“What’s the Worst Thing That’s Woken You Up in the Dead of Night?”
I recently moved to Williamsburg and thought life was perfect until I was awoken last night by a GIANT COCKROACH CRAWLING THROUGH MY HAIR! Is this normal? What’s the worst thing that’s woken you up in the dead of night?
Oh, fun: Gothamist is running a series of questions for publisher Jake Dobkin, a real live native New Yorker, and this is the first installment. Dobkin’s response is brusque but, I think, fair (“rather than ask what the cockroach is doing crawling through your hair, you should put yourself in his eight little shoes and ask yourself what your hair is doing gentrifying his neighborhood”), and he’s had his share of late-night run-ins over the years.
When I first moved to New York I rented a room that hadn’t been occupied in a while, and about a week into my stay, I woke up with a giant, stinging welt on my lower calf; a few nights later I found another one on my arm. I’d done enough late-night, panicked googling to know that it wasn’t bed bugs, which was oddly calming, but I had no idea what was causing it. Maybe it was a strange allergy? Then a few nights later, just as I was drifting off, I heard a distinct scuffling coming from behind the framed photo above my bed. It was loud, and I just had a sense that whatever it was was the little shit responsible for my bites. I flipped on the light, grabbed a rolled up magazine, and lifted up the frame. There was a four-inch long monster there. I hit at it, and connected, and blood (my blood?) actually smeared across the wall. The stain is probably still there. If you care to, you can search for “house centipedes” and you’ll get a sense of what I was dealing with. They’re apparently great for bug control. And gentrifier control, it turns out.
The good news is that I can survive anything now. And yours?