Moths

My friend Dan is wild about moths. The symbolism, the sad nature of them to be drawn into fires. He finds so much inspiration in something as seemingly unimportant, that he has a tattoo of a moth on his right shoulder.
I used to love reading about Moths in Dan's writing.
USED TO.
In the mornings I drive to work with my boyfriend and his friend. They work together, and the office is only a few blocks from mine. As they both start 1/2 an hour before I do, we park near their building, and I walk the rest of the way to mine. In the beginning it was a great walk. I picked up my pace and made my dress shoes move a little bit quicker to keep up with the Jones's. Now, it's not as much fun. The underpass by the Eaton's centre always smells like piss. The homeless people always greet you pleasantly in hopes that you'll throw a toonie at them, but you know they're the reason it smells like piss by the Eaton centre, and you just can't fathom giving them money, so they can go buy booze, and then piss it all out right by the fucking Eaton's centre.
One particular day last week was much different. I didn't feel cynical or short fused. In fact, just after walking away from John and Devin at their office I started admiring what a beautiful day it was. The sun was out and bright, the wind was warm with a cool tip on its outer edges. I just felt happy. Truly happy. I live in a great new city, I have a great new job, I'm wildly in love. It was euphoric, exciting, surreal, exhilarating.
I felt fucking good anyway.
I keep trotting along, and come to a stop at a 'don't walk' crosswalk with about ten of my professional walking mates, and I stop just short of the group.
I keep looking around, feeling the gentle breeze and admiring the way the sunlight falls across the downtown.
Now I must have sighed, or at least I hope I did, the thought that I walk around with my mouth hanging open doesn't do much for me. Maybe I was smiling, or just going to gulp in a big breath of fresh air. Whatever I had done, it had resulted in my trap being wide open and a moth saw that as a great opportunity.
Now, I don't know if moths are just generally suicidal, or just plain stupid. Flying into fires, ramming themselves into streetlights. This one saw a mouth (a giant one compared to its own) and it fucking dive bombed right into it. Sadly, that was my mouth.
I think I actually saw the moth about .5 seconds before I could feel its little legs grabbing onto my tongue.
The first thing that happened was that my eyes shot open and I thought,
"Now remember Ian, as unfortunate as this situation has turned out to be, you're in public, stopped at a red light, with people all around you. Just reach in, grab the bug and casually drop it by your side."
Well, by the time I got to "Now remember Ian..." I was already bent over spitting, hard, and clawing at my mouth. I think in the back of my mind I knew what I looked like doing this, but, I experienced a loss of control.
I felt like I could feel the dust on the moths wings coating my tongue and making its way to the back of my throat, had it gotten there, I would for sure have yacked on the sidewalk.
I started thinking about what the moth dust was, poison? feces? dead cells? I had to get it out. I kept a spittin and a clawin.
Now the whole ordeal lasted probably about 5 seconds. Not overly extended, but enough time to be noticed by the people standing beside you.
When I felt like I didn't need to continue hoarking everywhere, I glanced up and most of the people by me were staring directly at me. The ones who weren't were doing that sort of peripheral kind of stare, where they turn their head in your direction but pretend their looking at something else.
I could feel my face getting red, and I was more pissed off at the god damn moth by the second.
One woman inparticular was not only a dead-pan starer, but she had this look on her face like I'd just whipped my pants down, and taken a dump in her kids backpack.
Looking back on it, a simple, "God, sorry, a moth just flew right into my mouth, it was really gross."
Yeah, would have smoothed it over somewhat.
Not me.
I meet her stare, and said "Good morning". But not like a jolly good morning, more like a question, i.e.
"Good morning, are you going to call the police on me"?
or
"Good morning, you think I am unstable don't you"?
I can't remember if she gave back my greeting, or just turned away. But let me tell ya, that utopic feeling that I'd started the walk with was laying back on the corner of 4th and 11th right beside a dead moth in a pile of spittle.
This is why moths cannot be trusted. I used to think about suicide, and how if someone really wanted to wipe themselves out they could just pop of their seatbelt and ram head on into a car on a 2 lane highway. That seemed sick to me, and I wondered if anyone would ever do such a thing.
MOTHS DO!
Maybe not to the same extent, but they wanna knock themselves off and they make me look like a fucking asshole in the process.
Really I'm just glad that moths can't drive.