Heat Wave

Ha. Everyone keeps talking about how hot it is here today in Portland. Puh-leeze. I still remember returning to my apartment at 329 E. 14th St. in Manhattan the weekend after July 4th in the summer of 1999 (shout-out to Sue F!). We lived (then-roommate Sue F. and I) on the fifth floor of an old tenement-type building in the East Village. To this day, almost 9 years later, friends and family still talk about that apartment, and how hard it was to climb up the stairs.

That weekend was so hot the Amtrak train I was on from Rhode Island apparently melted onto its tracks and was delayed for hours. After finally making it to Penn Station, I'm sure it was a relief to get on the subway (in the early years in New York, I almost never took cabs). After getting out at Union Square, wading through the sticky soup-like air of summer on 14th Street, and walking up 5 flights of stairs, I was greeted with a "Welcome to Hell!" by Sue F. We didn't have air-conditioning, and the apartment was so hot the sheets on my bed were actually retaining heat. The old cordless phone was warm to the touch. The only way to even try to get to sleep was to take a cold shower and stand naked in front of a fan right before bed. I was so broke then (working at Penguin Books) that when I did finally buy an air-conditioner, I brought it home myself and rolled it up the five flights of stairs. Why I could afford an A/C but not the delivery fee, I do not know. It was my own weird form of economics I guess.

That is what I call hot. This, with the Maine breezes still blowing through the 90 degree air, is just a warm summer evening.