Dogwalkers

I must live in the right kind of neighborhood. I sit at the kitchen table and work most days with the curtains open, bay windows looking out at the street. It's a quiet suburban block and you'd think I'd know most of the neighbors but I don't. I know the ones on either side of me and directly across the street. I have met the guy across the alley behind me, we bump into each other sometimes taking out the trash and we chat a little. But I am mostly happy to work alone and don't really want to have a bunch of people who feel like they can barge in or interrupt me whenever they feel like it.

The good part is that there seem to be a lot of nice-looking women in the neighborhood, and they parade past my window throughout the day. Basically two scenarios: exercise walkers and dog walkers. Some of the ones walking for exercise, I hate to say it, really need it. They huff and puff around the block in their sweat suits and, bless their hearts, I hope it works. Then there are the other type, with the stylish headband, the FitBit on their arm, a cute outfit, name-brand shoes. These outfits tend to be skin-tight, often reflecting the light to emphasize the shape of the underlying musculature, often with little straps and designed to allow refreshing cool air to breeze over the chest area. Lots of skin, neat makeup, stylish hair, sometimes a ponytail bouncing as they stride along. Again, bless their hearts. But in a different way.

The dog-walkers are a different sort. One lady walks her dog every morning in flannel pajamas with fuzzy slippers. Another rigs herself as if she was going into the mountains, with a fanny-pack, a broad-brimmed hat, water bottle; that one walks two dogs and though there is something eye-catching about her she seems very mission-oriented, yanking on the leashes, walking fast behind their pull. It looks like most of the dog-walking women of my neighborhood just go out in whatever they were wearing when the dog got restless. Unlike the exercisers they don't make a fashion statement out of it. The dog needs to go out, they get up from what they're doing, clip a leash on Fido, and out they go.

And it seems that a lot of women do not really believe in wearing a lot of clothes around the house. Bras in particular are not a necessity if you're just hanging around the house by yourself. Shorts are comfortable, sandals, a practical hair tie to keep your hair out of your face. Our neighborhood is not like parading down Fifth Avenue or something, where you'd get all dressed up. During the day most of the houses don't have anybody in them, there is almost no automobile traffic on these little streets, nobody's looking. You walk the dog in your pajamas, absolutely nobody cares. So sitting in front of my big window I see jiggling young women walking their dogs around the block in tank tops, tube tops, halter tops, tops that are skinny straps and a couple of patches of fabric to make it legal, little belly-revealing t-shirts, shorts. I consider this a definite benefit of working from home, or WFH as we call it since the pandemic started.

My dog Flyer needs to go out a few times a day, too, and that's another benefit. It gets me off my ass and out into the fresh air. He's the kind of mutt who wants to chase squirrels and leaves that blow in the wind, and birds. When he sees another dog he gets excited and starts barking ferociously and yanking at his leash, but even though there may be times when I wouldn't mind if we both touched noses with a neighbor, I can't usually trust him to be a good boy. The neighborhood has a kind of mutually-agreed-upon norm of crossing the street or turning a corner to avoid doggy congestion. Which is a long way of saying, I guess, that I do not know any of these lovely women who I see outside my window.

This one particular day we had a beautiful sunny morning, and then some clouds came in around lunchtime. I made myself a meal and finished a page of a project, then threw Flyer on the leash. We have not had much rain but it could happen and I don't want to have to take him out to shit in the rain, you know? There are some dogs that love the water: Flyer does not. One little raindrop and he's ready to go back inside. I'm pretty much like that, too.

There are some woods near my block, and I walk him over there. I don't worry if he poops in the tall grass next to the forest, because nobody ever walks there. And the deer do it, rabbits do it, foxes and raccoons do it. I know I am a bad citizen but I let him poop where nobody will step in it, and I usually don't pick it up. He loves walking there too, because there are great smells of wildlife and sounds up in the trees and in the thickets. I am daydreaming about dumb stuff and he is having the time of his life with all that excitement, bouncing around on the end of his leash smelling stuff and peeing on stuff. Once he has pooped we usually come back out to the street and then roam the neighborhood a little bit, like I say, avoiding confrontations with other dogs, working our way back home to my computer and livelihood.

