Amongst the Widows: Part II – This Time It’s Personal

Since I caught a little flak last time for posting some creepy black widow pictures in Part I, I figured I post some cute ones this time around.

Oops! How did that get in there? Jesus, they’re everywhere. They could be on you right now!

As you’ll recall from Part I of our story, my childhood house was infested with thousands of hungry black widows. There were so many in fact that they finally unionized and demanded better rights from my dad, The Widow Whisperer, who was forced to meet their demands in order to save our family.

Shortly after this, my family moved to a new house. I was thrilled with the move, and can say with all honesty that part of my happiness had to do with escaping the widows. No more would I lie awake at night in fear, my skin crawling. No longer would I have to check under every chair before sitting down. No more would I have to share my meals with my arachnid pals.

But alas, it wasn’t to be. Turns out this new house was infested as well. Now I’m no conspiracy theorist, but I think there’s a 50/50 chance that my dad actually brought some widows over from the other house and started a new colony so that he wouldn’t get lonely without his old buddies. I even began to wonder if there was something about ME that attracted widows, especially after the following incident:

A friend of mine and I were at a party one night. It was really dark outside and we were sitting together on this little loveseat (if only he would have made the first move, sigh). We thought we were THE SHIT, sitting there with our bottles of beer, nodding at the hotties and bobbing our heads to the White Zombie song that was playing. We both must have sensed something, some alien presence, because we looked down between us at the same time. And there it was: a widow the size of my right testicle ambling along on the cushion. It flashed the devil horns hand sign at me and asked if it could bum a smoke. Slowly, my friend and I looked up from the widow and made eye contact. A moment later we sprang to our feet, dropped our beers and began jumping, screaming, and swatting at ourselves cartoonishly. Needless to say, neither of us got laid that night.

So yeah, maybe it was just my charming personality and Adonis figure that made me likable to the eight-legged little Dahmers.

My favorite all time widow incident took place in the new house. This one involved my mother, who did not share my father’s sick fascination for black widows (I know, it’s a wonder they ever got married with such differing values, isn’t it?). One day my sweet, saintly mother came into my bedroom after having just completed some yard work outside. As she began talking to me, she suddenly went into what looked like an epileptic seizure. She quickly took off the light over shirt she was wearing, flung it to the floor, and began stomping on it wildly.

“What, what the hell is it?” I calmly asked from my new perch atop my bed.

“There was a black widow hanging on a web from my arm!”

For a moment, concern for my mother filled me, until I thought of something. “Well where the hell is it???”

We both began searching the balled up shirt for the smushed body of the widow, but couldn’t find a trace.

“Well, it wasn’t that big, it must be balled up and we’re just not seeing it. Even as my mom spoke I knew there was no way she believed her own line of bullshit.

“Easy for you to say. I gotta LIVE in here!”
For the next few nights I slept uneasily, just waiting for the feel of eight scratchy legs on my cool flesh. But it never came. Slowly I began to forget about the incident, counting myself as lucky to have dodged yet another widow bullet.

That is until one day when I was lounging in my bed, reading. As I turned the page, I casually looked up at my desk. Catching movement out of the corner of my eye, I did a double take. There, hanging on a thin web under my desk right where my legs would normally be was my mom’s pet widow, spinning in a lazy circle. And to make matters worse, I had been sitting at my desk just minutes before.

The next day, deeply shaken, I left home and became a male prostitute. I was 17.