I can't move again. I can't.

I've moved eighteen times in the past twelve years. I've moved four times in the seven years I've been in New York. I resolved when I reached the six-month mark in my new apartment, shortly after my foot operation, that I would NOT be moving again. Even if this place was far from perfect, I was not about to bankrupt myself once more, looking for and moving to another inadequate New York apartment, while putting undue wear and tear on a toe that's already on the verge of being decommissioned for the rest of its life. I must deal with the imperfections. This place has most of what I want. An elevator. Decent space. Low rent. Lots of light.

Then, last night, I saw a fly. A big one. And I considered moving again.

Bear with me. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal. But when I first moved to this place last August, I was besieged by flies. I dreaded coming home.

It's not like I'd never seen flies before. My dad used to chase them around our house with his swatter when I was a kid. But I'd never had flies in a New York apartment before, and I'd never seen so many in one small place. I'd had roaches, sure, and the occasional millipede. Mice, certainly. More than I care to mention. None of those were pleasant, all of them were disgusting - but, still, none of them were flies: those annoying, buzzing, disease-ridden animals, impossible to kill, that swoop back and forth across your ears when you're sleeping, making you think that space aliens are trying to eat your head. And no one's ever made a horror movie called "The Mouse."

"Why the hell do I have flies?" I thought, when the problem first presented itself. (Actually, knowing me, I'm sure I said it out loud.) I'd spent the previous two years learning to be clean. I hauled garbage out regularly. I didn't have dusty vents, as far as I could tell. Eventually I noticed that one of my windows had a screen that was sticking out of the frame. It had been shoved in there with one corner hanging off, leaving a big gap through which anyone or anything could enter. I couldn't fix it myself because the remnants of a sawed off window-guard were blocking the grooves. I followed the natural urban progression from asking to harassing to begging my super to get this fixed. To this day, he has not.

So I learned to keep the windows shut for most of the summer and fall, until my apartment resembled a catacomb. It was stifling, depressing, hot. But I guess I preferred the pall of death over the sight of flies ... in the bathroom, kitchen, you name it.

I still wanted to know - why were there all these flies right outside my window? Was there something about my apartment that attracted them?

I learned from the exterminator who eventually came that everybody in the building had them. He had a couple of theories. One: that it could be the dumpster, often overflowing with trash, sitting on the street four floors below me. "Or, you know, it could be from the dog poop on the sidewalk," he said. At first I laughed. But then I realized this theory was probably closest to the truth. I'd never lived in a neighborhood so vandalized by dog feces in my life - not since leaving South Philadelphia. Navigating the minefield of turds that cover the block between Franklin and Bedford Avenues is the kind of brutalizing experience that makes one doubt the basic goodness of humankind. It also makes one whisper a whole string of cynical, psychologically debilitating phrases with every step, like: "What the fuck?" "Oh come on!" "You fucking retards!" "You idiots should NOT own animals!" "God, what's WRONG with you retards?" and "I need a vacation. Oh GOD, I need a vacation. I need a va- Oh Jesus - really?? diarrhea??" And to utter such phrases repeatedly to yourself every time you make your way to and from your home is a disquieting and surely unhealthy way to spend so much of your time.

It reinforces the sinking feeling I've come to know that New York City is mired in the Dark Ages, like no other city in the developed world. It is 2011 and yet people either don't know or don't care that animal waste attracts disease. It's a medieval city in which the rich have their fiefdoms on which the poor and the ignorant sweat – either becasue they know no other life, or because they’ve convinced themselves, like I have, that New York is “where it’s at.” Even the medieval serfs weren’t so naïve. None of them believed where they were was where it was at. They just couldn't figure a way to get off of it.

There is, perhaps, more upward mobility now than there was nine hundred years ago. But because I'm too stubborn or stupid or unskilled to get a real job, I consign myself to living among the villeins and the plowmen, folks who leave their oxen, dog and human droppings everywhere just to show the king what they think of their shitty jobs. It’s also, I gather, a message to the local police force, stationed permanently at Franklin and President, out there every night with their lights flashing.

Winter was much easier to take on the feudal moor. The flies went away and so did the kids who like to party in the street, blasting Jamaican hip-hop from their cars. Winter lasted a long time, as it always does in New York. But now that an enormous, possibly pregnant fly has presaged an end to my peace, my mind turns not just toward questions like "When will I be able to walk and work again," but also,"Do I have it in me to move house again?"

It also turns to other unpleasant questions like, "How much do noise-reducing windows cost?" and "Why is honking one's car horn still the preferred method of picking up someone for a night on the town? Is it still the 70's? And how many people are picking someone up on my block at the same time?”

But I can’t move again. It’s a physical impossibility. It would also be one more step toward financial disaster, and I’ve already taken so many steps in that direction. Instead of spending all this time bemoaning the conditions that promote infestation and ill feeling in my home, perhaps I should spend it learning a skill that might allow me to save up enough money to move when the time is right. I saw three infomercials this afternoon offering time-tested programs on how to “earn money from home! Up to 200,000 dollars a month.” The TV I recently bought must already be paying for itself – because I’m actually starting to take these offers seriously. Let's face it, they sound better than all the other money-making ideas I’ve been making lists of lately, including: “Write an episode of The Simpsons,” and “Become a German tutor.”

Yes.

In the face of this absurd catalog of ideas, it would seem that battling flies and avoiding dog leavings are the least of this author’s problems, and that canceling my cable should probably be the first action in a new bid for self-preservation.