07 April 2001 ~ The majesty and shame of the Drosophila melanogaster...

Aaron and I went out last night for a lively discussion about getting laid, debt, school, online-journalling, and... fruitflies.

After our get-together, Aaron wrote a remarkably funny journal entry (I thought I was going to cough up a lung I was laughing so hard) about his experience with fruitflies. (Go read his first; it's going to be a hell of a lot funnier than mine...) Thus, I decided to follow suit and give to you my own experiences with the species known as Drosophila melanogaster...

It happened in fifth grade. Already, I was a willful child who had her own stubborn eating habits. At lunch, I used my milk-money for Little Debbies or cookies, and usually ended up throwing away part of the lunch my mom had packed for me.

But then again, I felt incredibly guilty for throwing away food, when, after all, little children in Taiwan don't GET peanut butter sandwiches every day. I'm the kind of person who sympathizes with the last spaghettio left in the can, you know -- there's a lot of guilt over stupid shit like that. So I decided that I'd save the peanut butter sandwiches and apples and bring them home with me after school.

Well, the road to fruitfly hell is paved with just such good intentions.

I forgot to bring the food home. I must have had three or four apples and two or three sandwiches stashed in my locker at school. And we ALL know what happens to perishables when they're left in a school locker, don't we? If not, I'll tell you... They turn to MUSH. Not just mush, but WATERY mush. Juicy mush. Stomach-flu mush. Mush with the consistency of salsa. Have you ever seen an apple resemble salsa, aside from applesauce? I have witnessed it firsthand.

The fruitflies began. One or two fruitflies won't hurt anything, I reasoned. After all, once the food started to mushify in my locker, I DID make up my mind to throw it away. But, if my current apartment is any indication of my willingness to take out the garbage, I'm one hell of a sorry case... The food just stayed there. And so long as the fruitflies stayed in my locker and the mush didn't start to drip, I figured everything would be okay until I got the motivation and opportunity to eradicate the mush from my storage space.

Fruitflies, however, are adventurous souls. They like to explore. Had I named the fruitflies, I would have given them names like Columbus, and Eriksson, and maybe Kerouac, just for kicks. They ventured timidly out of my locker via the "air vents" at the top (WHY do lockers have these? WHY? Like your books need airing out? Seems to me that locker-air-vents simply encourage students to push the shrimpy kids INSIDE lockers and close the doors. More about THAT some other time...), and began to overtake nearby classrooms. I began to be afraid to go to my locker, for fear that someone would discover that, in fact, *I* was the one cultivating these creatures.

The situation rapidly became desperate. After all, food rots at a remarkable rate, and fruitflies multiply even faster. I couldn't go to my locker at all anymore when anyone else was around, because the fruitflies would flutter out to greet the world. Not only that, but it had REALLY started to STINK. Thus, there was no CHANCE to clean out the mess. What was I going to do? Walk through the hall with a handful of mush and fruitflies to the nearest garbage? I couldn't exactly put the mush in a classroom garbage can, either; THAT would stink up the entire school!

So, being unable to do anything, I simply did nothing and waited for the fruitflies to go somewhere else, and the mush to dry up and stop stinking. These things happen if you wish hard enough, right?

Wrong. The inevitable happened. The kid with the locker next door to mine complained to his teacher that every time he opened his locker, a bunch of fruitflies and a ghastly smell emerged. Rather, he said, "Miz Gulbin, when I open my locker, it stinks real bad and like, FLEAS come out." Fleas? I was rather insulted. FLEAS? My fruitflies were not fleas! Besides, I was offended by the ignorance of my classmate. Everybody knows the damned difference between a flea and a fruitfly.

Anyway, the kid with the locker next to mine was just asshole enough to tell the teacher this with the ENTIRE class listening. The teacher AND the entire class paraded out to this kid's locker. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, except a few dozen mush-fattened insects, they moved on to the next locker, which was mine.

The uneaten lunches were discovered with the entire class watching. Of course, I feigned ignorance. "I dunno how that got there... I don't remember putting food in my locker..." A couple of girls made gagging noises, and one particularly precocious girl yelped "That's so fucken gross I think I'm gonna throw up!" (I was pleased to note that she dropped out of high school to have a child, and that the father dumped her like a sack of potatoes...) The boys started a chant: "Helena has FLEAS! Helena has FLEAS!" This was interpolated with "You're such a DIRTY!" ("Dirty," in fifth grade, is both an adjective and a noun.) Also, a brief chorus of "Ew!" made a fine background for the symphony that was Helena's undoing.

A shy child; an adolescent on the very verge of growing pubic hair; a shrimpy little girl who had not yet experienced being beaten up on the playground, but who anticipated it with daily dread; a romantic student with a love for reading and hiding in her room with her penpal-letters and her diary; I was scarred for LIFE by this experience. I wanted to curl up and die. I considered suicide on the way home from school. I considered suicide all weekend. Eventually, when I went back to school on Monday, the incident had been forgotten, and nobody ever said "Helena has fleas" again. If somebody said that NOW, I'd probably laugh at them, but at the time, it was crushing.

As a sign that I've moved on, I've decided to adopt the fruitfly as my personal symbol. Perhaps Aaron and I should have a club called Drosophila Melanogaster Fanclub. I'm CERTAIN that we'd be the only ones in it, but it's good to belong...

Love,
~Helena*

"Fruitflies are so majestic!" --Aaron.