Post title inspired by Margaret’s Cool Me Down, which is a Lady Laid Bare approved ABSOLUTE BANGER.
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There is a grim physicality about summer weather. At least with autumnal cold, we know where we stand. We stock up on knitwear, layer ourselves, strap our boots on for winter walks. We know how to warm up.
After the scorching hot weather we’ve had in the last week, I’m not entirely convinced we remember how to cool the fuck down.
When I talk about grim physicality, what I mean is that summer has a knack for making you hyper-aware of bodies. Not just your own (this will not be a post about body confidence though – bear with me) but pretty much of everyone around you. Your day becomes its own version of the video for Bitter Sweet Symphony – except it does so for everyone else too, so in a way we are all Richard Ashcroft.
Commutes are a sweaty, toasted nightmare. Tubes are sardine cans. Walking through Central London is a never-ending, perspiration-doused game of live action Frogger, even on the sidewalks. Everyone is angry at everyone else for no particular reason. Temperature differences between inside and outside are, to put it mildly, shocking in some places. Sex? Surely, that’s not something you think about in this weather (at least, not in the conventional sense, anyway). You’re already sticky and panting. You’re already extremely aware of every inch of your body, because every inch of your body is aching and glossy with the sheen of perspiration.
Sex? Fucking hell, even walking to the supermarket’s a bit much. Or to the Tube.
The latter of which was what I was doing earlier in the week. I was on my way to work. It was, to put it mildly, a balmy afternoon. The kind where no-one would particularly frown on you cracking the window open to get air into your bedroom.
My street is on a bit of a hill, so when the weather goes bat-arse bananas hot like this, I occasionally stop to readjust myself. I was doing exactly that, near the top of the hill, when I heard a noise from one of the houses.
A deep, lustful, resonating moan.
Followed by more moans, the telltale moans of a woman in the throes of some very sexy time indeed. The house’s window – what I assume was the bedroom one – was open, but the curtains were drawn. I was, briefly, glued to the spot. Was it someone watching porn? Was it someone using the quiet hours of the afternoon to have a wank? Or was it two people, having summertime sex with scant disregard for the fact that one of them was moaning so loud most of that part of the street could hear it?
Not a clue.
Not that I was meant to have a clue – I was just meant to walk by, on my way to the Sardine Tin Express, my body a vessel for hot, hot heat and elbow jabs of strangers.
Still, regardless of all that, it was sort of nice to be hyper-aware of bodies in a different way for just a few moments. A reminder that sex doesn’t stop existing, and doesn’t stop being fun, even in the hot weather. If not for yourself, then for others.
Who knows, maybe sex is a viable way of cooling down. If not physically…