Max

by Avi Duckor-Jones

Genres: Coming of Age

Synopsis

I want to let her know that choosing something is the entire problem. How do you choose something without feeling the undeniable loss of everything you rejected?

Max is about to finish high school. On the surface it appears he has everything, but underneath he is floundering. Grappling with questions about his birth parents and his sexuality, he feels that there is a seed of badness deep within him that will inevitably be exposed.

After an incident at the end-of-year party sets Max's world to crumbling, he must finally figure out who he is and where he came from - and who he is allowed to love.

Max is a vivid and insightful coming-of-age novel about the ways we weave the threads of our adolescent identities into a cohesive adult self.

Release date: May 28, 2024

Publisher: Affirm Press

Print pages: 304

Sample

1

Fletch drives. Cool morning air rushes at me in the passenger seat, whipping my hair against closed eyes. There is the memory of cigarette smoke covered with pine-scented fabric cleaner. Fletch fiddles with the radio – snatches of local cricket commentary, a rippling crescendo of opera, finance reports, Top 40 hits – before settling on a Biggie Smalls song he loves. He lets out a long, quiet ‘Yasssss’, like the hiss from an open valve, and taps the wheel. I open my eyes and slowly lift my bare feet onto the dashboard.

‘Get your fuckin’,’ he laughs and swats my leg ‘hobbit feet—’ He swerves to realign us on the road. It’s still early, so there aren’t many cars out. We drive a red Toyota Corolla we haven’t taken out before and Fletch struggles with the sticky gears. His uncle owns a garage, so we have a rotation of loaner cars to use as we please. I am now used to the feeling of becoming attached to a specific car while also knowing it isn’t ours to keep. I already feel a sense of pre-emptive loss for when the time comes to swap the Corolla out. We both only have our restricted licences but we don’t care. We’ve never been stopped. Fletch is fastidious, however, about keeping the cars spotless, so we can continue to enjoy the privilege.

I remove my feet and look out at the streetlights. The sky shifts from navy to powdery blue, a thin seam of pale orange running along the roofs of small white cottages. Their low chicken-wire fences and trimmed hedges spill past, blurring into one another, punctuated only by the staccato of power poles. I ride the current of air with my hand. Fletch whistles through his teeth and continues to tap the wheel. His long black hair stands up at odd angles. While so many of our peers try to manufacture this look, Fletch achieves it by pure indifference. Thick eyebrows frown and lift in some conversation or argument he’s having in his head.

‘What?’ he looks at me and I turn away.

‘Nothing.’

The route to the beach is a gentle unravelling of our restrictions. Maybe that’s why we drive out here so often, even when we know it’ll be flat. A brief escape from our neighbourhoods, the city centre and school, filled with busier spaces, bigger structures and more pervasive expectations and rules. The houses and buildings, initially bunched together like too many teeth in a mouth, start spacing out until rolling lawns and pockets of bush stand between them. Empty lots, filled not with the graffitied concrete foundations and exposed metal rods of town, but macrocarpa trees left to grow wild, with long wrangled arms and a carpet of dry golden needles beneath them. Smaller roads spider out from the main artery. To drive out here is to exhale a breath I don’t know I’m holding. Despite knowing these roads are frequented by local residents and surfers, when it is just Fletch and me in the pale morning light it feels like it belongs to us.

Fletch is long known to bring a sort of ceremony to things. He makes up all sorts of rules and routines. Pouring the first sip of beer into the bonfire before drinking ourselves. Peeing on a nearby tree before setting up camp. Wiping a hand across his blank canvas before starting to paint. Patting the hood of a loaner car before driving it and saying, ‘You be good to us and we’ll be good to you.’ Kissing his board before paddling out. He makes me do it all too. For luck. For tradition. For respect. When I once asked him about it, he said it was probably something to do with how he’d grown up. Karakia to open, a karakia to close, a sense of tikanga around things. So, I wasn’t surprised when he suggested a dawnie during our last week as a closing ritual for our time at school. The swell finally arrived last night, which was just in time with two days left. Fletch called excitedly after dinner, telling me to be ready at six.

When we reach the beach carpark, Fletch turns in fast, swerving a little and pulling the handbrake hard, before tumbling out the door to assess the surf. ‘Yeaow! Look at that set!’ He points out to sea, where the thin corduroy lines are forming and breaking along the point. Specks of surfers move together in drifts. ‘Let’s get out there, bro!’ He leaps towards the car, hurriedly unstrapping the boards and lifting them off, laying them on the ground and shrugging them out of their faded silver board bags. ‘Told you we should’ve left earlier!’

