Unruly Union
that seems to be the general state of affairs these days
Pestulance takes on a new meaning after finding myself face-to-face with a rat in my kitchen at 11:00 p.m. As I’m preparing my "as-close-as-I’ll-get-to-midnight-on-a-weekday snack," the bastard darts out from behind the trash and toward the heat of the running washing machine. Accustomed to the size of a summer roach, I have a hard time accepting the magnitude of my present issue.
“Hi. I’m calling because I have a rat in my kitchen,” I say in a tone of desperation the exterminator is well accustomed to hearing.
“A mouse,” he replies with a stern inflection.
“No. I’m pretty sure it’s a rat. It’s really, really big,” I say, pleading my case.
“I’ll come and take care of it tomorrow, miss. Have a good night.” That I don’t. I’m terrified my subway crawler will enjoy the warmth of my freshly made bed.
It’s the first time I’ve had to deal with a rat. By NYC native standards, twenty-two years is a tremendous victory. Sure, I’ve had my share of rodent encounters before—the country culprits that add ambiance to a Christmas-strewn house. I even had a permanent resident in my sophomore dorm room—a small, innocuous mouse that would scurry into my pantry at three in the morning to nestle in my open bags of granola and dried apricots. It was fun and sweet until I started losing sleep. I’d wake up consistently to the sound of plastic crinkling, the mouse’s arrival marked distinctly by the clanging of the metal radiator cover.
To fix the issue like a pacifist, I sealed all my food and crammed it into my microwave and mini fridge, hoping the lack of incentive would stop it from visiting. I was right. My sleep soon disturbed itself, without the external environment as a scapegoat.
In Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast, the fortune teller warns the main character that the pigeon she keeps seeing in her home is a sign of something unresolved—a manifestation of a presence from her past, an omen of her inner turbulence. It’s a motif Bonello returns to throughout the movie: a haunting, a manifestation of our unresolved entanglements that will lead to catastrophe if unacknowledged.
It’s a classic premonition—the animal in places it shouldn’t be, doing things we don’t expect it to do. Wild animals entering domestic spaces are often seen as harbingers, signs of disorder. There is something primal in our distaste for the outside coming in, a breach of our constructed illusions of privacy and security.
It feels like a particularly salient omen on election eve. A sign of what’s to come: the unavoidable transgression of the public into our private, the limits of liberalism, the deceptions we insist on maintaining—that we are individual masters of our own domains, impervious to intrusions, unaccountable to community. Concerned with the maintenance of our white picket fences and deadlocked doors.
I wake up this morning and brave my crowded kitchen for a cup of coffee. Is the rat still there? Was its visit a short layover? A fluke? I hit the walls and stomp loudly to scare it out of hiding. I realize it’s probably doing the exact opposite. I sigh, brew my coffee, and wonder if I have the wherewithal to live in this unruly union. But then again, that seems to be the general state of affairs these days.