From the day
Perspective: The Anxious Local · Tactile
I gripped the neon-orange plastic of the Super Soaker, its reservoir heavy with water as the sun beat down on my pilled cotton sweatshirt. I shouldn't have spent the money—bread is up to seventy cents and the news from Moscow makes the world feel like it's unraveling—but this phat water gun felt like the only defense I had left. That Bryan Adams song blared from a neighbor’s window for the hundredth time today, the raspy chorus sticking to the humid air like a thick, unwanted film. I wiped my sweaty palms on my denim jeans, wondering if the gas station would hike prices again by tomorrow morning while the Soviet Union continues its slow, terrifying collapse.