the mediterranean sun - an essay

I was reading through some old travel journals the other day and I found an essay I wrote about travelling in the Roman summer. It's a few years old but I think it's actually kind of funny so, in the spirit of humorous essays, I'll post it (along with a few pictures from the experience) here.

The Mediterranean Sun
is a Cruel Mistress
(An Essay: Summer 2006)
By Joshua Shank

After a brief, requisite flirtation with Old Spice as a teenager, I took up Degree as my anti-perspirant of choice. Their motto reads like a battle cry: “Degree turns up the heat.”

What the advertising geniuses are hinting at here is possibly the best slogan of any deodorant/anti-perspirant out there. Instead of claiming that their product’s power is “strong enough for a man but pH-balanced for a woman” or insinuating that its scent is a magic, sexy charm for the opposite sex, the people at Degree have gotten down to brass tacks and claimed and hinted at the fact that their product is simply more powerful than the thing it was designed to beat. It appeals to our love of winning with sheer brute force—no fancy chemicals and formulas here—it’ll just overpower and kill whatever scent you, the consumer, decide to pit it against…it turns up the heat.
















That being said, I think I found a climate where Degree would metaphorically behave like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming Mack truck. It would have 2 choices:

1. Stand its ground and try to face down this 18-wheeler-of-a-climate rolling towards it in a hi-beamed frenzy. Ultimately, of course, it would be blown to bits by the force of the collision.
   
2. Run away from the 3-headed Cerberus that is this heat and pray to the gods above that it won’t ever have to again face down the kind of temperatures that surely guard the gates of Hell.

I have simply never sweated so much in my entire life. Nor have I ever been around so many sweaty people. I might as well not be wearing any anti-perspirant at all. It’s a rolling sweat that keeps it comin’ and should really be commended for its consistency of performance throughout the day as well as overall body coverage. The sun that beats down never lets up either and it’s become painfully obvious that this freckled Irishman-of-a-white-boy wasn’t built for this climate. My blood is simply too thick and I’ve burned through most of my sunscreen like some sort of SPF junkie. It’s getting to be ridiculous.

And, through it all, there is the public subway. We stepped into a car today packed to bursting in the middle of rush hour at one of the busiest stops and, as all of the people wearing tank tops seemed to be steadying themselves by gripping something above them, it was an olfactory nightmare that few could imagine and none should experience. I would imagine that death by mustard gas probably smells like this: humid and sticky to the point where you can taste it.

As I said in the beginning of this little diatribe: "the Mediterranean Sun is a cruel mistress." She makes sure that you work for what you see in Rome. If it were easy to endure then too many people would take it for granted. Perhaps that’s what makes it all worthwhile in the end.