Ghost Crabs
Mika Todd
As children, we spent hours at night clomping around the beaches of childhood vacations, from the flat seaside—hard as pavement when damp—to the fluffy dunes. We chased the beams of lanterns like searchlights in a fenceless prison as we hunted fleeing shadows: ghost crabs. From Latin Ocypodinae, meaning “swift-footed,” they scurried in front of us, jolting to strategic halts and then bursting back into motion like slingshots.
Ghost crabs are the same gray, dusted color as the sand. They burrow in the grains, twisting their bodies back and forth until they are submerged. One misstep and they will charge at your feet and pinch with claws locked like metal clamps.
If ghost crabs are too badly injured—fighting one another for territory, food, or mates—they’ll amputate their own claws, ripping off the irreparably damaged limb with the healthy one. These will regenerate, however, leaving the ghost crab with claws mismatched, uneven.
***
His OkCupid profile picture looks like a candid taken up close, as if he has just turned and, surprised, grinned at the camera, his narrow blue eyes playful and crinkled at the edges, teeth alarmingly white, black hair disheveled. He is 27, and his profile reveals he is intimidatingly rich in cultural capital. After spending the bulk of his twenties working on farms in various foreign countries, earning his master's in landscape design and interning in London, he has returned to Richmond in search of something settled. I am barely 22, constantly covered in plaster, earning a degree in sculpture and half the time wishing I'd chosen an English major instead. When Trevor and I meet for the first time on Halloween, his black hair is cropped shorter and sticks in defiant angles, especially after he takes off his rock star wig, a shag thing he carries under his arm for the rest of the evening like a dead pet.
***
Ghost crabs’ semi-translucent shells take on the color of their surroundings. Generally darker than the shells of older crabs, the shells of younger ghost crabs range from mottled gray to light brown to translucent blue, like blood vessels under skin.
***
“My mom says to watch out for ‘those youngins.’” Trevor half laughs the words, sweetly mocking, into the crook of my neck. “She says not to get attached.” He smiles and shakes his head softly, the pillowcase ruffling his hair. He won’t look at me, but he puts a hand on my chest. “I don’t think I’d mind getting attached to you.”
***
Lice of all types—head, body, and pubic—are ectoparasites that live on the body, feeding on human blood after piercing the skin and injecting their victims with saliva in a vampiric exchange.
Pubic lice, or pthirus pubis, are often referred to as crabs because, with ridges on their wide bodies and pincer-like hooks for arms, they resemble miniature crustaceans.
***
Trevor and I sit on the rocks of the James River admiring the sun as it sets beyond the south side of Richmond. We are discussing The Five Love Languages, which neither of us have read yet have resolute opinions comprised only of online summaries and accounts from friends. According to these secondhand sources, there are five expressions of both romantic and platonic love: physical touch, quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, and acts of service. When prompted, Trevor muses carefully, deciding that his would be acts of service. Abruptly, without thinking, I share mine would probably be physical touch. Immediately flustered, I assure him I meant to phrase that differently. We both know this is only partially true. He laughs self-consciously, connecting the dots of my intentions quicker than I am able because he understands, he’s noticed. No one in his family hugs as frequently or as warmly as I do, nor touches arms, shoulders, or hands so nonchalantly in one moment, so purposefully the next. He recounts the ease with which I took his hand while exiting the theatre the previous night, crossing a street busy with pedestrians and other audience members retreating to their cars. It isn’t that he’s ashamed of this intimacy. He’s just unfamiliar.
As our conversation progresses, Trevor shifts his weight forward on the rocks and scoots gradually closer. After a moment’s careful deliberation, he rests his arm across my shoulder.
***
My senior year of college, I call my parents a week before Christmas break. As a precaution, I tell them I have just finished a treatment to purge myself of lice. I do not specify which kind.
***
The highest risk factor for contracting pubic lice is sexual or otherwise intimate contact—including bedding or clothing. It is a myth that pubic lice can be spread fluidly in public spaces, such as via toilet seats, because their feet are not capable of clinging to the smooth surface in the same way they latch onto human skin. They cannot live for long away from the warmth of a body.
***
Trevor and I have just finished watching a terrible film where Toni Collette steals her parents’ money to finance a vacation she hopes will end with love; we projected the film onto the entirety of my bedroom wall, framed by a sealed-over archway that once connected to the living room. After several minutes of inactivity, the little machine disconnects from my snoozing laptop, bathing the former dining room in saturated cobalt light. Trevor pulls me off the bed, our bodies pressing tight as we giggle into each other's neck, words like can’t dance, and cliché, and suddenly, unexpectedly, boyfriend.
***
I condition myself to believe my own lies. This is easiest when repeating the lie to someone else, likely to someone I care about, likely to cover up an action of which I am embarrassed. Or ashamed. I deny. I rearrange the chronology of actual events in my head. I repeat, until I am as shocked as anyone else if the deception is discovered. Of course, some revelations are never ifs, but whens.
