The Night You Gave Me a Name

We sat on my porch over looking the alley in the dark with only the sickly orange of the street lights illuminating our faces. I lit the pipe in my hands inhaling the hot smoke waiting for the druggy effects to leaden my limbs just a little. As I passed the pipe to him he said, "Maybe we should get naked and roll around under the covers for a while." He took a deep drag, coughed and sputtered, "I think I'd like to run my hands over you."

I let the cloud of smoke I had been holding in my lungs out in one large huff staring at his face in the dim light. It was too cold really to be sitting out there in nothing but my underwear and a t-shirt with the nearly-winter creeping in but I huddled in on myself feeling suddenly hungry and just a little bit horny. "I guess I've heard worse ideas," I said watching the flash of a bat swooping into the edge of the light.

My eyelids grew heavy. "You know," I started suddenly feeling a tangent growing,"I've sat out here on nights when my belly was so full of worry I thought it might split open. I've paced these boards when I couldn't get my ideas to come together and the keyboard seemed to be more of a torture device than a instrument of knowledge. I've watched the local scavengers troll the garbage cans for smelly cashes of easy money from my perch over this alley. I made friends with the junkie hooker who lives down the street and comes to feed the stray cats everyday. Some days this few feet of space on the side of this building will be the only time I step outside of my apartment. On those days I just can't handle the world and the people milling through it. I don't bring many people up here."

He smiled a little looking at me like I was some sort of alien. I was sure I was about to get a laundry list of my more unattractive traits so I stood. I stripped my top off letting the cold air turn my flesh to goosebumps as I walked past him to the railing at the edge of the platform. My neighbors would have a clear view of my semi-nudity, as would anyone walking the road below, but at 3 in the morning very little life stirred around us. For a moment you could believe that your were alone and that the city wasn't crammed to the brim with people. The wind turned my nipples hard as I crossed my arms over my now bare chest. I sighed, twisted my face into the wind as my hair streamed behind me and waited for him to wrap his arms around me. I thought to myself, "Really... what would the winter be without at least a little heartbreak?"