While watching a horrifying movie of a cockroach infestation in Tokyo this morning (it’s a bit slow to load, so give it a few minutes), I was reminded of a truly scarring New York City memory.

My first job in New York was located on the twentieth floor of an “office” building in the wholesale district of Broadway and twenty-eighth. For those of you not familiar with the geography of Manhattan, that area is a rats nest of shops and buildings, populated majoratively by Africans selling everything from perfume and costume jewelry to pirated DVDs on a large scale. It’s crowded, hot, loud, dirty and smelly. On top of this everyone smokes. It’s kind of like the essence of Manhattan hell, condensed into a few blocks.

My office building was no exception. From a major DVD pirating operation down the hall, to the thugs smoking blunts and pissing in the stairwell, my first job in the city was memorable. During my time there, two people were shot and one guy was thrown or possibly jumped out a third story window. I witnessed brawls, police stings, death threats and all sorts of joy. But, out of all this urban beauty, it was the cockroaches that I still can’t get past.

We had all sorts of roaches in that office, big two-inchers that made you want to talk to God, all the way to tiny ones. They were everywhere. On desks, inside phones, trust me— everywhere. While some of my coworkers were rabid roach killers, I being the Aikido freak hippyish motherfucker I was, refused to kill them, thinking instead, “Here is a form of life, long reviled and murdered by man. I will do this creature no harm and through some cosmic communication, it will understand this and do me no harm, nor disrespect my space.”

I know, you want to gag right now, but listen, I was smoking a lot of weed and who knows what the hell else. I was in an interesting mental space and seriously, we’ve had multiple millenia of roach smooshing. Has anyone ever just tried reasoning with them? I’m a motherfucking pioneer!

So, as my coworkers were swearing, slamming, squishing and splattering their way to their own karmic justice, I took the different route. Upon spying one of the little bastards, peeking out from under the CPU, dolefully eying my breakfast of champions, I would simply look it in the eye (or at least the area where supposedly the eyes are located) and mentally communicate a message of peace, safety and “Please refrain from munching or laying your eggs in my food, my six-legged brother“.

My method seemed to work. I swear it! After transmitting my message of universal harmony and love, the little fucker would almost nod back at me, like he got it and take off, leaving my space and my breakfast of champions unmolested. Okay, it might have been the weed talking somewhat, but I swear that I had only a fraction of the roach problems as “Vlad the Insect Impaler” sitting next to me had. I really touched on something!

My little agreement with my newfound insectoid buddies worked well, for quite some time, until one fateful day.

As was my habit at the time, before popping in to work, I grabbed a cup of that over-sugared, colored water that passes for coffee at the many carts in Manhattan. I’m the type of person who often lingers over coffee, taking several hours to consume one cup. The worse the coffee the longer I take to drink it, basically. So, I spent the first couple hours at the office, sipping and working.

At one point, pausing in the middle of something pressing, I took a big sip of coffee. Immediately, I noticed a strange wriggling sensation on my mouth and spit back out into the cup. Lo and behold, a big, fat and still living cockroach was attempting to dog-paddle it’s way to freedom having successfully surfed my molars.

Somehow, through divine intervention or perhaps just sheer pluck, I managed to refrain from projectile vomiting all the way to Jersey. There was weird insect grit in my mouth and I think I might have swallowed a leg or possibly an antenna. I tossed my coffee complete with the feisty little tongue-snorkeler into the trash and stifled what might have been one of the more girlish screams to ever issue from my lungs. For the rest of the day, night and well into the wee hours of the morning, I could not relax, sleep or eat. I kept hallucinating bug grit in my mouth, even after brushing my teeth well over ten times. I recall lying in bed, watching the sun come up through my bedroom window, gagging on phantom cockroach detritus.

Well, that was that. Fuck peace, those motherfuckers crossed the line! From that day onward I was the sworn enemy of the cockroach. I joined the ranks of mad bug squishers with a zeal rarely seen outside the confines of a Whack-A-Mole booth. I wanted payback, Rambo style. I stomped those little freaks every damn chance I got.

Of course now, years later, I no longer work in such ghetto confines. There’s a lot to be said for moving up in the world. The lack of pestilence is breathtaking. But, I’ve learned many an important lesson, down amongst the DVD pirates and roaches. To this day, I am no friend to the cockroach. My grudges run deep. It’s just how I roll.