A Walk in the Rain: a story

By Josh Greenfield

 

As I walked west on Fourth Street, it was raining, a little. I was not despondent. Not really. I had come away from a dinner in a Japan restaurant. The food had been really good and the interactions, in their own way, illuminating. In some ways it had been a pleasant meal.

But as the evening progressed, I was not completely unaware of the scent in the wind. I went into a long-established coffee shop on Ninth Street, indulged in a brownie and some milk and tried to take stock. It was here that real trouble set in. I said “trouble set in.”

By those words I mean I became aware of the auditory hallucinations that are a primary symptom of my diagnosed illness, schizo-affective disorder bi-polar type. They are indeed disconcerting and have normally put an end to my evening. I head directly home, avoid human contact, proceed to bed, and turn out the light. On this early May evening, I tried something else.

The most logical choice would have been to board the first local city bus going up Third Avenue, assume a single seat on the western side and ride unimpeded to Thirty-Second Street, where I could catch the express bus back to Riverdale and the security of my own one-bedroom apartment. For reasons that I didn’t think through at the time, I did not.

Maybe I felt like walking in the rain. Maybe a part of me knew it was time for an experiment. Maybe I needed the exercise. For whatever reason, I zipped up the front of my olive-green raincoat, opened my blue umbrella, and began to walk north.

And as I did, sometimes beneath the open sky and sometimes passing fellow pedestrians beneath the scaffoldings that are an ever-present part of New York City life, I kind of figured something out. O.K. with this dark and angry voice in my head, however subdued it might be, I wasn’t going to be making any new friends. That much I knew.

But there was nothing to prevent me from befriending myself. It was raining,but I had the raincoat and umbrella. I decided that a walk along lower Third Avenue, with just myself for company was romantic indeed. I went with it. Two thoughts were foremost in my mind. First, it really didn’t matter what anybody else thought. And second, it was for me to be good to myself.

This was New York. People don’t interact anyway, beyond maneuvering umbrellas in the confines of an enclosed section of sidewalk. Really, all I had to do was look out for myself, be kind to myself, be good to myself, think about what would make me happy, which at that time was a spring walk in the rain.

As remarkable as this may seem, when I arrived at the Thirty-Second Street express bus stop, the angry voice had left the building. I was once again a solid citizen, welcomed cordially on to the waiting bus by a smiling bus driver. In good humor, he warned me there might be traffic ahead, and in equally good humor, I told him I was looking forward to relaxing on the northbound trip.

The cure had had nothing to do with more drugs It had all been about me finding a way to love myself and it had worked. Without getting too preachy of anything, might I venture to add that without at least some of this kind of progression, I’ll have precious little of that emotion to give to others?

This too I believe to be the case.

 

Josh Greenfield from US is a graduate of Cornell University's College of Arts and Sciences. He also holds two master’s degrees from the City University of New York, one in American History and the other in English Literature. His work has been featured in The Cornell Daily Sun, The Riverdale Press, Appalachia, Word Catalyst Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, The B’k Magazine, Prometheus Dreaming, Better than Starbucks Adelaide Magazine and The Red Noise Collective. His story, “And the Doors of the Ambulance Closed,” was nominated for a Best of the Net 2019 Award. His novel, Continue Breathing: A Novel, was published in December 2020 by Adelaide Books. In addition to being a writer, he enjoys teaching English to foreign students at a school near his home in New York City.