Entry #2 – NYC Makes You Curse in Public – Maybe Too Much

No, but really.

Once you’ve been here a couple weeks, enough aggressive action has transpired that you start thinking, “Okay, the NEXT time someone comes at me on the subway, I am getting all up in their business.”

You would be wrong.

As everyone is scrambling to force their way onto the number six so that they can finally go home at the end of the day, no one is thinking about who was standing in front of them, or that they just got there and probably ten other people were already waiting.  That’s not how it works.  There are no lines.  There are no rules.  There is no courtesy.  There is only the train, and the daily tested question of how many people can fit until the doors can’t close.

These are easy observations, common, unsurprising.  You see it happen every day and depending on your mood, you’re one of the jerks who slides through the turnstiles and elbows your way on ahead of everyone else.

But you never, ever push someone off.

All the pushing and shoving should be focused forward, onto the train.  Everyone gets shoulder to shoulder and starts buddying their way in – I say this because you have to remember everyone is in the same boat (or train) and to endear them to you because the silent resentment thing isn’t worth it.

But last week, after I had slid my way onto the train, just within the confines of the doors, a woman slid her arm between me and my new buddies and pushed me off.  Arm.  Torso.  Backwards shove.  Like a slap a across my collarbones.

I stumbled back onto the platform and stared in disbelief.  I like to think my buddies were staring, too.  Because it’s just not done.  YOU DO NOT SHOVE PEOPLE OFF OF TRAINS.

And that’s what I said to her.  Well, with a few colorful embellishments.  She had her back turned to me, the doors struggling to slide shut over her ridiculous, sorry – I’m sorry.  I shouted a few things at her, but I didn’t bring anything personal into it.  I don’t believe in saying things like that out loud.

But you can bet I was saying them in my head.

I furiously stormed over to the wall to have a good pout.

The next train came in two minutes.  There was even a vacant seat for me, so I could settle in and read my book.

Everyone around here tends to walk with a certain attitude like, “What?  You looking at me?  WHAT?”  But people usually aren’t really like that.  It’s a front.  Everyone here is really quite congenial.  I just happened to meet a woman who probably isn’t even from this city who was just actually, truly rude.

And it made me a bit rude back.

But still, I’m happy I said something.  Even if it was incoherent and PG-13.

Entry #1 - You Know You’ve Arrived Once You Start Killing the Native Fauna

Hello from New York, to everyone from home or various parts around the world.  If this were a pitch letter, I would have failed already.  I don’t really know how to write hooks for a blog… Maybe like this?

Girl.  24.  New York City.  A regrettably chaste and uneventful chase after the dream job.

Okay, do you see my problem?  You can’t HOOK real life.  Not really.  This is why we have novels – to make our lives interesting in a terrific way, as opposed to a horrifying way.

Not that everything that’s happened to me here has been horrifying, by any means, but it has definitely all been INTERESTING.

I saw a cockroach for the first time in my apartment last night.  And then promptly murdered it, brutally, with my slipper.  I’d just set down a novel and slid my glasses from my nose, folding them just so and preparing for sleep, when something scuttled out of the corner of my eye.

I was prepared for a monstrous spider, mind you.  I have seen them in Seattle.  They are the familiar beast, in this sense.  I was not prepared for a shiny, hard body and waving antennae.  And it was FAST.  They never tell you how fast the things are.  They are fast.  They are treacherously fast.

Eyes glued to my offender, I carefully slid off the foot of my bed, half blind without my glasses and utterly terrified.  It skittered around in the middle of my floor, unsure if it should stay under the lamplight or make for the dark sanctuary under my backpack.

The universe was on my side, for several reasons. 

1.      My mother brought slippers to me the weekend before.  I’d already brought my own pair, but they were soft-soled, well-worn, and inadequate for killing insects reputed to survive nuclear fallout.

2.      These slippers were hard-soled – an inch thick with firm, unyielding rubber.  The kind of rubber that sees something with six legs and waving antennae and says, “Not today.”

3.      Said slippers were at the edge of my bed and thus at a perfect vantage point for me to escape from my sheets and arrive at a prime roach-killing position.  If working in publishing doesn’t pan out, perhaps the CIA would take me.

I don’t know if anyone’s told you what kind of miraculous colors nature produces, but they are really unbelievable.  When I was a kid I went to marine biology camp, where we dissected squid.  If you cut open the liver of squid, it is nothing short of mercurial.  Ethereal, liquid silver running over your fingers.

The insides of a cockroach are chartreuse  Vivid, inescapable chartreuse.  If you are unsure what this means, Google it.  Live in the technology age, and heaven forbid you ever have to kill a roach on your own with slippers that were meant to console you.  Because chartreuse is never a color someone should witness upon killing a living thing.

I can’t describe the sound that I upon after the roach’s destruction, so I won’t bother.

Today, about eight hours after the foul creature’s demise, I did exactly what I do with most things that terrify me – I research them endlessly, until I’m satisfied that I know how to prevent them from happening.  You shouldn’t Google how to prevent cockroaches.  Really, really shouldn’t.  Google will only make you believe that there’s a hoard of them living somewhere out of your sight in your apartment and that you’ll never be free of them until you empty the place of all food, darkness, and moisture.  Which is physically impossible for most places where people live.  Thanks, Google.  Keep up the good work.

So I did what I should have done in the first place – I asked my bestie, already accustomed to the harsh ways of the city, what the hell I should do with my teeming population of urban pests.

This is why the universe sets you up with best friends – so that they can remind you that living solely in your mind is a dangerous thing and that reality is not nearly so bad as you think it is.

Every building in the city is festering with roaches and mice.  This is a fact.  But, if you keep your place clean (food neatly packaged in the cabinets, dirty dishes washed as opposed to left in the sink) you’re much less likely to be the object of their affection.  This brave soul has seen a roach before, yes, and was able to dispose of the offending insect without repercussions from any sort of hive. 

God, a ROACH HIVE.  Can you imagine?  I’d rather not.  UGH.  UUUUUGGGGGGHHHHH.

This knowledge didn’t stop me from totally losing my mind, however.  I spent several hours sweeping, mopping, scrubbing, and scouring my entire apartment.  An entire hour was devoted solely to scrubbing the mold out of the grout between tiles in my shower.  IT SPARKLES.  You could eat off of any surface in this place right now.

And yet… My skin still crawls at the thought of turning off the lights.

Because when you turn off the lights, the floor moves.  And there’s nothing you can do about it.

UGH.

More later.