It was hot. How hot? It was air doesn’t feel like it’s moving, clothes sticking to your body in an intrusive way, don’t bother to comb your hair because it’s just going to frizz up, walked two steps and already perspiring like a pig type hot.
It was almost a hundred degrees outside. Some girl walked by me wearing butt cheek exposing shorts. Yes, it’s hot. Is it okay to expose your butt cheeks in public hot? I’m going to say no to that. Don’t want to see your butt cheeks, lady. I went into the nearest subway station. Maybe I’d see a homeless person urinating in a corner. Butt cheeks and public urination...ah, the sights of the city are so varied, so entertaining. So gross, but I didn’t care anymore. It was too hot to care. I saw my train just waiting in the station as if waiting just for me. I was too hot to utter yay, but there were all kinds of yay feelings going on inside me. I wouldn’t have to wait in stifling heat on the subway platform for my train to come because it was there already. Yay! Right there in front of me. Yay!
I noticed instantly that the train car I was about to step into was mostly empty. I did a quick study of how the few people on the train looked. I knew if they looked bothered and fanned themselves with their hands, newspapers, anything available, then that meant that there was no air-conditioning on the train. If they were all bunched up in one area, heads down or heads shaking in disgust, that meant that a homeless person was or had been on the train and filled the whole thing up with his or her body odor.
It was too hot to continue my observances. I had to get on the train before it took off. I got on and was instantly greeted with a coolness that could only be described as pure heaven. I breathed in clean, non-B O tainted air. The few people around me were sitting quietly, enjoying the coolness, enjoying the non-smelliness, enjoying seats to themselves because everyone could sit separately without having a stranger’s sweaty body nudged up against theirs. I sat and smiled to myself. I settled into my seat and took out a book to read. It was amazing to be able to think coherently without feeling like my brain was sweating.
The perspiration that had beaded along my skin dried instantly so that my blouse no longer clung to me. I read, smiled, mentally zoned out a couple of times as I was lulled into the comfortable bliss by one properly air-conditioned train ride.
Several minutes later, the train stopped. I looked out the window and saw an 8th Street sign. 8th Street? I had been on 23rd Street with the intention of heading uptown. If I was on 8th Street, then that meant...what? What? I was going downtown? Seriously? I was on the wrong train? NOOOO! Say it wasn’t so, subway fates. Please say I did not get onto the wrong train that felt so right. But I did. Somehow in my overheated state of delusion, I did just that. I’d have to get off.
But I didn’t want to get off. I couldn’t take the air-conditioning with me if I got off. It was hot beyond the train car doors. Too hot. How hot? It was dog tongues hanging out, ice cream melts in a cone in five seconds, everybody and their grandmother is at the pool, want to slap everyone who goes around exposing their butt cheeks in public type hot. I didn’t want to see anymore butt cheeks!
It was a mad world out there with temperatures that made a sane person downright snippy. Oh yes, I was in full snip mode. I didn’t want to see butt cheeks! I was on the wrong train! CRAP!!!
But it was such a nice wrong train. I settled back in my seat. Who did I know in Brooklyn?
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