It was the start of a new century and my early days of dance parties in Sydney, of gathering with huge numbers of gay men and their friends to dance in various states of undress the whole night through, on a variety of mood-altering substances, though ecstasy was most prevalent, the pills with the happy-face that had really started the phenomenon. Yes, queens had been getting high and naked since the seventies, but the end of the eighties had brought a worldwide phenomenon that had crossed into the mainstream, no longer limited to sexual deviants.
Though in Sydney, we still ruled the place. There were the famous Mardi Gras and Sleaze parties, but as well a New Year’s party and the leather-clad Inquisition event. Sydney groovers knew they were the best parties. I was still relatively innocent in my drug taking, and hadn’t moved on to other letters. E was enough and with luck, it brought the energy to stay awake, a euphoric horniness and a feeling of great love for anyone in sight.
I was by myself at Hand in Hand, a medium-sized party held as a fundraiser for the state HIV organization, dancing in the middle of a sea of people, when I saw a familiar face a number of feet away. He caught my eye, and decisively made his way over to me.
“I’m Adrian.”
I introduced myself. “I’ve seen you at the gym but never had the chance to say hello.”
“And how’s your party?” And at that moment, he wrapped his arms around me in a warm embrace. I placed my arms around his back. That’s how it began. I’d like to report a romantic encounter, but it’s not discretion holding me back. It didn’t happen. Instead, never letting me go, we talked, or simply held each other, for hours. I don’t even know what we talked about. But I felt happy and safe.
His body really was one of the most remarkable I’d had contact with. All of his muscles were in perfect definition, a latticework around his stomach and up around his back, his strong chest, his biceps and forearms. Gay men in Sydney work out constantly at gyms, but fewer are athletes; his body was built through activity and sport rather than weights alone.
Whatever combination of our moods, I wasn’t feeling particularly sexual. I let my hands roam over his strong body but with more curiosity than intent. I would occasionally lift my head up toward his, angling for a kiss, for something more, but Adrian kept holding me, jovial and warm, like a friend, seemingly unaware of how beautiful I considered him.
When I told this story recently to a friend, he asked sharply, “Weren’t you embarrassed, both of you? What did other people think of you locked together like that?”
What I remember: one of his friends, Japanese Kaz with the dyed blond hair, dancing with us for a while; and being surprised at the end of the evening that we’d held each other the whole night through. I remembered little else and not a shred of shame.
Les and Simon made fun of me for years afterward. Mainly because I would look for Adrian every dance party for the next year or two, hoping to repeat the experience, but the few times I saw him I would only get a short hello; not unfriendly, mind you, but he was with friends, or on his way out, and the experience was not to be repeated.
There was a small possibility that if I’d been more assertive, if I’d known what I wanted, if I’d had the confidence to believe I could have gotten it, I might have had a less chaste encounter. But that was not who I was.
I continued to see Adrian at the gym. We never had long conversations but would ask after each other. He would ask whether I was going to the next dance party. Occasionally I’d find out how his martial arts competitions were going. I Googled him once and found the website of the club. I found a few photos of him, admired his looks, remembered our encounter and idly imagined signing up for his class.
Through the grapevine, I found out more about his personal life. The first time I’d seen Kaz after the party, I’d asked him whether Adrian was gay. “You’ll have to ask him about that,” he’d advised and smiled awkwardly. It came out that he was with a man, another fitness trainer, for about ten years. For part of that time, he was also with a woman for three years. It sounded confusing and not particularly happy.
He also went out to gay clubs and partied too hard. He was sometimes unreliable and missed showing up for his appointments with clients. “I’ve seen him when he looks like he’s still off his face,” said Les, critical again. “Or maybe he was just tired, but I wouldn’t want to train with someone like that. You could hurt yourself.”
I slowed down my partying, and even the events that I went to, I never spotted Adrian again at them. My friends did though—and a few reported his appearing in a crowd and locking them in a big slobbery kiss. They knew I was jealous but assured me that it wasn’t a pleasant experience. One year at the gym, we talked about his upcoming trip to Mykonos and Ibiza. He was planning on partying at some of the biggest clubs in Europe on hot Mediterranean evenings. I imagined the men that he would meet and bed.
Over the years, I heard less about Adrian’s martial arts competitions. I wasn’t sure if he still taught. He also got bigger, year after year. I had imagined it impossible; in my mind, he was as muscular as could be, with perfect proportions. But Adrian obviously didn’t feel that way. His muscles grew. They became more angular. He looked more like a bodybuilder than a martial artist. But rather than looking more healthy, he appeared tired with lines under his eyes.
Only a year ago, something strange was happening to him. Les and Simon had joined a new gym and left ours, but a new friend, Ger, was not only full of gossip, but had started training with Adrian.
“Why does Adrian look so dark?” I’d asked. “His skin has gone a different color, but it doesn’t look like a tan.”
“I know. Isn’t it awful? It’s experimental. Some sort of injection, he’s on some trial of it.”
But the effect was disconcerting: his skin tone didn’t match his Anglo-Saxon features. He was darker on the upper part of his body, while his legs were lighter. I couldn’t help but take part in a running commentary with Ger over the weeks about how awful it looked. It was also clear that Adrian’s increase in size and muscularity was through steroids. The veins on his arms stood out. Occasionally, when I saw him, I still imagined feeling his amazing body, but it was also off-putting. It had become harder, more boxy and less welcoming. I noticed, once, when he was saying hello, that his voice was scratchy and low, a cold I’d assumed, and then after time, he couldn’t seem to get rid of it because he was doing too much partying.
