Escaping the Heat
Early August, 1988, 2 a.m. on a weeknight: Too hot to sleep on the third floor of our narrow, urban rowhouse, even with the fan three feet away. My sheets are soaked with sweat and I descend to the first floor to the kitchen for a glass of water. When I move a paper shopping bag from the floor by the fridge, I am startled by a huge bug that has taken refuge under it. I don’t know the correct name, but we always call them “waterbugs.” They come out in warmer weather, and are maybe two inches long and fairly tall (for a bug).
I don’t walk around in summer in bare feet. I have socks on and am not in the mood to fetch an implement with which to squash the waterbug. A relatively vivid, loud crunch with a messy cleanup would have been involved. I retreat in disgust to the next room, letting the bug go where it might. Maybe it’ll find its pals.
My two housemates are both out for the night. I turn on the TV. Minutes later, a bat swoops by. Forgetting the TV, I dash out front, leaving the inner and outer doors of our front vestibule open. I deposit myself on the front stoop. It is a little cooler, outside, on St. Paul Street. A fairly busy thoroughfare, I gaze at the passing traffic. Defeated. I am aware that I have to get up in several hours for my morning job. Periodically, I peer inside and notice that the bat is repetitively flying around the perimeter of the room. It is gradually getting closer to the open doors. I hope it will find its way out. It occurs to me, later, that the intermittent, oddly-pitched sounds I’d been hearing have been the bat. It’s been hidden behind the window blinds for who knows how many days. A truly freaky feeling.
Fifteen minutes into this, a good friend walks by. He lives four blocks farther up St. Paul Street. Lots of us cronies are living here, in what is known as Charles Village. He is heading home from the downtown bars, which close at 2 a.m.
“What are you doing out here?”
“There’s a bat flying around the house and I’m waiting for it to leave.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I wish. It’s kinda’ creepy. You wanna’ see?”
We climb the stoop and observe. I explain my theory about the bat eventually sensing the open doors and leaving me in peace. We laugh, chat, exchange gripes about Baltimore summers. Right after he moves along, the bat exits. Relieved, I turn off the TV and the lights. The waterbug now seems more trivial as I climb back up to the third floor.
I hated Baltimore that night. For six weeks, it had been too hot to sleep. We’d had no rain, and each day was ninety degrees or more. A relentless dull gray, toxic sky had taken the place of a blue one. Grit would stick to my sweaty forearms if I stayed outside for a few hours. In other words, not an atypical Baltimore summer.
When cooler days began to break up the string of dismal ones, blue skies would make a reappearance. I could practically hear the collective sigh of relief, the shouts of hallelujah, across the city. Don’t get me wrong — I could easily list fun and funky things that I liked about Baltimore. I often defend the place. But back then, if I cited the pros and cons over a typical twelve month stretch, the cons would have won.
Two years after the “bat night,” I moved to San Francisco, where summers are more tolerable. I visit Baltimore every year. But it was twelve years before I was ready to experience another hot summer month, again. I was surprised. With all the heat and humidity, my visit was calm and easygoing. I enjoyed my family and my siblings’ kids on summer break. Baltimore still has a pull for me, and I could conceivably live there again if circumstance allowed. But I’d get air-conditioning and an outdoor space with a shade tree.
© Jim Forgione
Jim Forgione is a Baltimore native who relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1990. His work has appeared in the Baltimore City Paper, Advocate/Out Magazine, and the Paterson Literary Review. He has self-published a novel, Surface Tension, (Amazon, 2023) about growing up gay in a large Italian family.
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