Hotsleep...

Hello Friends.

It's so hot right now. ("How hot is it?"). It's so hot that I am very warm, and I'm sweating a lot, and the sweat pools underneath my supple man bosoms giving me a Rorshag-style inkblot stain that looks like rivers of disappointment. But I'm not complaining! We get so few hot days here that I am reveling every moment. Except when I am trying to sleep.

Dream: Get a good night's sleep in this oppressive heat.

Goal: Unachievable, as evidenced by the fact that I am writing you late on a Thursday night instead of, y'know, sleeping.

Plan: Think of a variety of get to sleep quick schemes that will also help beat the heat, such as:

Turn on the air conditioning. THAT'S WHAT IT SAYS WHEN I GOOGLE 'HOW TO SLEEP IN HEAT'? Really, website? Am I so stupid that it never occurs to me, in the insufferable, sweat-inducing, sun-drenched sauna that is my apartment, to turn the air conditioning on? IF I HAD AIR CONDITIONING OF COURSE I WOULD TURN IT ON! I'd turn it on and Doc would say, "Hey! What are you doing?" And I'd say, "I'm turning on the A/C!" And he'd say, "Are you sure?" And I'd be like, "It was on a website" and he'd be like, "Okay." What kills me is how, even though we don't have air conditioning in our apartment, if we were to buy a portable unit, we'd have to pay our landlords extra to use it. What the hell is that? They don't provide A/C, we buy one for a few hundred bucks, they say, "Pay us an extra sixty bucks a month", and we're like, "Durr, okay!" Did we lose a war? Come on, people, rise up against this nonsense.

Sleep naked. Way ahead of you. Well, actually, I'm not ahead of you. You can't be nakeder than naked. I'm at the same pace as you. Some people were just underwear to bed, which I don't get at all. As a human, the best part of underwear is its removal.

Take hot baths. Is it Blanche Dubois in Streetcar who keeps taking hot baths to stay cool, he wondered faggishly? I think it is. Some lady in a play at any rate. She takes all these hot baths because, the theory goes, you raise your body temperature to higher than it is outside, then when you get out of the bath, the air feels cooler. I'm not exactly sure how that works because I've heard the opposite advice:

Take cold showers. Right? Because cold is cold. My trouble is I'm a Baby Suckpants who can't tolerate a cold shower, at least not if there are heated options available. The Doc takes cold showers when it's hot out, but it's like overhearing someone getting waxed. Every few seconds I hear, "BUGH!" and "WAUGH!" and the occasional, "YIPES!" I can't imagine that lulls one to sleep.

I could take some freezer items into bed with me. Say an ice cube under each armpit and a bag of peas for beneath my scrote (those are my heat zones). But then you wake up to a warm, wet bed and a bunch of disgusting peas.

Fans. Fans are effective some of the time, but I'm convinced you just end up circulating the same hot air you're trying to avoid. Plus, rather than comforting, a fan's hum has the opposite effect. It is droning and buzzing and ruffles up your damn sheets.

Actually, the real cure to a hot night, at least in Edmonton, is time. As I write you now, the sun is completely down and some cool air has begun to blow through my windows. Time to, if not curl up, sprawl disgustingly and hope that these hot days go on forever. I might sleep soundly, I might toss and turn, but for now I'll just sweat it out.

Friday afternoon edit to ruin my closing line: It worked! I'm well-rested! Was too sleepy to post last night, so here it is now. FROM THE FUTURE!