Grossness: Fear of cockroaches
By Stacy J. Willis
At 2:22 p.m., a dead cockroach is riding shotgun in my Honda, in a test tube, with a hole in its chest. We’re late for a date with the psychologist. It’s blurry. Things are queasy. The bug is exhilarated.
I weave along US 95 at 85 mph, afraid to look in the seat next to me. But I do—the way people who are afraid of heights sway forward while standing at the edge. I do. I look out of the corner of my eye at it. I feel as though I may retch. I feel as though it is crawling in my skin. A shiver jerks my shoulders. I lay on the gas.
At 2:44, I put the test tube containing a thousand cockroaches into a discarded Styrofoam coffee cup, put a lid on it, so that they can’t see me, and carry it into the doctor’s office, holding it as far away from my body as possible. We wait.
There was a moment, probably around 1:30, when Professor Allen Gibbs and I spoke of cockroaches outside of the lab, that I could’ve bailed. I could’ve backed out. Gibbs said, They eat anything. He said, They float. Some types hiss—
I remember that Gibbs wore a Hawaiian shirt and seemed kind. I remember that he said Antarctica is the only place on the planet where cockroaches can’t survive. And wings. Something about wings.
There are images I’ve got. As if from a movie. Inside the lab. A box of bugs. Each one of them stuck through the heart with a pin, dead, but deadly, mounted in a box. They are enormous, and hideous—all legs and slimy, dark, slick shells; antennae, legs. Legs. Legs legs legs legs legs.
Stop.
At somewhere around 1:45, there was a microscope. Yes, yes, I do recall that. Professor Gibbs looked through it first. Your turn, he said. He seemed nice. He seemed so nice.
Hair on their back legs. Bristly, helps them grab onto things. Crawl on things, or people. Fast.
Stop.
I’m sure this happened: I touched a dead cockroach. Hard. Smooth. Stuck with a pin; displayed in someone’s final-exam project at the entomology lab at UNLV.
Then there’s Gibbs, offering a box of live ones. This is less clear. There is squiggling. Dear God. Squirming. Brown, black, shiny, angry, militant, filthy, millions upon millions, now laying eggs that will be billions more, crawling all over the world, just under the surface, ready to emerge—
Stop.
At 2:50, I am seated in the psychologist’s office, but I do not sit there, where the patients sit. I sit here, where the writers sit. Where I am safe. Phobia expert Mark Anderson says, Fear usually has a fairly low logic to it. It’s not rational. It is tricky.
Cockroaches are evasive, Gibbs said. They like to hide.
Anderson says, Anxiety creeps into other things.
When you see one, Gibbs said, there are others.
The way to conquer fear is to face it, Anderson says.
You can outrun a cockroach, Gibbs said. You are faster.
Face it, Anderson says.
Hours later, my cockroach, named Snowball, with a shot through its chest, in its test tube, in its Styrofoam cup, sits on my desk. There are days I’m sure it is dead. There are other days I think the cup is moving.
Cupcakes: Fear of ambiguous social situations
By Josh Bell
There’s something about the unstructured nature of parties and other amorphous social situations that really freaks me out. I’m shy and antisocial, but I don’t necessarily have trouble going on a date or conducting an interview—structured situations in which I am one-on-one with someone else, with a prescribed reason for being there. But plop me down in the middle of a bunch of unfamiliar people just milling about, and I’m terrified.
So in order to face this fear, I decided to do something I almost never do: Go to a party full of people I don’t know. A friend I met on MySpace and had hung out with a few times was moving and having a combined birthday/going-away party. Normally I would have passed, but I wanted to see her before she left. I brought over some cupcakes and arrived probably a little too early (there were only four other guests when I got there). My friend introduced me around, and after chatting with her for a bit, I watched another guest play some cooking game on the Wii. No one was talking much anyway.
Initially intending only to stay about half an hour, I figured I’d stick around at least until it was a real party. People started arriving fairly quickly after that, and pretty soon someone broke out the Jell-O shots. I don’t drink (probably one reason I’m not keen on parties), so I sat in the corner nursing a Coke. This scene was familiar to me from the few parties I went to in college. The only other nondrinker present was pregnant.
After a bit, I admitted to my friend that I was there for an article about confronting fears. She didn’t seem to mind. “We should all crowd you,” joked another guest, but no one did. Mostly, they left me alone. By the time several people were on to their third Jell-O shots, I left, no longer afraid, just bored.
Stuck: Fear of caves
By Julie Seabaugh
“We are heading to Desert Cave, which is probably the most popular cave in terms of usage here in Las Vegas Valley. Seems like everybody knows about it. Kids like to go there and spray graffiti and smoke out. It’s on BLM land, and it’s pretty destroyed. We’re passing through Cowboy Trail Rides right now.”
