A knock on the door, take 2

An unexpected visit from "Pest Control"

I was awakened by a series of sharp raps on the door.

They weren’t aggressive raps. They weren’t even that loud. But you’ll recall that my bed was the couch in the little living room of the second floor apartment and that my head was positioned only a couple feet from the door.

I managed to get my eyes open. It was mid-morning, judging by the light in the room. A quick check-in on my condition showed tired, a little peeved at having to get up and answer the door, moderate hangover but nothing that couldn’t be dealt with — under normal circumstances, anyway.

Photo by Ollie Craig: https://www.pexels.com/photo/the-ancient-stone-reliefs-are-carved-with-figures-28121926/

I had finally managed to land a contract job several months after quitting my corporate job at Coca-Cola. The market had stayed slow, but with a little coaching help from Sille, I had landed this sweet six-month gig writing technical documentation for a pharmaceutical company in Marietta.

My boss was highly spectrum-y. Not mean, but definitely not a people person. She made it clear on my first day that the less she saw of me the better our work together would go. She was working on this bespoke database system that only she and the one other coworker I ever met on that project seemed to understand. My job was to write a training manual and help system to enable eventual end users to navigate the system. But for most of my time on the project, Lisa was immersed in coding the thing and there was nothing to document.

This meant that I was being paid $35/hour to sit home and do whatever I wanted, as long as I was able to answer the phone two or three times a week when Lisa wanted me to make a note of something. This was more money than I’d ever made at any regular job before. Once I overcame the guilt of accepting money for such little effort, life was good. Or should have been.

I was still a wreck on the inside. Drinking way too much, feeling way too much, desperately wanting to capture it all in a Great American Novel while also pouring my heart and soul into the band’s first album…and in reality, about to receive a series of wake-up calls that would lead me, first through hell, and then eventually to the love, happiness and inner peace I desired.

My inner work was knocking at the door of my heart. But maybe you can remember what it felt like to be young and traumatized, trying to find love and get some money together, and feeling like there must be something more to all of this, there must be a better way of living than the wage slave, surface level, settling in love, working for The Man broken-ass American Dream I saw all around me. People hanging in there with spouses that didn’t love them anymore, jobs they hated, bodies getting fatter and softer, dreaming about the day they’d finally retire and be free — not seeming to notice how most of the retired people you meet were so sick and aged from forty years of going against their souls and denying their heart’s desires that their bodies couldn’t even allow them to enjoy their hard-won freedom and leisure.

The American Dream

Working for Coke had been an eye-opener on so many levels. I only took a full-time position there because I couldn’t find a contract job. But, hey, I thought, maybe this will be the start of some big success. My family were all proud of me for the first time in years. Big corporate boy, all right! He’s finally settled down and got himself a real job.

I thought maybe I’d be challenged working for such an iconic company. I’d be surrounded by the cream of the crop: smart, hard-working colleagues who would push me to become a better writer and editor, maybe even inspire me to start climbing the ladder of worldly success.

In fact, most of the people I worked with in my role as multimedia training editor — the researchers, designers, illustrators, and computer guys — were great people. They did work hard and they took pride in doing a good job. But no matter how good a job we did together, the management of our department found a way to scupper our work. I remember at the end of my first week there, the lead graphic artist on our team took me aside.

“Hey, can we talk for a minute?” he asked. He had a sweet south Georgia drawl and spoke softly and slowly.

“Sure,” I said.

“Here, follow me,” he said. He led me down to a section of still-empty cubicles along the glass walls looking out above the I-75/I-85 corridor that cut through midtown Atlanta. It was Friday evening and the floor was emptying out. You could see a soft layer of smog above the highway. The traffic was crawling along in both directions, ten lanes of people in cars just trying to get home and start their weekend.

“Listen, man,” he said in his south Georgia drawl. “I don’t know how to say this, but I feel like I need to let you know.”

Alarm bells were ringing. Did he know something I didn’t know? Was I about to be fired, just a week into the job? Did the managers know how many smoke breaks I was taking?

“OK,” I said.

“Well, it’s just that…you’re trying too hard,” he said. “We all came in here wanting to make a good first impression. I’m sure you’re a really good editor. But, and this is just the truth, you’re working too hard. It’s not rewarded here.”

“OK,” I said. I felt taken aback, affronted. But he was so earnest, I didn’t want to make a snap judgment.

