As a half-man/half-bear, I do not do well in the summertime.  Heat hits me hard, makes me sweaty, exhausted, stinky.  I know that you probably think these are the universal effects of heat on human beings, but that’s because you’ve never met me and so have never seen me in the heat.  You know how you feel when you’re getting changed in the moist, humid air of the gym locker room after a long workout?  Well that’s how I feel right now, sitting at my desk.  Because it’s 73 in my office.  And I just had to type the word "moist," whose letters are all over the keyboard.  God, I’m exhausted.

And so I celebrate and enjoy air conditioners in the summer, not just for personal reasons, but for health reasons.  Because it’s literally a matter of life and death, I am not afraid to crank those motherfuckers up to 11 from mid-May to October.  Crank it up, fuckers.  To 11.

(If you get both of those references, let’s get married or at least have a beer.  One’s easy, but the other’s a little harder.)

My apartment, however, presents a problem in the air conditioning department.  There are three rooms in my apartment that require AC: the front room, which was formerly my bedroom when I had a roommate (Brian) but has since been converted into an office; the middle room, formerly Brian’s bedroom but now my bedroom; and the living room, which is only about nine feet wide but is roughly thirty feet long and includes my kitchen and sitting/dining/jerking area.

The middle room (my current bedroom) and the living room both have security bars on their windows, meaning I can’t just slip and AC in there, as the windows are only about 13 inches deep (I know there’s a joke here, but I can’t find it).  I have addressed this problem in the living room by getting an in-room air conditioner, a cast-off from my mom.  It’s big and ugly (it looks kinda like R2D2) and has an exhaust tube that connects to my window, but it works and effectively cools the living room.  Always one willing to compromise looks for comfort (I’m wearing pajamas bottoms in my office right now), this ugly-but-working AC is ok with me.  

I have no such in-room AC for my bedroom.  Last summer, Brian used a small AC unit that was not very deep and fit perfectly in the window.  However, despite my protestations and bribes, when he moved out, he took this AC with him.  I offered to buy it from him, since he was moving to a place that did not have security bars on the windows and so could put any ol’ AC in them, whereas it was a bit difficult to find air conditioners that were short enough to fit in this particular window.  However, he refused.  Dick.

About a month ago, I began shopping for a small AC to fit in this window.  My search took me to several places but I finally found a suitable air conditioner at PC Richard.  For those of you outside of the NYC area, PC Richard is essentially a local Best Buy or Circuit City, but much, much shittier.  They try to pull the "family-owned" and small business cards in the face of competition from giants like Circuit City, but PC Richards proves a point that I have long held: there’s a reason why Best Buy and Circuit City are huge corporate giants – because they are much, much better than stores like PC Richard.  Just like I can take a dump in a box and put a guarantee on it, so can you call a store with crappy service and shittier products "family-owned" to test the intelligence of the consumer.       

But despite all this, I still bought the AC at PC Richard (not a smart consumer, am I).  Like I said, it’s not that easy to find a "short" air conditioner – especially so early in the season.  And again, my health and happiness depends on me being able to sleep in a cool room.  Also, the cold air masks that creepy baby/stale-old-man smell in my bedroom that I can’t seem to get rid of.  I needed the AC immediately.  And PC Richard had it.  Done and done.   

Installation of this air conditioner was, as you can probably guess, I totally fucking joke (I know I cried at least once), but fortunately my buddy Bill was in town that weekend and helped me through it.  Soon the AC was in the window and I was keeping it on full-blast even was it was still dipping into the 50′s at night.  All was right with the world.

But then, slowly, my AC started dying.  I first noticed this when I woke up one morning just before 6am, wet.  Usually when this happens I’ve either peed myself or my cleaning lady/lover Zoila has thrown a pail of water on me, as is customary after missionary-style lovemaking in her homeland (Belize? Guatemala? China?).  In this case I was wet not with urine or the post-sex juices mixed with mop water, but with sweat.  In the course of the night, the AC started blowing warm air; when I went to bed, it was nice and cold, but when I woke up, there was heat coming out of the AC.

I reacted to this with the hysteria reserved not quite for the national tragedy but more for the death of a beloved family pet.  I was nearly inconsolable at the prospect of my brand-new AC dying, and chalked up its poor performance to a freak of nature, a one-time mess up.  And wouldn’t you know it – that night I went to bed cold and woke up cold.  The AC made it through the night without a problem.  Hallelujah.

But alas, this success was short-lived.  Since then, I have been faked and duped with great frequency – one night it’ll work, the next it’ll die; for two nights it’ll work, for two it won’t, etc.  The story of my early summer (or late spring) has been alternatively sleep-filled and sleepless nights, with very little regularity.  Each time I lie down in bed on my cool and crisp sheets, slip my hand down my pants, and prepare myself for slumber, I have no idea if I will get a restful night of cold sleep or will awake in a few hours with my hair matted to my forehead, breathing in my own sweat-fumes.

After an especially nasty and hot last night (even though it was cool out) during which I woke up several times to find my crotch could have been used as a slip and slide for miniature people, I decided to call PC Richard to arrange to replace the AC with a new one.  Though the box was gone, I still had the receipt, had only bought the AC less than a month ago, and fo’ sho’ it did not work.  It wouldn’t be a problem to exchange. I thought; the company’s slogan is "97 years of honesty, integrity, reliability." 

Yeah, um, not really.

I was (extremely) rudely rebuffed by the "customer service" person at PC Richard.  Though I explained my situation in a very calm tone and asked only that I get a replacement AC, I was immediately asked if I had bought a store warranty.  Of course, I did not buy this warranty, since spending $50 on a warranty for a $120 air conditioner did not seem like a smart business decision on my part.  After that, the conversation turned and the customer service woman’s tone went from "unhelpful and disinterested" to "you’re a fucking idiot."  She ended the conversation by saying "Sorry – contact the manufacturer" – twice – and hung up on me (and I hadn’t even cursed). 

There will be a point in my life in the not too distant future at which I stop giving a fuck.  When this happens I will track this woman down.  I will not hit her (I haven’t hit a woman in over three weeks), but I will certainly throw something at her.  Not something huge, but maybe something like a can of Pepsi.  That’ll show her.

So now, in short, my life is in shambles.  My AC is broken and I’m terrified to fall asleep.  I was beat for $120 and will have to buy another $120 air conditioner this week (that is, if I find one short enough).  The stress has so affected me that I’ve been feeling a tingling in my left arm on and off all day long.  All I’ve wanted for the past month was an air conditioner that worked.  And maybe for Zoila to stop throwing water on me after we’ve had sex.  I got neither.  There is truly no justice left in the world.

Please, friends, learn from me.  Buy your cds at Virgin, drink your Starbucks, run in your Nikes, have lunch at McDonald’s.  If you stray away from the giants of corporate America, you will wake up in the middle of night sweating, spend your days exhausted, and the rest of your time plotting revenge on a faceless mean woman who was a dick to you because you weren’t smart enough to buy a warranty.  Learn from me, is all I ask.  If I know that my example has helped at least one of you avoid the troubles I’ve been through, I will sleep easier tonight.

(Though still sweating, of course.)