Born Different Page 9

  Inside the usual sanctuary of the studio, everything was as he had left it. Still, Gabe couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched, of another presence in the room. Gabe triple checked everywhere. He bolted and padlocked the door shut and put a bean bag in front it as an extra precautionary safety measure. And only then could he start to breathe semi normally again. He put some music on and lit a few candles. He couldn’t be creative under this much duress.

  Finally, when he was convinced that he was alone; totally and utterly alone with no chance of anyone seeing him or even potentially seeing him even if they came to the garden, that there was no one hiding behind the canvases or under the blankets, no one ready to pounce out of the shadows at him; Gabe took off his jacket, T-shirts and loose bandages and he spread his wings out wide.

  Gabe could only paint they way he wanted to without his wings all bandaged up. He could only express himself freely if he felt at least physically free of the constraints he put on his wings. The bandages acted like a tourniquet physically and also psychologically. When Gabe unwrapped himself he felt like he could really breathe again. After he had unravelled and exposed his wings, he always took a sharp deep breath in, filling his lungs and lifting his chest as high as it could go, as he unfolded his wings out wide. And then he could feel the release and relax in every one of his muscles, not just the ones connected to his wings.

  Gabe tensed his entire being most of the time and the short act of freeing his wings transformed him into a completely different person. From the Gabe who shuffled with his head down, to the Gabe with wings who could stand proud and look the world in the eye. Only he was stood behind the blacked out windows of his hideaway. Gabe may have been trying to look the world in the eye but the world was not looking back at him. The world and its population could not see him, know him or understand him.

  And that was it, thought Gabe, no one really knew him because no one knew his secret. No one could possibly understand because he hadn’t given them the chance. He was too different, too special. Who could help him? His mum did her best but she had let him go these last few years, given him freedoms, but he instinctively knew not to trust anybody. Even his friends who knew they could trust him, he didn’t trust them with this or with much else as they had got older.

  Before, Gabe felt like they would have had his back and him theirs but now, now it was all about the money. About the climb. And Gabe suspected that they would climb over him if they had to or if he was in the way. He felt it in their auras and he felt it in their eyes. Sometimes he thought that if he listened carefully enough he actually heard it in their thoughts. Their survival was more imperative to them than his. He understood that and he felt no real malice towards them.

  It was just that Gabe dreamed and hoped of a very different life. He dreamed that maybe one day, after he left school and when he started selling his art, he could move right away to somewhere; somewhere perfect. Somewhere he could expose his wings all the time.

  Then he would have the freedom to grow strong and muscular and tanned. Ideally, Gabe thought, he would like to go out and live in an exotic and far away land where he could live free with all the different colourful tropical flowers, birds and creatures. Somewhere with soft, white, sandy beaches and crystal clear, blue seas. Somewhere, where there were breath-taking waterfalls and still green lagoons. Tropical forests and local handmade crafts.

  Somewhere warm, always warm so that he didn’t have to wear many clothes.

  Somewhere isolated, so that he didn’t have to explain or hide, so that he could live free.

  Somewhere he could just paint all day. Able to fly occasionally if he felt like it. Hell, able to fly all the time if he wanted to.

  Somewhere where there was no grid lock traffic and exhaust fumes to fill your lungs, no super markets with aisles and aisles of stuff and of choice of things in cellophane and cardboard, disguising the fact that what they contained was invariably a different combination of the same shit. No politics, lies and media control. No power hungry leaders. No miserable faces and grey skies. He imagined being in this far away land and even if the friendly locals found him out they would respect his privacy. The privacy of ‘The Strange Winged Man’ that could fly and paint.

  He fantasised that they would view him as some sort of talented genius creature that created works of art and who was always kind to them. Gabe saw himself bartering with the townsfolk, swapping his art for food and other necessities down at the local, organic and straight from the earth, fragrant markets and backstreets. With no cellophane or sell by dates in site. No tills, no middle management. Gabe daydreamed like this to keep his spirits up.

  When things really got on top of him and Gabe felt that life was getting too dark and hard, too hostile and unmanageable, like now. When the reality of the world he currently lived in caused a dark cloud of depressive thoughts to shadow his hopes and the ever present black hole of powerlessness grew so large that it threatened to consume him whole, then he would dream these dreams. And escape.

  Gabe, when he remembered, would stop what he was doing and listen to his breathing, in and out, until he was totally relaxed. Breathing out the stresses and tensions that wracked his body and mind and breathing in the hope and beauty of infinite possibility.

  Gabe took a few deep breaths in and out and he imagined that all the chattering voices of opinions; all the internal conversations and endless thoughts that were criticising him and telling him in a hundred different ways that he was worthless and ugly and that every other person that he came across on a daily basis was simply self-serving idiot and an ignorant wanker; were all instantly transformed in to fluttering butterflies. Gabe transformed all the unwanted negative thoughts into butterflies that just flew straight out of his consciousness. If they refused to go, even as butterflies, Gabe imagined then that they simply transformed instantly into a colourful dust that fell down and drifted away to nothing.

