His Eighteen-Year-Old Self

Te Urukeiha Tuhua (he/him; Tūhoe) 

Maurice rummaged through the boxes that had been discarded and forgotten in the back of his closet, thick with dust and draped over with clothes that had fallen down on top of them. He uncovered old tokens and memories in the form of notebooks and photos of himself at age eighteen, CDs and love letters. As he withdrew them, he glanced over them before handing them to me and stooping over to hunt for more. I opened up a diary from 1999 and tentatively delved into his past. 

Eighteen-year-old Maurice was fascinated by psychedelics despite being afraid to try anything stronger than weed. I leafed through the notebook, amused by the drawings of trips and mushrooms and men with large joints hanging out of their mouths. All of the sketches had been done using a shitty ballpoint pen, leaving marks and wrinkles in the lined paper. He’d scribbled down song lyrics of his own creation alongside the drawings, no doubt imagining that he could become ‘one of the greats’. Maurice had been young once too, filled with hopes and dreams. I couldn’t recognize any of it in the cynical man standing in front of me. His movements were wearier; he was more realistic. Time had changed him, as it changed us all. 

After looking over the diary, I studied the old photos of Maurice from when he was my age. He had been a boy like me, on the cusp of manhood. He had a single piercing in the centre of his bottom lip and a soul patch on his chin, something Maurice still had as an adult. Maybe there were certain things that time couldn’t change about a person. Eighteen-year-old Maurice appeared good-natured and relaxed, a kid who enjoyed messing around with his friends, probably in a similar way that I did. I recognized something of myself in his eyes and felt a wave of something that I couldn’t explain, a strange feeling like I was meeting the younger Maurice of before. Someone like me. And it made me feel further apart from him than ever, because his entire personality from when he was my age was hidden away in a box. 

He found an album that he had recorded as a teenager and passed it to me saying, “Making this album is my only achievement. I’ve done nothing else with my life.” Maybe in his youth, Maurice had been ready to explore all the possibilities of his life and who he could become. Over time, his dreams had faded. “Isn’t that depressing?” He asked. I shook my head and said, “The purpose of life is not to achieve as many things as possible.” If achievements

made us feel fulfilled, successful people would be happy. They wouldn’t be left with a feeling of nothingness. Not good enough. It was apparent to me that life was for nothing more than living, and I never wanted to let my fears of failure stop me from enjoying the things I loved. 

Later that night I lay in bed with Maurice, resting my head on his chest. I touched his hand, brushing my fingers across his palm to feel the texture of his skin. The slight dryness and the scars that peppered over it showed me it was undeniably older. I could no longer shrug off and ignore the twenty-five years difference between us as though it didn’t matter. People always told me I shouldn’t see older men and I was beginning to understand why. There was a disconnect between us. He was weighed down with hopelessness and depression that he couldn’t shake off, and I was only just beginning my life. 

I could have drifted asleep like that, squeezing his hand gently and feeling the warmth of his body so close to mine. Instead I tilted my head back and allowed him to kiss me, ignoring the twinges of wrongness in my stomach. The distance between me and Maurice had grown, the gap in our ages something surmountable only through sex. I had nothing in common with this man and there was nothing we could talk about, and all we could do was kiss. For our lips to meet, for our tongues to slide into one another just for a taste. I lay back and let him climb on top of me, his weight pressing me into the bed. Eighteen-year-old Maurice was the kind of boy I could have befriended. I wondered if I reminded Maurice of who he used to be, and whether it comforted or tortured him.