I Haven’t Always Been as Hot as I am Now

I regularly burst into flame.

Of course, you wouldn’t know it to look at me.

Or maybe you would.  It’s hard to have one’s internal temperature moved to “Bake” – and without permission! – and not give it away.

Take, for instance, the flush of my downy pink cheeks.  There’s a giveaway.  What once spoke of a day in the sun now shouts of increasing distraction and the urge to get into some sort of hollering match, preferably one in which I am absolutely in the right, something that perhaps ends with a massage and offers of treats.

“You can’t tell by looking at you,” he says, turning on the fan.

“But it’s true,” I say.  “I’ve been set to Intermittent Broil.”

He says these things, perhaps, because it’s in his best interest.  Or so I imagine.  Frankly, while I like to envision myself as somewhat formidable, I’m just not that scary.  I rarely shout, berate, or demand, in general; but I am beginning to see why some women do.

“I see perimenopause as the reverse of puberty,” I tell a friend.  “Whatever your puberty was like, it’s going to come up again.”

She shakes her head.  “I’m gonna crawl out my bedroom window,” she says, “looking for parties.”

“Me,” I say, “I’m going to burst into tears.”

She nods.  “Probably do that, too.  Hey – can we write our boyfriends’ names over and over on something?”

“Only if you call mine and ask him if he like-likes me.”

We are quiet for a moment.

“You want to go to Dairy Queen?” she asks. 

I rise.  “Think they will let me stand in the walk-in cooler?”