Kakotheres
a vocab word I’m glad I have to name this condition.
Also, beek! No, not like on a bird.
To write this entry I took a walk in the summer afternoon all the way down to Slattery’s. About a 20 minute walk, all told. Today, the temperature outside is somewhere in the upper 80s Fahrenheit if not 90. When I arrived into the dim coolth of the Irish pub interior, I was sweating (I’m not a big sweater) and radiating heat. I ordered an ice water and a cold pint, and now I’m right as rain. Why did I do this? Because I need more exercise, and if I try and wait till the weather is ideal for a walk, I’ll always end up finding something uncomfortable enough to make an excuse. So. Here I am, and there I was.
And then it rained on me on the way home. That’s Colorado for you.
In the words of one of my very favorite villains in literature, “the sun mislikes me.” The villain in question: the beguilingly lovely and utterly sadistic half human, half rat Hisvet, daughter of the grain merchant Hisvin, dead set on world domination. She appears in one of my very favorite Fafhrd & Gray Mouser stories, though I can’t remember what it’s called—it’s one of those many tales called “Swords Against Fill-in-the-blank.” Swords Against Death, maybe? I dunno—I call it the Rat Story, and if you haven’t read it, go do so now. Just: Google Fafhrd and Hisvet and Gray Mouser and Fritz Leiber, you’ll find it. Okay, I found it: here. Go read it: I’ll wait.
Ain’t she something? You can’t really blame the Mouser, not totally anyway. But that’s how I always feel, from June through usually early September, because our temperate climate heat does tend to linger that long, and in the myriad perversity of academia, the Fall semester begins mid-August for me, so I have to be active in the heat, will I or no. Good thing I teach only online these days, so I can stay comfortably in my partner’s arctic AC. I’m not built for the heat. Is it genetics? Maybe. My heritage is a conglomeration of several Celts (mostly Irish), German, Polish, and only a touch Italian. I joke about being a Viking but I don’t actually think there’s any Scandinavia in that genetic soup of my family, though I haven’t done those DNA tests or anything to find out.
Drinking From the Garden Hose
I’ve written recently about my hometown’s, and really my home state’s, love of doing everything outdoors. And, unfortunately for me, much of my world (especially when I lived in Boulder) took place outside. Now I don’t want to seem like some kind of weird hermit (though if the shoe fits); I do like a gentle hike, I used to love riding my cruiser around town, and I do have to admit that back in the day when I lived in Boulder and took only public transportation, I did appreciate the shape all that walking put me in.
I went to cool camps up in the mountains quite often as a kid, too–One of the coolest of those camps was one called Nature Writing, where we’d go up hiking and the teacher would guide us through writing exercises as we paused. Carrying a journal around in the Rockies is actually kind of an amazing practice, and I’ll never forget some of those lichen-splotched boulders or cool tree roots where I’d sit and compose whatever it was during those weeks. And of course, like any Gen Xer, I spent most of my summers in general outside. I’ve written about the epic yard parties and volleyball that would happen at our trailer, and the trailer park had a swimming pool as well, that we’d spend hours at (my parents called it the Cement Pond). When on my summer month of an exchange program in the South of France, I spent literally every day on the beach, and came home ten shades tanner and ten pounds heavier than when I left, both of which looked fantastic on me. But still: given the choice, I’ll take the cool bar or the airconditioned couch with my book, thank you very much.
But Colorado, and Boulder especially, loves its outdoors. (See my ranting about rooftop or patio pubs in a previous vocab word.) Each year, in late May for god’s sake, the Boulder Creek festival would explode unto the most central portion of Boulder’s main body of water, the Creek (I think its official name is Farmer’s Ditch, but everybody just refers to it as the Creek), which just happens to be very near the Historic Pearl Street Mall, where one summer I donned a fully layered and bustled Victorian gown to walk up and down on the outdoor bricks and play Mary Rippon, an actually quite interesting historical figure from Boulder’s past. The outdoor theatre where the bigtime Shakespeare Fest happens* is named after her, and holy wow talk about an intolerably hot situation that stage would be for afternoon tech rehearsals.
*I recently heard it’s no longer outdoors at all. So. There goes ‘Shakespeare Under the Stars,’ I guess. Really bad idea, in my not so humble opinion, but then nobody asked me.
Is That a Giant Pickle, Are You Happy to See Me, or Are You Just Dehydrated?
