I've Finally Been Reduced to Talking About the Weather*

As a child my family used to occasionally take trips to Las Vegas, mostly for the strippers but we also appreciated the access to stores that specialized in goods other than feed. On a few of these trips when I was about 8 or 10 years old we stayed at the Tropicana which I saw as the height of luxury. My favorite thing about the Tropicana was the night time laser light show that was performed on the side of the hotel tower. The show was choreographed to the song “Hot Hot Hot” the tone of which is decidedly positive with its "party people" and "hands in the air" and "rum bum bum." I now have to acknowledge that the band Arrow totally lied to me about what it feels like to be hot hot hot. It is very hot in New York these days. I want my readers to fully comprehend what I mean by that last statement but I am unable to find the proper font, text size or color to convey exactly how hot it is. Yesterday, I sat on a frozen bottle of water, the resulting sensation was the best my ass had felt in years. I’ve been wearing skirts and using the extra fabric to fan my lady bits, this means that roughly 750 people are seeing my panties on a given day which seems like a reasonable trade off. On Monday I contemplated lying down on the subway ramp on the theory that the tile might be cooler. This is a place where I KNOW people have peed

The worst part of the heat is trying to sleep through it. I have one air conditioner in my apartment and it’s located in the living room so that a certain Mr. Grump-n-stuff can enjoy not dying. This means that when temperatures rise about 80 degrees I have to choose between sleeping on my couch where it’s nice and cool but I can’t quite get comfortable or on my bed where I can lie spread eagle in front of the fan and whine all night about the heat. I could also buy another air conditioner but they weigh 8 million pounds and I don’t have a car and I can’t carry it by myself and when I start planning out the process for actually procuring a second air conditioner I quickly say fuck it and commence with the back up plan of eating another popsicle. So I have been forced into being creative and have experimented with a variety of methods for staying cool at night:

Method 1: Fill spray bottle with water, spray above head, let mist rain down on me
Reasons for Failure: mist dries too fast, fear that I’m making the humidity worse, process is too manual, concern regarding growing mold in my mattress.

Method 2: Hold frozen bottle of water in hand
Reason for Failure: Hand sucking up all of the coolness, rest of body still overheated and considering revolt against selfish hand, ice melts too fast

Method 3: Rest frozen bottle on belly
Reason for Failure: Belly is an oversensitive nancyboy who can’t handle the awesomeness of the frozen bottle, ice melts too fast

Method 4: Rest frozen bottle on panties just over hips
Reason for Failure: As I doze off my hips move and then the bottle rolls onto Mr Wimpy (aka my belly) which results in general body freak out, ice melts too fast

As you can see nothing is working and my creativity button has now melted.

The only thing significantly worse than the heat is the corresponding arctic chill that has descended on the NYC subway system. I was recently on a subway train covered in Con Edison ads describing ways to save energy I read these while shivering on a 50 degree train on a 90 degree day. Oh irony, you’re such a cad.

*Next time on RAB: How 'bout them Mets?