Born Different (13 page)

Here and now,
it was not uncommon for Gabe to go years without ever seeing a
neighbour. Next door had moved out one day and Gabe realised that
he had never even met them before.

‘How long did
you live here?’ Gabe had enquired. Four years! They had lived there
four years and Gabe had never even known that they had moved in!
They had slept metres from his own body, they had eaten feet away
from him, they had lain half naked in their gardens in the summer
within holding hand distance and Gabe would not have been able to
pick them out in a police line-up.
Maybe I’m not as observant as
I thought I was
, Gabe thought. But then again because of the
way he looked they may have even avoided him. Gabe guessed that
made things easier for them, if they could deny to themselves that
life was anything but perfect, then it was. Or perhaps if they
looked at him long enough they might catch something. Or even, it
might simply just be their small minded inability to see past the
difference and see the boy and now the man behind the unusual
appearance.

Gabe had long
given up the need to be popular. Or more accurately the belief that
it was possible.

Gabe gave out a
wish then, a wish to find other artists or even just thinkers like
himself. Perhaps they would not judge him, want to frighten him.
They would be more like him. If they did exist, Gabe had no idea
where they all were. No doubt they were on the internet but that
was becoming more like a giant haystack by the day and finding good
things more like the proverbial needle.

Gabe read about
the places where, in the past, poets and philosophers had gathered,
but those places were now just tourist spots. So as well as the
dreams of a place where he could be free, Gabe also let himself
dream of the people who he could be free with too. And not living
on top of each other, all squashed together like sardines like they
were here. It freaked Gabe out living so close to other people. The
way in cities everyone is in everyone else’s personal space. Gabe
knew that he slept in a room next to another room where a stranger
slept in their bedroom. They might even sleep up against the other
side of the same wall, as Gabe lay with his wings out, they might
lay and sleep and dream within inches of him, and still be
strangers. It was just too weird.

Gabe gave up
working on his sculpture. The bang, the fright, had broken the
spell and he had been working on it for hours now and it was coming
together. Gabe checked the clock, it was six o’clock already. A
whole day gone, hidden and alone. Breathing in his own air all day,
Gabe felt stifled. He needed to get out.

Gabe bandaged
himself, pulled on his back t-shirts and he went over to the mirror
and was smudging the new eye liner under his lower lashes, when
there was a knock on the door. His heart jumped and beat faster,
raising his blood pressure, not for the first time today. But Gabe
saw that was only Frank and it reminded him to get a new padlock
for the gate, otherwise sooner or later someone was going to catch
him.

Frank looked
like he might burst in to tears. It was cold so Gabe just threw on
all the rest of his clothes and his new hooded black jacket. If he
zipped up the jacket and put the hood up, Gabe realised he didn’t
need to bandage the wings as much as they fit snug and nicely
without it all. Gabe was growing to like this jacket a lot.

He covered the
beginnings of the sculpture with blankets and thought that perhaps
it was not a sculpture at all but an installation. What exactly do
you call something that you have put together rather than taken
from?

It turned out
that the others had sent Frank, as the party had been going for
hours without Gabe and they were running out of booze.

“I’ve had
enough of fighting and the club, thinking ‘bout getting into Yoga
instead. I need more peace, more calm. And Gabe, I’ve been
seriously thinking about moving away.” Frank went a bit red, shy at
his admission but Gabe could tell he was a bit tanked up so didn’t
take too much notice.

“Me too Frank,”
Gabe agreed.

But it was
true. They both felt it. They needed to get out. Not just right now
but for longer and further, get away. Run away if they had to!

If anyone was
going to take this breakup of their gang thing bad, it would be
Frank thought Gabe. For although Frank probably needed the real
world more than anybody else, he had been petrified of it for so
long that it had stuck in his psyche. He had pined for the day he
would be legally allowed to be doing what he was doing for so long
that actually living beyond it was just too much to even
contemplate. He had never thought that far.

