“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”
– John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Today’s post comes from some free writing over the weekend. I keep a little memoir about partying, girls, and other vices. I thought is was worth sharing part of it.
Kendrick Llamar asks if you want to see a dead body. It’s 4 degrees outside. Someone opened a window and never remembered to close it. Now it’s almost the same temperature in here. Everyone is huddled under blankets.
You were at the gym for an hour this morning. When you got out your car was covered in snow. Some of it had melted and then refrozen. You had to stand outside and scrape the entire windshield off. It’s too cold to go out.
You stay inside. Read Bukowski. Read Rollins. Read the erotica novel you have to review. Every porn book you write about is the same. Some mundane girl gets raped by a billionaire playboy who’s hung like a moose. This one’s about a school teacher who gets sold into sex slavery. She ends up getting purchased by the world’s richest man who also happens to look like a Greek statue. That dating market must be tough.
Iowa used to be the meth capital of the world. Once November rolls around you can’t go outside. You speculate that this had something to do with the drug’s popularity.
Every girl comments that she never did drugs on weeknights until she moved here. She’ll always remark that she used to go jogging or practice yoga. Now its Hydrocodone and Orange Is the New Black. Every girl comments that she never realized that the winter was going to be so cold. Girls who’ve been here for four years still make that remark. Summer’s too hot and winter’s too cold. A far cry from the coast.
You think it’s midnight when it’s only 5 in the afternoon. You wake up in the dark. The clock reads 7 am. During the summer you could stay up for days on end, now you’re worn out by 10.
Some guy tells you that Toronto is almost at the same longitude as your house. What an idiot. You look it up later find out that he’s correct. You were planning on moving to Minneapolis, now you’re starting to reconsider. Miami sound nicer. Mexico even better. At this point you’d even settle for an eternity of burning in hell. At least no one would make you shovel snow.