This Heat

It’s tragic, that moment when you realise that a frozen tomato is not the rush of nutritious refreshment you were hoping for, but, rather, pretty fucking weird. Sasha is undergoing such a realisation, the hardened cells of its constitution fracturing around his gums, the skin sticking to the sides of his mouth like a terrible kiss. The freezer is still open, revealing the other options he could have chosen. This was the new thing this summer; frozen everything, relying on chilled pabulum to moderate the thermostat in a house with no air-conditioning. “We’re saving the planet,” was the optimistic catch-cry; an attempt to mitigate the sweltering misery of forty degree days and also of certain depressing environmental realities. Sasha swallows, grimaces, feels disappointed but then suddenly very aware of his own entitlement, and forces himself to remember that it took millions of years of evolution and the honing of agrarian practice to produce this consistently under-appreciated sustainer of life, not to mention $4.99/kg at Woolworths. He then thinks about the entire experience as though it were an unobserved art installation – he has decided that basically everything is, if you think about it in the right way – and both the sensation of the tomato and the inflated market price seem quite reasonable.

“This heat,” his housemate announces gravely, descending the stairs in a singlet and underwear, pulling the kitchen window all the way open. Sasha shuts the freezer. He has had his head half inside it for a few minutes, justifying it as part of the installation, with mental reference to a recent internet meme. “Are you trying to air condition your face, Sash?”

“No, we are saving the planet. Hey, I don’t think there’s a breeze, that window does nothing.”

“We could try watching Titanic,” she says, only half ironically.

“1912, what a world. No internet, no gay rights. You should try a franana, Bell, they’re like ice cream, it’s fucked.”

“No goatsee, no global warming. I already had a frectarine this morning.”

“Maybe. We could download it.”

They sit on the couch for twenty minutes discussing further temperature mediating options such as going to a museum or a swimming pool, but decide each time that the initial effort of conforming to a socially acceptable level of non-nakedness and catching a bus somewhere would defeat any foreseeable future comfort-gain. They also decide that Titanic is a pretty lame movie and way too long. Sasha googles other iceberg related films while Bell begins to ponder their inaction with respect to a more general lethargy. Within the next few weeks my brain will have vegetated to the point where little circular slices of it can be used for tightening my tired eyes, she thinks to herself, and decides this is something she can probably write on her blog. She wonders what it would actually take for her to do anything right now, and what that thing is anyway that makes her do anything, ever. The thing that somehow manages to carry her to University, 21^st parties and the café on the corner rather than the café down the street. Because of the job prospects, because of the necessity of others, because of the siphon, of course. She comes to the familiar conclusion that things happen when they happen because they do, and that if you think about it in the right way then it’s not actually as tautological as it sounds.

Sasha decides they should watch The Day After Tomorrow because it’s escapist and neither of them have seen it, and Bell agrees because Jake Gyllenhaal is “a babe”. As they watch, Sasha tries to think about global environmental disaster as though it is an unobserved art installation, to moderate success. Bell rationalises that total ecological collapse must also happen, because it does, in the same way as everything else. She sighs like you sigh at the news; exhausted. They both hold frozen bananas against their heads.