RITES OF SPRING

A Brief Synopsis

MICHAEL, a young teenaged street kid, perhaps age 15, has no idea when his birthday is or how old he is. Living on the streets, he is haunted by his friend Marc. MARC, age 14,  has struggled from within his sheltered and suburban life until a very chance meeting with Michael. Connecting and becoming best friends and then as runaways on a journey of self discovery, they unexpectedly fall in love.

Marc and Michael play along a busy downtown street getting into harmless trouble. Being silly and antic, they dart across intersections, hurdle over trash cans and planter boxes and purposely trigger automobile alarms. It seems like any other day for Michael, everything seems so real and alive and at times as they play, he even forgets and just can’t believe that Marc is dead

Days earlier, Marc has been influenced by a much older teen, Sebastian and naively believes that his sexual feelings for boys can be changed by sexual experience with a woman. Marc, believing in such a cure, is easily lured by Sebastian into meeting with a prostitute named Lisa who turns out to be a nightmare where Michael by chance is at the right place at the right time to rescue him.

The controlling Lisa and Sebastian dual torment the boys in a terrible game of ‘cat and mouse’ until Marc accidently kills Sebastian sending them off as runaway fugitives.  Burying their blood stained clothes they find themselves bare naked but more so facing the bare truth as they start a journey loosely following “Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs”. It is along this journey that they encounter survival, spirituality, self discovery and fall in love. When Marc awakens one morning and discovers that Michael has left him, a terrible reality sets in ending in Marc’s suicide death.

Later Michael learns that Sebastian was not dead, that he had survived an almost fatal stab wound. To save Marc from a life as a fugitive and to save himself from the horrific guilt, Michael searches for Marc and learns of his death. This is how Michael finds himself standing before the line that separates this world from the next as he struggles to accept Marc’s death..