The Bug Saga pt. 2

this is from a few days ago when I got sick and couldn't sleep. After the break is when I resumed post-sickness.

Pt. 2: The Hinterland’s Song
(In a few months you’ll be beggin’ for this weather)

Once or twice, in my more wise moments of clarity, I determined that one should not attempt to write or to make important decisions while either a) sleepy or b) sickly. It is June right now and it is 56 degrees outside but it feels colder. It feels like a cold that has set up in my bones. Perhaps this is the mark of a week and a half spent attempting to sleep on a terrible mattress that leaves me sore when I wake up. Perhaps my fridgidity is the result of a sudden sickness that has sprung upon me without remorse. Either way, I will attempt to recount the origins of my struggle with the bugs—against my better judgement to be sure—by working through the discomfort. I do not have high hopes for this part of the story for it began in what seems like years ago although it was only a mere four months or so when the actual troubles began. Nevertheless, I will see if I can recount all of the shock and naivite that comes with the beginnings of a great struggle. Pray my effort is sustained throughout this ordeal.
As early as September, my roommate Kevin (this is Kevin no. 1 for those in the know) noticed a peculiar looking insect perched upon the tweed exterior of his guitar amp. It was flat and brown and slothful in its gait but it nonetheless aroused his curiosity. This curiosity quickly waned as he remembered the crucial early fall survival mechanism known as the open and be-fanned window in our room. Figuring the bug had come from the outside and knowing nothing about its origins save for what his intuition relayed to him, Kevin #1 smooshed the bug and discarded it into our trash can. And for the entirety of the fall, that was all that was thought of regarding the bug. No freakouts or panicked calls to the landlords; no home-made remedies either. Simple forgetfulness and nothing more. It’s strange to look back on this singular little event and realize that it was still very much the beginning of our stay in this apartment that we enjoyed but it was also a harbinger of the coming storm that would ravage the simple structures and routines of our urban existence.
You don’t see these little things as big things without having knowledgable eyes. The eyes of experience would tell you that there was trouble brewing if, in the middle of a room and for no good reason, a bug decided to crawl on top of an amplifier. In fact, coming from an undergraduate environment where the houses that we lived in were not what one might call ‘without spot or wrinkle’—indeed, quite the opposite—you might say that we were predisposed to overlook such a peculiar scene as a flat little brown bug crawling on a Fender. Far too much has been said about the wisdom of hindsight and the fortune of misfortune but these words are often lost on the young. And if this experience has taught me anything, it is that vestiges the old Achilles’ heel of youthful invincibility remain longer than anyone thinks they have. Scarier still, invincibility seems to be subtly bolstered when manifested in numbers. The more youthful men you get together, the more apt they are to believe in their capacity for world domination, or at least entertain serious doubts about the stability of their own lives. In spite of all the shifty-ness of the urban-dwelling twenty-something American male, it should be well known that his ability to blind himself to his true weaknesses knows few bounds.
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And then there is the first bite. The first blood drawn. It does not happen in September when the first of these tiny monsters is discovered. No, in the dead of a Boston winter, when it is frigid and the world has gone completely gray, that is when they choose to strike. Little Kevin is bitten thrice on the arm and the rest of us are unmarked. What creature would bite three times? What mosquito would be alive this late into February? We wonder collectively but lack the ability to diagnose the problem. So the Kevins ask around and the horrible words are brought up: bed bugs. Could it be something that bad? ‘No’, we say, ‘it must be spiders.’
There is something terrifying when those things we young Americans incorrectly recognize as being clichéd rather than repetitive start to happen to you. It couldn’t be X, that wouldn’t happen to us. It can’t be that bad, can it? Those sorts of things are terrifying because you know the answer before you even give voice to the dismissive words. And you dismiss the awful anyway because, let’s face it, it really could be worse. Lumberjack Kevin (I assure you there are only 2 Kevins) was sitting at his desk built into his lofted bed reading a book. As he turned the page he noticed an odd little shape moving along the spine of the book. It was small and brown and more circle-shaped than most insects. And he knew. He just knew. There wasn’t a question in his mind that this could be anything other than the worst that could happen to us. We had the bugs. They had corrupted the sacredness of our apartment with their bloodlust and we were doomed.
“We have bugs” Kevin said with a stoic certainty. He looked like someone who had returned from the DMV after giving a little too much blood at a red cross event. Defeat is too light a word to apply to the gravity with which those three words and his stony visage brought themselves down upon the rest of us in that apartment. I tried to remain optimistic. “We’ve just got to tell the property managers. They’ll take care of this.” Such acceptance of authorities in my life to solve the problems that would appear to be within their responsibility is lost on me now. Then, back when the bugs were first an issue, I believed that landlords could handle a problem like ours. Oh the naïveté of the uninitiated.

It was a frigid time of the year and we were trapped with these things. There were many ashes and much gnashing of teeth.