SWEAT
His hands were all over her. She kissed him in small bites and deep dives. Her hair was amazing and the feel of her hips against his own was the very definition of ecstasy. About two minutes into the melee of tastes and touches and moans, Paul's body simply...stopped.
And he passed out on top of her.
When he came to a few minutes later, she was sitting on the edge of the bed, nervously smoking a cigarette and looking slightly wild-eyed.
"What the fuck happened? Are you OK? I thought I killed you or something."
Paul knew that he had traumatized another one.
"I'm sorry. I should have told you,” he replied as he doused his face, his chest and his now flaccid junk with ice water.
"Told me what?"
"I can't sweat."
"You can't...What?"
"I can't sweat. I was slated to compete in a Live Lit challenge and my opponent paid an old Hungarian woman to curse me. The curse was that, in order to fully appreciate the superiority of sweating, I would no longer be able to."
"This is fucked, man."
"Yeah. I get overheated pretty fast and instead of my body naturally regulating my temperature, I just pass out from the internal heat. I think I'm getting brain damage from it, too."
Imagine a future without sweat. Not a dystopian abstract future of strange, fat homunculi wearing air conditioning suits while a group of plucky biologists (and a surprisingly super model-like veterinarian) figure out how to combine human DNA with canine DNA so that this new breed can cool off the engine with their sloppy, drooling tongues. Not a Michael Bay meets David Cronenberg Disaster Pic sort of dystopia. A future where YOU cannot sweat.
Sure—you now—being one who cannot sweat—are going to avoid going outside as much as possible. Too much activity—like fucking any activity—and you’ll just seize up, go into a seizure like an old Ford Pickup truck driving on a highway in Tucson and expire. Because you need to avoid the sun, your skin will lose all color. Even black folks will become pasty. Without the sun, your bones and teeth will become weaker and more brittle—no Vitamin D. You will look like complete shit but will still need to work because "not sweating" doesn't count as a disability if everyone has it.
But you can’t go on a job interview. That moment of nervousness as you psych yourself up to rock that HR specialist’s world with your seven separate unpaid internships will lead to your heart exploding in your chest. No dates. The overwhelming fun of a new person sitting across from you at a pizza joint holds potential death if she looks you deeply in the eyes for a few seconds. No sex. Not even the pleasure of self love. The only time you can rub one out is in a cold shower which, as a matter of physiology, is virtually impossible. No sexual release equals more stress which results in a low-grade rage but you can’t express it because anger heats up the blood and will burn your insides as if you were in a microwave oven like a big, human-shaped Hot Pocket.
Imagine having to suppress all emotions as all emotions lead to sweat. Imagine no interactions with any other people because, as John Paul Sartre wrote, Hell is other people. And as I wrote, people are mostly assholes. No kids because, while they are just bundles of fucking unicorn hair and rainbow droplets, they also exist to destroy your furniture and ruin your lives. No pets because dogs are needy and cats are also assholes. Maybe an aquarium. Fish are fucking boring so they might be the only pet you can have. Maybe a turtle.
Sweat isn’t a lollipop or a bag of money. Sweat may not be as pretty or fun as shivering. But sweat is a necessary evil in most cases and a physical sign that you’re having sex correctly.
Years later, Paul, now pushing 423 pounds and living in a perpetually air conditioned bubble, ready to simply die because his family has left him, is jobless and hasn’t touched his penis in so long that he isn’t even certain he still has one, looks up at the ceiling.
“Christ,” he mumbles. “I want nothing in this life but to sweat one last time. Sweat is superior. Sweat is good and righteous and wonderful.”
And he hears, as if through a tin can on a long, taught string, an old woman laugh. If laughs can have accents, hers definitely sounds Hungarian. And he feels something trickle from under the folds of fat and skin.
And Paul smiles.
