Too school for cool - the coffee chronicles

Recently I've come to the discovery that I am not cool enough for coffee shops.  I enjoy coffee as much as any suburbanite with a liberal arts bachelors, and I know the basic concepts - you'd think I'd be able to get by.  My parents made a pot of Maxwell House every morning until we moved to North Carolina, when they started drinking Folgers (for reasons still unknown to me), but I never drank the stuff until I went to college.  One day a lovely woman who shall be known as "A" shared with me a bottle of what we came to refer to as "pure evil."  Coffee is easy to drink when it's drowned in cream, sugar, and chemical preservatives.  I used to drink one while downing a donut.  Oh, college.  The reckless years.

But soon that wasn't enough.  I transitioned to hot mochas with a fluffy pile of whipped cream on top, plus two chocolate covered espresso beans if I had the very nice barista at the Franklin St. Caribou.  That was just a short step away from actual coffee, which I started in half mugs with a healthy dose of flavored creamer and then moved to about two cups a day of the hard stuff with a splash of half and half.

In a place where everyone wants to "meet for coffee," it's imperative to have conversational coffee-fluency. My non-coffee-drinking partner has the misfortune of making coffee runs for the staff in her office, and it has become apparent she has no idea what she's doing.  This has resulted in hilarious stories of her attempting to siphon the last dredges of a stale Au Bon Pain brew for Very Important People Who Require Coffee or getting ruffled when the cashier at Caribou asks her what size she wants her non-fat lattes to be.  ("I don't know - that's all they told me!"  "But what size do you want?"  "Oh...um, small please.")  In mainstream coffee-land, I'm set.  I can hold my own in the Caribous and ABPs of this world.

But the elite local coffeehouses are a different story.  They make me feel the same as divey breweries with $14 beers and boutique burger joints where you chalk up ten bucks for some ground beef and aged cheddar - bewildered, insecure, and staring blankly at my empty wallet.  I leave those places wondering if I was part of something cool or if I just got punked.

How do I know coffee has reached an unbelievable eliteness?  Because I am elite as hell, and even I know I'm being outclassed.  I'm telling you, I have reached a whole other level of bourgy when Starbucks, the epitome of wealthy white people's adoration and angst, becomes the "safe and familiar" coffee shop.

In case this is sounding like a white whine of sorts ("I demand to feel normal at the elitest of coffee shops!  Why can't I fit in everywhere?!" #whitewhine), I would like to sharpen the analytic lens on these spaces and my own insecurities.  Here are what I have determined are the necessary requirements for belonging into elite coffee culture:

• The right eyewear and shoes (although alternative footwear are also acceptable).
• Apple products. Not necessarily this, because that's really for the 'bucks crew, but probably this, and definitely this.
• Being white - this helps considerably, since you're almost guaranteed to be served by one of your own.  Black people are a plus since their presence reflects positively on the super down white people, but only if they are the right kind of Black people.  Asians with appropriate eyewear and shoes are, of course, welcome.  Especially if they are from the Bay.
• Seriousness about latte art. This is not to be cute, people.  It is an art.
• A high level of coffee literacy; i.e., knowing the difference between a flat white and a latte; the precise brewing temperature for oolong; a preference for smokey or honey notes; the ability to discern between national beans.
• Time.  Drip coffee takes 2 minutes, the press pot requires meticulous upper arm and palm exertion, and that citrus eucalyptus tea ought to steep for 180 seconds, too.  If they hand you a sand timer, you better know what to do with it.  DON'T MESS IT UP.
• Benjamins. Because all of this awesomeness will cost you.

If you have these components, mixed with a healthy dose of cynicism and judgment, you are golden in counter-cultural coffee land.  Since I'm pretty sure my flip phone and Keds would have been acceptable as "ironic" substitutes, I would have had it made except for all of my sociological training.  ("Confound it!!  If only I weren't so aware of how I'm perpetuating social inequalities from which I benefit, this macchiato would go down like butter!" #whitewhine.) 

