This Autumn Rain Is Killing the Vibe
This Autumn Rain Is Killing the Vibe
Every weekend is a waterlogged write-off.
Weather reports in autumn tend to be issued with many issues and caveats, and this is especially true if you live near a large body of water. I say this as a reflection of my semi-professionalism and experience and full-spectrum understanding of October’s vagaries. I can lay out the schizophrenic weather patterns I’ve witnessed in Toronto in a slightly hinky order since I could experience five different climates in a single afternoon, and a sudden change in sunlight or windy gusts are both disparate and out of sequence. If this is an October miracle, it surely isn’t the only weather-related one that is ineffable while carrying an unparalleled capacity to get me heated. In fact, despite the fickle nature of the hour-to-hour temperature and precipitation, fall weather is less disparate than it may seem at first.
All this said, in autumn, there is death, taxes, and goddamn rain every Friday and Saturday. The precise nature of this weekly schedule is a bit high-handed, if not Mother Nature running a cynical/vile gambit to ruin our weekend plans. It is incredibly dispiriting to spend Mondays through Thursdays staring out my apartment window to see a vibrant blue sky in the backdrop of red and yellow leaves, silently praying for this weather to continue into the weekend. This oafish ritual feels like I’m pulling on a lever that is supposed to deliver a response if the things I’d been taught about autumn worked a certain way, and then as I pull the lever, either nothing would happen or a boxing glove would emerge from a concealed panel and sock me in the nuts. For the last month-and-a-half, the crisp October ambiance would carry a perfect When Harry Met Sally aesthetic all week only for the weekend to degrade into When Harry Hit Sally With His Car. This statement is less prosaic than it seems, but more portentous than it looks.
Sure, I will concede that there is no stronger vibe than rain-slicked city streets at night, but each Friday, the walls of every subway platform turn into the Bellagio fountains except it smells like hot dog water. Bursts and streams shooting everywhere as I wait for a delayed train to take me to a bar where everyone is throwing their soaked umbrellas in random spots scattered across the floor that in no way resembles a coherent and consolidated pile. Everything here looks out of place, like Patrick Bateman at an Olive Garden. This ordeal has inspired me to concoct a business proposition for Mark Cuban: Every bar should offer dry hot socks.
If all of the stuff in the previous paragraphs qualifies as ominous, imagine confronting an absolutely drenched food delivery person at your front porch or apartment lobby, their outfit bogged down by roughly five pounds of moisture that is a gross mixture of grimy city rain and relentless biking perspiration. No matter how generously you tip them, there is still an inherent pang of guilt when they pull up looking like the government employees from ET who ransacked Elliot’s house.
I understand that my fundamental quarrel is with the universe, or the month of October, or whatever force it is that makes weather patterns act like this as the air chills. The weather app will show something like 60°F/15°C every morning, the ideal weather to take your partner out for a Patagonia-fleeced saunter around the park with a coffee. Instead, as the dark gloomy clouds creep over you all uninvited and unexpected, you two will be spending $6 on an umbrella that will inevitably buckle at the first intense breeze. What qualifies as “sharing” the umbrella is a series of jostles and tugging until one of you passive-aggressively says, “You know what? You can have it! I’m fine!” The amount of breakups that will be caused by a couple’s inability to share an umbrella… well, we’ll look up the statistics.
