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My Week, For What It Was Worth

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The Sinti Boy

It was dark by the time we went out, but the heat was still oppressive. The only place left to buy milk was the little corner shop that opened and closed according to the whims of its owners. Nobody knew its hours. There was never any guarantee it would be open.

But Signora Bruschi had panicked. She needed milk for my morning coffee and for Bianchi’s Vitabella Corn Flakes. We could easily have managed without it, but she liked everything to be perfect. At confession, she would probably tell Don Carlo she had forgotten to buy milk and had therefore sinned.

Cola whistled as we walked. He had unbuttoned his shirt because he believed the months spent working for Signor Valenti had transformed him into a young Roman god. After sharing a bed with him for so long, I was inclined to agree. But Bianchi had been moved to the attic, and I was once again sleeping in my own room, with a large bed all to myself.

As we approached Via Cesare Trezza, Cola stiffened. He stopped whistling and buttoned his shirt. A young man stood beneath a streetlight, smoking a roll-up.

“Pezzo di merda,” Cola muttered.

The man had dark skin and closely cropped black hair. He wore jeans and a designer puffer jacket with nothing underneath, exposing his bare chest. His trainers were scuffed but spotless. Silver rings glinted on his fingers, a faded tattoo disappeared beneath the collar of his jacket, and an expensive pair of sunglasses rested on top of his head.

As we drew level, he gave a low, taunting whistle intended for us alone.

“He’s Sinti,” Cola said once we had passed. “He hangs around here. Dangerous. If you ever see him again, cross the street.”

Dangerous, I thought.

But extraordinarily handsome.

A Collector of People

It is all mirrors and smoke screens: the endless quest to protect an identity.

I shared my work with a friend—one of the privileged few—and he recognised the characteristics of people we both know, though inhabiting the wrong bodies.

“I am a collector of people,” I told him. “And it has always been my intention to confuse.”


The Same Quiet Corner 

I love the sun, but the sun does not love me. Shade is essential. It is time to discover whether cool air still exists. A time to slow down, to forget myself for a while and leave the rest of the world behind. Everybody needs a place to disappear.

Most days I come to these steps, where nobody thinks to look for me.

I sit beside carefully tended planters of oleander, bougainvillea and English lavender, the air fragrant with their scent. I drink my coffee in peace. It is silent except for the distant toll of a church bell or the occasional motor scooter threading its way through the alleyways.

Then a young man arrives. He always chooses a place nearby and settles down with a book. No matter what time I come, sooner or later he appears and quietly takes his seat. I ought to resent the intrusion, but I cannot. He is as pale as I am, and I suspect he, too, is a foreigner.

It is a curious thing.

We travel from distant places, only to find the same quiet corner of the world.


Circe’s Gift

Bianchi came up behind me and began ruffling my hair.

“Ti sto trasformando in un maiale,” he said. I’m turning you into a pig.

The display of affection was lost on me.

Later, I discovered that the bond between humans and pigs is forged in Homer’s The Odyssey by the powerful sorceress Circe on the island of Aeaea. When Odysseus’s crew stumble upon her palace, she welcomes them with a meal of cheese, barley, honey, and wine, laced with a potion. After they have eaten, she raises her wand and transforms them into swine, imprisoning them in her pens

Now I am a pig.


The Return of Antinous

People do not understand me. They cannot see why I am drawn to old things. But I am, and I have no idea why. More than anything, I like books about dead people.

At the moment I am reading a biography of Beverley Nichols, the English writer, playwright and broadcaster who died in 1983.

It is a banger.

His longing for intense, sometimes masochistic homosexual encounters existed alongside the refined, middle-class domesticity he cultivated in his bestselling memoirs.

Rather like me.

I would happily live my life as Beverley Nichols did, though I could do without the growing old part.

Which brings me to Antinous, the beautiful young Greek whose love affair with the Emperor Hadrian made him immortal. A statue of Antinous stood for decades in the gardens of Nichols’s house, Allways, in Glatton.

Nichols had bought the statue from Henry “Bogey” Harris, the wealthy London aesthete and art collector who lived in Bedford Square.

“Antinous would be much happier living in the Huntingdonshire countryside than at Bedford Square in London,” Nichols declared.

When Nichols sold the house, Antinous was left behind.

In the 1960s, the new owner ordered the statue to be removed. “One could clearly see his man parts and his bottom!” she complained.

It was thought to have been destroyed.

Imagine my delight to discover that, only a few years ago, Antinous was found abandoned in an overgrown corner of the garden. Restored to his former beauty, he now stands once more in his rightful place, gazing back towards the house below.

On the cute and willing…

Jonathan Kranebitter

My Week, For What It Was Worth

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Eddie Redmayne. Photo by Matt Carr

The Eddie Redmayne Test …

Imagine that Eddie Redmayne sat down beside you on the steps. He might do that. Soft-spoken, bookish and entirely unthreatening. His dandyish sense of style, expressive features and quiet politeness feel oddly familiar to me. He’s the perfect amount of gay—not in a sexual sense, but in that elusive way some men seem to embody a gentle elegance without ever feeling performative.

Fallen in love with …

Nineteen-year-old French student Didier Gaspard Owen Maximilien. Some people volunteer. Some climb Everest. Didier licked a straw from an orange juice vending machine, slid it back into the dispenser, edited the footage into a short film, and posted it with the caption: “city is not safe.” Singapore fined him S$600 (about $465). He’s either the villain in a public health campaign or the greatest shitposter of his generation. There is no middle ground.


