Summer lovin’ In the summertime, loving is easy BY SARAH GREEN

MOST PEOPLE define summer by solstices and equinoxes. But for me, summer is the time of year I experience the beer-goggle phenomenon dead sober. Perhaps it’s the smell of Banana Boat in the air. Perhaps brain function becomes impaired by direct sunlight. Perhaps, just as birds mistake heat waves dancing off the highway for pools of water, summer heat makes chumps resemble eligible bachelors. Both the birds and I end up crashing into the pavement. I wake up in September to find a totally unsuitable man using my towels and peering into my refrigerator. Libertarians, creationists, virgins, gambling addicts, the occasional pothead. Someone who dropped out of Yale to make sculptures from broken glass. Someone who insists on calling me "Tits." Or even just someone whose real home is on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon Line.

How could this be? Why do my expectations, IQ, and inhibitions all plummet when the mercury rises?

John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John never sang about winter lovin’. And for good reason — it’s nearly impossible to fall in love in the winter. People are ugly in the winter. Lips chapped, complexions pasty, hair dull, noses red and snot-filled, flesh dry and flabby. And people are crabby in the winter. Shoulders hunched, head bowed, you skid through an unappetizing potage of slush, salt, sand, and snow, slog through a tide of seasonal shoppers, and then arrive home to find that after all that, your neighbor, who looked so winsome among fall’s foliage, has stolen the parking space you spent an hour shoveling out from under three feet of snow.

Summer is a whole new kettle of fish. The crucial troika in any good murder mystery — means, motive, and opportunity — also applies to romance. And no season provides more of all three than summer. Maybe it’s nothing so complicated as UVB rays and neuroscience. Maybe it’s not a love-mirage. Maybe it’s just the fact that everyone’s already in a state of seminudity and you just spent the last six months cold and alone.

Come springtime, the bulky clothes and bad moods fall away in a collective molting. Last year’s disappointments melt away with the snow. You spring-clean your old clothes, your cluttered closets, your lingering ex-boyfriend. And before you know it, the profusion of tulips and magnolias and new wedge sandals have gone to your head. You’re twitterpated. Suddenly you’re seeing your space-poaching neighbor in a whole new light — Daylight Saving Time.

Is the flip side of seasonal depression summer euphoria? In June, anything seems possible. You’ve packed your common sense away with your sweaters. You believe you’ll go to all those summer concerts. You believe you’ll sign up for sailing lessons. You believe the Yankees will lose the AL East. You believe you have a future with Franc. You believe he will learn to speak English.

Come August, as the days shorten, you’re forced to re-evaluate. You settle. For a free show at the Hatch Shell. For canoeing. For the wild card. For the stranger in your bathroom.

In the summertime, the living is easy and the loving even more so. You can make it to Labor Day before even knowing what he looks like fully clothed. But just as Sylvester used to look at Tweety and see a little Cornish game hen walking around on its drumsticks, you should look at the hottie on the Esplanade and see a giant, sodden Kleenex. Your next broken heart, sailing by on rollerblades.

Only in movies does summer love end up with you moving (from Australia!) to your beloved’s hometown, winning his heart, and scoring a cool leather jacket. In the real world, you just end up spending your lunch break looking for discount flights to Tennessee. It’s all fun and games till someone loses a heart.

Summer romance — languid, tanned, all sun-kissed and flirty. Fall break-up — lingering, clammy, all tear-stained and depressing. And just in time for winter.

Sarah Green can be reached at sgreen@gmail.com