The Rainbow (Frerard) [underwater_sky]

December- The Garden State (Part Four)

The coffee we drank didn't prevent us from sleeping. In fact, the morning light seemed to have the reverse effect on us: it made us want to go back to bed. We placed all of our dishes in the sink, some with food still on it (we tried to put away a lot of the leftovers and save what we could, but can you really save toast with three bites left?), and then curled up contentedly under the covers. My stomach felt huge, distended, like I had eaten for the last time and this would last me my entire life. Gerard groaned a bit as well, and I was sure it was a complete shock to his system. But we didn't complain; we had done this to ourselves, and it was such a nice change. Instead of being awake all night because our stomachs were rumbling like they had in Paris, we were heading to bed for a dreamless full sleep for much of the morning. People who say that dreams are affected by what they eat are wrong, I thought. It was hunger that twisted the subconscious into things that dared not come out during the day. I was getting pretty sick of those dreams with their constant falling and sudden jolts. For the past three nights, I had been falling and sometimes not even waking up before I hit the ground. In one of them, I did fall through completely, hit the pavement, and exploded. I somehow managed to see my own explosion, and it was actually beautiful, in spite of itself. I was filled with many, many colours when I burst open, as if a piñata lived inside of me. As pretty as it was, I was glad that on this night, filled with food, there was no further rupture.

            When I woke up, it was late afternoon. Gerard had just gotten up before me, but it was to use the bathroom. He came back to bed afterwards, but picked up the book of Rimbaud poetry I had been reading and indulged his French proclivities until I woke up more fully. He began to kiss my face when I opened my eyes, and then asked if I was ready for another round of food.

            "I could make le pain perdu this time," he suggested, more comically than anything. There was not that same spark in his eye that he had had the night before. The hunger was gone from both of us.

            "Just some coffee; I won't have to eat again for years."

            He passed me a mug after it had been made and I went over to the balcony window with it. I suddenly wanted a cigarette and I borrowed the pack from him and went outside to look at the Jersey afternoon. People were a little more active than they had been recently. The snow that we had gotten the second day had already melted; the sun was out now and most of the sidewalks were dry and clear. It looked more like an April day than a day in midwinter, as if we had just come out of the long sleep and scarcity of February and March and were now celebrating abundance. It certainly felt like that, at least on the inside of the apartment, and inside of myself, but the chill undercutting the wind would correct me. I took in a deep breath of smoke and exhaled, feeling okay for the first time in years.

            I realized, more or less, that I had always been operating with a vague sense of dread around this time of year. Not only were the days shortening and the tenuous winter and holidays approaching, but winter had a different connotation for me. It meant Gerard. I realized then that the winter I had spent with him had been the only happy one I had ever experienced outside of childhood. All others were okay, bearable, but I was never really alive during them, except for short intervals if I was lucky. I would smoke and drink and just end up waiting for summer. I couldn't walk anywhere, driving was horrendous, and it was just too damn cold. So I stayed indoors, by myself. While I enjoyed spending time alone and that meant I had time for my art, my mind would always wander back to the time when I was seventeen, and I believed myself to be happy. I had been accused numerous times by Vivian and Jasmine that I just could not grow up and grow out of this obsession with being inside, Paris, doves, art, and well, obviously Gerard. I always felt stunted in my growth somehow by my perpetual revelation towards this time period in my life, and would try to make it up excessively during the summer by working non-stop in either paid jobs or art projects. But I couldn't help this constant shift in my mind; it was a movie always on in the background, a book I knew so well I could recite the passages by heart, and something that had burrowed itself into my subconscious and was now a part of me that I could not separate out.