It’s early September and the long, hot days of summer are winding to a close. Halle-fuckin’-lujah! Summer can suck it.
Yes. It’s an unpopular opinion. However, for those of us who or find themselves turning into a blotchy, blistered mess without slathering on a protective coating of SPF 100 and fail to frolic while wearing shorts, summer sucks hot, sweaty balls.
Vacation? What Summer Vacation?
The older you get, summer (as the kids say) “hits different.” Maybe its because, unless you’re in the education field, there’s no such thing as a summer off. If anything, summer work days become even more of an unlubed fist up the poop chute. The sky is blue. The sun is out. But you’re stuck staring out the window, sandwiched between pressing deadlines and Zoom calls.
Taking a week off for vacation becomes a Herculean labor that requires at least two weeks worth of prep to slap together an out-of-office plan. Furthermore, the rest of your coworkers are also trying to take vacation time and feeling the pinch of Preparation Purgatory themselves. It’s a lot of work for what often amounts to very little reward.
Which brings us to vacation itself. Chances are, if you’re one of the schmoes putting together an out-of-office plan, you likely don’t make enough to park your ass on the shores of the Amalfi Coast for a solid month, sipping homemade limoncello and playing grab ass with a cadre of cabana boys who respond to either Lorenzo, Tomasso, or Rocco.
Nope. If you’re an out-of-office planner, you’re probably bound for a less exotic locale like the Jersey Shore or Myrtle Beach. While the Jersey Shore holds some faint stirrings of nostalgia for me, I’m with Anakin Skywalker: “I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.” Looking out at the ocean can be peaceful, but the godforsaken sands and unyielding sun make a day at the beach feel like a week in a dungeon.
By the time vacation rolls around, it becomes an overstuffed race to cram as many things as possible into a precious window of freedom. Overstimulation meets overscheduling. In the end, it’s all so rushed that nothing feels truly enjoyable.
Feel the Heat
When you venture outside in the summer, a sweat ‘stache forms on your upper lip within seconds and the dread condition of Swamp Ass or Underboob Sweat sets in, causing your clothes to cling to crevices in the most unflattering of ways. It’s uncomfortable and can transform a simple, typically stress-relieving joy like going for a walk outside into an exercise in anger management.
Kettering Health also notes that summer heat can trigger a gauntlet of negative physical and psychological reactions:
When your body gets too hot, its stress response is activated, releasing higher levels of stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline. This can lead to emotional changes like increased agitation, impatience, heightened anxiety, and, in the most extreme cases, mental fogginess and confusion.
Well, isn’t that fucking great?
You’re Damned If You Wear Shorts and You’re Damned If You Don’t
Summer wardrobes lack the options of other seasons. While I like the freedom of not having to swing on a jacket and that my feet can breathe freely in sandals or flip-flops, everything else about summer apparel blows. In winter, you can layer clothing to reach an optimum temperature. Spring, for all its problematic pollen, lets you ditch the coat and just wear jeans and a long sleeved top. Ditto for fall. If you want to wear a sweater, hoodie, or rock a t-shirt outside, there ain’t no weather stopping you!
Sure, you can wear jeans in the summer, but run the risk of sweating through them. Shorts might be a cooler option, unless you plant your keister on a hot leather car seat and light up the backs of your thighs like a movie marquee.
From a fashion perspective, summer shorts for women fall into one of two equally unappealing camps. You can either don Daisy Dukes that are the equivalent of walking around in a denim diaper, or wear hideous “mom shorts” with a 7″ inseam that hits just above the knee and are universally unflattering. There’s no middle ground. Either you put your cheeks on full display or walk around looking like Angus Young in drag if you don’t want to sweat your ass off. And even if you do have the confidence to rock a pair of coochie cutters, unless you make friends with Body Glide, you might find yourself with a case of chafing “chub rub” if you do any walking while wearing short-shorts.
Guys have a few more options. However, the recent backlash against men’s cargo shorts also opens dudes up to their own undue share of mockery if they dare to wear apparel that’s more functional than fashionable while attempting to stay cool in smegma-curdling heat.
Summer is Fucking Loud
Summer is more than just sensory overload in terms of scorching temperatures, garbage baking in the summer sun, and the omnipresent stench of B.O. It’s also a cacophony of sounds seemingly designed to catapult you straight into the mouth of madness.
Some summer sounds are charming and evoke bygone days. The tinkling tune of the ice cream truck chugging up the street and the sound of kids running around and playing outside is actually kind of nice. Enjoy it while you can, children! Run fast and run free for all of us who find our feet firmly nailed to the sad, sticky floor of adulthood!
That said, most of the more adult-oriented seasonal noise is flat out obnoxious. Fireworks on the 4th of July can be fun. However, fireworks going off for hours on end are decidedly less endearing when they’re celebrating the 9th of August, Amazon Prime Day, or your Cousin Tim finally getting a date that he didn’t have to pay for with earnings acquired through selling stolen copper piping for scrap.
Weekends are usually prime time for cars to come tearing ass down the street, doing wheelies in residential areas with mufflers rattling like a nest of snakes. I don’t mind when someone blasts their radio. Some summer jams cutting through the air can be nice. But when some dipshit’s weapons-grade woofer drives within range of your house and you feel the windows rattling from second floor, the music itself is inaudible — but you sure can feel it.