It is November, and the water is still cold, so we change into our wetsuits, me in a full-length steamer, and Fletch in a shorter spring suit. I use plastic bread bags on my feet to slide down the tight rubber legs, still damp from previous surfs, then hop around clumsily, tugging up the thick skin. Fletch slips into his easily, twisting like an otter, reaching behind him to draw the zip up his back. The thinner neoprene of his spring suit clings to his strong body, giving him a superhero quality, everything held in tight.

I kneel, rubbing a nubbin of wax over the already lumpy terrain, scraping the board vigorously, creating a skin of fresh white flakes to cover the worn grey residue beneath. Something to stick to. I throw the wax to Fletch, who catches it and gives his board an impatient once-over, before pointing to where another set is forming out to sea.

‘Let’s take the rocks. Can’t be stuffed with the paddle out.’

I trot behind him down the small dirt path that leads from the carpark to the stony beach and we climb up the black rocks that hug the bay and lead out to the point. There is a lot about myself I don’t necessarily like or understand, but I am proud of my feet: soles hardened to the point where I can walk across rocks like this, sharp and peppered with small barnacles and periwinkles. My parents have always marvelled at their firmness, the lack of feeling, wondering where on earth they’d come from. It certainly isn’t from them. Fletch skips ahead of me, so light on his feet, hardened like mine, the board tucked neatly under his arm as he navigates his way forwards. We reach the access point – a rocky ledge jutting out into deep water – and attach our leashes to our ankles. Swell surges, frothy and white, up to where we stand, then sucks back, exposing black rocks and tendrils of slick bull kelp. We wait. The surge returns and Fletch throws himself into it, paddling furiously through the white wash, the suck pulling him beyond danger. I hold back, frustrated at the fear and hesitancy, stopping twice before gathering myself and taking the leap on the third roll of swell. The cold foamy mess churns around me, pulling me back towards the rocks as I paddle hard to get beyond them into calmer water.

In the safety of the line-up, I find Fletch.

‘Thought you weren’t gonna jump.’ Fletch splashes me. ‘Pussy.’ The sky is lighter now. Grey and muted. No wind. A boil-up out to sea with birds frenzied above it. ‘Does it feel sharky to you?’ Fletch gives a sly smile. A game of ours.

‘Shut up.’ I splash him back.

He blows a snot rocket from his nose and rinses it into the sea with his hand, which I find both gross and strangely attractive. We scan the horizon for the lumpy rise of a wave. When it comes, we both lie down on our boards and paddle into place. The peak is rising, darkening; Fletch turns and takes it, springing to his feet and gliding across the face, disappearing behind me. His arm momentarily flies up over the back of the lip, a fan of spray indicating a cut back before he vanishes. The next wave of the set is already here, bigger than the last. I paddle for it but another guy is already paddling deep and hard and launching to his feet, sailing away. The pressure to catch the next one pushes at my chest. Let Fletch see. The third wave arrives and I dig my arms into the water, swinging my board around as the wave grows behind. The panic and fear and hope all funnel into my limbs.

The lift of the wave.

Two more deep strokes and I push my board onto the face, spring to my feet and fly. Deafening wind and water. There is a second, so fast I can’t quite catch it, bright like a flash, where I know that this is the end of something. Something more than just school. It is a closing, a beginning. Spray blinds me. I lean into it, cry out, pumping to keep the momentum, letting it all go and then staying, if only for a moment, in the comfortable space of gliding between two worlds.

2

‘Sorry I’m late, miss.’ I sniff, damp hair hanging in strings and salt water still trickling from my nose. My English teacher looks up as I enter and waves me to my seat before returning to her pile of marking.

‘All good, Max, we’re just continuing with our practice essays.’

I suspect my teachers are just as worn out from the year as we are, their minds already at the bach up north with a chilled sav blanc in hand, no students in sight. The final week of school has felt messy. Panicked last-minute exam cramming fighting with an opposing energy: a sort of hazy malaise as we stagger, exhausted, towards the finish line.

I shuffle past my classmates; their brows are furrowed in concentration as they flick back to their notes from earlier in the year. Sam smiles widely and moves her books aside so I can sit next to her. Her enthusiasm unnerves me. We’ve only been official for a month or so, but she orbited around our wider friend group for ages before that. It was only after we were seated next to each other in Classics that we grew closer. Finally, after working on a project together about Greek vases, and perhaps horny from the stick-figure orgies adorning the ancient vessels, we hooked up at a party. Since then, the palpable eagerness with which she’s taken to the role of girlfriend, a role she truly believes in and wants, makes me knot up with fear.

‘How was it?’ she whispers. ‘Your hair’s still wet.’ She reaches up to touch it.

‘Stayed out a bit long.’ I sling my bag off and get out my English books.

‘Big?’

