Only Happy When It Rains
Some people can get soaking wet and come inside looking all slick and mysterious, it turns their hair to seal fur and their trendy clothes to gauze, the girls especially, a certain class of girl. Water nymphs in striped poly-blend. Me, I go out in the rain and I come in looking like a drowned rat, or possibly a drowned gopher, but that's not so different from the way I look dry, so I do it anyway, because I don't give a fuck, sorry, mama, a darn. Besides which, I don't have a car.
When it rains it's quiet, once you get away from the streets and all. Pedestrians are too smart to be caught out in the wet if they can help it-- I had a girlfriend once who said she was convinced bad weather was God's way of telling everyone just to stay home in bed and take it easy for a day. You'll notice that doesn't stop me, but then I figure that's far from the only thing I've got to argue with God about. And I like the quiet.
'course I try to tell Ayumi about liking quiet, and she laughs in my face and says that's because I hate to be interrupted. So yeah, okay, I talk a lot. In self-defense. The world's so damn, excuse me, darn noisy all the time, you have to put up some kind of a fight or it runs you down, you know?
But I get out in the woods, where nobody ever goes in the rain, and the water makes funny pattering noises falling through the branches, and there's that sweet, musty, achy smell of wet leaves underfoot. And it's quiet. Holy God, it's quiet. I can hear myself think. And it's like I've been walking through life inside an electric fence, and suddenly the current goes off and the fence goes down, and I'm right there in the world.
And I take off my jacket and hold out my arms. And just breathe.
Then I go home, after an hour or two, and she'll take a look at me with my drenched shirt and dripping hair, and shake her head. She thinks I'm crazy. But you know, what else is new?