Too beautiful to know it …

“It kills me to look at my old photographs of myself and my friends. We were such beautiful, sexy kids but we always felt bad because we thought we were ugly at the time. It was because we were such outcasts in high school and so unpopular. We believed what other people said. If any one of us could have seen how attractive we really were we might have made something better of our lives. I’m the only guy that I know who wanted to run away to be a prostitute.” ―Mark Morrisroe (1959–1989)

Mark Morrisroe. Self-Portrait (to Brent), 1982

The book I haven’t opened yet …

Why do I feel faintly guilty after receiving a copy of The Romance of a Choirboy from a friend in London? I haven’t even read the first page, yet it has already acquired that awkward quality of a book which almost seems to require an explanation simply for owning it.

Part of me wonders whether I should leave it exactly where it is.

John Gambril Nicholson wrote the novel between 1896 and 1905, although it wasn’t privately printed until 1916. It tells the story of Philip, an Anglican minister whose emotional and romantic fixation on a schoolboy called Teddy is presented with complete sincerity. More than a century later, it’s difficult to read the premise without immediately recognising the imbalance of age, authority and power. Today we would simply describe the relationship as predatory.

And yet, the novel refuses to disappear. It still surfaces in studies of late Victorian and Edwardian literature, less because people admire it than because it captures attitudes that respectable society often preferred not to acknowledge. Reading an uncomfortable book isn’t an endorsement of its ideas any more than visiting a museum is an endorsement of history. Even so, I suspect this is one of those books I’ll keep eyeing suspiciously from across the room before eventually deciding whether curiosity gets the better of me.


The boy you shouldn’t like …

A twenty-something, hard-partying gay fashion model who doesn’t wear underwear. I’ve come across a few of those.

That’s the premise of Proud, HBO Max’s new Polish drama series.

Ignacy Liss stars as Filip, a carefree young man who is forced to grow up almost overnight after a family tragedy leaves him the guardian of his late sister’s infant daughter, Tosia.

We should be angry with him. We should probably be disappointed in him too.

But we aren’t, because there’s something undeniably appealing about him.

Maybe it’s the soft jawline, the expressive eyes, or the raw vulnerability that slips through the bravado.

Liss, who is straight and, away from the screen, a married father, makes for an infuriatingly convincing bad boy.


On the cute and willing…

Photo: Bershka and Volcom (2026)

My Week, For What It Was Worth

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A Noble Name, an Ordinary Life …

Signora Bruschi received a visit from an old neighbour, Signor Luigi Bevilacqua, an elegant man who owns a second-hand bookshop filled with volumes I cannot read because they are all in Italian. They sat together over coffee, exchanging news of people they had known for years. Signora Bruschi is not usually one for gossip, but she seemed happy to make an exception on this occasion.

Signor Bevilacqua belongs to the historic Bevilacqua-Lazise family, whose legacy includes Paolo Veronese’s magnificent Bevilacqua-Lazise Altarpiece, which I admired in the Museo di Castelvecchio.

Like Signora Scala next door, however, these old aristocratic families survive largely in name alone. Signor Bevilacqua is a man of modest means who shops at Eurospin and watches Un posto al sole on television. There was something rather pleasing about that contrast.

Curiosity sent me down the inevitable rabbit hole. The history of the Bevilacqua-Lazise dynasty is so extensive that it is easy to wander from one fascinating detail to the next until you realise you have strayed a very long way from where you began.

I suspect that Conte Alberto Bevilacqua may have been one of Luigi’s forebears. A member of the Bevilacqua-Lazise family, Alberto is best remembered as the youthful subject of an 1899 terracotta portrait bust by the sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen. The bust was acquired by Henry James, who displayed it on the chimneypiece at Lamb House in Rye.

James wrote:

“I’ve struck up a tremendous intimacy with dear little Conte Alberto, & we literally can’t live without each other. He is the first object my eyes greet in the morning & the last at night.”

The sculpture captures Alberto as a boy with an eager, inquisitive expression—not unlike Bianchi—and it remains at Lamb House today as part of the National Trust collection.

My favourite quote …

“I think that there’s something very, very severely neurologically deficient about the generation right under me. I think screenagers, as they call them now, are fucked. God go with them. Good luck.” – Katya Zamolodchikova


Coffee Before Country …

Lautaro bought me a coffee. It was a peace offering, as if to say, I might be from Argentina, but please don’t judge me. I turned my back on him and laughed, which, in truth, was rather childish.

Everything Sounds Better in Italian …

Sitting on the steps of an old Catholic church, I listened to a young man speaking with his mentor. He worked his way through a list of places where they might hold a meeting. He had clearly done his homework, arriving with notes and a carefully considered list of options. His mentor questioned each suggestion, and the young man answered thoughtfully.

They spoke in Italian that I could follow—slowly, passionately—and somehow this entirely mundane conversation sounded impossibly romantic.


The Church, the Ball, the Boys …

Late afternoon. I sat on an old bench, a memorial to Concetta Rossini, who died in 1996.

