Ballad of the Sweatiest Boy You Know
I'm constantly told, "Don't sweat it," but that's a little challenging when sweating is my greatest skill.
I am on the subway and masks are still mandatory. We all pack on tightly because the next train is in 30 minutes, and because this city believes that is an adequate schedule during rush hour. I stand press boarded to the others on the train and feel as a bead of sweat begins to form between my shoulder blades. The AC is off, and the bead rolls down pausing only for a moment at the small of my back. There it pools again before dropping into its final destination, my ass crack. This sends a jolt up my spine like a rubber band snap. What happens next I can only imagine, as the entire water cycle begins once more. As the train lurches, more and more beads drop like a string of pearls to their eventual nesting place. It is a slow and methodical water torture, and by the time I am let off, I look like I have gone swimming. I am a sweaty boy.
***
During the summer between 5th and 6th grade, our Middle School hosted our first dance. It was meant, I think, to be our first foray into adulthood— which in this case mainly meant experimenting with hair gel. The main goal, if one is to believe there is some larger machination behind these things, was to ease in the transition from our individual elementary schools to the larger regional middle school. With so many new children to mix with, anxieties were to be expected. The school system thought they would alleviate some of these fears by corraling us all into a cramped gymnasium to dance our worries away.
I was most excited to go because the girl I had a crush on at the time, Brittany, would be there. Brittany didn’t go to my school, but played on my soccer team and would sometimes go with her family to my Church. She had a square face and looked a bit like Miranda Cosgrove, who was big for me at the time. (As you can tell this piece is a bit of a time capsule.) To that point, I had yet to have a girlfriend, which made me feel inconceivably uncool even at ten years old. I knew I was probably supposed to have crushes on girls at this point, and besides, everyone always seemed so interested in my pre-pubescent love life. It is hard to say how much I was actually interested in her and how much I felt it was something I should do. In many ways, she felt like a safe guess at who was an acceptable person to feel attracted to, like asking someone who their favorite Jonas Brother is and answering blindly, “Kevin.”
As we filed into the gymnasium of our local Boys & Girls Club I scanned for the love of my young life. I had spoken about her to so many of my friends, used her as a “Get Out of Jail Free” card, made up so much about our relationship, and now our worlds were going to collide. She wore a floral dress which I thought was the peak of fashion, but now realize was likely just a preteen sack dress from the Justice in our town’s mall. Though I didn’t know any of the people she was with, children have an innate sense of telling who is a particular school’s popular group, and hers far outranked my own. It was instantly recognizable that they were cool. Meanwhile, my small group of friends were not allowed to listen to Top 40 and did not yet know what a “Soulja Boy” was, least of all how to “crank” one.
Still, we danced, unincumbered, freely moving our little bodies in ways we thought possibly mirrored the music. Then I began to feel it, each time I touched my short buzz cut or shook my head wet sparks of electricity would fling off. If I ran my fingers fast enough over the surface of my skull I could create a mist-like spray that made me feel a bit like the produce in a grocery store. I went to the bathroom with a friend and realized we were slick with sweat. As we tried to pat down with the scratchy brown paper towels and drink from the rusted water bubbler, a new shame began to grow inside of me. I had probably sweat before, but I had never been so entirely aware of it until now. It was a watershed moment. (Literally.) This was the first time I became aware of my own presentation, one of the first times I felt my own body was betraying my intentions.
When I finally mustered up the courage to talk to Brittany, she sweetly said hello and introduced a few of her friends to me. Then she let me know that I was incredibly sweaty. She was of course correct, but it was probably the last thing I had wanted to hear, and a sentiment I have heard many times since.
***
I tell my doctor (like every infomercial urges) that I feel my sweating has become a problem. This is one of the many issues I find with myself, and I offer it up hoping for a solution. Ideally, I want a pill, but if there’s a surgery that comes with minor facial reconstruction, I’ll take that too. I am practically laughed out the door, “People sweat,” he reminds me, “it’s entirely natural, and you might be making too big a deal of this.” I resent this, I have never made too big a deal of anything in my entire life. (I wonder if there’s a pill with weight loss side effects as well?)
