Like a pig on a spit

My hungry bones compel me into the light, and it isn't always cute.

Cabbagetown, Atlanta, Georgia. Art by Erin Bassett. Listen while you read: Juicy by Alex Figueira on Spotify/YouTube.

Certain corners of my historic neighborhood are populated by pretty fashion people wearing the right trends in the right ways. What they lack in originality they make up for in aesthetic capital. It’s 95° outside and so humid we might as well be swimming, but they keep their jackets on and their sleeves buttoned around their wrists. Their shoes are cool, their bags are cool, their sunglasses are cool. They have the right haircuts. There is a formula.

They fawn over each other when they meet, spraying air kisses into the aether like a caricature of the cultural class. Their voices pitch up a few octaves when they greet each other, feigned excitement and genuine interest blending into an indistinguishable squeal. A smokescreen obscuring what is felt. There is no art here.

There is the one guy whose greasy center part mirrors the straight-line placket of his short-sleeved, cable-knit polo sweater, always buttoned up to the neck. Always wearing tall white socks. Usually seen in thick acetate-framed sunglasses, a single silver bracelet on his little wrist. He yells into his phone and plays the other voice on speaker, never quite touching the glass of the screen to his skin. He sips an iced latte from a plastic cup and always has his pinky up.

There is one woman who is either 38 or 17, it’s hard to tell. She is the kind of thin I assume to be intentional, and her shoulders hunch forward, hiding her heart, due perhaps to skeletal atrophy or crippling insecurity. She is the embodiment of Y2K, which is a nostalgia-driven fashion trend for some and for others, a high school nightmare. Maybe it is insecurity drawing her posture down after all; when I used to wear those clothes I mostly hated myself too.

---

I have successfully cracked the veneers of a handful of these pretty people who live in the neighborhood. We smile and nod, a gentle salute, when we run into each other at the lopsided sidewalk tables of this corner café, an all-day affair clearly modeling itself after Spanish establishments but unable to screen its clientele for either bullshit or for joy. We trade book recommendations once in a while but I don’t know their names. It’s a certain kind of intimacy.

They rest happily in the shade, these formulaic folks so aptly doing exactly what is expected of us all. They play their parts, if not with elegance then with obedience. I, on the other hand, am splayed out like a pig.

As soon as spring breaks and summer settles, I develop a compulsion to roast myself. With a mind of their own, my bones drag me out of winter and into the light. Picture an emaciated zombie creature, a little less than human, army crawling across a frozen tundra toward the promise of a break in cloud cover, dragging herself elbow over elbow into the full force of the sun, into a concentrated tunnel of light beaming down to earth from the heavens, promising to recharge her dying cells.

I don’t like winter very much.

So I’m sprawled out in the sun wearing as few clothes as I can get away with. It’s not a fit, it’s the bare minimum of public decency. I get here early because I know exactly which tables the sun will hit first as it soars above the crumbling roof of the 230-year-old church across the street. As the light shifts, I drag my folding chair out into the street to lap up every last ray. I chase that patch of sun until I am in the way.

To be clear, it is hot even in the shade. I am not in the shade. I am sweating the kind of sweat that doesn’t just stay on the skin but rolls down the body, that pools in the creases of the elbows and behind the knees consistently enough to drip steadily onto the ground. I usually leave before a visible puddle accumulates.

It’s not cute. I do not care. I am compelled. I must roast.

When the morning rush dies down, the barista comes outside to roll out the awnings. The fashion people can’t have their makeup melting, but I pout when he covers me in shade. I will get more done now, I can see my screen without squinting and I’m not distracted by constantly wiping the sweat out of my eyes. But my light!

---

Last month I spent a few weeks baking my body in the Las Vegas sun, which might as well be a different star. No pool of sweat appears in air that dry, try as the glands might. An hour somehow feels like a year and also like no time at all. I sat on that roof until I was dizzy, day after day. I mostly avoided my standard sunburn. I tried to drink enough water, as much as such an amount is possible in the high desert in August. I was on a mission, spinning myself around the rotisserie of my poolside lounger, exposing every inch of my body to the oven of Las Vegas.

When I returned home to the city, the compulsion was gone. I still sit in the sun when it’s out, sometimes, but I am no longer driven by insatiable obsession, like I might be torn apart if I can see the light but not feel it on my face. Maybe my body was seeking out the nourishment it lacked, an intelligent machine in search of fuel.

Perhaps that compulsion to drown my naked self in sunlight until it hurts is a desperate cry for absorbable nutrients. Maybe the winter zombie metaphor wasn’t that far off. Are my cells rejuvenated, my organs reenergized? Has my skin soaked in enough sky juice?

Now summer is waning again. It’s not quite fall but the chill threatens, especially in the early mornings when I’m out here before the crowds, hunting the sidewalk café table that I know will be the first to see the light. With each passing day the sun crests onto this spot a little later in the morning, and as its angle changes it tangles in the trees around the church before it can break free. It will come. For now, I surprise myself by sitting in the shade.