The power of fright compels you

As a child, my overactive imagination led me to believe that every horror movie made in the seventies somehow resembled my parent's house.  Looking into the backyard out of our kitchen window at night (it always had to be after dark), I saw the gentle rustle of the red and gold leaves of autumn as sinister precursors to zombies or hockey-masked madmen lumbering from the woods all set to chase me.  The awkward upbeat synthesizer heard during the movie Halloween strummed my ears as the leaves blew.  Coming back from my cousin's house across the field seemed like the longest and scariest fifty yards ever.  My mother would turn on the side porch lights and dining room lamp for me. Like a lonely pilgrim, I would sojourn through the trees following that single porch light as if it were an all-seeing unblinking eye of a cyclops and the illuminated floor-to-ceiling windows of the dining room was like the maw of Satan ready to suck me down to Tarturus.  108 Ocean Avenue---The house portrayed in The Amityville Horror---had nothing on my house. For many years, well into mid-adolescence, I just knew I was going to be possessed by a demon. For, you see, the interior of that infamous Georgetown townhouse where two priests fought the devil over a little girl's soul looked identical to our upstairs. To get to my room you had to run up a curved flight of stairs, take a hard right and down a hallway. I envisioned my bed bobbing and thumping while I writhed in fear and pain; my mother rushing to my aide only to have the door slam in her face leaving a huge crack streaking down the middle.

Halloween has always been a special time for me, maybe because I was so frightened of it.  Through years of attending church I was taught to fiercely avoid the dark side (or maybe I just have a stunning propensity to believe in just about any evil). Now, unlike my mother who was terrified of slasher movies---her rationale was that a maniac could actually stab you or impale you whereas the supernatural was kind of silly---I was completely transfixed by the otherworldly.  Bumps in the night heard after my parents were sound asleep kept me awake even as late in life as....oh what the hell, I'll admit it---last week.  I think I was attracted to the mere theatricality of evil.  Satan knew how to put on a real show (at least in the movies and on TV).  Knives and axes were so banal; crucifixes and talismans were my thing.  I believed in augurs and omens. Voices in the dark, demon seeds, daughters of Satan and Burnt Offerings. Oh how I wanted telekinetic powers.

Yet, on the other hand, I should have been a preacher instead. When I was five-years-old I insisted that being a minster was my calling. I wasn't so much interested in the administrative pastoring of running a church, but more of the fire and brimstone church-as-performance-art.  I would pull up a folding chair and have my parents dress in their Sunday best and have them sit on the living room sofa and shout at the top of my lungs. I remember my mother wearing her emerald green maxi-dress and her white T-Bar heels sitting beside my father in his suit and tie-clip. I would wag my finger and threaten all the depths of hell on them if they did not repent.  I was very concerned with saving souls in those days.  Growing up Baptist, when you were baptized the minister would make you hold your nose and submerge your entire body. We had a metal tub that sat in our backyard that had over a few days of autumn rain had filled with water. Well, I decided one day to save the soul of our sinful cat. My mother watched in horror as she washed dishes me taking our cat in my arms. Raising him high above my head I would shout, "In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, I baptize you!"  SPLASH!  I pounded the cat down into the water. I don't know who my mother thought she was saving, me or the cat, but by the time she pried the terrified creature from my grip I was scratched and bloodied. Nonetheless, I was satisfied our little tabby was now going to heaven upon its death.

But like most who are called to preach, I too was not without flaw.  My sin to confess was based in selfishness.  My mother had set out a tray of goodies for the trick-or-treaters on the cool fall night in 1970; a night that held such promise for the children of the neighborhood who had been dreaming of candy and cookie booty since the beginning of the school year. I had persuaded my mother to let me give out the candies. So we sat in the front room eagerly anticipating the first ghoul or Snoopy.  Now, I don't remember this event, but it has been told to me many times:  The doorbell rang and she said I jumped up and ran down the hallway. She heard me open the front door, then the children's lithe voices, a hissing sound and then the door slam loudly shut. She thought nothing of it until the next set of tricksters appeared. The doorbell chimed. I again jumped up, ran down the hallway. She heard me open the front door then children's lithe voices, a hissing sound, and then the door slam loudly shut.  After a few more instances of this behavior my mother decided to investigate. She said to my father that the next time kids come to the door she would shadow me to see what was going on.

DING DONG.

I jumped up and ran down the hallway. She stealthily followed me and pressed her body up against the door jamb leading into the foyer. There, she observed me running from the kitchen with a can of bug spray. I rushed the door, threw it open and when the children screamed Trick-or-Treat! I sprayed them generously before slamming the door in their faces.  I then ran back to the kitchen to hide my child-repellent for the next group and returned and pocketed their allotment of candy. What can I say?  As an only child, I never liked to share, neither candy nor the spotlight.  Maybe that explains the cause of my nighttime fear.  Or maybe one of those kids put a curse on me. It was the south and haints and roots were boutiful. That's malarky, of course. I'm older now and way more intelligent. There's no such thing as demons.

