Each season has its pros, each season has its cons. Even living in California where the seasons tend to meld into each other, there’s still enough of a difference to differentiate winter from summer. Fall and spring, not so much. Today is the first day of summer. And it’s about time. My psyche was built for blue skies and warm weather.

Summer as a kid meant time off from school. I would have become a teacher, just for that great benefit, if the job paid better. Still, most people take their holidays during the summer months when whereever it is you are going you can expect good weather. Even nothing more than a weekend in summer is a good excuse to take off, get outdoors, and enjoy life.

The best part of summer is the beach, and the beach appropriate clothing that hot studs wear pretty much everywhere. Summer is a season of skin. And tight, skimpy clothing covering the small amounts of skin that society says still need to be covered in public. Some say autumn is the best season with its riotous display of fall colors. Others that the festive holidays of winter make it the best season. Spring, when the world seems to be rejuvenating itself and coming alive once again has its admirers too. But if you were forced to pick one season and dump the others I’m pretty sure summer would win hands down. Sex sells even when it comes to seasons. And summer is all about sex.

Hot weather, hot boys . . . as that song from Porgy & Bess goes: Summertime and the livin’ is sleazy. I think summers were invented for gay men. The Beach Boys promised us Hot Fun In The Summertime, and Sly & The Family Stone made sure we all knew what the meant by “we can bum bum where we want to”. The sweltering humidity aside, summer invokes temperate memories of years past and of the boys of summer we’ve known. K.D. Lang crooned of “my friend, my new fun thing, my summer fling,” summing up the breezy, loopy, head-spinning quintessence of a summer lover, and Chelsia Chan stirred the memories of “that summer night, when my whole world tumbled down.”

Don Henley must have been a rice queen in his own right, singing of the hot boys “with brown skin shining in the sun,” and ya know John Travolta wanted to be the one singing the line “I met a boy, cute as can be” in Summer Nights. But uh-oh those summer nights, indeed. Chad and Jeremy harmonized about “soft kisses on a summer’s day,” and the Danleers reminisced in four part perfection about the “one summer night we fell in love.”

Dolly Parton and the countless drag queens who wish they were her sang how “sweet summer lovin’ keeps me high as candy wine,” while Will Smith in his Fresh Prince persona rapped from inside of his closet about “the days growing up and the first person you kiss,” and how “it’s like the summers a natural afradesiac.”

Everyone loves summer and the love the season brings. Sometimes it sounds like the musicians of the world spent their most memorable summers in Thailand, wrapped in the arms of their boy du jour, enveloped in a brief holiday love affair whose memory stirs the soul for years to come. In All Summer Long, Kid Rock, possibly a fan of Sunee Plaza, remembers his fling being “caught somewhere between a boy and man,” and Chris Isaak lets us know he shares our pain with the lyrics:

And I wonder do you ever ever ever miss me too;
The way that I miss you,
On that summer holiday we knew;
That holiday with you.

Decades before the boys working in the bars today were even born, The Motels sang of the love that happened Suddenly Last Summer:

It happened one summer,
It happened one time.
It happened forever,
For a short time.
A place for a moment,
An end to dream.
Forever I loved you,
Forever it seemed.

And The Pogues brought it home singing of the many changes we’ve all gone through “when it’s summer in Siam and the moon is full of rainbows.”

Yeah, I know. Silly post. But then we all act a bit silly come summer, even the most dedicated butterflies among us. That’s easy to do on any holiday in Thailand, but seems to be inescapable when summer comes along. Not that that’s a bad thing. Those summer holiday romances and brief affairs provide years of pleasant memories, and in the words of War, are at least worthy of a silly post:

Cause it’s summer,
Summer time is here.
Yes, it’s summer,
It’s my time of year.

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