“Look man, I could get in trouble for saying this. I hope you understand. But the managers — they don’t really want us to do too much. We have to appear as if we’re doing a lot, but when you actually do a lot — or especially if you’re making it obvious you don’t have enough to do — that puts them under a lot of pressure. And then they take it out on everybody on the team.”

I didn’t know what to say. It seemed ludicrous. I mumbled something about thanks for letting me know, but I didn’t really understand. In fact, walking home to our Midtown apartment, my tie loosened and my suit coat over my shoulder, the more I thought about it, the angrier I felt. What a jerk, man! They aren’t paying us to just sit around — are they?

I soon found out he was right. I got myself into trouble repeatedly with my managers, and by the time I quit Coca-Cola, I had come to the conclusion that corporate life mainly functions as a sort of junior high school for adults. A place where humans agree to gather for forty hours each week to work through their emotional dramas together. It’s not the best way of healing one’s inner child, though — not least because the supposed security of a regular paycheck and health insurance and retirement benefits entices people to stay in the game far longer than is healthy for real people with a soul.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that my artist colleague was telling the truth and, eventually, I did quit working so hard. I became a sort of lightning rod for my team — the guy that speak up in meetings and say what everyone else wanted to say but was too afraid of losing their job to blurt out. The guy who continued to bring a little bag of Ruffles potato chips to work and eat it in his cube with his turkey sandwich, even after being called out by one of the mangers.

That’s a Pepsi product!

I’m eating lunch in my cube, as usual. I look up and Cathy is standing over my chair.

“What are those?” She points at the bag of Ruffles.

“Potato chips?

“Yes, but what kind?”

“They’re Ruffles,” I say. “My favorites!”

I notice that my end of the cubicle neighborhood has gone silent. No more typing, or low talking.

“Are you supposed to have those here?” she asks. Her tone is that of an elementary school teacher asking a kid if he’s supposed to be wearing that Slayer tee shirt at school.

I take a bite of my sandwich, chew for a few seconds, swivel in my chair so I’m looking directly up into her eyes.

“What, I’m not allowed to eat chips with my lunch?”

She locks eyes for a few seconds then gives in.

“You’re supposed to have Lays chips,” she says. “Ruffles is owned by Pepsi.”

It’s all I can do not to laugh and spit turkey sandwich all over her. Somehow I manage to keep a straight face. But she knows I’m dying on the inside.

“Oh,” I manage, still staring her in the face.

She decides to save face and turns around and marches off to the elevators, just across the hallway.

I turn back to my computer screen and go on eating and then I hear a collective exhale from the nearby cubicles. I hear Frank, the systems architect next door to me, giggling.

“Are you supposed to be eating those?” he gasps in a high-pitched voice.

Trevor, the tech writer across from Frank, chimes in: “That’s a Pepsi product!”

Most of my coworkers had kids and mortgages. They’d tell me privately what they really wanted to be doing with their lives, or that they just wanted to work for a company that respected them and let them use their skills without all of the hassle and the drama they had to deal with at Coke.

And when I walked out of there 365 days after first walking in, I knew one thousand percent that I was doing the right thing.

I was like the prisoner who successfully tunnels out and escapes. A week after I quit, one of my teammates sent me a picture of my empty cubicle. People had posted pictures of us together, Dilbert comics, printed slogans…they’d turned my cube into an office graffiti shrine of our time together — and of their wishes that they could walk away and be free.

Vision Bearer

There was another series of short, sharp raps on the door. Open hand, I decided. Someone — not quite official — but who means business.

I stumbled off the couch and was pulling on my pants as a voice rang out over a couple more raps on the door.

“Pest control!” the man said. He had a noticeable Latino accent. His voice was a little husky, but melodious.

“I’m coming,” I snapped.

I pulled my pants up and took two steps to the door. I pulled the main door inward and faced my unexpected guest through the screen. He was a short, stocky, barrel-chested guy wearing a blue work shirt with a patch that said Steve on it.

“Pest control,” Steve said. “I’m hear to deal with your pests.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve got the wrong place.”

“Is this…?” he asked. He looked up at the street number next to the door and then down at a little notebook in his hand.

“Yep,” he said. “This is the place.”

“Dude,” I said. “I know we didn’t order pest control. And I’m certain the slumlord who owns this place didn’t. So you must have the wrong address.”

