Taipei, or how I learned to co-exist with cockroaches, then didn't, and then did

With varying degree, I have always been scared of bugs. As a child I would sometimes be paralyzed imagining that my darkened bedroom was blanketed in ants. (I think this fear came from a B-horror film cover I'd always see at the video store.) I was especially terrified of centipedes and seeing one in the basement was the only way I'd be pulled away from my video game binges. Even in adulthood, I stopped doing laundry after dark in one apartment because of cricket spider infestation.

But I've become increasingly more conscientious, and for some years now I've followed a capture-and-release policy (mosquitoes being the exception). When living in one place swarming with giant centipedes, I became very skilled at catching them in glasses, but before I'd release them outside I would force myself to look at them close up to help overcome my fear.

Asia however has been a bit trickier. Last weekend while hiking, I shrieked at what I thought was a bat swooping down at me, but it turned out to be an unusually large black butterfly. Later on that same hike, there was a four-foot snake blocking the path. I waited a little while for it to move, but when a local angered it by whacking at its tail with a stick, I turned around not wanting to see what would happen next. (Yes, I know these aren't bugs, but these incidents just show my general unfamiliarity/aversion to the animal world.)

When I was backpacking, I'd stay in places infested with ants, where I would lay in bed reading and every few minutes feel one crawling along one of my limbs. I couldn't help but flick it off, and seeing another one approaching, I'd only want to do it harm. I also had bedbugs in one place, but luckily the room had wifi and I was able to do a picture comparison to confirm my suspicion before I tried to tell myself to stop being a wuss and just accept all the little red mites under my pillow. If I accidentally discovered a giant cockroach in one of my guesthouse rooms, I would yelp in fear, but learned to calm myself down by repeating, "it's just Lee Kang-sheng, it's just Lee Kang-sheng." I had one rundown bungalow where before entering the bathroom, I would close my eyes, feel for the light switch, and wait fifteen seconds so as not to see all the roaches scurrying away.

In Taipei, cockroaches are seen as more of a common insect, much like ants in the States, and in my current apartment there are too many roaches (at least they're the small ones) to convincingly calm my nerves by naming them Lee, or even Kafka 1, Kafka 2... Kafka 16, etc. I live in an older building where they've been crawling behind the walls and underneath the floorboards unabated for decades, and the humidity of the summer months has only increased their visibility. So though I've taped up holes in the tiles and cracks in the walls, cleaned surfaces, and sealed up all my food products, I've also resorted to chemical warfare, spraying the perimeters with cancer-inducing Raid. Earlier in the summer I was squashing them in the kitchen, and suffocating the larger ones in the bathroom on sight with a solution of soapy water (they breathe through their skin), but since then I've given up, instead tending to stomp my foot beside them so they'll rush away. They dominate the kitchen and bathroom at night, but for the most part are only occasionally seen elsewhere.

I'm no longer afraid of them, but I cannot get rid of my disgust. Yes, they have a bad reputation for carrying diseases (like mosquitoes) but I still have a guilty conscience for resorting to killing them occasionally instead of just letting them be. Seeing them in the streets, public restrooms, or even in restaurants no longer bothers me, but I don't want it to get to the point where they're crawling into bed with me (I've experienced this once before and it wasn't pleasant no matter how much I tried to play it off as Lee just being frisky). So though I've become more accepting of their presence, I still at times do them harm, shattering my delusion of living guilt-free in co-existence with animals.

Lee Kang-sheng in THE HOLE