hot city diary: day 122

I'm out in the woods with Alaska Sam and it's unseasonably hot.

My dog is floating next to me in her ski outfit.  I must be dreaming.

There's a rustling in the bushes and then a bear comes out of nowhere.  Tree branch smashing and kicking up undergrowth, this bear is mad.

My dog and Alaskan Sam disappear and it's just me and Grizzly.

I wake up to me sitting up in my bed punching the headboard,  I've busted a knuckle and it's terribly painful.

I crawl into the kitchen and take some aspirin and stick my fist into the ice chest.  Ouch.  I'm a bandaged mess.  The ice is the only thing making it better.  Stop the swelling.  If only I could stop the swelling in my head.  I stick my head in the cooler and things are better, for now

hot city diary: day 19

Floating.

Diving.

Moving effortlessly in the water.

Hot City Diaries: Day 14

The main drag is full of trucks.  All kinds of action is going on at the town store across the street.  A steady flow of patrons going in and out, getting in and out of their trucks.  Whole families stored up in the trucks, some of the trucks will just pull up the sidewalk and let out a little one to go pick up some goodies.

It's not that hot over here.

We make our way into Carlee's to get some grub.  It's a fun divey restaurant with a bar that wraps around the entire inside.  It's cheerful and friendly and the waitress apologizes for forgetting to bring extra plates and then runs off again.  She's great.  It's nice and cool inside and the ol' folks from around town are mingling and doing their thing and somebody thinks I'm the double for a friend that lives in Vermont.  I ask how my doppelganger is doing and she gives me a quick breakdown where he's had problems with his relationship but things are great now that he has a job and can pay alimony.

I agree to take a picture so she can send to Bob (Robert, if you don't now me) Something.

The band starts to sing.

"Baby, I'll never forget our time in Borrego,
Where did it go?

Baby, You want to run away to Borrego,
What do I know?

Babe, Why can't we be together in Borrego,
Where do I go?

Baby, Let's sail away to Borrego,
Come on, let's go."

It's nice music.  The food comes and it's a huge portion and the drinks are gigantic.  We share.  It's Borrego.

Hot City Diary: Day 13

"Let's Go, Go, Go to Borrego!" is the chant we cant stop yelling on the way to Borrego.

Hot City Diary: Day 12

My pool is unreal.  It's deep enough to put in a diving board, but if you launch off it too hard to the left then you might land in the jacuzzi, so maybe the diving board is a bad idea.

What a beautiful day.

The sun is out.  Clear blue skies from here to eternity.  The mountains rise up all around the house and the small local community that's tucked away up near the base in a cove.  Each house has a front yard that is a work of art with water friendly plants and rocks and stuff.  Palm trees lick the sky.

My beautiful Italian wife is being funny on the large inflatable swan that she bought.  Shelly laughs and almost falls off her perch on the swan.  She wants her magazines and a beer.

The dog is running and playing in the grass.

I walk out front to get the mail and the neighborhood is sweet.  I meet some of my neighbors and they tell me they paid too much for their house and ask me to put the TV, that Dan left, back in the sideyard.  I apologize for leaving it out on the curb since I moved in.

"I thought the city was coming for it." I say

"Look, we might not be upper cove, but we certainly aren't lower cove, so if you could just keep it upper cove-ish, that'll be great." He says.

"Sure thing."  I say.

Hot City Diary: Day 121

We're on the back of a dragon fly.  There are millions of tiny molecules heating up and floating off into the atmosphere.  It's happening on a large liquid plane out in the backyard.  Our dragon fly skirts the surface, making a figure eight over it; flying back and forth, back and forth.  Sometimes, he'll dip down and bounce off the water, then it's off into the bougainvillea.  As the days heat comes (today it will be 108) it happens at an even faster rate.  These tiny molecules are the water evaporating off the surface and the dragon fly is bathing himself in evaporation.

So common to experience rain, but no one gets to evaporate.

I've busted my pinky and torn up my big toe.  Blood all over the place.  There's a knot on the back of my head the size of a softball.  What the fuck happened?  I try to stand up and realize that it's going to be better down here on the floor.  I'm on all fours.  Head spinning.  There's music still playing down the hallway.

