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 other's 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.
It's emotional and lovely and nothing happens. There is no plot, there is no conflict, there is no character development.
I was going for a little slice of life with this piece- I wanted to record a beautiful memory. I succeeded at that. Unfortunately, I can't use it anywhere else since it doesn't move any action forward.
Dammit!
