it sounds like the heroine of a Verdi opera, along with her sisters Anæmia and Carcinoma: she of course dies of consumption at the end of the opera – "consumption"! Now that's the name of a disease! – while singing an aria about coughing up blood and the injustices of love and life before collapsing into the arms of her spurned lover, Escalope Parmigiano, who has, by some amazing coincidence, returned that very moment from serving as a merchant marine on the Caspian Sea to ask her hand in marriage; Rubella accepts the proposal with her final dying bellow and Escalope Parmigiano goes mad with guilt and thwarted love. But I digress ... The computer chip that determines the entire course of my life (eg. You are from the West. You must love winter. Your skin is impervious to mosquito bites. You must vote for racist, homophobic political parties and hate anyone who speaks French, etc. . . . ), implanted when I was a child, must have physically carved neural pathways within by brain. Even though I had had it extracted in that weird tattoo parlour in New York's Lower East Side, I still have difficulties understanding why Easterners go berserk when the temperature dips below –10°C. It has also cursed me with the inability to function normally when the temperature climbs to above 25°C plus humidity. I swoon on Toronto's gum-encrusted pavement like Rubella in the arms of Escalope Parmigiano. I crawl down the streets in a feverish daze. I stumble from iced drink establishment to iced drink establishment. My primary criterion for male companionship rests solely on whether or not he possesses an air conditioner anywhere in his apartment.
The most striking indication of my inability to abide the sticky weather is the size of my hair. Almost smack dab in the middle of my 30s I am still blessed with the entire shock. This is a blessing of insulation on pretty (to people who don't live in it) wintery days. It is akin to having an entire rain forest on the top of my noggin on mouldery summer days. As the heat and humidity rise, my hair, perhaps in an effort to save me from drowning, absorbs most of the humidity that surrounds my head like a sheet of quintuple-quilted Bounty and expands at an alarming rate, twisting into large loopy ringlets that appear to writhe even when there is no breeze. I scoff at products people buy to add volume to their hair. I have spent four times the money for products that make my hair manageable and small. Otherwise, I am Medusa as I stumble down the street. It is, of course, my fault for having made the senseless decision to grow my hair in an attractive, modern, mussed-up looking style that covers the nape of my neck and my forehead, adding to the Turkish steam room quality of my existence. I am regretting this lack of foresight as I contemplate filling a shower cap with ice and sticking it on my head. It couldn't look any less attractive to the boys than does the kudzu on the top of my head.
Noudnic the Cat, who has the same amount of hair on his entire body as I have on the top of my head, but is much, much smaller than I, has the right idea. He lies on his back, little legs splayed akimbo, in the bathtub the entire day, emerging occasionally for water. We should all be so lucky. At over 6 feet tall (or, if you prefer, at almost 2 metres tall), I fit into bathtubs as easily as I do into airplane seats, movie theatres built before 1995, and Italian cars. In any case, take it from me that he may lie in the bathtub all day, but he objects to having the water turned on to amuse me cool him off. Cats are weird.
Just joking. I didn't turn the water on him.
post scriptum On an unrelated topic, boys are stupid and they smell bad, especially the one who stood me up this weekend. Next time I run into him I shall set my giant, man-eating hair on him and then we'll see who doesn't have time for whom.However Ajay, my future husband, remains lovely and amazing, in case you were wondering.
