On my way to P&C’s house, I can’t even begin to describe the myriad of emotions that I was feeling. Suffering from exhaustion, malnutrition, and a bad case of the crazies, I thought my mental state couldn’t get any worse. I was wrong, so horribly wrong.

Caught up in my neuroses, I wasn’t paying attention to the 2 new passengers on the bus…until I heard the one word that would draw me into their conversation: FLEA. To this day I still can’t be entirely sure if this happened, or if I had a temporary mental breakdown and hallucinated the whole thing. I wasn’t drunk or on any drugs but like I said…bad case of the crazies.

Sitting in front of me, the man and woman in their mid-forties, a bit rough around the edges, and clearly slurring their words, were discussing how they were going to go to the woman’s mother’s house to “borrow” some money to buy beer. Once they were done robbing the poor old lady, they weren’t going to a bar to drink, they were heading off to a FLEA MARKET. I’m not judging them mind you, I love flea markets. Oh but I don’t believe in robbing mothers…unless they didn’t breastfeed you as a child and this is what made you gay. That’s ok then. Rob away.

Though I can’t remember their conversation verbatim, it went something like this:

Man: “Where can we buy beer at the flea market?”

Woman: “Forget about the beer. We’re going to buy fleas!”

Man: “That’s funny. How many do we need and how do we package them?”

They then proceeded to cackle and I proceeded to try very hard not to poop myself.

Now that I’m more rational, I still don’t know how one could package fleas.

Since I couldn’t get the annoying idea out of my head that I was going to spread fleas and be an unwilling participant in their eventual  world domination, it goes without saying that I cut myself off from my friends and family. Fortunately for me, I have very stubborn friends. At least I like to think it’s stubbornness and not, you know, that there is something very wrong with them.

Sensing that I needed a break from myself and the fleas, P and C called me up on a Saturday morning and demanded that I come out to supper with them. They told me that if I indeed was a carrier of fleas, all three of their cats were given a flea treatment every month anyway, so any unwanted visitors would be eradicated before they tried to make themselves at home. Kind of like baby Jesus being turned away at the inn, except not as gory or as holy. And there were no virgins involved.

Moving on.

I’d like to think I’m stoic and relatively stable in troubled times, but my body and mind and spirit were so worn out by the constant stress that a really scary thing happened on the bus on my way to P and C’s house. I’ll talk about that in Part 20.

Upon arriving at their home, P in her typical fashion teased me a wee bit about the fleas, which if I had been in a normal frame of mind would have been ok, but since I was so incredibly raw from the ordeal that had just happened on the bus, I did something I very rarely do with anyone, I started crying.

That’s when P did absolutely the nicest (and craziest) thing she could have done for me: she hugged me. Never ever underestimate the power of a hug when one is feeling like a pariah.

The evening spent with my friends turned into a whole weekend because for the first time in weeks, I felt safe, well safeish…I was convinced the fleas were still there, but at least my attention was being diverted elsewhere.

C was equally just as kind (and crazy) as her partner. She took care of me for the rest of the weekend and tried to get some food into my system. P distracted me with movies and an awesome motorcycle ride. (Don’t worry I wasn’t driving.)

Despite the fact that I was convinced their house would be overrun at any minute and their cats would be sucked dry of blood by the time I left, I did get some peace of mind, if only for a few minutes at a time.

That’s when I realized what true friendship means: “A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.” – Bernard Meltzer, radio host

What was aggravating my fragile mental state and making the flea situation overwhelming were three things:

1. I had broken up with my girlfriend.
2. I was really stressed out at work.
3. I felt like the fleas were everywhere.

I won’t go into details about the break up out of respect for my relationship…but I will say this…I have never in my whole dating life gotten along with any of my ex-girlfriends. Though they might disagree, I just never felt I could count on them to help me when I was going through hard times. Not so with Sunshine.

The weekend of the dark and stormy night, when I was taking out my clothes from chemically flower smelling plastic bags, one of my favourite sweaters given to me by her was riddled with red dots. I went ballistic. I couldn’t stop crying because this item of clothing always brought me comfort when I wore it, sort of like a security blanket. To have it desecrated like this was the last blow to my ego, my stoicism, and my heart.

I called Sunshine and bless her heart, she picked up. For the next two hours she just listened to me sob and be incoherent but she did manage to understand two things. I wasn’t eating and I wasn’t sleeping.

For the next few weeks, despite being in Newfoundland, she managed to nurse me back to health, both emotionally and physically. One of the nicest things she did for me, and really one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me, was buy me groceries from an organic health food store and have them delivered to my workplace. Hundreds of dollars worth of meat, veggies, fruits, juices and other beverages, and even some yummy desserts were brought to me in two overflowing boxes.

