Tag Archives: Summer

Non-fiction

The End of Summer

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I was born in the summer, and I used to love vacations, but now I loathe the season for being too hot and not giving enough breaks like the winter when there’s Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years. I sweat and suffer through June, July, and August. September is insufferable too, but I begin to see a glimmer of hope. But it hasn’t cooled down. It’s almost ninety degrees in the morning, and a heat wave has flown overhead and doesn’t plan on flying away any time soon, like a massive raven in the sky. It flaps its heavy black wings and fans more heat onto the valley, where I sweat when I cross my legs.

I went to the gym yesterday just to stay cool and used a stair stepper for a half hour. It makes me drip sweat in front of a television. I wanted to watch the US Open, but on all six televisions in the cardio room, they showed one of those corny comic book movies like Thor or X-Men or Ironman. I was sure it was Thor. I saw a buff blond man with blue eyes in every scene. Why would I want to watch a movie while getting exercise if there’s no sound? It didn’t matter. I was wearing earbuds anyway.

I came home about an hour later and watched the US Open. Sinner played Medvedev, two of my favorite male players in the world, and their poetic strokes. Their rally points went on for over a minute. Amazing how long they could last through each point. They’re conditioned to be machines. In four sets, the number one player in the world, Sinner, won the quarterfinals and will advance to the semifinals to play whoever. I’m sure he’ll win. He’s just too good. I would’ve loved to have seen a fifth set to end the match, but Medvedev couldn’t hang: too many unforced errors. He’d reached fatigue by the fourth set.

The match ended around eight o’clock at night my time on the pacific. I settled in, knowing today would be long. But tonight, football season begins, and I have my fantasy team lined up. It’s something to look forward to when there isn’t much to look forward to anymore. I take what I can get. I never thought it would be this hard when I was a teenage boy with visions of so much more than what I have. No one told me life would be this disappointing. It isn’t something you would tell someone at so young an age. How will I last another thirty years? My parents have made it so far, and they seem happy.

And then I received an email from my tax firm. It said my social security number had been exposed on the dark web. A security breach occurred, and someone may have stolen my identity. I thought it was a phishing email at first, so I was afraid to click on any links. But after I called the firm, they told me the email was real. Bells and whistles went off in my mind. I logged onto the firm’s website and found more notifications. It suggested I call a few places to put a freeze on my accounts. At least they still look secure, but I don’t know. Those criminals may have cleaned me out by today.

Non-fiction

The Middle of the Week

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The sun has risen in the distance as I type this slowly, trying not to miss a key. It’s the middle of the week, and I’m hoping for the best to come before the weekend. Now that I have found a path to get there, I can gather the ability to relate to others and their passions. They seem so furtive as if I’d found them out, except I can’t. I’m not that observational.

But anyway, the middle of the week is like a dog that scratches itself. I watch him as he works his ear and shakes his head at what has gotten to him. It’s the dead of summer. I say “dead” between my gums with emphasis. The heat has weakened me. I drink my water like it’s never going to last. Just like the weekend is too short, so is water. And the heat dehydrates me. What else is there to do but stay inside until the summer ends? And that won’t be for at least another several months. September rolls along just like a train that coasts down the track too slowly. And I’ll be stuck in August with a job that breaks my back. My new supervisor told me she wasn’t a micromanager, which isn’t always good. I mean, no one loves a micromanager. Except I think we all need someone who can watch us for what we’re missing.

A lot has happened since the newest development. I’m working on a salary, not hourly. No longer do I have to punch the clock. Now some people may say that that’s a good thing, but that’s them talking. I have to hold myself accountable, except I’m a different person when it comes to my job. I go a steady pace which doesn’t work for everyone, and that can bring a lot of stress to me. I worry about what will happen next.

I see a woman with a dog in the shop who ordered coffee. Her shirt says, “All I need is coffee and my dog”. That’s like me wearing a shirt that says, “All I need is coffee and my laptop” as people see me at this table. She should wear that every time she comes in here with her dog. It’s a K-9 police dog. Yesterday she wore a collared shirt that didn’t say anything. She should buy seven shirts that say the same thing. They can be different colors. I wouldn’t be pedantic about that. I wear shirts with nothing on them, no statements, no letters or numbers, just plain shirts that don’t bring attention to me, or unwanted attention that is.

The dog is panting, and he looks around as the lady chats with the older men at the long round table. I adjust to the sun shining through the window. They pull the shades down in here to keep it away. She left with her coffee now. I have nothing to look at. The shades come down. I take a break.

Non-fiction

Life in the Desert

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It’s half past six in the morning in the Coachella Valley, and it’s already eighty-five degrees. The heat will climb to one-seventeen in the afternoon today. I walk in this oppressive weather every day to get exercise. It doesn’t fail to make me sweat. I had to wash my shorts on Sunday because they were drenched. People must’ve thought I’d wet myself.

I walked for two miles yesterday and had to stop for water at a liquor store at Palm Canyon and Vista Chino. They sold water for four dollars. I remember when water was close to free, and drinking fountains were everywhere. Now I find them only at the gym when I go.

People have to drink fancy water because they can’t handle water from the tap like they used to. They deem it unsafe. I don’t think it’s going to kill them. It’s advertised on the bottles now: 9.5 Ph alkaline water. Kind of like the protein argument. Just how much protein should a human consume in a day? How much alkaline does a person need?

I used to drink nothing but that type of water. I would drive through noisy traffic in Hollywood for several miles just to pick it up from a health food store on Sunset Boulevard, but I stopped doing it after a while. It wasn’t necessary. Grocery stores started selling all sorts of alkaline water. Now I think it’s a bunch of nonsense and buy any old water. I don’t even look at the brand except Aquafina: something is wrong with that water. I don’t know what it is.

