residing in saint louis in the summer months is comparable to living inside a combustion engine doing 120mph on the autobahn. and if you weren't bred and born in the region, your body is simply not equipped to gracefully handle the climate. i sweat so much here it's unfair to even call it sweating because a distinct property of sweating is that it is intermittent. when your body constantly exudes fluids it is really more an act of leaking, which is what i call what i do in saint louis, leak. as for the leak-season, it starts in mid-june and ends in late-september. the native residents don't really get why outsiders leak so, in part because they themselves never leave the city (for reasons i don't yet understand) so they don't realize there are environments in this nation and on this planet that have less than ninety percent humidity.

recently i was working with a colleague in my office. when we were done talking i left and biked home for lunch. the moment i walked in the door marty reminded me of something i forgot. so i jumped back on the bike and made the five minute trek back to my office, ran upstairs and logged onto my computer to get what i needed. after a moment the same colleague i was working with earlier walked back into my office to ask me a question. she paused at my desk staring at me oddly. i, in a distracted state, asked what she needed. she posed her question and i answered it. i noticed she remained standing there and i turned to find her staring at me wordlessly. when she realized i was looking back at her she lowered her gaze, turned and left.

dismissing her oddness, i resumed my own work. i felt a drop of sweat roll down my temple. i swiped it with the sleeve of my shirt. in doing so i realized that the material of my oxford was completely soaked through, like see-through soaked through. as i flitted the shirt around trying to cool off and air out it occurred to me that this woman was probably seriously perplexed that she was in my office moments earlier and i was fine and when she returned twenty minutes later i was drenched in sweat. she of course didn't realize that i made not one but two half mile sprints on my bike in the 94 degree, mid-day swelter. and because she didn't know this i now work with a woman who secretly fears the leader of her project team is free-basing heroin behind the closed door of his office.

what she's forgetting is that missouri is the nation's leading producer of crystal meth, not heroin.