Do you know how bedbugs mate? I’ll tell you. The male bug pierces the abdomen of the female before injecting her with sperm. Sometimes it kills her, which is not ideal from an evolutionary perspective, but still, they persist. It’s by no means the most violent or shocking mating practice (I think fairly often about male angler fish, who sink their teeth into the female, living as a parasite on her body until the two fuse, the male becoming completely absorbed leaving only his testes, which she keeps for when she’s ready to reproduce), but I think you’ll agree it’s up there. I’m thinking about bedbugs because, you see, I have just been to Paris. I returned to London to one question, asked regularly with a smirk and vague little fear. I knew, suddenly, how tall people must feel upon being asked repeatedly how the weather was up there. “Bring back any bedbugs?” said every single person at least once. And while I’m yet to discover whether I have transported them back on my clothes, I know for certain they’re on my mind.
I hadn’t realised bedbugs had a smell. Did you know they had a smell? Some describe it as desperately sweet, berrylike, others say bedbugs smell like coriander. Perhaps I’ve read too much, it’s possible I’ve read too much. They roam across the skin of their victims (originally believed to be bats, did you know that?) looking for a blood vessel with their antennae. They grip the skin with their tiny legs, before plunging their beak into the flesh. The beak, incidentally, has rows of sharp little teeth at its tip, allowing it to stab and dig until it finds blood. They start the meal flat, like a seed, but end it round and red. Some words just crawl across the page, don’t they? I have shaken out my laptop.
