Photo by Analyn Cuarto
It’s hot… too hot
By Rebecca Peterson, Humour Editor
You wake up and you’re sweating. You’re already sweating.
This is because you foolishly pulled a single bedsheet over yourself at 4 a.m. when it finally started to cool off a little, the unrelenting heat abating in the long absence of the sun. This has created an oven in which you are slow-roasting to death. You throw the sheet aside.
Your first cold shower of the day feels like heaven, but you cannot stay in there forever. Nor can you crawl into your refrigerator and beg for the mercy of the gods. There are no gods. There is only the heat.
Do you bother putting on makeup? You’re going to sweat it all off anyway. You slap on some long-wear waterproof never-come-off-until-you’re-dead-and-maybe-not-even-then eyeliner and hope for the best. After all, you’re already living the worst.
You step outside for 30 seconds to collect the mail. You come back inside to find that you’re already burned. Not even the SPF 9000 sunscreen you smeared all over yourself before braving the outdoors could save you. You dunk your face into a bowl of aloe gel and weep in gooey agony.
There are places you need to go today and people you need to see, so you pull on last year’s shorts that no longer fit and a t-shirt that hides sweat stains but sticks to you like something very unpleasantly sticky. You try not to cry—you can’t afford the loss of water. Already you are dehydrated, and you drank three liters of water this morning.
Public transit is an assault on the senses—uneven air conditioning, sun magnified through dirty windows, the incredible scent of 50 overheated humans packed into a mobile oven. You check at least five times to make sure it isn’t your deodorant that’s clearly giving out, just to be sure.
You meet your friend at a crowded coffee shop, refugees from the heat, packed in like sardines and raising the temperature of the interior by the bulk of humanity within. The air conditioner is blasting with all its might. You can hear its mechanics whirring away, on the brink of giving up. Carry on, brave soldier, your patrons need you…
You get your cold, overpriced drinks and look for a seat in the refuge of the shop. Predictably, there are none.
“Let’s go outside,” says your friend. “It’s a gorgeous day out there!”
The heat has clearly gone to her brain. A little scared, now, you warily follow her.
Back outside in the hellish gaze of the sun, the paltry shade provided by the umbrella over the table is hardly strong enough to combat the intense pain and anguish. The seat is hot. Your thighs are stuck together like glue, and are slowly but surely sticking to the chair beneath you as well. Your drink is already half-melted. You are already half-melted.
“I just love summer,” says your fallen ally, her eyes hazy as she gazes out over the bright and terrible dystopia around you. “Don’t you?”
You sip your melted drink, a drop of sweat cascading over your cheek like a single tear.
“Yeah,” you lie, hearing the faint sizzling of your own flesh in the heat. “Yeah, of course. Who doesn’t love summer?”
