Two months next week

JetJet — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 02:42:50 +0000

Sometime in the past two nights a mosquito (or maybe two) bit my left thigh while I was sleeping. There are two round pink bites right next to each other. Each is surrounded by a pale circle but they’re so close together that it looks like a figure eight. I have a fucking figure eight on my leg. And the whole thing is raised slightly, and sort of pink. I really don’t know what’s going on with that but it needs to go away because I get freaked out by things like this – I like for my legs to just be their pasty selves without swollen red bumps and numbers all over them.

There are currently nine on my arms and legs, which I guess is not so much, but I’m sure there will be more tomorrow and each of them at their most unpleasant have felt like little fires being set repeatedly underneath my skin, they itch so fucking much they burn. I spent the day doing research at the New York Public Library, the main branch on 42nd and 5th, and when I went to the bathroom there right before my lunch break I pulled down my new green capris and sat there in the stall staring at my huge, swollen thigh for about ten minutes. It wasn’t purple or oozing puss as I had expected, but it was big and red and angry looking. And of course I could just stop scratching but, um, NO I COULDN’T because the itching would drive me insane if I couldn’t at least make myself feel like I was doing something about it. I am a huge baby about things like this, about all things bodily, about my body doing what it wants to do and reacting to things as it will.

This never happened in Manhattan. I lived there for three years with a four month hiatus in London, and it never happened there. This is Park Slope, Summer 2006. There are mosquitos and I have no screen in my window. It’s not what I was expecting, but a lot of it meaures up pretty nicely: restaurants with good lighting and garden seating all up and down 5th and 7th Avenues, twentysomethings getting buzzed over discussions of art house films and progressive politics, cute young families, a lot of friends two subway stops away, tree-lined streets, Saturdays at the Tea Lounge with a book, Sunday afternoon strolls up 3rd Street to the library. Not bad. Not Tin Lizzy, that’s for damn sure.

Itchy Feet

Two months next week