There Can Be Only One: Steff Versus the Roach

If I ever needed me a man-slave, tonight’s the night. He could do me a little cleanin’.
My ever-so-brilliant landlords are this major conglomerate from back east. “Back east” is what we disenfranchised forgotten West Coast Canadians call Ontario, which is sort of east but hardly East, since a couple thousand kilometres of country flank it… on the east. We also call it “The Centre of the Universe” in a sardonic kind of way.
A little Canadiana for you. You’ll take it and you’ll like it.
These stupid conglomerate asswipes hired this dumb-ass bimbo to be the property manager. I’ve made it my mission to kind of get her fired, but they just never bothered. Until she illegally broke into a neighbour’s place to look for his drug stash to implicate him. (An accountant. A neurotically perfect accountant who’s as quiet and respectful as they come. Who smokes pot. And drops ecstasy to get freaky with his girlfriend. Yay, freaky! Otherwise… he’s an accountant. With a treadmill. Ooh, lock him up! Beast!)
My complaints about the millions of shortcomings didn’t go far. Neighbour’s complaint packed a little oomph. But the final straw, it would seem, came when they had to evict this strange, strange old stanky man she had rented to, despite the fact that he wore horrible old clothes, had one of those wispy “you should shave that thing” beards that never has enough hair to qualify as a “beard”, who smelled like trash… because he LITERALLY was a dumpster-diving guy who carted everything home with him and had an apartment literally full of garbage within the month.
He was evicted within six months. And a monster 15-yard disposal bin was needed to cart away the shit he left behind.
I’m three-and-a-half floors up and behind him. The bugs have reached my place just a few weeks after his eviction. Nine years I’ve been here, and the first time in my life I saw a cockroach was last night. On my kitchen counter.
I may be a dirty girl, but I’m not that dirty.
I’ve cancelled my plans. It’s quality time now for my friend, Lysol, and I. We’re tearing apart my kitchen, washing every single dish (but not with the Lysol! and I have an eight-piece setting because I could once afford to throw dinner parties, sigh) and cleaning the cupboards, and huffing chemicals…
Because I LIKE LIVING ALONE, MOTHERFUCKER. I WILL pay this price. You are univited, Mr. Roach!
Back off. You encroachin’ dis girl’s space. Yo ass is mine!
Meanwhile, since I’m quite the nervous nelly around bugs (but once I go Clint, man, there’s no turning back) I’m fuelling my death-search and sterilization quest with rye and coke.
In the meantime, I just want to say:
I guess there’s about eight or ten people who normally comment on this blog, and then no one else ever. I like comments. More importantly, I like to hear from readers that there’s a point to all these unpaid hours I spend blogging for the fuck of it, so when I had a new reader write me to say they heard of me in this posting tonight, and I read it, it made my roach-searching heart go pitter-patter and feel all warm and fuzzy. And I don’t think it’s the chemicals.
So, if you like my writing — or any blogger’s writing — you really should say so sometimes. Writing sometimes is like oral sex. Sure, it’s usually appreciated, but it can be awfully dark and lonely work, so a little encouragement goes a long, long ways.
Now. I have a little going-Clint to do here.
So you gotta ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, roach?

9 thoughts on “There Can Be Only One: Steff Versus the Roach

  1. tashe

    Steff dahlink, you are my latest hetero girlcrush and I’ve just started linking people here (me, not so public).

    HORRORS, re: your new roommate!!!

    But hey! I said hello!

  2. Just a Girl

    I read at both places all the time and almost never comment. Bad commenter…bad, bad.

    I’d say that a lot of what you write causes me to go up in my brain and just think, think, think and then I never get back to comment, if I have a comment.

  3. Jonathan Eunice

    I think your writing gets pigeon-holed as “a sex blog” but I think of it much more as “a life blog”…and a fascinating, artfully rendered life at that.