Hence the manure-splattered path my friend Brandon (member of the Southern Nevada Grotto and the National Speleological Society) and I (scared of caves) follow from the tiny parking lot, past a group of seriously morose horses and approximately one mile into the wilds of Red Rock Canyon. A moderate uphill scramble and suddenly
there it is, not visible from below or even 10 feet away: a Black Chasm of Terror, topped with a Precariously Wedged Massive Rock of Death. “It’s been there for as long as anyone can remember,” Brandon says of the PWMRoD, strapping on his hardcore caving helmet. “Yeah, but someday it’s going to fall, and today could very well be that someday,” I counter, donning the yellow plastic Lava Beds National Monument “helmet” Brandon once purchased for $3 and has MacGyvered with a duct-taped light for the occasion.
Inside it’s big and fairly bright, and that’s good. It’s when the underground gets small and dark that I have a serious problem. And even though it smells like dust and decay, it’s surprisingly colorful (thanks, spray-painting vandals!) and open (thanks, stalactite- and stalagmite-heisting thieves!). But about 100 feet in, the floor begins to slope upward, we have to break out the flashlights, and every couple of advancing steps require a dose of encouragement. Finally we’re stooping, I’m close to freaking, and Brandon points out a neon-pink penis sprayed on the wall and aiming one level downward, to grooves only a few feet wide that continue out of sight under tons and tons of terra firma.
“It goes further down here and opens up into different rooms,” Brandon says. “There are quite a bit of passages to crawl around in. It took me like two hours to explore all the openings. That’s also where the ‘bathrooms’ are.”
“F--k that shit,” I say, slamming my head on the ceiling as I turn and hightail it back toward the bigness and brightness.
While admiring the racial slurs and “Eat Good Pussy” scrawls, I notice a small tunnel situated atop a smoothed incline. It’s about 2 feet wide and 2 feet high, which ordinarily would send me shrieking, but it’s also only about 2 feet long. This is it: I’m going to squirm through that 2 by 2 by 2 mini-cave, feel like I’ve accomplished something and be done with the whole ludicrous thing.
It takes a couple of tries. And once my head and shoulders are in, I have to close my eyes and scoot along by feel. And then I almost get stuck when, in my haste, I try to maneuver my legs in front of my torso in order to expedite my escape. And I feel the weight of the entire world collapsing on top of me every excruciating second. But suddenly I’m on the other side and free; sliding down the slick rock; losing flashlights and scraping my ass, running for the entrance and getting the hell back on solid, above-ground earth.
Brilliant: Fear of brain disease
By John Katsilometes
Dr. Zaven Khachaturian understands my fear. “You have a fear of losing what is the most precious commodity of all humans.” Khachaturian is speaking of the brain. I fear degenerative brain diseases in all of their forms. Khachaturian, one of the nation’s leading neurosurgeons, is president and chief executive officer of the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute, which is scheduled to be completed at the Union Park development near Downtown Las Vegas in late 2008. “Without the brain, we have no consciousness, no identity; we don’t have a lot of the higher emotions shared by all humans.” Khachaturian says anyone concerned about suffering from a degenerative brain condition should first educate himself about the body’s most complex organ. He suggests starting with the official websites of the National Institutes of Health and the National Library of Medicine, both of which have posted several pages of information about brain functions and diseases.
Having never been diagnosed with any brain condition, my goal is to find the most effective preventative behaviors to stave off brain deterioration. The official website for the Alzheimer’s Association (www.alz.org) posts a list of such measures. Among the directives are to read, write, work crossword or other puzzles (and I am returning to the maddeningly addictive Sudoku as part of this process), attend lectures and plays (and remember to pay attention, a chronic defect of mine), play games (dusting off the Scrabble board for another beating at the hands of my Sig Oth) and try memory exercises. Ever have to read a paragraph twice? Happens all the time. Reading, and focusing on the written material so it is absorbed, is an ideal exercise. So is actual exercise, as physical activity maintains steady blood flow to the brain and can actually encourage the growth of new brain cells. Keep the body moving and the heart pumping. Avoiding fried foods is a good idea. Social activity is said to help, too, so in the coming year I will attend even more functions and events, show openings, benefit dinners and the like—all in the name of good mental health, of course.
Emptiness: Fear of disconnection
By Xania Woodman
My signature accessory. Like Coco Chanel’s pearls or Andy Warhol’s shaggy wig, my little Treo has been my constant companion these two years since I upgraded from a cell phone to a Palm device. My productivity has increased immeasurably, and the ease with which I can take notes for my articles is worth having to carry around the somewhat bulky, unfeminine phone; it usually doesn’t fit in my evening bags. But I’m on it so often it rarely leaves my hand anyway.
