The Cockroach

August 12th, 2005

The cockroach has startled me upon its arrival; I wasn’t expecting such an unwelcome guest. I had been walking at an angle through the kitchen when I first caught site of its antennas. I was never one for confrontation, so I stealthily tiptoed around the cockroach as to not disturb its first impressions of my trite abode. I remember the heightened buzz the radiator had been humming when the cockroach first rolled its colossal head. What have I done to attract such peculiarity?

August 13th, 2005

I have let the cockroach use my kitchen as a temporary dwelling. I rarely use it anyway. We are still merely acquaintances, but we seem to be getting along openly despite this. I have left the microwave door open because the plumpish insect has grown a special fondness for curling up and sleeping there.

August 15th, 2005

The cockroach has encountered and confronted the fan, repeatedly.

August 21st, 2005

Over time, the cockroach has taken particular interest in my daily state of affairs. Alanna often asks why I shut the kitchen door when she arrives. I tell her that since I am studying Sylvia Plath, I feel the need to dissect the origination of all of her personal afflatus. Alanna kisses the right side of my neck and tells me to stop reading dictionaries.

August 22nd, 2005

My apartment is contorted and overpriced. At the time, I preferred location and access to doormen rather than more spacious living quarters. The walls stop peeling when I look at them, but continue to do so once I’ve turned around; my carpets have been stitched together so many times I feel like I’m stepping on my mother’s wrists. The doors creak unless I kick the phonebook in front of them – they sent six phonebooks to my floor yet I am the only one that lives on it, and not wanting them to go to waste, I extracted them from the hall into the crevice I once called a closet. The heads of my numerous chairs are all slanted, my tables cannot maintain their formerly entrusted state of equilibrium, and my garbage can seems to suck all my valuables into it when it feels neglected.

August 28th, 2005

Alanna speaks with capital letters and proper punctuation. When she waves her hands sometimes I feel like I’m watching a poorly rehearsed commercial. She claims she’s just a pair of lips, she talks like I don’t know what she’s talking about.

August 31, 2005

The cockroach has territorially claimed the couch as its own. We watch TV together when I get home from jogging around the local reservoir. I lie on the coffee table. It has a tendency to nestle up against the fur pillows I have cushioned on the right side of the couch, raising its antennas to signal that I just skipped a channel worth watching.

September 3rd, 2005

I couldn’t think of anything to name the cockroach, and while I was apologizing, it insisted not to worry. Sometimes, I’ll catch it sifting through the various anas I have scattered around the inside of my desk: strands of hair, pant-strings, non-digital photographs, lipstick, train tickets. It sighs.

September 4th, 2005

Nowadays, every time a new book is released, I consider myself a better writer. Memoirs in particular; they require a certain sciolism that I lack, most often of sexual abuse, lucrative use of third party substances, degenerate parents, degenerate living quarters, lack of comestible nourishment, etc.



September 6th, 2005

The cockroach rolls onto its stomach. I was never comfortable with self-preservation. My girlfriend would always bring an exaggerated amount of band aids on our earlier dates – she’d keep them in her left pant’s pocket, probably the deepest pockets I’d ever come across: I could stick my arm up to my wrist into them. I remember waking up with band aids on my nose, or her licking my belly button and then giggling herself into convulsions. My – former girlfriend, I mean.

September 17th, 2005

Today I stapled my thumb so accidentally it almost felt intentional.

September 25th, 2005

A little reluctantly, I have decided to cease trying to rent out my second bedroom, and imparted it to my new miniature friend, now roommate. We have a lot in common, both being survivors, a little too temerarious for our own good. Hah.

September 30th, 2005

“I wasn't really expecting anything. You make me insecure. It's odd because I don't even know you, and I don't feel that way with anyone else here. I’m always scared to speak in creative writing class because you can hear it. The girl that sits on the windowsill told me to stop talking to you because she wants you, too.”

October 13th, 2005

Last night I took the cockroach to the McDonald’s a couple streets down from us and while we waited for our orders a vagabond of appearance strutted in and began telling us that we would not be able to assault him due to the fact that there were police in the vicinity. Aggravated assault was far contrasted from assault consisting of complicity aggravated assault we would not be able to assault him here he went on and on and on and on and finally he mumbled his way off to the soda dispensers. The cockroach peered at me searchingly, as if knowing I was shaking because of the memory I had just recovered from. When I was younger…

October 16th, 2005

I was intimidated by the man at McDonald’s intelligence. When he finished filling his cup up at the soda dispensers, he walked over to a table and poured the contents of the cup into a small bottle that he had stashed in his backpack, which I hadn’t noticed he had with him up until that point. Making sure no one was looking at him, he repeated the process in such a clandestine manner that every bottle he had in his bag ended up full. During this period he had ceased talking himself, and when he staggered forth from his chair to leave, he reiterated his act of schizophrenia.

