The Thing About Summer
ThEveryone hates the heat, I know that. Its stickiness, its weight, how it feels like it’s lighting your skin on fire until even your bones are left charred- but I loved it, reveled in it. I loved laying bare in bed, the whirr of the fan soft against my ears and my eyes half shut in thought. Or no thought. Sometimes it was just silence, all up in my head, and I enjoyed those moments too.
I am a being made for heat so the dry air just felt like a warm blanket against my skin, and I felt so safe. The summer wanted me. The heat wanted me.
Last summer was colder than it used to be. The crickets came later, there were no more lightning bugs and far more duvets. I hated it. I hated it.
We spent a lot of time at the river, I and them.
The water was icycold and the stones tore my feet (this river was not a gentle one) but you could lay on the biggest stones and soak up all the sunlight it held. These were not quiet afternoons, the water carried us downstream with shrieks and laugh ter and our favorite sport was to run as fast as we could into the water until we stumbled
and our bodies went down like boulders into the deepest parts but they were gorgeous afternoons even so. We tried to start a fire, once. It didn’t work, of course, but the idea was sound. Maybe it was just that we were all dripping wet, or maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. I treasured those days the most.
The haze of smoke never cleared, I don’t think. It stopped being fun and became a habit, something to fill the space of time between then and then. I always had a vice on hand, even when I didn’t need it; a bowl before work, a bowl during break, a bowl after coming home and some shots before bed.
I can’t drink certain sodas anymore without feeling the burn at the back of my throat. I wonder what I’m missing. But it made the music softer, didn’t make me feel alive as much as it made me feel the world was art.
I told someone once that I call my habits “living in the moment�. There is no moment to be living and there can hardly be called living when your body is there but you aren’t.
Fireworks hold a certain kind of poetry. I saw them with people I loved and a person I despised, and even his presence couldn’t sour their magic. We were the first to arrive, both times, and the second time the very last to leave. I kicked off my heels I wore to intimidate, packed up all the fury and dug my toes into the cold grass. The vans of food were setting up
and our group was still arriving, one by one, and with the comforters spread over the ground and the bags of popcorn in our laps the wait for nightfall felt both too long and not long enough.
We stretched our bodies, languid, into each others laps and giggled of tarot cards and TV show theories, and as more friends arrived I snapped pictures of them against a backdrop of the setting sun and the lights of the festival. There was a point where the field got so busy if we left we would immediately get lost, but sitting together, we existed in a bubble known only to us and it was wonderful.
I thought they hated me. I thought they replaced me.
They hadn’t, but my heart aches all the same.
When the sun finally set, and we had begun to share thin blankets as defense against a chill breeze, they started:
Boom
Boom CRACK
deep in our chests and exploding against our eyes. I leaned contentedly against a pair of knees with my arm around thin shoulders, too distracted to take many pictures.
Boom
Boom CRACK
light painted across the sky, illuminating the trails of smoke left behind and raining dazzling drops onto the earth below.
Boom
CRACK Boom when we all are gone, I thought, it will be like this: sudden, stunning and ethereal.
We travelled two hours to meet him, in a place where we played barefoot in the warmest lake I have touched and explored the tiniest kitschy tourist town I absolutely fell in love with. The three of us, again finally, together- the way it once was when things were better. Or maybe they were worse, but they felt better when it was us three facing them side by side. And so, us, again; we trailed behind each other on the sand and sat shoulder to shoulder to watch the sunset, chased
each other around pet shops and ate at the sweetest little diner on the side of the road that we would have missed had we not been convinced to live according to a soft sense of adventure. We sat huddled in the little booth, whispering in giggles like preteens about the cute waiter, snapped dumb pictures of our faces and dug our spoons into the massive heap of ice cream and cake and strawberries set before us.
There was a day we visited every artsy little shop we could find and immediately blew our money on artisan candy and truffles. I was drawn towards the pottery, thinking maybe I could see the future of my home in their glazed surfaces. We stopped by a sweet farmer’s market and bought jam and cheese, fresh bread and beeswax to melt into candles later. 25 cents for a stick of flavored honey and I bought one for us each. I think we all needed that little bit of homey sweetness. Then, of course, we reached the ride home.
Maybe I took too many pictures, last summer. I have forgotten so much that I desperately tried to hold on to all I could, and that meant the photos on my walls doubled in number. I insisted on trying every photo booth I saw, made sure to have a camera on hand with the strap wrapped tight around my wrist
and a USB full of memories stuffed carefully in the coin purse of my wallet. The photos gave me peace, let me see the faces of my friends when I wasn’t blinded by their brilliance in person and reminded me of boardwalks and riverbeds.
I saw less of people that summer than I ever had, and I still don’t really know why. I am someone who is defined by those around me, I cannot be anyone unless I am with someone.... But still most of my days were spent behind a counter or buried beneath blankets, trying frantically to force bleak thoughts from my mind. I was unsuccessful.
I wanted to badly to be close to someone again, to have someone to just talk to and open up to and be able to sit with, in comfortable silence, not feeling like I must always be doing something. I used to have that, when did I lose it? When did that end?
The thing about summer is that it always becomes memory. It becomes something impossible to grasp, little threads that slip through your fingers until it exists only in the souveniers left behind, and, of course, in its idealism and need. The thing about summer is that as far as the year goes, it’s the least real season of them all.
It makes you want to burn up and burn up fast until autumn only catches the embers of what’s left of your body, and you’re left again to painstakingly rebuild and forget and forget. It’s hot and it’s wild and it’s wonderful, but all the worst things are.
Leo