This July, I broke down and bought an air conditioner for my bedroom, even though I’m moving in August. It’s been too hot most days to spend time outside; there’s no enjoyment even in going to the park, much less in strolling through the city.

I used to hate the cold more than anything, but I think I’m being persuaded that heat is worse. If you learn to dress appropriately for cold, you can be out all day in it (unless it’s really awful, of course, but we don’t live in the arctic). Cold takes away from the enjoyment of the outdoors somewhat — you don’t want to sit on a park bench — but at least in New York, winter is still perfectly navigable. The subways are a pleasant temperature, the streets don’t smell like urine and garbage, and there’s plenty to do indoors.

The sort of nasty heat we’ve had this month is impossible to accommodate with clothing, short of maybe walking around in a bikini while being spritzed by servants. Subway platforms are their own special hell; sometimes easily as hot as an E-Z Bake Oven. And plenty of indoor spaces, including most of my apartment, aren’t air conditioned adequately or at all. Even more than in winter, living with nasty summer weather is a drastically curtailed existence of scurrying from habitable microclimate to habitable microclimate, screwing up one’s face against the awfulness of what’s in between.

I’ve never been a particularly rabid fan of musical theater, although I certainly grew up watching the classics over and over — and there was that momentous realization in seventh grade that I might be “different” because I found myself absolutely adoring West Side Story.

Still, I’ve lived in New York for five years and haven’t managed to make it to more than a handful of shows. Nor had I been to a piano bar until last Saturday, when my boyfriend took A White Bear and me to Marie’s Crisis in the Village.

I always thought a piano bar had to be elegant — a classy sort of karaoke, like the Diane Keaton “Seems Like Old Times” scene in Annie Hall. Marie’s Crisis is not anything like that. It’s a divey basement bar, where as the bouncer checks your ID you can hear everyone in the crowd singing out, oh what was it, “Feed the Birds” or something. Inside there’s a piano surrounded by crummy board for resting your drink, a bar where drinks are sold in the back of the place, and a couple of tables in a corner, though everyone’s standing.

Sitting behind the piano was Dexter, a middle-aged, barrel-chested man with thinning white (blond? probably not) hair and a few earrings. He seems to know every show tune. Every. Not just the piano parts, but the lyrics, which he can belt out if the crowd is unsure. Dexter played a mix of older and newer stuff, things that everyone knew and rarities for the real aficionados.

Everyone once in a while, when Dexter came back from a short break, he’d give one person a solo, but for the most part the singing was a group effort. On some of the verses of the more obscure songs there’d be only a couple of people who knew the words, but I thought it was amazing that there was never a song for which nobody knew the words. And then there were the blockbusters where everyone knew the words. Those were fun. A room full of homosexuals singing, “You’re doin’ fine, Oklahoma! Oklahoma O.K.!” at the top of their lungs is an awesome spectacle.

The crowd was interesting. Younger than I’d expected (lots of guys in their 20s and 30s). There were plenty of women, too, some of whom had clearly come to sing and others of whom had brought their boyfriends along for no apparent reason. The boyfriends clung to the girlfriends as talismans and made loud, obnoxious conversation that made me want to shoo them out.

In all, a good time, although if you go I recommend staying away from the well gin. I found I knew more tunes than I expected, and I surprised myself and my party by knowing all the words to “Our Love Is Here to Stay” — I vaguely recall being taken with the song in high school and making it a point to learn the lyrics. “The radio, and the telephone, and the movies that we know / may just be passing fancies / and in time may go. But, oh my dear…”

The boyfriend called the experience “gay church,” and that’s a fair description. It’s a church that welcomes everyone, though, if you’re willing to learn the liturgy and refrain from obnoxious talking. It’s easy, though. As Dexter sang to us, “When we read we begin with A, B, C. When we sing we begin with Do, Re, Mi.” If that put a tune in your ear (and I know it did), you’ll be fine.