tick-tock, tick-tock

beckett "tick" dorsey

"any view of things that is not strange, is false." - neil gaiman (Sandman #39: "Soft Places")

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antiques expert and connoisseur of fine things. anti-social pseudo-socialite.

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Beckett "Tick" Charles Dorsey was born on November 10th, 1994, in Plymouth, Devon, a coastal city in southwest England. Though he remembers much of his childhood, he only offers details like flashes of photographs: a stereotypically red-and-white painted lighthouse, whipping icy wind, candies bought from stores wrapped in shiny paper. His father told him and his little sister Mathilde he was an accountant, but they took many trips away from home and traveled the country and parts of Europe quite often. As an older boy, Beckett was inclined to believe his father had some military connections unbeknownst to him and Mr. Robert Dorsey was eager to keep his children in the dark. Despite the secrecy and the travel, young Beckett knew so much more about his father than his mother; Claire Dorsey had suffered post-partum depression following the birth of her little girl and had never quite recovered. She was emotionally absent for much of the Dorsey children’s childhoods and left much of the childrearing responsibilities upon her husband or her sister, Beckett’s aunt, Bernadette Granger.Through extensive travel, Beckett picked up languages and a love for art; Auntie Bernie was a young widower left wealthy from her husband’s estate, and she accompanied the Dorseys on all their travels. While dad worked, Auntie Bernie took Mathilde and Beckett to museums and galleries and preached a love of details; Warhol used repetition as a motif to showcase trauma and disaster, Saint Joseph sleeps through every Nativity painting, and Beethoven loves to play three short notes and then a long one. While Mathilde was easily bored by each lesson, Beckett consumed everything with voracious interest. Auntie Bernie taught him his grandmother’s native French and by the time he was 12, he was nearly as fluent as a native speaker. He liked speaking in Spanish with locals perusing the streets of Granada, shivering ordering sbiten in Moscow, and asking directions in Berlin. Auntie Bernie doted on her nephew and loved him like he was her own son.Mathilde was rather jealous of Auntie Bernie’s bond with Beckett. She gave him the nickname “Tick” because of his “obsession” with old timepieces in particular. The name stuck quite like the blood-sucking parasite it emanated. She loved him, but she was ruthlessly mean to him regardless. Mathilde was loud, rebellious, and a spitfire compensating for the weak sputter of life their mother left in their life. Tick was everything she was not; he was the smart one, the quiet one, reserved, broody, and sullen. She drank with friends and ripped her tights, and he perused stores for their oldest cufflinks and preferred evenings with Auntie Bernie beneath a strong lamp and a magnifying glass; Auntie Bernie’s art education for Beckett grew beyond the identification of classical music motifs and a taste for Pierre Bonnard’s impressionism paintings. Exposure to vintage and authentic antique artifacts in museums, galleries, and curio shop introduced him to a new hobby that would go on to dominate his life: restoration and procurement. She walked him through taking apart his first timepiece and helped him buy his first 1835 John Ridgway imperial porcelain platter. Family friction catalyzed a dynamic like none other.When Tick finished his A-levels, his mother had seemed to wake up from a decade long slumber. She re-entered her children’s lives, and somehow, they both retreated. There was an element of fear, uncertainty on the navigation of a relationship with a parent who had done so little in nearly twenty years, and Mathilde and Tick did not pursue this relationship. No, they did the furthest thing from returning their mother’s newfound affections. Taking inspiration from a lifelong dream never realized of Auntie Bernie’s, the siblings immigrated to the United States and made a new home together. In New York City, they used a loan from their aunt and some money made from odd jobs back home in Devon to open a unique antique shop-café combination.

Bernadette’s covers a rather spacious territory of interests and real estate. The front is a small little café, serving artisan roast coffees and teas in little chairs and tables situated between the crooks and crannies of shelves and an old record player. The back of the shop is entirely dedicated to Tick’s crafts. He sells collections picked by hand at auctions and found in garage sales or peculiar sites of the Internet, displays his personal collection. In the back room, he performs his miracles: restorations on old clothes, clocks, watches, and other items. The bougie, hip youth and the stiff-lipped socialites of New York alike have frequented Bernadette’s and kept the two siblings afloat despite their personal differences.For the time being, Bernadette’s will be the only life Tick knows; while Mathilde navigates the world freely, Tick only knows a life of reservation and tense shoulders that have never known touch. Feeding pigeons peas by hand is nothing like talking to a stranger in a land so bold, so brash, so loud and yet brimming with opportunities. Alas, the human heart and condition are not so easy and mechanical to take apart like an elegant 1942 Bulova rose gold wristwatch.

Indigo Jae Parker managed, though. And he has since happily decided that not every thing on this earth must operate by strict mechanisms and craftsmanship.

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name: beckett "tick" dorsey
d.o.b: 10/11/1994
nationality: english
sex: male (he/him)
mbti: intj
height: 6'1 (1.85m)
sexuality: fluid
residency: new york, new york, usa & plymouth, devon, uk

likes: authentic vintage or antique fashion, utensils, decor, art (preferably impressionism or romanesque), coffee, toffee, classical music, film photography, leather gloves, historic architecture, rain, fresh warm laundry, stargazing
dislikes: crowds, touch/eye contact, extreme heat, sudden noises, lavender-scented things
hobbies: antique restoration, long walks at night especially, museums and art galleries, trivia, writing, photography

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writer is 18+ and resides in e.s.t.
open to interaction & dms always
roleplaying in direct messages only
this account is for writing and roleplaying purposes only
face-claim: freddy carter