Tears in the Rain.

Tears in the Rain.

It’s almost Noon somewhere in North America and 3am half across the world maybe just maybe somewhere it’s midnight. The day has been on for 72 hours and the weather is slick as we make our way through Hayes valley. You want to find a place. Alex keeps saying he wants to eat. I say let’s find a place then eat there. Alex says “How about mine?” So we go.

We’ve been spinning around the scene for the never-ending day and the energy never quits coming. Alex keeps talking about this girl name Annie that lives up on Nob Hill while I duck into corners for quick hits. It’s down around Market when you decide we need a cab. Alex says I can’t walk anymore so I give him a ride. He yells “Giddy up Cowboy” and I laugh because I’m the horse. We’re tossing up the street and singing “Clementine” when it happens. I’m having an out of body moment that is thirty feet ahead and talking to a girl with a rainbow umbrella before running into another girl when it happens. It’s her.

It’s when they’re saying goodbye and Alex is yelling “Hi-Ho Silver away” that I realize I know that face, those eyes that hair and even though it’s different it’s the same. It’s passing by but I know it. And you know it. The face pauses when she sees me and Alex jumps down. He knows it too. I can’t believe it’s her and Alex is introducing us like we’re strangers again.

“Let’s take a trip together.” She tells me as we are walking through the farmer’s market near Civic Center on June 8^th and it’s almost three o’clock when she says it. She always was the one with the brilliant ideas. I can’t help but wonder what the next will be after this one. I nod and grab her waist tighter. She shifts her weight and pushes off to tie her red scarf tighter. I mistake the distance for nothing more than a loose scarf. I buy her a broken locket because she likes it before we leave the market.

If only after we make love that she tells me that she thinks she’s in love with me. I don’t know if it’s cause of the locket or because I promised to take her on a trip. I get up and walk to the bathroom to see if I’m still the same me and that it’s the right guy she thinks she’s in love with. Somewhere along the way I think I already love her so I tell her that when we are deciding whether we should eat Chinese or Mongolian BBQ for dinner. She grabs my face and kisses me when I say it. I don’t know if that’s what I expected, but at least it’s something.

The introduction is awkward. Alex knows me and knows her, but he doesn’t know us together when we knew each other. The girl with the rainbow umbrella is completely missable from the moment she said goodbye. It’s by luck that a cab pulls up because it starts to pour. We all decide to share among friends. It’s then I open the door for her and after she gets in when I tell Alex that’s “Felicia” with finger quotes. And he says “Your Felicia” before covering his mouth. After he gets in the front seat, you tell me to follow but instead I stand in the rain for a minute before getting into the back.

The cab is dry and smells like old curry. The driver is a middle age white man wearing a reversed black Giants ball cap that’s been modified with a Marijuana logo through the emblem. The rain is blanketing the window and streets. There’s nothing to say between us. She keeps making that sympathetic, understanding face at me like I’m upset. I can’t remember how she used to smell or taste or feel and I keep running into these empty places inside of me where there should be something instead of nothing. Alex starts talking about clothes and work. Felicia tells him how great it is to see him with a new collection. Then she mentions working with him again soon. I can’t stop trying to remember how she looked the last time I saw her.

We sit in silence for less than a minute when she leans over to whisper in my ear. Her hands are on my left arm. Leaning. Lips are pushing tiny bits of air against my skin. It’s when she says that we should talk and gets some air together. Instantly I tell Alex we have to go and stop the cab driver. I don’t know where we are but she follows me out of the cab.

After we get out of cab we’re in the middle of Jackson Square. The rain is coming down in waves. I can see her smile and eyes light up the way they used to when we were together. She runs to me and grabs my arm and starts spinning. There’s even a moment when you stop talking and join in. We’re in the middle of the grayest day beneath an ocean of falling water and there’s magic between us. I lean into her face and she kisses me. Dancing in the rain, kissing me again and I can’t stop the feeling that is building in me. I tell her that I’m glad we decided to do this. She smiles and tells me we should walk to the old place down the street before she kisses me. I agree and kiss her back.

Noon has finally come around and gone somewhere. We’re in this bistro place drying off from our brisk playful run through the rain that has my mind a little light. I’m still watching the weather outside with a smile through this brief dizziness. Our waiter brings two glasses of water and leaves the menu. She pushes it aside and looks at me then looks out the window.

The rain is still coming down in sheets when she tells me about this guy she used to see that’s been following her. He’s been watching her with this new guy she’s been seeing. I look at her with a glare to cut a hole through her and she starts flipping through the menu. I wonder how many new guys there have been since me while she’s pretending to read the menu. It’s all in French. She can’t read French. She always orders the same thing here without checking the French menu that she can’t read. I know she doesn’t speak or read it but only pretends to and this is her way of avoiding eye contact. This makes me think of Paris and she interrupts to tell me “I think… yeah, I think I‘m in love. Do you remember Paris?” I wonder, does she remember Paris? Before telling me she thinks she’s in love she should try to remember.

And Paris wasn’t her first choice. We were asked to spend the time in Italy with my friends. Our yearly trip as a group and she said, “I don’t feel much like Italian” so I suggested France. Paris she screamed and threw herself around me.

It’s funny that she’s telling me she thinks she’s in love. It’s so funny how she thinks she’s in love and it’s even funnier that she’s telling me especially since she put the hole in my heart to begin with. Split me in two and left me looking for what comes next. You want to leave. I can hear you screaming in the back of my head while she keeps talking about him. Don’t leave. She’s just being herself. You swore you’d never walk out on me if she showed up again.

“Do you remember?” I remember. Before we left there and came here. But she keeps asking, “Do you?”

I remember how she wears love like an invisible dress. One day there the next day gone. See-through and without substance.

