The Fly

October 2022 is the Month of the Fly. Why? Just as it happens. Last weekend we went to The Fly for dinner. I unwittingly wore my newly acquired shirt with Jeff Goldblum (star of The Fly) on it. It's day 8? 10? of the fly occupation of my apartment. I don't know when it started. I only know it was sometime between the acquisition of the Jeff Goldblum (star of The Fly) Shirt and dinner at The Fly. The night before dinner at The Fly I went with others to a concert at market hotel and when we came back the flies were rampant in my kitchen. I was on a little bit too much shrooms and I was reminded, again, of the first time I did acid, of coming back to our college apartment the day after the party during which almost all of us got way too drunk and seeing the yet-uncleaned remnants of the previous night on the floors and tables and feeling uniquely repulsed. The flies had the same impact. Flies are interesting because they are not actually bad roommates—they are, as far as I know, harmless, they never land on me or do much other than fly around. They are really just a signifier, a symbol of filth. Even if they were just projections my life would remain the same, the filth would still be there, somewhere (where????). Last time I was on a little bit too much shrooms I kept thinking the freckle on my right thumb was a bug (fly??). Actually if the flies were not real I would not be able to smack them. Does anyone remember that interview with Obama where he catches the fly? That probably won him the election. Back to the flies. It seems like every day their numbers double. The other day when I took a shower I think I counted 19 (19!!! this number feels perhaps too high in retrospect). If we've learned anything from that story about the guy asking the emperor for twice the rice each day, by the end of October (the Month of the Fly) there will be 9,278 flies in the shower. In third grade (our first substantial foray into multiplication) our curriculum was structured around the continent of Africa, and I learned then about the tsetse fly, which has been a boon to my NYT crossword vocabulary. Last Monday I solved the whole thing in under five minutes for the first time! Congrats to me! Also during our curriculum on Africa someone came in to tell us about clean water and building wells etc., and I volunteered to drink a cup of seemingly fine water instead of gross water with sticks and dirt in it. I was then told that my seemingly fine water actually contained a terrible parasite(!! it did not) and I ran to the stairwell and cried. At my housewarming (September 2022, B.F.E [Before Fly Era]) I left a conversation for a minute to use the bathroom and when I came back a man I had never seen before said "I want to find a therapist that will make me cry. I haven't cried in six years." What the heck did I miss while in the bathroom!!! I hope he's cried by now, I think about him often. Oh, to be a fly on the wall during that man's therapy sessions. Speaking of the bathroom, and third grade, during which I also learned about the Gold Rush, because in California you learn about the Gold Rush at all times, flies are kind of like prospectors but for shit and dead rats and stuff. Back to Africa, and to flies, according to passover the fourth plague of Egypt was flies, but I haven't yet seen much blood, frogs, or lice. I have however been wondering if these flies are a curse of some sort. I wondered briefly whether my Jeff Goldblum (star of The Fly) shirt might be cursed. The flies are in my closet, where there is no food, no water, no drain, but yes Jeff Goldblum (star of The Fly) shirt. I had been invited to go see The Fly at Metrograph last night; I have never actually seen it but did not go; I could not bear to bring myself to think any more about the prospect of joining their ranks. How are The Fly and The Metamorphosis related? Has Jeff Goldblum (star of The Fly) ever starred in a stage adaptation of The Metamorphosis? I think he would do a good job. These are questions to which I could google the answers but choose not to. Last time I went to a movie I decided I have an astigmatism. Does anyone know how to get your vision checked somewhere other than the DMV? Instead of attending The Fly at Metrograph, I waited for The Exterminator to come to my home. The Exterminator, whose name I forget, moved to New York from Trinidad a month or so before 9/11. Awkward!! He sprayed all the baseboards and holes in the cabinets with something (but what???) that doesn't seem to have had any effect yet. While spraying our basement he commented on our music equipment: "I have to get a house, something like this." I'm paraphrasing slightly. "I'm also a handyman, I have tools. You're a musician, you know when you get one thing and then you're like 'ahhh but I could do that one too.' You have to keep it up, making art." "Are you a musician," I asked? "No, but I like to give motivational speeches. I like to bring people together and inspire them, help them out, you know. And I'm also a painter, and a handyman, and these things are all intertwined, they all lock together in my mind and I unlock them." Watch out, flies.