Anyway, I carried my four-dollar water another two miles back to my apartment in Palm Springs, past a few homeless people in this town. One of them slept on the sidewalk. The cement could cook a steak, and he was sleeping on it. I thought his shoes were missing, but as I walked past him I saw that he was using them as a pillow. I didn’t have any change to give him, but it wasn’t change he needed. He needed a bed and a pillow, which I couldn’t offer either, but he was doing just fine without them.

If someone lives in the desert long enough, they adapt to the heat like a lizard. I made it home and took a cool shower. My air conditioner was still running. The thing won’t turn off because it’s set to AUTO at seventy-six degrees. It shuts off when the apartment cools to that temperature. The problem is it never gets that cool. It’s that hot outside. I should raise it to seventy-eight. Only then might it shut off, but I doubt it.

My bill for last month was over three hundred dollars. It could be worse for July. The weather is hotter now than it has ever been since I’ve lived here. I can’t wait until September when it might start cooling down. It’s supposed to lower to one hundred degrees by next week. That would be like spring all over again if it happens. I might actually wear pants.

Non-fiction

A Deep Cleaning

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It’s Tuesday, so it means I’m back to work after a day off yesterday. I went to the dentist for what I thought would be a filling replacement, but it turned out to be a deep cleaning.

I can say that I’ve never heard of one of those before. I mean I get a cleaning every six months, but I wasn’t prepared for a deep cleaning.

They shot me with novocaine on the whole right side of my mouth, which puzzled me because I’ve never had my gums numbed for just a cleaning. The needle injection hurt, so she told me to relax and breathe, which didn’t help the pain of the needle inserted into me. She told me to wait for five minutes for the numbness to take effect. In dentist time, that equates to about thirty minutes, so I lay in the dentist’s chair, feeling the right side of my mouth growing number and number while I was waiting for her to come back. I didn’t want to spend all day in there. It was already one o’clock in the afternoon, and my appointment was at twelve o’clock.

When she came in again, she told me they were ready for the cleaning. I thought it would take about a half hour for them to scrape my teeth and polish them and my gums, but it didn’t take more than five minutes.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“That’s it,” she said.

I wondered why she had numbed my mouth after such a disappointing operation as that.

I followed the nurse to the receptionist desk to schedule the next cleaning. I assume the dentist will do the same thing to the whole left side of my mouth. We scheduled me to come back in two weeks.

“Which day of the week is that?” I asked.

“The doctor only works on Mondays.”

No wonder the place is always crowded. At least I would miss another day of work. I get to look forward to that.

I opened the door back outside to the blazing heat. It was 116 degrees yesterday. I walked an entire mile to my apartment. By the time I returned, the back of my shorts was covered in sweat. It appeared as if I had made an accident. I had to cover it with my shirt. Otherwise, people might judge me, but they judge me anyway. I went back outside because I had no other shorts that matched my shirt. It was navy blue, and my shorts were baby blue. Why do they call it baby blue? Babies aren’t blue. It says online that baby blue suggests tranquility or what is needed to calm a baby in a nursery. That makes sense.

Anyway, I wore the same shorts at the coffee shop. It was crowded as usual on a Monday afternoon, with the temperature the way it was. A lot of tourists had shown up for coffee, not necessarily coffee but juices. It’s too hot to drink coffee. Coffee is dehydrating. People would rather stay hydrated.

I went outside to take a break, and a guy stood on top of a rock and started doing what looked like Tai Chi. I thought he was going to fall off. I just watched him, waiting for it to happen, but he never did. He was lucky. I guess people are going insane from the heat.

I finished editing my manuscript and sent it off to my editor. By then, my mouth had lost its numbness, which was good because I couldn’t drink with half of my mouth numb. The juice spilled onto my shirt.

After I was done editing, I returned to a short story I had been working on for several months about sexual relationships. I’ll be done with that in about a day before I send it to my beta readers for critiques. Then I’ll begin a new story. I have no idea what it’s about. The short I’m working on is beyond ready. I just quit working on it to focus on my manuscript. The last time I touched the short was about two months ago. My manuscript is over two hundred and fifty pages with over ten short stories. They’re not very long compared to most short stories, and so it can afford to have twenty of them.

That was Monday. I get to live through another short week before next week, which will be another long five days. At least I’m not living in Greece, where they’ve introduced the six-day workweek. The workers will work 6.5 hours a day. It still doesn’t eliminate the fact that citizens of Greece will only get one day off a week.

Non-fiction

Hotter than Bejesus

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I’m on fire as I’m writing this. It’s only six a.m., and the room is hot. It’s supposed to be over one hundred degrees in the desert today. My father said it was supposed to be 111. I can’t believe it.

I burned my ass yesterday on the curb when it was 107 at four in the afternoon. It was as if I was frying out there. It’s going to stay that way in the summer before the fall comes. Summer has just begun today. It’s supposed to be the longest day of the year, I heard. But how can that be? Anyway, I’m used to the heat. I’ve been living in hot climates for most of my life, so it’s nothing new to me. But the heat gives me a headache. I’ve been waking up with headaches every day this week, and I haven’t been able to go sleep very well.

At least I’ll go out of town tomorrow and stay in Goleta before I drive to Avila Beach where it’s cool and I can wear jeans. Otherwise, I’ll just keep burning. It’s miserable. Misery follows me like that kid in grade school who would follow you and you couldn’t be rid of him. He just tagged along and got on your nerves. What would I be without it? What would I be without worry? I have to worry constantly or else I’m out of control. And that’s no good.

The heat has followed me, too. My brain is fried. I wonder how it is in Maryland. What kind of heat are they facing? I know there are tornados in the country sweeping up cities, and I’m thankful I don’t have to live through that.

But damn this heat.