Adam: A Sensuous Coming of Age Tale (23 page)

Then,
‘It’s been quite a day for you all round, though, hasn’t it?’ said Sean more seriously. And then, in that tone of tender concern that had always been his hallmark and for which Adam had always loved him, ‘That was your lover, wasn’t it, we saw by the lakeside? He’s very handsome.’

Adam’s romantic, histrionic side
saw himself throwing his arms around Sean’s neck in a relief of tears but of course the real-life flesh and blood teenager did nothing of the kind. He just nodded soberly and said, ‘That’s right.’

‘
You should have introduced us. Why keep him hidden all this week?’

‘
I thought you wouldn’t understand,’ said Adam bluntly.

‘
Perhaps you were right,’ Sean said thoughtfully. ‘At the beginning of the week, maybe. But not now.’

Adam was surprised to find that he was
angry. ‘Are you saying you’re gay all of a sudden? Like this morning you were, yesterday you weren’t and the night before that you were. What about tonight?’ He stopped, shocked. He had never spoken to Sean in this tone before, had never wanted to. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘
If you’re angry with me I don’t blame you,’ Sean said slowly as if with an effort. ‘ You think because I’m older I should know what I’m doing all the time. Mister Cool, you think. And I try to live up to that. To the way you think of me. It isn’t easy, though. Perhaps I shouldn’t have tried. Truth is, I’m just as confused as you others. I’m not gay though. I do know that. But somehow in my own way I love you. And I mean you. I don’t have the same feeling at all about Michael. Work that out if you can. I can’t.’

‘
You’re different from Michael,’ Adam heard himself saying. Perhaps it was the wine. ‘You’re softer, gentler, than he is. I mean your personality is.’ Then he realised that that was not the only thing he meant, and said so. ‘Yes but also when I, when we … You’re more like Sylvain. Sylvain, that’s his name. But he’s gay – and Michael’s gay – and you’re not. So work that out.’

‘
Maybe it’s just to tell us that stereotypes don’t mean too much.’ Sean took a mouthful of wine and reached his hand across the garden table to take Adam’s. He didn’t remove it even when the nearby rustle of denim announced the return of Michael and Christophe from the darkest reaches of the garden. They were not holding hands. They didn’t need to. Christophe was as transfigured as if Botticelli had snapped his fingers and brought one of his smaller angels to life, while Michael was trying to restrain a smile that wanted to transform itself into a triumphant grin.

It was only after Monique had called by and taken Christophe home that Michael and Adam had the chance of a few words together on their own.
They were in the bedroom, perched on opposite beds while Sean very practically collected glasses of water from downstairs. ‘You could have fun with Christophe,’ Michael said. ‘He’ll do anything you want him to, that boy. And you can thank me for breaking him in for you.’

‘
I’ll bear that in mind,’ said Adam.

‘
Tell me though,’ Michael said more seriously. ‘Just what the fuck does Sean think he’s playing at? All this blowing hot and cold, straight yesterday and straight tomorrow but never straight today. Holding your hand across the table like Heathcliff. It’s getting tedious in the extreme … and that’s even for me. I hate to think what he’s putting you through. I hope to God that Sylvain doesn’t lead you such a dance. Personally, my nerves just wouldn’t stand it. Still, nothing to do with me, I suppose, since I seem to be completely
hors de question
. Thank God for the consolation prize of Christophe.’ He stopped. ‘Seriously. I don’t want you to get hurt by Sean. Just because it’s the last thing he would ever want to do, doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the power to do it.’ There was a long pause during which Adam realised that Michael had never spoken to him like this before: intimate, solicitous, concerned. Michael sounded almost bitter when he started again. ‘You think I don’t care about you really. You think I’m all surface and no heart. You treasure your relationship with Sean but little old me is just something useful to play with. An intellectual sparring partner and a friendly wank.’