RenFaire was the worst, though, when it came to hot outdoor theatrical work. You’ll hear more about that scene and that dynamic in my memoir (Saturday Morning Serial), but one thing I didn’t get into was the sheer punishing heat of that set, and that added to what I was hired there to do made it actually get to levels of dangerous to the health.
Each day, the opening cannon would sound at 10am, and the closing cannon would sound at 6. During that span of daylight, I (and my colleagues in On Edge, a stunt fighting company of rogues and ne’er-do-wells) would perform 9 fights, placed throughout the day so that Fight 1 would happen right after opening and Fight 9 would culminate right before the park closed for the day.* So it ended up being roughly one fight per hour, plus the noontime parade, which all performers of every stripe were required to join. Just before the fight, we’d be given ten minutes to rehearse, and just after the fight, we’d be allowed ten minutes (only) to recover, drink water, clean up fake blood, create makeup wounds, etc. All other times through the day we’d be required to walk around the grounds, in the heat, in layers of period costume, in character. Once the closing cannon sounded, we had often cheated by changing into our civvies early, and literally ran across the park to the one pub that would blessedly keep one of their taps running just for us as they closed up. Bless them.
Needless to say, this was hot heavy work. As the fighters, we weren’t allowed hats or fans (as they’d be lost or damaged in our activity), and as RenFaire performers in general, we were not allowed electric fans or sunglasses or spray bottles or any costume that wasn’t considered ‘period.’ One year I was in men’s clothing, which included tall black leather boots, black breeches, and a velvet doublet over a long sleeved shirt. Plus my weapons and leather gloves. The following year was even hotter, even though my shoulders were exposed: a corset over a shift, a long velvet outer skirt over a long inner skirt, tights and bloomers, along with my weapons and leather gear. Now, every fighter wasn’t in all 9 fights, but we did have to be there for them all, and I remember I did fight in around 3 or 4 per day out of the 9. I’d get so chronically hot walking (and fighting) around on those summer days that I’d lose all my appetite. I’d be able to have coffee and something pastrylike in the mornings at our pre-opening big fight call, but through the hottest hours of the day, I just couldn’t eat. I did, like all of us customarily did, carry a mug on my belt, and drank water or lemonade out of it all day (as the only employees who had drawable swords, we weren’t allowed alcohol during work hours), but as far as lunch goes, it was rough. Then again, if I ate nothing, I’d not be in a good physical or mental state to perform the athletic theatrics required of me. So I’d often get one of those giant pickles out of the pickle guy’s barrel and nibble on that for a while in the middle of my day. It worked threefold: it fed me, it hydrated me and provided electrolytes, and it gave me something funny to joke about when I ran out of things to improvise in the field for so many hours. I mean, that stuff writes itself: a lady swordfighter sucking on a huge pickle? Yep, basically. Good times. Hot times, but good.
Sexy Beast, not Beek
Remember the opening scene from Sexy Beast, where our hero Gal is literally roasting out on his lawn chair by the pool, looking an alarming shade of crimson, in nothing but a Speedo, and he arranges an iced towel over his groin, sighing, “Fannn-tastic”? That? Yeah, that’s the way my partner and a few of my friends feel about the sunny heat. Me? I need to retreat into the coolth of a bar or my bedroom, and hide from it. I’d like to have an ice cave to hibernate in till September, thank you very much.
The other day it got to be 95-100 degrees outside and my shoes stuck to the pavement as I went across the street to IC where they keep the big windows open on concert nights. They’re often plagued with wasps because of this, who enjoy the sweet mixers and the sugar rims and the combination of air conditioning and outdoor sun.
When there, I learned that a lovely happy young man who was a friend and a manager there (and one who loved reading this newsletter) had died the day before, crashing his motorcycle. I’ll do a longer piece dedicated to him and about what a tragedy his sudden death was to all of us who frequent that 3rd place, probably next week. But. It’s awful, really: we were just admiring his new motorcycle the day before that–well, out loud we were. Inwardly I think we were all a little afraid of that beast of a bike. It was a bit terrifying, parked. And the news was a gut-punch, that I still can’t quite comprehend–like I said, I’ll do more of a dedicated piece about him next week. Right now my brain remains pretty scrambled, though I didn’t know him that well. But even so. There’s still a him-shaped hole in the world, that will be gaping from now on. It’s hard to think, to write, in this heat. I wonder if it was hard to drive that bike.