Texas Summer Airgasms

  In Texas, where real people live, it's hot in the summer.  Damn hot.  We compensate by chilling public buildings and private spaces down to the median October temperature, (Fahrenheit, of course) of North Bear Butt, Alaska.  At the mall you can see your breath in June and hang beef halves during July and August.  The secretaries and receptionists sit around in sweaters and leggings with electric space heaters under their desks going full blast.  Outside you could fry eggs on a Lexus but inside it's 47 degrees with a light north wind, 15% humidity and no rain in the forecast.

  This leads to an interesting sensation.  You spend an hour looking for weedeater line or 38D push-up bras at Fauxon Hills Mall and get chilled to the bone.  Then, as you come out of the airlock, past the Mexican teenagers eyeing each other under the portico and walk across the sun-shimmering black asphalt to your baking car you feel an exquisite sensation of invulnerability.   Like an ice cube dropped into the sun.  

  It lasts about eight seconds.  Then you start to sweat.

  I don't know the name of this so I'm working on it now.  No humans in history have ever experienced any sensation remotely comparable, excepting perhaps New England witches burnt during the Little Ice Age where some accelerant was used.

  Airgasm?  Mallgasm?  Freoninment?

  My friend, Iris Davis noticed this phenomenon back in the 80s, when the Little Texas Central Air Conditioning Ice Age spread North from Houston where it began in the late 50s.   I don't think she has a technical or cultural name for it either.