Fly

September 21, 2005

There's a fly following me around everywhere I go. He was buzzing around my head yesterday morning as I drank coffee, landing briefly on my shoulder, then taking a few laps around my apartment and landing on my head. I tried to shoo him away, but to him my hand was only a game. I didn't see him follow me as I left home and took the subway into Manhattan, but as soon as I sat down to do some work, there he was, buzzing close enough to feel the breath of his wings and hear them whining like a tiny motor. It continued all day long, though he took breaks to explore the rest of the office now and then.

When I left work, I stopped at the Chinese restaurant I often do. I ordered my usual, and as soon as the waiter brought out the soup, a fly landed on my hand. People will try to tell me it wasn't the same fly, but I know better.

"You again?" I muttered and sent him flying with a flick of my wrist. But flying is what flies do, and it didn't disturb him much.

Zig-zagging through the air, leapfrogging from my plate, to my arm to my head, and back again, like an annoying puppy who wants to play. When he rested on the edge of the table, I stared him down. He rubbed his face with his spindly arms, the way a cat might while lying in the sun, content. Without warning, I swooped toward him with an open palm and caught him in my fist. He didn't seem to panic, or even be confused. It's easy to catch flies late in the summer, and perhaps he'd been through this before.

As he crawled on my skin, with what seemed to me a little too much nonchalance, I was tempted to crush him. I didn't, of course, for several reasons, but without getting into the Zen of it all, let's just say I was eating and didn't want to get my hands covered with the yellow snot of fly guts.

I only held him for a few seconds, but that must be like a few months in fly time, and when I opened my hand to let him go, I expected him to rush off and try to make up for the life he missed. Instead, he sat in my open palm long enough for me to change my mind if I'd wanted to. I didn't, though, and a moment later, he lifted himself straight up like a helicopter, then zoomed over to an empty table across the aisle to regroup and, I hoped, reflect.

The fly persisted, attracted to my head as if it had become a real horse’s ass instead of just the usual metaphorical one. I somehow managed to make it through my meal without going completely bonkers, paid my check, and headed outside, hoping to lose the fly on the way home.

I was sleeping a few minutes ago. I'd fallen asleep with my clothes on and all the lights on as well. I woke up from the buzz of a fly in my ear.

"Leave me alone," I snapped, his sinister motives finally dawning on me. "I'm not dead yet."

I'm in a rut, and the fly can smell it. He relishes my inertia, anxiously rubbing his hands, anticipating the moment when all forward motion stops once and for all. He's not trying to tell me something; he thinks it's a done deal, only a matter of time, and that's how he can afford to be so bold. But I see him, and I know what a fly buzzing over a body means.

"I'm not dead yet," I said again. And this time I meant it.