Sometimes, I have to remind myself, that this isn't what a steak tastes like. I have remind myself that there is air conditioning that is cold. That there is toilet paper that is, comfortable. All of these things, it's a lot harder to do than I thought it would be. There are times you sit, and think, and think, and think, what is it like?
The other night, laying down, sweating profusely, I tried to remind myself of summers back home. Laying in a room with my brother, the sound of the pool filter humming endlessly in the night, I would sweat there too, not as bad, but I would still roll over and then back to a wet spot on the bed, usually making me question whether or not I had feeling in my bladder anymore. And here, I close my eyes, listen to the industrial fan, chopping and spinning, almost humming, almost like home as teenager, with sweat collecting in a small pool in the middle of my chest. Those are on nights that we wouldn't play Clue, or Risk and throw cheese snacks at each other into the early hours of the morning, forcing my mom to come out, and tell us kids, and cousins to go to bed.
At chow, I take a bite of... steak? I'm to sure what cut it is, but the only thing I hope is that there is no gristle in this bite, the meat itself is tough enough. It doesn't remind me any of home, my mom's cooking was always to splendid to taste anything like this. My chewing becomes rehearsed, and soon over rehearsed and I swallow to large a piece and it has a fencing duel inside of my throat as it goes down. Even the cereal, pre-packaged from America, it doesn't taste the same. Not with the Aladdin milk company of Kuwait's milk on it. I wasn't sure milk had a shelf life of 2 years, but when in Rome, drink milk that is utterly old and quite possibly disgusting.
The sweat pours down your face more rapidly than you thought possible, and your shirt is more soaked that if you had pulled it freshly from a finished cycle in your washing machine. It's hard to understand you've only been inside the port-o-shitter for a minute. But with the 120 degree heat outside, and the plastic walls that now seem like the boundaries of hell, you sweat and sweat and sweat. A sauna, but more, the fumes not refreshing. The John Wayne toilet paper sits next to you, and you're not even sure that picking it up with your wet hand you will even be able to pull tissue off the role without ruining it, turning it into mush. I guess John Wayne toilet paper, rough tough and doesn't take shit off anyone has it's kryptonite too. Thank god for wet wipes.
Who would've thought that porcelain could every be such a luxury.
It's in these conditions that I remember that I'm, much like I was when I was a kid, trapped. I have to sleep in this bed, which stabs me with springs throughout the night. I have endure the sweating, because our house doesn't have AC. I have to eat this food, this steak, this meatloaf, because it's all our cooks have, or it's all my mom spent an hour on making. You don't get to choose things in life, not all the time. Sometimes you have to take what you're given, you know that whole make lemonade out of lemons thing. I usually think that's a bullshit cop out, that you do actually have a choice. But today, for now, tomorrow, I do not.
Mmmm mother effin' lemonade.
So the gym doesn't have air conditioning and the hallway through our living area is definitely not ventilated, and so standing outside of the 2 by 2 foot box in front of any of the mostly broken air conditioning units, you're asking for it, to sweat. The food is the same, mainly, served over and over again. Maybe it's just griping or complaining that has me on this little tangent, but it's something more. It's the humming of the pool filter outside my bedroom window, it's the sweating that summers filled with games of monopoly and fish cracker fights are. It's home. It's not the best, it's not the worst, and years from now, much like now from then, I'm sure I might miss this too.
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