The Harder They Fall

I stopped blogging about mosquitoes because, what with Kyle and Iraq and my monthly student loan statements, the tragedy of scratching through the night sort of pales in comparison.

But that's not to say the attacks have stopped. Here we are, November 15th, and somehow a super race of cold weather mosquitoes is breeding in my apartment. We've taken out the screens and taped up every crack in the windows and still, night after night I wake up scratching. My nightstand is cluttered with sprays and lotions and anti-itch creams. The shapes of the bottles have become so familiar I can reach over and apply an ointment without even waking up all the way. Occasionally I get lucky and am able to kill one, but there's always another the next night, buzzing my ear as I drift off to sleep, taunting me to get up, turn on the light, and go to battle.

There's one mosquito in particular that's the bane of my existence. This guy is huge, much larger than the bitty ones I'm able to kill, and evolutionarily superior. He knows how to hide. I only ever get a glimpse of him before bed, and no matter how quickly I rushed to turn on the light and track the son of a bitch down, he always eludes me. I've come to see him as the Mosquito Big Boss, watching from the shadows as I swat at his foot soldiers, waiting until I'm completely unconscious before coming out to torture me. And how long a mosquito is supposed to live exactly? Because I swear this dude has been feasting on me for weeks. Weeks.

Anyway, this morning at around 6:30, J got up and sat at the end of the bed. I had no idea what he was doing - I suspected it was cat-related - and I wasn't going to waste my last half hour of sleep figuring it out. When my alarm went off, I stumbled to the bathroom with my don't-fucking-talk-to-me look on my face.

I came back a few minutes later, teeth brushed and ready to engage in human interaction, and J was still sitting on the edge of the bed. "Babe," he said. "Come here. I have something to show you that's going to make your morning."

Unless he had a suitcase full of cash or a copy of the published novel I'd unknowingly written and sold in a Fight Club trance, there was no way he was going to make my morning. I stayed up too late last night. The sky was gray and the forecast predicted rain. But oh, how I'd underestimated him.

He patted the blanket, I sat down, and then he slowly turned to point at a half-dollar-sized bloodstain on our white walls.

"Is that..."

"It is."

"Is it...him?"

"Babe, I got him."

He was got alright, with what looked like a pint of our blood bursting from his evil little belly. Rain or not, work or not, J was right. What a fantastically terrific morning. May November 15th, 2007, be forever remembered as the day J felled the beast. For in a time of great turmoil and uncertainty, it is the little victories that help us fight on another day.

It Just Never Ends With These Guys

My roommate Justin joined the good fight a few weeks ago and bought packing tape to seal up all the cracks in our old window frames. It seemed to work - we haven't had a mosquito sighting since. That is, until last night. How it got in, I don't know, but right as we were drifting off J roused me with a solemn warning. "Babe, I just saw a mosquito."

I was already half asleep. I just pulled the covers up and my last thought was a hope that J didn't know what he was talking about.

I woke up itching and furious at 3 AM. It's October. What the hell was a mosquito doing in my fifth floor apartment in October, waking me up like I had nowhere to be in the morning?

I'd kicked off the sheet in my sleep and my back was bear to the wilds of my room. I was lying there, trying to muster the will to get the bug spray or at least to pull the blankets back up, when I felt the lightest brush across my skin. It could've been anything. It could've been my imagination. But in that zen-like state of half sleep I reached behind me and with one sure, slow swipe I crushed that little fucker. I knew even with my eyes closed that I'd got him. There was that particular combination of grit and liquid to roll into a satisfying ball and flick away. Only I didn't get that far. I just left the thing smashed against me and fell back asleep.

I Could Teach Tom Cruise a Thing or Two About War

It's on.

Two mosquitoes infiltrated my room last night. The New York front must've heard about my DC victory, because I was barely home before I had two fresh bites. Luckily, I spotted the bastards early, while the lights were still on, and was able to kill one before bedtime. But the other still lurked and reinforcements were likely on their way, so I doused myself in Off before I went to sleep. My bed smells like a campsite, but at least I woke up swell-free.

There's been some confusion about Kenny Loggins, so here's an explanation:

Last summer, J bought a 1992 GMC Vandura in Jacksboro, Texas. He used to be in this band, The Golden Falcons, and they took the as-yet-unnamed-van on the road. They left out of Dallas, chose the unluckiest of routes, and were plagued the entire trip by transmission trouble and an overheating engine. They were pulled over just outside of Emporia, Kansas, towed by the sadistic parents of NASCAR racer Clint Bower, and one of them was arrested, requiring the rest of them to scrounge enough money to release not only the van, but their bandmate as well. It was a complete disaster, and somehow most of the responsibility was heaped onto the poor Vandura.

Hence, the name. Have you ever heard Highway to the Danger Zone from Top Gun? It's got a great music video. Kenny can't writhe on the bed hard enough.

Well, We Made It Home

DC was great. We saw J's mom and Aunt Sue and the American Indian Museum and a bit of the West Building of the National Archives. We slept in and food was cooked for us and Aunt Sue let me do a load of laundry. It was a lovely weekend.

Except for the mosquito.

Yup. Apparently my last post really pissed off the East Coast mosquito community, because we arrived at Aunt Sue's on Friday night and one of the little fuckers got me three times. Twice on the face. I itched through the night and woke up sore, red, and lumpy. And pissed.

