There's just something about the rain, I guess. It makes you want to do the strangest things.
Listen to you roof break it's usual stoic silence. Curl up with a good book, for you more mature or conservative folk. Or maybe, if it's a hazy summer day like the memory I am immersed in now, you want to run outside; let the rain caress and envelop you. Or try to, anyhow. Have you ever done that? Run headlong into a warm summer shower? If you have, you might have noticed how the rain pelts your skin, soaking in until your hair is stringy and your jeans are spray painted to your thighs.
You know what I think? I think the sky just opens up and falls. Who knows, maybe it's jealous. How would it feel to be contained by something so finite as a human body, with all the passions of something thought to be immortal? The sky never dies. But it never lives, either.
So, I am outside, in the rain, and this girl walks up to me. She's maybe twenty three, twenty four. All legs and eyes; she sits down, and is staring at me in that way that could mean one of two things: She thinks I am insane. Or, she thinks I am sexy.
I have become an expert on this type of appraisal; most of my life, this is how women have looked at me. I have a fifty-fifty ratio of getting laid (or getting a raised eyebrow and look of disgust) when it comes down to it. And sometimes, they want to fuck because they assume I am a little outside the range of the normal frequency. Not that I am complaining. Those women, the women who want to wander over towards the wild side away from their alcoholic husbands and minivans, they are almost desperately voracious in the sack. It's like they want to be the very embodiment of reckless abandon, because they read that exact phrase in some Harlequin romance novel. Like I said, I don't mind. It's fun to be ridden, just as long as every now and again I get to ride.
So what was I saying? Oh, yeah; about the rain. So this girl is there next to me, and I think it's rather odd, considering that I am squatting outside my regular summer shower venue, an old Greyhound station that I used to hang out at in college. People watching and higher learning avoidence, wrapped up in one decrepid building where no one knew my name.
Ever find stuff like that comforting? I have always felt more at ease when no one knew my name. You get further in life that way, though most people I bother saying this to tell me to shove it. You get further because: you are the only one with the power to say who you are. You say where to, quitting time, and how far. You want to know what freedom is? Go into a fleabag bar in Elco, Nevada sometime; wait until all eyes are on you, and recite that famous passage from Macbeth. Or a sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. End with a bang, baby; scream the last line. Smile. And walk out. As you go, you'll be hearing someone say, 'Does anyone even know his name?' I'm telling ya, you don't walk into your town's equivalent of Cheers. You know, not where they all know your name; go where they all want to. And then, make sure to get the hell out of Dodge in a timely fashion.
About names, and the girl. This sweetly beautiful woman in the rain; she asks me my name. I told her, and she didn't say anything. So I started in on my Chicken Little theory. She looked a little askance at that one, and then I was looking straight ahead, about to throw down my boxing gloves and go back to my corner, when I heard this noise.
It's low, and soft, and keening almost, and when I take a good look at her, I can see she is moaning. Her mouth is forming a sort of involuntary 'O', and the rain is just pouring in. I stare through the haze of my waterlogged, squinty vision and think that she may be crying. It's rather sexy, or should I say, sensual. I thought that this was perhaps the closest I had ever been to a generic romance movie introduction. Get the mental picture, or go buy one of those novels I was mentioning earlier. They can describe this scene, the vulnerable woman in distress during a summer rainstorm, much more eloquently that I could ever explain it to you.
But hey, sexy was actually right on. And I came to this conclusion when she leaned back, right there on the uneven, rocky pavement of a deserted Greyhound bus depot, and mumbled, 'Watch this.' My eyes were looking down, cause, after all; she had afforded me the view. Talk about reckless abandon. This was the point when I noticed her jeans were undone; the buttons on her fly were glistening with discarded rainwater. And her hand seemed to be moving cyclically, under the cover of the crotch of her jeans and my amazed, watchful eye. I couldn't believe it. Can you? Here was this leggy, well dressed chick that looked like she should be showing horses or jockeying them for a living, with her pants undone, grinding her face into the blacktop, loose pavement tangling into her soaking, matted hair.
I was staring at her face, ruddy, dripping, and speckled with random pebbles from the lot, and at her hand gearing up for the big finish; her knuckles outlined by jeans that, for all intensive purposes, looked like soggy construction paper by this point.
I think that's when she came.
I don't remember her getting up, or leaving, or even buttoning her fly. I do remember this, though. I never got her name. You see what I mean about freedom?
There's just something about the rain. Maybe there is a little release inherent. The sky is letting itself go, turning in on itself, coming out of itself. And all you can do, really, is watch.
Or maybe not. Hell, you want my personal advice? Remember this, the next time the thunder rolls through. Ditch the book, baby. Open your front door, or step out onto your back porch.
And then, join the fray.
1:58 a.m. - 2001-08-16
Recent entries:
cliffhanger - 2005-11-12
Mary - 2005-02-08
Border - 2004-07-26
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