Yes Flies On Me
Flies. I love them.
Sometime ago I got into the habit of saving the lives of flies, initially beer flies, which would occasionally plunge into my pint glass and flounder helplessly on the surface of my cider.
Scooping them out of the glass is challenging, but possible, with gentleness, a little patience, and preferably, for swifter drying, on the back of a fingernail.
If you manage to scoop out the fly, you must allow sufficient time for the pool of liquid, on the surface of your fingernail, to evaporate from around the struggling creature. This could take several minutes, as it gradually frees itself from the sticky mire and diligently cleans its limbs and wings.
Do not attempt to remove the fly from the pool of liquid that engulfs it, or you will surely tear off whichever body part you lift it by. Just wait. Patience is your connection with the future gratitude that this being will undoubtedly bestow upon you should it survive its ordeal, though thereafter it might immediately dive back into your beverage.
I also save flies from toilets, and yes, even public ones. I have learned not to do so with toilet paper though, nor anything which is particularly absorbant, as the surface material of the rescue scoop needs to allow for evaporation as soon as the fly is retrieved; otherwise the insect will succumb to drowning, submerged in a miniature swamp of gluey paste.
My unusual friendship with flies developed profoundly one particular afternoon whilst under the influence of LSD…
It was a very warm summer day, mid afternoon, and I was at home with two friends. LSD was the day’s play theme, for no particular reason, and we each took a single acid tab. Within a few minutes my friends had left our flat to attend previously arranged meetings, but although invited along by them, I had decided to stay home and enjoy the trip alone, in whatever manner unfolded.
I was sitting in an old armchair, upholstered with green velvet, which I wasn’t to leave for four hours. A window in the room was open slightly, allowing a light breeze to pass through the dirty net curtains, which billowed rhythmically, gently. I sat in my shorts, without shoes, nor socks, nor shirt, an almost imperceptible sweat rising from my pores to meet the warm air in the room.
Then it came, out of its own tunnel of time and into my sphere of reality, a metallic green buzzing fly. It landed on my thigh and skittered about a little, its proboscis skimming the surface of my skin. Its perky movement, over the hairs of my leg, tickled. I enjoyed the sensation.
My focus was dedicated purely upon the activity of this little being, knowing that it was in complete safety in my company. Lysergic acid time passed.
There came other flies, alighting on my chest, arms, and hopping about my face. The orchestra of tickling, which I found myself experiencing, would have perhaps been more challenging to bear had I not allowed myself to luxuriate in its sensual titillation. Perhaps there were, at the height of this arousing experience, as many as twenty flies grazing upon the moist surface of my semi-naked body, and I, like a soft, still mountain, breathing gently, pleasantly enshrouded within a cloud of tender, benign activity.
I wonder whether flies develop a sense of trust. Or do they simply react spontaneously by an instinctive inpulse, unable to discern an act of aggression towards them from an incidental nearby movement?
They do though, have a bad reputation, but undeservedly so, say I.
Yes, they feed off anything they are biologically designed to accrue nutrition from, be it shit or sugar. There is no other discerning factor than that for their dietry needs.
But they have beautiful transparent wings, which reflect colours like oil on water, and their brightly coloured bodies mirror, like polished metal, their surroundings. They can fly upwards, sideways, but not downwards. And fruit flies beat their wings once every 4 milliseconds; faster than the action of our neurons.
Still, I admit a weakness in my compassion, when there I am, at 4am, improvised weapon in hand, cursing that lone mosquito secreted somewhere in my bedroom, having been awoken by its infernal signature buzzing as it attempts, for the seventeenth time, to feed off the blood from beneath the skin of my slumbrous face.
