July: For and Against
The thing about July is that it arrives with expectations already baked in. You’re supposed to be somewhere with a wristband around your arm, music bleeding through tent walls, someone’s warm shoulder to lean on at 4 a.m. If you’re still at your desk on a Friday night while the season unfolds without you, the guilt has a specific texture.
So let’s take stock. The things worth doing this month: eating drinking chocolate straight from the pot. Weaponizing cheap beer against anyone dumb enough to wear fashion-victim drag to an outdoor event. Swinging in a park until your stomach turns. Running a ghetto blaster loud enough to bother the neighbors. Photographing whatever stumbles in front of your lens without asking permission. Breakfasts that stretch into early afternoon. Neon colors and airy clothes and beanies in summer, because fashion has no meteorological obligations. Complimenting strangers. Hugging the people you love. Hamburg. Dubstep. Graffiti nail polish. Flavored tobacco. Rubber boots. Masturbating yourself to sleep on a Tuesday.
What the month doesn’t need: chronic sniffling in summer, which is a special humiliation. MDMA intake pushed into statistical anomaly territory. Sunburn on the eyelid—somehow still happening. Slurping in public. Armpit sweat. Canned beer, which is the defeat beer, the beer you drink when you’ve given up on the idea the evening could go differently. Small talk. Umbrellas. Going to bed before midnight when the air is still warm. "Swag." Switching to Google+ with the genuine belief that this time social media will deliver on its promises. Fucking neighbors who make it impossible to maintain your own romantic atmosphere. Pulling damp banknotes out of places they shouldn’t be. Seeing your own face in the mirror at an unfortunate moment during a cocaine situation. Plasticizers in everything. "XOXO."
And Facebook. The specific grief of suddenly finding it completely repellent after years of daily use, then checking it anyway—every hour, compulsively—because disgust alone isn’t enough to make you stop. That might be July’s defining move. Knowing something is doing nothing for you, knowing it with full conviction, and going back in regardless because the summer is long and the alternatives require effort.