It's a sweltering Sunday night. I'm already on the wrong side of 8pm and it's still as humid as it was at 3pm -- or at least it feels that way inside this apartment. I returned home this afternoon from a weekend in West Chester, PA, where I was visiting one of the wife's countless siblings, their respective offspring and extended family. It was a nice, refreshing break to get out of my beloved C of NY, but the trips to and from remained arduous. My wife and kiddie-kids having hitched a ride with another of her sisters a day earlier, I met up with one of my brothers-in-law in the swarming, airless ant heap that is Penn Station on Friday night to be herded like doomed cattle onto a late train bound for Wilmington, Delaware, home to the closest Amtrak station to our destination. A rainy day and a half of family activity (lots of eating, lots of drinking, lots of crying children, lots of World Cup viewing, etc.) later, I found myself on another expensive train trip back to Penn Station, only this time by myself. Peg and the kids are staying with her family one more night, but I had to be back to be at the job Monday morning. After a pleasant ride wherein I rediscovered the myriad joys of the Beastie Boys' illustrious catalog (I so love my iPod), I was dumped back into a hot and sticky Manhattan afternoon.
Not wanting to stick to anything on a subway car, I decided to walk home from Penn Station, cueing up the Beasties' seminal debut License to Ill on the headphones to spark my stride. To the Led-en whallop of "Rhymin' & Stealin'," I bounded down 8th Avenue, obliviously into the sweaty crotch of Chelsea on what turned out to be Gay Pride Day.
Now, if any single demographic in NYC knows how to throw a properly festive parade, it's the gay community. That said, while ducking and weaving my way over to the East Side and vainly trying to cross the boisterously colorful river of disarmingly bare flesh that consumed Fifth Avenue, I couldn't help but wish that I too had stayed in the comparatively quiet, verdant hills of rural Pennsylvania with my wife, children and in-laws. Instead, I was pinned like a sweaty sardine behind a police barricade with a gaggle of clammy onlookers in mesh shirts and "No Sleep `Til Brooklyn" incongruously blasting in my ears.
I did eventually manage to claw my way through, and spent most of the rest of the day in the air conditioning and foolhardily ordering Indian food (on a hot day? Am I that clueless? Evidently so). I had meant to go get my hair cut and beard trimmed this afternoon (I'm starting to look less like Peter Hook of Joy Division and more like the Unabomber), but simply couldn't be arsed in this heat. So hirsute I'll stay for the time being.
There's no milk in the house, much less toilet paper, so I'll have to go back out into the humid evening. But maybe I'll pick up a tub of ice cream while I'm out there.
It's a hot summer night, and I'm temporarily free of parental obligation, but I can't help feeling that this apartment is not only hot and unpleasant, but it's also inescapably quiet and lonely. So outside I go....
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