Frank was not
cut out for a life of crime either and Gabe couldn’t figure out why
Frank had been so up for the robbery yesterday. But then the money
had been too tempting he guessed. As part of his martial arts
training Frank had studied Buddhism and various other Eastern
philosophies and these ‘spiritual’ ways made Frank feel good about
himself, had calmed down his heart and placated his ever present
anxiety. And everyone knows that stealing and lying are quite high
up the list of ‘no-no’s’ if you want to live like a warrior of
light. If anything, Gabe thought that Frank would have been better
on the other side of the fence, that he would have made a better
copper than a criminal.

“Gabe there is
something I need to tell you.”

Gabe wasn’t in
the mood for it. He wasn’t going to be here for Frank anymore, he
had to start confiding in the others, so as much as he didn’t want
to Gabe said, “Come on mate, let’s go down to the park and meet the
others then. Let’s go get them this booze they want so desperately.
We can walk and talk if you like.”

Gabe and Frank
met Dave and Johnny, who had already been sitting in the middle of
the disused bandstand at the park for a few hours. Dave and Johnny
were wearing matching jackets and had been drinking all day by the
looks of it, spending their money fast too. Frank still had
something to say and he hadn’t managed to spit it out to Gabe yet.
None of them noticed or mentioned that Gabe looked any different
which Gabe just took as another sign of how selfish and self
centred they all were.

Dave had just
got a tattoo of tribal thing on his calf from his neighbour, who
had bought a tattoo gun online, so he was walking around with his
jeans rolled up to his knee, with a blood stained white sock. The
tattoo was really shit, it looked a mess artistically and medically
but Gabe thought that he would still like a tattoo. He didn’t like
the idea of the pain, even Dave had said that it was agony but Gabe
liked the idea of having a permanent reminder of the way he felt
now; of the dreams he had now that he didn’t want to forget. He
even toyed with the idea of becoming a tattoo artist himself,
marking people with his art. He knew that skin was different to
canvas and that he’d never be able to deal with people all day,
bent over working with his wings all bandaged up. Having to do the
work that they wanted him to do, it would break his heart. But, if
it was the only way, it might be an idea to have a go at
least...Even if just to learn another discipline. Gabe made a
mental note to check and see if there was an apprenticeship going
at a local tattoo studio where he might fit in. He could go round
them all first and get an idea of the people in his search for a
tattoo.

But Dave had
got there first. Dave had already bought a machine from the guy
that had done him and he had a bag full of tattoo magazines to help
him on his way. Gabe didn’t want Dave thinking he copied him, that
he wanted to be a tattoo artist as well out of some form of twisted
need to be more like Dave. Or for Dave to take it the wrong way
because he thought Gabe thought he was a better artist than
him.

Dave promised
to tattoo all of them. Gabe couldn’t think of anything worse than
let Dave at him with sharp needles that were going to mark him with
ink for the rest of his life. He had no doubt that in a few years,
with the right teachers, that Dave could get good but Gabe had been
a guinea pig for Dave already one too many times. But the others
were all up for it. Frank said they should all get the same one and
the others agreed but still Gabe had his doubts. He nodded in
agreement; he wasn’t in the mood to row about it right now.

And besides,
they had shared a significant time in their lives together and
tattoos were ancient and tribal too. Perhaps it would be a good
thing to do, to mark the end of this time. Something very small and
simple and somewhere not too obvious. More than likely they would
talk about it for hours and never actually get round to doing it,
like they usually did about most things. It would give them a break
from talking about money, sex and misdemeanours for a bit and all
the other meaningless conversations they had that just seem to go
around continuously on a tilted loop on repeat.

