Humid Daydreams

I. Gothic Hero

Like all desperate women, I spend my nights dreaming of the gothic lover I know waits somewhere for me, biding his time behind a tree, yes, spying. My subconscious struggles to reconcile the obvious creepiness of such an archetype with what I find so attractive about him, which is not, or I hope isn’t, the same thing. I paint my lover uncertain and socially awkward rather than eerie, apologetic for his ungainliness, yet indignant about subjects for which he has a passion. He is tall and thin, weaker than I am. In my dreams I am not the porcelain damsel fearing and at the same time hoping to be broken by the man who belongs to the old house. On the contrary, he is the fragile one, teetering like an unfounded lamppost, undernourished by an impoverished childhood or his own appetite-ruining anxiety, and I must conceal my own strength so as not to make him uncomfortable. I let him play the protective knight, tucking his arm around me, wrapping me in his jacket like a package and carrying—delivering--me home. Only when I have won myself access to his bed, in those moments after the book has long ended, only then do I show him my true self, the strong, flexible, and, dare I hope, exciting partner in crime and fun who will pinch and bite and devour him to within an inch of his life.

II. College, Central New York

My 21st century college became abruptly 20th century, even 19th, in the winter. Despite the boxy, utilitarian buildings and students still hunched over tiny laptops in the library, counting down the days till the endless winter break, we were still in a small town presiding on a gentle hill between the Finger Lakes, sometimes buried under snow in October, shivering under thin blankets like children in an austere Victorian orphanage. The smooth concrete of the paths made no difference when you were walking down the hill from the dining halls—the ice that froze over it rendered the hill steep and treacherous, the kind you wished you’d brought a fancy cane for, one of those archaic ones with a bird-shaped head. Even when you found someone to cuddle with in the on-campus apartments, the faulty thermostats would make you shudder against one another. If you wore no or little clothing, you felt slatternly and guilty, feeling the urge to put on a shapeless sleeping-robe and nightcap.

After a day downtown, the already unpredictable bus back to campus might decide to go completely off-schedule, making you feel like the crazy one for thinking there was ever such a thing as being “on-schedule”. Feet freezing to numb blocks in ineffectual snow boots, you’d call up a roommate for a ride, get home and desperately rub your feet to get the feeling back. Your roommates watch you solemnly, gravely, not yet discarding the possibility of frostbite. Then you’d go to the bathroom, splash your frozen face in the mirror that you consider, for a moment, calling a looking-glass.

III. Climate Change Gothic

But now, now you’ve fast-forwarded several years, and it’s a sweaty mid-September day, only the barest hint of cool fall air in the long breezes that sweep the city, the reflection of blue sky and the crisp downtown Brooklyn skyline in the Gowanus Canal’s oily surface.

You’re in the gothic novel you always wanted, you can feel that claustrophobic thrill pressing in around you, albeit not in the way you might have expected. It’s nothing too obvious, just an ominous abruptness in the gray cumulus clouds that spring up so suddenly over the steeples of Brooklyn, the humid breath of the supernatural on the back of your neck. Passing the tall, dark hero of your dreams with all his pale limbs on display, sweating and dressed for mid-July. The mini-turrets and balconies of Park Slope look unusually eerie today, maybe swollen with the only just-broken humidity, their contours blurred with clouds of mosquitos.