Teenage boys played football—World Cup heroes, though none of them Italian. Echoing thuds. The hollow knock of a plastic ball rebounding off weathered travertine steps and ancient wooden doors. Worn backpacks and abandoned electric scooters became goalposts against a sacred backdrop that had witnessed centuries of community life.

Sharp, rhythmic cries of “Lascia! Batti! Tira!” ricocheted off the high stone walls, mingling with the peal of the church bells. Apart from me, the only spectators were weathered marble saints, rose windows and towering columns, silently watching the fleeting, restless energy of youth.

The sharp, geometric shadows cast by the church’s Baroque façade slowly crept across the piazza, offering a cool sanctuary from the heavy afternoon heat. Just a few feet away, sunlight blazed across the cobblestones, drawing a glowing boundary as the game flowed in and out of the light.

To those boys, this might just as easily have been the San Siro or the Stadio Olimpico.

Great Freedom, Small Mercies …

I watched Great Freedom—Große Freiheit in German—with Bianchi. Franz Rogowski plays Hans Hoffmann, a man repeatedly imprisoned under Paragraph 175, the law that criminalised homosexuality.

Halfway through the film, Bianchi asked why Rogowski “spoke funny”. Irritatingly, he had a point. I later discovered that Rogowski’s distinctive speech is the result of surgery to repair a cleft palate and lip during childhood. I told Bianchi not to be so cruel, whereupon he kicked me hard with his bare foot, managing only to hurt himself in the process.

One character, Oskar, played by Thomas Prenn, immediately caught my eye. Unfortunately, my newfound admiration was short-lived, as he promptly fell to his death from a rooftop.

Bianchi noticed my disappointment and, in his own uniquely compassionate way, consoled me by kicking me with his other foot.

Given that Prenn’s character is German, I was surprised to discover that the actor was born in Innichen, Italy, before studying at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin. Fluent in both Italian and German, he would be the ideal person to translate between Bianchi, Severin and me—assuming he was available and prepared to tolerate us.


On the cute and willing…

Charlie Besso. Photo by Frederic Monceau (2026)

My Week, For What It Was Worth

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When the Sky Finally Let Go …

There had been a thunderstorm warning across the Veneto, but nobody believed it. They complained about the relentless heat and the pitiless sun, longing instead for shorter days, cold mornings, and snow.

Even so, the wind hinted that relief might finally be on its way. It rattled the café awnings, scraped chairs across pavements, and sent menus tumbling into the next street. In Signora Bruschi’s courtyard the washing twisted itself tightly around the line, while the terracotta pots overflowing with pelargoniums, lavender, salvias, petunias and Mexican fleabane bore the worst of it. One of the smaller pots toppled from the kitchen step and shattered. Even the tiny finches that usually flitted between the potted citrus trees abandoned the branches for the shelter of a shaded corner, where they sang with frantic urgency. Signora Bruschi rushed outside clutching a broom and shouted for us to rescue the washing before it blew away.

It was Cola who first noticed the bruised-purple cloud creeping across the sky. Others followed behind it, darker still, advancing with slow deliberation as though reluctant to commit themselves. They lingered above the city, steadily subduing the sun. With every passing minute the light faded, the heat loosened its grip, and the stale air trapped inside the old stone walls for weeks was finally released. When the wind eased, Signora Bruschi scolded us for throwing the clean washing into the basket instead of folding it properly.

An uneasy stillness settled over Verona. The city seemed to pause in expectation. Even the finches fell silent.

Bianchi stepped into the doorway and sniffed the air. It carried that strange sweetness that always arrives before heavy rain, reminding us of freshly cut grass. He pointed towards the sky, where the clouds had taken on an unsettling greenish hue, their tops spreading into broad, flat anvils. For a fleeting moment the sun broke through, casting dramatic shafts of light that sharpened every corner of Signora Bruschi’s courtyard.

Then came the first distant growl of thunder from somewhere beyond Lake Garda.

A blinding flash of lightning sent Bianchi darting back inside. From neighbouring houses came cheers, laughter and exaggerated cries of alarm. Only a handful of raindrops struck the marble flagstones before Signora Bruschi ushered everyone indoors.

Moments later the wind returned with renewed force, and the rain followed.

It swept across the city from the west in solid sheets, lashing the parched streets and hammering rooftops. The sheer weight of water became a roaring wall of sound that swallowed everything else. Gutters overflowed, torrents cascaded from the roofs, and water surged across the courtyard until it pooled outside the kitchen door. Drains that had lain dry for weeks surrendered almost immediately. Through the window we watched the neighbouring buildings dissolve behind a curtain of rain until they became little more than grey silhouettes.

“The heavens are teeming,” Signora Bruschi cried.

Brilliant forks of lightning split the sky, vanishing almost as soon as they appeared. Each flash was followed by a violent crack and then a rolling explosion of thunder that rattled the windowpanes and shook the house to its foundations.

Again.

And again.

“I hope it stops soon,” Bianchi whispered.

Cola, however, seemed delighted.

He dashed into the courtyard, pulling off his T-shirt as he ran, and stood ankle-deep in the rising water, lifting his face towards the sky as the rain drenched him within seconds. By the time he wandered back inside, his jeans clung to his legs and streams of water spread across Signora Bruschi’s kitchen floor. Without missing a beat, she clipped him around the back of the head, snatched a towel from the washing basket, and thrust it into his hands.

