My skin had a fresh South Florida tan, still requiring a daily coat of aloe when I moved to Midtown in Atlanta, Georgia in the winter of 1993. I was unprepared in body, mind, spirit and wardrobe for the infamous blizzard in late March, a mere two weeks after I arrived. This was too far outside my comfort zone. And even after my third nip from a passing flask of whiskey in Piedmont Park I couldn’t bring myself to join the locals in many swift, drunken hurtles down a snow-covered hill on stolen street signs and restaurant food trays and crashing them into near-by Dogwood trees.
It should have been a magical weekend unlike anything this panhandle princess ever dared to experience but my thin skin wasn’t ready for the frigid weather and I spent my extreme yet short winter hiding in my apartment with the heat on high; safe in my comfort zone out of the elements.
I remember waking one day of the far side of April and opening my windows to a glorious temperature. A wondrous breeze filled my tiny apartment: the perfect temperature, humidity and barometric pressure. I sat down with my cup of store-brand coffee and stared at the leaves and the sky in reverence, half expecting a trio of blue birds to alight upon my windowsill to sing me a song of spring.
Later that same flawless southern day, as my land lord was fixing a light switch, my perfection ended abruptly. Noisy air-conditioners clanked on throughout the neighborhood. So many windows slammed shut down 8th Street it seemed to echo into forever.
“What was that?” I questioned my land lord.
“That was spring.” He answered, quite simply.
Spring sprang, then sprung.
Summers in Atlanta are as long as the list of streets with Peachtree in the name and even the most reclusive, yours truly, could not endure the solitude it took to keep heat stroke at bay. I wasted many hours categorizing as many different words for heat as Eskimo’s have for snow. Thick, wet, scorching, painful, smoggy, blasting, roasting, evaporating, fatal…etc…
One particularly hellish day (there’s another word) I peered from my darkened apartment at the visible swelter through drawn drapes. It looked hot. But I’d spent the last few eye-ball simmering Saturdays inside rotting my brain with westerns and Matlock reruns. Even I couldn’t take another squint-eyed, cigar-smoking, trail-dust covered moment of the genius that is Clint Eastwood, so this was clearly borderline madness.
Would I hole up again in the chilled sanctity of my abode, air-conditioning so high I could lose my smaller appendages to frostbite? Or would I race to the car, hissing at the sun like the undead, so I could meet with my boyfriend Steve at the local pub, again, doing our part for local beer sales?
I wasn’t really looking forward to the usual early afternoon buzz, but it was better then another wasted day in my 20X20 foot living room. I added one more term for heat to the category, ‘boring heat’ and ‘hissssss’ I fled from my apartment and the boredom that surpassed my fear-based desire for comfort.
As I approached my minimally-insured oven in my parking space, I could see the driver’s seat, molten and bubbling, forming little imitation leather islands on the car seat with black sand beaches and everything. I reached for the door handle with my now print-less fingertips and flung open the car door. I recoiled in pain from the blasting fumes of fermented to-go cups and whatever was rotting in that Styrofoam box and I checked if my eyebrows were still there.
The unforgiving sun forced my decision over grilling my legs or a stewing death by vitamin D poisoning. And since my parking lot didn’t have frosty glasses or this week’s issue of Creative Loafing, I favored a nice medium to medium rare with ‘FO’ charred onto the back of one leg and ‘RD’ on the other. But backwards, so it read DROF.
I’m sure if I was anywhere else but Midtown, people would think it was some weird scarification thing they were too OTP to understand. But, no; as I entered the pub, the bartender pointed at my welted fanny and said,
“So, I see you got your Taurus fixed.”
“Kiss my DROF.” I replied and picked a seat at the bar beneath the air vent.
I demanded ice cold beer to decrease the swelling in my brain and a trendy weekly circular for when my vision and motor skills returned.
“What are you doing to stay cool today?” The bartender asked as he placed a pitcher of beer and an icy mug on the bar top next to a tattered weekly circular.
“Looking for plane tickets to Australia,” I replied breathlessly fanning myself with the paper. The bartender looked confused. So I clarified, “Its winter there.”
I’m not sure if he understood but he left and I caressed myself with the frosty mug like an over-sexed beer commercial that didn’t quite make it past Standards and Practices.
When Steve arrived, late and sweaty as usual, I asked him what he planned for us that day. He silently filled his beer. I knew what that meant. I was looking at what his plans for us were today. It wasn’t a bad start to a Saturday afternoon. But sharing a pitcher of beer was what we were supposed to do while deciding what to do for the day. Right?
