Come Dance In The Rain...
The lightning filled the Indianapolis sky and the rain pounded the heat from the ground as if it were a Pentecostal baptism with hellfire and brimstone. I watched steam leak from the ground like the whispy tails of a ghost disappearing through the walls. My friend, Anna sat beside me on my deck, underneath a mink blanket as we sat quiety and enjoyed the night sky. She was watching me, knowing I was thinking something but not expecting me to stand and dare her to join me in the rain. The bottle of wine and blanket discarded we grabbed two towels and put them on the chairs. When we stepped out from under the roof of the porch and lifted our faces heavenward the sky seemed to open up and buckets of water fell from the sky, showering us, cleansing us and we held hands as lightning and thunder made music that we could dance to.
We were two women at different stages of our lives but yet at that moment she became infinitely more wise and I more youthful than either of us had been before. She held my hands and we skipped through puddles and laughed while rivulets of water trailed their way over the contours of our faces, down the lines of our neck and into our clothing. We were drenched. Anna was one to dance and play and I could have laid there on the sidewalk and let the rain pummel our bodies for the rest of the night. If you've never been through an Indiana summer rain, it's hot, it makes the ground sizzle as the heat dissipates, it cleanses everything that it touches. Lightning cuts jagged cuts through the sky brilliantly and leaves your eyes blinded momentarily, the thunder will shake the ground you stand on in its fury.
Anna and I were very good friends. Both of us interested in women, but our interest in each other was more geared towards friendship than much else. I have often thought that it was a sad state of affairs that I didn't realize how beautiful she was until that night in the rain with her eyelashes wet and spikey framing those cat shaped green eyes and her honey brown hair plastered down her back, almost touching her waist. She had a body meant to do things. Thin, beautiful, yet firm. She wasn't a dancer or an athlete, but she had this body that just made you want to ask for salvation in her arms. Her form was meant for art. You could paint her body, photograph it and never be disappointed with the results. I had fallen in love with her and didn't know what to say.
I stood stock still in the rain until I realized that the rain had sucked the heat from the ground and was cooling the air around us and we were shivering. Our teeth chattering was a signal to go in and warm up. We clutched at our clothes hoping for any last shred of warmth as we raced to the porch for the relative safety of the fluffy white towels waiting on us and we made a beeline for the bathroom. I turned the handle to warm and let steam fill the air, we lit candles and let them light the way. Our sopping wet clothes dropped into massive puddles at our feet and we stood there naked; staring at one another. She reached first and I responded. My back pressed against the door while she kissed me, her hands on my breasts, mine in her hair and we made our way into the shower. Shivering and aroused I touched her. I could write all the poetry in the world, but the truth of the matter is it wouldn't do justice to the way I felt that night. I sat on the edge of the tub with the shower steaming us and warming our bodies while she pressed her back into the shower wall and I kissed my way up her legs and found her ready and wanting. She pushed her fingers through my hair and held me there while my mouth created desire and stroked her to an orgasm. Her breath hitched and came in spasms and she moaned low in the back of her throat and when it was over, her eyes opened, glazed...and she looked at me with this smile and sat down beside me in the tub. We turned the shower to open the faucet up and let the tub fill with water. The scented bubble bath we used floated upwards and around us, luxuriating us in the scent of passion and flowers and it was intoxicating.
Anna would come to visit me often and each visit we shared a bubble bath. It was our quiet couple time. Did we date? Not really, not in the conventional sense of the word. We really were good friends and yet much more. Like two halves of a whole that needed the other piece to make the world sit right. Now tonight as I type this story up, I sit looking out my window and think about a lightning storm, thunder rocking my world, and Anna changing my life.




