On the absence of ventilation,
or
an exercise in sweating
Elizabeth Bailey
Sweat drips in the nook of my mind in a way coolness never has. Coolness and cleanliness only notable as a relief from sweat, an absence of sweat, a removal of hot. Year in, year out, I find sweat coursing through my writing.
The sweat mirrors the undulations of my moods. I cleave to grubby sweat to wallow in misery. I exult in the sunshine sweat of playing grown-up in European summers. I marvel at the never-before-heard-of cleansing and rejuvenating sweat of exercise.
January
Wearing the same jumper I wore in bed all weekend to climbing acts as a refusal to take off the bed’s safety and enter back into the real world. To avoid confronting my shit-chatting huge eyed self of Friday night, the hyper awake but completely unaware mess I’d been, the spectacularly abandoned dry January.
Those cringing repeated on loop conversations.
So instead quick lock down my thinking by watching Friends, checking out, stepping it to an alternative reality, coming up for air for the briefest times, only the most necessary. Reluctantly eat. Avoid showering. Stretching out this removal for as long as possible because the return won’t be what I I want to have done with my weekend. So I wear the jumper climbing, a transitionary jumper, helping me stay in my sweaty smelly greasy unreality for that little bit longer.
Until I stretch and feel my whole weight as I swing up to grab and pull myself level with the top boulder, toes clutching on, hands puffing chalk anytime I move them, smeared across my face. I’m back in my body and my body is back in life and it’s ok, I made it.
June
Figs, fennel, manchego. Big bowl glasses of Aperol Spritz. The sun is burning my eyes, lids heavy from lack of sleep yesterday, and the alcohol. The sunshine sweat mixes with the night’s sleep sweat.
Smoking cigarettes to stay awake. Hibiscus flowers, peach walls, stone with concrete plaster filling up the gaps. Shoulder still sore from my straw bag overflowing with carrot tops, mint, basil and stolen blanched almonds.
To think yesterday I was rushing through the airport, spaced out with leftover hash running in my body, alcohol shakes and sweats, limbs still aching and tingling from frantic urgent kissing. Stood on Streatham High Road, lanes of traffic rushing past oblivious as I kissed and was kissed, my body being held and pulled close, his hands splayed against the small of my back against my flesh. Head swirling drunk from one pound beers and pimms and the delight of being wanted and desired after the low of not believing I was.
July
I feel better. My body is sticky with sweat and soft where it used to be taught, and my eyes I can still feel the tears dried there. But I feel better. Better enough at least to know I will exercise, to know I will shower, that I will get up and pack a bag and get on a train and go to Gunnersby Park, that I will go through those human motions. For now I am safe.
July without pause for breath
This summer has been so sticky and sweaty I’m used to the feeling of slick skin and hot clammy hands. Pooling in crevices behind knees, dripping down my sternum. There’s so much of it. I can’t remember being cool. Everything is intensified and everything is intense. You can’t rest your hand against your cheek without a film of sweat building. Waistbands become restrictive and damp. Every night is a hot half waking endurance, hugging Bibby closer, no longer trying to find relief from the stifling overbearing heat.
Sat on hampstead heath, crickets and heat on my back. The grass is brittle dried out yellow golden in the light, great swathes of it, white dots of people in linen shirts and brown heads dotting across the banks of gold, nesting in sanctuaries. Towering ancient trees deep late summer green already thrust up and out.
The summer of ants as well. Huge flying ones crawling along the pavements through the gutters the cobbles the concrete swarms of them. The ants in my bed, the red ants biting my back as I lie in the grass, sit in the car.
Panic is constantly bubbling under my sweaty hot skin. I have to stop thinking about the next day the next week the next month before the decisions that these time slots need overwhelm.
April, lockdown
Blackthorn blossom hangs onto branches in large swathes along lanes and across the common, a crown of misting white against the still bare trees.
It's been so hot and heavy, that sore itchy ache and my belly queasy and sweaty and bloated.
The grape hyacinths are dried up, their fat berries shrinking into themselves.
Its hard to picture the things that were before but moments bring them back. Its not the rows of beaming photos of my friends, turned towards me, raising a glass, that captured moments. But the ones in between, where they’re bending over a plate of food in Seville, or reaching up to a cupboard or passing me a knife.
Those are the ones that feel and breath what was felt and those are the ones that make me ache for sliding into glorious day drunk where a picnic of plastic wrappers and hummus sat too long in the sun and radish ends left, their flesh bitten off. Of picking up the rubbish, filling bags with empty cans and tottering out of the park, back into the busy real life streets of London, the hot heat of the day coming off the tarmac and warming where the damp grass had chilled, of being in that moment ridiculous in borrowed layers wrapped round legs and wilting crowns of daisies droopsing.
Of being able to carry on, heading to a pub with big outdoor benches and beer slopped down fronts from disposable cups. and then the sweaty inside dance floor with people in little tops and us pushing through, a rucksack stuffed with leftover picnic. To the bar and looking round in drunken haze all these other people’s lives fading as my eyesight narrows in on my friends on their sunburnt beer blurred faces, lines of grime and sweat and big grins and only bits of this stay in your mind and somehow you are on the overground station tired and laughing and its a Sunday and there isn’t a train back south for 17 minutes and then the crash and scramble at Canada Water, spilling off the orange line up the escalator to the Jubilee and here everyone is smart dressed London proper dressed and you feel scruffy but with that day and the people in that day still and maybe you don’t even know all the people you have been with but you’ve been with them for today and for now you are one big bumbling mix and mess and it feels yours, all yours.
June
In Brockwell Park, picking my way across the sunny slopes of grass. Earth soft and full of wet still. I danced and danced and danced, by myself in the middle of the hill with the sun streaming onto me, my shadow long in the long grass, arms flailing dipping bowing bending. Hips hurt and ached, feet pressed into the ground thrumming with blood and energy, a stitch in my side, feeling sweat build on my sternum and under my breasts.
Bending to the music I could hear but no-one else could. Necks craned round as people criss crossed on the beaten footpaths, one lady all in orange waved, another stopped on her bike and filmed me or did she film the sun, self conscious and arrogant but also humble and not of note to film. Knowing that I was being watched, sometimes aware of it and moving my limbs with more considerations. Other times dancing and flailing and throwing my limbs and body around, dress kicking up and raffia bag banging against my chest until I hurt.
Afterwards I squatted down on the damp grass, feeling a patch of wet bloom on my dress, hoiking it up and sitting on my bum, on my knickers. Dried grass soggy from the rain beaten down under my feet, wild geraniums among my toes. Looking down at the ground seeing it all, the bits of red plastic, the clover, the wild sweet pea.
I got back and Toby was still watching the football. Cheltenham versus Northampton. He said I must’ve looked like a lunatic. I said so do all the people doing push ups and crunches in the park. And it was worth it.
June, more
Brockwell Park again. Days slipping by in sweaty languid empty slopes, all filled in with grass and picnics and warm beer and moving from one room to another, out onto the roof, watering my plant pots in endless cycle, window propped up so I can refill with water without climbing in and out.
October
My sheets need changing. They are turning yellowy in the centre. I have eked it out far too long. Rolling into my sheets each night as they get more stained, coffee and sleep and sweat and Frances and Penny and all the bodies I’ve shared my space with. Somehow the act of washing them has been one too far, even though all I’m doing every day is moving up stairs and in and out of rooms. My life is shrinking back again.
That isn’t true. I have been running full speed careening around these rooms and even now it hasn’t slowed down.
There is still a list long and swimming in my mind’s eye.
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