I am become Jim, Destroyer of T-Shirts

Dating from September 1, 2006, you can tell that the heat was begining to get to me.

It is so goddamn hot here. It’s not humid, it’s not blazing, it’s just HOT. The kind of hot where you step out side and think “Ah, this isn’t so bad,” but when you find yourself standing still twenty minutes later, the waves of sweat course down your back, the bottom of your shirt turns white with salty perspiration, and you’ve slicked back the hair from your face again and it feels like you’ve just stepped out of the shower; that’s how hot it is. I wipe the sweat that beads on my wrists as I write this, in an air conditioned room, after spending twenty minutes simply moving things in the other room and walking around the rest of the apartment. I’m sitting here, no t-shirt, basking in the glorious AC, and I realize: I have become Jim, or Demetrius, my big fat Greek room mate from Beijing in 2004. He had no shame, no pointless pretense: he was hot, sweating to the point that you’d change your shirt three or four times a day; and when he got that hot, he whipped off his shirt and just let the jellyrolls cool.

Well, at least this will be (more) incentive to lose weight.