Cover

About the Book

‘I was an agent of Dan, a captive of his, really. I went where he wanted me, and did as he wanted, and for a long time, in this way, I was happy.’

It’s been a long winter in a creaky house in Brunswick, where a young man has devoted himself to recreational showers, staring at his phone, and speculating on the activities of his best friend and housemate, Dan. But now summer is coming, and Dan has found a boyfriend and a job, so the young man is being pushed out into the world, in search of friendship and love.

The Adversary is a sticky summer novel about young people exploring their sexuality and their sociability, where everything smells like sunscreen and tastes like beer, but affections and alliances have consequences. It asks what kinds of stories are possible – or desirable – for which kinds of friendships, and what happens when you follow those stories to their natural conclusions.

Dedication

For Mum, Dad, Pete and Mandy

PART 1

DANCE OF THE HUMBLE MOSQUITO

Beauty that knows no love,
sorrow or pity
repeats the colours of
the burning city.

Amy Witting

A smart man once told me to be careful around gifts, as they’re often more complicated than they first appear. The savviest recipients plumb their gifts for hidden questions, such as what secret agenda has been furthered by this gift? And why have I been chosen to receive it?

The smart man who said this had just given me a gift, which caused me to regard it with considerable suspicion. It was a birthday gift, and it came to me from my housemate Dan, who explained that although the gift at first may have seemed innocent – it was a month’s membership to the Brunswick Baths, a gym ten minutes’ walk from our crumbling townhouse – what he really wanted was to give me a reason to get out of the house, something he’d noticed happening much less throughout the winter, meaning he came home from work or his boyfriend’s apartment and was not able to spend any time in the house by himself.

‘But don’t stress,’ he finished. ‘Nothing’s wholly altruistic. Why do you think the gift horse doesn’t want you near its mouth? That’s where it keeps its money and its motives.’

I used the gym a few times that month, the deepest dark of winter, but when September came, and with it spring, I did not renew the membership; the gym contained too many fluids, too many weird-eyed men, and one day I finished a full forty-minute workout before realising I had done so while wearing a pair of jeans, a situation that filled me with a queasy kind of terror. No good things come to animals that stop paying attention to their surroundings. It suggested a particular evolutionary fate.