Dirty, Sweaty, Smelly

New York is a seething, steaming, fetid mess right now. It’s so hot and humid. The air is thick and oily, like breathing swamp air. It’s dirty and if it had a color it would be a dull, sickening mucous yellow. You can feel it blooming with bacteria. Everyone is sweaty and smelly and swollen, walking around looking wilted in damp, itchy clothes. The sexiness of that shine on people’s skin evaporates when you see the crazed, feverish look in their eyes. And the smell. Everyone stinks.

I don’t know how anyone can even think about having sex in this heat. Even if I could muster up the energy to swim through the nauseating humidity, the idea of touching someone is just too gross for words. It would be like touching raw chicken meat, filthy and slimy and foul.

Last night I was at a birthday party near Times Square where I met this sort-of cute guy. He and his friend had been in the park all afternoon, drinking cheap whiskey and Coke out of coffee thermoses. After steeping in the air-soup out there for hours he smelled of stale sweat that had had time to soak into their clothes and spoil there in the heat. He smelled like the guys who would come into the grocery store where I worked in high school after fishing all day. Cigarettes, sweat, fish, beer.

It made me sort of nauseous. And then I felt bad about thinking that way about him. I felt like a fussy little princess getting all grossed out by the proletariat. It would have served me right if he had smacked my ass and started ordering me around. If he had known what I was thinking he would have shoved me into the bathroom and pressed me up against the wall. He would have taken off his shirt and shoved it in my face. And then he’d make me lick his armpits and suck the sweat off his cock and balls, and I’d have to breathe in the smell of his thick damp pubic hair. And we would have had dirty, sweaty, smelly sex, and I would have deserved it.