Dance With The Sun

34 "I used to fly with those stars."

Anthony dressed again, lay his head back on the grass and looked at the sky. He could see his boy floating up there, just out of reach. Could he ever touch those heights? The damp in his eyes, was it love or pain? With a mixture of pride and sorrow he could feel the tension growing within him. Confusion! Fatality? Fear.

"I wish I could fly with you."

Sunny sat up and looked into the face of the source of his joy, lying stretched out before him. A question ran through his mind that had always bothered him. Is the body a physical manifestation of the soul, or is one's mind somehow influenced by the shell it finds itself locked within? Anthony always had a tension and a secretiveness that caused a frail insecurity and a tight locking within himself of the joy and confidence of selfexpression. Looking at him, Sunny noticed the knotted brow, not creased, but rounded folds formed from a life of permanent almost unconscious worry. His lips were small and drawn together in a pout. Even the cleft in his chin gave the image, if exaggerated, of his whole face squeezed together, as if two hands had been permanently pressed against the sides of his head. He could not see under his clothes, but his legs, stretched out from within his trousers, were tightly together with the feet locked over each other in a secure embrace. Something frightened Anthony and his body was its response. It had grown to express his subconscious. It spoke when he could not.

"What came first do you think? The physical or the spiritual. You look so much in harmony. Perhaps not with the world, but with yourself............. I love you."

The following evening when Sunny arrived at the flat his friend was out of it. He stayed with him for the night and said nothing. Sitting side by side at the broken breakfast table, they enthused again over organising joint adventures. Dependence on having a plan, something on the horizon to aim at, was a need that reassured them of the future, their future. The younger boy had much more faith in life then did the other. He had always had love, whereas Anthony was in love but had not always had it. He had not had the security of never having been abandoned. He knew reality better than the boy, whose charmed life had drifted along with the reassurance of its own internal and external beauty.

Sunny loved him and they became a couple, but only as a couple did they both move among their friends with optimism and happiness. The two of them sat for some joint portraits by the painters who found them increasingly hard to separate. They worked on some street theatre projects together, and Anthony helped his lover to improve his writing skills. The boy lacked no imagination, but some refinement in his construction was needed, and like the sponge he was, he absorbed everything quickly, especially when given by an admirer with tender kindness. Nothing fed the boy more than did affection and appreciation. He blossomed under love's guidance.

Each week he continued to study dance, Sophie arranged singing lessons, Archie coached him in painting, and the boy although mastering none totally showed an insatiable hunger to find new ways of expression.

Everything was a carefully fitted stone that was building a personality. Incorporating the fruits of his searching into his image of himself and that which surrounded him, all became more thrilling, each moment he was alive.

The days were becoming so full of activity that the boy lived on the sensations that creativity had given him. He had no employment but studied the arts, all arts, with a passion, and in a disciplined way that was rare in the politically aware generation to which he belonged. It was certainly a generation that was concerned with refining and freeing life, but in those years the mood was to look outwards. Indulge yourself but with the greatest intentions of doing it for the betterment of mankind. He on the other hand saw a discipline that was needed to expand himself. He relished his freedom, but it was different. Freedom could be destructive, as it proved to be when the bubble burst for many of the sixties. They loved everyone, but beneath this 'love' there evolved little lasting consideration for anyone. Indulgence became the norm, the goal. Sunny indulged, but he indulged his creativity, not his senses. The joy he had was a by-product of his attachment to the world, not an aim in itself. He was a true embryonic artist, with a passion to communicate with all around him. He needed to expose himself so that he would be known. He felt no desire for fame, but a need for truth in his existence.