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I am unsure of where I fit into this, but I either produce an exorbitant dose of carbon dioxide, have an unusually high count of uric acid on my skin, or process cholesterol so efficiently that the excess amounts concentrated just under skin level are causing mosquitoes to want to bite me that much more than they want to bite other people. And this isn’t just me talking. Joe Conlon, PhD, technical advisor to the American Mosquito Control Association, claims that more research than ever is pouring into why mosquitoes are biting me. And other people like me. You know, the real sassy, juicy, and incredibly interesting people of the world.
So, that’s where my life is today. It’s hot—it is, after all, summer in Brooklyn—and the mosquitoes have taken hold of Williamsburg, especially near Metropolitan Avenue, where I write this description of myself, doused in Deep Woods Off. They must come in from the yard because we don’t have screens on the window, though I’m not wholly convinced that these vile beings aren’t breeding in some unknown puddle of standing water somewhere in the house.
When I was five, I went to Boothbay Harbor, Maine, with my parents and brother. He and I were fishing at a pond when a mosquito bit me just above and below my eye, which then swelled shut. These were two of thirty-two bites to be found on my body that day. Even at a young age, I was pre-disposed to the agony of itchy, bumpy, unforgiving red welts with the only psychological relief being one criss-cross from a wee fingernail per bite. Nothing more. Nothing less. Somehow that made it better.
And you know what gets me the most? They say it’s not the bite itself—it’s the anesthesia. You see, when a mosquito bites you, she apparently injects you with an anesthesia meant to numb you so that you don’t feel the blood-sucking. But we humans are allergic to this anesthesia, the allergic reaction causing what we know to look like a mosquito bite. Listen, missy, don’t do me any favors.
When I’m not complaining about mosquitoes, I can be found doing other activities, such as watching TV, eating, shopping, or staring at my computer screen. I have carpal tunnel syndrome. That’s the other thing. Oh, and I’m also a bona fide hypochondriac, which is, believe it or not, the only thing that the doctor truly thinks is wrong with me. I know I have mytral valve prolapse. It’s a heart condition. I have not been diagnosed yet, but it’s only a matter of time. That, and of course, West Nile virus.