I'm not sure that readers outside of the Southwest truly understand the ugliness of mid-June days that reach highs of 107 degrees. Allow me to explain.
107 degrees means that it's already somewhere around 80 degrees at 6 a.m. Thus, it is impossible to sleep one minute past sunrise. By 9:30, when you have to leave to drop off some work stuff in another part of the Valley, it is just hot enough for you to realize that you will not be able to work out today. You make sure that the air is running and the windows are shut before you leave the house, lest you come home to an oven. By mid-afternoon, you realize that you totally forgot to turn in that last piece of paper to prove that you have paid off the right authorities about that traffic ticket. In the time that it takes to walk from the car to the courthouse, your bra sticks to you. Inside, the line is fifty people long and there are only two clerks present, just because that's what it's like at any office of State bureaucracies. Even though the air is on, it doesn't mask the fact that you are crammed in a room with fifty other sweaty bodies, standing almost completely still for an hour. You get home in time to take a second shower that day, because there is no way you are going to a party looking like it's 107 degrees, and then head over to your boyfriend's house in the South Bay, which takes two hours on account of the fact that every car over 10 years old will overheat at the top of the hill.
So you and the boyfriend head down to a loft party a few hours later because your friend tells you that you really should get there before it packs. It's a little before 10 p.m., but the heat has not subsided and, even though the loft is nowhere near half-full at this point, it is deathly uncomfortable. You're thinking that maybe you should have just worn the cutoff Levi's that you have had since 9th grade, but then you see a bunch of hipsters wearing nearly identical cutoffs and you think, Okay, I'm suffering, but at least I don't look like everyone else. You and the boyfriend meet up with your friend and you start to chat as you sit through sets by various local bands memorable only for the fact that one managed to slaughter your favorite Stone Roses' song. Your friend runs off to shoot pictures and you and your boyfriend slide against the wall down towards the floor because, if heat rises, then it should be cooler down here, right?
As the loft fills, the heat grows more oppressive and the vodka tonics have about the same effect as Diet Coke because you have managed to sweat out everything you consumed. Your friend hands you two cans of Sparks that he hijacked from the VIP area and you start to drink one, but it's so sugary sweet that it gives you a headache. MSTRKRFT starts to DJ and your digging it, especially when the guys mix in parts of "La La Land." All you want to do is dance, but every time you try, you feel like you might collapse. You head to the bar and purchase two bottles of water. You press one against your forehead and one against the back of your neck, which further musses up your formerly stick-straight hair. If you weren't used to this, you might be upset, but, since you are from California, you know that any night on the town in this weather means that, sometime before midnight, your hair will fall limp with the few natural waves reappearing and your makeup will melt. Still, you are getting really into MSTRKRFT because these guys are that good, so you stick it out until somewhere close to 2 a.m., when you are about to collapse from the heat.
The next day, it takes over an hour to drive back to your place, a 405 crawl where you pass overheated engines every mile. You get home, jump in the shower and pull on those old cutoffs and try to get something productive done inside the air conditioned home until you must, as Marc Almond once sang, "start the nightlife over again."