Flyer had done his business and was still wound up, so we headed off down Miranda Street toward Hughes. All of these are just houses, there are no businesses, also very little vehicular traffic, this is just a "bedroom community," as they say. During the day most of the houses are empty, everybody's at work. We went down Hughes to Justin Drive, which connects with Tryer at the end of the block. Whatever, you don't need to know that.

I have heard of this before but had never seen it happen. We had some scattered clouds and a nice breeze, then with absolutely no warning a heavy wind kicked up and it started pouring, all within a second. There was no preliminary sprinkle or breeze, no warning, this rainstorm had a crisp sharp edge and in an instant we were in it, with rain pounding down on me and Flyer.

The dog looked at me and started whining. I said, "I know, Flyer, this is bad. We need to get home." But home was early five blocks away, and we were already getting drenched. Flyer started tugging at his leash, pulling me toward our house, and I followed, almost trotting along the sidewalk. The poor puppy was soaked already, and so was I. My t-shirt was sticking to me, my tennis shoes were like sponges. You couldn't see to the end of the block, rain was falling so heavily, and with the wind there would be sideways moments when the water got into any place it might have missed when it was falling straight down. Water was running into my eyes and down the inside of my clothes, splashing when I took a step. I didn't want to run on the wet sidewalk but we walked fast.

About half a block down Justin Drive I saw a For Sale sign on a house that looked empty; I could see through the front window that there was no furniture. Even better, there was a covered front porch, with screen along one half of it. I didn't want to break into the place, but given the circumstances it seemed reasonable to try the door to the porch. Flyer scrambled with me up the stairs and I turned the knob and lo and behold the door opened into a nice, cozy, snug -- dry -- porch.

With the wind, a good amount of water was blowing through the screen, but the other side of the porch was enclosed, and the rain did not reach that side. It was a little dark -- I assumed the electricity had been turned off -- but it was nice and dry and it had a funky little sofa, with a little bit of junk back in the corner where maybe some contractors had left it. There was a row of coat-hooks on the wall, mounted on a long board screwed into unfinished two-by-fours. I imagined a family coming in from the cold, hanging their jackets in a nice neat order, mom and dad and a row of the rug-rats.

Flyer started shaking himself dry, like dogs do, and water was flying everywhere. I said to him (I do talk to my dog, you know), "Man, Flyer, I wish I could do that." I was too wet to sit on that couch, and figured I would just stand there and wait while Flyer napped on the floor. I tried the door to the interior of the house but it was locked. Just as well, that could look like breaking and entering, or at least trespassing if somebody found me in there. Hanging out on the porch during a sudden storm was easily justifiable, in case somebody called the cops or an alarm went off or something. As fast as this storm came upon us, it could disappear just as fast and we'd be out of here.

Flyer look around a little bit, made himself comfortable in the corner, and curled up with his tail over his face, while I stood in the middle of the area, freezing. I took off my shoes and set them upside down near the wall, thinking they'd dry better that way (I can't explain that, it just seemed like they would). I unrolled my socks and decided to hang them from the coat rack. I put them at the far left, one hook for each, being kind of obsessive in that way. I checked my phone, which was in my back pocket, and it worked. I blew on it to dry it off a little bit, but it wasn't bad.

I was shivering near the point of convulsing. It was not really a cold day but between the wind whipping through the screen and being soaked, I was chilled. I tried taking off my t-shirt and discovered that I was significantly warmer without it. I walked over to the wet side, where the screens were, and wrung it out on the indoor-outdoor carpet, then hung it up using the next two hooks so it could spread out a little and maybe dry faster.

The porch seemed to have a metal roof, the way the rain pounded on it. There was a constant roar, and now it was punctuated with thunder, rolls at first and then crashes nearby. Now and then the shadows were illuminated with lightning flashes. I realized I might be here for a while, maybe long enough for my clothes to dry. Wouldn't that be nice, to walk home all nice and dry? After some consideration, given that I was in a completely private space in an unoccupied house in the middle of a blinding rainstorm, I pulled off my blue jeans and hung them up, hooking two belt loops over the next two hooks.

