Summer off? Summer's...off
A season so far
As a New Orleanian, I have a taste for summer. I thrive in humidity, generally, and I like heat more than cold not only for numerical temperature reasons but for the lightness the heat tends to bring out: a sundress-and-sandals atmosphere, regardless of what people are wearing. A certain liquidity takes over the collective mind, people slow down, thoughts trail off. When I worked in fundraising for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a mass email from HR informed us that the traditionally buttoned-up institution would be relaxing its dress code for the summer, and assured us that if we had any questions or concerns about our chosen ensemble, we could talk to a couple of specific supervisors “or the fashion police,” thereby letting us know that they were serious about not being serious for that stretch of time called summer.
I have specific books I read every summer: Blake Nelson’s Girl, Francesca Lia Block’s Blood Roses, and Pamela Des Barres’ I’m With the Band. Books about West Coast Girls whose female protagonists balance a giggly-girliness with genuine emotional depth. I have specific music I reserve for summer listening: Luna’s “I Want Everything” and “California (All the Way),” Freezepop’s deadpan-giddy “Summer Boy,” Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Cut to the Feeling,” everything by Sublime. I drink a superhuman amount of iced tea and eat blueberries and cherries.
Most of all, I feel hopeful, adult shades of those endless-possibility feelings that colored my summers as a teenager the moment school let out. Dreaminess.
Not this year. At least, not yet. The heat index will reach 100 F today, but nothing actually feels like summer. I have a bathing suit I’ve never worn because I bought it out-of-season and I haven’t felt like swimming. Unlike Iowa City, the last college town I spent the hot months in, Milledgeville hits the ground with a thud during the summer. Even the gym loses dimensions of invigorating possibility, because I’m one of about 3-5 people there. That was fine when I had just arrived and an empty Wellness Center meant that every machine and the well-windowed indoor track essentially belonged to me.
One year on, though, I miss the Gym Friends I made in San Francisco, even if, in true California fashion, we never made good on our nascent plans to hang out outside of the gym. Blackbird Coffee, the pride of downtown Milledgeville, was perfectly satisfying in those empty days when Ian and I were still dazed from a week on the road and were just grateful to get properly caffeinated in a welcoming place. Now, weighing the choice of a hot 25-minute walk to shell out for expensive drinks or the comfortable and fiscally friendly option of staying in my house and partaking of our own coffee and tea, I think, “There’ll be plenty of time to go to Blackbird when I have to, in the frenzy of the Fall semester.”
Is it just me, this “doesn’t feel like summer” thing? Is this internal heaviness a product of the genocide-torn moment we’re all living through in several global regions at once, entwined with our fear for the generational repercussions of a boiling planet? That’s enough, certainly, to make one forget the heart-flutters of a summer romance, but reading the news with my eyes open has never zapped a whole season before.
Well, I can’t speak for you, but Ian just informed me that, via his workplace’s mailing list where his coworkers post sundry items for sale, someone is selling a bag of 50 used baseballs, so they’re clearly feeling summer. Nothing says All-American summer like throwing out your well-loved dirt-caked baseballs to (presumably) replace them with firm, spotless ones. “Great for throwing to your child,” says the ad.
I have no especial attachment, though, to the All-American summer per se. When Ian and I were in Malaysia for two unforgettable months in 2017, I discovered that there’s no more blissful and life-affirming way to cool down than with the divine nectar that is fresh watermelon juice:
I once had a therapist who asked me to imagine a place I feel entirely relaxed. At the time, I couldn’t remember when I had last felt anything like relaxed and in those dark days I was nearly convinced that there existed no such place. Then I remembered back to our dripping afternoons spent at the Double O Kopitiam in Penang, Malaysia, where the iced coffee on offer was served this way:
Those photos, if we’re prioritizing linear time, were actually taken in February, but as one local proudly told me, “We have summer all year long.” Indeed they do, and it’s delisious. I did get caught wearing sandals during a monsoon, which was a hilarious misfortune, but other than that, walking in tropical humidity felt like my natural way, relentless sweat a fantastic excuse to get a lime juice drink for 50 cents on the street every 2 or 3 blocks.
Summer in San Francisco is also out of step with the US calendar: June and July are notoriously cold and immersed in fog. This had novelty value for me my first year there. “I’m wearing a hoodie in July!” But that necessary practice had lost its luster by Year 2, leaving me longing San Francisco Summer, which, conveniently, tends to fall right around my birthday in early October. Those dizzying days were as dream-based and flutter-hearted as I could’ve wished. (A little too much so; the comedown reverberates years later.)
Seattle people and San Francisco people tend to be connected in their love for the cold, which is the most concrete reason I felt out-of-place in both cities. San Francisco never gets properly warm, leaving any visitor who dresses for “California” to walk its parks with a blanket around their shoulders, shivering in actual-summer wear. And I’ll never forget the stranger who made an indellible impact when Ian and I were taking a walk in Seattle: he had his window open and his shirt off as he played video games next to a whirring fan. It was 70 F.
If there’s a high from Seattle summer, it’s the seasonal whiplash from a pitch-black night that begins around 3:30pm to a seemingly-sudden blast of sunlight that doesn’t even begin to dim until around 10:30pm or so. This makes music festivals and Hemp Fest and the Solstice Parade and otiher events into EVENTS INDEED. When pot was first legalized in Washington, it was municipally agreed upon that the new law should be written on bags of Doritos to be handed out at Hemp Fest. A priceless quote from someone in law enforcement reasoned that people can’t be assumed to seek out the specifics on their own, but would have a better chance of doing so “if it was written on the bag of a salty snack.”
Delightfully resourceful in a summer sort of way.
I would love to know what’s been keeping your heart light these days, or if that’s a bigger struggle this year than it’s been in past summers. I feel unexpectedly lighter after sharing that with you, so, as always but especially this moment, thank you for subscribing and for reading.