I crawl forward and make my way into the living room.  It's black outside.  A hot breeze blows through the house.  I grab a towel that's hanging on the oven door.  It's dirty.  Everythings dirty.  Good god.  I need to spray down the entire inside of this house.  Something else to put on the list.

I figure things will be better in the pool, so I crawl, limp, hop and fall into the blue, er light green.

It's perfect in here.  I can float.

The towel is now soaking wet, so I throw it out into the moonlight to dry.  As dry as it is out here, the towel will probably dry out in the moonlight.  I float around in the pool.  The shallow end is a mess of grass and algae and all kinds of bugs working it out in there.

I float to the bluer end and it's not as blue as it use to be.  It certainly isn't as blue as when I first bought it.  The haze in the bottom of the pool is getting thicker.  I'm sure I'll have to empty the thing at the end of Summer.  Emptying the pool at the end of summer.  The pool will be empty by the end of summer.  What was once full of water, the most precious of precious.  We will kill the lawn, but the pool must always live.
But not this year.  Not for me.  The pool and the lawn must die, but not now.  Not yet.

The pool is perfect.  I hang on to the orca floatie for dear life.  I shouldn't be floating in the deep end.  The water is around 89.  it's perfect in here.  I just need something to eat and some filtered water.

The music plays from the broken out windows.  Oh that must have happened last night also.  What is happening to me when I fall into these heat black outs?  I need to make sure the gas is turned off.  What else did I do?  I swim to the steps and get out and hobble around the house and yes the gas is turned off.  Whew.

I lay down on the outdoor lounger and fall asleep in the warm midnight air.

Hot City Diary: Ode to iced water

Hello ice water, how I love you so.
in a mug or in a glass
sweeter than the sweetest ass
First we filter the water thru charcoal and then poor it in 8 ounce servings.

And by we I mean me.
maybe the dog.

The water that's been sitting out on the counter all day sparkles in the pitcher.
The ice crackles when we drop them in.

Hot City Diaries: Day 95

I'm so tired of the heat.  106 today.

The cool air at work helps.  It actually makes me want to fall asleep.  I can't sleep at home with it being so hot and filthy and it's just so nice and cool and clean here.  The maids flutter around and clean it even more.  Somebody is in the lobby with a brush most of the night.  Unfortunately when they go to clean other parts of the hotel that's when it get's weird.

I'm dozing off on the couch in the lobby, at least if the phone rings or somebody walks in, I'll wake up.  Not like falling asleep in the back office or in one of the linen closets or even better, one of the rooms; anyways it's NOT like that and I doze off for 20 minutes and wake up to Michael sitting on the couch next to me.

He must of been run out of his meth camp or the cops raided it.

His Six and a half foot frame is stretched across the couch at the furthest point from me.

Well, he's laying down with his jacket over him and he's taken off his shoes and there is a horrible stench in the room.  Horrible.  He's not sleeping either.  He's in this weird state of consciousness.  Mumbling about handling it and magic.  He can't put a sentence together without some other part of him ripping him apart and he starts talking about something completely different.  He moves his jacket over his head and then sits up with it draping over his face.  He's so dirty.

He's suppose to be the son of a famous politician.  They've tried to help him but he needs to hit rock bottom before anyone can do anything.

I remember this and try to get him into a conversation about his Mother or Father but we easily get sidetracked about how he can make shit work by magic.  He snaps his fingers and claps his hands and wants me to look at him when he's talking.  I remember they say he carries a knife.  Security says that, they've got the whole file on him.  I really need to find out who the Mother and Father are.

That's when I give him a cigarette and tell him it's been cool but people will be coming soon and he has to leave, then I sneak into the back to radio security and ask him where's he's been for the past hour? or more?

Turns out he's the new guy that just got back from Iraq and he's deaf.  He's legally deaf in his left side because of a rocket launcher mishap.  He's also the guard that, on his day off, comes running over to the front desk and can't get any of the clerks attention because they were slammed and he yells, "There's a dead body out back, somebody call 911!"  Some guests were a little put off, even though it turns out the body was gone 2 minutes later when they all went out to look.  Yea, the new guy, he says he lives at the motel down the street.  Sounds like a fun guy.  Fly by the seat of your pants living in a motel, do what I want and half deaf war hero.  I like him already.  Sure, he's stoned all the time to get over the bad shit he did over there and it's A-fucking OK with me.  Send these people out to war and they get to smoke as much pot as they want when they get home.  He's friendlier and has a great big smile and even though the jokes are way to complicated, he's funny.