THUMP! THUMP!

What was that? Did...did you hear that? ...Mother?

Mitt Romney will never be captain of the Enterprise

As an author, I rarely take a stand publicly for or against any particular topic. To all my personal and facebook/twitter friends, however, I am quite vocal with my viewpoints. So with great reticence I will forge into the U.S. presidential election of 2012 here.  After watching the second presidential debate I made a realization:  Mitt Romney will never captain a starship.  To explain, let's probe into an area of which I am very comfortable: science fiction.

Oftentimes in reading and writing science fiction we see two vastly different futures for humankind. One is Utopian; that paradise where Big Bird has succeeded in educating the masses and where gender, ethnicity, creed and sexuality have no meaning; a place of civil discourse, natural fabrics and food replicators; and where all ideas are new and all materials are recycled. Here, there will be no need for "binders" filled with "suitable" female candidates because, in Utopian society, women would rule entire galaxies. In this future, science has conquered global warming and diplomacy has brought peace to the Middle East. It is a place where class warfare and monetary greed have fallen into disuse and ill-repute. Religion is less about dogma and demagoguery than the meaningful coexistence of different doctrines. Finally, this future, like Star Trek, sees the ability of humanity to unite and rejoice in the peaceful exploration of space.

The second is Dystopian. This is a vision of the future where greed and avarice have crushed humanity creating a hot house-affected earth filled with the rich few lording over the hungry masses.  Places where privatized for-profit RoboCop police forces vent drugs onto the street so they can charge cash-strapped cities ever more money to clean them up; a future where mankind has destroyed itself and eradicated thousands of years of intelligent discourse by telling its citizens that women's bodies can flush away rape sperm if the attack was "legitimate," or that dinosaurs and Jesus existed at the same time; adulterers and fornicators who hate gay marriage willingly forfeit domain over our planet to some damn dirty apes.  In this Dystopian society, domed cities emerge and are inhabited by beautiful and spoiled children who play without guilt until they reach the age of 30 while being forced into the worst retirement plan ever. Ultimately, they are killed.  And just like Romney's reinvention of Medicare, the citizens of Logan's Run will take their chances on health premiums of the "Carousel" and all will die a spectacular death.--- And you thought his voucherization plan was bad. This is the future Governor Romney is peddling.  A world where the wealthy succeed at the expense of the masses.  A world where 47% of the population work like Troglytes in the zenite mines of Ardana, suffering without healthcare and succumbing to the poisonous gas emanating from the very caves they work because regulatory safeguards and unions no longer exist.  Here, Mitt and his fellow elites float ethereally in the cloud city of Stratos, remarkably oblivious to the hardships of their fellow Ardanans below. In the overheated and exhausted future of the city in Soylent Green, bulldozers scrape up hundreds of people, cart them off and ground them into food---an operation wholly-owned and operated by Bain Capital (apparently without the knowledge of its absentee CEO, Mitt Romney). Only people with offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands and dancing horses (because all other pets will be eaten) can afford red meat, or soap, or air conditioning, or even water. That small wavering voice you hear is that of Michael Jones, the black man in the audience at the second 2012 presidential debate who expressed his disappointment with the president.  There, Mr. Jones indicated that he wasn't optimistic about voting for Mr. Obama again. But now he is screaming and reaching out to you as he's being lifted into the meat grinder.

"It's the middle class! Romney's 5-point plan is made out of the middle class!! He turning us into food! Tell everybody! Romney's 5-point plan is....PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS!"

Now, there's a reason you don't see conservatives in the utopian version of the future:  It is because humanity has grown so wise in 300 years that we no longer need to fear each other. There are no guns and Trayvon Martin would still be alive. People, for the most part, work for the good of the universe. Thus, business is left in the hands of the sexist Ferengi who survive on greed and profit and are reviled by most species in the Star Trek universe. There's no sexism. If you thought James T. Kirk was a badass you need to meet Captain Kathryn Janeway, the ass kicking Hillary Clinton of the Delta Quadrant. There's no homophobia because, in many races, there's no gender. Here, love is love. Outward appearances often have nothing to do with the person (or symbiotic host) that you've fallen in love with. There's no racism.  Lieutenant Uhura was not only a beautiful black woman and an awesome communications officer, but she was actually fourth—YES—FOURTH in command of the USS Enterprise. Similarly, immigration reform is unnecessary. Mr. Spock proved you don't need a green card (but green blood helps) to be a valued member of the ship's crew. He was a bi-racial illegal alien (actually bi-special) who left home and crossed that cultural border from Vulcan to Earth.  He received a free education at Starfleet Academy and went on to become the most beloved character in the Star Trek mythology. Luckily, for him, Sheriff Arpaio never patrolled the Neutral Zone. So, here, in our utopian vision, there are no Tea Party candidates claiming they have some special knowledge over constitutional rights that they know nothing about because there will only be one law:  The Prime Directive. This directive states that we should never interfere with anybody else's world. In other words, stay the eff out of folks' bedrooms and away from their wombs.

