Title- Broken Figment Of An Injured Mind
He gets inspiration from the strangest of places, not roses and clouds and frolicking kittens like he should. He gets his inspiration from death and rebirth and the sound the TV makes when you turn it off. He writes sonnets about the shadow his glasses make when they are folded in front of the white light from the computer screen. He sings songs about how the shadows veil his own face and he can't see who he is anymore.
The music is constantly pouring from his headphones like a golden kind of liquid, and he absorbs it. Music is a powerful thing to him. A motivator. He is called a freak, by friends and family. He counted once, how many times they called him a weirdo or a freak in a week. Twenty seven.
He thinks the dark one can save him. He is perfect. He is not his, will never be his. He doesn't care. He prays and thinks and lives in a world in his mind where he loves him. He's not real. A fantasy, they would call it if they knew. A daydream, he would return. He does return to it. Every day, he lives beside the dark one, when he is in school and his friend is out sick and he sits through the class, alone and paranoia telling him that they're staring, that they can see him too. And that they're judging him and he looks ugly. He's there beside him when his father wanders home and sits on his bed, late at night when the darkness outside the windows is kept at bay by the nightlight he will not sleep without. He sits and mumbles and stutters and the alcoholic vapours permeate his eyes.
He was with him when he was disowned, and left the family home. He tries to go to his brother's house, and then remembers he doesn't have one. He's a part of his detailed fantasy. In his mind, he is the gutairist of a rock band. They are unknown by most of the 'normal' people but adored by their people. Icons to the ones that are called freaks. He is his brother. He was adopted by the tattooed one's family, after being disowned by his own religious parents for being brave enough to tell them he was bisexual and open. They all grew up together and he was hated for his religion by the school, his parents and the rest. He loves them all, his bandmates. Their bassist is sarcastic and adorable. He is small and sweet and strange to ones who don't know him. He is Jeph. He is the tattooed one. Their drummer is the funny one, the muscle. He is strong and his idea of jokes is to swap a letter in a word, in everyday conversation to make a word with a different meaning. He is impossible to understand unless you knew his language. He is Dan. He spoke his language and he liked translating for the ones who didn't understand him because, finally then he was useful for something. Maybe just unravelling the mind of a possibly insane person. He wonders why he understands him. He speaks the language of a crazy person better than a sane man should. He kids himself. He is not a man. He is almost sixteen, but in his mind he is forever twenty one.
He lives in a fantasy because the humiliation and bruises of reality do not entice him. He is afraid of real emotion in case it anchors him to reality. He prefers not to be cared about more than affection, because it's harder to humiliate himself when he lives in his mind. When he is in his dream world, there is people who love him and adore him and would die for him, the bassist and the drummer. And the singer. He is the one he dreams about the most. He is the one who, in his fantasy has taken a knife and a bullet for him, and who left his family home and began a band with him. Not just because he believed in the band, but because he asked him too. He is short and dark and obnoxious and he snorts when he laughs. He is slight and annoying and horny and problematic and perfect. He is Bert. He is the dark one. And he is Quinn. Bert is a figment of his vivid imagination and Bert lives with Quinn in his home in Provo, where he is surrounded by nobody but his drunken father. His band is successful in his mind and his eyebrow is pierced because he doesn't live with his father in his fantasy, so he doesn't have to hear a slurred, 'Brow bars are for fags and girls' and he doesn't have to experience the pain of another piercing vacating through his flesh, in a different manner to how it was put in. In his mind, he is Quinn Allman and he is respected and cared about. He is musically talented, even though in reality he cannot play an instrument nor read music. He is brothers with Jeph and over-protected by Dan because he loves him and he is loved by Bert. He is never humiliated nor embarrassed, unless it is by his own choice for comedic value for the scores of fans watching him through the cameras and TVs in his headland. That's what he called it, years ago, pressed tightly into a warm bed with a fresh kiss from his mother fading on his forehead and a small blue rabbit named Bugsy and a new fantasy drifting into his sleepy mind. He called it his headland and it was his and he would share it with no one but Jeph and Dan and Bert. They were his playmates when he was a child and had no friends in reality because he moved home too much, and they were his companions when he entered school, and they were his bandmates when he first fell in love with music. Quinn remembers the love for music grew at the same time as the love for Bert grew and later he thought maybe they were the same. Maybe music was Bert and Bert was music. If Bert was the song, then Quinn was the singer, after all, he could make him anything he wanted. He invented him. A small question niggles at the back of his headland, where his normal thoughts live and it asks him why he made Bert have an annoying laugh if he could make him perfect? He dismisses this doubt because it does not fit his fantasy.
It will be two years before a homeless Quinn stumbles into a dusty Orem and falls victim to a storm outside a family home. It will be two years and a day before the door of the house will open and a short, obnoxious but caring boy will dash out and kneel beside his slowly dying body and call an ambulance. It will be two years and five days before he wakes in the hospital and finds his imagination spilled into human forms on the orange plastic chairs beside his bed.
It will be five years before he is married to his fantasy and the band dream has been realised.
It will be five years and a day, when Quinn finally decides that he had never dreamed and invented friends in his headland, or even thought of Bert and Jeph and Dan at all, and instead dreamed of an indistinct boy and friends and he imposed his new friends' and lover's persons upon his vague fantasies.