 Michael stops opening the door and talking thru it and then letting it shut and then opening it again just a little bit mumbling something and grinding his teeth letting it shut and then opening it again to clap his hands and snap. and Michael, who I accidentally call Jacob and  he corrects me with Michael.  So that's when our security guard shows up after unlocking the pools with the chains and locks in hand at 5:30am and does it for effect; and that's when we ask him to leave. We ask him to leave nicely.  He doesn't want to leave until we give him cigarettes.  We give him some cigarettes.  Security also reminds me not to look him in the eye.  He finds that intimidating and starts to get all hyped up.  I think about our magic time together and realize he was just having a freak out.  Snapping and clapping, what a freak show, whatever, I don't look him in the eye anymore and soon he puts on his shoes and stands out side and asks for another cigarette and a lighter and then lights his cigarette and throws the lighter back at us and leaves.  All the while flailing about and riding a certain intense high.

We open all the doors and turn the fan on high and have the housekeepers fabreeze the shit out of the place.  I sneeze.  We laugh, and Security makes his way on his rounds.

Hot City Diary: Day 94

Burning, burning, hot, hot, hot!  Yikes this car is hot.  It's gotta be 200 degrees Fahrenheit in here, not to mention the rest of me is being quickly cooked.  What can I do?  I roll down the windows and catch a hot breeze and go.  It's more training at the night shift and things are going great.  The car slowly cools off and by the time I pull into the dirt lot in Palm Springs, it has cooled off a little more.

It's the weekend and the bachelorette train just keeps on coming.  They got all kinds of ideas of what they're going to do.  The Sequin Crew tore thru the place like a tornado.  The bride calmly walks in last with all the adornments, the sash, a veil, and some kind of nice white dress, not her wedding dress but something expensive.  The sash reads Bride to Be.  Some of the girls have gone inside the bar and others goof off waiting for their pictures from the photo booth and the bride mingles.

Then comes another crew.  This time not as obvious as having matching outfits or theme party, but they're all very nice and one of the girls is wearing a sash.  They walk past the desk and see the photo booth and freak out and take some pictures and then disappear into the bar.

Somebody wants pillows.

Somebody is streaking the compound.  Probably room 4K.

Somebody wants somebody else to shut up.

Somebody needs some antacid.

The party goes into the early morning hours.  People complain that there is no parking.  We tell them how sorry we are and not to be upset, they can park in the 10 minute parking overnight.  Soon it's all full.  The whole compound.  There's an estimated 272 guests in house.

It's 3:43 a.m. Some guys hop the fence to the pool and get busted and want to know if they have to climb back out or if security will open the fence.  Security makes them climb back over.

Soon it's 5 a.m. and the reports are finished and the desk is clean and we refresh the water and wait for our relief to come in.

Hot City Diary: Day 160

It's getting worse in the back yard.  The pool is looking like a pond.  Grass has grown into it at one end and the algae has bloomed and so there are all kinds of things happening in the shallow end.  The bottom of the pool has a ghostly fog on it.  I can swim around in the deep end and the water is still fairly decent.

I can't have people over.

There's been so many hot days that now when one of them is around 100 it's not that big of a deal.  In fact you tell family that calls that it's nice out today.  It's only 99 or 100 degrees.  It's crazy talk.

The pool waterfall continues to flow, but I can't get enough chemicals in the water to change the mix.  I'm fucked.  The pool is a world of it's own now.  I will put a pound of chlorine in the pool today, but it won't change anything.  I'll also have to put in a gallon of acid and wait a couple hours in the bathtub until the pool is usable again.  More like 4 hours.

Even the cactus are melting.  They turn brown at the bottom first and then the arms start to fail.  Maybe you'll get lucky and you'll get the white puss and then they die.  They become shells and the sun further tears them apart and the shattered honeycombed insides are left to further bake in the sun and fail under the weight of the rest.  This is the worst heatwave combined with a drought that this area has seen in my lifetime.  We need more rain in California.