I am wearing a dress
that is too short. All of my dresses seem to be too short, and I can never
figure out if I simply purchase them this way – judgment blurred by a dark
dressing room and the allure of something new – or if they are shrinking in the
wash. Each time I climb out of my car, I tug at the hem self-consciously,
feeling my tights slide down my thighs – where I unceremoniously hike them back
up.
On my drive to the library each day – where I do
the majority of my work – I always stop at the gas-station and buy the same
things for breakfast: A 32oz cup of ice – because the drive is long, and hot,
and I haven’t had a working air conditioning for over a year – a container of
grapes, and a sugar-free redbull. I should probably cut back on my caffeine
intake. Red Bull makes my mouth taste funny.
I always park myself on the second floor, in the applied science and technology
section, near a window. I move the chair closer to it – although the window is
always closed, it gives it less of a stuffy feeling. I search for my laptop in
my backpack – yes, backpack. I prefer it over bulky ‘designer bags’; they seem
to fit me better, and are good for spur of the moment adventures. I pulled out
my computer, pushing aside the book I had ‘borrowed’ from this library a few
days prior. I hadn’t stolen it, I had the intention of returning it since I was
here every day anyways, but I wanted to read it late at night in bed, and I
didn’t have a library card here – I couldn't even get one if I wanted to, as I
was living in another city entirely.
I sat down in the squashy brown armchair that sagged
slightly with age. I liked it here. It was quiet, with an almost abandoned
feeling to it; I felt as if I’d adopted it – the books, the musty smell, and
the peeling wallpaper – and it had openly adopted me. It was easy to get work
done here – sometimes.
Sometimes my mind would wander, and I would find myself
setting my still open laptop on the floor to wander the hallways of dusty
books. I would run a single finger along their spines, my eyes skimming eye-level
over the titles, and stopping to pull one off the shelf if I felt so inclined.
I would flip through where I would read the first paragraph of each. I love
first paragraphs, and first sentences especially. I like to think of the author
sitting down to a blank screen and typing out that first sentence, like pulling
apart a pair of curtains over a window that looks out over the story. I can’t
imagine how other people decide to begin a novel. Perhaps it is born with the
writer, secreted like tears, falling out of them with its own unstoppable
catharsis.
Though normally I may take several breaks throughout the
morning to do just that, today – today it rains. And I cannot bear to pull
myself away from the window for even a second.
I have so many memories in the rain where I have felt love, ecstasy,
hatred, anger, or sorrow with such a fervent passion as to split my physical
world down the center. When it rains, I remember those memories, and saturate
my soul in them:
i. We had only just met – he was a senior and I was a
nameless sophomore – I still retained a youthful innocence that settled
delicately on the corner of my mouth. He’d asked me quietly while we watched
the ending of a generic love story with a team of his friends if I’d ever been
kissed in the rain. I shyly smiled and said honestly that I hadn't, but confided
in him that the romantic in me yearned try. A few days later the clouds –
pregnant with precipitation, had broken – and as he drove me home in his
mammoth of a van, he stepped out with me into the pouring rain and kissed me
hard on the mouth. The downpour was so thick, so constant and unending, that it
got into my eyes, and my mouth, and my nose, and I remember wondering if this
was really all it ever was. When he climbed back into his bus – and after
several coughing and wheezing attempts, brought it back to life – he leaned
over the passenger seat to roll down his window to say that I had the softest
lips in the world. He then drove away, leaving me standing on the sidewalk,
soaking wet and disappointed.
ii. Together we stood in the downpour of ice outside his
house in the middle of the night, shivering under the orange glow of the
streetlight. I hugged my thin arms close to my body for warmth, bouncing on the
balls of my feet as I always did when I was agitated. He was colder than the
rain, and far more devastating and unpredictable than the lightning that
cracked indignantly through the sky. I could yell at him, imploring him to see
and to understand my depth; and he wouldn’t ever hear a word. He would just
watch my lips move, clumsily fumbling through soundless pain. And my blind
agony would spill like raindrops on tin, until the fertile downpour would end with
a flood of anger and guilt, leaving behind long stretches of empty silence. Words
washed away into another night.
iii. We were going on an adventure. We seemed to whip past every
other driver – the image of us reflected back in the wet asphalt – rain pelting
the car as we entered warp speed. His music was mixed harmoniously with the drumming
rain and the enthusiastic whir of the windshield wipers. The sun-roof was open
just enough to allow my hand to slip through; the rain was like pinpricks on my
fingertips, and frigid water streamed down my arm. When I pulled it in, my hand
was clammy, cold, and wet, but he grabbed it from my lap nonetheless and
clutched it tightly, interlacing his fingers with mine. He sang so loudly – glancing
over at me again and again, sitting dumbstruck by the complexity of his melted-chocolate
eyes, and laughed – the laugh that won me over; that threw me into a place with
no doubt, no uncertainty, no logic, no reason. I knew I loved him; and my heart
burst.
vi. I was too young, not yet touched by fear, or doubt, or
dangerous hands. It had rained and rained for days without stopping. My
neighborhood had flooded, and the grown-ups were outside helping each other
place sandbags around their homes. All the kids from the neighborhood gathered
in the upper floor of my little house to drink warm apple cider – made by my
Father earlier that morning – that was simmering quietly in an oversized stock-pot
on the stove; the smell of cinnamon and cloves permeating every room. We all
watched from the window, crowding our bare toes around the heater vent on the
floor, as our parents went frantically from one house to the next. The road – heavy
with water – was overflowing onto the sidewalk and into the yards. Being struck
with an ingenious idea, I ran wordlessly into the storm, and dived into the
road; I watched happily as the kids in the window laughed and laughed as I swam
around, showing off the backstroke I had learned earlier that year. My angry Father
quickly arrived, to tell me that the water was filthy, stripping me completely naked
on the doorstep, in front of the still-laughing neighborhood kids. Even though
I got sick later that week, I remember my only regret that day was the choice
of underwear I had worn.
v. Our clothes were soaked long before we had darted from
the parking lot and into to the street. We laughed loudly and without care for
the passersby that watched us openly; he dragged me behind him by the hand as
we ran a block to the CVS on the corner to buy an umbrella. We wandered – huddled
together – around the strange city, leaving puddles behind in all the places we
found interesting enough to stop in: toy stores, art galleries, candy shops. We
were both broke, but he understood me, and recognized that I didn't need things, that I needed only new
experiences to stimulate me, and someone loving enough to give me their time.
We sat in a tea shop playing board games and drinking lightly flavored hot
water until the rain stopped. When he opened the door for me, and we stepped
out into the sunlit air, I remember thinking that it was far better to be loved
in the rain, than kissed in it.
~C
