New York is a cement oven in summer, but then you only have to deal with it on the street, because every time you walk through the threshold of a door you get smacked upside the head with the unescapable sense of walking into a meat locker. For some reason, when I remember this feeling, it's always a Best Buy that I'm walking into; which makes no sense considering I don't shop at Best Buy. Still, it's not easy to dress for a day that will vacillate between breaking a sweat with the mere effort it takes to breath, to the frozen tundra of Wisconsin in January. I am not equip with any kind of personal bodily cooling reflex so I dress for the heat. I am totally totally unfit for heat, simply looking at people wearing pants or god forbid, jeans in any kind of heat sends me into an anxiety attack. These people seem totally fine in 90 degree weather wearing their body constricting jeans but just looking at them sends my body temperature 2 to 3 degrees higher. It's like phantom pains, as I imagine what I would feel like if I had my own pair of tight jeans on.
So moving to Europe, well, I should have remembered what it was like at the Whitehorse in London summer of 2003. I lived above the pub with 10 or so others, I remember we had a fan, maybe two if we were quick enough to take the one from the common room, and we slept in the position of a jumping jack, or as if we were making snow angels. No touching.
Paris went from October weather, to August, overnight, there was no May, no June, no in between, scorching 90 degrees after day upon day of 50 degree rain. A week ago I asked Sylvain if we could get a fan, imagining a fan so big and powerful, he'd never expect me to be the one to lug it home from the store. Tonight the only conversation I've been able to muster has dealt uniquely with my personal hotness and why he doesn't feel as affected as I do. I mentioned the fan again, which he said I could go get whenever I wanted, "but babe" I said, "don't you think you should carry it home, since I already lug the groceries" then he looked at me and made a circular shape with his hands showing me a fan that wouldn't span more than 8 inches in diameter. But that won't be of any use, I say, we need something powerful. My heart is set on the fan's that my employers bought in April, one's that look like big round TV sets, the kind of TV sets rich people have in their bedrooms.
Still this no AC thing, I'm kind of all for it. I don't get for example why stores can't just turn on the AC, why do they have to make it meat locker cold? I mean, it's makes dealing with the heat that much harder to bear when leaving the meat locker space. I know it feels good to have those sweat droplets on the backs of your legs and dripping down your back freeze dried within moments of entering the AC'd space, but it would feel just as nice to walk into a cool space that isn't refrigerated. With all the talk of high energy cost, and environmental damage, AC is a major offense. I respect Europeans for their ability to make a fan work for them. The Metro here has no AC and no one even seems to notice, there are no window AC's it's not even an option that registers for these people. Although if it did, it's be pretty hard to fit into these French windows that open up like doors. In August I'm going to visit my parents for a week, if I come home in summer I pack my winter sweaters and sweatshirts. Wisconsin gets as toasty as anywhere else in summer, but my parents blast the AC to an uncomfortable level, especially considering they live in the country and simply opening the windows would offer the ideal nighttime sleeping, breezy and cool, walking up with the natural morning instead of the climate controlled AC that has me layering another quilt on so I don't catch a cold. In New York I used my fan ever night, over the years I'd used it year round to drown out the noise of rowdy roommates, to keep me cool, to muffle the street noise of New York, I'm gonna put that fan in my room this August close the vents and open the window,
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