This was supposed to be a different column. It was supposed to be a column about Juan Williams’ being fired by NPR for saying that he is afraid to fly with traditionally dressed Muslims. It was going to be called “Sheiks on a Plane,” which was supposed to include a scene in which Williams runs through the aircraft shouting, “I have had it with these motherfucking sheiks on this motherfucking plane.”
This is gonna be sooo funny, I thought as I brought my piping hot coffee into the office and excitedly began typing out my brilliant idea—for a couple of minutes, anyway, until the creature arrived. It was a fly, and when it flew in the door and landed on my coffee cup, everything came to a screeching halt.
For two hours, we were at war, with him dive bombing my head and landing on my stuff, and me hunting him down with an Esquire magazine until losing him. Then I would search for bit, fail, give up and return to work—at which point he would return, forcing me to chase again, over and over again, for about 10 cycles.
I cannot tolerate flies in the least. Sucks for me because I live in Ocean Beach, which is like Cancun for houseflies. If that weren’t bad enough, my house is against the alley, near the garbage cans, so they swarm and swirl outside my house all day and somehow—like a barricaded house in a zombie apocalypse—a few of them always manage to get in.
Every morning, depending on the time of year, I wake up to about 2 to twenty flies in my home. At that point I have but one mission: destroy. Before showering, before breakfast, before coffee even, I must rid the house of every single fly so that I can continue my day in peace.
It’s called pteronarcophobia.
To be honest, I don’t quite get that word, nor does it accurately define me. I understand the “ptero” part. Ptero means winged. But “narco”? as in lethargic, sleepy? Hell no. There’s nothing lethargic about a housefly. And the one in my office is freakishly speedy, like he got into my coke stash somehow. Furthermore, while I am definitely fearful of flies, the “phobia” suffix leaves out the other, equally-important, half of the equation: hatred. I fear and hate flies, as do most people with this condition. So I took it upon myself to tinker with the word. I dumped “narco” and replaced it with “tacho” (meaning “speed,” as in tachometer) then added “miso” (meaning “contempt,” as in misogynist) and put it all together to come up with, “ptero-tacho-miso-phobia (tero-tacko-meeso-fobia), the fear and loathing of flying insects, specifically, the fly.
So, what is the reason for my pterotachomisophobia? It all began in 1986, when I saw the remake of The Fly starring Jeff Goldblum as a scientist who turns into a murderous member of the musca domestica species. There’s a scene in which his girlfriend catches him regurgitating on his meal. When she recoils in horror, he explains that this is how flies externally digest their food. The acidic vomit liquefies the solid so it can be sucked through their straw-like proboscis, and it occurred to me then that when a fly lands on my food, it’s probably puking on it. They are also fond of defecating, urinating, salivating or simply shedding any or all of the horrifying pathogens they carry in their disgusting little leg spurs.
At any given time, that teeny little housefly—sitting on your coffee cup, cutely rubbing it’s forelegs together like a kitten cleaning his paws—could be a bounty of typhoid, cholera, dysentery, salmonella, tuberculosis, anthrax, hepatitis, cysts of protozoa or the eggs of helminths.
When I see a housefly, I envision a dead raccoon festering under the SoCal sun, with him and a hundred of his friends crawling over the thing until something startles them and they all take wing, each hurtling toward a different surface on which to deposit its biological mayhem—like my coffee cup, on which the creature rubs its forelegs together to shake off every single cyst and egg it brought with him.
I take a swipe but the bastard is fast. I chase him around the room, knocking over pictures and plants until he finds refuge in some cranny that I can’t locate. It’s a viscious cycle, and I can’t get any writing done! So I Google “Lifecycle of the common housefly.”
I was under the impression that they live for only three days and thought, Well, maybe I can ask my editor for an extension and then wait for it to die. But the little upchuckers live 20 days! And, judging by its size and speed, this one was young— probably only a few hours has passed since it was a mere maggot munching on the infected innards of a dead raccoon, the thought of which makes me want to externally digest my monitor.
It’s midnight now. Deadline is tomorrow. My best hope is to ignore the fly and keep working on Sheiks on a Plane. So I write, “The problem with firing Juan Williams for his comment is that he is rubbing his forelegs together and dropping the cysts of protozoa into my goddamn coffee again!”
I watch with contempt as the creature crawls deeper into the cup. If I could, I would drop a nuclear bomb on his head and tolerate the radiation poisoning. I hate him so much. I hate him the way sharks hate surfboards. I hate him how hipsters hate Styx. I hate him the way Mormo—suddenly, he takes wing and heads toward the area of the door. In a flash, I leap from my seat, rush toward him and maniacally wave my hands shouting, “Out, fly, out!”
The beast is discombobulated as I use my hands and body to herd it out the door. Clearly, it does not want to leave, preferring, I’m quite sure, to torment me further. But my shouting and waving has startled him and he bounces off my chest, the wall, and my chest again before conceding and careening out of the office.
“Don’t let the door hit you on the rear abdominal segment on your way out!” I shout, as I slam it shut.
Peace then. Elation. Emancipation. After a few moments, I peek to see if the coast is clear. It is. I walk to the kitchen, pour a glass of victory wine and return. Breathing easily, I start typing. My brilliant column about air-bound sheiks, it appears, will be completed after all. Before long, I am in the zone.
Then the unthinkable happens.
“Honey?” says my wife, as she opens the door. “Have you seen my wallet?” at which point the little vomit-monger zips over her shoulder, lands on the rim of my freshly poured glass of victory wine and barfs a few thousand anthrax spores. Reflexively, I wail. The sound is guttural and dampened, like a mouthless banshee being gang-raped by a grove of pine trees.
“What’s wrong?!” my treasonous wife asks.
“I have had it with this motherfucking fly in this motherfucking office,” I howl, with bloodshot eyes and throbbing neck veins. She backs away, slowly, quietly. When I’m on deadline, and blocked, I’m prone to demonic outbursts. At these moments, my wife has learned, it’s always best to retreat and shut the door.
“May the cysts of million protozoa infest your pancreas,” I scream at her, as the fly rubs his forelegs and drops a few thousand more Helminths’ ovum into my wine. I sigh, and delete the Sheiks on a Plane title, replacing it with “The Fly,” thereby tendering my unconditional motherfucking surrender to a motherfucking insect.
Edwin Decker
Originally Published in San Diego CityBeat
11.10.10