Remembering that a lie is not the truth is like that moment just before you fall asleep and jerk suddenly back awake; it is a sensation of falling and then snapping to, recognizing your own self-deception. How could you so convincingly forget what you’d done?
***
Two weeks after my lice treatment, my family spends Christmas in upstate New York visiting my mom’s relatives. At 2 a.m., as I am changing for bed, I find a crab on the inside of my thigh. In under a minute, I find three more on my lower body, one as far down as my ankle. I grab my electric razor and retreat to the bathroom. An hour later, my entire body is bare: arms and pits, thighs and calves, beard to pubes—even the hairs of my forearms and the little dimple above my ass. I leave only the hair on my head, which I wash twice and twist into a tight bun.
The next morning my mom, grandma, and I strip my bed and pile all the fabric I have touched into the laundry room off the side of the house. My stepdad goes to Rite Aid to buy another box of acidic-scented shampoo that burns my skin.
We treat my little sister’s clothes, repeating the process with the solemnity of a ritual, the silence broken only by my mother’s confused, prying questions.
“The website says body lice lay their eggs in the seams of your clothing—but I don’t see any on your seams?”
“Where are the lice?”
“Are they on your head?”
She asks question after question, fact checks my claims against the evidence, her questions gradually ceasing as she arranges the answers she finds in my silence.
Because I shared a hotel bed with my little sister on the drive, she does the treatment, too. This is what finally pushes me to cry, hours later, curled in my bed, my skin against fresh sheets feeling raw but not yet clean.
***
Itching may start soon after infection or may be delayed up to two to four weeks after contact.
“Was there anyone else?” There is hesitance in Trevor’s voice, a kind of plea.
“I—yes. I mean, before you. And one guy, just a few days after we met, before we were serious—”
“When? When could you have—? We saw each other all that week. Monday and Wednesday and Friday—”
Because I didn't know I had lice until I gave them to him, I cannot even tell Trevor who it was or when I got them. Before him, I wasn’t keeping track of the when or who, never thought I would need to have a timeline or an alibi. This was not the guilt of intimacy with other men I had long fought to unlearn—this was something else. Something worse.
***
When I pluck the crabs from my body, I press them tight between thumb and forefinger, but they continue to wiggle and crawl. It is only when I cleave them in half, my thumbnail a guillotine, that they finally die. Brown-red smears of my own blood on my fingertips, their bodies shriveled and empty, like flecks of dead skin.
***
This is the lie that becomes the truth.
The dishes have been done, the leftover turkey shredded and bagged for future sandwich lunchmeat. It is after 1 a.m. Thanksgiving evening, you are back home, and no one will notice that you’ve slipped out.
The GPS announces your arrival as you pull up outside the glow of the streetlamps. You cut across backyards of pale grey buildings, the flattened background of a familiar story. It’s chilly for November, but the nipping air helps calm your nerves. You still get anxious sometimes, like the freshman version of yourself who believed in the no-sex-before-the-third-date rule. Back when you still went on a lot of dates. When dates were what you wanted more than whatever this is.
When you reach what you think is the right door, you pull out your phone and click the tiny icon of a boxy skull, its orange light reflecting on your hands. For years Grindr, a cruising app, has been a more consistent presence in your sex life than any one guy.
A car door opens and closes, and he crosses the parking lot. He’s shorter than you with big eyes, broad shoulders and, you can’t help but notice, scruffy black hair. For the little difference it would make, you wish it were a different color. You don’t believe in “types,” but you’ve definitely noticed a pattern: long black hair, pencil thighs, timid smiles.
You and Trevor are just “seeing” each other—coffee and Sugar Shack donuts, walks around trails at Byrd Park. He’s three hours away, probably asleep or maybe drinking wine with his siblings, enjoying the long holiday weekend. But he wants you to meet his sister next weekend when she’s in Richmond recording for her album. And he sleeps over some weeknights now, bringing a nice tie and the button-up you’ll borrow for the Christmas party he’ll invite you to in a couple weeks. Maybe if you knew these things, you wouldn’t be here now.
This other boy explains he doesn’t want to wash sheets after tonight, so he spreads out a sleeping bag, split open and laid out like a blanket in the living room. You make small talk about liking his glass coffee table and within a few minutes, his legs are over your shoulders.
Fucking has a way of wiping your mind clean, scrubbing away stress like steel wool on an unwashed dish. It’s this cleansing effect that keeps you from making the connection until later, the realization that this moment is a mirror image of you with Trevor, your legs over his shoulders. His pelvis is pressed tight to your hips, but he’s not fucking you—he’s laughing, his arms wrapped around your thighs, holding them to his chest, his own legs cradling either side of your ribcage. It’s just one of the strange ways you two settle in bed together, holding one another in ways as abstract as ink blots. Your favorite way to fall asleep is on your back, legs bent like a tent so Trevor can curl around you like a lowercase letter “c.” He’s never been held like that before because he’s rarely held by anyone in 28 years. But then, with more men in your past than you can count, you’ve never been held like that either.
