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F**k Summer!

What’s so great about sweating?

Remington Write

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Hell is a NYC subway platform in the summer — martindavid WikiCommons

Update: I wrote this last summer long before we had a total non-winter in 2019/20 followed by our current global pandemic in which all bets are off. No telling what we’re up against this summer but I expect I’ll be indoors with the shades drawn for most of it. No Coney Island this year, friends.

Here we are, standing at the brink of another slimy-with-sweat, breathless, humid, miserable summer and I am saying again what I always say this time of year?

What is so great about summer?

See, it’s quite a different story in the winter. We get 18 inches of snow and everyone’s out there with big grins. Kids on sleds, even the guys with shovels are yelling and tossing snowballs. People greeting each other and laughing.

Does that happen when we’re in day four of a heat wave? Is anyone laughing and making dumb jokes about the weather with their neighbors?

Oh hell no!

Already I’m dreading that disgusting trickle of sweat running down the middle of my back and soaking my underpants. And the smells? That’s a special feature of summer in the city when (as Neil puts it) New York becomes the city of a thousand smells. Insider tip: avoid Chinatown in the hot weather.

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