LA is Trying to Kill Me
Sometimes I really hate LA. Three bugs have unraveled my fucking life.
Let me preface this by saying I HATE BUGS. I don’t mean that cutely. I mean it seriously. Bugs can fuck off. I understand their places in the ecosystem and blah blah blah but stay the fuck away from me. And look, I lived in Australia — that place is CRAWLING. But their bugs are respectful and don’t bother me. It’s these damn American bugs that drive me batshit. Do you know what mosquitoes have besides malaria? The motherfuckin’ NERVE.
I moved apartments two weeks ago. Basically, I had a creepy roommate who made me mad uncomfortable and I wanted out OUT OUT of that place and away from him. I found a room in a house right off the interstate in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood. You can’t imagine how ecstatic I was. Never mind the lack of street parking, air conditioning, and wifi; I WAS MOVING. This was an obvious and definite step down from the apartment in Los Feliz (I lived right next door to Naya Rivera, thank you very much!!!), but I have one less roommate and no longer clean pubes off a toilet.
My room is at least quadruple the size of my last room and by LA standards, I’m pretty much living like a D-list celebrity, BABY! GET ON MY LEVEL. Even last week, I was drooling over those mid-century way-too-expensive couches from West Elm. I had my eyes on this baby blue velvet loveseat that looked like Elvis and Priscilla could have conceived a baby on and I had plans to buy it. BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOO. These bugs had a different plan.
Some new Netflix show was playing on my laptop. I was half paying attention, distracted by how bright my room was (shout out to ADD). I decided I would go turn off my light, resettled into my cozy bed in my NEW ROOM, and start the show over. When I went to turn off the light, a moving speck caught my eye just outside the door. I’m already hyper-paranoid of anything with more than four legs because EW FUCKING GROSS, so picture my DISGUST when I discover none other than a MOTHERFUCKIN’ bed bug crawling on the floor outside my room.
My soul left my body.
I watched my jaw drop. A fucking bed bug in *my* apartment? In my *NEW APARTMENT*? Excuse me, but what (*clap*) the (*clap*) fuck (*high pitched scream*)?
When my soul finally returned to my might-as-well-be-dead corpse, I squished that bug with ferocity and called my landlord. He was at a The Who concert at the Hollywood Bowl. A once in a lifetime opportunity, no doubt. Was I going to separate him from Pete Townshend and that entire holy experience? Umm, absolutely. There was a fugly blood sucker on my wall. Alas, my landlord said we’d have to wait to deal with it, but that didn’t stop me, clothed in pajamas and sans bra, from getting in my car and driving all the way to Burbank’s Walmart. After I frantically went inside and had a full blown meltdown (that involved me plugging my ears and starting to cry — shoutout to Anxiety Disorder this time), I found the bed bug sections — and YES, THERE’S A SECTION — and bought ALL the cans of spray. I’d return to my apartment a mere hour later to douse it, wishing I was dousing it in gasoline. My future children will probably be born with six legs because of that spray and then I’ll have to get rid of them, too.
After getting negative three hours of sleep tossing and turning that night because I thought I was getting my ass bit, I got up the next morning ready to tackle the situation with my hungover landlord. A decision had been made. While I suggested throwing a match into the building and walking away, he said we’d bomb it and spray everything. These bombs were no dynamite, like I’d hoped, but foggers with some chemical concoction unhealthy for humans and deadly to bed bugs (OR SO WE THOUGHT). Six other people live in the house; two in my apartment, and all of us would have to be out of the house for at least eight hours the next day while my landlord hotboxed the life out of the pests.
And because I take my life seriously, I stripped my bedroom like it was Ebenezer Scrooge’s house. There was not a single thing left in there. I took all my bedding and clothes to a laundromat down the street, where I spent at least 20 bucks in quarters shrinking all my shit to Baby Gap size on high heat. I vacuumed and washed my car. I threw out a lot of cute shit and even a Mason Pearson knockoff hairbrush (EASILY 40 BUCKS!) and I was sad as fuck, BRO.
Crying in a laundromat isn’t cute — no matter how hard the crackhead by the dryers tries to convince you otherwise.
There were no bugs in our actual beds. Or in our clothing. Or on our skin. No trails to let us know they had been feasting on our bodies. Nothing. There were only the three bugs we found on the wall. This still made us bomb the place because apparently bed bugs have survived the test of time. They were the beginning of all life forms and will be around well past the apocalypse and the second coming of the Lord. Great. Good to know.
The bombs were set. They went off. And we still found a LIVING bug the next day.
I have been sleeping on the center of my bed, careful to not let anything touch the ground. Powder is spread surrounding the frame, like salt to keep away vampires or whatever. On Monday, a REAL exterminator will come to find the source of these bastards (I think it’s my male roommate who isn’t being forthcoming) and hopefully get rid of them once and for all and we will wait. It has been such an excruciatingly bad week in Los Angeles for me and I decided, you know what? I’ll go get my hair done. That’s what I’ll do. I drove all the way to Venice Beach — a 45-minute drive without traffic; an eternity with. There I am, complaining in the chair and crying about my horrific week. I complain about gas prices, boyfriends, and rent. Normal stuff. I leave the chair feeling refreshed and go to the front desk to pay. “That’ll be five hundred and seventy five dollars.” Sometimes I really fucking hate LA.
