...M ichael and I take "four unfurnished rooms & bath" in a 12-flat on Madison Avenue. Coincidentally, the building's eastside entry is on Lewis Drive just one long block directly south of Davy's parents' house. But, already I digress. What's germane to the set-up for our story is an awareness that there exists in the Midwest USA, circa1970, an anti-hippy bias so vehemently held that if you're aged twenty and have shoulder-length hair you're damned lucky to even get through a day of not getting your ass kicked much less to find someone who'll rent you a flat in a Wonder Bread burg like Lakewood, Ohio. Having said that, should such an offer indeed come along, forget about getting an apartment without the considerable problems in the areas of sanitation and maintenance that are quite likely the very reasons why they're renting to YOU in the first place!

The day of our moving in, I'm Black-Flagging some of the braver (or perhaps just the more foolish) members of a cockroach kitchen battalion bivouacing back of the baseboards in the sweltering third floor walk-up.

"What is that, Brian?" Michael catches me can in fist, "What the hell are you sprayin' in here!?"

"Gotta do it Mike; it's them or me", I reply, not expecting Michael's deeply-felt pacifism may indeed extend to all — and I do mean all —of god's creatures, including a scattering scouting party of bugs.

"Don't spray that stuff in here!" he demands, but then schizophrenically changes tone to advance a reasoned ruling coming in on the same channel from Mike the Magistrate.

"Hey look, we just don't want 'em in the apartment, ... right?" he asks, positing the concept as though all but the instrument of their removal has been previously discussed.

"Huh?" I grunt, stupidly, not really wanting to open the door for intelligent debate on the pro's and con's of a particular pesticidal remediation, as I've already come into possession of a entire case of my chosen weapon.

Mike glowers for a moment in dead silence. Then scooping up a lively specimen, he heads abrubtly to the double-hung window triptych in the north wall of what the landlady had called the "spacious dining room" when she'd showed us the place a week ago. Plastic curtains (courtesy of a previous tenant?) are flying beneath a cheap valance like torn sails in a sea squall; helping to fan hotter an already blazing summer wind, they've turned the apartment into an 800 square-foot convection oven. After a flogging, Michael defeats the drapes and releases the bug out the window. As I watch the little brown aviator launch from the palm of his outstretched hand and then vertical-dive right into the living room of the apartment below, Michael makes me agree to a total ban on chemical weapons as long as we both shall continue to live ... together.

"Sure", I assent, full-knowing a vow made under duress doesn't count and I'll break it starting tomorrow.


The clandestine weekend war which follows remains my (and the roaches') secret from Michael until the night of our third day, when while celebrating the new apartment with friends we all drop acid. In true Timothy Leary spirit attempts are made at mind-expanding explorations in place of our customary ape-like reactions to colors, fabrics and each other's faces. But, alas, the cerebral exercises rapidly deteriorate into banal, idiotic, truth-or-dare challenges, one of which prods me to reveal—in front of my new roommate—the existence and whereabouts of my nearly-full case of Black Flag. Further interrogation from the tribunal of trippers elicits even more: precise locations of my greatest victories and an approximate head-count of the fallen troops.

The harsher judges—having dubbed my liberal dousings "a flagrant use" of the three emptied cans—are audibly debiting my karmic account. As they go about their business, my own LSD-enhanced perceptions gain me access to Michael's mind. Once inside, I discover that the number of deceased vermin are being levied in a one to one ratio as demerits against any domestic considerations I might have otherwise engendered owing to our earlier agreement— the hollow and now vitiated disarmament pact. Outwardly, Mike's looking pissed as well. He starts to say as much, but details of his disappointment fall soundless beneath the increasingly loud and terrifying cadence of a now-protected goose-stepping army of pests crossing the kitchen floor. ...