Writing Exercise 9: Hot Stuff

[StillStunned]

Yeah, I can see it now
The distant red neon shivered in the heat
I was feeling like a stranger in a strange land
You know, where people play games with the night
God, it was too hot to sleep
*
Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck's getting dirty and gritty...
*
It's hot here at night
Lonely, black and quiet
On a hot summer night
*
I think your nose is peelin'
The sun is hot and clear
The city's fairly steamin'
I can taste your skin from here

Some song lyrics that, I think, capture the idea of sweltering heat of summer. Can we match them? Can we do better? Can we capture that sense of breathless closeness of a summer's night, or the sun hammering down, or the city shimmering in the heat?

Usual rules apply: keep your snippet to 300(-ish) words. It doesn't have to be self-contained, it doesn't have to be the start of a scene or the end. Just write a scene as if you've taken it from one of your stories.

And be respectful of each other's writing when commenting!

 

[StillStunned]

Here's mine:

===
Even with the window open and the curtains drawn back, it was stifling in the loft. The sun had spent the day heating up the air in the small space until it was suffocating.

“It’s hot,” Kat breathed, as if saying it out loud, acknowledging it, would make it better.

“Sorry.” I kicked the covers aside. We wouldn’t be needing it. Already my skin was becoming clammy.

“How do you sleep up here?” The only light came from the moon, swollen and yellow in the thick air outside, too lazy to move. It was enough to show a drop of sweat on her thigh.

I bent down to lick it up. “Mostly I lie awake.”

She didn’t move as my tongue glided over her skin. “What do you think about?”

I glanced up, blinking to clear the sweat from my eyes. Then I grinned. “This.” I kissed further along her thigh, along the inside where the skin was soft and smooth. I encountered another drop of sweat, and licked it up. It was salty on my tongue.

I felt her muscles tense. “I haven’t showered.”

“That’s alright.” My lips continued their slow, careful journey upwards. “I like the scent of your body.”

Slowly she relaxed, as if it was taking a conscious effort. Outside a nightbird cried. My stomach was sticking to the sheet. Taking her thighs in my hands, I parted them gently.

The heat between them was like an oven. The close air, the warmth of her body. She still had on her knickers, and I sensed she wasn’t ready to take them off. So I ran my tongue along the skin of her thighs, seeking out the drops of sweat as they formed on her skin and listening to her quiet gasps.

 

[Voboy]

I couldn’t tell which was worse: the way the air felt dusty as I gagged it in, or the way my clothes clung to my back, a second skin reminding me how much I’d rather be shirtless by the pool. But still, even with all that discomfort, I was able to force myself to focus enough to move the soldering iron where it needed to go, able to hold it still long enough to make the connections, able to remind myself that the work had to get done, and I had to do it… yeah, I was able to keep forcing myself, right up until the sweat got bad enough to roll off my forehead and land on my glasses, the view blurring at once.

And that’s when I flung my glasses aside, tossed the iron in the rack, and stretched my arms high against the unwelcome prickle of the sweat under my arms. “Fuck this.” I needed a cup of coffee. Well. Iced coffee, anyway, or better yet cold brew… and yet? There was none. The freezer had gone wonky two days ago, its frost raining down from the roof while all the ice cream inside turned to milkshakes, then to milk.

But the Telecaster waited, its wiring hanging out like guts, and that needed fixing. So I sighed, more humid air to join with the stuffiness around my workbench, and bent once again over the molten solder. It was only July. August was yet to come. I had no idea how much Gatorade the world could produce to make that tolerable, but I had to try. I reminded myself that tomorrow I should bring a change of clothes to sweat into after the first set got wrecked.

Because the work had to get done, and I had to do it.

***

Voboy hates heat.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Haven’t counted, but it looks about right. From my story It was an Itsy-Bitsy, Teenie-Weenie…

* * * * *

Brazen.

That was the word, Maeve thought, right out of some ancient Greek story like The Odyssey -- a 'brazen' sky. She smiled a little, thinking that her English teacher, Mrs Pensey, would be pleased by her remembering.

