Roach

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Following another full day of standing on my feet and pulling endless shots of espresso and steaming gallons of milk, I came home to find a roach lying on the metal rim of my bathroom sink’s drain. If you’re a plumber, or you know one, you might call said metal rim a “flange.” I am not a plumber. I do not know any plumbers—not personally, nor professionally. But, occasionally, I like to be accurate. So I looked it up and there you have it: “flange.” You’re welcome. It was a fat one—the roach, not the flange—nearly more than half as big as a Hot Wheels Redlines Porsche 917. (I own more than several.) I haven’t seen a live roach since last August, when I signed the lease on this walk-in closet with a kitchenette, toilet, sink, and tub. This roach on my sink’s flange, although on its back, was very much alive. Methinks it was playing dead. Upon laying eyes upon it, I gasped and leapt across the kitchenette’s floor and swiped my steal blue bottle of Raid Max from its home on the far corner of the counter top (which, in sooth, isn’t all that far). Summarily I summarily soaked said roach in poison. Summarily it summarily flipped back onto its legs and scurried madly up the steep slope of the sink. I smashed it (the roach) with a wadded paper towel and flushed it (the roach-smooshed paper towel) down the toilet. Three of its legs, along with some of its guts, remained smeared against the white porcelain (unless its ceramic) sink. This explains why I had some difficulty eating my chicken burrito. 

18 March 2001

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