The Feast of Stones Chapter 1

Oh man I was having a great sleep. Lights out. I had barely slept at all but I felt totally recovered. Oh my God I could have been sleeping for 12 hours for all I knew or cared. I almost felt guilty when my brain woke up to the sound of someone else’s alarm.

I kept my eyes shut but I knew I had to get up. My eyes open without much resistance and I’m greeted by the cutest nose I’d ever seen. You can go fuck yourself I couldn’t have asked for a better way to start that morning. My arms were wrapped around her. The face that nose was attached to turned away and I bury my face in the matted hair that comes around to greet me.

The alarm stops and the girl with the cute nose and matted hair brings her silhouette back towards me. My fingers slide from her crown and comb out my own little piece of her. The room around us is dark and unfamiliar to me. A crack of light along the ceiling, where her burgundy curtain doesn’t quite meet the ceiling. I could invent whatever world or reality of mind in that morning. There was no outside, no light, nothing beyond that room.

Christina. That was her name. She was amazing, she cared I think. I like to think. But, of course, all good things come to an end and a single thought cursed my mind and that’s where all my trouble began:

“I’ve got a show tonight.”

          I turn my head, and along the way the rest of my body slides upward until I’m crisscross applesauce on the bed. I see my shirt matted and wrinkled beyond decency.  For a moment I imagine that if I can manage to keep this thought to myself then this little paradise (fucking paradise) will stay with me forever and the only world that I’ll ever really need is right there.

          But I know myself and I knew that no matter what kind of obstacle course I went through in that infinite gymnasium of the mind I could never escape the fact that I did indeed have a show waiting for me at the end of that day and nothing could shake me away from it. Maybe that’s what screwed me or saved me. I don’t know, I don’t really know the difference between those two things nor do I care to.

          The beginning of autumn comes over my back and down to my hands and I return to the covers over Christina’s bed. I like Christina’s room. I like Christina. When I come back to her she traces her finger around my cheeks and casts a feeling of complete acceptance and encouragement.

          So, when I woke up that morning I had met Christina last night and, well I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but you should know that being with her, knowing her feels like the absolute correct thing to do. I don’t know too much about her but here’s what she told me about herself.

          Christina Josephine Dumaresque was born in Edmonton, Alberta. She lived there and studied theatre there. Apparently they have a very good theatre program, but I don’t really know too much about it. I don’t really watch theatre.  It was her first great love which she discovered in High School in place of an actual sweetheart. She was guided forward as if by a line of fate that would take her all the way to Hollywood. You know. The unrelenting dream or whatever. I can’t blame her.

At the school though she discovered art which then gave her something to live for beyond fame and fortune. I guess I can understand that. I guess I can understand that intimately. She told me she had lost her father when she was quite young, her mother is rather strange. She lives in the United States. they talk every now and then.

Somehow she doesn’t really appear outwardly lonely. she talks to everyone and anyone without a care in the world. She seemed to already know everybody, and I thought I did too. Maybe she’s someone that I just HAD to meet. I guess I can tell you about the cherry-coloured lights in the bar that made her leather jacket shine or the contacts she had in her eyes that made her impossible to ignore. I was heading down the stairs of the bar I was at with my band. The smell of Belmonts hanging on my tongue. When I met her eyes I didn’t dare let go and I felt that unforgettable pulse in my chest, in my ribs, in my lungs, and in the back of my head. She brushed against my arm.

In her room I ended up looking at a photo on her wall of her father. While she was in the washroom I wrote down the title of the book she had on her night table. If I seem a little fragmented right now its because there’s something I really have to say to you. Because I don’t really want to lie to you. I don’t think I’m that much of a liar anyways. I think that makes me a good person sometimes.

So. Right now, I’m in Christina’s bed. I’m in Christina’s room. I’m even in the house Christina lives in. But the trouble with that is that I have a girlfriend I happen to like very much, and Christina is not exactly my girlfriend.