A monotonous hour, one pitcher of beer and a few redundant Bevis and Butthead impersonations later, I felt a strange thing happen to my face. My lower lip grew heavier and began to protrude. My forehead crinkled and wrinkled and I heard a weird tone in my voice as I said:
“I wanna do something fun.”
“Don’t pout about it.” Steve replied, “Open the paper and find us something to do tonight.” He waved for another pitcher of beer as my lower lip grew;
“Not tonight. Today.” I whined.
Steve glared at me and in a few more testy words I was questioning whether or not he was going to leave that barstool to trot to the can. Maybe locking myself in a tiny apartment every weekend doing my best interpretation of a dormant cave fish had taken its toll on my social etiquette and sanity. I said, a bit too loud, the most unbelievable string of words a person could utter according to the look on Steve’s face:
“Well, I don’t care how hot it is. I’m bored with this place.”
Man, you could have heard a feather hit the frigging floor. I saw pitchforks raising and torches blazing out of the corner of my eye. I was waiting to be stoned to death by angry, loyal pub patrons for my blasphemy as Steve moved his barstool away from me ever so much.
I cast a needful gaze at the side door. I knew if it wasn’t unlocked I was going to have to break through the plate glass window Kung-fu style to make it out of there with my life. But then, brave, stupid or bored beyond reason, I knew I could not spend another day trapped inside a stale climate-controlled environment. And with a psychotic twitch in my left eye, I demanded Steve’s answer;
“I’m going to the park and walk around at the art festival. Are you coming with me?” Steve dismissed me politely. Well, maybe not that politely; thus my snide response, “Typical.”
And I stood up tall. I chugged my beer like it was my last meal. With my boldest stride towards the exit daggers of disbelief from patrons and employees alike shredded my DROF-engraved backside as two Goths dragged themselves from outside to the bar, dehydrated and weak. They had chanced a decent make-up job against a mad dash to the pub and lost. I added ‘melting heat’ to my growing list.
“P…B…R…” One Goth gasped through charred lungs and chapped lips to the bartender, “P…B…R!”
With the speed and precision of a paramedic I watched the bartender dispatch two large cans of beer to the bar and the Goths both guzzled half the beer down and dumped the rest on their steaming skulls.
I turned my concerned gaze back to the front door. Damn. It was going to be a perilous heat. P.e.r.i.l.o.u.s…
But now everybody was watching me, daring me with their scowling eyes and I boldly exited my sanctuary and I heard the words from some wise guy;
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of death…” And the tinted door to my comfort zone closed behind me.
I’ve heard it said that Atlanta is a city built in a forest. So the Valley of Death must be those few blocks I had to walk to get to the park. There were no trees to shade the sidewalks so they blinded me with their midday gleam. I had only the familiar scent of a near-by drycleaners and the high-pitched beep omitting from the pedestrian signal guiding the blind across the bustling intersection.
Curiously I examined my cement path ahead through vision-impairing heat-vapors. I listened again.
Somewhere over and beyond the rumble of traffic whizzing by me on the right I could vaguely hear a drumbeat. For a moment I thought it was merely another Fulton County driver field testing for seismic activity in the metropolitan area with the newest rap CD but as I made my way closer to the park, it grew steadily louder. Slowly I heard the melodic wail of a wind instrument until I knew it was a flute, tweeting wildly and joined by the feral chiming of tambourines.
My feet grew anxious, if such a thing can happen. Maybe it was just the heat affecting my brain;
“Hurry!” My feet told my burning lungs. “Wanna go there!”
Ahead of me was the Tenth and Monroe crosswalk. My feet hadn’t been on this corner yet.
And across the Valley of Death in this unexplored part of Midtown, was a new and personally undiscovered breed of human being that looked like they actually planned this outing; light-colored clothing and brimmed hats, reeking of SPF 5000 and citronella and toting cold purified H2O in reusable, environmentally friendly, color-coordinated bottles. And if I wasn’t mistaken; they were looking forward to their day in the stifling blaze.
I was considering doubling-back to my comfortable apartment to beg for Clint’s steel-eyed forgiveness. But the infectious music pulled me up Tenth Street, towards a tree-dotted haven bustling with vendors of crafts, creations, cooked delights and sweaty city-dwellers. I saw the line of tented booths and my mind began to wander towards the colorful merchandise.
My feet reminded me;
“Hey, DROF! Music? That way.”
