Cinnamon Twigs by Darren Freebury-Jones

calling himself a hero for losing count of his conquests. I made a conscious decision not to sleep with everything that moved. I’d given promiscuity a go and it had been fun, but sex was a bonus that came with a genuine relationship. Michael could take the same route as Don Juan if he liked.
     
    In the dream space, intersillient figures cut through tendrils of smoke, each beat takes on new meanings, and reality
    is your audience.
    Delivering long, uneven lines, we’re
    all friends, our issues issuing from us, deeply shallow.
    No more problems. Your debit card
    doesn’t serve its old purpose anymore,
    and the figures in the cobalt blue grow ever tantalizing.
    You battle it out with the hasty clock,
    eyes wide, admitting newfound
    natural light.
     
    Awake. Organs ravaged. Flecks of rain
    on the sill. Outside, sober citizens struggling with their umbrellas,
    which bloom like black roses.
    Alone, frightened, nameless
    in this stinking hole,
    the figure beside you too obvious, emerged.
    And there, brink of despair,
    you are the audience,
    viewing yourself in the harshness of day.
     
                  Sex filled each corner of the university premises, resting silently on the lips of horny students, etching itself on the faces of couples rushing to their lectures, and scrawling its deviant ways all over the literature I studied. Andrew Marvell did his best to get his ‘freak on’ in the poetry I studied, and even Shakespeare liked to mention the forfended place. But meaningless sex is concerned purely with performance. It’s all an act, as Michael showed whenever he boasted about his latest bedfellow. That kind of performance would always pall for me.
     
    CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    Gorsedd Gardens 
     
    I finished my first year at university and prepared for a hectic summer with Michael. We went on camping trips (as well as a holiday to Faliraki, but more on that later) and enjoyed numerous nights out in Cardiff and Swansea. But we also found time to discuss the future, and how to go into professional acting.
                                After calling agencies and enquiring about television work, we landed a couple of jobs as extras. I didn’t mind waiting around on set, pretending the camera wasn’t on me, because I learned a lot about how television worked. Most of our fellow extras did it just for shits and giggles, but Michael and I took it very seriously, even though we knew that standing around on television sets wouldn’t ensure cinematic success. Unlike many other extras, we’d never get caught falling asleep on set, even if we’d been called at 5am. We were always alert and attentive. It’s what we wanted to do for a living. If you come across old episodes with the pause button on your remote at the ready you’ll spot me popping up like Where’s Wally in shows filmed in Cardiff, such as Casualty , Pobol Y Cwm , Being Human , Ar y Tracs , Upstairs Downstairs , Alys , Doctor Who and, believe it or not, performing silently opposite the wonderful Scottish actor Richard Wilson, in Merlin .  
                  Michael and I earned some money and gained experience. Later in the summer, we became members of the actor’s trade union, Equity. It used to be the case that you couldn’t do anything without an Equity card, but our foremost aim was to get hold of a proper acting agent. Getting hold of Equity cards was just a way to pamper our egos back then.               
                  ‘This is a big steppingstone.’ Michael sipped a pale grey cocktail as we sat at a bar in Cardiff.
                  ‘Yeah, but we’re at the very bottom of the ladder, mate. Let’s not kid ourselves,’ I said.
                  ‘At least we’re on the ladder now. That’s a big steppingstone from nothing. Every fish out of water is closer to becoming an amphibian.’
                  ‘That’s an interesting analogy!’ I