Coffee shops are this intense locus of class and race culture heavily underpinned by oblivious hipster sensibilities, and it makes me feel a little woozy to go inside.  I love supporting non-chain coffee shops, but sometimes all the pretension and full-frontal whiteness is just plain embarrassing.  If we really wanted to create an alternative coffee culture, you would have thought we'd make it affordable and not have a lock to the bathroom.

At the root of all of this, however, is likely my own privileged sense of entitlement to belonging in any white-centered space.  That, or I'm just as cynical and Judgey McJudgersteiny as the folks who inhabit these spaces ("Ugh! I am sooo over local coffee shops! #whitewhine)...in which case, perhaps I'm just as white as I am socialized to be.

The skinny on skinny dipping

Public nudity.  Never really been my thing, know what I'm saying?  Like most women, the thought of public disrobing and prancing around in my birthday suit is sort of like running across a bear in the woods: you're pretty sure the bear sees you and you're pretty sure this is where it all ends.

But I have bared all, dear readers, and I am going to tell you why you should, too.

This all started when my partner had a Groupon for Spa World.  She had been before with a cadre of friends and had such a great time that when she saw the online deal, she jumped on it and asked me if I wanted to go.  Um...(nervous laughter)...let me think about it.

So a couple of weeks passed, and I didn't think very much about it at all.  In fact, I did an excellent job not thinking about it.  But then my hand was forced: the expiration date was coming up, and I had to decide - if I didn't want the free pass, she'd give it to someone else.

First came instant panic: Noo!  This will be awful!  I don't want to be naked!!!  Then came instant regret: Noo!  Missing this will be awful!!  I don't want to be so insecure!!!  It's surprisingly easy to berate myself for not doing something I haven't not done yet.

In some ways, my resistance caught me off guard.  I've certainly had my own struggles with body image, as reality doesn't necessarily match aspiration.  I've been very lucky, however, in that I never really embraced a femme aesthetic, and that has made it much easier for me to be easier on myself.  You can't fail at something you aren't trying that hard to do.  Soooometimes I have that pinched-inside feeling that I ought to wear make-up or exfoliate or thread my brows or something...sometimes.  Not watching TV helps.  But to do the naked thing, you do have to have a sense of yourself as being okay the way you are.  In my more self-righteous days, I can say that I'm generally at peace with myself.  Especially when my clothes are securely buttoned on.

I've also been extraordinarily lucky to have a partner who is maybe the most body-accepting woman on the planet.  It's pretty easy to be naked with someone who finds absolutely nothing wrong with your nakedness.  Being with someone who loves your flaws - or doesn't seem to consider your flaws flaws - makes you think your own perspective might be a wee bit warped.

But even for a generally healthy, feminist-minded woman like myself, the thought of taking it all off unearthed deeply rooted body shame.  You don't even know how DEEP that shit is until you are tested!  To make peace with your imperfections by yourself in front of your mirror is one thing; to take it on a group outing is this whole other level of "self-love."  I just wasn't sure I had it in me.  My mind began racing with various scenarios that all more or less played out like this: 1) people would stare at me, 2) people would judge me, and 3) my head would explode.

Damn it.  Why couldn't it be enough to just love myself when I was all by myself?

A few things swayed me.  One was that I didn't want to let my socialized insecurity prevent me from doing something I honestly wanted to do.  I had always wished I could be the kind of woman who could waltz into a room full of naked people in the buff - now was my chance to dance, and I knew I would regret it if I let internalized body shame win.  Also, one thing Eve had written in a list of things I should do before I turned 21 included skinny dipping.  (In fact, I believe she wrote it in all caps, so it looked more like this: "SKINNY DIPPING!!!!!!!!")  Now a third of the way into 25, clearly I missed the time deadline.  But maybe it time to say, "f this s, I do what I want," and take my clothes off.

And it was free.  So that was a pretty strong motivating factor.  I know I sure as hell wouldn't have paid someone for the opportunity to be extremely mortified and vulnerable among strangers.

