The Blog of Yashi - July
Cockroach
"I'm writing to you after just coming out of shower. I was shaving in the bathroom and then near the end, a fairly large cockroach flies through the open shades right into my direction, and onto the sink. It was horrendous. I immediately went to a catatonic attack and "jumped" outside the bathroom. I opened only a small slit of the door to observe what the creature was up to. At first he seemed to have been restricted to the sink, but then he somehow got out and started roaming the area. I thought because the apartment had poison from the extermination, he would just die right off, so I didn't get prepared to kill it (that would mean having my sandal ready). It seemed to be "camping" near the toilet, so I closed to door for a while trying to think what to do--I couldn't just leave it there for the night and hope it would die off during; First, I had to shower after shaving, and second, he might have gone beneath the door into the bedroom and crawl into my mouth. So I figured maybe in the meantime it already died off, but just in case I readied a sandal at hand. I opened the door very cautiously, expecting the worst, and I saw it still near the toilet, "camping". Closing the door again, I weighted my options and concluded that if I just waited for it to die that might take too much time and my night might be wasted on that (I had similar experiences in the past), so I decided I have to actively kill it.
I opened the door looking into the direction of the toilet and BAM it runs right into the bedroom, behind, or into (I'm not sure, I haven't carried out a follow up yet) the red suitcase. At this point my heart is already pounding. I understand this cockroach means business--he's not prepared to just flip over and die like a turtle. He's gonna run for his life, even into my underwear if need be. So now, stronger than ever, I hold my sandal firmly and in a culmination of excitement and panic try to move the suitcase a bit to make it show up. It doesn't. I assume the worst: it has gone into the clothes inside the suitcase and laid eggs there, while comfortably chewing on some humid books.
Not sure what to do--I realize the problematic practicality of the situation: on the one hand I cannot go to sleep when a foreign entity is present, on the other, I can't really do anything--I pause for a short while on the bed, on a frog's stand, and out of the blue the cockroach sprees from the suitcase's direction to the bed. In a fight or flight designing moment, the hunter in my instinctively initiates the lethal action which sends the plastic black sole of death of the sandal to have a meal of encrusted protein. I heave heavily and groan, almost as if after intense libidinal activity. Perhaps this is what Freud was referring to when he said "man" has two essential poles: libido and death.
The body has been removed, not extremely meticulously but visibly satisfying, and I go on to shower."