So there I was in my soaking wet tighty-whiteys, me and Flyer. I thought about hanging up my underwear to dry, too, as they were also soaked. Should I? What if somebody were to come? It would be pretty hard to explain why I was in a stranger's house naked. On the other hand, why in the world would anybody come? No realtor is going to show this place in a heavy storm. And is standing there in my underwear actually more defensible? If somebody came, I would hear the car, the door, probably some sounds. Flyer would certainly bark. I walked over to the screened side and leaned over to look out without exposing myself. I could barely see the house across the street through the downpour. There was absolutely no traffic on the street, obviously nobody out walking. I couldn't sit on somebody's sofa in wet underwear. And so -- off they went, to the next two hooks. My clothes were taking up nearly half that homemade rack, and I was bare-ass naked in a nice cozy hideout during a terrible rainstorm.

I sat on the couch and looked at my phone. I had no texts, no new email, so I opened up Threads, the new social media site that I liked since Twitter went to hell, and started scrolling through. There was an empty paint bucket in the corner that I put in front of the sofa for a footstool, and so Flyer and I settled in to wait. It was pretty cozy.

I read news and sports for, I guess, five minutes, lost in it, forgetting about the storm, when suddenly pandemonium hit.

Flyer started it. He jumped up snarling and barking and charged toward the other side of the porch. I just barely grabbed his leash before he got away from me. The screen door flew open and another dog came leaping in, a pretty big one, and he too was snarling and barking at full volume, yanking on his leash, trying to get at Flyer, both of them jumping up and down like they wanted to kill each other. I had stood up and my head was spinning with surprise before I realized that the person holding the other dog's leash was an extremely wet young woman who I had sometimes seen outside my window, in her standard white halter top and shorts and sandals, totally soaked. Her hair was stringy and sticking to her face, and she had obviously had some makeup on but now it was just Alice-Cooper-type streaks running down her cheeks.

She was yanking at her leash with both hands, leaning back against the force, trying to keep her big dog under control, and it was a few seconds before she looked at me.

"Oh, my," she said, glancing back toward the door as if to escape.

"No, don't leave," I said in a moment of genius that I will always be proud of. "It's okay, I just needed to get out of my wet clothes. Here, I'll put them on again."

She may as well have been naked herself. The rainwater had rendered her halter top utterly transparent and her smallish breasts, aureoles, and hard nipples were clear as if she was wearing nothing. Even her belly button. She said, "No, wait, why would you put on wet clothes?" She studied my face for a second, and asked, "You're not some crazy guy or something, are you?"

"No," I said. "I live on Howard Street. I see you walking pretty often. I was just walking Flyer and this storm came up. I ducked into the only place I saw."

She stood contemplating the situation. In the meantime the two dogs had figured out how to get their noses together and had decided to be friends. There was some pawing and whining, and I released a little more leash, and so did she. The two dogs went through the usual dog routine, sniffing and feinting, happy enough.

"I guess if Ballou trusts you, I can trust you," the woman said. She extended her hand: "I'm Rosa. I live on Fanta Drive. I think I've seen you, you live in the house with the bay windows, right?"

"You can see me inside there?" I asked. "I'm Doc by the way."

"In the evenings sometimes you leave the curtains open."

"Oh, okay," I said. There was a pause. "This is pretty awkward, isn't it?"

"Well, sir," she said with a sardonic tone, "It is true that you are not wearing a stitch of clothes, and we have just met. So yeah, it's got some potential for awkwardness."

"Obviously I was not expecting company," I said. "Or I would have prepared some tea, at least."

Rosa said, "If I had gotten here first I would have done exactly what you did. I would've gotten out of these wet clothes." She looked around at the porch. "I mean, this is actually a perfect little hideout for getting away from the rain." I could see her teeth chattering and her lips were blue. "I'm freezing," she said. She looked down at herself and looked at me, blinking as she realized the effect the rain had had on her wardrobe. "It's like I don't have any clothes on, isn't it." She gave a slight embarrassed laugh. "Oh well. I'm not going back out there just to be modest or something. It is what it is." She stretched her arms out and stuck her chest out a little, like, let's get this over with, if you're going to look, then look. It was a kind of defiant gesture with a slight twitch of the hips, defying me to stare and defying society for making stupid puritanical rules that went against common sense.

