10.06.2002

 

I want it to rain every night from now on. It didn't actually rain tonight. But here it's been pouring for days. Thunder and lighting, window panes rattling in the darkness and cars driving down the street at 10 miles an hour because the drivers don't want to be splashing too much water up into the engine block. The rivulets of water streaming down the window stand in sharp contrast to those beads of sweat that form in a V just below your clavicles. My kind of rain.

We decided to just stay in bed all day, knowing that the minute we stepped outside, we'd get soaking wet, and if we had a secluded place to go, we'd just say to hell with it and go outside naked and laugh at each other as the rain water plastered our hair against our faces and we'd pretend we knew how far away the center of the storm was by counting the seconds between lightning flashes and the subsequent rumble that always made you jump just a little bit. It would be dark enough to the point that our nakedness would just be fun, instead of stange looking, especially when you jump with every crack of thunder and I laugh with my whole body at your little jumps, things that would look rather unattractive in an everyday situation under normal lighting, but with us being as drunk on the experience as we would be, this would just be part of the memory and the smile.

But we don't have a secluded place to go, so we decide to stay inside and get soaking wet there. And the windows keep rattling and we hear the cars slowing cutting their way through the 10-inch deep water in the street, but we stop noticing it after a while. And it just keeps raining and raining, really coming down, and I keep thinking, I hoped for this kind of rain for weeks and then it came, and I hope it never leaves. I love the rain, I love the things the rain makes me do, and I stare straight up at it and try not to close my eyes, even though the drops keep pelting me directly in the face and my natural instinct is to shut my eyes and find the nearest shelter. But no, for the moment I want to keep staring up, drinking in it and swimming in it and remembering that I had hoped for rain like this for some time.

Today was bright and sunny. Not a cloud in the sky. But the rain washed all that away and satisfied a thirst, one that nevertheless grows stronger as the rain keeps falling.