In the future, Mitt Romney will be like the alien that held Captain Kirk and his crew hostage by claiming to be the Greek God Apollo; a lonely bitter relic yearning for the days when he was a titan of industry and lusting for those times when he was important because of all the non-humanitarian wealth he amassed. He will be bitter and angry because his profit-over-people ideals will have been swept away for a greater purpose. He will violently hold onto the notion that only the gods (or rich people—which is synonymous in Mr. Romney's mind) can provide bounty to the lowly worshipers of his materialistic edicts. And when the future finally shatters his temple of greed and profit he will be a broken-hearted god bereft of money and followers begging us to pay attention to he and his clan of One-Percenters. That's when our future selves will wonder in amusement how one---so tiny in perspective and resignation---got to be so powerful. Then they will remember that odd little thing that separated us so many years ago. Capitalism. What an archaic system that was.

As the episode ends we see standing in the corner quietly waiting his turn to repeat his lines, for he ultimately is a false player on life's stage:  Mitt Romney. And he's wearing a red shirt. Not a good sign for a prosperous future.

Buggery

I don't like bugs, though not entomophobically (yes, I looked up that word and, contrary to popular belief, I just don't insert large fancy words into my text to be priggish—well, maybe sometimes, I suppose).  I just have your regular run-of-the-mill distaste for insects.  I grew up in the South and admit that I love the romantic serenade of the native 17-year cicada on warm humid nights; that dulcet chirp heard just beyond the tree line as I sat on my mother's side porch. The sound is magnificent—as long as you keep the monstrous insects away from me. What I truly dislike are those pesky bugs that chase you from the room or seemingly fly into your face just for fun. Those carpenter bees and dirt daubers. Those creepy crawlers and winged-dooglers. Insects whose names could only be more sinister if conjured up by Boris Karloff himself.  Those are the ones that make me leap in horror. Of course, I've never done well with creatures with half a dozen legs or more. I was afraid of them as a youngster. I was afraid. I was very afraid watching the remake of The Fly. To this day I can't look at the E.G. Marshall segment of Creepshow.  Thirty years later, I continue to have nightmares thinking of his body being engulfed by insects. #wakesupscreaming

Upon signing the lease of my first New York City apartment (a decent fourth-floor walkup in the Bronx), I kept hearing the voice of Florence Johnston, the Jefferson's maid, sass her famous line "In my building the roaches are so big that when you step on them the crunch drowns out the television!" Unfortunately, I had the displeasure of meeting one of those roaches. I was coming out of the bathroom heading into the living room when I saw my partner's eye widen to the size of Rhode Island. I knew immediately it was some massive insect he had spied, so I literally jumped several feet almost landing on the coffee table. He didn't have to say anything; the blaze of his telescoping eyes told it all.  So I looked over my shoulder and squealed. There, affixed to the ceiling above where my head had just been, was the largest, longest, fattest, menacing cockroach ever recorded on earth. I grabbed a broom and he grabbed the Raid.  As we jockeyed for the best position to make a speedy exit we kept bandying "You spray it and I'll hit it!" and "You hit it and I'll spray!" animated back-and-forth Chip 'n' Dale style.  I finally pushed him forward.  Gripping the can of Raid, he pressed the actuator.

"Sssssssssssss!" A white mist filled the space in front of the bathroom. I was ready with the broom when....  dear Christ Almighty the monster took flight!

I think I blacked out—one of those blind flight-or-fight rages, perhaps. The next thing I remember, I was standing in the kitchen with a jaggedly broken broom handle. We had killed the ginormous roach, but a framed wall photo, several items on a shelf and a lamp on the bedroom nightstand were all collateral damage. Apparently, I started smashing the bug violently and didn't stop until I snapped the poor broom in two. I was told that the dead husk of the creature flew upwards and I charged into the kitchen shrieking in terror. Thankfully, that was the last roach I had to battle in my twenty-year residence in New York City.

