It's raining, it's pouring...

My Love works nights about the half the time,
so tonight it is just me and four cats on this big ole bed.
I can hear peepers outside, and crickets or something.
I love how alive this place is.
This is NOT city living, that's for damn sure!
The country is loud with quiet...
And there are so many stars here it make me wish I had a telescope to see them more clearly!
I love it.

Trying to think of more intersting things, but all that comes to mind are my worries.
I guess that's just how life is.

Instead, here's a story I started writing the other day.
Just sorta rolled off my tongue, but with some editing and a few more pages, it could be a cool little story. Or first chapter to a book.........

She wasn't the only one there with tattoos and cut-offs, but she managed to look the sleaziest. Maybe it was the dark eye makeup, or the unexpectedness of so many lines on the childish face. She had a skinned knee and a hole just under the back pocket of her ill-fitting shorts, but there appeared to be knitting needles sticking out of the lumpy backpack she carried. She had something nondescript sprawled across her lower back, ink stains on skin, but the rose tattoo on her ankle was the final piece of the jumbled timeline. The rose was straight out of the 70s, but this girl's mother was probably too young for a tattoo in the 70s. Her name, obviously, was Crystal. What other name would a girl like this have? The dirt under her fingernails hinted at something, but the cigarette clasped between those fingers was what really drew the eye. She held it like a child holds a crayon, her fist curled around it, shoving it into her rotten, ragged-looking mouth.

The jukebox stopped and in the silence, other senses were sharpened--the grit on the floor could be felt inside shoes, while the scent of stale smoke and unwashed armpits was almost a taste, and made several patrons blink. The silence also left room for the Jimmy the bartender to notice this squalid presence, this aged child.

"You got some ID, junior?"

Crystal swatted the fly that had landed on the back of her cigarette hand. She looked into his grey, drooping eyes and said nothing.

"Look, I gotta see some ID or they'll shut me down. And I can't afford that shit again this month." He braced his hands against the bar, holding his ground.

She sighed and reached into her backpack. She tossed something hat looked like a receipt, or an invoice onto the polished wood stretched out before her.

After his eyes skimmed the paper, Jimmy cocked one eyebrow, smoothed his mustache with one large hand, and gave it back to her. Mostly to himself he said, "Well that explains a lot," shook his head slightly and met her eyes again. "What'll it be?"

She coughed from somewhere deep in her lungs and pointed to the Budweiser sign behind him. "Light," she amended.

"Three bucks." They completed the exchange in silence and she took the bottle to the far corner of the room. Sometime during that slow-motion exchange, the jukebox had started up again, same song as before. There was a dull buzz of conversation, but most people were edging away from Crystal's booth.

Crystal put the bottle to her lips and let the cool crispness wash through her mouth, her scattered thoughts each fighting for center stage. She didn't really want to be here, in a crappy bar full of crappy drunks, each making some version of a crappy judgment of her. She could feel their disapproval, smell their loathing. But she didn't know how she must look to them. She didn't know they could see her life spelled out in the way she walked, the breaths she drew. She lived inside her own head and had very little use for anyone in the outside world. She needed something, though, and she had decided that this might be a place she could find it, or get closer to finding it.

The scene before her seemed convex, with all the people clustered at the center of the warped vision. She sipped at the brown, sweating bottle until the scene stabilized and she was able to see each person separately.

Breathless

Just a little story from my time as a single woman in America...
Dating was always one of my greatest pleasures!

Too many drinks, too many smokes....
music--every song the soundtrack to your eyes on mine...
your skin on mine.
we stumble to a room, a mattress on the floor.
candles cover every surface,
a fleeting thought to light them is replaced with your lips on mine.
where are we?--another fleeting thought replaced with your hand on my bare stomach, pushing my shirt higher.
the music is loud, the smoke heavy, softening the edges of everything.
you ask to see my tattoo.
i unbutton my pants, opening them to reveal my hip to you...
you kneel, kissing...your hands on my waist.
showing so much restraint, creating so much heat....
we are so young, so unsure.
breathless.
you look up at me, head cocked, questioning.
i nod slightly, my breathing turns shallow.
you slide my pants down, i step out.
you stand, pulling your t-shirt over your head.
you kiss me on the mouth, both of us suddenly aware of so much skin, a closed door, a bed...
i touch your chest with a tenative hand, the thrill from it reaching my toes.
our kisses open our minds and bodies to each other--and close out all else.
the music stops for a moment, and we hear voices.
we pause, looking into each other's eyes--by mistake, almost.
the shyness nearly returns,
but the music starts again and we make our way to that bed on the floor, shedding clothes along the way.
all of your skin on all of mine, the kissing continues, each of us afraid to take the next step.
you say my name and my stomach flips.
i look at you, mouth open ready to speak...
you say your name with a soft smile, for the first time that evening.
my hands go to your purposely-messy hair, a thumb tracing your studded earlobe.
your hand strays down my side, hesitantly inching inward...
i let out a soft moan as your fingers find their mark.
i reach down to touch....you...so smooth...
both of us ready, both of us hesitant.
i spread my legs wider, you sink in.
we both sigh.
moving together in a rhythm so soft and sure, that it seems we've done this a thousand times.
in that moment i know it is the future i'm feeling and not the past.
you know it too, and smile, saying my name again, the breath it takes tickling my ear.
your hands are soft and have found all the right places, this interlocking opening the store of memories yet to come.
we have become a sweating writhing tangle of limbs, with tunnel vision.
my nails find your back, your lips find my breasts, we are lost in this maze.
it builds to a frenzy of need, being released only by the waves of ecstasy which wash over us together.