Summertime Sadness
Perhaps my attitude towards summer stems from the knowledge that summer today is different from the summers of my youth. It’s like taking a sip of a McDonald’s Shamrock Shake and wanting to hurl because it tastes nothing like the minty confection you remembered and now tastes like a combination of chalk, lard, and a faint aftertaste of mouthwash. But unlike that momentary disappointment, the let-down of summer lasts for an entire season.
Maybe it’s remembering summers as they once were and contrasting them with how they are now. The shift from summer as a carefree reprieve from everyday routine to a sweltering mess of same-old-same-old punctuated by a scramble to wring a droplet of fun from the season is jarring. The mind forgets, but the body remembers routines and repetition learned in our early years.
Decades of seeing summer as a break from school and responsibility are deeply embedded and recalled even as an adult. When the memory of something you once loved doesn’t match the reality of a similar experience today, it can feel like a betrayal.
It sounds very foo-foo navel gaze-y, but you can’t measure “now” against “what used to be.” Often, “now” looks very different from just a few years ago. Injuries (mental, physical, and emotional) can compound over time. Life gets more complicated and it can be a whole new ballgame with different players.
The beautiful Welsh word hiraeth springs to mind. It means “longing for a home you can never go back to.” That sentiment extends to summer. Summers might not be as carefree as they once were. Yet, tempering expectations and trying to find ways to make them fun again while working with what you’ve got can turn things around.
So, What Do We Do About It?
For starters, acknowledging that summer has a cousin to winter’s seasonal affective disorder (SAD) can be helpful. Summer heat can trigger the body’s cortisol stress response. Being bombarded with ads and photos pimping summer fun can also make you feel like you’re an anomaly if you don’t love going to the beach or engaging in outdoor activities when warmer weather sets in. Some people love summer. Good for them! But it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you if you’d rather shit in your hands and clap than hang ten with Frankie and Annette.
A common thread I heard from people this year was: “When do I get a fucking summer?” While biting your tongue is a useful weapon for keeping the peace, doing it all the time just means you normalize suffering in silence. There’s only so much room in The Great Garbage Can of Emotions to keep stuffing things down until the damn thing overflows. Being brutally honest and voicing your discontent can be a start towards feeling better about whatever annoys you. (Case in point: my mother once went a whole month without yelling at everyone and wound up with an ulcer.)
You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, but you can make it a point to enjoy summer your way. Here are a few ideas to keep in mind so that summer sucks less next year:
- If you don’t like hot weather, stay indoors. Head someplace with central air conditioning. Go see a movie. Skip off to a museum. Or, if you’re on a budget, bring back the glory of wandering around an air-conditioned mall.
- Take one day off each month. No one can make you fill out an out-of-office plan if you’re just taking one day off. Better yet, be spontaneous! Play hooky! Call off sick! Even if it just means sitting in front of a floor fan with it aimed at your crotch while binging Netflix, it’s a reprieve from the madness and a day without responsibility.
- Bribe yourself. As an adult, responsibilities don’t stop just because it’s summer. There are things we all have to do in order to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. But what’s the point of living if life is just about struggle and survival? Goddamnit! You’re an adult now! Reward yourself once per week for doing something you didn’t want to do with the same energy you’d get for doing summer chores as a kid. Get yourself an extra-large iced coffee for “hopping on a call.” Devour a slab of berry cheesecake as a treat for finishing a project. See at least one summer concert that makes you feel like a music-obsessed teen again. Buy a good book to savor from under an umbrella if you’re coerced against your will into going to the beach. Speaking of….
- Re-institute “summer reading.” Whether you enjoy sitting outside and thumbing through a paperback or like listening to an audiobook on-the-go, revive the summertime practice of escaping into a book. School-mandated summer reading was equally full of hits and misses. For every Catcher in the Rye or Lord of the Rings banger, there was always a Moby Dick or Red Badge of Courage to suffer through. But now you can read whatever the hell you want and not have to worry about getting quizzed on it. That said, Pizza Hut is really missing out on creating a Book It program for adults.
- Stay present and stop comparing. Let’s not sugar coat it. Staying in the moment is hard when there are so many things competing for our attention. The onslaught of picture-perfect vacation photos and summer festivals you see on Instagram can make you feel like everyone else is living it up and your summer is the drizzling shits. The very nature of social media and the fact that there are people who jot down the job title “influencer” on their tax returns indicates a concerted effort to prey upon the anxieties and wants of people to make them feel like they’re missing out. Whether it’s someone you knew from high school trying to sell you on a LabubuLemon yoga pants crossover MLM scheme or even an earnest friend who who scraped together enough for a summer vacation in Santorini, remember that behind every carefully chosen Instagram photo is a much larger story that isn’t being told. Stay focused on your reality and question why you may want to do something similar. If you can’t clearly articulate why, then it might not be right for you. Stay present and dream your own dream.
Summer sucks, but it doesn’t have to. With autumn closing in, there’s a chill in the air, apple cider in the fridge, and less pressure to perform for an invisible audience you might feel is “grading” your summer adventures. Colder temperatures mean more time for hibernation and reflection. So, take it easy and find the lesson in the hot mess of adult summers so that you can enjoy it your way the next time the calendar flips to June.
Photo: Author’s own.
YOU CAN SUCK IT.