This was precisely how Adam did see Michael but he was too slowed-down by trying to think after drinking to deny or soften Michael’s charge.
He stayed silent, looking down, unable to meet his eye.

‘
Well, it isn’t true,’ Michael said in a voice become suddenly tremulous. ‘I care about you. More than Sean does. I love you, Adam.’ And to Adam’s horror, Michael burst into tears: the worst kind of outbreak, involving snot and nose-blowing as well.

The sound of Sean’s footsteps coming up the stairs forced Michael to regain his composure quickly.
Adam scrambled over to his side and gave him a peck on the cheek – something he had never done before – while Michael scoured his face with his hanky. Adam had to get up to open the door for Sean who was balancing three glasses of water like a barman. And when he came in he sensed at once that he had just missed something of a drama and said: ‘ I’m not interrupting anything, am I?’ It was a degree of irony which, a week ago, he would not have aspired to. Then, having put down the water, he sat himself next to Michael and said, gently and earnestly, ‘Would you mind very much if I slept with Adam tonight?’

And Michael, who might have been forgiven for making an operatic aria out of his reply, said simply
, ‘No, go ahead Sean. It may be your last chance, after all.’

‘
I guess you’re right,’ said Sean heavily.

In bed Sean held Adam firmly, intensely.
He was choked-up, even nervy, in a way he hadn’t been the other times. He put his mouth close to Adam’s ear so that his lips tickled the lobe. ‘When Sylvain fucked you, you know …’

‘
Yes?’ Adam whispered too, though Michael’s bed was so close that there was little point. At that range he would have heard telepathy.

‘
Was it … I mean, did you enjoy it?’

‘
I … I’m not sure. I suppose, because it was him …. I suppose it brought us closer together.’ I’m going to get fucked, thought Adam, at two arms-lengths from Michael. Dear God.

‘
Could I … I mean, do you want to fuck me?’

Adam thought his heart stopped for a moment.
This was Sean asking him this.

‘
I suppose so.’

Sean said:
‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic.’ He sounded half amused.

A moment later, once the idea had sunk in, Adam was very enthusiastic indeed
– Sean checked the extent of his enthusiasm with his fingers. Then he turned over and offered Adam his sculpted, muscular behind.

‘
Oh God,’ said Adam, ‘ I’ll come too soon.’

‘
You won’t,’ said Sean without a shred of evidence.

Adam, making the happy and inspired guess that quantities of spittle would be an important factor in the success of the enterprise, applied as much as he could spare, both to himself and to Sean’s inside.
Then, lowering himself gently and using his hand as a guide, he urged his bucking penis a little way into Sean.

Who gave a gasp.
Adam stopped. ‘Go further,’ whispered Sean. Then Adam felt his cock, which had never seemed bigger than tonight, sliding inch by inch into his friend as if it were being swallowed. Once or twice he felt the kind of weak resistance you got when you pushed the plunger of the cafetière down too fast, and knew from that experience that then he must slow down.

He had gone as far as he could.
His balls and belly met the smooth buffers of Sean’s backside. He could hardly believe what he was doing. He was inside another person for the first time in his life and that person was Sean, the most beautiful, most unattainable person he knew. And straight …. Well, at least supposed to be.

Adam shot.
He felt as if his life’s blood were pumping out of him and into Sean. He felt Sean squirm beneath him, felt his sturdy cock swell in his hand and then felt all the hot and urgent wetness as Sean let himself go. A not insubstantial amount of noise from the other bed indicated that Michael had been joining in the excitement vicariously and was not too shy to let them know.

The morning dawned cloudy. Last night’s wine-induced euphoria had dissipated and a pall of uncertainty, of things unresolved between the three boys hovered over the breakfast table. Sean in particular looked shifty and unwilling to catch anyone’s eye. Adam didn’t know what he’d expected – or if he’d expected anything at all.

Later Sean cornered Adam.
He seemed agitated. ‘You know last night. We didn’t use a rubber. You’ve been fucked by this strange guy. He might have been carrying anything. You could have given me Aids.’

