Wednesday, April 16, 2003
Brutal Rain
Passover starts tonight. Can’t deal with that. Grandmother died two days ago. Can’t really deal with that either. Tara and Phil are coming to town tomorrow night and it’s raining. Not only can I deal with that, I have to deal with it and it’s in my face even if I don’t deal with it. So in honor of their impending arrival and the ongoing precipitation now moistening this city of screaming spires, I will post an old essay about Tara and Phil and the rain. Cozy on up and get your freak going with:
Tara and Phil came down to visit from Seattle. Things had been going really well – the food, the weather, all the moments when we got to be ourselves together. Then our dear friend Andy called to ask us if we’d like to go with him to see his friend’s band in concert. It wouldn’t be a lot of cash and they were playing at a club in our neighborhood. We told him that we’d be there.
The concert was a hoot – it really wasn’t the kind of music we most often listened to, but for what it was they did a bang-up job. With a pleasant beer buzz we left after midnight. Even Tara and Phil, still in the upswing of their twenties, admitted they felt a bit tired and worn.
The once-perfect weather had been on the change when we’d left for the club, so we’d brought some rain gear. Phil had been dismissive of our warnings, reminding us that his residence in the PNW prepared them more than sufficiently for what we hypersensitives called rain. But when we stepped outside the bar that very early morning, rain poured out around us in a series of grey ripples in the air, moving swiftly up the street. Sheets of water fell from all the edges of the awning under which we stood. Phil snapped up his hood. “Yeah, it’s kinda raining.”
Tara was less sanguine. “Holy crap, it’s shitting. Can’t we blow this off, cruise later? How long does rain like this go on here?” Kelly answered that some storms go on for days; it’s not like back in Pennsylvania where squalls just blow through and leave. In vigorous response, the wind picked up around us audibly and the raindrops in the air consolidated into one big flying puddle for a moment. I resigned myself and then convinced the others: it’s only water; we’re just ten blocks from home; it’s time to go and we all want to get to bed. With a sigh, we stepped into the deluge.
Phil was still less than impressed. Rain cascaded down the sidewalks; rain draped the roofs like watered silk. He said, “We get a lot more rain than this back home.” We kept on walking. Within a block or two, my raincoat was completely soaked. My wide-brimmed hat was sodden, dripping. I looked to Kel and Tara. They were huddled to each other, each attempting to get down beneath the other or behind her to avoid the rain that blew and swirled around us. Phil was strolling with a grin, rain streaming off his hood and rivuletting down his back. “You know,” he said, “up North the people go out in this stuff all the time. It’s when you get down here that people all start freaking out.”
I smiled back at him. The weather quickly turned much wetter. Where once thick snakes of rain cut through the streetscape, now it all was thick with braided ropes of water. The color of the night grew lighter – raindrops were everywhere, expanding light while they obscured our vision. I looked at Phil. He started laughing. The water was hitting the drowning sidewalk hard enough to splash up to our faces; water seemed to spray from all directions. Both of us were laughing. Kelly stood by Tara, soaked, stoopshouldered, inconsolable. “Okay,” Phil finally admitted. “Even in Seattle, this is pretty brutal rain.”
*****
Almost time to catch the bus home at the (outdoor) transit terminal. It’s not raining quite that hard yet. It’s waiting for me to get outside. Tomorrow will be very busy and I’m off Friday, Monday and Tuesday. Let’s see if I get anything posted. In case I don’t, try not to think poorly of me. I’m under a lot of stress.
