The Evolution of Sweat.

The physicality of summer is something I both always forget about until it pops back up into the bullet sun, middle of the sky arching it’s back towards you and also remember instantaneously, clear as day as if it smacked you awake in the back of your head, causing you to sweat, perspire, glisten, whatever the term as applied to the appropriate situation.

All of a sudden, you can smell everything again. You can smell other people, who had seemed as cardboard cut outs just weeks before – now you sense their processes – their toenails become part of your daily mental task, the layer between their clothes and skin becomes its own entity and you are forced to see them as more, simply because you can smell their presence, no matter how subtly, as the heat is up, the air is full and rounded and the sun bares down on you all, and brings light to your circumstance, which by the way is constructed by the heavens, but driven by you. Even more in summertime heat.

Heat is made of fire and sweat is the result of that fire – roasting coals inside our brains, cooking and scorching our plans and their tail-tips as we look for chilled drinks, and air conditioned doorways to tuck into, so then our fire will remain as ash for a time, and we can fancy ourselves comfortable again. The thing about air conditioning is, it’s pleasant and it allows your body and self to refrain, and find shade within itself. And it’s all well and good. But it’s not real. It’s not the world, nor life and experience – it is devoid of all passions. Your head grows hollow in the cold, you can’t formulate any emotions anymore – since when was anger and rage a bad thing when the rage not coming from your personal ego, but the righteous sort that drives a battleship, builds worlds and creates fantastical dreams,

Every.

       Single.

              Day.

Air conditioning is for the weak, to be sure. Now, toss it out the window. Don’t look first. Just close your eyes, garner every inch of yourself and Push. So it lands on top of an old lady’s head, or a little kid who should have learned early in life to look up. It’s not your concern. The wheels of physics at play do not ask you your permission when they micromanage the universe, jiggling invisible keys in your orifices and in the arses of your obsessive thoughts as they rape all oncoming ideas and tear them down to their own, “reality based” level. They are moving, fast and luxurious, as you tip the a/c sputtering out of control out of your window. It sails down, the dust flying from its crevices, the innocent bystanders (no one is innocent and we all get what we deserve) moving out of its way – if they’re lucky. It crashes on the pavement, practically sinking into the hard cement, wishing there was at least some earth for its unbegotten burial. No such luck. Like follows like, and it sleeps sound in the grey fake city street. Open your eyes, it’s done now.

See? Better, yes? Look out the window, no- Don’t look out. Look Through in, around and about everything you now see which the numbing coolness did not allow for. Now, You jump.

[--------]

No, really.

Trust me.

Listen, you can jump of your own accord, or allow those seersucker atoms to push you, and believe me, you Don’t want That.

They don’t care for your feelings or your heart. They just have a quota. They just Do.

You never see it coming when they do it, so do it now, with this fullness in your heart. Your mind’s eye 20/20 and your will strong.

Just………move forward.

----------------------- .  Now. See? You’re still alive. Death is really only a sales pitch, you know that. You have to know what’s truth and grab onto every little piece of it, because the lies will just sew you into that comfy air conditioned sack where you’ll play with yourself and your repetitive daily tasks until eternity, and since there is no such thing as “until” eternity, then why go out like that?

OK, now that we’ve cleared up this little air conditioning business, you can see and smell and taste the summer like it was meant to be experienced. Flesh, skin, heel, stretch, sleep, swim, waters become the ground and the sky is something you sail upon. Nothing is stopping any of this but your own mind. Feel the sun on your back? And now, the fireflies have summoned you. It’s a difficult language to understand at their level, but their abilities can be mastered. The sweat has started, now. That’s how you know it’s official. Remember what I said back up at the beginning of our little chat? About forgetting all about summer (real summer, outside the sack) and the way it Feels, and then BOOM – like a shot, it’s back. Well, this is that moment. All of a sudden the back of your neck is wet, small droplets of sweat have formed from their pores and are at that breaking point, where they too leap off in a communal roll down to the shoulders, or gather in pools in the crease on the inside of your elbows, or the backs of your knees. They jettison us into memory. We can now smell our skin, just like we could now smell the other passengers’, the ones we’d like to forget about. Our layers like cream in time, spinning deserts straight down childhood –

