On Not Having Sex with Your Cockroach
(rated PG-13)
Okay, you’re a slut, I get it. You were fat in middle school, or just barely chubby, and you wanted to shop at Limited Too but your mom just brought you to L.L. Bean and decked you out in as much plaid as covered the entire history of lumberjacks, and you liked that cute boy in your civics class, the skater who bought all his hoodies from Hot Topic and made it to second base with your best friend at your under-the-sea-themed birthday party, but now you’re hott—that’s with two ts—you’ve got the jungle tan, the flourescent beachy hair, legs five times the length of your torso, and now you wanna fuck everything that moves because they want you and because you can.
But, seriously, that’s no reason to sleep with your cockroach.
Ah yes, let us recall briefly the evening that you first came upon him. It was a lovely Thursday in October, just after Charles Wright’s poetry reading, and you were all set to buddy up with your laptop and go into a nature-inspired hyper-drive, so you cleared off your bed, pulled back your covers, and who should be there waiting, sprawled naked, smoking a cigarette and brooding like the sexy motherfucker he is—but Antoine, an American cockroach, poetic bad boy with a thick skin and six legs ready to bend for danger. You’ve heard about the pheromones in their shit, and you’re pretty sure they’re what’s affecting you—but after all, who doesn’t love that raspy, drawn breath through tracheae, that tickle of inch long feelers on the back of your thighs? And of course there’s that whole trans-species naughtiness thing. Insect, you imagine, is almost as delectable as incest.
But stop right there! Don’t you remember what happened when John Bushell told you he liked dogs and then offered you fifty-seven Solo-cups of something neon green? Or, what about that time when your TA took his shirt off during office hours and then offered you a chance to get a little extra credit? What about Mark Landon? JJ “The Ripper” Malone? Your adopted cousin Stefan? All of these, complete and utter failures that left you with what?—three broken hearted creepers, a bill from John Hartley Attorney-at-Law, and dismissal from the family reunion at Cedar Point. (And you were so totally looking forward to riding Topthrill Dragster.) Not to mention of course the four hundred, fifty-seven and three-quarters other guys you’ve known, in the Crucible sense.
But Antoine, you think, is different. He won’t promise to call you and then sleep through your tea date because you know what, he can’t talk. And it’s not like you have to worry about how he needs to pull his pants up or iron his collar or finally realize that green and orange just look gross together because he’s always naked. And that, that’s another turn-on right there. Sure he’s not the greatest cook, but he won’t leave the toilet seat up, hell he can’t even lift it. And you’re starting to get pretty keen on the idea of mothering the first half-human, half-insect child, which, you think, you will name Franz, for obvious reasons, and he will be a godsend to science.
What, wait, no, I was joking. I was completely joking. You aren’t actually, seriously thinking about this, are you? Enduring nine months of a life-threatening pregnancy where you won’t be able to hold your baby at the end of it all, because he’ll be too fucking disgusting look at? Or every night, cuddling up close to something that feels remarkable like steel wool? Not to mention his little ::cough:: I mean, what’s that really gonna to do for you?
Listen, sweetheart. I know you’re a slut, and it’s…somehow grotesquely appealing, but you’ve just gotta pull a Kleenex outta the box, wrap him up in it, even if he’s hissing, and flush him down the toilet before you’re tempted any more.
