The Roach Guy

Roaches are as much a part of bartending as a soda gun or a rocks glass. Roaches make a great living dining in the dank crevices common to bars, scampering around like confection-overdosed kids at a day care center with a Jungle Jim.
I've seen little roach exercise wheels and little roach couches. I've seen roaches fly through the air and snatch full beers out of customers' hands. I've seen "Battle of the Network Roaches" and, to my horror, "Win, Lose, or Roach." I saw a cockroach drinking a Piña Colada at Trader Vic's. His hair was -- can't you guess? - perfect.
Roaches are such a recurring problem for taverns that many have exterminators on retainer. Once a month they flood the place with contaminants. This is called "Roach Night" (not to be confused with "Ladies Night"). I dread Roach Night. It requires an extra hour of closing. We have to pull up all the bottles and cover everything. My story takes place on such a night...
On a memorable, serendipitous evening, circa 10 p.m., into my bar walks this Latina number that nearly irrigated my fluids right there. She's about 5'2" and firm as a plum tomato, but flaky as the discarded shavings in a pencil sharpener. She's got a Dionysian haze over her eyes and a Bacchanalian sashay in her buttocks.
So I make my bid, flashing plumage, spinning bottles and emitting pheromones. All of which she acknowledged and readily returned. At closing time I kicked everyone out and we started drinking tequila. The next thing you know our mouths are tethered in a swirling rain dance, followed by breathing, groping, and the insanity that is the yield of a Cuervo-hormone cocktail. Out of the corner of my eye I see the pool table. The pool table to a closing bartender on the make is a blanket on the beach, or the mattress in the back of the band van.
But before I can pick her up and carry her there, in strolls the Roach Guy.
Now Roach Guys are a queer sort in general. I've never met one that didn't have some sort of quirk or ignominy. But this guy was deranged.
He was about 5'4", with coaster-sized eyeglasses. His white boy Afro was a pilfering of "Welcome Back Kotter's" Arnold Horshach. His mild stutter suggested that he was more comfortable in the land of roaches, late night fumigations, and scratchy Bee Gee's records than with humans. And he knew, as we scampered to zip, fumble, straighten and compose ourselves like roaches when the light goes on, that we were on the verge of some nasty business.
So, the Roach Guy withdrew to the kitchen, seemingly out of our hair.
Next thing... her skirt is hiked and I'm doing things with my fingers that I learned from an ancient Mongolian Rickshaw repair manual. My lips are all over my olive hotbed, my hand is playing "Ain't Misbehavin'" on her kettle drum. And out he walks, with his gas mask, DDT tank, and spray wand, like he's just walked off a space ship and wants to farm humans for eating.
"You know," says the Roach Guy, "the Asian roach is larger and more dangerous than the American roach?" And goes back to the kitchen.
What the hell was that?
Poison is slowly filling the bar. I'm deeply affected by it, and by his strange remark. But my sparkling Evita is not. So we start making out again.
As if on cue, out pops Gregor Samsa, Roach Boy.
"The Asian Blattidae is attracted to artificial lights," he says with the bland certainty of Alex Trebek. "They're invading America you know."
"Is that so?" I say, trying to figure a way to get my hands out of her pollen soaked pants without Roach Menace noticing.
He must know what we're doing.
"Cockroaches lay eggs in an oothaca," he says.
Then it hit me: Roach Perv was stimulated. Roaches, sex and fumes, just one giant oothaca for this guy. Then I looked at my libidinous Rosalita. She liked it too! They were both getting off! My god, I thought, I'm in "Naked Lunch, the Mini Series."
My pool table dreams slithered away.
Any minute, like a "Night Gallery" episode, a hive of humongous brown band cockroaches was going to burst through that door, proclaim Roach Boy as their leader and my entomological se–orita as their queen. Then, in a swarming attack, sic them on me as though I were a hardened piece of ground beef on the kitchen floor. I would awake in the morning with a thorax, six legs, and two antennae.
Like I said, I dread roach night.

(Apologies to Franz Kafka, Warren Zevon, William S. Burroughs and Rod Serling)