Days that end with a euthanasia are hard. No matter how many showers I take on these days, I always go to bed with the smell of death clogging my nose, a tacky, electric-pink chemical sensation on my fingers.
It's the first day that's felt like summer to me - not just an exceptionally warm spring, but a real summer day, thick air and slow lazy wind and the heavy sort of warmth that promises little cooling-off as the sun sets. This evening, I've started to get the first real hot-day tickles at the corners of my brain, thirty-second teaser trailers of what this particular summer might hold in store.
This will be a hot summer. I will fight a deadly inner battle against the siren song of my AC window unit, which dangles before me frigid bliss at a cost of nothing more than the integrity of my sinuses and a festively quadrupled energy bill. My thighs will stick to bus seats all over the greater Seattle area. I will drink too much gin with lime juice and not enough water. At night, I will fling blankets and clothing across the room, swearing impotently at the oppressive temperatures for which I spend the other nine months of the year pining like a forsaken lover.
This summer will wear on me, and I will wear it out, vintage lace slips and twenty-eye Doc Martens pounding the streets in search of trouble and maybe ice cream. I'll pour music over myself like cold water, muddling the joyful melancholy of the New Pornographers, Alvvays, and Dragonette with the unhinged revelry of Chromeo and Chungking, with a dash of the vile pop music produced by Max Martin that I can't help but gobble down like cheap chocolate.
I'm not going to go into this summer gracefully, I suspect. There'll be some wailing and gnashing of teeth. Much of it will, I hope, be done here, with some semblance of style; a smaller helping will be dished out to my acquaintances, face-to-face, smelling of sweat and beer and sounding like nothing more than it is - the heartbreak of the season, whichever of my traumas I choose as trending.
This summer will yield adventure. I'll squeal at marsupials in the artificial gardens of the world's oldest zoo. I'll drag someone, protesting a little too little, by the hand into a park after closing. I'll bake a cake while stoned and wake up in the morning wondering why the apartment is so hot and everything smells like nutmeg. No one can tell me what to do this summer, but I might allow it from time to time, in the spirit of camaraderie, if what they're demanding is tantalizing enough.
Like last summer, this summer will be over too soon, and I'll be left wishing I had written it all down, and wondering why I wasted so much time writing when I could have been out there, enjoying the sun.