“Well, that’s what it says on my list,” Steve said. “May I come in? It won’t take long.”

This guy obviously wasn’t going to be denied.

“Come on in,” I sighed.

The entry area in the little apartment was so narrow, I had to step back around the side of the couch to make room for him to come in. He pulled open the screen door and stepped across the sill and stood there for a moment, surveying the apartment.

My computer was set up on a card table directly across from the little square patch of linoleum that constituted our entry hall, along the outer wall of the apartment, between the door and the dark, narrow kitchen.

Steve looked at my computer and papers spread out across the card table and turned to look at me.

“Why don’t you want people to know you are a writer?” he asked.

“Huh?” I said.

“You are a writer and you have something to say, but you are ashamed of it,” he said.

I felt a little wobbly.

“You’d better sit down,” I said, motioning to the love seat.

Steve crossed the living room and sat down on the loveseat. I gathered up my sheet and sleeping bag and folded them under my pillow, then sat down on the main couch.

"See, Creator gave each of us a gift,” he began. “Sure, we have to work to bring our gift into life. And not everyone is going to find your gift to their liking. Some people — especially family — might even try to convince you that your gift is BAD. That you will be hurting them by bringing forth your gift. But ultimately, at the end of this life, you will have to come face to face with your Creator. And Creator will not judge you on how nice you were to your family or to any others who tried to control you and keep you small. Creator is only interested in, ‘What did you do with the talents that I gave you?’”

For the next fifteen minutes, Steve sat there ‘reading my mail,’ as my outlaw preacher friend Philip used to put it.

“What’s your gift, Steve?” I asked.

He got up off the loveseat and stood in the middle of the room, motioning to me to come to him.

“Let me show you,” he said. He held his hand up to my chest, palm facing my heart, a few inches away from my body. I began to feel this warm stream of energy flowing into my chest.

“Wow,” was all I could say. I had never encountered energy work before. This was like the shit you read about in books.

“It’s not magic,” he said. “Anyone can do it. It’s just life force, flowing through me to you. My gift is showing people that they are gifted, awakening them to who they really are.”

“Thank you, Steve” I said.

“You are welcome,” he said. “Also, my name is not Steve.”

I was standing there in the middle of the living room, staring dumbly at his name patch.

He uttered a stream of syllables that weren’t Spanish. They had a lot of rough consonants.

“That is my name in my lineage,” he said. “It means ‘Vision-Bearer’.”

“Vision-Bearer,” I repeated. “What language is that?”

“People nowadays would consider it to be Aztec,” he said, “but it actually descends from the Olmec.” Seeing the look on my face, he explained that the Olmec were the pre-eminent civilization in Mexico before the Aztecs.

“You can imagine how many people would let me in the door if I had a long Aztec name on my name patch,” he said. He laughed and his eyes twinkled.

“Well, got to get to my next appointment,” he said. “Take care, DK.”

He was about to walk out the door when I remembered the “pest control” part of the visit.

“Hey Vision-Bearer, do you actually work for a pest control company? Or is this just a spiritual pest control visit?”

He laughed again. “No, man, I really do pest control. It’s a great way to meet people and share my energy with those who need it. But sometimes Spirit sends me to a place more for the spiritual pest control.”

“Well, could you do something for the physical pests? We’ve got a shitload of roaches here.”

“Oh sure, man. Let me run out to the truck and get my stuff.”

He bounded cheerfully down the metal steps. I sat back down on the couch and wondered at the warm energy still flowing through my chest.

I heard him coming up the steps a couple minutes later. I was expecting to see him carrying one of those pest control guy spray bottle-and-hose thingies but he returned empty-handed.

“Looks like I forgot the sprayer at home,” he said. He may have actually winked at me, but I was so far out of my normal reality zone at this point that I could have just imagined a wink.

“I would never use those chemicals at my house anyway,” he said. “Here’s the best way to get rid of the roaches.”

He told me I should buy a box of baking soda and sprinkle it along the floorboards and in the kitchen, anywhere the roaches were known to travel. Then he motioned me into the kitchen and ran his thick, brown finger across the stove top. He said you should never wash your greasy stove with soap and water because…

I think he might have advised me to wash the stove top with mayonnaise when my brain finally decided it couldn’t take in any more novelty without a strong cup of coffee and a cigarette.