Her smile didn't last too long, for this sky was beyond hot. It lay like a low, searing bronze lid over the town, the oven-like temperatures scarcely relieved by the odd feeble twitch of stale, dusty breeze. Air conditioners across the region wheezed in failing attempts to keep up. The demand had become so high that the electrical system was struggling and consumers had been warned of possible rolling service interruptions to avoid a complete collapse. Records weren't being broken - not quite - but the last time it had been this hot for this long had been almost a century ago. People moved noticeably slower outside, speeding up as they neared buildings known to be cool inside. There were reports of families sleeping overnight in their cars to take advantage of vehicle air conditioners and the town council had activated an emergency cooling plan for the poor and elderly, with cots being set up in local gyms and arenas. Tempers were fraying and, after a couple of spectacular brawls in parks and bars, the police had announced an increased presence on the north-east end of town.

Maeve, wearing just panties, groaned in frustration as she tried again to adjust the sweep of the fan sitting on the floor in front of her. Irritatingly, the fan refused to be set to aim in just one direction; it insisted on swinging back and forth, leaving her swaying from side to side in a futile effort to stay in the cooler air stream.

 

[mrs_mackenzie]

“My bollocks have never been so sweaty.”

Darren and Charlie were digging in the garden of 22 Moriston Avenue and it was the hottest day of the year so far. The grass was yellow and wilted and the ground was hard as nails.

Charlie snorted with laughter. He had the relatively easy job of moving earth, while Darren was waist-deep in the hole with a shovel, excavating a faulty power cable.

“It shouldn't be this hot in Scotland. It's not natural.”

“Hi lads. Absolutely scorching today, isn't it? If you want any water, just let yourselves in, kitchen’s on the left. I’m just going out to the gym.”

Both men looked up to see the lady of the house, a Mrs Lyons, walking down the garden path towards the street.

“Will do, thank you,” Darren called back, giving her a wave.

They both paused work to watch her go, encased shoulder to ankle in lycra, ponytail bobbing behind her.

“Fuck me, she's got an arse on her,” Charlie said, when she'd turned the corner. “Mr Lyons must have some right fun with it.”

“I’d nae kick her out of bed, that's for sure,” Charlie replied. “Not much in the chest department, mind.”

“Ach, I don't mind that. More sensitive than great big knockers.”

“Aye; a little pair of tits matches your little dick and all.”

They both laughed, then turned back to work. The sun really was blazing down, and the rest of the day was only getting hotter. Charlie shaded his eyes as he waited for Darren to lift another shovelful of dry soil out of the hole.

“I’m serious though, Charlie, my bollocks really are sweating. It's like a swamp down there.”

“Shut the fuck up, Darren. Hearing about your ball sweat isn't making me feel any cooler.”

 

[StillStunned]

“I’d nae kick her out of bed, that's for sure,” Charlie replied. “Not much in the chest department, mind.”

From my WIP Pandemonium story:

“She’s beautiful.” There was a dreamy look in Thews’s eyes.

“Ha! If I found her in my bed, I wouldn’t kick her out."

 

[Bamagan]

It's high summer in the deep south, and it almost never gets cool. Even in the middle of the night the heat lingers, aimless and sullen. It shuffles back and forth in a breeze that can only stir memories, too weak to lift scraps of paper off the ground. Steam rises from every puddle, loitering on street corners, too brash and insistent to escape without feeling its warm, damp touch. The air is thick, cloyed with sour sweat and sweet blossoms, and drawing breath is like drinking bathwater.
It's a night for jazz.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

The old line up here is, “I wouldn’t throw her out of bed for eating crackers.”

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

My humble offering, and a tribute to our shared muse; @StillStunned. Let me know if you catch it.

===

Oppressive was the only word for it.

Early August heat mixed with the insufferable humidity of the Mississippi delta.

God, I hated New Orleans sometimes. The ceiling fan creaked its lazy circle above the bed, offering no respite from the sticky night. The noises it made were only slightly less intrusive than the thick, tepid air I suffered in my quick shallow breaths. It was too damned hot to breathe. Fuck, I hated this city.

It was my fault. I knew that. I’d left Chicago on a whim. Greener pastures. Bullshit like that. Chasing a dream. New Orleans was the Birthplace of Jazz, after all. Surely my bass and I could find plenty of work. I scrounged enough gigs to pay for the flop I used as a place to sleep–when I could sleep.

