“Once this hideous beast of a woman lugged in an older dell desktop. One of the optiplex models that sat flat & opened similar to the way a car hood opens. It wouldn’t boot, she says. She is standing a full five feet from me, and the aroma coming off of her made me think she had bathed all the previous week in bear piss. I opened the case of the computer & nearly had a goddamn heart attack - there was barely a square inch inside that wasn’t moving. It was full of cockroaches & had so many antennas stuck up in the air waving around looked like they were all at a rock concert - all that was missing was miniature lighters.

I told her it would take a day or two for me to figure it out, so just be patient and I would call her as soon as I knew. I waited until her car left the lot & took the computer & made for the door. Roaches started swarming out on my shirt & my hands…the cover was partially cracked and then…..I dropped the damn thing. The corner hit the floor effectively jarring a good percentage of the confused occupants out onto my floor where they began to do as roaches do and scatter in every direction they could. I had a stomp fest. Then a ‘seal computer in plastic bag’ party. Then I went to the store & bought three times too many bug bombs & bombed the entire shop & went home for the day. Days later I informed her of the problem, and that I wasn’t going to touch the computer anymore but was pretty damn well certain it was done for.

She bought another one, and two days later she was back with it. It wouldn’t power on. I cracked this one open…..roaches. I went into the power supply…..roaches. At some point during this fiasco, I apparently inadvertently touched my eye. I have contacts, so sometimes I have to readjust them. Within another week, I was in the emergency room with THIRTY EIGHT STIES total on my eyelids. I had some deep in the eye sockets in my cheek. I took vicodin, and enough antibiotics to change my genetic makeup. I sat for an entire afternoon with hot compresses on my eyes while the sties weeped yellow oozage. The doc said it was a severe bacterial infection - I recounted the cockroach story…he said that was the likely culprit. Now, if I smell roaches when they come in with the computer - they go right back out with it.”