rooftops

I wrote this at some point over the summer as the start to a possible novel but it hasn't gone anywhere and I'm lazy and at a friend's house so enjoy today's blog and maybe someday it will be the first page of a novel that you'll read with a strange feeling of deja vu.

***

I’ll be the first to admit I was intoxicated. Somewhere between slightly and pretty intoxicated. The kind of drunk where it seems like a good idea to climb out of the window with your glass of stolen Jack and Coke. The kind where you decide to switch out the drink for a guitar so you can sing about heartbreak to the stars and the street cats. That kind.

It smelled like disinfectant in the house and I wanted out. In fact, if the roof had been high enough to kill me and not just leave me seriously injured, I might have wanted that kind of out, too. Alcohol is a depressant, they say. Like I needed any help with that.

Getting the guitar out of the window was kind of awkward. I am as graceful a drunk as any but the bulk of the guitar took some maneuvering. It caught a little on the windowsill and I lost my balance for a bit when I yanked and it gave way. The relief at not falling backwards off the roof surprised me. But I guess life wants to live.

I sat down on the sandpapery roofing and started trying to remember chords. My fingers fumbled to remember the right strings. Somehow, my muscle memory got me through. I strummed into the darkness.

My back against the house, my gaze to the universe, I had one of those fractured moments of clarity I only have after two shots of tequila and one and half girly vodka coolers. Like a light flicked on and off just as quickly, I had lost it but the innuendo of epiphany lasted, like my eyes were stained by the light.

I heard a window open and thought of my dad but then remembered I hadn’t shut my window. There was a boy sticking his head out a window to my right and I stopped playing, the last chord I strummed ringing out.

“Hey, just a friendly reminder that you live in a fucking townhouse complex and it is past midnight. Good day to you.” He didn’t sound angry exactly but the inflection could have been lost on me. He shut the window again and I began to convince myself I’d imagined the event.

I’m still not sure.