Talking Dirty

It takes a great deal to gross me out. I have a pretty strong stomach for the most part. For example, I broke my kneecap at the World Trade Center right after 9/11. I was walking with a friend to work, wearing tennis shoes, and I fell right into a hole in the sidewalk. I didn't even feel my knee twist around to the other side of my leg. Everybody else around me freaked out. I think that was the scariest part. My friend kept repeating like a mantra, "Don't look down, Don't look down." Even when the fireman and the ambulance got there to help me I could tell by their faces it wasn't good. I didn't feel a thing. I think my body just shut down. Even in the emergency room I held it together. (The morphine may have had something to do with it.)

My point, is that I think, perhaps naively, that I can handle some gross stuff. But yesterday I reached my breaking point. I am convinced that this city, in big and small ways, may be out to get me (or at least get me to hurl.) It started when I ordered lunch at work. I ordered a Philadelphia Roll from Empire Szechuan. That may have been my first mistake... I thought a Chinese delivery place could make good Japanese food. I open my lunch and there is a live centipede / thingy with antennae crawling in and out of my sushi like it wants to play hide and seek. Gross. Puke. When the delivery guy came back to pick up the food he wanted to see the bug. So he dug through the sushi and put it in a separate container in front of everyone. Gross again.

Later that night when I got to my apartment, I was expecting to breathe a sigh of relief because my landlord supposedly had sent an exterminator while I was at work to take care of the roaches that have been invading the kitchen in my apartment ( by invade I mean one or two but everyone has a breaking point.) I walk into the bathroom and not only is there a roach in the bathroom sink now doing a happy dance, the toilet seat has been left up and there is urine on the floor! What? Nobody in my place has a penis or pees standing up!!!!!!! Triple Gross. I guess that not only did the exterminator forget to kill the bugs, he also forgot to put the seat down. I cleaned that bathroom from top to bottom and tried to disinfect my person in the shower. I don't know if I will ever be clean. This city has officially grossed me out.