The last times I saw Adrian, he had reverted to a more natural color. His body was still imposing, But he seemed run down. In the meantime, I was turning forty and thinking about aging. I’d settled into a happy three-year relationship, barely went out and hadn’t partied in ages. Because it was so different from my drug-fueled discovery of Sydney as a single man, it had caused introspection. I came to admit to myself that I’d turned some of those substance-enhanced encounters and friendships into myth and romance, and romanticized bonds that had only been possible because both parties were high.
The very last time I saw Adrian, I’d thought about this. I certainly wouldn’t erase our embrace from my memory but felt some embarrassment for my young, naïve self, searching him out at dance parties, and the way that instead of accepting and valuing experiences, I tried to recreate them and seek out more.
We left the gym at the same time, and I noticed, with some shock, that his voice was still gravelly after what I remembered as months since it first started. On the street as we parted, I put my hand on his back. I felt a shiver of attraction from the heat of his body. “You’ve got to take better care of yourself,” I told him. He replied in a tone both jovial and self-conscious that he was trying.
Two mornings later, when he failed to show up for a training session, his client, who was also a friend and pissed-off, went to Adrian’s apartment to give him a lecture on unreliability. But seeing that Adrian was apparently home—his car parked out front—but did not answer the door, he got worried and called the police. It was too late to revive Adrian. He’d died.
None of us knew the family well enough to inquire about what happened, and we weren’t even sure if a comprehensive toxicology was done before his body was cremated less than a week later. But I found out that he’d had a tumor removed from his throat, which was the real excuse for his change of voice. I found from the Internet that the possible side-effects of injectable tanning treatments are unproven, and doctors worry that tricking the body into believing it is exposed to the sun might cause cancer. I learned that Adrian had been hospitalized before and told to stop the treatment but that he’d continued. I worried that he’d been out partying at a club and taken a substance like GHB from which acquaintances had died in the past. But no, he’d been teaching a judo class the night before. So, I wondered if his kidney or liver had shut down from steroids and the tanning hormones and maybe even something he was taking for the cancer.
Death by tanning is one of the stupidest ways I’ve ever heard of to die. I heard of a beautiful man, also gay, also muscular, who had gone in for a nose job and died of a staph infection, and dying from plastic surgery also rates highly. But the facts of his death dishonor Adrian, make him sound monstrous; what I’d heard at the funeral told me that he was caring and loving, and cared and loved, and that he took care of others even though he didn’t take care of himself.
I wonder how being attracted to men played into this story. He certainly struggled with it. He came from a background that if not homophobic, was not supportive. The archetypal story of a gay man not accepting his sexuality mirrors a man who does not accept his own body or skin.
I mourned Adrian and I imagined talking to him.
Did anyone ever tell you how beautiful you were? That you had no need for a different skin color and more muscles? Was it self-hatred or careless experimentation? I am angry that you wasted a life.
Another lesson of getting older is how people come and go. Settling into a relationship and a routine, settling out of going to bars and parties, I realize there are acquaintances who I haven’t seen for years, some who moved abroad and I’d find out after the fact. At the gym, Adrian’s memorial photo disappeared surprisingly quickly and the place and its members put back on their workout clothes and gloves, leather filled with sweat and grains of salt.
It seems cliché to say that it seemed like he’d simply gone on another trip to Ibiza or started personal training at another gym. Cruel, too, when others closer to him would still bear their different weight of grief. But it’s easier to think that way. I had such a tiny window into his kind, troubled soul, to a more truthful self beyond his dazzling appearance.
Adrian Miles, I’ll fold this glimpse of you into my hands, tuck into it that one embrace and hide it away.
Good-bye.
ON SPANKING THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BOY IN THE WORLD
Simon Sheppard
He was, yes, the most beautiful boy in the world, assuming that someone liked lithe young blonds with adorable faces. And at least one particular someone, a middle-aged man named Chris, certainly did. Chris adored them, couldn’t help staring at them when they passed him on the street, masturbated to images of them when he was at home alone in front of his computer.
He’d ended up in the cluttered bedroom of the boy—who was also named Kris, but Kris with a K, not a C-H—by sort of a lucky accident. The exact circumstances, though on the amusing side, weren’t really important. What was important was that he was in the very same room as the most beautiful boy in the world, the entire world. What was improbable was that the boy wanted to have sex with him, in fact already had what seemed, again for all the world, to be a hard-on in his sweatpants. What was absolutely wonderful is that the boy, Kris, had told him that he liked to be spanked.
It was all so easy, so perfect, that Chris thought Kris might have been figuring that an exchange of money would be involved. This would not have been horrible. It might even have answered the question of why young, blond Kris had invited over the older man, with his male pattern baldness, slight paunch, and presentable-but-weathered face, when the boy could, presumably, have had just about anyone he chose. But when Chris had gingerly broached the subject, afraid that Kris might be offended but even more afraid of some awkward misunderstanding farther down the line, he was reassured when Kris simply smiled and said that cash was the last thing on his mind.
Then he leaned over and kissed the older man softly on the cheek, a gesture that, unexpectedly, almost brought Chris to tears.
Better get ahold of myself,
he thought.
I don’t want to look like some helpless, foolish old man.