THE horror. The hor ror. As I sat, scratch ing miserably – Is that dry skin? Or is something eating me alive? – the City Council cranked up its brain power yesterday to deal with a menace so resilient and stomach-churning, I dare not speak its name.
Bedbugs. I said it.
Just when you thought you might afford that two-bedroom walkup in Midtown, bedbugs are rapidly moving into our real estate, showing up in mattresses and rugs from the Upper East Side to East New York.
They suck your blood like thirsty, mutant vampires. They will not easily be killed.
They even, I learned, are bisexual Americans – friskily and without invitation attempting to reproduce with whatever gender is present. Their eyesight stinks, not that it ever bothered a randy bed bug.
I need to lie down now. Not on a mattress.
“They give you the heebie-jeebies,” said Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who cheerfully imitated my scratching.
As if to ensure that bedbugs are considered an equal-opportunity menace, Councilwoman Gale Brewer said, “I don’t want to mention all the famous people who’ve called me about bedbugs.”
Mary Pane is not famous, but she suffers. The 50-year-old waitress has bedbugs in the day bed of her Manhattan apartment. Dear Lord, I hope she did not carry any on her person.
“My landlord has exterminated three times,” she said. “I’m losing sleep. I’m afraid to close my eyes for fear of being attacked!”
The pesticide DDT was banned, people travel more, and we continue to live on top of one another in the city, so these little buggers have increased fourfold over two years. Some 22,000 complaints streamed into the 311 network last year alone.
But as I itched in solidarity, I saw that all the council members can’t wrap their fingers on a method to stop the menace.
They can’t agree whether to ban the reselling of mattresses, a bedbug magnet. Or to create a standard for cleaning used ones. They agreed to start a “task force.” Goody.
If they don’t do something, soon, I fear we are doomed to be a planet of the bedbugs.