"Hey, it could be worse," I said. "For me, I mean." She laughed.

"At least you've got a sense of humor," she said.

I unsnapped Flyer's leash and sat down on the couch. I had not noticed, but my penis was beginning to respond to the angelic presence of this soaking-wet beauty. It was not fully hard but had definitely awakened. What you going to do? It is what it is.

Rosa unsnapped her dog's leash, and the two dogs played a little together. "Look," she said. "I'm freezing and don't want to die of cold. So fuck it. I know I don't know you or anything, but I am getting out of these clothes. You can already see everything anyway."

I did not think of looking away as she struggled to pull her transparent wet halter top over her head, revealing goosebumpy pale skin and the full delight of those beautiful little breasts. She kicked her sandals over alongside my shoes and pulled her pale blue gym shorts off in one move. It somehow seemed perfectly normal to see her hang her clothes on the hooks, absolutely nude, following my example of two hooks per article.

"You've got goosebumps," I said.

"Yes, I'm covered with them."

I sat on the couch while she stood in the middle of the room rubbing her hands over her arms and her body, trying to warm up. I would guess she was in her mid-twenties, slender, athletic-looking. Her B-cup tits were just made for going without a bra, and her dark pubic hair was thick and untrimmed, suggesting to me, maybe irrationally, that she was not currently seeing someone.

"Oh, this is rude of me," I said, suddenly jumping up. "Here, sit down. I'm sorry. Sit down and relax a little bit." The rain and thunder were as loud as ever. "We might be here for a while," I said.

"Yeah, sounds like it," she said. "Thank you." She sat on the sofa. I was not as wet or cold as I had been. I stood in the middle of the room. The dogs had settled into a quiet game of chewing-on-each-other's-faces. The layout of the porch was such that the left side was screened in and thus visible from the street, and our side, perhaps eight feet wide, had a plywood wall for some privacy. Again, I pictured a family coming in and hanging up their jackets and maybe changing their clothes over on this side if it was snowing or rainy. There seemed to be plenty of privacy on the covered side.

She sat on the sofa with her knees together and her hands in her lap, her head swiveling as she took in the environment. I looked her over unabashedly, looking at her muscular limbs, a little hint of ribs along her sides. As she examined the room she turned a little on the seat and braced herself with a hand, and her legs opened slightly. She also seemed unabashed. It was a weird way for a friendship to start, but we started with no sense of shame or self-consciousness. She seemed to feel it made sense to be naked, and if it bothered me that would be my problem. She was not showing off or teasing, we were both simply accepting the circumstance as, well, it is what it is.

Unfortunately, by this point I had a regular, ready-to-go hard-on, and I did feel a little self-conscious about that. Mainly I didn't want to scare the poor girl. I couldn't stand there with my back to my guest, and it would have been too stupid to try to cover it with my hands, so I just stood there looking at her and talking with her, pretending it didn't exist. Just so you know, I am not some kind of womanizer and never have been; I enjoy watching a beautiful woman pass by but that's enough for me. Maybe I'm shy, I think of myself as gentlemanly. But even if you're a gentleman, old Mother Biology is running the show, and being alone with a beautiful naked woman, my cock was stiff as a board.

She continued to rub her arms and I noticed the goosebumps going away. We distracted ourselves by watching the dogs, who were quiet and happy. Finally Rosa looked up at me and said, "It looks like you find this situation exciting."

"Uh, what?"

She giggled. "You know what I'm talking about."

I looked down at myself. Without thinking, my hand wrapped around my shaft and gave it a tug. "Yeah, well," I said. "I guess, given the whole situation."

"It is a little strange," she said, ignoring my gesture. "Are you married?"

"No," I said. "Not now. I've been divorced a few years."

"Girlfriend?"

"No," I said. "I have my work, Flyer, my home. I'm just a boring guy, I don't really even have a close friend."

"Huh," she said. "You seem normal enough."

"How about you? Are you married?"

"Well, yes," she said. "For now."

"What's that mean?"

"Yeah well, hard to explain. Basically I guess you could say it's falling apart. Leave it at that." She was still rubbing her arms and legs, trying to get warm.