Free Adam: A Sensuous Coming of Age Tale by Anthony McDonald

Fox’s chest. He envied its spare muscularity, its wind-tanned air of confidence, the plume of hair that showed below the navel and then dived down below the waistband out of sight. He thought how childlike his own physique was by comparison. If anyone had told him that he only had a short time to wait before the maturity he admired in Fox’s frame would be his too, he would scarcely have understood. But he was not abashed either. Fox had seen him nearly naked and had not been unimpressed. Adam slowly peeled off his own shirt and vest, until his state of dress mirrored that of the man beside him. His state of excitement too, he noticed, glancing quickly down to where promising indications stretched the fabric of both their trousers.
    ‘ T’es beau,’ said Fox, meaning it, and Adam was happy to accept the compliment even if he hardly dared to think it true. Fox had been here. Waiting for him. It had been an appointment and Fox had kept it. Adam felt a warm glow of comfort and security. He stretched out a hand and ran it over Fox’s front, exploring the smooth surface, touching the rubbery protrusion of a nipple. It felt quite solid. Adam was intrigued; he was sure that his own nipples never got like that; something to do with being older, maybe. He ran a finger down to Fox’s navel. Fox gave an involuntary little half-gasp then lay back on the young grass. Still crouching beside him, Adam slipped his hand down the warm slide of Fox’s stomach until the fingers were quite out of sight. Then with his other hand he started to undo the metal buttons of his denims, one by one.
     
     
    FOUR
     
    Christophe ’s family had invited Adam and his parents to dinner. It was one of that sort of social occasion that hurled together adults and their teenage offspring and where different worlds collided – or appeared to – like solar eclipses, with unpredictable results. At school the impending event had been acknowledged by Adam and Christophe with rolling eyes and expressively raised eyebrows. And by Thierry too. He had been invited, along with his own parents. Adam had not had too much to do with Thierry in the last few days. Adam sensed a new aloofness in him. He didn’t try to imagine its cause.
    Christophe ’s family lived in a prosperous looking modern house by the shore of Lac de la Mouche. The house was set back from the lakeside road and the driveway that led up to it ran through an expanse of long feathery grass that was referred to, with the sangfroid of the well-to-do, as a garden. There was more garden of the same sort at the back, running away to finish where forest and hillside rose up abruptly together beyond the fence. Getting out of the car, Adam and his parents were greeted with the salvo of hysterical barking from family pets that traditionally constitutes a formal welcome in rural France. Fifty metres back from the front door lay the lake, stretching away out of sight in both directions. Today it was flat and glassy, a mirror reflecting the oncoming evening. Beyond, its forested opposite shores lay black against the west. Kites wheeled overhead in the still blue air above the water. Adam had never seen birds of prey in such numbers before coming here. But up on the plateau they were everywhere. Every time you looked up it was to catch sight of a harrier or a buzzard or – more exhilarating to watch – a kite.
    There were two kinds of kite here, the dark one, the ‘black kite’, and the red one with its more deeply forked tail. Adam had looked them up in his father’s bird book. Both were wonderful to watch as they sliced through the air with the daring and skill of stunt pilots, adjusting the trim of their tails and wing primaries to take a sudden sharp corner or to deal with an unexpected change in the breeze. They would skim the surface of the lake like bats or outsize swallows, and just like swallows’ too were their breathtaking changes of direction, when it seemed that the wind must catch their