Meel F. Lover / Daily Nexus

It’s the first day of class. You’re going to your first class, ever, perhaps. It’s hot outside. You’re walking — no, you’re busting your ass to get to class before the clock hits 8 a.m. You’re thinking to yourself, “Why in the fuck would I ever have to take a fucking class at eight. I thought I was done with high school. Eight-a.m.s are for nerds and virgins.” You’re huffin’ and you’re puffin’. Google Maps may say that it will take you five minutes walking from the Arbor to Phelps Hall, but you’re about to defy physics, live outside of the laws of man — you’re going to make it in two. But I must ask you: at what cost? 

You walk into the classroom and the class goes quiet. Every single one of the most beautiful people that you’ve ever seen in your entire life turns to look at you, and every single one of them contorts their faces in disgust. Your body has betrayed you; you are dripping sweat from every inch of your body. You wore a gray shirt, and your buckets of sweat are as clear as day — mistake. You thought you could defy the sun, forgetting that you are a mere mortal bound to its heat — mistake. You thought it would be alright and that you would glisten with sweat like Edward Cullen, but instead you look like a drowning donkey — mistake. All of these mistakes and here you are in the middle of Writing 2, slippery as a fish. Don’t want to live your life as a sweat particle, drenching every plastic seat burdened with the task of laying behind your back? Fret no longer, sweaty. Here are five ways to tell your body what YOU want to do, instead of allowing it to ruin your life with that “natural processes” bullshit.

5. Go the extra mile and get there early enough, drenched in sweat, to go to the bathroom and pop a squat under the hand dryers for a while. Lay there, full out on the bathroom floor while both of them are going above you. Take a little hot girl nap, no matter what gender you are. You deserve it. As long as you don’t care about mycobacteria making their way over your entire body, you can make the most out of the resources around you. Adapt. Improvise. Overcome.

4. Bike slowly to class. Don’t mind the people who will speed around you, yelling obscenities at you while you bike at the same speed as the ants making their way on the pavement next to you. Strike up a conversation with them! Right there in the middle of the bike path. You do you, babe. Your skin is glowing, keep it up.

3. Take some time for morning meditation to reengage with your body. Then, tell it to stop being a little bitch. Give yourself a good slap in the face. Look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you will not sweat today. Imagine it happening — you just ran six miles and not a single bead of sweat appears on your forehead. Your armpits smell like the original Old Spice, the one that was on that little brown ship. You are flowers and windblown hair, you are a god. You do not sweat, you glow in the face of your enemies as you stand on their faces, looking down on their dripping, salty, pruny, wet little bodies secreting sweat like the scum of the earth, like the filth beneath your shoe. 

2. Find joy in the little things.

1. Don’t go to class. Complex problems require simple solutions. Root out the problem at its source. Easy as that. No more questions, please. 

Meel F. Lover glistens under moonlight and shines like a reflective orb of bright light from her sweat under the scorching heat of the sun.