“My son is stupido,” she sighed, with equal measures of exasperation and affection.

Pietro’s Books, Bianchi’s Curiosity …

College has broken up for the summer and, when he is not working, Bianchi is usually either trailing me around Signora Bruschi’s house or reading in my apartment. Since my return, our hostess has been content for him to stay, but she has made it abundantly clear that no relationship of any kind is to develop between us. Consequently, Bianchi has taken up residence in my rooms while I have been relegated to sharing Cola’s bed.

My stay in Verona is only temporary, and I have no illusions that, once I return to the UK, Bianchi will have any claim on my Italian life.

For now, however, he has been quietly investigating my possessions in an earnest attempt to learn everything he can about me. He has also been working his way through Pietro’s boxes, which Signora Bruschi finally carried down from the attic for me to sort.

That is how Bianchi came to be sitting on my sofa with one of Pietro’s hardback novels from the 1990s.

Scuola di nudo is an intimidating thing: six hundred pages of uninterrupted Italian, which effectively rules out any possibility of my reading it.

“It is about a university professor in Pisa,” Bianchi explained, “who explores his obsession with male beauty and desire, and who is very critical of his colleagues.”

“Would I like it?” I asked.

“Probably not. I think you like magazines instead.”

The remark was aimed squarely at the infamous French copy of Le Pénis lying beside my bed, a publication that, until then, he had politely pretended not to notice.

“There is no plot,” he continued. “But it is interesting. And there are many scandals.”

I suspect Bianchi has already grown bored with the novel, despite his insistence to the contrary, and is persevering with it largely because he thinks it will impress me.

I looked up the author, Walter Siti, and discovered that he taught at several Italian universities, wrote screenplays, and has also been a reviewer for La Stampa.

As for Scuola di nudo, I remain none the wiser. Bianchi’s fractured English synopsis is, I suspect, as close to understanding the novel as I am ever likely to get.


Not my Taormina …

Severin wishes I were back in Taormina. I’m not so sure.

Dolce & Gabbana recently unveiled its new Alta Sartoria collection at the Teatro Antico, with the Ionian Sea below and Mount Etna rising behind it. The guest list was suitably glamorous: Erling Haaland and Isabel Haugseng Johansen, Theo James and Ruth Kearney, Christian Bale, Monica Bellucci, Jennifer Lopez and Michele Morrone.

I wasn’t invited.

That, in a way, is the point.

Taormina isn’t really for north European wastrels like Severin and me. It’s for people willing to spend the equivalent of a monthly mortgage on a single night’s stay, pay limousine prices for taxis and happily buy things marked up tenfold simply because they can.

It is the most expensive destination in Sicily.

We visited out of season and enjoyed it, although even then the White Lotus pilgrims were beginning to get on my tits. According to Severin, they’ve since become unbearable.

I left after a few weeks. He stayed.

He now spends sixteen hours a day working in a restaurant, and even the flat that came with the job has lost its appeal. The owners have suggested he share it with three other young waiters, each expected to pay an exorbitant rent. Rooms are scarce in Taormina, they say.

Watching from afar, I realise the place isn’t really for me.

Give me the Taormina where writers, poets, artists and photographers arrived on the backs of flea-bitten donkeys and drank cheap wine in tiny houses with compacted earth floors.

Give me Alfio, paid peanuts to work in a hotel whose rooms now cost five times what I paid only weeks ago. The same Alfio who took us where the locals ate, introduced us to the Taormina hidden behind the postcards, and preferred the company of ordinary people to wealthy tourists.

Give me the sweaty boys chasing a football across a dusty patch of wasteland, before somebody decides it would make the perfect site for another luxury boutique hotel.

Severin won’t last the summer.

Sooner or later, he’ll leave Sicily in search of something better.

I’m tempted to invite him to Verona. But that would test Signora Bruschi’s generosity.


The First Twink …

“Adam, as in Adam and Eve. I think he was the first twink and he was definitely a power bottom. The snake of it all in the garden is sus to me.” –  Grant Gibbs

Adam in Paradise. Kristian Zahrtmann (2020)

On the cute and willing…

Ruslan Danilchenko. Photographed by Kiana Beijleveld

My Week, For What It Was Worth

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He was absolutely right …

It’s been a week of emails and rewrites.

Back and forth.

It’s not normally like this.

The editor of a magazine received my latest submission. It was different from my usual work; this time there were 2,500 words of creative writing. 

Thankfully, he liked it.

Then came the revisions.

Lose the opening paragraphs. Move a sentence. Remove the relationship angle. Tone down my favourite character. Rewrite the ending.

He was starting to annoy me.

A typical comment read:

“Your writing has become noticeably more restrained… Readers tend to trust narrators who don’t feel the need to interpret everything for them.”

All I wanted to do was submit the piece and see a payment appear in my bank account.

But we got there in the end.

Before sending the final draft, I read it one last time and realised something rather irritating.

He was absolutely right.

*****

Photo by Victoria M.

A lesson in speaking Dutch …

Signora Scala lives in the building next door, but spends more time in Signora Bruschi’s kitchen than in her own. It is not unusual to find her sitting at the table chopping vegetables or helping to make bread. All the while she will be engaged in animated conversation, sharing the latest gossip with Signora Bruschi, who appears to tolerate these daily intrusions.

Though she does occasionally test her patience.