  4. Stabbity

    Hi Steff,
    I’m one of those lurkers who never comments. I love your blog, though. No matter what you’re writing about, it’s alway entertaining. It’s especially nice to see someone local (or relatively local, I’m from Victoria) blogging.

    -Mel

  5. ArtTamali

    Some of us folks “Back East” (yes I live in Toronto) love your blog. I read it religiously because I see some of myself in your postings and I love the advice you give.

    Keep up the great blogging and I’ll keep up the lurking.

  6. Invisible G.

    Wow, the connections that people create. A reader or dabbler of my blog found you through my post, yet who is this new reader of Smut and Steff? Does this person also read my blog religiously and never comment? So many unanswered questions.

    In my defense re: never commenting on your superb blog, I lost touch with your blog for quite a while. It wasn’t until I re-launched my blog and scraped through my own demons on writing did I re-discover you. My experience in blogger land thus far: scads of readers do not comment. I back you up on encouraging readers to post comments. After all, we don’t do this for the love of expression, writers also ache for approval. πŸ˜›

  7. Tan Yee Wei

    Not sure if you have this sort of cockroach bait in Canada: it’s a slow-acting poison that does not kill the bastard immediately. Instead, the creature takes the bit of poison back to the den, thus killing a lot of them at one go.

    Some people swear by it…

  8. Scribe Called Steff

    NOTE TO ALL: FUMIGATORS COME FRIDAY. IT SEEMS I HAD A WAY WITH WORDS WHEN I WROTE THE BUILDING MANAGEMENT. Yay. Die, bugs, DIE.

    TASHE:
    Aww! Yay! Spread the word, yes, I like site traffic. I’m always happy to provide crushing material, too. πŸ™‚

    Thank you.

    JAG:
    Oh, you have commenting phases. They’re appreciated. I like knowing I make people think — every now and then I think I should be more vapid in my postings and maybe I’ll get more comments but then I’ll feel vapid. LOL.

    Jonathan:
    Shucks, thanks. Yeah. I never intended it to be all sex, and I don’t care that people think it is that way or if they want it to be that way… It’s a strange little window on my world, one where I censor myself a little more than I do on my journal blog, where I worry about content following themes more, but certainly not always about sex.

    Besides, I think our psyche and internal lives impact our sexuality more than most sex blogs wanna explore, so that’s the niche I’m in, I guess.

    But thanks so much. πŸ™‚

    Stabbity:
    Yay, Victoria! Man, I haven’t been over in three or four years… I gotta have me a Vic Weekend, I tell ya.

    But thanks from one reasonably local person to another. Go, Canada! πŸ™‚

    Arttamali:
    My folks were from PEI and all my family’s in Toronto, so I’m not entirely opposed to the East. lol.

    Thanks for delurking for a few minutes. My tender ego loves it.

    InvisiGirl:
    I know, what a weird cycle huh?

    I’m one of those blog readers who reads a blog for a week and then never again, so I’m totally a hypocrite when it comes to wanting comments. I read newspapers, not blogs, and I don’t have one of these jobs where I can surf the net at work, so I’m very, very out of touch with the blogging world, other than what I write about.

    But, yeah, writing can be very depressing if you keep doing it, doing it, and doing it, yet never see stats rising or comments landing. Every now and then it’s nice to remind people that you need love too. πŸ™‚

    Tan Yee —
    In the end, not cockroaches it appears… some other ugly critter and because I never watched Microcosmos or Discovery Channel bug shows, I’ve no idea what they were. πŸ˜›

    But, fumigators shall deal the deadly blow.

    DIE, BUGS, DIE! πŸ™‚

  9. AndrewNZ

    Hey, found you via Sugasm and have now been wandering through this and Last Ditch. Fun, good writing. Made me smile and laugh.

    Hope you managed to kill those roach muthafuckas. πŸ™‚

    Oh yeah, and like your photos on flickr. Why no posts there for a long time though?

Comments are closed.