I made up my mind to go.  What did I have to lose, but my dignity?  That's pretty much gone already.  So two weeks ago, we packed up some magazines and piled into the car.  As we drove out deeper into Virginia, the panic started to grow in my stomach.  By the time we got into the parking lot, I was definitely doubting my decision.  If you do this for the first time, I am sure you will also seriously reconsider once you pull up to a strip mall with "SPA WORLD" plastered across the front of a beige brick building.

But as soon as we walked inside, I realized it was all going to be okay.  There was a line of people who were all here to naked it up with me.  They were all cool with it - surely I could be, too.  After the Groupon checked out, I got a key for a cubby to put my shoes.  There.  Shoes off.  That's not too weird.  Even Mr. Rogers did that every afternoon on children's television.

Then the people with vulvas and the people with penises when into different locker rooms.  (Spa World is absolutely not trans, intersexual, or gender-queer friendly...in fact, they judge you based on your appearance as to whether you are a "boy" or "girl," which is what is stamped on your receipt and determines which locker your key will open.)  While there are obvious limitations to gender segregation, it eased my foray into nudity...just a bunch of folks with parts like mine.  No surprises.

Once in the locker room, there is nothing left to do but bare it all.  The hardest part was walking into the pool room, where nakedness is required - for some reason, it feels like a debut into a nudist colony, even though no one is really looking at you.

And that's just it - no one is really looking at you.  You realize that everyone is just there to soak in the baths and do their thing and have a nice time, just like you.  And there is something about a space full of naked women - from pudgy little girls to wrinkly old women, skinny women and fat women, Black women and white women and Asian women (actually, lots and lots of Asian and Asian-American women, since Spa World is a Korean spa), that makes you realize you feel, in a way you never knew you could feel, free.

Being naked in a multi-generational, multi-racial, multi-size space is deeply affirming in a way I could not have predicted.  Seeing what we all really do look like under our clothes makes so much more apparent the unattainable expectation of what we are supposed to look like.  It also makes apparent how very imperfect we all are...imperfect just like everyone else.  I fit right in because there isn't a standard at all - we are all human looking, real looking, looking like we've given birth or walked up a lot of hills or eaten a lot of cake or laughed at a lot of good jokes.  We all look like we've lived.

There was still the remnants of body shame happening, of course.  Some women go to the bathroom and close the door to disrobe, and then only go to the poultice rooms, a mixed-gender are where you wear an orange uniform.  I saw one woman only remove the towel she had wrapped tightly around her as she rushed into the pool.  Interestingly, I don't think I would have noticed her at all if she hadn't had the towel on.  We all kind of blur together when we're naked.  You stand out more when you are trying to hide.

A few minutes in, I turned to my partner beside me in the spa bath and said, "This is so awesome!"  I couldn't remember what I had been so afraid of anymore - at least, it was hard to believe how I could have ever been afraid of something so easy.  Why is that the place where you think you will be the most insecure is the place you feel is one of the safest to be you?

Now I'm trying to convince other women to try it, and the reactions have been mixed...actually, I've heard quite a bit of "Um...(nervous laughter)...let me think about it."  It's okay, though, because I was there once.  I know.  It takes time to take it all off.

You are not forgotten

Dearest readers - and yes, I'm talking to all three of you - I fear you believe I have forgotten about you.  Indeed, consumed with the most recent dissertation proposal draft, I have had to focus my attentions on churning that out rather than my weekly blog goal.

But no fear!  I have several heart-stopping, page-turning blogs in the works, including but not limited to: revisiting whether to give to panhandlers, my experience with semi-public nakedness, and not being cool enough for coffee shops.  So please, don't lose hope - there is still much meaningless personal detail and navel-gazing with which I intend to regale you, and you really won't be able to turn away, mostly because you, too, are not cool enough for coffee shops.  (Which is probably why we are such good friends.)

In the meantime, I will leave you with this surprisingly well-done review of women in this fall's television line up, brought to you by Sunday's Washington Post.  Not bad, you know, for a man.

The working world is flipping fantastic!

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...

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.

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.

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.