“Is there not a week that passes without her mentioning that she is related to the Della Scala family?”

The Della Scala family was the influential medieval dynasty that once ruled Verona. Signora Scala is not technically related to them; she acquired the surname through marriage. Nor does she seem aware that there are thousands of modern-day Scalas living in circumstances every bit as modest as her own.

Signora Scala speaks no English, which makes my presence a constant source of frustration for her, but a welcome distraction for Signora Bruschi and Cola whenever I wander into the kitchen.

“She’s talking bullshit,” Cola might announce loudly, while Signora Scala smiles and nods in complete agreement.

I am something else she struggles to understand.

She cannot comprehend why Signora Bruschi refuses to charge me rent for the apartment.

“He is family,” Signora Bruschi replies.

“But you could live comfortably if you made him pay.”

The truth is that Signora Bruschi is far from poor, and she seems genuinely offended whenever I suggest contributing financially.

Cola insists that his mother fears I might not be able to afford it, and would simply leave.

Signora Scala will tut loudly, make the sign of the cross, and declare, “Ed è anche omosessuale.”

As though I hadn’t understood a word, Cola inevitably provides a translation.

“She says you like to take it up the arse.”

This week, perhaps determined to prove a point, Signora Scala announced that she was taking in a lodger for a month. He was a young Dutch dancer performing with a contemporary dance company at the Teatro Romano. For this, she informed us, she would be paid €150 a week.

Signora Bruschi, quietly folding the ironing, rolled her eyes.

“And what is this Dutch boy called?” she asked politely.

“Jort,” Signora Scala replied.

Except she had decided there was a proper Dutch pronunciation, producing something closer to “Joooorrrrrt.”

Cola pounced immediately.

“Joooorrrrrt,” he bellowed in an impossibly deep voice.

“Sì, Joooorrrrrt,” she confirmed.

“Joooorrrrrt!” he shouted even louder.

“Joooorrrrrt!” she echoed.

“Joooorrrrrt!”

“Joooorrrrrt!”

By now they were practically competing to see who could produce the most theatrical rendition of the poor boy’s name.

It was the finest Joooorrrrrting I had ever witnessed. 

“Oddio,” sighed Signora Bruschi.

*****

Photo by Paul Jasmin

On explaining a one night stand to Cola …

You just know, don’t you?

It is always the timid one, sitting quietly in the corner with the girls who want to protect him. 

Halfway decent-looking, too.

Johnny from Tunbridge Wells.

He’ll ask if I want to play Spider-Man 2 and snort lines of coke from his psychology notes. He rarely has the coke, but it sounds impressive.

I ask whether his mother still buys his underwear. He blushes. He says no, but we both know he is lying.

He freezes like a rabbit caught in a trap, yet he has no real desire to escape.

The next few minutes will make or break him. At least, that’s how it will feel.

Eventually, he drops his jeans, revealing the underwear his mother chose for him.

Now what?

You tell him to take off the underwear. When he does, his embarrassment is written all over him.

*****

My favourite newspaper quote …

“Oh dear. Such a shame to see the US lose at football after their insanely embarrassing president cheated for them. Still, it really brought the world together. The last time this many people cheered on a Belgian resistance, it was 1914 and the Germans had just crossed the Meuse.”


Marina Hyde, writing in The Guardian, UK.

*****


On cargo shorts and crop tops …

Imagine that one hundred years from now someone discovers a single photograph of you. Your music has vanished. No recordings survive. No interviews. No reviews.

What would you want that photograph to say about you?

“Cunt-serving twink.”

Severin introduced me to a rising German Gen-Z singer called Siovo. He played him incessantly in Taormina and, now that I’m back in Verona, I find myself doing much the same.

Siovo is one of the few openly gay artists working in the German pop scene, writing songs that explore queer identity, unrequited love, modern relationships and isolation.

At least, that’s what Severin tells me.

My complete ignorance of the German language means Siovo could just as easily be singing about bin collections or discounted washing powder.

He has also cultivated a distinct visual identity, usually appearing in an unlikely combination of oversized cargo shorts and cropped tops.

Naturally, I was delighted to discover that he had recently collaborated with photographer Nikolai Voelcker, whose work has a particular talent for capturing chavvy young men in various states of undress.

Lampoon magazine describes his photography rather more elegantly than I ever could:

“Photographer Nikolai Voelcker focuses on male dynamics. Friends joke, stretch limbs, shift postures, and press next to each other. Shoulders bump. Arms connect. These gestures do not carry disclaimers. They occur as part of casual time together. The camera records moments that raise questions about erotic currents in shared male space.

Photos by Nikolai Voelcker

*****


The Silence of Roca Rey …

The last person I saw fervently stroking and kissing rosary beads was Nico, my ex-boyfriend, who went through this disconcerting ritual every time we had sex.

I thought about Nico while watching Albert Serra’s riveting documentary Afternoons of Solitude, about the Peruvian matador Andrés Roca Rey, who appears to share the same devout Catholicism.

Cola watched the documentary on Mubi Italia. It was in Spanish with Italian subtitles, and the only things I understood with any certainty were the bulls.

“Uomo coraggioso,” Cola murmured.

“Uomo bellissimo,” was my reply.

I watched it again later, this time with English subtitles.