The gentleman who delivered them took one look at me when I went to the lobby and said you must be Geneviève. You are loved.

I started crying. Yes. Yes I was.

Suffering from lack of sleep and lack of food, it’s safe to say that I wasn’t behaving like a normal healthy person. My stress and anxiety levels were so high that my blood pressure was through the roof and I knew that if I continued down this road, I would soon have to be hospitalized. The body can only take so much abuse.

The only thing keeping me going was my strong work ethic. We had a huge conference coming up in September, and I could not, would not, fail my co-workers. Plus, I was working hard to get a much wanted promotion and failure because of fleas was just not an option…plus that would have been embarrassing.

In my sleep and food starved mind, my fear of contaminating people with fleas got so bad that I became obsessive compulsive. My O.C.D. behavior had manifested itself in my early twenties when I felt out of control during a hard time in my life, but it had never spiraled this badly.

I was showering twice a day, morning and evening, with a bath right before I’d go to bed. Again, I was drowning the fuckers and this gave me some measure of control. The upside is that I’ve never smelled so good in my life.

In addition to obsessively washing, I was also obsessively examining my clothes at work. I’d strip at least five times a day in the bathroom stalls and look for red dots, which I always found and in great quantities. I wanted to stop, trust me but alas, the crazies were stronger than my desire to stop stripping…which in normal times…that would never have happened.

I likes being naked.

While the gentleman exterminator was spraying pesticides upstairs in my apartment, I was outside helping the young man from the laundry service load his van with all 16 bags of just about everything I owned. The deal was that he would keep most of my stuff in storage until I felt it was safe to have everything returned without any chance of flea contamination.

Between the fumigating and the laundering, I knew this whole thing was going to cost me a pretty penny but at this point I really didn’t care. I needed help.

Now I don’t want you to think I didn’t have the support of family and friends, I did. But I didn’t want them to come to my home and risk them bringing any fleas back to theirs. Most of my insanity stemmed from the fear that I was going to bring on the second coming of the Bubonic Plague. I figured professionals were needed as they had experience with this sort of thing…and on the off chance they did “contract” fleas from me, well they knew the risks and were getting paid for it.

One of the reasons why the laundry service was going to cost me an arm and a leg was because where I lived was outside their delivery zone…but again…I didn’t care. So saying, as I was helping the young man load the van, he looked at me and said that he really appreciated my honesty about telling him about the fleas. He said most of his clients kept silent when they had bed bugs and consequently it cost him more money to clean out his van and his laundry facilities because the proper measures hadn’t been taken. He was so impressed with my having told him the truth, that he waived the delivery fees.

For the second time that morning, Ken had competition.

A week after the exterminator company sent someone to my office to kill the fleas (to be honest I made them come twice in the space of six days), they were finally able to send a professional to come my home…but to me he will always be so much more than just a killer of vermin.

That same morning, an expert laundering company (not the kind you pay under the table) came to my apartment to pick up a grand total of 16 plastic garbage bags containing everything I owned that was made from some sort of textile. From clothes, to sheets, to table cloths, to towels…if it had polyester, cotton, wool, nylon, acrylic,  and yes even spandex, it was considered contaminated and had to go.

The exterminator, before even whipping out his toxic pesticide spray, helped me carry down every single bag. What made this even more touching was that he was out of shape and was easily winded but insisted on helping me nonetheless.

When this arduous task was over, after he caught his breath, he asked if he could be frank with me. I said of course by all means as I appreciate honesty.

He said that he could tell I was very anxious about this whole ordeal and wanted to assure me that this wasn’t my fault. He said I had gone above and beyond the call of duty to try and get rid of the fleas and should know that it was now just a question of time before they were completely eradicated. He also said that he was impressed with my honesty at work since most people wouldn’t have said anything, letting their co-workers bring fleas home with them.

I wanted to melt into a puddle of tears. I had finally found someone just as nice as Ken.

That same evening, while the rain drops were equaling the amount of tears I was shedding, it struck me that I didn’t have to do this alone. By no means was I going to call any of my friends or family for help, but I could call a professional. I couldn’t be the only person in Montreal to suffer from fleas. There had to be an expert out there who made money off of crazy frustrated desperately at their wit’s end parasitically infected victims like me.

So I went online. I called a few companies but unfortunately they were closed on a Saturday evening. I finally reached a lady who said that she was an expert in laundering clothes and bedding that had been infested with bed bugs. To her, fleas were going to be child’s play. As long as I paid her in cash, she would come pick up the clothes, wash, dry, and fold them, and even have them returned to me that same evening.

At that moment, I loved her more than Ken.

I mustered the energy and went off to an ATM machine to get about 200$ in cash. I didn’t know how much I was going to need since she said she weighed the clothes by the pound (after they were dry of course.)

