THENEWYORKER, SEPTEMBER 16, 2019 25
SHOUTS & MURMURS
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ
I
woke up on Tuesday as a bug, and
my boyfriend did not want to work
through it.
“We have to break up,” he said, and
I could feel the floating organ on my
back, which had taken the place of my
human heart, start to break.
“Can we try to make it work?” I
pleaded, though it came out as a series
of garbled clicks.
I should have seen it coming. He
smelled different, you know? Clean
and fresh, and there was little to no
feces on him that I wanted to ingest.
Isn’t that strange? When someone who
once smelled like home suddenly re-
pulses you with his lack of a feces scent?
Love is brutal.
He said that, ever since that morn-
ing, I’d had “wandering eyes.” In fact,
I had twenty-six wandering eyes, but
they weren’t looking at attractive young
pupae. They were looking at flying
predators, at crawling prey, and, mostly,
at him, the love of my life. But also
mostly at danger, because everything
in this new world wants to eat me.
“I’m not feeling supported in this
relationship,” he offered by way of ex-
planation, and I understood that to
my core. Mainly because I was now a
bug, and because he hadn’t even con-
sidered offering me a leaf.
I had concrete ideas about how we
could make things better. We’d pile a
few mounds of dirt on my side of the
bed, and we’d make our relationship
an open one so that I could have a col-
ony. We’d turn the temperature up very
high and leave rotted food around so
that I could feel at home.
And I, for my part, would pretend
that time didn’t move radically differ-
ently for me now, and that I could still
understand television. I would sit for
aeons in front of a screaming wall of light
if it meant that I could stay with him. I
would perch in his palm, and things
would be different, maybe even better.
He nodded, considering my sug-
gestions for a moment, before con-
cluding, “That would be gross.”
He was kind but curt when he asked
me to pack my things and go. I flew
to the top of the bookshelf we’d as-
sembled together, and he looked at me
with impatience. But I will not be
shamed for being a bug who is drawn
to light bulbs and stares at them,
transfixed, while my ex-boyfriend tries
to use human language to get me to
remember what we were light light light
light light light.
Excuse me.
I stared at that light bulb for four
hours before he turned it off. I mean,
look, he was a terrific boyfriend in many
ways, but it’s absurd that it took him
so long to realize that he had to turn
the light off. Get it together, Matt.
I had a lot of things at his house—
I’d practically lived there when I had
hands—but I couldn’t really use any of
those items anymore. I mean, you don’t
need a bike if you have wings, and you
don’t need a man if you have both male
and female bug genitals, which I do
now. I was gentle when I told him that
he could give my stuff away, but I guess
it came out as a threatening screech,
because he batted me away with a
rolled-up magazine.
I understood. A jaded flea I met re-
cently told me, “Don’t put all your eggs
in one person.” But I still think that if
you find the right human it’s worth
shoving some eggs in him and seeing
what hatches. So I took a few specks
of dirt from a plant at my ex’s house
and nestled them in my proboscis, just
to have something to remember him
by. Am I glad that I had this experi-
ence? No. Did I learn a lot? Absolutely
not—my brain is so small now.
But, if you’re experiencing heart-
ache and/or you’ve turned into a bug
and are struggling to make it work
with someone who isn’t interested in
you, know that you are lovable and
that you are not alone and that there
are plenty of bugs in your house.
IT’S NOT YOU
BY CIROCCO DUNLAP