Roca Rey is a strikingly handsome twenty-nine-year-old: a man of countless facial expressions and very few words, capable of selling out bullrings across Spain, France and Latin America.

The global controversy surrounding bullfighting rests on a direct clash between animal welfare and cultural preservation.

It is utterly riveting, but an extremely difficult watch.

There is blood. Lots of it. The bulls, after all, never come out on top.

Supporters defend bullfighting as a deeply rooted art form and historical tradition: an epic celebration of human skill, courage and intellect overcoming the raw power of nature.

Phil Hoad, writing in The Guardian, observed:

“Filming Rey in transit in a people carrier, getting apparelled in his hyper-camp getup, rehearsing his mannerisms in a lift, Serra is fundamentally interested in questions of performance and style. In the arena, he documents the finesse and attitude with which the matador confronts, corrals and quells the raw force of nature. In the ring, Rey has an extraordinary repertoire of gestures: preening head tosses straight from a Whitesnake gig; a glowering demon kill-mask out of kabuki theatre.”

Roca Rey spends much of the documentary sitting silently in a people carrier while an entourage of yes-men shower him with endless praise. You were magnificent. So brave. Nobody does it like you. Hoad captures it perfectly: “There’s something almost insecure about the nonstop stream of compliments Rey’s entourage lavish on him.”

Roca Rey rarely responds. More than once I found myself willing him to turn around and shout, “Shut the fuck up!” But he never does. He remains almost unnervingly silent, and those cherubically handsome, boyish looks only make him more fascinating to watch.

*****

On attempting to pick someone up …

I woke him from his slumber. He had been staring without realising it. When I moved, he was startled. That was the moment you knew. You were in complete control; he wasn’t. Sometimes it made me think I hadn’t lost it after all.

I asked why he had been staring. He denied it.

“Well, I was staring at you,” I replied.

That was usually the point where they folded. The bolder ones called your bluff, and when they did, I made a tactical retreat, giving them just enough space to realise they had missed their chance.

They always came back. By then, they wanted what they had pretended not to.

*****

On the cute and willing…

Tim Wolf at East West Models, Germany. Photo by Ralph Geiling.

My Week, For What It Was Worth

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On going out and getting drunk in Verona …

Francesco called me noioso, which I had no trouble interpreting as “boring”. And he wasn’t wrong. There comes a point in everyone’s life when drinking simply becomes too much. If I’m honest, that moment arrived for me in my early twenties. Others, like Francesco, were still going strong well into their thirties.

I was on my sixth Birra Moretti, and the combination of oppressive heat and alcohol was beginning to take its toll. Italians don’t generally binge drink, preferring a few leisurely glasses of wine instead. But Francesco had once lived in London and had wholeheartedly embraced the British tradition of getting shitfaced in the shortest possible time.

I was sinking fast.

Francesco—whose name I’m delighted to say translates rather wonderfully as “Frank Horse” in English—suggested that later we should head to Paradiso, an underground club that played 1980s Italo-disco for people who had missed it the first time around. There was a rumour that Disco Bambino would be DJing, but when I checked, he wasn’t even in the country.

With three hours still to kill before Paradiso opened, I knew I wasn’t going to make it. “Noioso,” he repeated when I told him I was heading back to the apartment to sleep it off. “But first we must go to the river. It will be cooler.”

By Italian standards, Frank Horse was no longer especially handsome. He had put on weight, dressed as though he had wandered straight out of the 1980s, and would have blended seamlessly into Paradiso. His nose had also been permanently bent after a fight in Piazza Bra.

But he hadn’t always looked that way.

Once upon a time, Frank Horse had been slim, handsome and one of Pietro’s boys. Eventually Pietro grew tired of his heavy drinking and cast him aside. It seemed that I had become his long-term replacement until Pietro dropped dead from a heart attack. Frank Horse now earned his living as a distinctly unhurried car mechanic in a rather dubious garage off Via XX Settembre. Yet, despite everything, he had never shown me the slightest resentment. He had always remained perfectly cordial.

He dragged me to Ponte di Castelvecchio, the fortified medieval bridge spanning the Adige, where tourists crowded together, phones and cameras raised. I squeezed past them to peer through one of the crenellations and marvelled at the broad sweep of water gliding silently beneath us, the afternoon sun dazzling on its surface.

Behind me, an American voice was enthusiastically explaining the bridge’s history.

“Of course, it’s not really the original bridge because it was blown up by the German army in 1945 and rebuilt using the stones recovered from the river.”

After a fair amount to drink, I have a habit of retreating into my own little world.

Had I been fully aware of my surroundings, I might have noticed the commotion further along the bridge, followed by a loud cheer. Seconds later there was an enormous splash as somebody landed feet first in the Adige. The young man waved happily as the current carried him towards Ponte della Vittoria.

Frank Horse eventually climbed out further downstream, where he was promptly arrested by the decidedly humourless Polizia Locale.

Alas, he never made it to Paradiso.


On finding that leather’s just for the look…

There is a room at the top of Signora Bruschi’s house that is filled with clutter. It is where unwanted things are taken to be forgotten. The good lady mentioned that there were boxes up there that had belonged to Pietro—and that they probably belonged to me now. It was a less-than-subtle hint that I ought to sort through them. I pretended not to hear.

Three boxes appeared in my room the following day.