We know better. But we will let him imagine. As we always have.
He gets inspiration from the strangest of places, not roses and clouds and frolicking kittens like he should. He gets his inspiration from death and rebirth and the sound the TV makes when you turn it off. He writes sonnets about the shadow his glasses make when they are folded in front of the white light from the computer screen. He sings songs about how the shadows veil his own face and he can't see who he is anymore.
The music is constantly pouring from his headphones like a golden kind of liquid, and he absorbs it. Music is a powerful thing to him. A motivator. He is called a freak, by friends and family. He counted once, how many times they called him a weirdo or a freak in a week. Twenty seven.
He thinks the dark one can save him. He is perfect. He is not his, will never be his. He doesn't care. He prays and thinks and lives in a world in his mind where he loves him. He's not real. A fantasy, they would call it if they knew. A daydream, he would return. He does return to it. Every day, he lives beside the dark one, when he is in school and his friend is out sick and he sits through the class, alone and paranoia telling him that they're staring, that they can see him too. And that they're judging him and he looks ugly. He's there beside him when his father wanders home and sits on his bed, late at night when the darkness outside the windows is kept at bay by the nightlight he will not sleep without. He sits and mumbles and stutters and the alcoholic vapours permeate his eyes.
He was with him when he was disowned, and left the family home. He tries to go to his brother's house, and then remembers he doesn't have one. He's a part of his detailed fantasy. In his mind, he is the gutairist of a rock band. They are unknown by most of the 'normal' people but adored by their people. Icons to the ones that are called freaks. He is his brother. He was adopted by the tattooed one's family, after being disowned by his own religious parents for being brave enough to tell them he was bisexual and open. They all grew up together and he was hated for his religion by the school, his parents and the rest. He loves them all, his bandmates. Their bassist is sarcastic and adorable. He is small and sweet and strange to ones who don't know him. He is Jeph. He is the tattooed one. Their drummer is the funny one, the muscle. He is strong and his idea of jokes is to swap a letter in a word, in everyday conversation to make a word with a different meaning. He is impossible to understand unless you knew his language. He is Dan. He spoke his language and he liked translating for the ones who didn't understand him because, finally then he was useful for something. Maybe just unravelling the mind of a possibly insane person. He wonders why he understands him. He speaks the language of a crazy person better than a sane man should. He kids himself. He is not a man. He is almost sixteen, but in his mind he is forever twenty one.
He lives in a fantasy because the humiliation and bruises of reality do not entice him. He is afraid of real emotion in case it anchors him to reality. He prefers not to be cared about more than affection, because it's harder to humiliate himself when he lives in his mind. When he is in his dream world, there is people who love him and adore him and would die for him, the bassist and the drummer. And the singer. He is the one he dreams about the most. He is the one who, in his fantasy has taken a knife and a bullet for him, and who left his family home and began a band with him. Not just because he believed in the band, but because he asked him too. He is short and dark and obnoxious and he snorts when he laughs. He is slight and annoying and horny and problematic and perfect. He is Bert. He is the dark one. And he is Quinn. Bert is a figment of his vivid imagination and Bert lives with Quinn in his home in Provo, where he is surrounded by nobody but his drunken father. His band is successful in his mind and his eyebrow is pierced because he doesn't live with his father in his fantasy, so he doesn't have to hear a slurred, 'Brow bars are for fags and girls' and he doesn't have to experience the pain of another piercing vacating through his flesh, in a different manner to how it was put in. In his mind, he is Quinn Allman and he is respected and cared about. He is musically talented, even though in reality he cannot play an instrument nor read music. He is brothers with Jeph and over-protected by Dan because he loves him and he is loved by Bert. He is never humiliated nor embarrassed, unless it is by his own choice for comedic value for the scores of fans watching him through the cameras and TVs in his headland. That's what he called it, years ago, pressed tightly into a warm bed with a fresh kiss from his mother fading on his forehead and a small blue rabbit named Bugsy and a new fantasy drifting into his sleepy mind. He called it his headland and it was his and he would share it with no one but Jeph and Dan and Bert. They were his playmates when he was a child and had no friends in reality because he moved home too much, and they were his companions when he entered school, and they were his bandmates when he first fell in love with music. Quinn remembers the love for music grew at the same time as the love for Bert grew and later he thought maybe they were the same. Maybe music was Bert and Bert was music. If Bert was the song, then Quinn was the singer, after all, he could make him anything he wanted. He invented him. A small question niggles at the back of his headland, where his normal thoughts live and it asks him why he made Bert have an annoying laugh if he could make him perfect? He dismisses this doubt because it does not fit his fantasy.
It will be two years before a homeless Quinn stumbles into a dusty Orem and falls victim to a storm outside a family home. It will be two years and a day before the door of the house will open and a short, obnoxious but caring boy will dash out and kneel beside his slowly dying body and call an ambulance. It will be two years and five days before he wakes in the hospital and finds his imagination spilled into human forms on the orange plastic chairs beside his bed.
It will be five years before he is married to his fantasy and the band dream has been realised.
It will be five years and a day, when Quinn finally decides that he had never dreamed and invented friends in his headland, or even thought of Bert and Jeph and Dan at all, and instead dreamed of an indistinct boy and friends and he imposed his new friends' and lover's persons upon his vague fantasies.
We know better. But we will let him imagine. As we always have.
