Marshmallow Dreams

"Hot summer streets, and the pavements are burning, I sit around… It’s a cruel, cruel summer." Bananarama

Do you know the old joke, "I dreamed I was eating a giant marshmallow, and when I woke up, my pillow was gone"? Well I have a better one: As I write, there are about seven food products in my entire freezer, and three of those, for a reason unknown even to me, are bags of jumbo marshmallows. Not very funny? That’s because it’s true, which I guess gives it more of a weird, sad sort of quality. And I have a little story to go with it.

Living in Los Angeles this past summer was…holy cow...hot as the devil’s blazing armpit. Trés misérable. (And don’t tell me it’s a dry heat, because I’ll just get mad.) In spite of the weather, I absurdly spent most of the season at Bryan’s apartment, which does not have air conditioning, and is on the second floor, on the wrong side of the building for how the afternoon sun hits it. So being there at almost any time was like a summertime snuggle right inside that nasty underarm, a cozying up by the fireplace at the devil’s house. In his attic. With no ventilation. Wrapped in a parka and ski mask. And he is treating you to a fire sandwich with a tall glass of Dave’s Insanity Sauce.

I do have a small air conditioner at my place, but I try not to use it, doing my part to save both my budget and the environment with one responsible, sweaty, self-sacrificing decision. And Labor Day weekend, a special time every year when you are responsible for showing up at barbecues and being happy about it, was brutal. The thermostat broke into the triple digits, the sun spewing its ruthless sizzle, hotter and hotter by the hour, as if it had something to prove. Sort of like a sad and middle-aged prom queen racing her new sports car around and around the neighborhood, things coming from the stereo that were too young for her and much, much too loud. "Yes, you’re hot! We get it!" the city cried. "And if we agree you’re hotter than you’ve ever been, will you leave us alone?"

I still did not give in to the siren song of my air conditioner…well, not completely at least. For an hour or two before bed one night, I let the thing blow its cold and costly breath, submitting myself beneath it like a Tibetan peasant, hoping that by the time I turned in for the night I would be unable to feel my fingers and toes. I could then shut it off, and drift off to sleep on a snowy cloud of nippy dreams. It would not matter how hot the room became later, because I was dog tired that night anyway, and was going to dose myself with Benadryl for good measure.

I nearly pulled it off. I switched off the air at bedtime, threw open my windows, and set the floor fan at the foot of my bed on its highest speed. Just as expected, I fell into a hard sleep within moments – blissfully, snoozily unaware of what I was really up against.

At approximately 1:15 a.m., I woke up. My comfy, feathery little bed was now a sweltering wading pool of perspiration and tangled cotton. I was so tired, so drugged…I could barely make out what the problem was, my basic animal instincts telling me only, "Get somewhere cold, fast." I tottered out of bed, stepping into and on the several boxes of stuff I had brilliantly left in obstacle course fashion in the surrounding floor space.

With an "oops" and an "ouch" and a "crap, it’s hot! " I found my kitchen, and flung open the freezer. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know my own name. I was the walking dead, drawn from the grave against her will, smoked out of her resting place by a merciless California summer that was too hot even for the deceased.

I vaguely recall my mind touching on the tiny, lunchbox-type ice packs I had been using at Bryan’s to sit on, lie on, or otherwise apply around my body just to get through the day. But just as quickly, I knew I had brought none of them home to my own freezer, and would have to figure out something else. I squinted against the interior light, and grimaced with drunken disdain at what my poor little Kenmore had to say for itself: a Hershey bar, two brown bananas, a carton of egg substitute, the box under the ice maker – devoid of any ice because I had taken that, too, to Bryan’s. "Lord, girl – go to the supermarket! " is what I ought to have heard. But those basic instincts weighed in again with, "Just take something, anything – if it’s cold, you want it in your bed."

The marshmallows. I must have settled on seizing whatever most closely resembled a bag of ice. The entire event had taken just seconds, me with neither the patience nor the presence of mind to make any deliberate selection, and I now made my way back to bed, bleary eyed and clutching a full bag of fluffy white frozen goodness.

Marshmallows. I had read recently, when looking up different ways to keep your home cool without air conditioning, that you should fill a sock with rice, and freeze it; then put it under your pillow at night, and anytime you turn the pillow over while you sleep, the new side will be so comfortingly cool. A swell idea. I had not done so. But I believe my thoughts followed loosely along these lines as I dropped the bag onto my pillow. This’ll do, I reasoned, with a fleeting notion that I should put it under the pillow instead of on top. At that moment, however, my heavy head fell upon my small plastic bag of icy manna from heaven. So cold…so soft…I sighed as I re-entered the gates of dreamland.

In the light of the new day, I opened my eyes and gazed upon a mysterious package of my favorite s’mores ingredient, lying at room temperature beside me on the mattress. What the crap? I wondered. Was this how it felt to go barhopping and awaken the next day with a person you don’t remember ever seeing before? "What exactly happened in here last night?" I considered asking my strange little bedfellow. And then I remembered, ever so slightly, what I’d done.

"I slept with a bag of frozen marshmallows last night," I reported to Bryan when I got to his place.

What could I do? It seemed best just to come clean.