Box Number One …

Inside was an old Italian-language paperback, Fratelli by John Preston. The price sticker on the back still read L. 4.500. Time had turned the edges of the pages a brittle amber, carrying the faint scent of vanilla, dust and old glue. The book fell open naturally at page 142, where a paragraph had been permanently marked by the back of an old glossy Polaroid.

I recognised the photograph immediately. I’d seen it before. It was Hustler by Christopher Makos and taken in 1977: a handsome young man wearing nothing but a pair of jeans and a leather jacket, provocatively unzipped to reveal a well-toned chest.

Tucked inside the pages was a note, apparently torn from an old notebook.

One line leapt out at me.

“Leather’s just for the look. It comes off easy.”


On looking at young Peter again …

Well, I’m apparently being accused of hating David Hockney.

According to my inbox, my post about Peter Schlesinger, his lover and muse for three years, was unfairly biased in favour of the American (who, incidentally, is alive and well). Fair enough. But while I’ve always admired Hockney’s work—indeed, I seem to be surrounded by Hockney art at the moment—I never found the man himself in the least bit attractive.

The same could not be said of Peter Schlesinger fifty years ago. He was, surely, every man’s erotic dream.

I’ve now managed to get hold of Schlesinger’s A Chequered Past (2003), a collection of photographs taken during the 1960s and 1970s, accompanied by brief autobiographical reflections. (Note to self: why are old photography books always so darned expensive?)

The point I had tried to make—and evidently failed to make very well—was that Hockney was extraordinarily fortunate to have shared part of his life with someone like Schlesinger. Today, of course, such a teacher-student relationship would rightly raise serious ethical questions.

And perhaps Hockney was a little naïve not to realise that young free spirits have always had a habit—as they still do—of looking around the next corner.

How I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during that “dramatic and public break-up” in Cadaqués in 1971.


On being fooled by Dorian Grai …

Spotify chucked a recommendation my way.

It was a singer called Dorian Grai and a song entitled Hockney Blue, which I found surprisingly seductive. It is a tribute to David Hockney’s swimming pool paintings, particularly those populated by cute, half-naked young men.

A snapshot of the lyrics gives you the general drift.

I’ve had one night on my youth slipping away ever since I saw the boy who knew nothing of decay.

He slipped into the water cool, how it possessed him. So that every drop glistened as a diamond on his skin.

I can see him now as he swims across, how his body’s framed in that azure box.

And I had to be an admirer of the boy I knew I could never love.

So I wish him well, how I make my peace, and I take his portrait as a memory. And I see the stars and I smell the flowers, how the day is gone forever.

He was the boy in the turquoise swimming shorts, tanned skin, black hair, his body lean and honed and young.

He slipped into the swimming pool of Hockney blue.

So that all I could do was sit still, held beneath my eyes.

According to Blakeman Records, Dorian Grai is a twenty-year-old British-American digital artist. Hockney Blue is described as a smooth tropical house track with delicate harmonies and jazzy motifs—a paean both to the paintings of David Hockney and to the yearning regret of a love that never had the chance to blossom.

There is also an interview with the handsome young man.

“I’ll never forget how it felt to write my first song and to listen back to it. I was electrified by the act of creativity—that I had made this thing that had never existed before in the world—and I was hooked.”

Well, I like the song and I like the sentiment, but—and it is a very big but—it is entirely AI-generated, as is Dorian Grai himself.

To be fair, there is no attempt at deception. Everything is out in the open, right down to the lustfully created video of him swimming half-naked in a pool.


On the cute and willing…

Yehor at MOSS Management, Paris. Photo by Pasith Thirawatworakun (2026)

My Week, For What It Was Worth

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On being naked, sleepless and bitten in Verona …

I am told a story about a man who goes to visit his mother’s grave at Cimitero Monumentale di Verona. He stands before it in prayer and then drops dead himself, overcome by the heat.

The problem with this story is that I have heard it before.

There was the case of a man in the town of Garlasco, near Milan, who collapsed while standing at his parents’ grave. In Naples, another was found slumped across his father’s tomb.

In Italy, they sometimes try to outdo one another, and that makes it difficult to distinguish fact from fiction.

The heat, however, is real enough.

The Italian health ministry has been issuing its maximum Level 3 red alert — known as the bollino rosso — for cities across the country, including Verona.

The heatwave is being driven by the African anticyclone known as “Cerberus”, bringing temperatures with little variation between day and night and daytime highs of up to 40°C.

For now, the apartment where I am staying is woefully unprepared. There is no air conditioning, only a collection of small electric fans that offer little respite. 

Signora Bruschi insisted that I keep the wooden shutters closed to block out the sun. She also instructed me to keep the windows shut.

I ignored her.

I needed fresh air.

Now the heat from outside has permeated and made the room unbearable.

I sleep naked, but sleep itself has become impossible. The nights are spent tossing and turning in my own sweat. When I wake, I discover that aggressive tiger mosquitoes, which are supposedly creatures of the day, have spent the night feasting on me. My body is covered in bites and an unsightly heat rash stretches across both arms.

Alas, I no longer feel beautiful. A plain, white-skinned English boy like me can only dream of the cold, the rain and, perhaps, even snow.

On the three naked butts …

Italian boys are more cultured than English and German boys.

Severin, the German boy, and I, the English boy, have not forgotten those hurtful words.

