I don’t have much in this life, but I do have cleavage. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.

This summer feels as though it’s been carrying on for months now, and it’s not even August.  I’m not sure why this is, since the year overall feels like it was strapped to a rocket and launched in fast-forward; we’re almost two-thirds of the way done.  How?  Does this acceleration have something to do with quantum physics, or string theory, or Satanic pacts, or merely getting old and monitoring our cellular disintegration on a day-to-day basis?  

One day, you put on your pajamas and give yourself a grateful thumbs-up in the bathroom mirror, impressed with your virility and buoyancy despite how many years you’ve amassed.  The next morning, you can’t get up without taking a few minutes to sit on the edge of your bed, gathering your mental and physical wherewithal in hopes you’ll be able to stand up straight without your entire body crackling like plastic bubble wrap being stomped on by a bored toddler.  

Then you croak over to the toilet, have a pee, and discover that you’ve sprouted several grey pubic hairs overnight.  It’s all a hell of a process.  Add vanity and fear of death to the equation, and you might as well resort to Bonnie Henry-endorsed levels of paranoia and anticipation of worst-case scenarios.

Since our Vancouver summers are now going to regularly consist of scorching heat waves and unbearable temperatures (remember two things: 1.We whine endlessly about the weather here, and 2. This is a temperate rainforest accustomed to nine months out of twelve being characterized by wretched downpours and winter clothing), there has to be some adaptability.  My sister generously hauled a portable air conditioner to my pad last weekend, meaning I can now switch it up between my honest little column fan pushing around the air, and some refreshing, pumped-in cool temps that save me from sleeping in a soaking-wet bedsheet. I’ll survive the next few summers, and so will my perfectly floofy cat, the incomparable Annie.  

Annie’s a cool cat, and she knows how to stay that way.

Another development has been early-morning jogs around the Seawall, located just blocks from my apartment and for which I am always, endlessly grateful.  I can’t think of a single place I would rather be in the early summer mornings, connecting with the artwork of nature and recognizing my privilege for having effortless access to such a breathtaking physical environment. I’m being totally sincere. I am by no means lucky, but when I’m hitting the Seawall, I feel that way. I guess you have to be here.

After Siwash Rock and before the Lions Gate Bridge, just after 7 a.m., and this will never, ever stop being stupendous.

I’m no smug veteran of outdoor running, having regularly incorporated it into my life only a handful of months ago after years of indoor treadmills that don’t prepare you one whit for the joint-compromising intensity of bringing your entire body down onto concrete again and again.  I don’t really have an issue with getting up at six o’clock in the morning, sometimes even earlier, but in the summertime I just don’t have a choice. For one thing, despite my sleep mask, I can sense and feel the sun pouring through my closed blinds, urging me awake (along with Annie cheerfully kneading my full bladder, insisting on breakfast).  For another, if I’m not lacing up my trainers and hitting the pavement by about six-thirty a.m. at the latest–which is already broad daylight–I may as well scrap it altogether and go back to bed, because there is no escaping a torturous, unforgiving sun beating down on you by seven.  

By eight, you’re squinting despite the sunglasses and baseball cap, wondering why you decided to punish yourself by doing cardio in a never-ending, miles-long outdoor pressure cooker. By nine, you’re gasping, streaming sweat, irritable, and doing your best to convince yourself that the ancient Romans had it far worse during their many feats of athleticism, running marathons in sandals and with no access to replenishing electrolyte drops. Occasional patches of shade and bursts of ocean breeze help, but not all that much. 

The first time I hit the Seawall at six-thirty a.m., I was legitimately shocked (and, being a bit of a naturally grumpy gal, annoyed) at how crowded it was, until I made the egregious error of attempting a jog at a slightly later time.  People here absolutely must get up early and start their outdoor exercise immediately in the summertime, or there’s very little chance of completing their goals when the temperature is already in the twenties by seven-thirty a.m. 

Just bear in mind: this is very new and very unusual for Vancouver.  We used to have one good, hot month per year, and we called it August.  Now?  I’m hauling out threadbare sundresses and bottles of SPF 30 by mid-March, and I don’t particularly like it, either.

Even though I am the lord and master of dumb decisions, I can at least pat myself on the back for practicing skin care since my pre-teen years.

