Chronically Ironic

·Summer Session Cesspool SuckFest

I had lived in the same tumbledown shanty all through college. It was a house that someone had decided to build a wall right down the middle and call it “quaint cottage apartment.” My half was modest, and more importantly, $245 a month. A steal. Unfortunately it was still a struggle for me to get that together, what with my $400-a-month phone habit. My neighbors that occupied the other half of the house were rabid Baptists with the spawn of Satan, a little horrible girl named Ashley. She was spoiled like a black banana, and she listened to Christian Contemporary music non-stop along with having the volume to “The Little Mermaid” video up to 10 jillion. She was 5. She was evil. I wanted them all dead.

Needless to say, I was thrilled to get out of that place for my last semester - a new opportunity, a bright horizon! A friend lived in a nice house right across the street from campus, along with 3 other girls, and one of the girls had just moved out - they had a space. So I packed up all my stuff and either sold it or moved it to a storage space and couldn’t wait to have roommates. I had never had roommates before. I don’t know why I thought NOW would be a good time to start.

It was May. I took summer classes every year, and this year was no different. May in East Texas, aka the Piney (Burning and Suffocating) Woods, is a little warm to say the least. Upon moving in with these lovely new roommates of mine, they unleashed on me a secret that I swear they were keeping from me: The house did not have AC. Well, they had window units, but they “tried not to use them.” ????? It’s only 7500 degrees outside and the humidity level is that of an Amazon rainforest, but that’s cool. No worries. I don’t need to wear makeup for any real reason. Oh, and I don’t really need to FEEL FUCKING COLD AIR for the entire rest of the summer.

There were more problems than just the no-AC rule. They had cats. I like cats, I have two. But try the combination of cat litter on bathroom floor + swampy shower. Gross. One of the cats really liked me, and wanted to sleep with me, which was sweet. One night, I woke up in the middle of the night to a vaguely familiar smell - and my sheets were wet. I was severely afraid that, at 23, I had indeed wet my bed. I got up and washed the sheets, not wanting the other girls to know. Much to my dismay (or relief,) however, it happened again. This time, I KNEW it was not me. The cat. The FUCKING CAT was peeing on me at night. Hot, stinky, cat pee. Fantastic.

The no air/cat pee/roommate situation was not cracking up to a rollicking good time, to say the least. Sure, I made some friends, but said “friends” were also happy to eat not some but all of the groceries I had purchased for myself. I know that this is a common roommate-related problem, but when they went after my hair products, I went crazy. I suffered through exactly 30 days of living there. I found a way out for the rest of the summer.

The way out was my English Renaissance professor. Hey now…don’t go to the wicked, wicked place that had been on my mind for at least the last two semesters of my collegiate career. I did NOT, contrary to popular belief, sleep with the aforementioned professor, although the thought had entered my mind once or twice. Or maybe a few dozen times. He was savvy, intelligent, knew everything I had ever wanted to know about, and had an entire roomful of Armani. Yes, like many young women in his classes, I had fallen prey to the Devastating Doctor. He was, sadly, always a complete gentleman. But we were friends outside of class, and I had shared with him my horrors of the All-Girl Wayward Hothouse of Thievery and Devil-Cats. He had mentioned that he was going on a research trip to a larger city south of us for the remainder of the summer, and how would I like to be his house-sitter while he was gone? No rent, just utilities, and an entire house to myself. Well, it sounded pretty damn good is how it sounded. Like a fairy-tale fucking dream. Plus, I could spend all that time in his house trying to get closer to the mystique that was this man. He kept the Armani Room under lock and key, however, so there would be no wearing of his shirts and jackets for fun. I moved all my crap in, but there were things I didn’t yet know: Like how he didn’t really turn the AC down past 80, which holy shit, is still fucking hot. And how that would have to be my rule as well. Strike one. He also had cats. These cats were not of the snuggling and peeing variety, but they did enjoy their share of hijinx. Like when one of them managed to claw his way through the screen door to the backyard and get lost for two days. Strike two. Oh and hey, guess what, he was MANIC FUCKING DEPRESSIVE. So when he would come back in town for the weekend, I never knew what mood he would be presenting, so I either had to listen to him whine and cry or go the fuck away (which is only awesome if you have someplace to go.) Strike fucking three. It was still better than the first 30 days of my summer, until one night.

I was almost ready for bed, and was watching reruns of Thirtysomething (he had no cable, so I was forced to watch whatever crap they had on the regular half-tuned channel that I could get.) While I was hunkering down and slowly immersing myself in why orange-haired guy had screwed whomever over or why the cute guy died, my eyes were drawn to something that was on the ceiling. Something that was moving. It was as big as my fist. IT was a cockroach.

A cockroach almost so large that you could saddle and ride it. I tried to ignore, but I knew very well how what we call wood roaches in Texas fly. Yes, my friends, they fucking FLY. I could not think about sleeping, or the cancer-girl on Thirtysomething, or the 2 hours of infomercials after that. All I could think about was this thing that was slowly circling the upper perimeters of the bedroom as if to taunt me. “Just try to go to sleep,” it said, “and I will quietly crawl directly into your mouth and have my babies.” There was no other choice. It was either kill or be killed.

Cut to a scene of a girl, early twenties, 2am, talking like an insane person to herself and the Mammoth Cockroach (”c’mere you little fucker…I know you’re trying to kill me…but I am gonna kill you…You won’t win…etc.”) Armed with what I thought were my most effective weapons - a giant can of hairspray and a magazine - I followed this thing around the room for another hour. It would move, I would move with it. It sat still, I watched it. I could see it’s little front legs rubbing together in glee. I think that the moment that I realized that only action, not crazytalk, would speed up the process of me getting possibly 4 hours of sleep that night was when IT TURNED IT’S WEIRD LITTLE BROWN HEAD AND LOOKED DIRECTLY AT ME. I know that they can’t see very well, but holy fuck. I then started screaming at it while spraying it with what equaled half the can of hairspray. And then, Dear Readers, it fucking flew at me.

I fall over the bed while running away from the flying monstrosity that is about to attack. When it does land, I take the magazine and whack, whack, keep whacking, screaming and crying all at the same time, until I am positive it is more than dead. I put the magazine over the remains, along with a couple of books - just for safekeeping. I don’t want the ghost of this thing to rise up through some flimsy edition of People only to torment me and bring me all the way around to full-on crazy. I had conquered that fucker, and boy was I glad. It only took 3 hours. I was scared out of my mind.

Unfortunately for me, where there is one Mammoth Cockroach there are dozens, and this scenario was repeated again at least five times before I was granted leave of that house, as well as college, as well as East Texas. The ironic part was, on my last day in the Dr.’s house as well as the day of my graduation, he calls and says, “Your graduation present is in the room where I keep all my suits…the key is in the bottom drawer of the nightstand.”  Finally, admittance!  And yet by that time, I thought he was so screwed up that I frankly didn’t care anymore. 

I couldn’t have been happier to say goodbye…but if I learned anything from that whole experience, it’s that large roaches a) multiply out of spite, and b) are damn hard to kill.

The Short Bus