One of my greater fears—along with those of the dark, large dogs, deep water, home invasion and bugs—is of being disconnected, out of touch, out of the loop. For me there is no greater horror than logging on to my e-mail to find a solid page or more of unread e-mails which have languished uncomfortably in my in-box since they were, likely, sent in earnest haste. Each morning I tear through them, and through texts as well, trying to satisfy as many questions and inquiries as possibly, making me—just a bit—a slave to my fears.
At 8 p.m. on a Saturday, I signed off. Not for good but for a good while, just to see what would happen if I essentially dropped off the face of the texting, phoning and e-mailing grid. The results were troubling, to say the least.
8 p.m. I text some close friends with instructions not to send search parties when I don’t respond to their communiqués. I jot down my boyfriend’s number, my parents’ and that of a friend I’m meeting with in Manhattan tonight, for emergencies. Everyone and everything else will simply have to wait.
8:45 p.m. At the train station in White Plains, New York, I am unaware of the time and forced to ask complete strangers “Do you have the time?,” a phrase that, like watches, the cell phone has made all but extinct. They look at me funny and check their own phones for the time. I’m so jealous. And increasingly jittery.
9:05 p.m. On the train, nothing is more irksome than not having my On Demand news service, which feeds the top headlines directly to my phone. I bring a newspaper for the 35-minute ride to Grand Central Terminal.
9:40 p.m. I leave my paper for the next riders. Perhaps someone will find it useful. To dispose of gum or something.
10 p.m. Making my way out to 42nd Street and Vanderbilt, I pray there has been no change in the plans. Phoneless as I am, I worry about the time, traffic and just about everything. My security blanket—or rather, my beacon to the world—is gone. What’s going on out there, I wonder.
11:45 p.m. I make it through dinner well enough, with the exception of having to constantly sneak peeks at my friend’s cell-phone screen for the time; if I miss the last train home, I’ll be sleeping at Grand Central tonight.
1:24 a.m. A quick stop in at Bungalow 8 on the 27th street “Club Row,” and I find the club’s owner, New York’s once-and-former nightclub queen, Amy Sacco, draped across a visibly exuberant Quentin Tarantino in a VIP booth! Drat. If I had my phone I could be taking notes on this!
3 a.m. I return to the ’burbs and fend off the urge to check my e-mail. Boy, I’ve really convinced myself that my leash is my choice, haven’t I?
5 a.m. I’m going to bed. Maybe it won’t hurt so much if I’m asleep ...
3 p.m. Sunday Ahh, I am back on the grid. This exercise has been less than fun. But the world didn’t end, and I still have a job. My boyfriend is overjoyed to hear from me, and, yes, my inbox is a frantic mess of other people’s wants and needs. But I did enjoy a peaceful night’s sleep for once! I think perhaps I both want and need to do this again sometime. There’s no good reception on Mt. Charleston, right?
Germs: Fear of unsafe restaurants
By Aaron Thompson
According to the Centers For Disease Control, 5,000 Americans die and 70 million are sickened every year as a result of food-borne illnesses. So when it comes to dining, there’s a lot to be afraid of.
Week after week, I obsessively scan the health department’s restaurant reports to see which of the thousands of eating establishments in town have roaches in the kitchen, are serving mayo or sour cream beyond the expiration date or have mold in the ice cooler. With this information, I plot the places to avoid. I’m also afraid of too-exotic cuisine, given that my stomach sometimes reacts poorly even to water.
So what could I do to get beyond my over-the-top fear of seemingly dangerous restaurants? Eat at them.
The first place was a Malaysian joint. I’d never had this strange Southeast Asian cuisine before, but I was hungry, so I went in. The place looked nice and clean, no bugs on the floor (that I could see), and a good health rating was displayed prominently near the door. I had my dish, paid and left. Everything seemed fine. Two hours later, my stomach erupted in god-awful cramps and toilet-calling sickness, and I wanted to die. What a waste of $12.
The second place, a small taco joint Downtown, seemed like the textbook case of a gross restaurant. The place smelled funky, the floor was unkempt, and the place looked like a haven of E. coli. But one bite into my burrito and I was in heaven. Three hours later I still hadn’t gotten sick.
Rejoice!
For my third and final foray into extreme eating, all bets were off. Taco wagons, otherwise known as “roach coaches,” are surely ideal for food-borne illnesses. As easy to find as your nearest construction site, these rolling food establishments are the nemeses of health professionals and paranoiacs worldwide. Two years ago the Health District formed a task force to inspect the rolling code violations. I think of them as the wagons of Chernobyl/stomach-destroying fun.