‘Three to five foot, offshore.’

‘Still cold?’

‘Yeah.’ I wipe my dripping nose down my arm.

Students either stare at their books with glazed eyes, or in a whirl of recollection send their pens scribbling across the page. These peers of mine. Whether secretly playing Snake on their phones, etching logos into the wooden desktops or actually doing work, everyone seems more convincingly ‘student-like’ than me. Decent and dull. I should know them better than I do. The fact is, apart from Fletch, in five years of high school, no one here has felt close to knowing anything other than the version of me I’ve handed to them, the polished pebble sitting in my palm. It’s not their fault that there are things I keep for myself.

‘Still good for after school?’ Sam whispers shyly.

‘Yeah. Definitely, yeah.’

‘And your parents know I’m staying for dinner?’

‘I’ll call Mum at interval.’

Sam goes back to her essay. Everyone is working quietly now. I silently judge them and envy their ability to unthinkingly follow the rules. The scratching of pens on paper, intermittent sniffs, coughs and yawns. Sam tucks her hair behind an ear. A simple gold ring in each lobe. My blank page stares up at me and I feel a compulsion to scream and break something. To disrupt the silence and release the knot in my chest. I look for distraction, but just find familiar posters shouting their imperatives at me, or offering naively optimistic messages.

Get an opinion!

What’s in the text anyway?!

It’s not a failure because I haven’t given up yet!

I can do hard things!

The secret to getting ahead is getting started!

And my most hated: This is a quiet zone!!!!! A picture of a dog, its paw photoshopped in, holding a furry finger to its snout, the exclamation points totally contradicting the message.

What would happen if I stood up, stripped off, tore these posters from the wall and ate them, leaping from desk to desk making animal noises? What would happen if I swept my arm across each desk and sent all the papers and books and pens clattering to the floor? Perhaps then they’ll see. At the very moment I think I finally might, Fletch walks past our classroom. On his way ‘to the toilet’ no doubt. He always leaves class to use the toilet but then just minces around enjoying his freedom while everyone else is trapped in class. Sometimes he takes twenty minutes and comes back just as the class is ending. Now, he stops to dance silently, gyrating his hips, his face distorted in a porny music-video way.

The teacher walks to the door and opens it, leaning out as if to shoo away a stray dog. ‘Back to class!’

Fletch does a few more quick gyrations then scampers away laughing. It disrupts the silence and my need to break something vanishes with it. My classmates laugh and comment, turning away from their half-done essays to share their admiration or disapproval of Fletch.

‘Oh my god, Fletch. Is he even going to sit the exams?’ Sam laughs.

‘I don’t know.’ I smile too – not at the comments about Fletch, but at Fletch himself. His loose abandon and lawlessness. He’s better than us, who all play by the rules. He is himself. Outside of the expectations and regulations of school and the confines of the classroom, he’s escaped, here for us all to see. As always, he is entirely free and although I envy him, I love him for it, completely.

3

I change out of my school uniform slowly while Sam sits on the edge of my bed, her gaze flitting around my body like a moth. I’ve been a bit obsessive about it lately. Urgent press-ups, sit-ups and squats in the morning before school and two red dumbbells pumped repeatedly to the heavy bass thudding from my Discman in the evenings. I monitor the new definition in my arms closely, flexing in my small square mirror to check for progress. My chest and back are the issue. So different from Fletch’s. Too pale, too lean, too speckled with small moles, as if flicked at with a paintbrush. I think of him changing into his wetsuit this morning, his brown skin remarkably free of any hair or moles or marks.

Sam flips through my CD wallet, trying to find an appropriate soundtrack. Mum and Dad work late on Thursdays, and it’s become routine for us to use the time and space without fear of interruption. During our last class today, when everyone was exhausted and smelled of stale sweat, grass stains and feet, I watched the clock anxiously, and tried to ease the trepidation that preceded our Thursday afternoon sessions.

‘Tomorrow,’ Sam says, breathing out in one long sweep. ‘It’s crazy right? Like, the actual last day of school. Moby?’ She holds up a CD.

‘Nah.’ I sit next to her and peel off my school socks. They’ve flattened my leg hairs and the elastic’s left a circle printed into my calf. We flip ahead past Pearl Jam, the Chilis, Foo Fighters.

‘Now that it’s actually here, I feel sort of sad, you know? It’s sad.’ She takes off her jersey and smooths her dark hair. It was wild and curly up until earlier this year when she took to straightening it. Now it falls in neat curtains to her shoulders, parted in the middle. There is still the odd wave, like a building swell of her old hair trying to break through.