You decide not to tell Trevor about leaving your bed at 1:32 that morning.
But he will tell you.
The evidence will cling to the roots of your genital hairs like water droplets, hatching into transparent freckles that burrow into your skin. November will crawl into December and you’ll find one, just near your belly button, when he calls to confront you about the parasitic crustaceans you couldn’t even feel.
***
“I had a second outbreak of crabs. I’ve had to spend a lot of time cleaning everything again, tearing my room apart, getting angry all over again—”
“Trevor—I know, I did too—and I’m so sorry you had to go through that again, I—”
“I finally broke down and cried about this today.”
I have been crying all through visits to student health, hauling all my clothes to laundromats in downtown Richmond, deep cleaning my carpets, pleading with him over the phone. If I have been crying all along, what can it mean now for him to finally shed tears?
“It just feels kind of… gross, and I… I just don’t see how I can forgive you for a lot of this, or how long it’s going to take me to heal. And it’s obvious that you’re going to continue to care for me in a way I can’t reciprocate or appreciate, so—”
***
The game of catching ghost crabs included more than just the children. My entire family, and the families we vacationed with, geared up with nets and headlamps. We’d corral the creatures between us, creating circles with our feet, and throw them in an industrial bucket where they would fight, tearing off arms and stalky eyes. When we dumped them out, piled on top of one another, they would scatter over our feet surrounding them like an audience at a miniature moon-and-flashlight-lit gladiator battle.
***
My mother’s reflection pulls the electric razor from its box and then hesitates behind where I am seated in front of the bathroom mirror.
“Are you sure?” she asks. There is a suggestion in the question that we try the shampoo again, that maybe it will work a fifth, sixth—
“Just fucking do it.”
Fourteen months to grow my hair to my shoulders.
Two minutes to shave it away.
***
A few months pass. A director friend asks me to fabricate a severed leg for her production of The Whipping Man in which Caleb—a Confederate deserter at the end of the Civil War, returning to his family home in hopes of hiding out—encounters his newly freed slaves, Simon and John.
I’ve done several limbs for her before—the heads of Macbeth and John the Baptist in Salome, a Grecian bust for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. We make jokes about this as I cast plaster replicas of the actor’s leg before rehearsal. Apparently severed body parts are my niche now.
Back in my studio, I toil over the wound, carving the bullet-torn flesh. I pour thin layers of rubber into the mold, creating a tight but elastic tube to fit over the actor’s leg, something like a gruesome shin guard. One by one, I paint on the colors decay, layers of yellow, green, purple, building up a collage of rotten flesh. For you see, because of the soldier’s stubborn refusal to admit his crimes, the leg becomes irreparably damaged with gangrene—and so Simon and John forcibly amputate Caleb's leg in the living room of the ruined house.
***
Phantom limbs are the sensation that an amputated or otherwise absent limb is still present. Around 5-10% of individuals who undergo amputation experience this phenomenon. The majority of these sensations are painful.
***
For months after I finally rid myself of lice, I continue to itch. The nurse at student health says this is an allergic reaction to the lice saliva and can last up to two weeks. But I am itchy even into the spring months, itchy under the hats I wear to disguise my close-cropped hair, itchy under t-shirts and jeans and sweatpants and sweaters, itchy all over my body.
Every night before bed, I strip naked and sit under the harsh light of my bathroom and pluck at my skin, scratching my freckles until they bleed, my fingers stained. Just to be sure.
***
As we got older, we cut back on family beach trips. The ones we did take were on more populated beaches. We saw no more ghost crabs, and no one ever explained the cruelty of hunting them, not as an adult and certainly not as a child. When we released them back to the sand and surf, we were always cheering at the spectacle of the survivors jolting in all directions, too distracted to notice or care about the handful of corpses at the bottom of the bucket.
***
During the last cold days of winter, I reactivate my OkCupid profile for the first time since I met Trevor. I find a boy with dark hair. I commit to the lie. A bit of a nomad, he is frequently out of town visiting friends in other cities or working on commissions for smaller companies, but we go to a few bars and restaurants and one night share a bottle of wine at my house. After we fuck, he lets me lie with my head on his chest for a while but doesn't stay the night. I feel myself wanting, trying to cry. But sometimes I can only cry if someone else is watching. I deactivate my profile again and, after some time, fall asleep staring at the wall.
***
In a true amputation, you cut out a little extra flesh, a little extra muscle, and pull the skin taut over this absence, sewing into a stump. This will heal, eventually; you will live. You just won't have what you lost.
MIKA TODD is a queer writer, artist, and educator from southwest Virginia. They hold a B.F.A. in Sculpture and Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from Colorado State University, where they teach composition and rhetoric.