Today, I was looking through old files for some inspiration. And I found a story I had written back in 1995.
On Green
Street
I love to play in Green Street.
Let me explain. In Champaign, Illinois,
the main road through the University of Illinois campus is Green Street. On the north side of the street reside the
engineers. To the south are liberal
arts, ag, LIS, and the rest. And the
cities of Urbana and Champaign had been built over a swamp that had been
drained. So when it rains, the water
table rises quickly and fiercely. The
Boneyard Creek flows fast and hard and the streets flood (along with basements
and sewers). On Green Street, when it
rains, the water gathers and runs in the gutters, overspilling into the street ‑‑
turning this road into a fountain.
During the brutally hot summers we get
here, the summer rains are a blessing and a curse. Sometimes they bring cool relief, sometimes
they just bring more steam. But they
bring flooding to the cities, too ‑ dangerous, slippery. And they fill the streets with water ‑ warm,
inviting, cleansing. I have splashed in puddles
as deep as my ankles and waded in ponds up to my hips on Green Street.
One very rainy day, my lover and I had
walked to get food at AJ Wingers. This
was a very special man. Of course, all
of my lovers were wonderful but this one....Ah, words fail me. Skilled, compassionate, loving, passionate,
uninhibited, ‑ no words can fully
explain this one. Someone once tried to
pin me down on his most wonderful trait.
Stammering, I had replied that he was a good listener.
As
we walked, the rain kept coming. We
watched the rain fall as we ate and we kissed the sauce off of each others'
faces. We began the walk back - giggling
over our folly at not driving or taking the bus. The rain kept falling. Our shoes immediately drenched through, no
matter how much we tried to avoid the puddles.
Our jeans clung to our skin. We
took off our shoes and splashed through parking lots, curbs, and streets. Cars would pass and splash water as high as
our heads.
We
got to his apartment, and shrieking with laughter at ourselves, we peeled our
clothes off and draped them over chairs and doors. We wrung out our socks in the bathroom sink,
and put our shoes over radiator vents.
We eventually showered, embracing the heat and steam of this water as
gleefully as we had embraced the rain.
We kissed and kissed and kissed under the hissing showerhead. His hands,
so large and competent, lathered my back and legs, rubbing circulation back
into my feet and neck. I stroked soap
into his chest and armpits, playing with his body hair. We kissed some more. For the rest of my life, I will see him like
this, his head tilted under the streaming water, his hair slicked back, his
eyes closed and his mouth slightly open at the pleasure of taking a shower.
We
dried off using his one towel (for all of his wonderful traits, sometimes he
was almost a stereotypical single man), still kissing, still giggling. His kisses remain on my mind - so intense
that the sensation of his lips blotted out the world and destroyed rational
thought. How to describe it? He kissed like my mouth, my pleasure and his,
were the only things that existed or ever will exist. He kissed as if kissing alone were the most
divine pleasure ever given, not as a prelude or introduction, something
perfunctorily done to satisfy protocol.
He kissed me like my mouth was his Holy Grail and his True Cross
combined. He kissed as though he meant
it.
We
shimmied under his covers and our bodies entwined, wrapping around each
other. Sometimes I felt like our bodies
were two pieces of rope, coming together in a knot. We kissed and touched and sucked. We made love.
Even
now, my hips curl and my stomach clenches at the memory of that afternoon - at
a lovemaking so profound, so powerful, so intense. It was the sum of my universe - it was slow
and powerful, it was fast and fierce.
We
were falling in love.
In
a way we never had before, and never will again.
And
our bodies betrayed it.\
***
Have you fallen in love in a way that changed you?
