100 degrees and counting.
Summers, I never know where I'm going to wake up.
I have an army green canvas bag that Charlie swears is filled with rocks, but currently, it has a tent, and a blanket, several changes of clothes, and other things that are needed when i don't go home for several days.
It's such a drastic change, going from being a part of the skyline to being grounded in the helter-skelter of the city, raucous and rude and bubbling like some witch's concoction right beneath the surface of everyone's skin. Today, like the past three days, it's too damn hot; too hot to move, too hot to think, to hot too function, much less make rational decisions.
This morning, for example. It's still pitch black, but it's the heat that wakes me, wraps itself around my chest in the style of a monstrous boa constrictor, and tears the air from my lungs. I bolt up in the dark only to immediately fall back down, not being able to move my arms, or find them, for that matter. I might as well not have arms, or for that matter legs, or eyes. I might as well be floating in a purgatory known as the typical humidity of a Minnesotan summer. The air is so thick I could swim through it, rather than walk.
I lie back, forcefully immobile, and assess my predicament. Somewhere during the night, my nightgown decided to change its function into that of a straitjacket. I turn my head to the right, and suddenly I can see. It [I]is[/I] still dark, but not without a source of light. There were ribbons across my eyes, and the fact that I did not notice them immediately were only because I could not, at the time, differentiate sweat from cloth, as I was so equally swathed in both. The material from my nightie had assimilated all the features of a pool tarp, and clung to my skin in a perverse way, draping itself along creases and riding its way above my thighs. I raise my legs and see the pale moons of knees, my knee socks pulled down and bunched along my ankles.
There's only one solution; to rock. and I do, a steady, gaining motion until I flop onto my stomach with my face in the pillow. "Fuck" comes out more like "Mmmphck" as I flail about and finally find purchase of my hands. I sit up, trip over the bed post, and promptly face plant onto tile. I am in a pool house, and I am not exactly alone. There are other figures, abstract shapes around me, but Jesus himself would walk into Mickey D's and order a McFlurry and an extra side of fries before I could tell you who they were. They are outside of the room, but I can see them through the fog of the sliding glass doors.
I pick through the wreckage on the way to the powder room. it's an upper class suburban battlefield, strewn with empty champagne bottles and the green stubs of strawberries. A rented chocolate fountain gurgles half-heartedly in the corner with an addition of what might have been vomit. Everyone else is asleep, bodies cast over furniture like Dali's clocks, covered in a sheen of reflective sweat and melted into chintz.
The powder room has a mirror, a vanity seat, and a shower stall. I close the door and keep the lights off as the cold water runs, sluggishly at first, but gaining momentum as the pipes become accustomed to liquid occupation. I run my fingers through my hair, and come across a crooked and sorry cigarette that had hidden itself behind my ear the night before, now damn and neglected, but, decidedly, still salvagable. It all depends on the level of desperation.
I have an army green canvas bag that Charlie swears is filled with rocks, but currently, it has a tent, and a blanket, several changes of clothes, and other things that are needed when i don't go home for several days.
It's such a drastic change, going from being a part of the skyline to being grounded in the helter-skelter of the city, raucous and rude and bubbling like some witch's concoction right beneath the surface of everyone's skin. Today, like the past three days, it's too damn hot; too hot to move, too hot to think, to hot too function, much less make rational decisions.
This morning, for example. It's still pitch black, but it's the heat that wakes me, wraps itself around my chest in the style of a monstrous boa constrictor, and tears the air from my lungs. I bolt up in the dark only to immediately fall back down, not being able to move my arms, or find them, for that matter. I might as well not have arms, or for that matter legs, or eyes. I might as well be floating in a purgatory known as the typical humidity of a Minnesotan summer. The air is so thick I could swim through it, rather than walk.
I lie back, forcefully immobile, and assess my predicament. Somewhere during the night, my nightgown decided to change its function into that of a straitjacket. I turn my head to the right, and suddenly I can see. It [I]is[/I] still dark, but not without a source of light. There were ribbons across my eyes, and the fact that I did not notice them immediately were only because I could not, at the time, differentiate sweat from cloth, as I was so equally swathed in both. The material from my nightie had assimilated all the features of a pool tarp, and clung to my skin in a perverse way, draping itself along creases and riding its way above my thighs. I raise my legs and see the pale moons of knees, my knee socks pulled down and bunched along my ankles.
There's only one solution; to rock. and I do, a steady, gaining motion until I flop onto my stomach with my face in the pillow. "Fuck" comes out more like "Mmmphck" as I flail about and finally find purchase of my hands. I sit up, trip over the bed post, and promptly face plant onto tile. I am in a pool house, and I am not exactly alone. There are other figures, abstract shapes around me, but Jesus himself would walk into Mickey D's and order a McFlurry and an extra side of fries before I could tell you who they were. They are outside of the room, but I can see them through the fog of the sliding glass doors.
I pick through the wreckage on the way to the powder room. it's an upper class suburban battlefield, strewn with empty champagne bottles and the green stubs of strawberries. A rented chocolate fountain gurgles half-heartedly in the corner with an addition of what might have been vomit. Everyone else is asleep, bodies cast over furniture like Dali's clocks, covered in a sheen of reflective sweat and melted into chintz.
The powder room has a mirror, a vanity seat, and a shower stall. I close the door and keep the lights off as the cold water runs, sluggishly at first, but gaining momentum as the pipes become accustomed to liquid occupation. I run my fingers through my hair, and come across a crooked and sorry cigarette that had hidden itself behind my ear the night before, now damn and neglected, but, decidedly, still salvagable. It all depends on the level of desperation.