Jerry Is a Bastard

There’s a housefly in my apartment right now, and, I swear to god, it’s starting to push me over the edge. It bothers me primarily in the mornings as I’m trying to get ready. It seems intent on investing all of its energy into the process of flying back and forth directly in front of my face. It also bothers me during the evenings when I’m trying to watch TV (it walks around on the television screen) or trying to get ready for bed (more flying right in front of my face while I brush my teeth).

I first noticed him last Friday evening. I’d just finished reorganizing my spice rack.* and was settling onto the couch for the rest of the night to watch a movie. I was having a beer and eating some yellow curry for dinner that I’d gotten takeout from Sweet Tamarind. The beer I was drinking was Singha, which pleased me for two reasons. One being that it’s a Thai beer and I was eating curry (I love themes). The other being that it’s delicious. At one point, I glanced over at my beer, chopsticks poised in front of my mouth, and noticed that a fly had landed on the rim of the bottle.

*I’m not kidding. I’ve been dying to get one of those lazy susan spice racks for ages and found this one on sale from Crate and Barrel. This is what’s sad about my personality. I get excited about incredibly mundane things. Especially if said thing involves a project requiring the usage of a label maker.

“Bastard!” I yelped sitting up and dropping the food from my chopsticks down the front of my favorite cotton tank top.

The fly walked a quick circle around the lip of the bottle, and then seemed to stop to gaze up at me. I was horrified. At that moment, I thought about how that particular fly was likely a maggot just last week. A white formless worm-thing writhing around in a pile of feces or some rotting garbage. I grabbed a magazine off the coffee table and tried to hit him. This caused my beer to spill all over the floor, but I didn’t care. In my mind the fly had just wandered around laying eggs and puking simultaneously on a surface designed for my mouth. He’d tainted my beer.

Since then, the little bastard’s been harassing me on a constant basis, and the whole situation is obnoxious. It reached its epoch this morning right after my shower when I noticed Jerry** sitting there on the orchid next to my sink. He appeared to be watching me.

**I just now named him that.

I quickly adopted a new tactic that involved trying to pretend like he wasn’t there, and so I began to casually brush out my wet hair. For some reason, my pretend ambivalence incited him into action. He leapt into the air and began flying around as if he were on fire. Begging me to do something about it. Anything. That was it. I became enraged, and started flailing blindly at the air with my damp towel. This made Jerry fly in an even more spastic manner, and I began knocking things off of the various surfaces of my bathroom with my towel. My toothbrush went skittering across the tiled floor. As did the necklace I was planning to wear that day. But I didn’t care. At that moment I would have given my soul to have that fly tortured in a lengthy manner, then ‘offed’ by some Mafioso gangster-type.

“You. Are. Not. A. Good. Fly.” I stated in a tone saturated with impotent rage. Each word was carefully annunciated and spoken through gritted teeth. Towards the end it was muffled when I accidentally hit myself in the face with the towel.

As I heard myself saying perhaps the stupidest sentence I’ve ever uttered, the reality of the situation set in, and I felt the first dredges of reason enter my brain.

What the hell was I thinking? Do I believe there are good flies? Did I think the fly might take what I said to heart? That it might go some place quiet to try to think of ways to better itself?

‘Am I a bad fly?’ Jerry would think suddenly riddled with doubt, ‘Did she really mean it, or is she just upset about something else and displacing her frustration onto me?’

‘Maybe she’s just having a rough day,’ he would buzz to no one in particular as I stood in the bathroom, cheeks pink and chest heaving from the spate of towel-waving-physical-exertion.

I suddenly felt calmer. In control. I hung my towel neatly where it belonged and went back to brushing my hair. After a few seconds, Jerry seemed to calm down too and settled back onto the orchid.

I set my brush down on the edge of the sink and glanced at my reflection in the mirror. That’s when I noticed that during the fracas my robe had become askew and my left breast was now uncovered.

I started to readjust and then hesitated when I remembered that I live alone. Why do I own a bathrobe? Why not just stroll around in the nude? As these thoughts were occurring to me, I glanced over at the orchid. At Jerry. The bastard was staring right back at me. I imagined my breast reflected a thousand times over in his shiny, unblinking compound eyes. Then, I covered up so that the top of my robe was cinched directly under my neck.

Wikipedia says that flies live between fifteen to thirty days.*

*Here are two additional fly facts that I thought were fascinating:
1) Flies have taste buds and smell receptors on their legs. This seems both stupid and gross. Dumb flies.
2) Flies have physical intercourse to make babies (the male mounts the female from behind).

I’m turning twenty-eight next Thursday. I hope the little bastard kicks it on my birthday.

- fliEs must bE Killed!