caution: contents may be hot

If one more person says, "hot enough for ya?" when it's 90 fucking degrees out I might just kill them. Better yet, I'll say, "no, actually, it's not", and then light my shirt on fire just to make them feel stupid.

Why my Mondays are so boring is a real mystery to me. I don't really do much on the weekend, and I'm not actually part of that corporate world that would require me to hang a Garfield poster on the wall of my office, but I seem to have fallen into the typical Monday rut all the same. Well, I had fallen into it, until today. I arrived home at my usual time of 3pm. I had planned on kicking back, opening an ice cold cheap American beer, and watching one of the three fuzzy television stations that my rabbit ear adorned set top box would allow. I rolled up my sleeves, put my coat away in the proper hanging area of my bed's footboard, and ventured into the kitchen for the beer. Noticing that I was out of the L.A. necessity of bottled water and uncharacteristicly feeling energetic, I decided to venture back out into the heat and walk down to the fork in the road of Echo Park and Morton Ave to the shops.

The shops, which is not it's actual name, is a convience store owned and operated by an older Mexican woman. I've been going there for a longer time than it took my high school girlfriend to pop out a baby after she dumped me. I'm in at least every other day to buy cigarettes, beer, soap, chocolate chip cookies, or any number of things that I'm too lazy to walk the extra four blocks to purchase a much cheaper version of at the grocery store. Energetic as I was feeling today, I'm still an extraordinarly lazy person by nature, and it was just too goddamned hot to walk any farther than a half a block for water. When I walked in a said hello, the Mexican woman said my name and I said, "hello", since I can never manage to remember hers for some reason. I picked up a bottle of water from the back and brought it to the counter. She said, "Cigaros?" as is her custom with me, I said no, not today, we chatted for a minute about the World Cup, and I left.

On my way back from the shops I spotted a girl sitting at a table outside the corner coffee shop. I remembered that I met her once, right there outside that very coffee shop. I was introduced to her by a younger girl I had the great misfortune of sleeping with. Misfortune not because of the sex itself, but because the young girl just happened to be my upstairs neighbor's daughter, who had been in town visiting from college. I don't really like to make a habit of sleeping with college age girls, or at least ones who's mother lives above me in a building with paper-thin walls, but then I don't like to make a habit of going swimming in my underwear either and that seems to happen all the time. Especially when there's a bottle of whiskey involved.

I tried to pass by the coffee shop girl unnoticed. I failed. "Hey you!" she yelled. I stopped, wearing a pretend confused look on my face. She knew what I was attempting to do and wasn't going to let me get away with it. "Don't give me that look. You know who I am." Yes, yes, of course, I told her. I tried to play nice with a little how are you doing, and isn't it hot out? and it's nice to see you, followed by a stab at a quick escape with, "Well, I really have to be going..." but she was having none of it.

"You still living across the street?"
"Yeah, still in the same place."
"How is it? Comfortable?"
"Well, it does get quite hot around this time of year, what with no air conditioning."
"Oh, it gets hot, does it?"
"Yeah, well, you know, Southern California and all."
"You son of a bitch!"

She threw her cup of coffee at my crotch.

"How's that? Hot enough for ya? I hope you fucking burn, you fucking bastard!"

She got up and stormed off, continuing to scream obscenities. I removed the cap off the bottle of water in my hand, poured it down my pants, and walked back towards my apartment.

Yeah, it's hot enough for me. I hate the summertime.