Volume X: The Industry of Chemical Artistry - or - The Age of Rockism

11. A Study of Damiano Sera Morrow

To begin with, Miss Morrow was promised to Mr. Marco Marek. I don’t know what their parents were thinking with these names, sounds Italian to me on all sides, but all the same, that’s how it goes. Marco was one of the Wicked, the alpha male. There was an alpha female as well, and then two underdogs, one of each gender. Damiano was a gypsy - she could never be one of the Wicked. There was currently talk around that Marco was sleeping with the alpha female, a girl that none had ever seen, but came to calling her Seven, being that was how many days it took her to achieve her post. Such was the drama of the races.

Yet again, the plot thickens.

Society expectations and allowances of sorts, those all prohibited Marco and Damiano from having a typical relationship. They could never appear together in public, mostly because of her status. She was below him, and that would lower his integrity. He didn’t love her enough to throw the rules out a window. He was determined to have his cake and eat it too. But she was fed up, of the drama, of the madness. She just wanted a simple kind of life, a simple kind of love. Nothing more. She loved the arts, all things creative. She would come to every show Caine played. She always kept hidden, to avoid accusing glances. I tried to figure out how I’d never noticed her before.     

When I woke up, she was standing at the window, looking out at the world. She was absolutely breathtaking. How she carried herself, her appearance, her personality, she just felt so familiar, so warm and inviting. She turned to look at me over her shoulder, with an almost tragic look to her. I kept that image locked in my mind, saved, every detail. I stumbled out of the bed and grabbed my camera, snapping a quick shot just in case. I’d work on a recreation later, probably drawing. After I put the camera on the table next to the bed, I crept up and stood behind her, wrapping my arms around her. She laid her head back on my shoulder.

“Listen...” I started.

“Ssh. Just look.”

And I looked. Out the window, a new day was beginning. The fog was clearing slowly, and the brilliant shine of the new morning sun started to appear through the parting clouds. As it came up over the horizon, and vibrant reds and oranges started to sneak over the ground, I could feel the beauty she felt. I was inspired by the sunrise, the range of colors brought forth from it, from her warm body held tight to my chest. She was wrapped in a sheet at the time, as was I. There was no need for conversation - there was no need to sort out the details. I felt like I had been away for a long time and I’d just recently come home. All the troubles of life, every little bit, had faded into the background. All that mattered at this current moment was the morning’s sunrise, and Damiano’s presence.

To give a small history of how girls like her ended up with the gypsies - Damiano is the youngest of three. Her older brother, Jerome, and the middle child, Janus, are both officers of the New York City Police Department, as I learned firsthand. Her parents were both artists, a little bit bizarre, but as kind and loving as could be. Her mother was murdered a few years back hence the elder Morrows developed an interest in law as an effect of that. Her father, unable to deal with his loss, turned into heavy drug and alcohol use. Damiano had no other family that would interfere, so she turned to the gypsies, which were her best friends at the time. They took her in, adopting her as one of their own without a problem. She had been with them for a few years now and had grown very accustomed to her new lifestyle.

The gypsies were artists of sorts. Very similar to the punks that ran the circus, but they weren’t scary. They didn’t live how they lived to scare people; they lived in a lifestyle that accustomed them comfortably. They were more like....Bohemians. They got high, made art, and scraped by in jobs created in their own community. They didn’t leave the community because that could bring in trouble - inviting others. Should someone want to date outside the circle, a whole series of steps had to be taken. If you skipped those steps, the community would consider you an outcast, never assisting you again in any way. It was a very tight knit idea.