A Tale that Perspires
July 7, 2015
I resisted writing a follow-up to my last blog. It ended as the electricity in my apartment, and mine alone, went out. It made for a brutal night of a stiflingly hot sleep. I was, at times, slick with sweat. A bed soaked by my perspiration. I would lay still and snooze long enough to ‘dry out’ for a period, but upon waking to gulp some badly need water, my body’s waterworks would begin again. The morning ‘shower’ was a trickle of water that took time to fill a small tub so I could bucket bath it. The heat, however, did not allow me to dry. I left early for the office, where I knew it would be cool. Even that, though, took time, I was so deeply heated.
Come to find out, my local apartment runs on ‘cashpower,’ a device by which you preload kilowatts into a small keypad and use only what you have prepaid. I had never heard of this contraption, and so apparently ran out of power. Later that day I was set up with a local prepaid cell phone that I would need in order to text the electric company, who would text me back with a code to load into my electricity device so that I could have power. Unbeknownst to me and my hosts, my landlord loaded some kilowatts into my apartment to give me a little leeway.
So in my third night, thankfully, I could sit in my air-conditioned room and do some work on my computer.
And then the electricity cut out. In the whole area. The Almighty seems to have a wry sense of humor. As the room gradually lost the last bits of conditioned air, I resorted to stretching out on the floor to tease out the little bits of cool air embedded in the stone tile. I fell asleep only to be awakened by the power returning. A least I had a mostly full, cool night’s sleep.
Now here I sit, night four, in the dark of yet another power outage, sitting on the quickly fading coolness of the stone tiles, placing bets as to whether it will be a brutal or cool night’s sleep.
I believe I have slept in my own pool of perspiration in more countries than my mother has visited in her life.