What is a New York Summer?

It is the months when the heat soars and the sun shines with an intensity that finally makes one pay attention to its sheer power.

It is the time when the humidity makes us strip and expose our legs and thighs, arms and backs, breasts and hair on chests in public, like everyone else, daring to be ourselves for once without the coverings that reveal personality but hide physical existence.

It is evenings when we bike fly across the Brooklyn Bridge (and the Manhattan Bridge, Williamsburg Bridge and Queensboro Bridge) with the wind cooling our bodies, yet unable to dissipate our glorious youthful energy and exhilaration.

It is mornings when we awake all aroused as hell and go running in the park at the light of dawn, before returning home and showering to begin our day at our job after a splendid start.

It is when we hang out on the stoops until 2 am with friends in BedStuy, the South Bronx, Jamaica, Flatbush, Crown Heights, Harlem, Washington Heights, the East Village and countless other neighborhoods we call home, maybe drinking a cold beer, possibly smoking a joint and listening to music made incredible by our high, while talking about the good old days when we were teenagers, even if we are still teenagers or merely twenty somethings (or even OGs) breathing in the warm and free summer air, calculating the odds of some daring mischief of which we are supposed to know better, or planning our weekend at a club or concert.

It is when we suddenly find ourselves in Times Square, amidst billions of tourists surrounded by invisible money-grabbing Emos, Spidermans and female Desnudos, thinking how could anyone fall for that, then laughing anyway in the glow of the lights and signs that distract from the smells and decadent dirt of the city, that they come from so very far away to witness, wade and revel in.

It is when we once again repeat the pilgrimage to Coney Island, Orchard Beach, Riis Park and the Rockaways, requiring a display of more skin and less clothing than we would ever be seen on the street, and the ritual baptism of immersing ourselves in the sacred, laughing, joyous, deep, dark water brushing endlessly and reassuringly against our bodies and the sand, with blue skies hovering like the universe’s seagull, not unlike the occasional giant kite or an airplane with banners, giving us an imaginary, heavenly bird’s eye view of ourselves.

It is the nights when, if we do not have air conditioning, we are tempted to sleep by the windows, with the fire escape right outside, if no one is around to object, with our bodies almost deliriously naked and sweaty under the turned up, repetitious fan, feeling the elevated temperature in more sensual and sexual ways than ever before, aware that we must awaken before the morning sunshine reveals our erotic skin and unembarrassed assets and distended organs to neighbors.

And it is when, on special nights, hot degrees shared with overheated partners result in blazing sex that burn into our memories and lasts a lifetime.

Because it was a New York summer.

SU1907

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