Summers are the worst, a period of time where I feel I am self-sous vide-ing. I change my shirts two or three times a day and find trouble keeping my underwear dry (ladies, amiright?). Though I have no conclusive evidence, each Summer feels hotter and more humid than the last. Each lasting for longer than the year prior, me only escaping to the first snap of Fall by the skin of my teeth. If experts are to be believed (which let’s be honest, when are experts ever believed) this pattern will continue to intensify, thanks to a phenomenon known as “Global Boiling.” At the rate I am going, sometime next August the sun is going to be just a little too strong, and in a flash of light I am going to burn up on the spot like a mosquito under a magnifying glass or that one guy in Bleak House. All that will be left of me is a salt outline surrounding my smoldering pile of cinders topped by a pair of 301 Ardell Wispies.
Without pills or another Ice Age, I have been left to my own devices for concealing my perspiration. I’ve gone to house parties and used entire rolls of toilet paper simply dabbing my brow throughout the night, stuffing the wet remains in the empty kitchen drawers. They look so sad, wadded up like that, but it does give me some sense of pleasure envisioning the unfortunate Lax boy reaching for an empty roll as he takes his morning coke shit. I’ve tried the sprays and the powders and the special deodorants with aluminum, but nothing works. Afterall, are we really to expect a little baking powder can soak up the full swamp with functioning ecosystem located under my chest?
There’s a certain type of person, I have noticed, who feels utterly compelled to announce the obvious. When they see me all red-faced and puffy it is like they are put into a trance. (And hello, can you blame them?) They lose all control and simply must blurt it out: “Jesus! You’re sweaty.” They then breathe a great big fat sigh of relief — how very straining it must have been on them to keep all of that in. Really, I’m thrilled to have unburdened them of their unkind thoughts.
I wonder what the ultimate takeaway from this brand of comment is meant to be. Do they actually think that I am so unaware of my own body, and the ways in which I look like I’ve been playing in the rain? This makes me feel like a child too dumb to outrun the pirate head as it tips over the edge of a water park. This is how they see me, a boy in the splash zone. But I do not need their help moving out of the way.
Still, I think I can recognize the impulse.
By stating that I look wet, damp, sopping, sodden, waterlogged, aqueous, bedraggled, clammy, and moist, they in turn seem drier. Now when I see others sweat, I find a great and perverse joy. I've been turned into a schadenfreuding scoundrel who celebrates the wetness of others. I search out for pit stains, the high shine of a forehead in the sun, reveling in others’ dewy complexions. There is no greater high than seeing a self-professed “non-sweater” begin to shvitz ever so slightly— it is the most gratifying form of vindication.
But, whenever you seek a flaw in someone else, what you are really looking for are the parts of yourself that leave you dissatisfied. Likewise, it is often so much easier to find your own traits more attractive when reflected back on someone else. Why are the men slick with oil and sweat so sexual in a Tom of Finland way when I look at them, but I feel like a blobfish sputtering and wet covered in a layer of my own mucal membrane? This is just one of the million ways in which I wage war against my own body, blaming it for doing something so natural. I should be thankful, I know it is my body's way of taking care of me, its own version of rubbing my tummy and Hey Nonny Nonny-ing about, but just like a mother’s efforts it still sparks embarrassment in me.
There is this shame and fear in Western societies, a prudish need to present formality and cleanliness, an understanding of what is deemed acceptable. We see sweat as vile and unfit, not belonging in our manicured spaces of acceptability politics. But in my sweat is a Berlin dance club, it is Grace Jones thrusting her muscled hips to a Sylvester song. The water that runs from my forehead is clouds over cemeteries and a glass of organic orange wine. It is the wet backs of my best friends who bike to see me regardless of the heat, the chest of my lover that keeps us stuck in bed, the neck of my cousin rapt with conversation. Sweat is sexual and feral, it dances with its hands above its head, it is a ringer tank, red lipstick from behind the glass case, a Corona with lime— it is alive and it is beautiful.
I've never related to something more in my life. Handshakes are a hyperhidrosis-haver's nightmare fuel. Been saving up to Botox the sweat out of my appendages and armpits someday- the only thing that seems to be a possible solution.