(Embarrassing to even write that; legitimate and applicable for many, many of my sistren. We’re in this clusterfuck together, ladies, no matter how much you reject that reality!)

I will elaborate on all this in a future post that I’ve been working on for some time. Suffice to say that the western world’s obsession with young women–and preying on that obsession by developing a multi-billion industrial complex based on the terror and insecurity that women feel, including myself sometimes–is sick and exploitative.

…but you will never understand sickness and exploitation unless you have lived your life as a biological woman; you never will. This isn’t any personal victimhood talking, as I have never been a victim, and I never will be.

Oh, mercy, woman. Plays a song and no one listens. Play the song just a little bit louder.

…just a little bit. The men don’t know, but the little girls will understand.

* * * * *

Like everything when it comes to being a human being and maintaining a semblance of health, prevention is key; treatment is a pain in the ass. A few blocks away, if I find myself hanging out at Sunset Beach, I sometimes glance around at the young women around me.  I see youthful, sexy, long-limbed, taut-bodied, bikini-clad chicks in their twenties, enough to give me a sense of despair and insecurity until I realize I am old enough to be their mother and, in some sad cases, their grandmother.  There’s nothing quite so shocking as being an aging, attractive woman who suddenly realizes she isn’t in “competition” with beautiful young ladies; she’s thinking about retirement plans and whether she can get monthly payment plans for facelifts, while they’ve been menstruating for less than a decade and for whom the word “landline” might as well be an ancient, indecipherable Khmer proverb.

Anyway, I look at these near-flawless young women sprawled on their blankets, oiled up and absorbing the rays of the sun, and sometimes they do this for hours.  They aren’t talking, aren’t covering up, aren’t applying sunscreen, aren’t reading some delightfully pulpy novel, aren’t even scrolling on their phones.  They’re just wordlessly, determinedly broasting their bodies to various shades of terracotta, sepia, mahogany, and strong tea.  It is both astonishing and amusing to watch, although surreptitiously. 

Meanwhile, halfway-to-a-hundred Nadya over here is continually reapplying her sunscreen, wrapped in a beach towel to cover her modest swimsuit, and darting into the water as often as possible for respite since the overall heat is at nuclear levels.

Now see here, Charlie Bucket: about twenty-plus years ago (which, in today’s chronology, is roughly medieval-era), I used to get excited when the sun would finally make its appearance for a scant few weeks.  I would celebrate my “first beach day of the summer” by heading down to whichever beach was closest to where I lived, slathering my entire body in massage oil–I’m not even kidding, not even sort of–and conducting a sort of masochistic ritual in which I would broil my pale, clammy Pacific Northwest flesh to an alarming, painful crimson.  I’d deliberately burn myself to sheer agony as a means of welcoming and showing respect to the sun (or something), conditioning my skin for the rest of the summer through this objectively deranged tradition, and then making a point of avoiding direct sunlight, wearing sunscreen, and covering up as much as possible after that initial sacrifice.  

I have nothing pithy or sarcastic to say about this; it’s just what I did.

That was well before the Chernobyl levels that now characterize our current summer climate in Vancouver.  You reap what you sow, and these gals (and guys…plenty of them too, but they don’t face the same scrutiny of the outward aging process) are going to face some bad consequences of this careless worship of our mighty sun.  It is not some innocuous orb of fire whose sole purpose is to facilitate poolside barbecues and dick dancers on floats during Pride month.  It is to be respected, but not taken for granted, and the amount of premature aging that’s going to happen without protecting yourself from UV rays is dastardly.  I’ve known six people who have dealt with–and survived–melanoma, and I sense that all sorts of skin cancer diagnoses are only going to increase in their severity.  

What was my entire point of this offhand post?  Oh yeah: I’m getting old, the summers are sweltering, the kids need to take care of their skin, and we’ve still got a month to go.  The worst part?  Soup is one of my favourite things to make and eat, and the idea of drizzling streams of perspiration into a homemade cauldron of stovetop chowder is unthinkable.  It’s gazpacho or nothing, and gazpacho isn’t proper soup to me.  May the rains come, may the temperature plummet, and may we put this behind us until next summer, when I will probably shave my entire being from head to toe and join Annie beneath a side table on the hardwood floor.   

And may Jasper recover.