Spinster

Lots of people are traveling this summer — Lorien’s going to Germany, Alli’s going to China/South Korea/Vietnam, Annetta’s going to Slovenia, Tamara’s going to Japan — and the most traveling I’ll be doing is when I (inevitably and miserably) move back home to Miami. I wouldn’t say that I’m jealous, or even envious, of my friends, though. The thought of traveling kind of makes me want to take a nap — the hostels, the language barriers, the strange food, the uncomfortable beds (see: the hostels), the carrying of the luggage — I want no part of any of that. I know, I know, traveling is about so much more than that, and having done a bit of traveling, I am well aware of those things. But still, the negatives are all I can think of when I consider it. I’m pretty sure that because my future is so uncertain, because I don’t have a job lined up and because I don’t know where I’m going to be living in a few months, I just have no interest in stirring things up any more than usual.

So, in the curmudgeonly spirit of Scrooge, I have a little travel story to tell my friends, a cautionary tale that will hopefully teach them the lesson I had to learn the hard way.

Last spring, Lorien and I went to Montreal for the weekend. We took the overnight bus and arrived at 7 am, exhausted and dirty. We headed straight for the hostel, where they were kind enough to let us crash on air mattresses before check in. The air mattresses were in the dorm rooms, and there were a few guys sleeping in the room I was put in. I plopped down on the air mattress and curled up under my blazer, and started to doze off. Right before I fell asleep, one of the guys draped a hostel blanket over me for added warmth. I slept for a few hours and woke up, feeling a hell of a lot better. I put the blanket back on the bed it came from, put the mattress up against the wall, and headed out to find Lorien.

The rest of the weekend passed by pretty quickly and soon we returned to Toronto. About a week and a half after we came back, I started getting these weird itchy bumps on my arms and legs. I was at work and I was complaining about them, saying that I would wake up in the morning with a new one (or two or three), and since I wasn’t allergic to anything, I couldn’t figure out what they were. One of my coworkers suggested bedbugs, and I was horrified.

Bedbugs?

I couldn’t have bedbugs; I’ve never had lice and mosquitoes don’t even like me that much. I checked out the symptoms online, and sure enough, my bites fit the description. But how had I gotten bedbugs? I hadn’t even been out of Toronto in — . Oh. Wait. Yes, I had. I’d been to Montreal, and I’d stayed in the hostel and… and as I thought about Montreal and the hostel, my mind flashed to a bird’s-eye view of me, lying on the air mattress, my jacket over me, the blanket on top of it… the blanket. The hostel blanket, the ratty hostel blanket that looked like it hadn’t been washed in, well, in forever. The ratty hostel blanket that had been over my jacket, the jacket that I’d worn the entire time we were there.

I did what any Internet savvy kid would do — I googled the shit out of those bedbugs. In 2 hours, I became an expert on the subject. I also went to a doctor, who told me that the bites were probably from bedbugs, because they were of the telltale three in a row variety, which they call “breakfast, lunch, and dinner” in the biz (bite, scratch at it, repeat as necessary). However, he wasn’t one hundred percent sure that they were bedbug bites, and neither was I, as I hadn’t actually seen a single bug.

When I got home that day, I ripped the sheets off my bed. I pulled at the mattress, peering into the crevices and seams, looking for droppings, larvae (fucking disgusting, eh?), or the little spots of blood that are signs of an infestation. The bugs themselves are usually not spotted, because they are small and nocturnal and wily little bastards. I got my little hand-held vacuum and started working on the mattress, vacuuming the entire thing even though I couldn’t see anything. I pulled the mattress away from the wall and continued pulling and peering and vacuuming, and that’s when I saw it.

A larva.

A squirming, writhing, nasty little larva. Just one, but one is all it takes to make me go into full freak-out mode. I am generally not a squeamish person, but I have had too many maggot encounters in my life, and the thought or sight of those little fuckers just makes me want to die. I’m not entirely sure what I did then, because I’ve blocked it out of my memory, but I think I screamed, cried, called my mom, screamed and cried some more, and made her stay on the phone until I was done vacuuming.

I got off pretty easy — I only had about 10 bites and I figured out early on what they were. I vacuumed my bed and my suitcase, washed all of my sheets, and put my Eeyore in the freezer (he’d been on the infested bed and I wasn’t taking any chances). I got a hypoallergenic mattress cover. Basically, the infestation was stopped before it even started. How do I know they’re gone? Because I haven’t had a single bite since.

So, friends of mine who are going to faraway corners of the world, know this:

Bedbugs are everywhere.

They are in all 50 states. They are in Canada. If they are in North America, you can bet that they’re an international problem. So remember, even when you’re exhausted and dirty and your head is addled from too many drinks or too many sights and all you want to do is crash on the proverbial air mattress, never, EVER, touch the hostel blanket.