Dancing in the Rain part 1

I went to the hospital again. This was the fourth or fifth time I've gone to a Hong Kong hospital. I broke some bones in my hand when an MTR train derailed a few months ago. That was the most dramatic one. On the opposite end of the scale, I went to the hospital when I had a pretty bad cold last year. People go to doctors all the time for colds around here. I'm not used to that since it would be too expensive where I come from, but in Hong Kong, I have good insurance and hospitals don't cost nearly as much as they do in the United States. My first Hong Kong hospital visit was for some weird rash I had on my hand. The same hand I broke on the train, by the way. I never found out what caused the rash, but it went away right after I took the medication they gave me.

None of those were my fault. The cold was a simple cold that got out of control. I don't know what the rash was, but if I did anything to cause it, it never came back. The train was definitely not my fault. I would not know how to derail a train even if I wanted to.

This particular hospital visit was entirely my fault. It was raining, as it does all summer, and I went out to the pool deck at the big house. I like being in the rain as long as I'm not in a hurry to go somewhere. I was at the house and wasn't going anywhere at all, so the rain was never a problem. The worst thing about being out in the rain is that your clothes get wet. Wet clothes just don't feel right, but wet skin feels perfectly natural.

There was no one else at the house, so I took my clothes off and went out in the rain. It seemed like a good idea at the time. The pool deck is completely private from any of the neighbors. It faces the ocean, so only the fish and seagulls can see anything.

There is a wide open terrace around the pool with plenty of room to move around. I dance off and on the clock, and I have danced on that deck more than once or twice. Only this was the first time I did it naked in the rain.

The thing about rain is that it makes the ground slippery. I should not have been surprised when I fell down, but I was. I started crying like a small child whose parent was stupid enough to walk past the toy store. Not because I was in pain, though I was. It hurt like a son of a mother, but I was more upset than anything else. I twisted my ankle and at that point, in the immediate aftermath of such a simple fall, I had no idea how bad it was. It felt bad, but I could not tell if I sprained it, broke it or simply bruised it. As a dancer, an ankle injury can be the worst thing in the world.