However, just like my love affair with the exterminator, my love for her was short lived. When I got home, there was a message for me. The lady had decided to cancel since she had done some research and was afraid of getting flea eggs in her car.

I called her back (after crying some more) and told her that there wasn’t any possibility of that happening since all the clothes were in the bath tub and I was going to rinse every item off and put them in plastic bags. She still refused but told me that she thought her partner might accept the job.

An hour later, I received a phone call from another lady who angrily told me she would take the job for $150 in cash. The reason why she was charging me so much was because the clothes were wet and she had back problems so she was going to forgo the weighing of the clothes and just charge me a lump sum.

Again, since I was a crazy frustrated desperately at my wit’s end parasitically infected victim, I accepted.

Nadia, the launderer/extortionist came to my house within the hour, took $40 up front and put all of my clothes in her trunk.

Three hours later, my clothes were returned, washed, dried, folded, and smelling of a variety of chemically infused flowers. All items were placed in new plastic bags.

I was grateful and exhausted. I took a sleeping pill and went to bed.

After another evening of insomnia (sleeping pills do not work on me) I got up the next morning and thought I should empty the plastic bags and put the clothes away. That’s what civilized people would do. Upon approaching the bags however, to my horror, I realized I hadn’t checked to see if they had been properly sealed the night before.

Like a scene out of a horror movie, minus the scary music, I removed each item one by one out of the plastic bag, anticipating with great trepidation not a severed hand or head, but a flea.

And lo and behold, one did indeed jump out of the bag. I think.

Again I was sleep deprived and under great duress. To this day I still can’t be sure.

All I know is that $150.00 worth of my money went into making sure the fleas had some sweet smelling clothes on which to lay their eggs.

You’re welcome fleas. You’re welcome.

As much as I am trying to convey this story in a humorous manner, the truth is that my neuroses became such a serious problem that my old compulsive behaviors began manifesting themselves. The difference was that instead of being afraid of germs, I was now obsessing over fleas.

I didn’t feel safe at work or at home. I was convinced that I was a garden for fleas  and I was spreading their eggs where ever I went. The fact that no one else was being affected was completely irrelevant because it was just a QUESTION. OF. TIME. After all, no one understood the flea cycle like I did. I felt like a human time bomb, about to explode into hundreds of thousands of fleas. A walking plague carrier. Yeah…the CRAZY had settled in my brain.

So much so that I stopped sleeping, barely getting an hour of rest per day. I also lost my appetite. In the space of four weeks, I lost twenty pounds. The flea diet…I strongly do not recommend it.

Another thing I stopped doing was going to the laundromat. My sleep deprived logic dictated that if I had fleas on me, what was the point of washing my clothes only to have the fleas jump on them as soon as they came out of the dryer? By this time, Zellers was very familiar with my credit card what with all the new clothes I was buying. However, I realized I couldn’t continue this way unless I won the lottery.

On a dark and stormy night, filled with rage and more than a bit of desperation, I threw every item of clothing I owned into the bathtub and  ran the hot water until it was practically spilling over the top. Because fleas need to breathe, I was going to drown every single one of them.

I  was then going to take the clothes to the laundromat, throw them in a washer, and change my clothing with clothes that had not ever been worn and were safely preserved in a plastic bag. The contaminated clothes would be thrown in said plastic bag and HA HA HA to the fleas because they wouldn’t suspect a thing.

Vengeance was mine. Sort of.

Physically and emotionally exhausted, I realized I wouldn’t have the energy to bring a ton of wet clothes to the laundromat.

Proving that revenge is indeed a dish best served cold…and not steaming wet.

Touche fleas. Touche.

So I bought a new vacuum cleaner. For those keeping track: I now had a grand total of three vacuums in the apartment. This latest one however had a canister, no bags. All I needed to do was empty the contents in the toilet and flush as many times as I needed to feel emotionally vindicated. (Usually three…sometimes four if I had P.M.S.)

The issue with this new one was that the hose wasn’t very long so I needed to channel MacGyver by combining components from all three vacuums. Once this was done, I now had the ultimate fighting machine for my war against the fleas. However, two things were working against me:

1. I had underestimated my enemy.
2. They were lulling me into a false sense of security.

I needed to be smarter about this situation. (Which as we know was going to be harder what with all the pesticides I had been inhaling.) But as G.I. Joe explained to me oh so long ago in my childhood: KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE.

With all the hard work I was doing on a daily basis, the fleas didn’t have a chance for a full on infestation. Consequently, one to two weeks could go by leading me to believe that all was well…then CHOMP!

While I may have been killing the adult fleas and eliminating most of their eggs, there were still some lurking about, and I needed to understand their cycle…because I was getting mighty frustrated with living through them.