If I ever complain about it being freezing in the winter, please tell me to shut up immediately and slap me across the face. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s much better to be cold than hot. At least when it is so hot that you release two tons of sweat every time you move two inches and so humid that you feel like you’re walking in a lake. That’s how it has been for about the past two weeks. And I am so over it. Bring on the snow!
I don’t know what is wrong with my body, but I tend to perspire much more easily than other people. If I walk to the subway in this weather, by the time I arrive, my clothes are soaked, I’m literally dripping and my hair has started to disintegrate. And this is if I walk at a snail’s pace. If I’m in a hurry and have to run or bike, the image is much, much worse. Not only does it take my body much longer to cool down, but it will look is if I have just walked out of a shower and not bothered to dry off before putting clothes on. My face will be shiny with perspiration and my hair will look like a crying, dead wet dog.
This happened to me the other day when I went to meet up with some of my friends to go bar-hopping in Greenpoint. It was midnight, so I assumed that the temperature wouldn’t be as bad and I could bike to the subway station to save time. I was so wrong. By the time I got down into the suffocatingly hot, breezeless subway station, I could feel my clothing begin to stick to my body and my hair start to melt into dead-dog mode.
My friends had told me that they would meet me at their stop on the last subway car. I attempted to locate myself on the platform where I thought the last car would arrive, but I was also very wrong about that. For some reason, the G train has been running with an unusually large number of cars and where I thought the end car would stop, the middle car ended up. Somewhat aggravated in my post-perspiratory state, I boarded the middle car and tried to avoid attention as I unsuccessfully fanned my face with my hand.
At the Bedford-Nostrand stop, even before the train had stopped, I saw my three friends running past the window of my train to meet me in the last car. I thumped the window hard to try to catch their attention, but they no doubt couldn’t hear it above the din of the train. When the train stopped and the doors opened, I thrust myself onto the platform and ran like a sopping zombie towards the final car. “Blaaaaaaarrrrggg!!!” my sweaty, crazed self grunted as I hit the closing train doors and pounded on them. My friends looked up as the doors re-opened to reveal me standing there like a drowned rat. I boarded the train and tried in vain to look composed. “Look how wet I am!” I said, trying to laugh off my total mortification.
Needless to say, I was kind of a wreck the rest of the night. In addition to being a total hot mess, I was also a little bit loopy from doing the night shift at work a few times in the past week. Let me tell you, sleep deprivation and self-consciousness is not a good combination. It makes you do stupid things. Like not be able to read. Or walk smack-dead into screen doors and break them. Yes, I did that. And this was just after one beer.
So, I’m sure it’s pretty clear at this point that I am sick and tired of summer. I am sick of my towels not drying because of the humidity. I am sick of my air conditioner not even being enough to cool down my room. I am sick of arriving to work and having to blow-dry hair under the hand dryer before going up to the sales floor. Can it please be fall already?
