You know you're a New Yorker when...

...you've had your first nightmare about bedbugs.

For those of you who don't live here, there is a current bedbug epidemic. Bedbugs are tiny, horrid, vampires that lodge in your mattress, emerge at night, and suck your blood. They will leave you with horrid bites that resemble welts and they will make you broke. Exterminators have dogs that can sniff them out, extermination can cost thousands of dollars, and many a family has literally gone bankrupt because of a bedbug invasion. I am terrified of them: I don't let students put their coats anywhere near mine during the winter, I don't sit between people on the subway during the winter (bedbugs can travel in coats easily b/c lots of folks put coats on beds), I am skeeved out by hotels now (another big bedbug home)...Oh, ick ick ick. bedbugs.

I have lived in New York 11 years now, and I had my first bedbug nightmare last night.

I dreamed that we were staying at a hotel on 5th Avenue in our neighborhood, literally right around the corner from our apartment (makes NO sense, but it is a dream). I was in the hotel bed pregnant and napping when Adam came into the room and turned on the lights and a million tiny bedbugs were ALL OVER THE MATTRESS. I screamed, got up, and realized I had been bitten all over. I then ran around freaked out asking others' opinions--I didn't want to go home b/c I was afraid I would bring the bedbugs into my apartment, but I obviously didn't want to stay in the hotel--what should I do? It was like I was banished from everywhere. It felt horrible.

I'm sure someone could say something profound about this dream and how it signifies that I'm in a state of transition or indecision or something in my life, but all day long I have only been able to think of those little bugs.

Photo of Alexandra showing Nico an enlarged image of a bedbug, from New York Magazine's story on bedbugs on the Upper East Side, the richest neighborhood in New York City. Bedbugs do not discriminate.

(Note: Ever since learning of and fearing bedbugs, I can't bring myself to say "Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite"--what my parents always said to me. Ewwww....Gawd forbid.)