I love the rain because I have a home that’s safe and warm.
When I need to walk outside, my friend lets me borrow his umbrella.
Then, this week, something happened. My friend told me to get my own umbrella.
So I stood outside in the cold rain and I started blubbering. Then I yelled at him. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t just. It wasn’t Jewish.
Eventually, I tired of crying and I tired of yelling. I stood still, letting my head float up like a balloon, keeping my neck free and easy, allowing my shoulders to float over my hips and my back to lengthen and widen.
I heard music welling up from my soul and I started to dance in the rain.
"What are you doing?" my friend yelled. "You are being punished! You are not supposed to enjoy it."
He didn’t bother me. I was twirling like mad now, looking up at the threatening sky and singing, "Let it rain! Let it rain!
"I call Heaven and Earth to witness. Let it rain!
"Let righteousness well up like a mighty stream. Let the Torah go forth from the Hovel!
"All the animals come out at night – whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. I go all over. I take people all over Pico/Rob. I don’t care. Don’t make no difference to me. It does to some. Some won’t even take spooks. Don’t make no difference to me.
"Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There’s no escape. I’m God’s lonely man… September 25. My life has taken another turn again. The days can go on with regularity over and over, one day indistinguishable from the next. A long continuous chain. Then suddenly, there is a change.
"Now I see this clearly. My whole life is pointed in one direction. There never has been a choice for me.
"You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the hell else are you talking… you talking to me? Well I’m the only one here. Who do you think you’re talking to? Oh yeah? OK.
"I realize now how much she’s just like the others, cold and distant, and many people are like that, women for sure, they’re like a union."