They all
offered up their ideas on designs and phrases, things like ‘all for
one and one for all’, but they couldn’t agree on anything. The
tattoo had to mean something, it had to have a purpose, serve as a
reminder and it had to convey the way that they all thought now.
Something that connected them all but still would not fade with
time. Things that they wanted to remember and not to forget, like
that they would never conform, that they would never work for the
company or the government or ‘the man’ or be a wage slave. That
they would live their lives to the full and not just exist. Live
their
lives, not the lives anyone else wanted for them or
that made them feel like they weren’t being true to who they were.
And all of their other hundreds of other ideals; never to be a door
mat, never be used or abused, never forget to laugh, read comics or
watch good films. To always play their music loud, to never give up
on the dreams they had now, however much real life jaded them, shat
on them or fucked them around. Never take second best, to be the
best and mostly, the others agreed, to confirm that they would
always have each other. Like a more grown up version of the time
when they were twelve and they cut their thumbs with a Swiss army
knife one of them, probably Dave, had and declared themselves to be
blood brothers by rubbing their thumbs into each other’s. Mixing
their blood and mixing their souls in a bond they believed would
never be broken. Gabe’s had got infected and he’d had to go to the
doctors and get a tetanus injection. He still had the scar.

Gabe agreed
with a lot of what they were saying but at the same time his brain
was just saying, ‘but yes, the bond is going to be broken!’ Did he
really want to be reminded of them forever? Being bound together
forever is a very long time.

It wasn’t
turning out to be much of a party and there was a black cloud
looming. Gabe promised himself two beers and a bit of vodka and he
was going to go home and chill out.

Frank still had
something to say and was making a big deal of telling them his
secret, building it up and up as some enormous revelation. As the
sky got darker and the band stand echoed their voices in
reverberations, they all sensed it was something big. But how much
worse could it be than what they already knew about him? They were
sure he hadn’t murdered anyone. He told them he had something to
tell them, something huge and then he kept changing his mind and
then changing it back again and this went on for an hour as Frank
and the others took more and more swigs from the bottles that they
were handing around. Trying to talk on other subjects and keep warm
as they noticed lightening and waited to hear how long it took
before the distant booms of thunder sounded, the seconds shortening
as the storm neared. But Frank kept interrupting them and his
anxiety was highly contagious. They all wanted him to get on with
it as it was getting cold and they wanted to get moving before the
storm, Dave and Johnny wanted to go to a new club in the city. And
really, after all that they had all been through together over all
the years that they had been friends, basically for all of their
lives that they could remember, they thought that there was nothing
left to shock them. But Frank had wound himself up so much and
convinced himself, what with his abandonment issues and all that,
that they wouldn’t want to be his friend anymore.

“Ay, just get
on with it Frank. We love you ok? Nothing is going to change that
even if you pull out two dicks ok! Just get on with it! You’re
giving me gut ache.” Dave really had had enough.

They all
watched on with baited breath as Frank slipped all of his leather
and friendship bracelets that he always wore, off both his wrists
and over his hands and as he rolled up his shirt sleeves, to expose
a mass of scars. Some were old, some fresh. Scratches and scars
went up both of Frank’s arms but they were mostly concentrated on
his left forearm, like a surreal broken, haphazard ladder. Some
rungs were mere grazes while others looked like they should have
been stitched. Deep red gashes and high raised white scars, some
purple, some healed. Mostly, they were all in the various stages of
healing, a few may have been as freshly made as that day. Some
looked like they were a good few years old.

They were all
shocked and they all gasped involuntarily; their skin was not as
thick as they made out.

After a long
few seconds Dave managed to speak. “So you’re not gay then?”

Dave was so
unprepared for this other revelation and wanted to break the
silence that was thick with all the unsaid words. None of them knew
a way in which to express the things that they each wanted to say.
It was like there were no words that fit; the words that they
wanted to use had not yet been invented to convey these emotions
that lay out of the ordinary. And then they just felt sorry; sorry
for Frank, sorry for themselves and sorry for Dave too as what he
had said was inappropriate and would have been funny in any other
situation but they were too sad to laugh really.