And yet another bee found dead in the bathroom last night (of course Tam and Julie never saw it).
(actual dead bee found in our bathroom)
I wrestle with duality as I sit at my desk sipping tea sweetened by the finest honey harvested at Old Shaw Farm. The devil temps me with this elixir, and I have not the will or desire to refute it.
Do I judge myself too harshly? Am I not just a pawn in the eternal battle of good and evil, just a cog in the great ethereal machine struggling for salvation. Maybe, if I squeeze my eyes together so tightly, so ever tightly that I am forced to evacuate, I will find salvation...
My brother came out to Brooklyn tonight for a little dinner. We were sitting around the table eating and chatting about breakfast cereals and how nobody ever ate the plain oatmeal packets from the instant oatmeal assortment boxes our mom used to buy. I felt a tickle on my arm, and I looked down. What did I see crawling on me? What, dare you ask, did I see crawling there? A Bee. A bee was crawling up my arm, just about to crawl up the sleeve of my tee-shirt. Its was eight o'clock at night, I'm was at my kitchen table, and a bee was crawling up my god damned arm.
It has become quite apparent that I am cursed, doomed to eternal damnation. There will be no redemption, no turning back. I have stepped off into the abyss of perpetual hellfire, and there is no return. My ever lasting soul shrivels and decays as I wait for Lucifer to turn what remains of my wasted humanity into a black stain in the bowels of infinite, torturous hell.
In early spring I noticed a dead bee lying on the floor of our bathroom. A few days later I noticed another bee on our bathroom floor. I pondered the significance of these terminated bees for a moment, and then went about my business. A few weeks later I found yet another dead bee in the bathroom. In the following weeks I continued to happen upon the dead remains of bees. In passing I asked Tamara about the bees, "Have you noticed the dead bees in our bathroom?" She replied, "What bees?"
"I have been finding dead bees in the bathroom, on at least four or five different occasions." She shrugged, "I haven't seen any bees, are you sure they were bees?"
"Am I sure they were bees? I think I know a bee when I see one. Where are they coming from is the question."
"Not sure, I haven't seen any."
Not completely convinced that she believed me, I dropped the subject of bees.
A month or so later I was up late working at my desk downstairs. I felt a slight sensation on my neck. I reached back to feel what it was, and felt a sharp pain. I grabbed whatever it was and threw it to the ground. It crunched when I grabbed it. I jumped out of my chair and spun around. I looked on the floor, but saw nothing. Something had bitten me, but what I did not know. It was dark in the room, and I began to fear that what had bitten me was not dead. I poked around on the floor with an envelope to see if I could find the little bugger, but it was late and dark, and after a moment I decided a hasty retreat to the bedroom was the best strategy, better to live and fight another day and all that.
I climbed into bed and nudged on Tam's sleeping shoulder, "Tam, you awake? Something bit me on the neck." She mumbled, "hrmph." I nudged harder, "Something bit me on the neck. I was downstairs at the computer, and something bit my neck. Will you take a look?" She sleepily leaned over and looked, "I don't see anything."
"Nothing, not even a little spot?"
"Nothing. You sure it was a bite?"
"Yes I'm sure, something bite me."
"We'll there's no bitemark, maybe it was something else."
She rolled over and went back to sleep. I rubbed my neck and thought for second about going downstairs to find the culprit, but it was late and dark, and maybe that little bastard wasn't quite dead. Better to investigate in the light of morning.
The next day I had forgotten about the bite, and I went about my business. A few days passed, and I was doing some work in the office when I noticed something on the floor. I turned on the overhead light to get a better look. A bee lay dead in the middle of the room. I paused for a second. Could this bee be the little bugger that bit me? Maybe it wasn't a bite? Maybe it was the beginnings of a sting? Maybe the bee started to sting me when I grabbed it, but didn't get a full sting because I crushed it and threw it to the floor? I relayed my theory to Tamara when she got home that night. She was dubious. I spent a few moments trying to convince her that this was indeed the bee that had bitten, err stung me. She finally agreed, if half heartedly. Then there was the basic question of the bees themselves. Where were they coming from? What device was bringing these bees into our home. I was quasi comfortable with the idea of dead bees, but now that they had arrived in my presence alive and stinging I was more concerned. Another shrug from Tam, "Its summer, and summer brings bees." Sure it was summer, but why had summer decided to bring bees into our house, and how? That was the important question.