Paris. The rain with its smell and coldness reminds me of Paris. Our first and only trip and the demise of it all. She told me she thought she loved me then took off the dress and ran with it. Love was no more real than the Emperor’s New Clothes. Each day she would change the color of nothing. And each day I tried to convince myself repeatedly over and over again, but nothing I could tell myself could change the reality of her. That I was never a factor in her decisions.  Never mattering in the end. It was easier for her to go through the motions of it all because it wasn’t real. The days lasted longer than I could have ever imagined in that place of lights. The days were long and nights were quick. Hours spent between city dreaming and making love were almost indistinguishable the first week. Slowly days spent with my music replaced my time with her while she began watching anything but me.

Every morning we’d spend together she’d match with an afternoon in another man’s arms. I could see it all happening before my eyes and didn’t want it to be true, so I pushed it away. The distance in our time together grew. Our walks through the city echoed of them. Making love with the feeling of another’s touch on her. And then another’s taste filled her mouth. I couldn’t feel or see what she was anymore. 

Like a last stand before the end, she suggested a garden picnic that found us in the rain. It was when I realized it wasn’t different for me and that nothing had changed only her. She kept telling me she thought she loved me and kissed me. After I kissed her back she moved her wet hair and leaned back to unpack the wet things. There wasn’t anything she couldn’t fake better than the fabric of affection and then came thing that I couldn’t change. Somewhere between passing the small container of tea and handing me a tiny knife, she made her demands and I told her I loved her again. Instead of telling me she thought about it, she told me she was ready for Italy and I knew nothing had changed. And it was time to go back home and away from there. She followed them and I fell apart. 

“What the fuck?” I can’t restrain myself. “What do you mean you’re in love?”

“Adrian. Calm down.”

“What? Calm down? You’ve just finished kissing me in the rain, not even twenty minutes ago. But you’re in love with someone else. Why should I be calm? What do you want from me?”

“I always liked kissing you. I think I just wanted to. To feel you, taste you before I couldn’t anymore.”

“You… you. It’s because you wanted to. Damn girl. You’re even colder than I remembered.

“What? Why are you being like this?  Part of you had to miss me, and have a little curiosity about what it would be like again. ”

“Curious? I loved you. I missed you. All that we had tore me in two. And… YOU BROKE MY HEART!”

“Adrian.” She sighs. Like she even cares “I needed to talk to you about something else.”

“I don’t think I can listen anymore. Not with the way you t…”

“I think you should know about this…” She slides over a small paper that has crease from being folded.

“What? What am I supposed to do with this? Is it mine?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry I took care of it two months ago. I found out after I got back from Paris. I just thought you might want to know about it.”

Looking at the tiny black and white picture on the small folded paper with its tiny little roundness that’s barely recognizable as life I come to a realization. It’s when I realize that she can still hurt me from so far away.

It’s then I loose my patience and tell her she’s not wearing anything. This is always just another role that people play and she plays this well. Pretending to say or do things that they really do not mean to. It’s in that instant, that moment sitting across from me is this girl I’ve never met pretending to be someone I used to know. I tell her all this and she gets up and starts crying. Then she walks out the door. This isn’t done though. Those tears are mine.

She’s crying and running into the rain. And I’m running after her and catching up to my pain. Tears on her face are falling down while she is still trying to convince me of anything else with her mouth that tells me she couldn’t forget me but left because she had to. All the time her voice that tells me she knew at first glance that she had to tell me that she loved me in the rain in Paris and how much it broke her heart when I left her.

My broken face without tears holds when I slap her then tell her not to say it anymore. My lips that should stop the final crying lie from escaping with a kiss spill out words of pain. The words out of my mouth should be the ones that release her but from my voice echoes the reminder of her actions with punishment. She's falling and crying in the rain with her broken ego instead of a broken heart. My hands that should reach out to grab her, violently push her back down. And I walk away. Telling her that I don’t care. That I don’t want to care.

She follows and tells me that I’m damaged. Tells me that I should care and keeps walking behind me. I ask her why should I when she didn’t care. She didn’t care when it mattered to me. I tell she’s the one that’s damaged and killing life without caring about what it does to others. And I keep telling her to take her see-through version of love and keep giving it to that fellow she thinks she’s in love with. I’m telling her to go back to the one that came after the one that is following her, whatever number he was after me. This is when I realize why you’re gone. I can’t take this either. She’s still following me. I want to be anywhere else but in the rain with this crying liar chasing me.

This man on TV is talking to a child. I’m at a place that Wayne likes to stay but isn’t around. I’ve decided I’m not going home or calling anyone. The TV has surround sound and a wall sized screen that’s so clear I feel like I’m talking to this guy. But I’m not talking to this guy. He’s a man telling a child that Santa Claus isn’t real. That the Tooth Fairy is his mother. And that those puppies you get rid of don’t really go to the farm. This is how I feel about where I am at this moment. Nothing is real. Alex called before I got here and is coming to meet me. And you haven’t come back. Although I can’t blame you. I take a hit while the man keeps telling the child the truth. I take another and it only gets worse. The child starts to cry, break down and throw a fit. Demands that he never needed to know. But he did. The truth is painful but at least it’s real. I’m still trying to figure out why she did it, when I don’t care. I need another hit. When you’re ready you’ll come back.

Ready for another taste? This is from the (???) perspectives. Been holding back the… Tears in the Rain. Have you ever kissed anyone in the rain? Needless to say it is raining outside and there should be no more tears between. Thinking of Matisse, but saying it anyway… careful with the feelings of others. love is not an emotion to be used against someone or discarded like trash. Anyway, have a fun time in or out of the rain. Enjoy. kisses. m.