Spinster

My third floor, un-air conditioned attic apartment was sweltering by 9 am. Even though I had a while before I had to be at work, I left early to take advantage of the air conditioning there. That’s pretty much unheard of.

Summer’s one of those funny seasons for me. There are things that I love about it, including the clothing, or lack thereof; sometimes it’s nice to leave the house wearing only a single layer. I like summer activities: swimming, hiking, camping, biking. Summer songs are pretty much awesome and hilarious and it seems like every band has at least one (off the top of my head: basically anything by the Beach Boys; Summersong by the Decemberists; that one by Sheryl Crow…ya know, the one that goes something like, “Put my 45 on so I can rock on,” though why she needs sunscreen for that is beyond me).

But oh God, I was born and raised in Miami. I have a lifetime of summers stored up. I’m not hurting for summers. Springs, falls, winters: those are the seasons I’m lacking. But spring is over and fall is yet to come, and it’s bittersweet anyway, cause that means winter’s on its way and while I don’t mind winter I haven’t come to love it, and so right now there’s summer.

I love summers in un-summery places — people seem to alternately revel and wilt in them. I remember in college in Portland when, after a long, rainy winter, the sun would finally come out and even though it would be 60 degrees, max, girls around campus would try not to shiver in skirts and halter tops. We’d be out in bikinis and playing frisbee and soccer in March, our pasty skin barely warming in the still-chilly air. It seemed so obscene to me at the time, to see so much skin after so long. I’d have forgotten that my classmates had bodies under their polar fleece and Gore-Tex and when they revealed their arms and legs and cleavage I almost had to look away.

The summer of 2002, between my junior and senior years of undergrad, I worked on my college’s paint crew with my boyfriend, with whom I also shared an apartment. We were up at 6:30, at work at 7:30, and done at 3:30. I worked on the indoor crew, repainting the scuffed walls of the dorms. Even in shorts and a t-shirt, with the windows wide open to let in whatever (stiflingly hot) breeze there was, we’d be sweating like pigs by 10 am. There were days when it was too hot for the boys on the outdoor crew to paint. In the evenings, Vito and I would return home to our humid apartment, where mold grew year-round. Complaining about the weather was practically a regional past-time.

Still, that was one of my favorite summers. I was off to Scotland in the fall, and the last two weeks before I left were wonderful — a week in San Diego, in a rented beach apartment with Vito and his mom, boogie-boarding in the cool ocean and baking in the heat; three days in Lake Tahoe with Vito and Aundra, catching crawdads and swimming in the lake; a couple nights at Crater Lake with the same two, when the forest fire smoke cleared for a single day, the day we were there, and we took the boat to Wizard Island.

Summer here is gardens and cottages and days off work and smog and fans and bikes, from what I can tell. I already have a tan line from my watch, various tan lines from various tank tops, a tan line from my Birks. I’m not one of those careful girls who pulls the straps of her tank top or bikini down to get an even tan, or slathers on sunscreen at the first sign of summer sun. Hell, I don’t even try to tan, it just happens.

With my oscillating fan, endless bottles of white wine and maybe even refrigerated red wine (blasphemy) for those lightly alcoholic weeks, shorts and tank tops and sandals and skirts, a wet sarong draped over my body at night so I can sleep, a bike to get around town quickly, summer will pass.