But one carnitas burrito and a Mexican soda later—from a taco truck at a job site on Flamingo—all was fine. I didn’t die or experience paralyzing botulism, and my stomach felt fine. Not even a speck of heartburn disturbed my prissy gut.
So in the end, despite the stereotypical issues of what does and doesn’t seem clean, it seems pretty clear. Don’t judge a restaurant by its rating or its apparent cleanliness. Because either way, in the world of dining, you’re always taking a chance.
Manhood: Fear of snakes
By Damon Hodge
I used to chuckle when WWE wrestler Mankind said his opponents lacked testicular fortitude. It was a snide way of saying someone lacked balls. As I get closer to Exotic Pets on Decatur and Smoke Ranch, I begin questioning my manhood. I’m here to conquer my fear (I prefer aversion) to snakes. I haven’t been this nervous since I stuck a pencil in the light socket in junior high and nearly set the classroom afire. This is a different nervous, a pit-of-my-stomach nervous, an
I’m-physically-metamorphosing-into-a-wuss nervous. I told my editors I didn’t fear snakes, only poisonous cobras. Somehow they construed this as admission by denial. If you hate snakes, then Exotic Pets is either the best place to confront your fears or the worst place to go into cardiac arrest.
•••••
First a bit of backstory about my aversion to snakes. I trace it to once seeing a sidewinder whiz by me at 30 mph; watching a local acquaintance behead a snake with a shovel; trying to get in the family car in Bastrop, Louisiana, as a garter snake dangled from a tree overhead; coming face to face with a cobra in New Orleans on Thanksgiving weekend 1994—this jackass walks down Bourbon Street with a yellow cobra. Shit ruined my night; my life, actually. To this day, when I see a cobra on TV, in magazines or on the Internet, I twinge. My eyes close. My tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth, and my stomach and ass tighten. An aversion to cobras eventually turned into a hatred of serpents. Esquire ran a photo of a snake eating a mouse, and I almost upchucked.
•••••
This is torture. Even pictures (in coloring books) and drawings (on signs) of snakes inside Exotic Pets wig me out. I haven’t seen an actual snake in years. I should’ve brought Pampers.
I chat up the guy in the white shirt, glasses and windswept brown hair. He seems like he knows the run of the place. He owns it, actually. Ken Foose is his name. I tell him I’ve heard a lot about Exotic Pets—lots of snakes—and why I came.
“We got more than 200 species of snakes. Which one do you want to hold? I’ll go get one right now,” he says, sniggling.
“None. I’ve got to get past looking at one first.”
Actually, it isn’t as bad as I thought. This snake has a flat head and is spinach-colored. Trouble comes when I force myself to stare—to drink in its snake-iness. It blinks.
I’m out.
•••••
I come back the next day. Foose is there. “Remember me?” The look on his face says coward.
“Some people are naturally afraid of heights, or water, or close spaces, but nobody is born with a fear of snakes,” he says. “It’s a learned behavior, through the media, through their parents, through books, through fiction.”
As he talks, I bravely let my eyes wander. The place doesn’t look that big. It can’t possibly have 200 species of snakes. I’ve half a mind to count when I discover that the transparent glass case I’m leaning on holds nearly two dozen small snakes, coiled like pieces of licorice in soup can-sized holes. My whole body has a Charlie horse.
“You ready? I’ll get a snake for you.”
I’m out.
•••••
Back again. I can do this. Foose says he overcame his fear of spiders by holding them, letting them crawl on him. He has his way, I got mine. “I ain’t doing it. I’m out.”
My co-worker calls while I’m in the car. He challenges my manhood. That’s all it takes. I go back.
“Give me the Guyanese boa constrictor.” Nothing against Guyana—I hear it’s nice. It’s just that it looks asleep. I could run if need be.
“Go on back,” Foose says. Back where? Back there? He can’t bring the snake out. Could be liability issues.
Two deep breaths. Yea though I walk through an aisle of caged snakes I will fear ... every one of them. The small ones, the big ones, the hissing ones, those whose skin blends with their surroundings. “The branch blinked at me,” I yell. I feel watched, like a million snake eyes are on me. I’m trapped.
Foose’s assistant is waiting on me. This is some bullshit. Two more breaths. I hide behind his left shoulder. Just as he slides open the glass panel, two heads move. Jesus, mother of Mary—a two-headed boa. I’m out. I look away. Damn, more boas. I close my eyes, then realize I can’t avoid their sneaky snake attacks if I can’t see them. He grabs the head, and its body tenses. So do my stomach and ass muscles. I reach over his shoulder and pet its top and underside, say thank you and zip out, without looking back, balls intact.