Damn this heat, this humidity.

Pools of brine gathered in my neck and the low places on my chest and stomach. Pools that turned into rivulets that would turn into yellow stains on the sticky sheets below me as I fought the night air. I did everything I could not to breathe too deep.

The last thing I wanted to do was start coughing again and wake Amber. She’d worked a double, coming home and collapsing next to me. I smiled when I thought of her. She was the only good thing this cursed city had given me. Her thick ebony body, her smooth skin and easy smile. That and she had a thing for musicians, especially bass players. Even ones that had to scratch and fight for gigs.

I let out a heavy sigh. Damnit. I coughed.

“Davey. You ok?” Amber stirred. Of course, the first thing she thought about was me.

“Yeah, babe. It’s this heat. I can’t sleep.”

“I know. Me either.” The light from the streetlamp outside our window showed me her smile. “Maybe I can help you relax.”

Why not? It just too damned hot not to fuck.

 

[yowser]

All right, a bit over the limit. So sue me. From an early tale in my corpus:

It was beastly hot in Boston. I had begun to wonder why we had made this trip. That summer Melissa and I were working at an Atlantic seaside resort town, her hometown, but had driven in to Boston on a sweltering August Friday afternoon to catch a concert on the city green, Bonnie Raitt along with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. We had bummed a ride from Hal and Erin, vague friends in town and also a couple, and we would be staying at their friend John's flat in Brookline.

On the drive to Boston, windows wide open to catch whatever breeze we could, we saw streams of city dwellers in their cars emptying out of town to the coast, which we had just left. They were far more sensible than us. The roads were clogged with grumpy drivers anxious for some relief away from the city, and the further we got into Boston, the hotter it got, the tall steel and glass buildings reflecting the heat back on to the streets. People walking on the sidewalks looked exhausted and dispirited, their wet clothes sticking to their overheated bodies.

One bank sign we had passed indicated the temperature was 104. Melissa and I looked at each other. No wonder we were sweating like pigs. Boston never got this hot, did it?

Hal and Erin looked just as hot up front in the car. Hal was a skinny surfer-dude type, long dirty-blond hair and slender shoulders and hips. Erin had pale Irish skin and freckles, handsome curly red hair and a big chest for her short size. Flashing eyes and a saucy smile graced her face charmingly and often. The back and armpit portions of Hal's tee-shirt were dark with sweat.

Concert was great, but it was still oppressively hot when close to midnight we got back to John's. Weary, we went to bed straight away, John in his own bedroom at the front of the long narrow flat, Hal and Erin in the empty spare bedroom in the middle.

Melissa and I were on the overstuffed, beat-up couch in the room between the bedrooms and the bathroom.

All the windows were open, but no air moved. Lying there you didn't even contemplate getting up to fetch some iced water out of the fridge -- it was more effort than you wanted to expend. Melissa and I were keeping as far away from each other as possible on the couch, so our sweaty bodies wouldn't touch and create more heat. This was totally frustrating because we had been looking forward to this weekend not only for the concert, but because we might have a chance for some extended intimacies, problematic to us due to our separate, overly-supervised, summer living situations.

So here we were, with a golden sexual opportunity, and it just was too damn hot to even want to do anything fun. I had on a pair of briefs, Melissa in a tee-shirt and panties, her thick prominent nipples exceedingly arousing as they poked at the fabric covering them. Altogether still too much clothes for comfort.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

Damn. Who knew Canada could be so crazy hot and humid? All I knew was I was sweating balls and knew I had to go in for a swim to cool off or I'd never get any sleep.

Nice as it was to have my cousin loan me his summer cottage for a few weeks, while I was up visiting from New York, it would have been even nicer if it had been air air-conditioned so my clothes weren't glued to my ass.

Too hot and sweaty to even think about trying to go to bed, I opened the door that led out onto the beach and stared awestruck at the moonlit waters of Georgian Bay. Drawn by the allure of the bright full moon reflecting off the water, not really giving a rat's ass if anyone saw me, I stripped off my shorts and T-shirt and tossed them on the deck. I made my way down over the white sand beach to the shoreline, feeling pretty confident that no one else would be around to notice me skinny-dipping at two in the morning.

