A person harbors a longstanding dislike of air conditioning, associating it with sterile, impersonal environments. Childhood preference favored natural basement coolness over window units. Multiple small objections, rather than one major objection, underpin the aversion. Typical coping methods during hot spells include iced drinks, fans, and frequently changed towels. An unseasonably early June heat wave overwhelmed these strategies, producing sleepless nights, diminished concentration, widespread heat rash, and a sweat-stained mattress. The extreme physical and cognitive effects compelled active efforts to cool the living space despite reluctance to install an air conditioner.
I've never been an air conditioning guy. Even when I was a child, I had an aversion to AC; when my parents installed window units in our Civil War-era house, I slept in the natural cool of the basement, preferring silverfish and crumbling walls to the industrial roar of fake coolness. Why? I don't have one strong objection so much as a bunch of small ones. I associate AC with the multiplex, the office, the hotel room,
There's something mildly pathetic about it: You can't tell me it's not sad to huddle next to a vent, breathing manufactured air that smells like keyboard cleaner and mildew, passing your summer in sealed rooms that have been cooled to precisely the same temperature they're heated to in the winter. No-instead, whenever it tops 95 degrees, I deal with it how I always have: I suffer, and I endure.
But my tried-and-true approach to beating the heat failed me this June, when an unseasonably early heat wave hit New York City. It was so hot I couldn't sleep or concentrate even with a fan directly on me, and overnight I developed heat rash over what seemed like a third of my body. My sweat-stained mattress, when I stripped off the clammy sheets, looked like a modern-day Shroud of Turin.
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