Tamara has a history with bees. She took a beekeeping course with her friend Maryellen, and has been wanting to start a hive ever since. Whenever we go to visit Maryellen in vermont Tamara helps her work the hive, and we took home quite the bounty of honey the last time we were up there. Living in Brooklyn tends to put a damper on bee keeping, so she has put her bee dreams on hold for the time being. After reading The Queen Must Die and Other Affairs of Bees and Men, I also became enamored with the idea of keeping a hive. Of course, the bees seemed quite pleasant and docile in the book if properly managed, and only handlers who did not respect and understand the bees were the ones who got stung. Yet, when faced with the prospect of sharing my home with bees, the allure diminished dramatically.
A few weeks passed without any bee sightings, dead or alive. The bathroom remained clean of bees, and I had forgotten about the infestation, infestation is what I had begun calling it after the bite...err sting. The next Saturday I woke up early. I brought Uther (der gute hund) downstairs to let him out in the backyard. I opened the back to door to find a bee on the screen door at eye level. It was at most six inches from my face. I froze. The bee just sat there. If it hadn't been clinging to the screen, there would be no discernible evidence that it was alive. Was it mocking me? I slowly swung open the door, and let Uther out. I then quickly closed the backdoor, once again imprisoning the bee between the door and the screen. The backdoor has a small window at eye level, and this provided a view directly at the bee. I watched it for a while, and I wondered.
Could this be a sign? Had I done something that had prompted the first wave of bees, and now this second? Maybe I had angered some god somewhere, and this was the plague she or he had smote upon me? Sure, it was a fairly small and minor plague, but maybe I had committed a very minor infraction that only warranted a plague of miniscule proportions. Or maybe I had offended a very low level god, and this was all he or she could muster. If this was the case, how could I find redemption? I silently cursed the bee and its god.
After a while Tamara came downstairs, and I promptly reported the return of the bees. She walked to the back door, and much to my dismay, opened it. She shooed the bee off of the screen, and closed the door. "It's just a bee." she said. "Just a bee." I thought, " She just damed us all."
I scoured the bathroom and back hallway for an entrance for the bees. They had to be getting in somehow, but how was the question. I came up empty. There was no obvious entry for the bees, and I saw no hive outside. I tried to discuss the infestation with Tamara and our roommate Julie, I was careful never to utter the word plague, but they brushed me off. They didn't seem to think we had a problem with bees. They were careful not to call me crazy, but I could see it in their eyes. My words fell on unsympathetic ears, and I began to wonder if they were right. Maybe it was all just a coincidence. Maybe "The summer brings bees". Maybe.
Last Monday I walked into the bathroom to perform some pre bedtime activities when I saw a bee, a living bee mind you, flying like crazy around the bathroom mirror. It was bouncing again and again off of the mirror while taking brief respites to bound off of the bathroom light. I looked up to find another bee crawling its way across the bathroom ceiling. There were two living moving bees in the bathroom. Someone had angered the gods. I stood still for a brief moment, and then I turned and ran out off the bathroom. Tamara and Julie where watching a movie as I ran into the living room, "There is a bee, err, two bees in the bathroom, two live bees, in the bathroom, flying around. Alive." They looked up from their knitting, "What?" "Bees, in the bathroom, two of them, alive," I said. They walked over to the bathroom. "How are we gonna kill them?" I said. Julie replied, "Kill them? We're not going to kill them. We'll put them outside." This idea was so foreign to me that I could not respond. I stood stunned as Julie caught the first bee with a glass against the ceiling. She slid a small piece of cardboard under the glass and brought the bee outside and let it fly away. "This second one seems a bit angry." she said, "I need a bigger piece of paper. "Angry?" I thought, "This bastard is pure evil, we must kill it." She caught the angry bee and let it loose outside. I proceeded to ramble on about the bees and how they got there while Tamara and Julie ignored me. They seemed incapable of understanding the magnitude of what was happening. The bees had come, and it was only a matter of time before they destroyed us. The writing was on the wall, why couldn't they see it.
I walked back into the bathroom. I looked around for more bees, but there were none. I stared into the mirror, and I said out loud, "Candyman, Candyman, Candyman, Candyman..."
