Tony Deyal IF IT is possible to tell personality types by the way people sleep, it should be even easier to determine who we are by how we towel and where we towel first. Do you towel from your toes up or what we in the towel-trivia business call the feetal position? Do you start with your lower thighs or the neo-kneetal position? Or do you lie face-down on the bed and start with your rear-end? We call that the missionary position.
If you feel that I am overdoing it, laying it on with a towel instead of a trowel, you don't know the half of it. My towelling preference, predilection if you will, probably saved my life. I was in what would be considered a virtually insect-proof room. Another fine mesh you've got yourself into, I said to myself as I surveyed the safety of the wire-netting around the windows and door. Geckos there were aplenty but since they eat bugs they are infinitely preferable to their prey.
I forgot that spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Having showered, I embarked upon my towelling behaviour. Fortunately for me, I hold the towel loosely in my right hand, drape it across my right shoulder hanging to my left side, where I grasp it with my left hand and proceed to rub it vigorously against my shoulders first and then the rest of my back. I understand that there are certain persons who do not start at the rear but proceed with a full frontal assault on whatever moisture clings to the surface of their bodies. Some I am told, primarily of the female species, start by implementing a forceful up and down motion between their legs, a time-honoured tradition known since Chaucerian times as The-Wife-of-Bath method.
TOXIC SHOCK
Were I so predisposed or bent, and had I proceeded frontally, this column would have been written by a dead man or one hospitalised in a state of toxic shock. Tony Deyal R.I.P. (not Rest in Peace, not even Return If Possible, but Repose In Poison). What happened was this:
My towel was on the back of a chair, drying out since my early morning shower. I picked it up and went through the normal gymnastic procedure. As the towel brushed my left buttock, I felt a bump instead of the soft cotton to which my very sensitive skin is accustomed. I glanced down to see what had occasioned this departure from the norm. It was not a bird, a plane, or Super-Grover although it was almost as furry. It was merely a large tarantula spider that claimed my towel as his or hers and was about to claim the rare privilege of feasting on my rear.
HEINOUS LIBEL
There are Trinidadians and other West Indians who crudely refer to the female reproductive orifice as a hairy spider. No greater sin, no more heinous libel, no more salacious slander could be committed than to so defame an organ of such esteemed nobility. I saw a hairy spider at very close range and was neither aroused nor amused. The kiss of the spiderwoman was not for me. In fact, I had a major attack of arachnophobia or the fear of spiders. It is easy to make spider jokes now.
When my friends ask me about the spider experience, I become very blasé. After all, as a communications professional I have a lot in common with the species. We are both spin doctors. I tell people that my attacker, if we can go so far as to accuse it of actual assault or seeking to occasion grievous bodily harm, was a very modern spider. I explain suavely, "It was so modern that it did not have a web, it had a web-site. In fact, it is the one site where bugs are welcome". I add, "It was so large you had to measure it in gigabytes." When I flicked the spider off my towel, he or she was either very frightened or very angry. Or maybe it was just me and my manner. My wife would recognise it.
I sometimes drive her up a wall too. But, had the spider bitten me, Indranie would have ended up a Black Widow which is not what you get when you cross a tarantula with a rose. Whatever the result, and, however, it appears, hairy spider or not, I would definitely not try to smell or eat it.
There are indeed some people who eat spiders. Most Amazonian Indians are not afraid of them and one tribe,
the Piaroa Indians, actually eat the larger spiders and consider them a delicacy. Female spiders, especially the large ones, also consider their mates delicacies and consume them during or immediately after the act of copulation and conception.
HAIRY SPIDER
The whole thing sounds like it came straight out of Khalil Gibran, the philosopher. One can almost hear him recite powerfully, "In your consuming you shall be consumed." But in my consuming or even in my towelling, I don't like to be copulated with especially by a hairy spider whose bite can be fatal or make me very ill. Had it been radioactive and even if I was sure to become Spiderman, I would have eschewed its chew.
What perhaps for me was even more horrible to contemplate is that I slept in that room for two nights blissfully unaware of what else was there. What if this spider had a wife or husband and they were newlywebs? What if there's an irate mate around who would has vowed revenge? Even after I had crushed the spider with my size 11 sandal, I was still very unsettled, looking carefully through my other possessions before packing them and fleeing the room.
One of my friends, having read my column last week about my choice between Mr. Holder, the parlourman of Carapichaima, or a spider, thinks that the whole event was more than synchronicity. It has a meaning of some sort, a fate that I had invited. I agree. I have always felt that God has a sense of humour and that his greatest gift to us is laughter. I can see Him looking down at my discomfiture and smiling, perhaps pleased at the new form of towelling behaviour I have invited. It is called rubbery with violence.
Tony Deyal was last seen saying to a waiter, "There's a fly in my soup", and the waiter replying, "Don't worry sir, the spider in the bread will get him."