Lifting my gaze to stare up at the gorgeous starlit sky, the full moon seemed so much bigger and brighter than I'd ever seen it, almost eerily so. Staring out across the still water, it felt like I could see forever, it was so just incredibly bright out, it was hard to conceive it was the middle of the night. I could even make out a few rocks on the bottom of the water it was such an amazingly clear, cloudless sky.

Then some splashing by the floating dock caught my attention, where I'd seen some kids diving in earlier in the afternoon.

I quickly ducked into the water so no one would notice that I hadn't bothered with a bathing suit. Diving down below the surface, the water felt just refreshing enough to give me some relief from the heat.

Once I'd waded out far enough to dive to the bottom, I swam underwater in the direction of the big square wooden float, curious to see who else was crazy enough to be out for a swim at this time of night.

When I came up and surfaced beside it, as I took hold of the ladder and wiped the water from my eyes, I thought I had to be dreaming. A gorgeous slender blonde was sitting cross-legged on the float, gloriously naked. Though her nice little breasts were slightly heaving, she seemed totally unfazed as she grinned and calmly said, "Hi."

 

[draco519]

My life changed when she walked in.

Everything before her made sense, you know? I’d go into my job, make an honest day’s wages for pay beneath the damned hot summer sun. Cold in the winter, too, don’t get me wrong. Spring and fall aren’t so bad. But the way the sky itself seemed to char everything beneath it when you’re laying bricks? That’s a different kind of rough. Makes your skin crack and peel before lunchtime.

But on a Saturday night, having a few cold ones with the boys? Shooting a little pool, singing a little karaoke, asking pretty girls to dance; getting laughed at or slapped and heading back to the boys so we can all laugh about it? It all made sense in the best, simple way it could.

But when she walked in in that tight red dress that contrasted her blue eyes? I learned the true meaning of the word..

Hot.

 

[Erozetta]

The basket on the back of my bike held the desserts with ease.

I pedaled around to the park, where I sat by a large fountain and pulled out the little chocolate swan - which had a droopy neck as the chocolate softened in the summer heat. I chuckled as I pushed the swan’s head back up into the graceful swoop it'd had when I bought it, only to watch it droop back down into the saddest looking swan I’d ever seen.

In the hollow back of the swan was a swirl of pastry cream and a delicately sliced half-strawberry fanned out on either side to mimic wings. I don’t know exactly what I expected but for six dollars maybe a little more oomph? An extra creamy chocolate? A punch of real vanilla beans in the cream? Perfectly ripe strawberries? It wasn’t bad by any means, it just wasn’t six-dollars-for-a-bite-of-chocolate-and-cream good. I could only hope that the pies and lobster tail were better given I’d just dropped over thirty dollars plus tip on the lot.

After eating my swan and licking the melted chocolate from my fingers like a heathen lacking any social etiquette, I rode home. The lobster tail went in the fridge with a note on it declaring that Neil could have the majority of it as long as he left me a piece to try.

By the time I showered to get the sweat of a thirty mile bike ride in the humid midwestern summer off of me, my dinner date with dear old Mr. Tozier was nearing. I needed to pick out an outfit. Preferably one that, once he saw me in it, made him sweat enough to wonder if his AC was still working. Shouldn't be hard.

 

[NotWise]

The desert kills the weak and the unprepared.

Father Sun blazed from a merciless blue sky, and the volcanoes on the distant horizon floated above its shimmering reflection. The desert whispered in my ear like some beckoning lover. “I’ll fold you in my arms,” it said.

I shook my head to clear it and trudged away from the old truck I had to abandon. Heat and dehydration left me weak.

One step and then another—each came more slowly than the last.

A car roared from behind me. The dry grass that clung to a crack in the road nodded as it passed down that empty stretch of asphalt. I turned too late to put my hand out to beg for shelter and a ride.

One step and then another. “I’ll give you peace,” the desert said. “I’ll give you comfort.” Its whisper cut through my confusion. How long could I force it from my dazed mind?

A withered tree clung to the rocks beside the road. Its leaves, shriveled by the heat, rattled in the breeze. It offered me no shade. A salty crust of dried sweat gathered on my skin. My head and my eyelids drooped, and the vast desert shrank to the parched ground in front of me.

