Although Max was a highly attractive young man, he never talked about, or celebrated his own sexuality. In this regard, Max was much more like the straight men he disliked than he would care to admit. But he tried to convince himself he was different, reminding himself how he felt no need to get married or have children. His friends made him feel like he was already married.
By the age of 27, Max was a fascinating and charismatic, if soft spoken bachelor with beautiful and intense brown eyes. He was buff and clean shaven, often striking poses in coffee shops that made him look like an advertisement for expensive watches. But Max was not vane or materialistic. If you got to know him, you would discover that beneath his soft spoken exterior was a charming, self-deprecating sense of humour that felt oddly more British than American.
When Max wasn't thinking about films or writing essays, he loved listening to 19th century piano music, playing chess, and analysing Russian literature in his head. Max especially loved Dostoyevsky, although he felt loving Dostoyevsky was itself somewhat of a cliche. Max's one major vice was procrastinating, whenever he had a task to complete that he found overwhelming. During such a task, Max would often stare for hours at images of famous paintings. He particularly liked staring at paintings of women's faces by artists like Marlene Dumas, Alex Katz, and Renee Magritte.
Between the day his mother moved to Whittier and the age of 27, Max had no contact with Davis McFarlin. This was how he wanted things, and Davis certainly respected his wishes. This was partly because Max would always be her favourite person, the person she loved more than anyone she had ever known. Davis could never tell whether her love for Max was good or evil, like love to cherish or love to suppress. But because of this love, Davis would always do whatever she could to be thought fondly of by Max-even if that meant following his orders never to contact him again.
Max's friends tried to dissuade him from taking such a hard line stance towards his birth mother. In fact, they routinely encouraged him to resume contact with Davis. Max would respond that the last thing he ever wanted was to resume contact with a woman who had hurt him so badly.
His friends would shout, "But she's the reason you're alive!"
Max would reply, "I don't owe her my friendship just because I fell out of her."
Whenever his friends implored him to think of how much pain Davis might be in, Max would reply that this pain was her own fault. Sometimes Max's friends would speak more softly, demanding that he practice the art of forgiveness, using such forgiveness to repair a broken relationship with the woman who introduced him to so many of the things that he loved as an adult. Max would respond calmly that he didn't want to forgive her, or repair the relationship. He'd say he could forgive many things, but not sexual abuse, especially from the woman whose job was to love and protect him.
Max's friends continually brought up the issue of his estranged mother far more than Max himself wanted to talk about it. When Max repeatedly stated he didn't want to talk about it, his friends would accuse him of hurting himself. Max's friends thought that if Davis grew old and died without Max ever being in her life, he would feel an unbearable guilt, a painful, soul crushing regret he could never fully forgive himself for. Max would reply that these potential regrets were unimportant. If he felt them, that just meant his job was to make himself not feel them. They were the wrong feelings to have.
Because Max would never back down in this particular dispute, his friends frequently insulted him, calling him cold and heartless, insinuating he was the sort of man no woman would ever want to love. Max's friends believed all women needed to be with a man who had a deep respect for his mother, as unconditional love itself was only possible in light of this respect. Max would tell them that he didn't believe in unconditional love, after which his friends would shout that he was a spiteful and vindictive asshole. When Max pleaded with them to drop the subject, they'd get even louder, screaming in his face how much they hoped to never have a son like him.
Many of these insults hurt Max's feelings, but because they came from women who loved him, Max worked hard not to take them personally. In fact, Max was fascinated by the fact that when women said hurtful things to him, it never felt as bad as when men said hurtful things to him. It was as if the higher register of a female voice had a distinctly magical quality; it could soften even the most brutal insult, making it seem half as hateful as the hateful words within it. Max envied women for their beautiful sweet voices. His own voice was tragically deep and masculine.
By the summer of 2029, Max had become a talented grad-student in film studies, doing a Phd on David Cronenberg's late works. Max's Phd was at USC, but he mostly did his research and writing at home. He had video conferences with his pedantic and prickly advisors, and went to campus quite minimally. He didn't like most of the people at USC because they seemed competitive and snobbish, like his step-mother. This is partly why it was not a huge inconvenience that Max lived a long drive away from campus.
Max had a small apartment in Pasadena, near Colorado Blvd. He didn't really like the people in Pasadena, anymore than he liked the people at USC. But he liked the city's shops, restaurants, and bookstores. For all its faults, he still thought Pasadena was pretty, and the city reminded him of some of the happier days of his childhood. Like it or not, Pasadena had something going for it that most Los Angeles suburbs did not: It was interesting. Whether a child, or a 27 year old man, Max couldn't help but obsess over things he found interesting.
As a bookish grad-student, Max had a set of routines he rarely deviated from. He wasn't hedonistic or someone who liked to party. He didn't drink. He hadn't even masturbated for four years. But every once in a while, Max got restless and did something impulsive, something almost out of character. He had one of these impulsive moments on the night of August 16th, 2029.
Shortly after 9pm, Max decided to visit InsideDavis, suddenly curious about what his mother's old porn looked like. To his surprise, Max found that InsideDavis was no longer a pornsite, but instead a fan community platform discussing his mother's writings.
Perusing through this platform, Max found a few bits of information about his mother, particularly about what she had been up to in the intervening 13 years. From what he could glean, Davis was now single and living in New York. She looked much the same as he remembered, but with a (slightly) more wrinkly face. She wore these wrinkles well, and was still an unusually attractive woman in her late 40s. From what Max could see, it didn't look like Davis had anything to do with this platform. It was run exclusively by her obsessive fans, fans who didn't get that her writing was never ironic or satirical.
Max recognised a lot of Davis's older pieces, but was curious about the newer ones.
One thing he immediately noticed was the change in titles. The older poems and essays always had quite melancholic and elaborate titles. The titles of the newer pieces were all very short and funny. A few of them made Max laugh out loud, which in turn, made him more curious to read them. Max clicked on one essay entitled "Why I'd Never Want to Be a Nice Person."
In this essay, Davis described, in lurid detail, all the things she loved about sex. Much of the language was vulgar. Much of the imagery was titillating. But more so than that, the writing seemed distinctly unfeminine. It was like an essay about sex written by a dirty old man who liked to sexually harass women; the kind of sexual predator most women would be advised to recognise and stay far away from.
Yet what stood out most to Max was the essay's point of view. His mother loved sex for all the reasons he found it cumbersome. She loved that it was dangerous and risky. She loved that it had the power to frustrate and damage people. She loved that it could be manipulative, a way to control people, tease them, and head fuck them into tears, heartache, violence, even anxiety and depression. She loved that sex wasn't fair, that it was racist, that it wasn't politically progressive, and that at base, sex was more exciting the less equal it was, the more it involved dominance, aggression, body shaming, and things Max had always associated with pain.
This was fascinating to Max, as it seemed Davis had now dropped the pretence of being a Feminist. The last words of this essay read:
Fuck gender equality. Men and women are different, and that's why they're so good at getting each other off. I understand this as a bisexual. For me, sex with a woman is only really sexy, when it's like sex with a man. I despise lingerie, candles, and anything with the word 'sensuality' in it. I do not like it when even beautiful women are gentle with me. And as a bisexual, I am the first to admit that many beautiful women are boring. I should know. I've had sex with over 300 of them. And regardless of how interesting even the most beautiful woman is, there's always that fucking smell. I can forgive that smell, because I have been forgiven for many many things. Much worse things.
I like hurting people, Dear Reader. And as a friend of mine once told me, "It's always better to forgive yourself."