  Then, when Gabe’s mind was still, when he had reached that silence that was always there and that was present between all thoughts, Gabe felt free. He felt like himself. The himself that he wanted to be, where anything and everything was possible. This was the place where Gabe knew, felt and understood was where his soul resided.

  It was the only place where he could be his true self, where he couldn’t be anything but his true self. Here, where there were no worries, no fears, no more mental conversations, just his soul, or whatever it was, his spirit, his light, his birth, his death, his constant, his essence, his ‘God’ for want of a better word, his higher power.

  His ever present and everlasting soul.

  Gabe knew that when he could finally be himself revealed, he would feel free. Free of the shame, free of the guilt and free of his self-obsessions. Free to fly.

  The freedom to be exactly who he was, wings and all. To accept himself even if others couldn’t. Gabe thought that this was perhaps what true freedom was; the gift of expressing your true self without the voices of criticism or false judgements. From yourself or anybody else affecting your natural need to be yourself.

  So to do that, Gabe took himself to this, his far away land where he imagined better things and where he touched at the allusive feelings of calm and peace and bliss.

  And from this place, Gabe started on the sculpture. From this place post meditation, Gabe found things flowed easily, as if almost subconsciously, letting him express himself without regret, without the weight of worry, without that thief of energy, over analysing or the stronger than gravitational pull of the massive self-doubt that plagued him.

  Gabe gathered all the things that littered his studio, that covered the floor and every other surface; in bins, in corners, on walls. Everything that he had collected and accrued over the course of his life so far; concert tickets, fancy bottles, bits of material he had liked but not ever used, labels he had picked off things, bits of jewellery, pieces of paper with scribbled poems on, notes, warning letters from school, posters of bands he had liked, old toys h
e’d had as a child that he hadn’t wanted to throw away. Anything that glittered, that had caught his eye, that he had put in his pocket or bag on his travels and claimed ownership on that had never made it out.

  Gabe was going to use up all these things that he had amassed over the last eighteen years of his life to make the final piece. Everything that had interested him, the little things he had picked up as memento’s, till receipts, dud lottery tickets, smooth pebbles, twisted branches, all that he had collected on some of the many days that had led to here and to this day, were going to go into making the sculpture that would signify the end.

  It would be the full stop that he needed to pass from this point to the next. The detritus from the past would build the sculpture and metaphorical archway through which he needed to pass through into a better life, the rest of his life. Each collected thing was now just a small part of a far larger jigsaw. Every one of the items he was going to use, gave him a memory of that time and all his memories created, in complex combination of his own reaction and reflection on what he had experienced, to who or what he was now.

  Gabe lost all sense of time, of place, of ego. He even lost the burden of who he was. Almost trance like he glued and stitched and welded his treasures together. Treasures that were worthless to anybody else. His jewels of the journey. Slowly transforming all that he had collected over his childhood into what he hoped would be his most defining work of art yet. It was like every memory and every life lesson learnt; every day and event that he had lived through had brought him to this moment in time and went into making who he was now. It was like all the individual genes that went to making the unique individual that he was.

  No one saw him but if they had, they might have said that he looked possessed. But Gabe was just happy to be back in his studio, creating and free, being his true self for a change.

  A deafening shot and crashing noise made Gabe almost jump right out of his skin. A bang, like the sound from a gun, followed by a crash as something landed on the skylight of his studio. Gabe froze, he felt like a stranger, a foreigner in his own land, potentially caught out. Like the Rabbit in the headlights. It was as if, all of a sudden, he was nothing more than a condensed version of himself, heavy and obvious. The spotlight was on him, like an interrogation. Guilty. Where would he run if he couldn’t run into his own house where his mother and her clients would be? Nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide.

  Gabe could hear people laughing and wondered if he was being targeted again, it had happened before. One year it had been so bad they had doubled all the locks and padlocks from the gate to the studio. But it had been a few years since that phase and he had grown more confident, or just more lazy and more lax with the security. He told himself it was just a car back firing and a branch falling, nothing was broken, nothing had happened.

  Gabe felt like he had had a heart attack but it was just nothing. Just somebody, or just nobody. Worse way out, he could run into the house, even if his mum was in there with a client. Gabe didn’t know anyone else anymore and he realised that it was true, that he hardly knew anyone in his street anymore. The houses were put up for sale and sold so regularly and apart from some of the old people, Gabe reckoned he and his mum had been here the longest. People downsized, up graded, went over to somewhere nearer or somewhere further from the city. They divorced or had more children than the house could cope with. Property prices had boomed and in this area especially. This area that had once been the domain of artists and writers, of the bohemians and hippies, was now so desirable that investors had just renovated and made a quick buck. There were no evident artists or writers left. Gabe wondered where they had all gone or if they had all become property developers too, as the cash had been just too hard to resist for the penniless painter and Gabe could identify with that. It was a shame but who could blame them? But now, thought Gabe, now it was time, time for the artist to come back again. Time for a revolution. Time to bring the real art back to the people. The Middles could certainly do with it. Gabe knew he needed to change but he also thought everything could do with changing, with getting better.

  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.

  Chapter 11

  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 fel
t 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.