One step and then another until I reached the door and a wave of cool air broke over me. “Henry,” my wife said. “I swear you dropped me off five minutes ago. I could have been half done with my grocery list by now.”

“I had to park all the way out at the edge of the lot.”

“Pobrecito. Here, you push the cart. I’ll load it.”

 

[MrPixel]

July in downtown Las Vegas. It's five past midnight, but nobody knows it nor do they care; there is quite a crowd milling about the casino. Endless neon turns the night into day, enough for the K64 in the camera for pix at f8 or so. The McDonald's sign a block away all in Vegas-style neon is fun yet disconcerting.

Gawd, is it hot, even to this Mojave Desert native. I glance around the corner of the casino to find a - yes, neon - thermometer declaring 105°. I inform my buddy standing at the roulette table next to the wide opening to the sidewalk. He shrugs his shoulders as he watches the wheel spin. Not much of a gambler, just a couple of $5 chips on red. At 19 I shouldn't be inside the casino proper, so I gingerly loiter in the opening unsuccessful in finding a fan breeze, swatting at the flying cockroaches landing on my sweaty neck. I click-off a couple more shots of the amazing light show outside.

15. Black.

Buddy shrugs his shoulders.

"Mickey D's?" he poses.

"Sure."

=====

IRL from 50 years ago.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

The Path (current WIP)

It was about three in the afternoon, and the heat was too hellish to keep going. With less than two kilometers to go until Los Arcos, we agreed to stop for a break.

We stopped at a stone bridge where a river crossed the path, and where a group of other peregrinos had stopped and were cooling themselves off.

“I know a very secret place here,” Belén whispered, motioning impatiently for me to follow.

She went off the path, pushing through a thicket of reeds, and I followed, until we came to a stony bank where the slow river water was clear, and gently clawed by willow trees, and where refracted sunlight danced electrically.

She dropped her pack, and without warning, took off her leggings and her top, flinging them aside. She walked into the river and submerged her head, and came out whipping her hair, spraying water like little shards of diamond. I stood there frozen, gaping awkwardly at her naked body.

She laughed at me and said, “Don’t be rude, Sister Felicia, join me!”

She stretched deeply, her breasts — her shamefully perfect breasts — pointing towards me, trying their very best to coax me to join.

I had a death grip on Mother Superior’s bible, my index finger wedged into it to save the spot that I had been reading while we were hiking. The spot I just so happened to have my finger on read: And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts…

Could there be any clearer sign? Belén was no simple peregrina, researching her doctoral thesis and collecting stamps and etchings from monasteries. She was the devil meaning to tempt me from the path.

 

[riverboy]

A thin cloud of dust kicked up from the unpaved road that parallels the beach as I slowly drove it’s length. I drive it when I’m alone, without my wife. She’s not interested in a nude beach, maybe because she knows the most commonly seen sight is bare breasts.

Today, with the thermometer about ready to burst like in the old cartoons, I slowed my car and sat in air-conditioned comfort as I watched a woman get more comfortable, if standing on hot sand under the blistering sun can be called anything like comfortable.

She looked hot from the moment I saw her. Both kinds of hot. Pert-breasted, with an ass that screamed bend-me-over, her skin glistened with that kind of perfectly uniform perspiration that reminds one of a light glaze of honey on the best-looking donut at the bakery. Shiny. Gloriously shiny, that’s what she was, enough to make me think she’d been running, or maybe she’d walked a few miles to get here.

She was getting comfortable by taking off her bikini, its bits of bright yellow cloth becoming bits of bright yellow litter on the sand. She glanced at me when she was nude, the distance between us mostly hiding the sparkle that I could tell was in her eyes. There was a coy smile there, too, on her pretty face, as she swept her hair back and gathered it with an elastic band, her shiny bare breasts on thrust-forward display.

On a day this hot, with the sun so scorching overhead, she needed sunscreen, and soon a big tube of it was in her hand, and she started with her breasts, and I could tell her eyes were watching me. The lotion melted into her sweat, and her hands slid on the soft flesh of her, and my cock was hard and hot in my pants when I opened my car door and stood up into the heat.