       ---the sticky summer night, no a/c in sight – after an evening bath, when the water was cool and calming, and you’d run around after, but not too much, just before getting into bed. Your hair still wet, and your body caught in between the cool temperatures and the oncoming balmy night trying to slip its way into you again, back and forth, underneath the single sheet, and flipping the pillow again and again to no end, as the coolness leaves you and the wet in your hair mingles into perspiration until you don’t know which is which. The smell the day previously, clean laundry pinned up on the clothesline, whipping in the wind, the neighborhood sewer smell, when it backed up and stank in the sun, the stale smell of weeds growing (they always grow and always will, take note – just because they don’t give up doesn’t mean you succumb) and petrol from a nearby lawnmower, clouds have a smell even, a taste like water poured into grass---

All of this comes back to you, upon this first summer’s sweat. It has only been five minutes or so and just look at the worlds you’ve travelled. Still it continues, as later you think of being poor and 23, lying in the dark during the heat wave, on a futon bed left on the floor in greenpoint, the tuxedo cat at your side, the one who marked your arm for life and made for the conversation starter of men, and the like thinking you cut yourself – no such luck, boys…afraid you got a live one here. I’m more likely to cut you than me. Or at least arm wrestle under the competitive influence of whiskey. That’s how I met him anyway. He says he let me win, but I’m not so sure. Granted, we had some glorious fights in that shithole apartment of his – resulting in not one but two UTI’s, so you know they were down, dirty and alive. And he had no a/c as well. I’ll give him that. Both of them, at differing times and stages in a five year period fucked me in that apartment – in both bedrooms. The first, well, he was the one I thought I wanted the most. And I remember it was so hot that night, he carried me over and tripped on the fan…there was much sweat to be had, but he sweat like a maniac. There is no other metaphor to describe that. He had also dabbled in cocaine, which I disapproved of then and still do now – it brings out the worst in them, and makes it drag you into an eternal conversation that you’d rather leave in order to be shot in the head over than stay and chat alongside. Not him though. He was from the desert, and said if you cut him open, sand would stream out. His skin from head to toe to manhood to hands was thick, hard like cardboard – the hide of a side of beef, which if you cut you couldn’t break through easily – it would take a special array of knives to get the job done with him. His brain was the very same way. Even after he had done his duty much more than once- sweat dripping into my mouth, on my back, my cunt and legs (I didn’t mind – it was like wine and it went down smooth as ever), he couldn’t manage a third time (he made up for it the next morning, before the heat got the best of us) he said, breathy and soaked through his thick skin and wet hair, “goddamn cocaine”…..Somehow after, for him, it was as if his thick body soaked up all the moisture in the room and became dry again in minutes – his internal desert balancing out the humid summertime he found himself in.

The second times, in the next bedroom, were quite different for many reasons, but the sweating remained, for me particularly. As long as I had a foot free to keep on top of the sheet (my own internal cooling capability) I was decent. Mine was more of a beading that never graduated to pouring. It would take a lot of work to do that. No wonder I was drinking entire bottles of booze then and eating Greek, Turkish, Italian take out with him and still not overweight – the things we did under the duress of the summertime kept me strong, currying favour with the atoms which pushed and pushed me until there was no place left to go. They are always invited to my windowsill. I’m standing there now, looking down on that obnoxious child on the street, thinking she is entitled to everything and never being told no. You can’t master this world and let yourself go within its boundaries, you can’t function by the enacting of your own rules and say no to all the bullshit (and there is a Lot, more and more every day) if you think yourself the master. You master the physical (so-called) world by being the servant to the invisible one, and slaying all the dragons – the first your own, and then the rest will follow. This entitled little idiot, well, she’ll learn. I hope she learns the hard way, because there is nothing worse in this world than entitlement. Air conditioning breeds it (yes, a/c is responsible for a lot of our woes) by making us forget that nobody owes us anything. Well, despite her walking beneath my window, I’m here, arms outstretched for the atoms to pick me up light as a feather and cast me into the tornado, the eye of which is inside me. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one in on this brilliant storm – everyone else sits in the shade, but I’m out there, and I ain’t never coming back.