I herded into the park with the other bi-peds and followed the drumbeat to a crowd gathered around something happening that I couldn’t quite see. But I could hear the music calling me and my anxious feet. I pressed through the thick circle of entertained onlookers. A crushed toe here, a lock of my long hair snagged there, one; ‘hey pal, keep your hands to yourself,’ and I found my way to the center.
It was a-whirl with colored cloths and netting, feathers and urban-jungle hair upon what appeared to be a dozen child-like wood-nymphs frolicking in the sun.
‘Marvelous.’ I thought, my eyes darted unfocused at the young and limber and exuberant dancers spinning around circle. I even released a light giggle at the truest expression of freedom I had ever seen. But I realized there was a plot amidst what I thought was merely a splendid chaos.
There was some kind of fox, by the look of the performer’s fake pelt and tail, dashing around to the beat of the drum or the chirp of the flutes. A group of mighty hunters rhythmically charged and chased the fox in tempo around the performance circle. The mighty hunters lost track when the fox slipped slyly into the crowd. They searched high and low and even as the fox pulled a pretty teenage girl from the crowd and hid behind her, attempting an escape across the circle, the mighty hunters of course could not see the fox behind the lovely victim.
Suddenly a hippie burst theatrically into the performance circle. Donned in a dingy rock and roll t-shirt, flip-flops and faded burgundy bell-bottoms and tangled sun-kissed hair, he was a flash-back of great beauty, but there was a ‘crap this is going to be bad’ feeling flowing through the crowd. For only a brief moment.
The hippie easily picked up the beat and joined the hunters in their search as the fox slowly crept across the circle hidden behind his giggling victim. The hippie was given an invisible spear by another hunter and the hippie began to dash in and out of the excited crowd; his frizzy, long-haired head popped up between people as he dramatically scoured the horizon for the fox.
Suddenly the hippie burst from the crowd directly behind the fox. He pulled back his invisible spear and charged. The startled fox darted away and the crowd was over-joyed when the hippie began to lead the hunters in a dancing pursuit back around the perimeter.
But the fox had grown tired and the hippie soon cornered the fox between himself and the mighty hunters. The hippie charged the fox with his invisible spear and invisibly pierced the fox’s belly. The fox clenched in invisible pain and then laid dead. The hippie poked the fox once then seized the fake fox pelt and tail from the performer’s shoulders and held it high and victoriously. The mighty hunters danced around the perimeter of the cheering mob with honor to the hippie, triumphantly sporting his furry trophy.
The heroic hippie’s march stopped at the lovely teenage girl he rescued from the fox and dropped to one knee before her. He pointed gallantly to the sky, to his heart, then to her and presented her with the fox’s pelt as a token of his love. She accepted the pelt with a nod as the performers danced again, now in apparent celebration of a wedding. The hippie offered the pretty girl his elbow and led her to the edge of the circle.
Then the hippie turned and bowed to his grateful audience. With a humble sweep of his hand he honored his fellow performers. He bowed to his leading lady and kissed her hand good-bye before he disappeared into the applauding crowd without uttering a word.
I dabbed the tears of viewing perfection from my eyes and let my feet take me out of the performance circle. I found my way to the hill atop the park with activity and life and people milling around below me.
Then I cursed myself for wasting so many days in my protective comfort zone, away from that which I assured myself was harsh and unbearable. I spent so much time cowering in my climate-controlled environment and not stepping out into the elements, into the experience of life, in fear of getting weathered.
I was wishing I had the brass below to throw myself so confidently into life like that brilliant hippie when my cell phone rang. It was Steve.
“Me and the guys are going to see a movie in a while.” Steve said, obviously expecting me to invite myself out of the heat, “Do you want me to get you a ticket?”
“No thanks,” I replied, “I don’t feel like seeing a movie.”
“Are you going to come back to the pub and hang out?” I could hear his subtle pout.
“No. I’m good.” I said, but there was a long pause to comprehend that, then Steve asked;
“Aren’t you hot?”
I looked around at the sights to see and listened to the sounds to hear and smelled the aromas to smell. I smiled when I saw the hippie playfully chasing a few ecstatic giggling children around on the hilltop. Though I knew I could never pull off spontaneous performance art without a second chancing of being on the bad end of a village stoning, I knew that I had already stepped outside my comfort zone to live life despite the heat.
“No,” I said, “I’m just getting comfortable out here.”
I was smiling as I hung up and walked onward, looking for another bottle of cold water and some of that SPF 5000 I smelled on everybody, maybe some funnel cake. It looked like I was going to be out there a while, roasting my DROF off, happily enjoying myself in the wonders outside my comfort zone.
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