We all really do go home alone

I must have stood in the rain for about a half an hour.  It was just past 1 am.  I could taste the mixture of sweat and rainwater running down my face and over my lips; it tasted metallic.  I didn't even think about the cold until I saw my breath steam and look down to realize my clothes were nearly completely rain-soaked.  I don't think I was crying, but every so often a warm drop of rain would run down the outer corners of my eyes.  Water pattered lovingly on the tree branches and their leaves, the park benches, the brick, the asphalt.  It pooled and puddled and swished and ran along the curb of the street.  I turned my face upward to the sky and for only a brief moment could I see a ghost of a moon, muffled behind layers of cloud, resting comfortably beyond the downpour.

I could still the thumping of the bass and the twang of the vocal tracks, the din of all those trying to speak on top of one another.  I watch the people stumble down the street; cars start moving away from their spaces every ten minutes or so.  I look towards the building, I think about my observations therein:  one young man who drunkenly told me several times that he hadn't seen a girl since high school, and that was "six years ago!"  Then a woman I went to elementary school with standing alone at the bar; I think she was looking for someone in particular, but I don't think the person was never found.  She looked sad..and drunk..but I felt sorry.  Another young man so far gone that he was literally spinning with his partner around the floor; it was like he was a ball and we were the bumpers in a pinball machine.  And another young woman, who moved from partner to partner, then would feel the severity of her drunkenness, sit for a short while, then get back up and do it all again.

After my friends dwindled away, I tried to maintain the energy and mood by myself, but at the change of a song, it was enough.  I gathered my layers to guard me against the weather.  I went down the stairs and stood below the balcony.  I put my jackets back on, shouldered my bag, then proceeded to walk towards the park.  Halfway across the grass, I realized I didn't care about being rained on.  I cast my hood back to let the rain come down into my hair.  The closer I got to my car, the more I realized I didn't want to leave yet.  I unlocked the car, put my bag in the backseat, closed the door, and walked back onto the grass.  The rain felt nice.  My body would have been steaming if I had been naked.  I felt like I could have stayed out until dawn.