However, in May of this year, I returned to North Carolina to take care of my mother who happens to have dementia. That's when the current onslaught began:  the hordes of Insectus Attackio!  For the past few months I've been assaulted by crickets, silverfish, grasshoppers, centipedes, granddaddy long-legs, ants, gnats, flies!  And then, after all that, there came the most merciless and unrelenting soldier of them all:  The Brown Marmorated Stink Bug!—a grotesque brown-armored behemoth that landed on our shores in the belly of a Chinese cargo ship several years ago. With no predators in North America, this beast has reproduced by the gazillions.  Up and down the eastern seaboard homeowners have waged a war with this creature as it relentlessly invades and infests dwellings and other structures. The stink bug is almost like some CGI creation of David Cronenburg. They have no mouths and they resist insecticide. Every time I looked around they were buzzing and dive-bombing towards me in my bedroom.  But I was no simple neophyte just arriving from the big city; I was armed with Google and an eco-friendly idea that there must be something, somewhere in nature, to at least repel these pests.  So with a spray bottle of garlic water, mint and dried chrysanthemum leaves, along with the help of a vacuum cleaner, duct-tape and caulk, I was prepared for battle.

"To fight the bug, we must understand the bug!" Sky Marshall Tehat Meru's rallying cry in Starship Troopers urged me on toward the fray.

Are you ready to rummmmmmmmmmbbbbbbblllllllllllleeeeeee!!!!!!!!!

Now on to tonight's main event.

In this corner.... wearing all-slimmerizing-black by Ralph Lauren, Daaaaarrrryl T Sturgis!  "Ahhhhhhhr" (insert cheers from the crowd).  And in this corner.....wearing a stench-emitting-exoskeleton, the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug! (Booooooo!!! Hiiiiissss!!!).  -- I would tell you to throw tomatoes but the evil little ass-hats eat them and love them.

You can't really battle away stink bugs. Like other insects, in order to beat them you have to prevent them from entering your home altogether. Thus, I was in the process of sealing the windows, especially the area around my mother's bedroom air conditioner.  She had noticed a few bugs at the top of her drapes (the little buggers love to hide in the folds of curtains), so I retrieved the vacuum and headed up the ladder. I was poised with the hose in hand ready to suction the bugs to their doom, when my mother—who's starting to become less coordinated because of her progressing disease—decided she wanted to help.  So what does she do?  She runs over, grabs the curtain and starts flapping it.  I'm now teetering on the top of a ladder with vacuum in hand and a flying squadron of stink bugs escaping the curtains. My field of vision was obscured by the buzzing gross little devils.  I'm pretty sure I yelled like Tippi Hedren in that famous scene from Hitchcock's classic, The Birds—where the sadistic director forced her to endure over 40 takes of real birds scratching and pecking at her. I swatted and flailed my arms.  My startled mother fell backwards onto the bed (thankfully), but in doing so, she brought the curtains down on top of me. Now I was trapped in lavender-colored cotton, a corner of which the vacuum clumsily sucked in. My mother goes on the offensive and starts stepping on the bugs to crush them. She didn't realize that the reason they're called "stink bugs" is because when smashed they emit a terribly foul odor.

Trying to untangle myself and, as if in some scary scene from Poltergeist, I'm shouting over the roar of the vacuum cleaner,  "Don't crush them! They'll stink! The smell will attract more bugs!"

"Whatcha say?!  Can't hear you!!!" she shouted while intensifying her stomping.

"DON'T CRUSH THEM!" I yelled over the continuing noise of the vacuum.

"PUT THEM IN A CUP?!?!"

"NO!! I SAID DON'T CRUSH THEM!"

"YOU WANT SOME?!" she yelled quizzically. "YOU WANT THE BUGS IN A CUP?!?!"

Sigh. I had enough. I threw the curtain off of me and tried to power off the vacuum with my toe to no avail.  I asked her to toss me a black plastic trash bag and I stuffed the curtain, vacuum cleaner and bugs all into it. I yanked the cord from the wall, tied it around the bag and stormed out into the night towards the trash bin cursing along the way. I waited a few minutes to allow the rage and repulsion to burn off.  I dusted myself off and quivered at the thought that some of those bugs probably found their way into my pants.  I went back in the house. My mother was now sitting comfortably in the den in her recliner watching television, volume up, as usual, to 161 decibels.  Maury was shouting from the screen "You ARE the father!" with ear-shattering cheers and catcalls from his audience.  I looked at her, feeling like a dejected warrior.

"Mama, I'm sorry. I seemed to not be able to keep the stink bugs out the house," I said with puppy dog eyes.

She sipped her glass of cold Pepsi and looked at me curiously. "What stink bugs?"

"Exactly," I chuckled.

Oh crap. There's one now on the ceiling! Dammit, the vacuum's in the trash bin. Where's a good broom when you need it?