Hot Child in the City

The city is melting. Or I am. I don’t know which because it’s so hot I can’t really think straight. The heat rises up out of the pavement, and swallows my feet first before making its way up my entire body. When it reaches my chest my heart seizes. I look at the people passing me on the sidewalk like, holy shit you guys, is this for real?

And they just wipe the beads of sweat from their foreheads with the backs of their hands in an exhausted gesture of, yes, yes it is.

It’s hot here. Like Hades hot if you could venture a guess of how hot Hades might actually be (and I hope I never find out). And it’s all anyone can talk about, because for some reason, we just really can’t get enough of talking about the weather. I guess because it’s the one common thing that we have to unite us as New Yorkers - Park Ave. to Park Slope odds are you’re feeling the heat, and you’re not at all happy about it.

For the most part, we all really love it here, but the heat makes us hate it because it does crazy things to our minds. While there is no universal definition of a heat wave, it is the result of a high pressure system, which makes sense because that’s what we’re all under here, and it can take something like a significant jump in temperature to simply make us snap. When the mercury stretches up past 95 degrees, it’s as though everyone and everything in the city gets thatmuchcloser. People can be sitting next to me on the subway as they do any other day, but when it’s 95 outside (and feels like 100) its like they’re right on top of me, and I’m looking at them like: Would you just get the hell off of me for Christ’s sake!?

I don’t say that of course, because that would be crazy. And I don’t want to turn into that person who actually is crazy, who shouts crazy things at people on the subway that I usually look away from while thinking wow, that dude’s crazy. But when it’s this hot I’m like, thisclose to becoming that guy. So I tell myself, don’t be that guy, and I close my eyes and count to ten, and try to envision myself in the North Pole or someplace where it’s probably pretty cold.

I did that this morning when I was standing on the subway platform. I could feel a few beads of sweat make an appearance on my brow, and then attempt to make their way down the side of my face. I felt like I was sitting in a sauna wearing a dress and holding a handbag. I tried to focus and remain calm. North Pole, Antarctica, Iceland. Wait, is Iceland actually cold? In my attempt to muster Zen-like concentration to regulate my core body temperature, I couldn’t help but notice that the woman standing next to me was desperate. Her face was red and sweaty, she was fanning herself with her AM New York, and moving from side to side in frustration as we waited for the downtown 1 train.

I could see the dark rings already getting larger under her arms. I wanted to tell her that today was not the best day to wear silk, but I figured she was already having a tough time of it that I shouldn’t kick her while she’s down.

When the subway arrived, a near-empty car stopped before us. Anyone who’s been here long enough knows that when it feels like 100 degrees out (and 150 underground), and an empty subway car presents itself at rush hour, it doesn’t mean it’s your lucky day. What it actually means is that the AC is broken, and you need to start making your way towards the next car fast, because there’s going to be a legitimate stampede in approximately three seconds.

The girl next to me did not know this. Maybe it was her first day living here, or maybe she was so hot that her brain had actually stopped functioning properly – either way she looked so relieved to see that she could, in her anxious and overheated state actually sit down, that she bolted inside as soon as the doors opened.

I would assume that she probably passed out when she realized her gaffe, along with the handful of other people who didn’t know better. But I was too far away at that point to know for sure. Later, when I was wedged in a cool car like a sardine next to a guy who smelled like he definitely overdid it that morning with the Axe, I thought that maybe I should have said or done something to save her.

But this is a heat wave on a sweltering island with 8 million people. This is a battlefield. It’s every man and woman for themselves.

And it’s okay though, because according to Bill Evans and his Accuweather forecast that is, like, 90 percent of the time inaccurate, we’ll only have to endure this trauma for one more day. After that we’ll go back to normal (by the weekend 85 high, chance of rain 30%), and resume our lives as New Yorkers where our headaches are sourced from an unlimited list of grievances that don’t pertain the weather at all.

Our perspective will resume, and that extra inch on the subway will suddenly feel like a football field. We will go back to thinking clearly, dressing accordingly, using body spray in appropriate amounts, and the overall state of the atmosphere will adjust itself around us.

But I figure when that happens I should probably judge the crazy people who actually are crazy a little bit less, because I’ll know at that point just how narrow my own escape was from the same fate. 

So try to stay cool and sane New York. You have 24 more hours to go.