An Open Letter To Spider-Man

By: Sean Crespo

November 23, 2005

TO: Spider-Man

Subject:
AN OPEN LETTER TO SPIDER-MAN
FROM THE SANITATION DEPARTMENT OF NEW YORK CITY

Dear Spider-Man,

First of all, thank you very much for all that you
have done for New York City and its inhabitants. We
all feel safer knowing you are out there “webslinging”
among the skyscrapers of New York, assaulting violent
criminals, tentacled super geniuses, hovering color-themed
goblins et al.

However, I would like to draw your attention to an
issue that, when seen in its proper perspective, will
hopefully give you pause to reconsider your mode of
locomotion.

You get about the city by means of the aforementioned
“webslinging.” Any time I hear nearby police
sirens and there’s an audible gasp from everyone
on the sidewalk, I’ll look up and there you are, swinging
away. The first few times, I’ll admit it took my breath
away, Spider-Man.

Aabout a week into my tenure as a sanitation worker,
however, I started asking myself crazy questions, like:
“Say, what happens to those web lines of his?
Do they dissolve right away? Are they dangerous if left
alone? Who cleans them up, anyway?"

A day later I had my answer. As it turns out:
I do, you prick.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to remove
a superdense organic polymer with the tensile strength
of a steel cable from the underside of an 17th century
Rhineland gargoyle 83 stories up without damaging the
building or the gargoyle?

No, I bet you don’t. You’re
a superhero. You don’t have time for niggling
questions — questions like, “At what rate
do open-air activated enzyme strands biodegrade?”
(Answer: astoundingly slowly.)

Or: “How many chisels have to be lost to attempted
web removals before the city starts making sanitation
workers pay for it out of pocket?” (Less than
five, so you know.)

Or even: “What happens to one of those sharp,
heavy tools suspended hundreds of feet in the air when
the web they’re attached to finally dissolves
months later?” Answer: it plummets to the earth
and violently maims me, Ronald P. Devlin.

Just as you can’t recall the location of every
web you disease our city with like so many gangrenous
capillaries, nor can I keep track of the hundreds of
cleaning tools I’ve now lost to your arm snot.
Not that I’m able to keep track of a lot of things these
days, what with the multiple concussions I’ve received
from web-strewn construction tools plunging at my skull
from multi-storey drops.

In a way, though, I should thank you. You see, since
the accident, I have been bound to a motorized wheelchair
and unable to move any of my appendages. I even have
a machine that breathes for me. That’s not the
"thank you" part, by the way. The "thank
you" part is that I won a sizable workman’s
comp reward and, after recovering consciousness, have
had the “leisure” time to become the President
of the sanitation worker’s union Local 117. And
I couldn’t have done it without the razor sharp
focus imparted to me by the crushing loneliness of my
complete immobility. Thanks Spider-Man! (Before you
ask: I dictated this letter by blinking my eyes in Morse
Code.)

It’s not just the people of New York you’re
hurting. Your glue-ropes are like enormous roach motels,
trapping thousands of birds and squirrels every year,
and on three recorded occasions, horses. Yes, horses.

“How did horses get stuck in my webs?”
you ask. We don’t know. We’re
not detectives. We’re sanitation workers. Our
job is to clean up average everyday messes, like this
completely common scenario: a beautiful chestnut pony
walks under one of Central Park’s historic bridges
and manages to become entangled in some of your home
made projectile wrist-jizz left to dangle from above.
The beautiful equestrian rears up in terror, tragically,
ensnaring and twisting itself ever further, until it
eventually is pulled off the ground by the shear elasticity
of your web. It bays in terrible agony as the weight
of its own body begins to cause its own skin, hair,
and even superficial muscles to be ripped right off
its body and onto your adhesive death vines, leaving
a grisly tithe to your complacency, and forcing a hundred
little girls and boys who had the misfortune to pass
by just then to witness the aftermath and cry aloud,
“Why does that horse have no skin on its tummy,
mommy? Why can I see its rib bones poking out, mommy?
Mommy, why is foam coming out of its mouth? Why are
its eyes rolling back in their sockets, mommy? Why are
the police pulling out their guns, mommy? Why are ravens
pecking at its dead eyes mommy? Why am I never going
to sleep again mommy Why WHY WHY?”

I bet you’ve never had to listen to those questions.
Guess who has, asshole?.

I must wrap things up. My eyes are beginning to redden
from the constant friction inherent in my particular
form of communication… if you know what I mean
(wink wink). Please note the effort involved in actually
having to communicate “wink wink” and the
ensuing explanation.

A final thought to leave you with: If you were really
a "spider-man", wouldn’t it be more
accurate for the webbing to shoot out of your ass, like
a spider? It would be more fitting, considering you’ve
been shitting all over our city and leaving the employees
of local 117 to clean up after you for years.

Also, I know it fits with the “cleaning up the
streets” metaphors that superheroes enjoy using
so much, but could you refrain from leaving recently
captured miscreants cocooned in New York City trash
cans. We get it. They’re filthy criminals and
you’ve put them where they belong. In the trash.
Very subtle. I guess your spider sense doesn’t
go off for belabored metaphors.

Eat me,

Ronald P. Devlin
The Sanitation Department of New York City