‘Nah, I’m ready.’ I yawn and slip Radiohead from the sleeve. ‘Time to launch out into the abyss.’ It isn’t entirely true, but the topic of finishing school has been discussed so often over the year, used and recycled so many times over that it has lost its original shape. I go over to my stereo, unnecessarily large with several dials and switches I have no idea about, and open the CD player. I put in the CD and the stereo comes to life with lights and digital letters running across the display. As the guitar plucks its fairy-light intro to ‘No Surprises’, I walk back to the bed, lean over and kiss Sam. Our teeth clink, and we laugh. Sam apologises and then we go in again, now conscious of the teeth, and kiss fully.

‘Wait.’ She places a hand on my chest and I lean into it. She slowly takes off her shirt and hugs her tummy. I bend down and kiss her shoulder before reaching around to unclasp her bra. It still takes a bit of work. The straps fall down her arms but she holds the cups to her, not letting them fall. ‘What if your parents come home?’

‘They come home at six; we’ve got heaps of time.’

‘It would be, like, really awkward if they came in. I like them.’

‘I like them too.’ I smile. ‘I also like you.’ I sit in my satin boxers. They are covered in small laughing sheep wearing reindeer antlers, given to me by Mum last Christmas.

‘So, I want them to keep liking me and not think I’m some slut or something who is corrupting their beautiful son.’

‘You think I’m beautiful?’

‘You know I do, dick.’

‘I think you’re beautiful.’

‘I’m getting fat.’

‘You are not!’ I pull her in and pinch the skin of her tummy.

‘Max! Seriously!’ She starts to laugh.

We kiss again, more relaxed now. I am grateful for Sam. I am relieved at her ease and acceptance, her need for nothing more from me than who I appear to be. She is kind and funny and smart and sweet and pretty and we like the same music. But most of all, and I am aware this is fucked up, she legitimises this expected version of me – perhaps the version I most want to be. I have a girlfriend, so I am normal. I bend down and kiss her neck.

‘It tickles.’ She lifts my head to kiss me again. We lean back together, both following the muscle memory of the routine. As I undo the clasp of her skirt, even though we’ve done this dozens of times now, I still feel an acute clumsiness, the intimate self-awareness of the act. Sex with Sam is different from the few random hook-ups and one-night stands I’ve had. Those have an unruliness and urgency about them that isn’t present here. There is freedom and confidence in anonymity. Sam is my friend. We know each other. To see her naked, to be naked with her, sometimes feels like worlds are overlapping where they shouldn’t be, and it often makes me feel more guilt than lust. I’ve trained myself to push it away so I can concentrate on the physical feeling, not what it all means, or how I am supposed to respond. I straddle her and growl like a lion. A game we sometimes play.

‘Max, stop it!’ She laughs, then her face turns serious. ‘Do you have a condom?’

‘Yeah.’ I pull back and pick up a T-shirt from the floor to cover my nakedness as I walk to the dresser, open the sock drawer and pull out a condom from the packet. I return to the bed, where Sam has covered herself with a sheet. I tear open the packet with my teeth and go to put it on but it is the wrong way around and I apologise, half losing my hard-on as I turn it over and roll it on. Our hands go to work, getting ready. Impatiently, I roll on top of her and she guides me in with her hands, her face screwed up like she is fixing a bike.

‘Wait.’ She shifts herself.

‘What?’

‘It’s just … there. Okay, there we are.’ She lets out a deep sigh, and we fall into a motion, puffing out small breaths and coughs and moans. I try not to finish too fast but when I close my eyes, images of past breasts, pecs, wrists, shoulder blades, thighs, abs, eyebrows and butts flicker unfiltered and unwanted. It is hard to organise what I am meant to see. I try to focus on her and the movement of her body, but the sensation of sex is so deeply associated with these other bodies that I can’t keep the images at bay. I imagine stronger hands. Rougher skin. Hands pressed against firmer chests. Sam’s hands find my hair and I come. Once our breathing subsides, I turn away to remove the condom, tying it up and tossing it into the rubbish bin by my desk. It misses and lands on the red dumbbells. I look at it, sitting there idiotically, like a drunk friend. Sam covers herself up with the sheet again as we laugh and sigh at what we’ve done. I don’t think Sam has come, but I have and that is a relief, not just for the sensation of it, but for what it means to her. To me.

‘Aphrodite is my favourite goddess,’ she says eventually, and kicks her legs out straight. ‘She’s pretty.’

‘True.’

‘Who’s yours?’

‘I don’t know. Apollo maybe.’ I roll away and pull up my boxers, suddenly wishing to be alone. She runs her fingertips along my arm and I smile. Really, what I want to do is to assure her that the sadness I feel isn’t her fault. That it’s mine to hold. Silently and all alone.

4

Dad spoons buttered potatoes from t. . .