Photo by Blue Centerlight

A couple weekends ago I, and all others in the Northern hemisphere, woke up to the deathly heat of the depths of summer. Hailing from the the Northeast, summers had a tendency to get pretty damn hot, but because my childhood neighborhood consisted of fairly new, insulated, suburban, stately baby-boomer brick homes with fenced in swimming pools, summer could easily be avoided by cranking up the A/C, sneaking into Dad’s secret beer stash, and waiting out until October. Summer starts out with the best of intentions: warm, usually sunny weather invites us to leave the confines of our homes in which we’ve spent the past several months to spend time outdoors, whether that be a run through a park, a vacation to the beach, or simply a nice glass of iced tea on the stoop of one’s apartment building. Much like its cold, snowy cousin, summer means well, but almost two months in, I think it’s safe to say summer is starting to overdo it. As temperatures rise into the high nineties and the humidity of our swampy home settles like a suffocating blanket over the city, I’m beginning to think that August, while given the hard job as the last month of summer, is becoming increasingly less sexy.

Being single in the summer definitely has its perks. After months of solitary confinement in my apartment, living off a variety of stews, Scrabble, and reorganizing and then re-reorganizing my furniture, summer was nature’s invitation to get out and explore my community. All of a sudden I was meeting neighbors who lived in my building and who I had never encountered before. We even started to invite each other to quiet evenings of drinks on the steps leading up to our building. The park situated across from my apartment building became a hotbed of young urban professionals walking their dogs, playing with their dogs, and introducing their dogs. Down the street, a patch of what I once thought was vacant realty blossomed into a small urban Gethsemmane, which after a while began to brim with bright green peppers, startlingly red tomatoes, and even a few stalks of corn and what I assume will be pumpkins. Beyond my neighborhood, it seemed like everyone was sitting outdoors having a drink, eating dinner, and meeting with friends. I believe complete transformation is an appropriate description of DC in the summer to DC in the winter. And while DC’s residents blossomed with an obsession with the outdoors, so did the city’s dating scene. All of a sudden, from bars to clubs to house parties, DC’s singles slowly emerged from hiding. Over the course of two months, I found myself not only face-to-face with potential dates, but going on several dates, and finding myself asked out for second and even third dates. As the harsh, cold temperatures of winter relaxed into the mild heat of June and July, so did my inhibitions. In order to accommodate the rising heat and eager to break ties with the doldrum that was DC’s winter, I found myself cutting up old pairs of winter trousers and jeans, once critical for warmth, into trendy new “jorts” and cut-off shorts. I stumbled through allergy season and lived to tell the tale. Summer was gearing up to be one of the best seasons yet.

Unfortunately, as the age old saying goes, all good things must come to an end. To many summer enthusiasts, this would be the last day that the pool is open or that bittersweet Labor Day picnic. For me, this happened to be the first days of August. And, only eleven days in, while August hasn’t really had a fair chance to prove itself to me, I have to say that it is starting to feel more and more tiresome and depressing as muggy day leads into the next muggy, humid day. The mild summer days of June and July have fled for other climes, leaving DC stuck in a static heat so miserable, those with barely functioning or no air conditioners can’t help but pray for the fall. The simplest tasks have become the most arduous. From grocery shopping to cleaning the apartment, one is almost promised to end up sticky, sweaty and cursing for summer’s sizzling hot siege to be lifted. For me, rising temperatures have affected my single lifestyle. Nothing says sexy like waking up next to a new date to find that, even with the window open, you’ve sweat yourself and each other into oblivion. Casual drinks at a favorite outdoor cafe are now marked by vigorous rituals to avoid sweating through one’s clothing, despite even the breezy comfortability of jorts. Nothing says “I’m really into you” like nervously wiping beads of sweat from your forehead while trying to hog the only fan located in the back of the bar. Even if the social norms of contemporary Western society were suddenly erased and everyone could walk around naked tomorrow, August would still make me want to just lie on the floor of my apartment, fans on high, hoping for even just a brief break from the heat before temperatures rise again to point where even cold showers and ice cream can’t don’t do the trick.

Maybe there is a reason why August tends to be the harshest of months. After June and July, it is only appropriate for there to be a kind of punishment, a karma, for the indulgence that warm, breezy early summer temperatures permit. For those of us with the money and flexibility to travel on vacation in August, this conclusion may not be quite appropriate. But for me, and I would assume many young, relatively poor, urban professionals, August is starting to get a bit annoying. The other week I showed up for an interview, face flushed red from the heat, my Brillo pad black hair matted down with sweat. One of my favorite hobbies of this past summer, running through Rock Creek Park, has turned into an exhausting and unhealthy affair. My mid-afternoon run now has to be pushed back to the evening, when mosquitoes, the tragic summer enemy, are at the their worst, or to the early morning. Many times the latter involves an ambition not afforded after a late night of fighting off the heat with refreshing alcoholic beverages. Everything has become sluggish and fried, from my social life to my mental state (For instance, I am now writing an article on the sexual degree of a month). Maybe there is a reason why there are no important holidays or quintessential events in the month of August. Everyone is just too damn hot to do anything noteworthy.

Since it is technically not over yet, it might be too early to reflect on my first summer in Washington. While I genuinely want to try and enjoy the last weeks of summer before schools starts back up and temperatures start to fall, I can’t help but daydream about jeans, sweaters, boots, soups, and falling leaves. It is a shame that summer has to come to such a humid, claustrophobic, and obnoxious end. But maybe it’s all for the best. Leaving on such a hazy, dreary note makes one remember the good times summer affords: the pool parties, quiet evening strolls, nervous dates, and life away from the confines of winter. As a single guy, it is a good time for me to look back on what the DC summer provides socially: new friends, dates, and potential relationships. Much like the rest of the year, DC summers are a time to network and branch out into the community. And while the newly filled ice cube tray just won’t freeze fast enough, goddamn it, so too does summer seem to linger. August definitely isn’t the sexiest of months. If I find another new bug bite or have to swat at one more fly, I may be forced to up and move to the nearest tundra my finances can afford. It’s easy to forget that August won’t be around forever. Much like summer interns returning to school and vacationers leaving town after sightseeing in the nation’s capital, so too will August, DC’s most irriguous thirty-one days, fade away. Come January, I’ll definitely be nostalgic for that fundamental aspect of urban summers: the openness warm weather and sun brings to a community packed tightly into a rectangular, politically unrepresented patch of former swamp land. Summer is romantic in its lethargy, but suffocating in its insistence to go out in a bang of oppressive heat. The new friends and relationships I’ve developed over the past two months have provided many exciting opportunities that I hope will last through until next summer and beyond. In the meantime, you will find me miserably strewn out on my stuffy, humid apartment floor, in my underwear, probably blasting Ravi Shankar or something while numbing the heat with copious amounts of beer and an unopened bag of frozen peas. August: if you don’t have to be sexy, neither do I.