Jennie Smash

This morning I wandered into my bathroom to take an innocent pee and a horrible segmented she-beast ran out from underneath my trashcan. Don’t ask how I know it was a she: It was wearing earrings. But seriously, I refuse to fight to the death with a male supervillian, because of implications of woman battery when he gives me a cinematic bruise along my left cheekbone and so, the bug, it was a she, just trust me.

My first thought was: Roach. I’ve never seen a roach, so I wasn’t sure if it was one. But it had antennae and it was super-fast, so it was roachy enough for me. I smushed it with the corner of the trashcan, much more easily than I would have thought, given roaches’ bionic reputation, and headed off to work, feeling slightly dejected.

I take the F or the V to work. Which is to say that I take the F, but sometimes I sit on the V for five to ten minutes while it sits there for one million years, unmoving, as if it were the air-conditioned waiting room for the F (which it is, I swear). Today, whilst sitting on the V, staring out the open doors, I saw a truly horrifying sight. A small brown rat, cute enough, if it were in a picture book and not scampering down the subway platform, paused in front of the open doors and peered in at us, twitching its nose. It looked for all the world like it was going to ask if the V stopped at Broadway/LaFayette.

I screamed, for the second time this morning, and yelled, “Rat!” No one else even looked up. I was momentarily embarrassed, until I realized that I regularly see people humping the air or sniffing their figures or yelling “Fuck fuck fuck, you bitch, I said FUCK!” all Motherless Brooklyn-style on the F, so who cares.

When I got to work, I did a Google search and discovered that the bug I saw was actually a silverfish, not a roach, and therefore, according to my coworker Madeleine, nothing to worry about. Of course, she grew up in New York, so she’s not easily impressed by bugs.