Tropical Depression: Yeah, I complain. So I was going to have to ride my bike in the rain tonight, which, in my old age, I totally freakin' hate. So I was complaining, yeah. So a friend wrote me this story:
Shorter version: I'm on my bike, & it's really, really, really raining outside.
Longer version: It had been raining for 30 hours straight. Entire [white] neighborhoods were sliding into the Pacific Ocean. The 10 o'clock news was predicting that the end was near (for real this time-no kidding around) this was definitely aloha, people. The Big Wet One. The Big Soggy. Good-bye, wish I was made of rubber.
Which for her meant that today (yes indeed) today she would wear the sacred rubber camo shorts. The ones that looked like something T. Randall might have worn in an underwater golf movie.
She does this intentionally (riding in the rain) she likes punishing herself for unspecified weather-related sins. Squishing and mildew sinking into her wily-ways. "Public transportation, fuck it, I'll ride my bike." (Her words, not mine) "Let's get this soggy shit rolling!" (Potty mouth) "I gotta get to a pay phone to blab to my high school pal kooky (he owes me money).
Oh well, its all a joke anyway. It seemed funny, err, sunny when she first left the house, the chirping of birds, the windex (y) glow of the sky, the atmosphere= monochromatic. . Hard to refuse. And every day, or so, (okay, weeks now) she'd been very sorry that she had not refused, the sorriest in that moment when, taking her bike to work over a jet black street (slick with rain) she felt the tiniest pinprick chill in the bottom of both feet. Right there, in the paddiest part. For a moment she would try to believe that (yes) this is possible.
This time (somehow} she would elude the inevitable. Getting the bike outta the wet-by tiptoeing (bike on shoulders) quickly from sidewalk overhang to bank-machine canopy, or by walking on the outside edges of her monkey feet. But after a couple of steps it was all over. The warm of dry integrity converted to a fetid squish-stink of an x-boy friend, who only calls on her birthday.
