come back to life after I killed them. In a month's period, especially the spring and the fall when the season's changed, I would kill upwards of 20-30 flies, even with my windows closed. I started keeping a paper towel, cleaning spray, and a shoe beside me at all times.
By the end, I was killing strange bugs I'd never seen before. Beetles with funny flat feet. Some kind of six-legged freakish spider hybrid. And then I think some little momma spider had little babies in my bathroom, because I had to start squishing little spiders a couple times a day. Randomly, I killed two bees in my bathroom, both of which I presumed had come through the poorly-caulked window on the poorly-insulated fire escape door. I covered the corner of the window where the pane wasn't meeting the frame with eight layers of packing tape. My showers got shorter and shorter. I picked up the technique of shampooing with one eye open, just in case.
Over the time I lived there, I killed many of God's creatures, but it had to be done. There was no way we were going to co-exist in that apartment, although I was pretty sure by the end that the bugs were collaborating to slowly drive me to the brink of insanity. I know I was averse to bugs before I lived alone (especially tree roaches, which I have never been able to stomach, and have always reacted to with shrill helplessness), but I have memories of blithely killing pests when I was under 22. Now, I'm dangerously neurotic. It's like I have PTSD, except instead of scanning the room for potential assailants or land mines, I'm looking for dark spots that I might have to disable before they jump me. I literally do a room scan whenever I walk in. The sound of a fly buzz now instinctively makes me hunch my shoulders. I have jumped when people come around behind me to ask me a question, and not because I didn't know they were there, but because, for a fleeting, terrifying moment, I thought they might be a bug. I have come to associate all movements out of the corner of my eye with panic and horror.
So I killed many things, in an exhausting, adrenaline, profanity-filled battle that often ended with me having my arms wrapped around my chest, rocking myself back to normal breathing. I just don't have the masculine bravado required to do the deed with less shame. I was especially reminded of this when I encountered something I simply couldn't kill - a hornet. Or at least I thought it was a hornet, it was that freaking big. This hornet, for it shall forever be a hornet in my mind, was the Hulk Hornet, because one day I was heading to clean the bathroom, toilet bowl cleaner in hand, and I heard the sharp sound ripping tape. I peeked inside, and oh my god, the Hulk Hornet had busted through the eight layers of tape. Like the Kool-Aid man with blood lust, the Hulk Hornet was going to make me pay for trying to keep it out. I could see no other reason for its presence in my bathroom other than that it had been sent to kill me.
I tried to kill it first. First, I slammed the door shut and prepped for battle. I steeled myself, trying not to cry with panic. You have to take care of this, I kept saying to myself, you have to do this. But when I opened the door and took another look at it, I decided that this was where I draw the line. I was simply not fierce enough. Someone else was going to have take care of this for me.
And so, with very little pride and rather a lot of desperation, I opened up my phone and started phoning anyone who I thought could come and kill the Hulk Hornet, preferably someone who I felt I could be extremely vulnerable with, as I wasn't sure how much longer I could feign holding it together. Turns out this was four people. One was out of town. Three didn't pick up. I began to reconsider the depths of our friendships.
When I ran out of names, the panic started to take over, but a friend saved me by calling back. Turns out she couldn't come over (she was with her parents, who were visiting that weekend), but her roommate, another male acquaintance of mine, could. Even though he didn't meet the "I can fall apart around you and still look you in the face tomorrow" standard, I was so desperate at that point that I didn't care. Yes. Absolutely yes. I'm sure I'll never live down the guilt of this, but please send the man friend in.
I had all of the necessary catching and killing instruments ready by the time the man friend arrived, a bit sweaty, twenty minutes later (he had jogged over, since he was already out for a run...killing the Hulk Hornet was but a mere diversion from his daily dose of cardio). He glanced at the battery of weaponry I'd assembled, and said, "hmm...do you have a container? I don't really want to kill it."
I stared at him in shock. Not kill it? Not kill it?! What the heck other option was there, keep it as a pet? But I gave him a Tupperware container, stood twenty feet back at the edge of the kitchen, and pointed vaguely at the darkened, closed-door bathroom. "It's in there," I whispered my B horror movie line. "And I can't look while you do this."
He opened the door, glanced at it, then - and I'll never believe this except I saw it happen with my own eyes - he turned around to tell me that it wasn't technically a hornet while the door was still open. Man friend turned his back on Hulk Hornet, and lived to tell the tale! Masculinity, apparently, makes one invincible. Also well-versed in bugs, as he told me it was actually a wasp. "Not even a very big one," he added, rubbing salt in the wound. "More like a small to medium sized one."
I'm telling you, readers. That thing was the Hulk Hornet, and I'll never take that back.
"Whatever you say. It's definitely a wasp." I nodded. "Yep, yep. Just please get it out of my bathroom!"
And in the time it took me to say that sentence, he had caught it in the container. I opened my apartment door for him, and he wandered down my stairs to the bottom floor, where we headed outside. He walked down to the street, just a few yards from the front door. Man friend removed the top of the container and, with all of the delicacy of launching a wedding dove, he released the Hulk Hornet into the sky.
The next day, I had a hard time looking him in the face. How could something that rendered me completely useless be so effortless to him? What kind of feats could I conquer if I had such unshakable nerves? Why the hell didn't I get those? And where I could I sign up to get me some?
The answer is to try to deprogram myself, but I even I know my ephemeral tactics and pre-kiling pep talks aren't fundamentally changing my response to bugs. If anything, I'm getting worse. Although I used to regularly kill house centipedes when I was a senior in college, now I am completely undone by them. They are pretty useless bugs and I know they can't hurt me, but I lose it when I see one. Anything with that many legs has got to be the work of the devil. One friend, a fierce woman who had a roach problem when she and her partner first moved to their current apartment, told me that the secret is a combination of force and speed. She described it, lifting her hand over an imaginary roach, "You get your paper towel ready, position yourself, and then..." She slammed her palm on to the table. "THE WRATH OF GOD!!!"
I know if she can do it and my partner can do it, I can't blame it entirely on gender socialization. I have to be an adult, take care of business, and start exacting the wrath of God. But that seems unlikely anytime in the near future, since I don't think I'll even be able to re-read this post.
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