an extract...

...from the joy of raki.

Izmir, June/July 1994
Whole days would pass in that smoky living room, the three of us drinking beer or the local white wine mixed with orange squash to make it more palatable. We sat and smoked and watched MTV on the knackered TV, listened to Nirvana, Blur, Green Day, Madness, anything. We�d sit in the smoke, wearing the lightest clothes we could. Even speaking seemed too burdensome, too sweatmaking at times. Beer bottles slowly accumulated in the hallway, until we had to jump over them to get to the bathroom. The kitchen had died long before, and was stacked with the corpses of long-expired dinners. The fridge had become an experimental ecosystem. Guy, Andrew and I were slugging at our beers,when I saw a cockroach knocking at the living room door. Not just a cockroach, but the biggest bastard I had ever seen. Its black carapace glistened evilly, its antenna twitched and searched.
Jesus, look at the size of that bastard! Andrew yelled. We all got on our feet. The bastard scuttled away from us.
Quick, trap it!
We chased it, and it ran behind a beer bottle. We were all armed : Me with a newspaper, Andrew with a shoe, Guy with a can of aerosol and a lighter. We gathered round the bottle where it was hiding. Right, I said. After three, Ill lift the bottle, then we take turns to smack the fucker into oblivion. OK?
Quick nods from the other two.
Alright then, get ready.......one.......two......three........go! No!
I lifted the bottle, and there it was in all its loathsome glory. It then did the unexpected: It charged us.
AAAAGGHH!
We all dived for the cover of the living room.
A few minutes passed.
Has it gone yet?
I think so.