The sweat continues chasing up memories and wayward dreams, creating lifetimes and personalities inside…the boozing, 2nd floor apartment matches were one thing, but summer allows us to taste in gentler tones too. Sometimes, just the soft, fragrant sweat takes its place in the same areas, but doesn’t boil over with pride or deviance, the sweet afternoon fuck in the grass, tastes of him mingling on your lips, in your clothes, what’s left of you just sinking in, and forming constellations between sun and shade, tree and root, tongue and mettle…time moves slower under these circumstances, and you know that you can ward off all sickness and loneliness and oppression with one blessing upon the blades of grass, in this way and every other imaginable. Nowhere to be, and no reason to stop using your hands – they sweat too, but it’s more like dew on the leaves – inner to outer. Just like most people sweat from their brain, their head, but mine always came straight from the gut. Out in all directions, fireworks on the fourth of July. The only other thing worth putting your clothes back on for is the carnival down the road – the sort that moves from town to town, outskirts mostly, usually near the fire house or along the main road out. Late summer, even a different smell – your mouth tastes the flowers now sweeter, in the last hurrah of themselves before oncoming autumn - the people nearly sweated out, so its older, smoky sweat interfacing with 2nd and 3rd degree cigarettes smoked by the former inmates, those ex-cons who work the giant swings – forgetting themselves and giving you far too long a go-around, cause they can and cause they know you want the ride- legs in the air, hair eating bugs and the sweat in front of your ear made cold in the created wind, just for awhile. Ten feet up from the ground, you ruled as the air snuck up your nostrils, the sickly sweet cotton candy forming in your ears, the faint smell of pizza and meats grilling, all smack dab in the middle of your face.

This is the happiest of sweats, but the hard sweats have their place as well. Your father, erecting houses like roman temples, summers meant he was outside more than in, and his sweat always on; long farmer’s tan summer work days, up the pool, the tennis court, the woods belonging to us and the woods behind that did not (but you held the secret deed and the ground was quite aware of your dominion, and how it held you as its own just as much as any person ever could) – later, working with him to sheetrock the garage he built onto the florida house, constructed from nothing – at 68 years old. Men really take a lot to impress me, I suppose. The work hard in southern heat, and the sweat truly stinking from overwork, your clothes soaked and your brain open as it ever could be. Muscles aching, and you know what pleasure can be received from a good day’s work – versus the idling that most do nowadays – peas in a pod, their brains asleep, their hands worse of all – buried in shit. The constant battleground of armies marching, pouring themselves across the earth – the great civilizations made actual from the backs breaking of those who held no power in the world as it stands. Instead of all that, you can fall asleep on your rooftop under the sun, in the lawn chair, after you didn’t sleep enough – spit canvassing out and down your dribbled chin, and a quiet, clammy feeling – no story to this smell, just stillness. It belongs with you as does the steps you take and the courage you keep looking for, which disowns you on occasion, only to make you go looking for it again and again.

Think of your courage hiding in all of these places which is apparent to you now. They have always been with you, even when sleeping under the snow in wintertime. It all contains you as you wipe your brow, flicking off the excess sweat into the air or smoothing the back of your dress, where all good stains belong. Feeling that release when you throw off your bra, tits moist with summer dew and greeting you, remembering that they’re your friend, ass cheeks on fire from the city strain of heat, the hot seat, the world doesn’t let you use it anymore. It’s trying to tell you something. The last realization is your cunt – alive moreso in summertime; you can see, feel, hear and touch with her like superman, saving all the poor citizens from their peril. Now, coming back to that a/c feels like defeat, pure and simple. If any bodily strain finds you, it’s a falsehood – the empty sweat of nothing gained and nothing earned. Is it really going to end like this, each detail of the hanging setting the scene right before your heart sitting in its throne, as it is and every last cadence stated and sung, the baton death march in little things, each to remind of all that you lose every single day while the only choice left is to set the place on fire and make for the hills? Keep looking for those beads of sweat, no matter where they hide and who they hold as hostages there. Chances are, it’s you. And the atoms will not be happy, and take my word for it – they’ll kick you out of the comfort soon enough, whether you are ready for it or not. There is only one life to be had, and a million chances to sweat out the shit and take in the air, as it was meant to be – full, bright red heart, open legs and alive. They’re keeping score, and will make themselves known when you least expect it.

What’s that, you say?

You dreamed you were lost in the ocean, being pushed and you sank because you allowed the pushing to keep you underneath, and you could breath down there but it wasn’t the same, and you were sweating underwater and how is this physically possible, and the mermaids fucked you and it felt really good, and the sky, the light, you could see it coming too, above your head, in front of your eyes and you realize it’s been there the whole time and no one is pushing you, and the atoms are you and you are their god and the slave to everything above and below the water and is it summertime up there in the light you wonder? And you reach it, you are doing it, and the way the air and sun break into you and lift you up is indescribable and those mermaids are back flipping with joy for you, and there is another greater feeling you let inside of you, and here it comes, and -------

You awake with a giant Bang, back down into your bed? All wet and sticky between the sheets, trying to hide from the morning sun? Exactly.

M. Lucia