The Boy Who Thought He Could Fly
He always knew he could fly. He spent his days awake knowing it, and his nights asleep practising it. It’s not even the fact that gravity may have something to say about it, had even entered his head. He knew that if it was possible in his fantasies, then it was certainly feasible in reality! The thought that humans were resigned to a lifetime of terra-firma wanderings, was far too much of a narrow-minded absurdity, let alone mundanity, for him to contemplate. I mean, not the kind of flying we all know about being realistically possible; like in a plane, helicopter, space rocket or hot air balloon. Not that form of mechanically engineered gravity-defying. Oh no, but the sort that birds achieve – balancing upward lift with the downward thrust of weight due to gravity, to achieve semi-weightlessness in a gas. Unmachine-assisted flight.
He wasn’t the kind of boy you would necessarily look at and stereotype as “away with the fairies”. I mean, yes, it can’t be denied he was a bit of a dreamer, but he was firmly connected with the world around him, and the ground upon which he was born. This was half the problem: this was precisely what he was fighting against. The kind of physicality he didn’t want to dictate his entire life! He refused to admit that flying on holiday in a jumbo jet was where his freedom ended. The kind of child that always wanted more than he was given, more than his dealt lot. Never happy with the portion he was served. Not a fantasist, but a dreamer. There is a difference.
As he stood there on the precipice of sanity: glazed over, staring entranced by the London skyline, the first of the weekend sun rose over the Primrose Hill maisonettes. As the cocktail of recreational amphetamines surged through his bloodstream, his mind began to wonder to home…
…how his father would be rising out of bed around now. The rich, intoxicating aroma of fresh coffee, filling the AGA-warmed countryside kitchen. The irresistible sizzle of bacon. His little sister tucked up all snug in her pink and mauve “Sleeping Beauty” bedsheets, enjoying her weekend respite from prep school. The two family dogs, aimlessly chasing squirrels around the freshly mown lawn to no avail….
…It was as these thoughts coursed through his drug-addled mind, that she appeared at the top of the loft ladder on the roof near where he was standing. Arm-in-arm wrapped round some random two-bit ten-a-penny skinny jean-clad crow-legged mal-nourished “rock’n’roll” Indie Bopper (each adjective as vital as the next in that description!) That was all the incentive he needed.
As the rage began surging through every cell in his body, he eyed up the ever-decreasing void between the roof he was perched on, and that of the neighbours of the next semi-detached house. What was she trying to do to him? Could someone really be that spineless? Did she even have a heart after all or had it been destroyed by her traumatic, mother-deprived childhood?
It was the perfect setting for drama: here he was on the roof of the family home of one of the 80s’ biggest pop star couples, his friend’s parents (who were evidently away, hence the house party). If a story was going to unravel this early morning, then it was going to be here. Money, drugs (along with their dealer), rock’n’roll, sexy young girls, offspring of has-been rock icons, oh… did I mention drugs?
Before the reality of what he was actually pondering doing had sunk in or the consideration for the severity of the abyss between had crossed his mind for a millisecond, he found himself at a full sprint towards the gap. He couldn’t even bear to be attached to the same building as her for one moment longer. The rest of the befuddled gaggle of no-need-to-rise-as-never-went-to-bed sunrise voyeurs, had not realised what was going on in their slow-moving brains. Had no clue of what was unravelling around them. A high-pitched shriek of fear and bewilderment cut through the dew-filled air, from one of the teenage girls. This wasn’t like long jump in Sport’s Day at school. This was a whole new field sport, created in the emotion-led arena of his mind, where the penalty for under-achieving in the sandpit was death. Literally. No two ways about it. The reality of falling from a four-storey Victorian roof was by far the most extreme length he had gone to test his own abilities. Which, after all, is what he had always liked to do!
And as his feet left the security of the roof ledge where his safety had once rested, he pondered in mid-air: was he doing this to prove something to himself or to try to prove to her the lengths of madness the neglect of his love had driven him to? A physical demonstration of the extent to which the turmoil of their emotional conflict had manifested in him? Not solely a proof of his love, or a cry for help. A display of what the turning a blind eye to an attention-seeker and the neglecting an emotional co-dependent can lead to.
As he jumped using every last ounce of strength left in each single muscle in his feet and legs, he leapt like he had never leapt before. (The gap must have been four metres in length at least!) The cold, spring morning air stung his cheeks as he flew across the North London yuppy “Primmy Hill Set” mise en scene unto his un-predetermined fate…
…and for just a brief moment, he had accomplished everything he had ever dreamed of. He was flying.
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