Adam was surprised and stung.
‘ Given you Aids? What about me, then? That’d mean I had it too. Or don’t you care about me?’ He might have felt and sounded angry, but his feelings for Sean still made that difficult for any length of time. Instead he felt more let down, more betrayed, than ever in his life.

Something of this communicated itself to Sean.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m scared, that’s all.’ He paused. ‘And selfish too.’

Adam saw with incredulity, and for the first time ever, that Sean looked ready to cry.
What a way the week was ending. Awkwardly he reached out a hand and touched his forearm. ‘ Don’t be scared. Sylvain’s never been fucked by anyone before me. I’m sure of that. He’s told me what he has done and who with. So you’re safe. So am I.’

Sean looked for a moment as he was going to embrace Adam but he didn’t.
He only turned away wordlessly. Perhaps he really was finding it difficult not to cry.

The journey back to Chaumont in the car was very different from the arrival earlier that week, the mood sombre and reflective.
Adam was glad that his mother, not his father drove them. To the same driver the difference in mood would have been too tellingly obvious. Sean sat in the back with Adam whose one consolation was that Sean kept his knee pressed against Adam’s for almost the entire journey. What message this was intended to give was unclear: Sean’s face gave nothing away but at least it was certain, after everything that had happened, that this time the contact was intended and not accidental. Then, when the car at last stopped outside the
Gare Routière
of Chaumont, Sean gave Adam’s hand a quick tight squeeze, carefully choosing a moment when it would not be seen by either Jennifer or Michael. Then the moment was over. It seemed to Adam that a momentous event in his life had occurred this week, but one whose meaning was as yet completely hidden. And when, standing by the open door and steep steps of the coach, he found himself shaking hands almost formally with his two friends – or rather lovers – he had the strange sensation that the experience, this leave-taking, was actually happening to someone else.

TWELVE

It had been a genuine mistake when
Adam had told Sylvain that he would meet him on the Sunday afternoon after the departure of his English visitors. He had either meant to say Friday or had not taken it on board that Michael and Sean would be returning home so soon; he no longer remembered which. In the event he found himself rather thankful for his muddle: it gave him a breathing space between one world and the other, time to compose himself, think through things and – at the purely practical level – decide how he was going to handle Sylvain when they next met, and what he was actually going to say.

Before
Michael and Sean’s arrival he had mentally run through a variety of scenarios for the week of their visit. These had ranged from having to explain to an unhappy Michael that there could no longer be a sexual relationship between them, through the possibility that Sean and Michael had somehow metamorphosed into a couple, to the rather more likely chance that Michael had outgrown his interest in boys during the previous year – in which case Adam’s new attachment to Sylvain would not have posed a problem. Almost the only thing he never dreamed of was the week that actually happened: the reality of five days of frenzied sexual activity and the roller-coaster ride that his emotions had given him. Roller-coaster was hardly an adequate description, though; it had been Ferris-wheel, dodgems and the whole white-knuckle, stomach-inverting gamut of fairground rides whizzed into one. It would be a couple of days before the world stopped spinning round him like a giant centrifuge and slowed to its normal pace.

Sometimes the events of those last few days seemed so unreal as to be almost unbelievable, now that the two boys were no longer around to corroborate his memory of them and that the forensic evidence provided by the bed-sheets had been efficiently destroyed by the washing-machine
– which Adam had had the presence of mind to turn to its highest setting when, in an unprecedented access of domesticity, he had stuffed them into it with something like panic even before breakfast on the day of his friends’ departure. The only thing that remained to prove to him that it had not all been a dream was the perfume of Sean’s body which, despite baths and showers, clung to him enduringly, endearingly, and seemed to him so strong and pervasive, at times attractive and exciting, at others menacing and dangerous, that he found it difficult to believe that his parents and Gary could not smell it on him too.