Read Online Adam: A Sensuous Coming of Age Tale by Anthony McDonald - Free Book Online
Authors: Anthony McDonald
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would strip naked before throwing themselves onto the duvet (Michael’s plain, Adam’s patterned) and add a preliminary tussle/cuddle to their standard repertoire, usually to a background of Brahms or Mahler. It never crossed either of their minds that they might consider the experiment of a kiss.
Adam pondered the implications of all this in moments of quiet. The word ‘gay’ floated on the currents of his mind quite a lot around that time. Was what he and Michael did a ‘gay’ thing or did all boys do it? And then ‘gay’ was something else? It was not easy to discover. He had heard that some bookshops had a whole section devoted to gay fiction. His local one did not. You would need to spend a fortune buying books on the basis of a promising title, or else spend an inordinate amount of time browsing, to make this a useful avenue of research. He consulted his local library instead and got one or two leads, a few whispers of hard fact. In the end it was Michael who came up trumps. ‘ Look what I’ve got from the library,’ he said one day. They sprawled on Michael’s counterpane and riffled through the pages. ‘Oh hey,’ they both said, and, ‘look at this.’ It was a book called The Swimming-Pool Library.
When their affair had ripened over a six-month period into a state of comfortable constancy, Adam one day worked his way round to a question he had been wanting to ask Michael. ‘You remember that first time, on the ropes. I mean the really first time.’ Michael nodded. ‘ Was that the first time you ever …?’ He tailed off, suddenly thinking that he didn’t really want to know.
Michael looked surprised. ‘No. No way. I’d been doing it by myself for about a year.’
‘ By hand, you mean?’ For some reason the word wank, which they all used as part of the common currency of classroom exchange, was taboo when they were in private together, doing exactly that.
‘ Of course.’ Michael paused and peered at Adam. ‘ You, not?’
‘ No,’ Adam said softly. The conversation was sending gentle shivers around his shoulders and down his arms. Not unpleasantly though.
‘ But you do now, don’t you?’
‘ Of course,’ Adam said staunchly. Since he had started with Michael he couldn’t get enough of it; it had become a nightly ritual even when (which was most days) he’d done it earlier on with Michael.
‘ But you did it with me first?’ Michael sounded pleased.
Adam confirmed this. ‘You did it to me three or four times, and I did it to you too, before I ever did it to myself.’
‘ But that’s great, man! That’s truly fantastic!’
‘ I suppose it is,’ said Adam, half convinced. But something in him remained absurdly jealous of Michael, who was actually a whole three months – an aeon of time – younger than himself, for having discovered the source of pleasure between his legs, learned how to use it and found it already operational when he did so, a whole year before Adam had taken any steps in the same direction. He did not tell Michael this. But Michael said cheerfully, ‘Anyway, you’ve been making up for lost time ever since,’ just as though he had heard Adam’s silent cogitation.
But Adam never really felt he had caught up, and even now, nearly three years later, and after his recent, riskier-seeming, experience with Fox, it still rankled: Michael’s year’s start on him seemed like something on which, even were he to devote the rest of his life to the acquisition of sexual experience, of whatever kind, he could never catch up.
Adam had mixed feelings about following up Fox’s easy, same time next week, proposal. Meet Fox again. Sex with Fox again. It sounded so simple. But ‘again’ never was simple, not now. Back in those far-off uncomplicated times with Michael, at the very beginning, perhaps it had been simple; maybe it just looked simple now, in hindsight. But the repetition of even the simplest things was not a simple thing itself. The musician in
Adam pondered the implications of all this in moments of quiet. The word ‘gay’ floated on the currents of his mind quite a lot around that time. Was what he and Michael did a ‘gay’ thing or did all boys do it? And then ‘gay’ was something else? It was not easy to discover. He had heard that some bookshops had a whole section devoted to gay fiction. His local one did not. You would need to spend a fortune buying books on the basis of a promising title, or else spend an inordinate amount of time browsing, to make this a useful avenue of research. He consulted his local library instead and got one or two leads, a few whispers of hard fact. In the end it was Michael who came up trumps. ‘ Look what I’ve got from the library,’ he said one day. They sprawled on Michael’s counterpane and riffled through the pages. ‘Oh hey,’ they both said, and, ‘look at this.’ It was a book called The Swimming-Pool Library.
When their affair had ripened over a six-month period into a state of comfortable constancy, Adam one day worked his way round to a question he had been wanting to ask Michael. ‘You remember that first time, on the ropes. I mean the really first time.’ Michael nodded. ‘ Was that the first time you ever …?’ He tailed off, suddenly thinking that he didn’t really want to know.
Michael looked surprised. ‘No. No way. I’d been doing it by myself for about a year.’
‘ By hand, you mean?’ For some reason the word wank, which they all used as part of the common currency of classroom exchange, was taboo when they were in private together, doing exactly that.
‘ Of course.’ Michael paused and peered at Adam. ‘ You, not?’
‘ No,’ Adam said softly. The conversation was sending gentle shivers around his shoulders and down his arms. Not unpleasantly though.
‘ But you do now, don’t you?’
‘ Of course,’ Adam said staunchly. Since he had started with Michael he couldn’t get enough of it; it had become a nightly ritual even when (which was most days) he’d done it earlier on with Michael.
‘ But you did it with me first?’ Michael sounded pleased.
Adam confirmed this. ‘You did it to me three or four times, and I did it to you too, before I ever did it to myself.’
‘ But that’s great, man! That’s truly fantastic!’
‘ I suppose it is,’ said Adam, half convinced. But something in him remained absurdly jealous of Michael, who was actually a whole three months – an aeon of time – younger than himself, for having discovered the source of pleasure between his legs, learned how to use it and found it already operational when he did so, a whole year before Adam had taken any steps in the same direction. He did not tell Michael this. But Michael said cheerfully, ‘Anyway, you’ve been making up for lost time ever since,’ just as though he had heard Adam’s silent cogitation.
But Adam never really felt he had caught up, and even now, nearly three years later, and after his recent, riskier-seeming, experience with Fox, it still rankled: Michael’s year’s start on him seemed like something on which, even were he to devote the rest of his life to the acquisition of sexual experience, of whatever kind, he could never catch up.
Adam had mixed feelings about following up Fox’s easy, same time next week, proposal. Meet Fox again. Sex with Fox again. It sounded so simple. But ‘again’ never was simple, not now. Back in those far-off uncomplicated times with Michael, at the very beginning, perhaps it had been simple; maybe it just looked simple now, in hindsight. But the repetition of even the simplest things was not a simple thing itself. The musician in
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