October 21st, 2005

The small patches of grayish-brown hair left on his head reminded me of the tinfoil needles I’d always see stuck in the clay creations the other boys in my art class would make when I was in elementary school; the man was almost completely bald. He wore deformed goggles that caused his sickly and pulsing eyes to bulge. His nails were festering with a green growth that I at first mistook for nail polish; surprisingly, he had no beard, but his lips were glazed with dead skin and traces of his earlier meals.

October 31th, 2005

Alanna is very good at performing fellatio when she doesn’t want to. The parents accompanying the trick-or-treaters outside throw rocks at our window as their children clap clap clap along and my legs aren’t twitching but I can’t stop them, so I stopped trying. If I was a cow there’s no way in hell I’d try to jump over the moon cause baby what’s life when you can’t be afraid of the dark?

November 1st, 2005

Eh, so, everybody feels the need to inebriate themselves on Halloween, I just happen to have impeccable handwriting while under the influence. The cockroach complimented my vocal prowess and sturdy affection, my adept precision of where when and how to bite the lower lip without leaving a mark. The cockroach says in a previous life, his wife had gargantuan breasts. The cockroach always had a certain finesse with his tongue, he says he could make any girl moan on the inside, he says it’s when they open their mouths but nothing comes out that you’re doing it right. I trust the cockroach in ways I never would have imagined possible before our association. He reassures me this trust is mutual.

November 3rd, 2005

Today the landlord of my apartment decided to check in. Our conversation went something like this:

“Raskolnikov, do you realize there’s a cockroach squealing sideways on your bed?”
“It’s snoring, sir.”
“And how would you know this?”
“…”
“Mmm?”
“It kind of told me.”
“Ah, I see. Well then.”
“You see sir, I’m not a fan of dogs or cats or gerbils or leopards. In fact, I’ve never really been a fan of pets in general, they are simply too demanding and high maintenance for my personal leisure. However, lately I’ve taken accustom to the responsibility of taking care of an insect.”
“And what sort of responsibilities does taking care of an insect consist of?”
“Can I get you a drink? Come with me, I know this great pub around the corner where the waitresses are rather phenomenal…”

November 7th, 2005

Phenomenal!

November 10th, 2005

As of late the cockroach had been loitering permissively around my apartment in such a dreary tone that I had to ask if anything was distressing it. It replied that it was dealing with the natural ennui that comes with being a cockroach. I had no idea.

November 17th, 2005

Alanna’s ornate lip-ring has seduced me into attending classes again. The way it wavers to the left, the little spike coming up and pointing at the depraved eyeliner she wears; part of me wonders if I’m even attracted to her. It’s been a while since I’ve been to class, and the students look at me in such a way that I find myself almost self-conscience at times. I wonder if a single one of them here has ever experienced what it’s like to pace around an apartment at five A.M. with a pink water-pistol stuck to your temple trying to find reasons to live. I was never discreet with my self-deprecatory endeavors. And neighbors can be such a bunch of cunts, and so can square-jaws and defiant hair and no self-esteem; if animals are deemed animals for not listening and my mind is uncontrollable then what does that make me? I’ve never been in love, only in love with someone else. No one seems to be comfortable with the fact there’s a cockroach perched on my shoulder.

November 26th, 2005

Her voice sounded like the drone of a dial-tone. The cockroach tells me he’s kept a notebook full of every tongue-tied loss he’s ever had. We sit like a pack of matches in a desert at midnight exchanging fabricated stories about what it’s like to be deprived, and the deprivation of being deprived. Very few people ever have childhoods, and many of them spend their entire lives trying to find one, or the closest substitution. Not even the air conditioner can save us now.

December 9th, 2005

Today we went driving in search of squirrels to run over. I let the cockroach drive for a while, but consequently he drove straight into a tree. Neither of us got hurt (he got lost in the rubble for a little while), but I managed to laugh myself until I was happy again. It’s began to snow, and now everything’s prettier than it really is. And now that I think about it, I guess what I was trying to say before is that, no matter how many times you tell someone you’ve been molested, it doesn’t sound true unless you don’t say it. I’m not implying that I’ve been molested, or any of that, it’s just an analogy I thought up while riding the subway around New York last weekend. I do that a lot now, take advantage of public transportation. Have you ever entered an elevator and not exited it for hours, just sat or stood there and observed the people walking in, walking out, striking conversations with the ones who question as to why you haven’t moved?


December 25th, 2005

Alanna has shown up randomly to have Christmas dinner with me. As I watch her untangle her scarf from her lip-ring, I’ve finally made up my mind, and I know there’s no where I’d rather be than right here and right now. She’s brought her cat, too, and as it scuttles past my legs I look outside and notice her car’s rammed right into my mailbox. She sees me looking at it and she performs the most beautiful combination of a blush and a giggle I’ve ever seen, then tells me she’ll fix it tomorrow if I don’t mind, stumbling towards the kitchen. I’ve laid out a chicken and the kind of side dishes you tell your guests that your parents used to make. She beams at me, and as I begin to undress her, I come a little closer to the harsh reality that I’ll still be with her when I’m gone.