It was so hot this summer. I was constantly sweating. Everyone else was sweating too, but I felt like somehow I was getting the brunt of the heat. Why? I don’t know. Maybe because I’m taller than everybody else, closer to the sun. Or it could be that I often feel like the world revolves around me, and so my problems are just naturally a little heavier than everyone else’s. But it’s also because I didn’t see anybody sweating nearly as much as I was.

I would get out of the shower and dry off and immediately start sweating again. I’d go meet somebody or go to work and by the time I’d get to wherever I was supposed to be, my shirt would start soaking through with perspiration. Super embarrassing. And it was really uncomfortable. I’d bring a change of clothes to work, because I know I’d have sweated through whatever I wore just getting there. But then I’d start to sweat through my work clothes not even five minutes later. I tried hanging out in the walk in refrigerator. I tried standing in front of the AC, to completely cool down, but I was still just damp, always a little damp, and the dampness wasn’t like a refreshing dampness, like the dew on blades of grass in the morning, it was a damp like I made a tuna sandwich for lunch, but I made it early in the morning, and by noon the sandwich is all damp.

And it’s beside the point, because there is no AC at the restaurant where I work. There’s an AC unit, but I think it’s purely decorative. People would complain to me that’s it was hot. “Can’t you turn on the AC?” they’d ask me. And I’d just be standing over them, literally dripping over them, sweating through my shirt, through this layer of cotton, and it would get profuse, leaking through my shirt, dripping onto them, but still they’d complain about the heat. And I was just so pissed. These people wouldn’t leave me a dime, I could tell, so I didn’t even pretend to act like I was at all interested in how good or bad of a time they’d be having. I’d just stand in front of them, looking at the seconds tick by on my waterproof watch, which I had to buy, because my other watch got destroyed because it wasn’t waterproof. It must have just given up, being tied around my wrist, probably exactly the same as being underwater.

“But can’t you just open the windows?” And I’d be getting angrier by the second because, yes, we should’ve totally open the windows, but my nut job boss is completely blind to reality. She insisted that the AC was working, it was working fine, so she refused to allow the windows to be opened even a crack. She had this nutso logic that open windows would force the AC to work even harder, like it would try not just to cool the room but the entire outside world, which would naturally be much less efficient, which would in turn make the room even hotter, which was, I’m almost positive, physically not possible. We reached the opposite of absolute zero folks, right here in this restaurant. And finally I stopped sweating all together, it became this rare scientific phenomenon where, because it was so hot, the sweat came out of me pre-evaporated, like just a gas, like I was just steaming, and the whole time at work it was this cloud of sweat vapor in this closed room, all of us stuck in this room, nobody enjoying anything, me not enjoying my job, the customers not enjoying their dining experience, the only person enjoying anything would be my boss, she was enjoying the line out the door of mindless sucker tourists, desperate for a piece of this tourist trap restaurant, with its line down the block, down three blocks, everyone sweating, touching everything.

You know what? This is definitely the most disgusting thing I’ve ever written about. I can’t wait until it’s winter so that I can start complaining about how cold I am. Oh man, that’s going to be so great, such a relief. Well, it seems great to me right now, but I’m sure I’m not going to feel the same way when there’s snot constantly running down my face, and I’m drinking cup after cup of hot tea, which won’t do anything to warm me up, but it’ll maybe waste another minute and a half, a minute and a half where I won’t have to concentrate on how cold I am, so I can just be a minute and a half closer to warmer weather, to summer, I can’t wait until it’s hot out again. Wait, now I’m confused. You know, I’m a pretty whiney guy. I’m really hungry too. I think I just need a snack. Maybe a bowl of soup. A nice piping hot bowl of red hot soup. Extra hot. I’ll throw it back in the microwave for another minute or two. I’ll heat up the spoon in the oven, just like you would put a beer mug in the freezer, to get all frosty. Nothing like a first hot bite of soup on an even hotter spoon. If I’m eating something hot, I want it to be hot, like hot, hot. Like super, hot. Like hotter than this summer, just so hot out.