The Nature Of Things

I feel like nature is single-handedly, simultaneously healing me and teaching me how to forgive. I won’t bore you with the details of why both of these things are necessary and I will say that all in all I love my life. I couldn’t ask for a better one and if I had the option I would pick this one right here. But alas life is life and humans are humans and good luck getting to 28 without a heartbreak or two. And the remedy I am learning for such issues is nature. Nature nature nature NATURE. What a funny word. I think I’ll dissect it later. We obviously come from it, ARE it. It’s beautiful, it’s powerful, it’s life itself. It can also kill and does kill and, in fact, always kills. All deaths are natural in essence. Even a car accident can be considered a natural death because the body cannot withstand those puncturings. It just naturally doesn’t do so. I digress. I watched the Sun set tonight. Well really I went to the gym and then I didn’t feel like going home yet so I stopped by the beach lookout (30 seconds from my home, don’t be jealous) and about a dozen and a half people were there with their phones out. Some had professional cameras (I know one when I see one hehehe) and I thought “okay I picked a good time”. I caught it just before the ocean tucked it in. Yeah I just said that. It peaked behind the horizon and did that weird blurry sizzle thing where it no longer has a shape because it was never round to begin with, and it’s true form finally presented herself, all fire-y and chaotic, bleeding outside the lines of a perfect circle. And then there was nothing but Ocean. But don’t get me started on the Ocean. And how it’s so obvious to be drawn and hypnotized by the womb from which you came.

Tonight, as I stepped out of the shower, wrapped myself in a towel and made my way to the kitchen to see if I should cook the chicken or the turkey, I was interrupted by a BIGHUGE BUG. It was a whole inch long. It was charcoal black and I say it was charcoal black to let you know this was a slightly different creature. It resembled a beetle but had the legs of a roach (um, ew) and it’s head was triangular. It was clear it had come in thru the window in my kitchen and was headed for my dishes (oops, don’t judge me). Earlier today, I noticed some dead bugs curled up in a spider web in the corner of this window. I brushed them off and tossed them outside. And now, I’m feeling the wrath of this mistake. I took his dinner. Or maybe I took the spider’s dinner and now I’m meeting with his “little friend”. You know the one, the one who is really not that little. A whole inch, I tell you.

A little backstory. I haven’t spoken to my family in about a month because I’m…. well, I’m mad at them. Just accept me. I’m a Pornstar. Period. And since you’re anti-porn and I’m pro-porn we can’t mix. A black and white scenario I’ll soon have to overcome. Soon.

Tonight, as I scrolled thru a list of male acquaintances, some platonic, some sexual, all potential aids in my current war against The Bug…. I thought “Dammit I’m a 28 yr old woman, I can kill a goddamn bug.” I undid the towel in my hair, tucked the hairs behind my ears and reached for my thickest textbook (who said Calculus was useless?). I took a deep breath and inched my way towards it, off the warm carpet of my living room and onto the cold, hard tile of my kitchen floor. Nope. Can’t do it. I called my sister for help. At the first dial tone, The Bug shook his hind leg… at the exact same time. “Hello?”, “…. there’s a bug in my kitchen.” She laughed at me. Right away, WHOOSH. I think I just might be able to do this. I explained to her the details of the situation. Size, time, location, how it got there and how I intend to get rid of it. “So what’s the problem?” she asked. I didn’t want to get too close to it and accidentally have bug goo all over me (you know, like back when Nickelodeon used to slime people?) or worse, I didn’t want to hear the crackling of the hard, dark, mysterious shell. CRACK. SPEW. Her advice was to put in my headphones and just go for it. So I hoped and I hoped and I aimed my textbook at that one tile on the floor, as if there were no bug there. But I still couldn’t do it. Instead, for encouragement she asked if she could hum me a song and together, we hummed the theme song from Rocky. Laugh laugh laugh. I reminded her of the time when we were little in Van Nuys and we were sharing a bath, and a roach had somehow gotten onto my shoulder. She admitted to me all these years later how grateful she felt that it had been me. Cue laughter. Anyways. So eventually, without any thinking, without a countdown, without the Rocky theme song, I threw my book up in the air, and I bolted for the other side of my apartment. I soon heard a thud. I stood there and I looked at my kitchen counter, the only thing separating me from the gory atrocity of war. A No Man’s Land, if you will. Had I killed it? Or had I simply scared it and it was now running frantically all over my kitchen floor at light speed with guns up? I peeked……. dead. Super dead. Like, SO fucking dead. It died on its side but the textbook was about half a foot away from it. So thank you Nature. And thank you Bug. And thank you Sister, who, as it turns out, is really good at calming me down. We got off the phone so she could enjoy her drive on the 405 at night, past the Getty Center, with the lights and the upcoming view of the San Fernando Valley. And I told her I loved her like 3 times. And then I went to Subway cuz fuck cooking when there’s a corpse in the kitchen. Just kidding, I threw it out the window and THEN I went to Subway.

❤

Natasha Nice