Whatever The Weather

Through most of my teenage life, and even into my later years at university, I kept a handwritten journal. The pages boasted two main topics: romance (or more fittingly, lack thereof), and career aspirations. Apart from my younger, more hilarious entries (which contain notes such as, “I swear maths challenge was designed to make my life a misery,” and “I have decided to start making Lord of The Rings on Granddad’s camcorder”), these bound notebooks haven’t really passed anyone else’s eyes. There’s such a catharsis to sharing your innermost thoughts, fears and brain-rattlings, but there’s also something so lovely to the secrecy and safety of journal writing.

It’s different on the internet. This blog has been a window into my head over the past year, not only to me but to everyone else, should they choose to read it. I’ve shared some intimate thoughts about my own wellbeing, fears and loneliness, as well as vaguely detailed recounts of intimate experiences. We’ve all been through my long-awaited hookup with Mr Swipey, my brief affair with Not-Mark, my kiss with Skinny Caramel Latte… and I don’t have any hangups about writing all of it for you to read, right here. Because if you listened close enough to my music, you’d be getting the same picture, pretty much.

Anyway, all of this is just a short preface to what I really want to write about, which is last Saturday night. I want to tell you all about it… but at the same time, I don’t want to. I want to keep it locked away in my own private collection. Hey, Prince has a vault. Why can’t I keep my own?

So instead of talking about him, about the colour of his eyes, the foolish quips and exchanges, I’m just going to leave it, and talk about the weather instead.

It was dusk when I stepped out of my apartment. The air was thick with the scent of summer about to break, the sky daubed with coral clouds. I walked past the open doors of laundromats, street patios beginning to fill up with scattered groups, leafy saplings that lined the roadside. Every so often the humidity would be lessened by a faint breeze that washed around my shoulders, soothing the red burns that had bloomed after a day in the sun. I turned off College and wound my way up the residential streets, taking turns that I hadn’t even discovered in the previous year. It began to darken overhead as I made my way up Palmerston, a beautiful road, lined with lampposts balancing white orbs. The houses had warm wooden porches, some laced with fairy lights or lanterns. I turned on to Bathurst and caught sight of the venue, he was standing outside.

*

The stairway eventually opened up to a rooftop patio, dimly lit but awake with chatter. We got the last table. It was blissfully balmy, the wooden floorboards steady underfoot, still warm from the day’s sunlight. Overhead, the space between the clouds revealed stars, and similar tracks of light moving slowly across the sky: the airplanes coming to and from island airports. I chose gin, he chose a Caesar. Three hours passed before I could even tell.

*

The venue was dark and I had my hands hovering cautiously in front of me, ready to cushion any revellers ejected from the thronging pit ahead. I felt ludicrously small, my neck stretching up to see the mop-headed lead of the band under the stage lights. Still, I nodded and swayed to the drum beat. One guy seemed to keep buying drinks only to just throw them in the air when he entered the buzzing mess in front of me. I wiped the rogue droplets off my forearm. Every so often I would feel a shoulder press against mine. 

*

As the crowd spilled out out on to the street, rain spattered the black tarmac. The sidewalk was shimmering with the aftermath of a thunderstorm, and the water soaked through the papery soles of my ballet flats. It was several blocks to the bar. The rain quietened into a mist, while my heels began to scrape against the backs of my shoes. I tried to walk on tiptoes to stop the blistering, which only left space for more rainwater to slip in. It reminded me of a day-trip I had taken to Niagara Falls. Despite the damp, the air still hugged itself around me, warm and comforting.

*

He reached up to open his bedroom window. The breeze still barely there, now brushing over us in the darkness. It was warm, but too cool to lie over the comforter. Perhaps it was three, maybe four or five in the morning. The sky was beginning to lighten ever so softly, and I could see a silhouetted branch swinging gently. Sounds of rustling came through the screen. Cackles and whimpers of nocturnal animals that I couldn’t identify marked a scuffle in the trees. As I laughed quietly at the noises, I heard the first few birds beginning to chirp.

*

The sun was shining. I couldn’t remember sleeping but now found myself waking up. As I lay on my side, he noted the sunburn marks on my back, before speculating about how warm it would be outside that day. As I walked back home through the softness of morning, I could tell that the day was going to grow bright, and hot.

I romanticise the weather, because I don’t want to romanticise the experience, like I did with Skinny Caramel Latte. I don’t want an accidental brush to turn into a lingering touch, or the eye contact to be made akin to the attraction between binary star systems, swivelling in the glittering vacuum of space. I don’t want to jinx any of it by making it into some grandiose experience, because it wasn’t, not really. It just felt real.

What will remain beautiful, within every memory I have of spending summers in Toronto, is the weather. The way the sun feels when it’s beating against your chest, or the break in clammy tension when the first cracks of thunder ring through the streets. The way the rain hurtles towards the pavement, almost magnetised. As I write, there’s a thunderstorm outside. I’ve got the windows open, I’m eating Green & Blacks’ and listening to Roxy Music. I can afford to remember this colourfully, to share it with its fullest intensity conveyed; perhaps not exactly as it was, but exactly how it felt.