NEEDLING

Went to the sink after getting out of bed around four thirty this morning and what I found was the last few day’s dishes all stinking wet in dish water. My primary goal was coffee and I would have preferred denial rather than a face off. Turn a blind eye to the sink, so to say. If you don’t look at it – i.e. dirty dishes with old chunks of food such as scrambled eggs floating in the two day old dish water – then they don’t exist. I went straight for the coffee machine. That’s what I’ve been told, know what you want and go for it with blinders on. Anything or anybody gets in your way? I say, smash’em silly, squish’em with the sole of your foot, stamp’em with indignation, push’em off to the wayside.

All I wanted was coffee, and I wanted it right away, so I grabbed the coffee machine to remove yesterday’s filter which, unfortunately for me, was full of water. When I attempted to take it out, the soaked through paper slipped from my fingers and the wet coffee grinds spread on the machine, the counter, and the sink. I was faced with the dilemma of having to clean around the coffee machine to make my coffee, of having to clean the coffee machine itself, before being able to get the new coffee grind ready for take off. The closeness of the coffee machine to the sink, or the sink to the coffee machine, however you want to look at it, forced me to face my dirty dishes situation.

Still, I fought the fact, fought the smell, fought the sight of bloated egg chunks. I picked up a plate set against the side of the metal sink bottom side down held up at an angle under which I expected to find my green sponge. I picked at it with the tip of my finger and there underneath the protection of the plate I found two cockroaches one top of the other looking at me. We were all three stunned. They were on the green sponge which, keeping their size in respect to that of the sponge, looked as if they were laying on a bed.

I asked myself for a second, can I use this sponge safely? Hygienically speaking? Can I keep living in denial like this for the rest of my morning? Will I be able to enjoy my coffee now, after having interfered the lovemaking of two very large cockroaches? During this bit of introspection, we all three continued to stare at each other, each wondering what was coming next.

I broke down and cleaned the dishes. All of them, ignoring the two roaches trying desperately to get out of the sink, running around trying to avoid the water flowing every which way. They were desperate and slowly loosing the energy required to survive this flood. They had no Noah to save their asses, and I was the hands of God making them suffer for forcing me to face my dirty dishes instead of a steaming cup of coffee. There was, I’m ashamed of admitting it, a certain enjoyment in the process, even though I never directly tried to kill. I didn’t try to run them out, for example, nor did I try to smash them to smithereens, I simply did nothing to either save them or take them out of their misery (isn't that a horrible euphemism?).

I let them fight the water on their own. It took them the whole fifteen minutes it took me to do the dishes to finally turn over and die. I washed them away to the drain, caught them and threw their dead little ugly bodies into the trash can.