…I quietly sang to myself to soothe my slowly fraying nerves as we sized each other up. My eyes roved his body voraciously, wondering how to gracefully approach him without setting him off. How to call a truce to this ceaseless war between us.
And then, he took flight, swooping at my face with speed. His determined advance sent me flying in the opposite direction with alacrity,. I didn’t need to be told twice. Peace would stay dead tonight; only one of us would survive.
I recently heard the word ‘Cucaracha’ while watching the movie, ‘The Hitman’s Bodyguard’. On hearing that word ‘Cucaracha’, lovingly whispered by Salma Hayek’s character as a pet name for her husband, my mind fought the quick association with ‘Cockroach’. No, I shook my head, it couldn’t be.
Despite her explanation that she lovingly called her hitman husband that name because he just wouldn’t die, I, for the life of me, couldn’t marry the emotion on her face with the vileness of the creature the Cucaracha evoked in my mind.
Alas, a few finger cha-cha-chas across my keyboard led me to the discovery that both words duly refer to the most abhorrent creature that I’ve ever had the misfortune of encountering again and again…ad infinitum because I’m that unlucky.
As I watched the movie, and observed how the cucaracha was raised to lofty heights by Salma Hayek’s lips, how her employment of the word as a term of endearment to her husband made them both melt, I foolishly decided to plug into that sentiment.
I began to force myself to think fondly of these cockroaches that have made my life a living hell in this flat. I mean, if they can survive the countless fumigations that I’ve had to wheeze through with my inhaler as my trusted companion, isn’t it about time we made peace?
And then, he flew at my face. My cucaracha. And with him flew all hopes for peace. I lunged at the pesticide -1 purposefully decorating each room- whipped off the cover and wave-sprayed him down.
I would like to think that, going in for the kill, I was as graceful and adroit as Salma Hayek was at murdering those men in that bar. But the pain I now feel after contorting myself into new shapes to simultaneously spray at and flee my cucaracha, would beg to differ.