Vision-Bearer quickly wrapped up his cleaning lesson and said he had to go. He stopped at the screen door and shook my hand firmly.

“Thank you so much, Vison-Bearer,” I said.

“My pleasure. Keep writing. It’s going to be a longer journey than you think from where you are now, but don’t give up on your gifts.”

“Do you ever teach any of your energy stuff or Olmec spirituality?” I blurted out. “I’d really like to learn more from you. I’d be happy to pay you.”

“Sure,” he said. He seemed like he was in a hurry to go now. He pulled a card from his wallet and laid it next to my computer keyboard. “Just call the office during business hours and ask for Steve,” he said.

After Vision-Bearer left, I went into the kitchen and brewed a pot of coffee. Went out on the back steps and had a smoke. As the tobacco hit my bloodstream, I thought maybe I’d starting spacing out there at the end because I hadn’t any nicotine yet. I couldn’t believe I’d asked this dude to become my spiritual teacher. I mean, what had even just happened?

For a second, I wondered if someone was pranking me. But the energy I felt flowing through his hand to my chest was real. I’d never felt anything like that before. And how did he know I wanted to be a writer but struggled so mightily with self-doubt? How could he have known that I secretly felt ashamed of wanting to do that with my life?

I could tell the coffee was done brewing by the spitting sounds coming from the top of the coffee maker. I went in, poured myself a cup, and then grabbed the business card off of the table and went back out onto the back steps to have another smoke.

The card was — apparently — from an actual pest control company. Nothing fancy, just black letters on a white background.

****

When Josh came home from work that evening, there was baking soda sprinkled along the back of the kitchen counter and along all of the floorboards in the kitchen and living room.

“Are you a coke dealer now? What’s all this white powder?”

“Sille,” I said. “You’re never going to believe this one.”

Sille sighed and rolled his eyes.

“OK, before I tell you what happened, let me ask you a crazy question: did you or Brady call a pest control service?”

Sille let out a short, staccato laugh. “I’m too cheap to spend money on pest control and you know as well as I do that doing such a thing would never even cross Matt’s mind,” he said.

I told Josh about Vision-Bearer. Half expecting he wouldn’t believe me. I was still so floored by the whole experience, I was almost doubting that it had actually happened. It felt like my brain was trying to convince me to reject the experience because it was too far out of the norm. I mean, stuff like that just didn’t happen.

But Josh was intrigued. He listened to the whole story.

“Did you call the number?” he asked.

“No, man, I was kind of afraid of what I might find out.”

“You need to call that number,” he said. “This was a message from the Universe. You’ve got to take it seriously.”

I thought about pointing out that Vision-Bearer hadn’t told me to call him for more instruction; he’d only given me the card because I asked for his number. But I decided to let that go for now.

Post-Script

A couple days later, I mustered the courage to call the number on the card.

“Johnson’s Pest Control,” the voice on the other end said.

“Um, hi. May I speak to Steve, please?”

“Steve?”

“Yes, Steve,” I said.

“There’s no one works here name Steve,” the man said.

“Is there a Mexican guy, kind of Indian-looking?” I asked.

“Naw man. No Steves, no Mexican-Indian guy, have a nice day,” he said. Click. The line went dead.

Post-Post-Script

The baking soda didn’t get rid of the roaches.

Luckily, most of the roaches in that place were the little German ones, not the big palmetto bugs. But there were a lot of the German ones. They seemed to have a little roach highway between the kitchen and the bathroom that ran along the bare wall of the living room opposite the couch.

Sille loved telling anyone who knew me about how I’d met this Aztec pest control guy named Vision-Bearer who refused to spray for roaches and instead advised me to use baking soda.

“I’d get up in the morning to go to work,” he’d start out. “Dee is still snoring on the couch. He’s got one hand trailing on the floor, clutching an empty bottle of Jack Daniels. He doesn’t wake up no matter how much noised I make. As I’m walking out the door I glance back over at the living room wall where he put the baking soda along the baseboard. And there’s a line of about 20 German roaches scurrying towards the kitchen. And when they get to the middle of the wall, right across from Dee’s couch, they all stand up on their hind legs and give him a round of applause.

He’s like a god to them. Because he could have sprayed them but instead he gave them the baking soda road. So every night and every morning as they pass by him, they stand up on their hind legs and clap, releasing tiny puffs of baking soda into the room…”