Below is an email to a friend who wanted to know why I'm leaving LA again.
1857 N Wilton Pl, Los Angeles CA 90028. <------ That's why I'm leaving. Moving into this "dream apartment" was the worst thing that has ever happened to me.
Hi X,
I wrote a book here, so pardon the length... but I know you appreciate a good story. :)
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Remember that apartment I mentioned moving into last December? The one that was "the best thing that has happened to me in years?" The one that "wants only to be graceful and beautiful?" The antiquated historical monument where John Huston lived in 1933? My ultimate cinematic reverie?
Well, that fantastic phantasm dissolved into the most nightmarish ordeal I've ever endured.
How?
It all began mid-June, when I started noticing (what I thought were) mosquito bites each morning. I assumed the buggers got into the apartment through the holes that the sparrows tore in my kitchen window screen (which was a gauzy fabric-y material that they were using for their nests). So I taped up the holes.
But I was still being bitten every night. I thought maybe it was a spider, so I cleaned and cleaned and washed the bedding in hot water, etc.
And STILL. the bites were more frequent and more serious--they were like welts, actually. My arms looked like they had track marks. The bites were all over my face, arms, legs, feet. Everything. I have pictures, but I'll spare you.
It got so I couldn't sleep at all.
I asked my building manager if anyone else was getting these mysterious bites. He said "no."
My mom visited me last May and noted the birds that were nesting outside my window in the heating duct... and she suggested maybe I had "bird mites." So I had the building maintenance guy seal off the duct (which, fortunately was vacant at the moment--no birds were harmed in this story!).
I bought Mite-a-cide. I bought DDT. I bought every repellant for every pest known to man. I slept with the lights on. I just couldn't imagine what was biting me.
It actually occurred to me in a moment of weakness that maybe I had (GASP) scabies. SCABIES!!!??? I thought, "who the hell gets scabies from nobody?!" Because "nobody" was who I had been hanging out with during my classes. My doctor assured me that I did NOT have scabies, but that I did need to be careful about getting a Staph infection--some of the welts were starting to look gnarly.
I asked my building manager to have my apartment inspected by an exterminator. The "exterminator" said he didn't find any trace of anything, and he apparently left without spraying.
I said to the building manager, "Make him come back! He needs to spray! I'm being eaten alive!!" And building manager said he "didn't have time for this bullshit." He brushed me off completely for a week.
So I cried. For days I cried. I hadn't been sleeping mind you, so I was not behaving rationally at this point.
A week passes. Then a knock on my door. It's the building manager, looking sheepish. "We'll be spraying your apartment tomorrow. We'll also be spraying a few other apartments. And the family who lives below you is being evicted; they are ground-zero for one of the worst bed bug infestations I've ever seen."
BED BUGS!!!! Grooooooossssss! That was what had been biting me!
I actually rejoiced. At least I wasn't crazy! And an exterminator was coming! My hero! My savior!
I moved all my furniture away from the walls; removed all my pictures from the walls. I bought an air-tight plastic mattress cover. I bagged all my clothes, washed every piece. I scoured every inch of the bed frame, sprayed it endlessly with phenoxybenzyl cyclopropanecarboxylate / N-octyl bicycloheptene dicarboximide (aka "Good Night").
Did I mention I washed everything I own? Twice? I spent several days at the laundromat. I did something like 28 loads of industrial sized laundry.
When the exterminator sprayed my apartment he said, "you should see the place below you--the bugs are crawling the walls in broad daylight."
But sprayed he did and I felt incredibly relieved. That night I had the first good night of sleep I'd had in a month. And when I woke up I found.............. NEW BITES.
What happened next was a series of frustrating events: staying at the Farmer's Daughter Hotel for a week ($$$), throwing out TONS of clothes, books, magazines, my map collection, throwing out my beautiful bed (I've been sleeping on my kitchen chairs, lined up in a row), arguing that my carpets need to be ripped out (the building manager refused).
Because it turns out that bed bugs can live 18 months without feeding, I have to get rid of almost everything, and what few possessions I decide to keep need to sit in a storage unit for two years. So my lovely parents rented a "POD" that is presently in my Mom's back yard... I am shipping small (hopefully decontaminated) boxes with my most valued possessions, and she is putting them in the pod for two years. Everything else is in the garbage. I had to slash/deface my beautiful upholstered chairs so that no one would take them and risk cross-contamination. Instead of Goodwill, almost all of my clothes went in the garbage.
I've lost everything. I'm like a newborn baby. And, appropriately, I want my mommy. So I am moving back to MN to recuperate. My parents are helping me with the expense of completely re-furbishing my new apartment, which is the only good thing to come out of this.
My new apartment!!!!
It's right by St. Anthony Main, it's a beautiful 2 bedroom with a lovely garden, a fireplace, a garage. And it's CHEAPER than my studio in Hollywood.
If you were to tell me six weeks ago that I'd want to run screaming from this apartment, I'd have told you that you were insane. And I certainly never thought I'd want to go back to Minneapolis. But right now there's nothing I want more.
So that's my story! Life is weird, isn't it.
