FLYPAPER: At one of the lowest points of my life, I lived with a man who simmered with violence like a vat of acid, a beaten teen. I never knew when I would do something that would make a conflict occur. Sometimes it could be something as innocent as cleaning out a litter box. I would carefully make sure that no urine contacted my hands or clothing, yet when I completed my task, he would claim for hours that he could smell urine on me and that he could not work or think or sleep or act because I had ruined his day with urine. I would calmly say, “I don’t want a problem,” and wash my hair and change my clothes, because these were the only acts that would keep the rage from boiling over. In many ways I stopped living, stopped acting, because it was best to not give any provocation, whether it be the content of my writing, or the people I spoke to. As winter passed and the summer months grew closer, there were insects in the house. The kitchen was raided by several generations of fast black ants, and the man I was with tried to make humane traps for them, like sugar syrup, jam, honey, candy poured and crushed on the ripped open envelopes of neglected utility bills. He would get up several times a night to check on the ant traps, so that he could carry the ants outside, leave them by the front door. He did the same in the basement with a population of fruit flies. He dug them out of a cat’s water bowl and carefully dried the wings of each fruit fly, an operation that took place on a nearly microscopic scale, requiring great care, and tweezers, and time, After drying each fruit fly, he placed it with its brethren on long strips of toilet paper. Days would pass and I would see a battlefield of dozens of drowned fruit fly corpses on these strips of toilet paper, strips grown ragged with the moisture and doting. These were the ones that “didn’t make it.” Each day, the man would convince me that several actually did revive, and that this technique was in fact saving lives. I told the man for two years that I could not live with him, but he refused to leave, and he remained the guardian of the ants and flies and real estate. I wished for a moment that he could treat me with as much respect as he treated these mindless beasts. I was afraid, afraid to my core, and didn’t know what to do but hide this fear from myself. You see, he saw me as the enemy; humans as the enemy. He was safe in the realm of flies and ants.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 04:33:13 +0000
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