Saturday night I read a little before going to bed (Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. Both Kidder and Paul Farmer, the book's subject, are really something else). I was about to turn off the light when I glanced over and there he was, a mosquito as big and black and bold as they come, sucking from my bicep like he had all night. I swatted at him but he buzzed off to a dark corner to twirl his diabolical little mosquito moustache and wait to strike again.

I was tired, I wanted to turn out the light, but there was no way I was letting the bastard win. I went back to reading, keeping one eye on the page and the other on the soft, exposed skin of my arm.

I began to itch - he'd already gotten me three times that night - but I tried not to fidget. Mosquitoes are attracted to the carbon dioxide of your breath (though some breath more than others, apparently. The mosquito flew right over J each time he attacked me). I breathed deeply and slowly. He was coming back. I just had to outwait him.

Can you see that? That's the beautiful bloody smear of a dead mosquito caught unawares by a seemingly sleeping Miranda McLeod.

I won. Ha.

But the thing that's going to stay with me is the road trip. The last time we drove down to DC in Kenny Loggins was when I was on my way to the Hurston/Wright Writers' Week. It was July 15th. Kyle's funeral had been two days before. We arrived back in New York on Saturday and woke up early on Sunday to drive down.

I'd already been accepted and paid money, but I really didn't want to go. My submission wasn't ready. I was tired. I wasn't sure yet how things were going to be, after the call and the flight and the hospital and the California coast and LA and the funeral.

But I went. It was something to do, a series of steps, a meditation on logistics. Packing and driving and registering and finding rooms were all possible victories. I cried on the way down. Not the whole way, but songs kept coming on my iPod that had played during the death week. I felt a little like a crazy person.

The Writers' Week was amazing. Life-changing. It sounds trite, but just when I lost my brother, my other biracial person, the only other member of our demographic of two, I went to DC and met a bunch of other black writers, biracial writers, writers like me. I had conversations I'd only had with my brother. It was awesome.

This time around, I didn't think the drive would bother me. So we were in the same car, on the same road, with the same soundtrack, going to stay at the same house. I'd be fine.

And for the most part, I was. But I cried again. Both going down and coming back. It was sudden and unexpected and a little embarrassing, as if I should be over these non sequitur crying jags. It's been more than two months. Most days, I'm OK. How long does it take? Will I ever have control of myself again? Or for the rest of my life will I just tear abruptly and inappropriately at any slow guitar? And what happens when I stop? Is it alright to stop crying for your brother? Or does that mean something about you is more self-preserving than feeling? I feel like I'm in danger of losing my feeling.

We saw this on the way back:

Hear hear.

I Torture Bugs, Horses Aren't Scary, and Some Vans Have Names

First of all, as you already may know, I hate mosquitoes. I hate everything about them. They're cruel and unnecessary. Sure, birds and spiders have to eat, but there's a gazillion bugs in this world, so what the hell do we need mosquitoes for? They suck blood. They spread disease. They kill babies. But worst of all, they make me itch like crazy. I'm allergic. When I get bitten by a mosquito, the whole area swells up to the size of a golf ball. Once, I got bitten right by my eye and it puffed up so huge that I woke up not being able to see and not knowing what the hell was going on and went to the emergency room and it took them forever to figure out that it was a bug bite. They'd never seen anything like it. We have screens on every single one of our windows - I even found a baby screen for the bathroom - and still I am plagued by mosquitoes. One snuck in last night and I stayed up until 3 AM scratching and having unbelievably detailed fantasies about dismembering the little fucker, slowly pulling off each of its limbs before slicing its nasty belly open to free my blood from its miserable little body. I mean, if you have to have my blood, fine, you're welcome to it. As long as you save me some, I'm sleeping, I don't care. But whywhywhy must you make me itch? That's just hard-hearted.

Second of all, Vicente Fox came out with a lovely little detail in his new book: George Bush is afraid of horses. I love that so much. Remember Will Ferrell's brilliant Bush impression in that ACT commercial a couple of years ago? Talk about prescience.


Third of all, J and I are headed down to DC today. His mom is up from Texas visiting his Aunt Sue and we're going to take Kenny Loggins down there for the weekend. I don't know what the internet situation will be, so I may not be able to post anything new until Sunday.

Devastating, I know.

I Hate Bugs

Did you hear about this on NPR today? This is the scariest thing I've seen since Shark Week. Completely, absolutely, terrifyingly scary. And it's in Texas. Lake Tawakoni State Park. Looking at this makes me want to walk around in a bee keeper's suit for the rest of my life.


It's a spider web. A huuuuuuuge spider web made by all these bizarrely communal one-inch spiders. 200 fucking yards of spider web. In the forest.

I feel sick.

But if there's one good thing to be gleaned from this stuff of utter nightmares, it's that in that web are millions upon millions of mosquitoes. Buzzing, struggling mosquitoes trying desperately to escape, to keep the blood from being sucked from their very veins.

What a coincidence.

Mosquitoes love me. To them I'm like maple syrup. Every summer I go to bed knowing that I could wake up with my face swollen like Quasimodo's. I have laid awake hundreds of nights, scratching and cussing and fantasizing about slowly dismembering an endless string of mosquitoes with a magnifying glass and tweezers.

So, while the giant spider web may forever bother me on some visceral, precognitive level, to know it is stuffed with a whole generation of the hypocritical, bloodsucking motherfuckers gives me some solace. A very little bit of solace.