The Cure for Arachnophobia
I sat with my friend Ed at the tiny kitchen table in my shitty apartment sipping coffee, watching the spider dangling above us. The table used to sit in a Village Inn, before it became the place where I ate ramen and drank coffee with my downstairs neighbor."Dude. Squish that thing.""Aw, we don't have to do that," he said, stepping up on a Village Inn chair. "You got a jar or glass or something?"I handed him a jar. He trapped the spider in it and offered to take it outside, but I stopped him, reaching for the jar. A weird curiosity suddenly laid eggs in my brain. I poked some holes in the lid."I've got to get rid of the arachnophobia somehow," I said.I named the fuzzy brown wolf spider Cowboy Otis. For a few months, I took him everywhere. To work. To the bar. To lunch at Souper Salad and to my weekly therapy sessions. He sat on the...