Seamlessons in New York Living (Long Version DJ Radio Edit)

By Jessica

I’m new to New York City.  Although it’s one of the most widely-depicted cities in media, living it for myself has shocked me in ways both good and bad.  Some of the pleasant surprises have been the feeling one gets standing in the middle of Central Park on a bright day, the fact that people truly are friendly, and being able to get anything you want at anytime through places like seamlessweb.

Some of the unpleasant surprises have been the feeling one gets standing in the middle of a crowded subway car on a hot and sticky day, the fact that friendly people sometimes knock you down when they’re in a rush, and the size of the cockroaches.

An ordinary Thursday evening led me to go through the motions of chopping onions and peppers to prepare pasta for dinner.  The rotini was bubbling on the stove and I was moving back and forth between chopping block and oil-covered pan.  Dressed in my usual after-work sweat pants and button down blouse with pearls, I was feeling good and hardly noticed the sirens outside that frequent my block.

Stepping away from the kitchen for a split second, a shriek, louder than any siren, stops my heart.  “THERE’S A COCKROACH!” I hear my boyfriend’s sister’s voice trail as she bolts from the kitchen to the living room, jumping up on the highest part of the couch so that her head is inches from the ceiling.  I turn and face the largest monster I have ever seen. 

I am more terrified of cockroaches than anyone I’ve ever met… until I met my current boyfriend.  The two of us have had many an evening, in our previous home in Atlanta, spent plotting out ways to kill cockroaches without coming within a 5 foot radius of them.  It was immediately apparent that my boyfriend’s sister would not be our savior that night, and as the mighty beast moved toward me, adrenaline pumped through my body, causing a heroic act.

I grabbed the nearest thing to me – a silver clog I had worn to a fancy dinner the previous weekend.  I approached my enemy and “Whack!”  He’s still moving.  “Whack, Whack!”  I’m too scared to realize I’m screaming at the top of my lungs and I can hardly see past the tears that have formed in my eyes.  The cockroach is winning.  I end up half smashing it, half whipping it, like a horse, encouraging it to move faster.

The roach is now cornered behind the door and my knight in shining armor boyfriend emerges with the vacuum cleaner.  The roach knows that running back towards me is a bad idea and makes the fortunate decision to run close enough for the long skinny end of the Dyson to suck it into its freshly-cleaned chamber.

Relief lasts only a brief moment as the three of us stare at the roach spinning quickly around and around the clear otherwise-empty chamber of the vacuum.  A quick flick into the off position makes it quite apparent the roach is still alive, so we turn him back to spinning.  Although it would be unlikely for the roach to somehow make his way back out of the vacuum, he is still moving and none of us are comfortable with him being in any position other than whipping around the spherical container at what must be 30 miles per hour.

My boyfriend pulls out bug spray from his parents’ house that has been sitting around since the 1970’s.  He sprays an incredibly large amount into the hole in the vacuum cleaner but all it does is smell up the house so badly that I nearly pass out on my way to open the window.  The heat that pours in from the outside adds to the heavy poison air we are breathing in, causing us all to cough.  My boyfriend’s sister offers to get some 21st century bug spray, which was great because this roach needed to die and she looked like she needed to leave the house.

My boyfriend and I stare at each other and down at the roach.  We ponder again whether to turn off the vacuum as it is likely bothering our neighbors at 9pm.  We can’t.  The loud, grating noise of the industrial Dyson is nothing but comforting.  I cannot help but feel guilt at the torture we are putting this creature through – first the centrifuge, now the gas chamber – but I am unwilling to stop and watch him wiggle around.  The thought crosses my mind that if we could communicate, he would likely give up the location of the cockroach terrorist cells and their hiding places and plead to be put out of his misery.  Soon enough, little friend…I hope.

Finally, a can of raid pokes its way through the door first and I grab it.  With the tiniest squirt into the torture chamber, he is gone… on his back.  The vacuum is now in the off-position for good and the relief begins to set in. 

Without a word, the three of us look at each other and know what to do.  I silently open my computer and click my “favorites” key for seamlessweb.  Not bothering to even look in the kitchen at what is now a poison filled, burned, remnant of a meal, I quickly click through the buttons to get what I know to be the three of our favorite meal – I order enough Indian food for six people.  We sit in silence for the next 15 minutes until there is a buzz at our door.  We all jump just a little, as if it is possibly the roaches friends coming to claim the body.  The nice man hands me our food – perfect timing.  It was the best meal of the week.  Seamlessweb saved the day, our stomachs, and our sanity.