Over time, Severin and I have found each other like long-lost brothers. Recently he heard from Elio — the chosen one — who has discovered a diary belonging to Pietro.

Inside was the following entry:

“Elio is the lover I have always wanted, but he is spoiled and without scruples. Perfect for me. Severin is cute but stupid. He will do whatever I want him to. Miles could be wonderful, but he always thinks with his dick. There is no loyalty there.

“But I love them all, and I call them my three naked butts.”

Nude of Three Boys by Wilhelm von Gloeden

On Thomas and the Paris heatwave …

Thomas messaged me from Paris, where the temperature had become stuck at 40°C. He had covered his windows with emergency blankets to keep the heat out, though this also prevented him from seeing the world beyond them.

“It is hot and gloomy,” he moaned.

His girlfriend, Ambre, had abandoned her apartment in Batignolles. Poor insulation and a lack of external shutters had turned it into an oven. “The blazing sun hit her windows all day — she couldn’t breathe and felt dizzy because there was no air,” he explained.

“I have a headache all the time and now we must walk around my rooms completely naked,” he added, clearly for my benefit.

The image of Thomas — tall, skinny and entirely unclothed — was not an unpleasant one.

“And Léo was arrested for possessing drugs and had to spend the night in a police cell where temperatures reached more than 43°C.”

I was tempted to ask Thomas whether the heat had prompted Léo to shed his clothes as well and, if so, whether such a display might have proved provocative to his fellow prisoners.

Thomas signed off with a question:

“Are you missing me?”

On the boy by the water …

A cold stream. Stepping stones. It attracted students from Università degli Studi di Verona. If fashion models of either sex were to be discovered anywhere, this was the place to find them.

Nakedness was almost a prerequisite.

Gods and goddesses baked beneath a merciless sun, seeking relief in fast-running water, plunging into deep pools and sunbathing in temperatures that might well kill them. Youth does not concern itself with such things until it is too late.

I sat beneath the shade of the only tree.

I love the sun, but the sun does not love me. It burns me at the slightest opportunity. I had no desire to move because all around me was visual heaven. A multiple-choice examination in beauty: who was the most handsome, the sexiest, the most likely.

My eyes settled upon a young man wearing pale blue striped shorts that clung to his buttocks from the dampness. His hair was swept back as though he belonged on the streets of Milan. I could not see his eyes because they were hidden behind wraparound sunglasses.

But it was his body that held my attention.

His soft, undeveloped chest. His slim frame. The perfectly proportioned legs he stretched out before him. He was the colour of a bronzed angel, without a blemish to be seen.

He lay upon a rock below me, water rushing around him, and I wanted to take his photograph but dared not because it would have seemed too obvious.

He assumed I was looking at him, just as I assumed he was looking at me, though neither of us could be certain.

If I had been forced to choose anyone there, he would have been the one.

Then he turned his head and smiled.

I smiled back, though I could not be sure the smile had been intended for me.

He lay back and the water rose around him. For a moment I thought I could detect the suggestion of an erection, though that may simply have been the product of an overactive imagination.

He sat upright again and flicked back his hair. His profile caught the light.

Then he shouted up and asked me for the time.

Four o’clock.

All was well.

A voice in my head suggested that a little flirtation was taking place. But I knew better than that. I knew the type of boy he probably was. He knew he was beautiful and, perhaps, enjoyed the effect he had on others. A fly-catcher, drawing us in simply for the pleasure of watching us hover.

I got up to find my friends and smirked as I stepped past him.

I decided to love him only as a memory.

Artwork by Daniel Jaen (2019)

On waiting for the fall …

We wait for the one who built the empire to fail.

We, the loyal followers, are waiting for the collapse. It cannot be far away.

And when it comes, we, the loyal followers, will make our move.

On the cute and willing…

Lucas at Avantage Management (Budapest)

My Week, For What It Was Worth

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Illustration by Etienne (Dom Orejudos)

On my trip around the world …
A great deal of time has been spent talking to Severin, who is thoroughly enjoying his new life in Sicily. He has started work as a waiter in Taormina, where the heat is intensifying by the day.

When he is not working, he is busy fending off the advances of Alfio, the hotel receptionist who took an immediate liking to him. Severin has his reservations about Alfio and wishes he would stop asking him to spend the night. The only person with whom he truly feels comfortable, he tells me, is myself, and that is because we share a history — at least, in a non-sexual sense.

Severin insists that Alfio carries a flick knife in his back pocket and fears that he might use it against him if he does not get his way. I tell him that the chances of this happening are remote. Alfio, from what I have seen, is one of the sweetest and most charming hosts imaginable and the least likely person to become a murderer.

“It is Sicilian blood,” Severin claims. “Alfio is related to an influential family who are not afraid to inflict death upon their enemies.”

I ask where he acquired this alarming information, and he tells me it came from a young prostitute who — as it transpires — also had designs on Severin and had seen the two of them together in Piazza IX Aprile. German boys, it seems, can sometimes fail to recognise the simple mechanics of jealousy.

Alfio had, however, managed to secure tickets for them both to watch the new season of House of the Dragon on a large screen during the Taormina Film Festival. It is here that Severin and I differ greatly; I can think of few things more unbearable than sitting through several hours of fantastical nonsense.

Severin’s greatest excitement, however, was that Russell Crowe and his entourage had visited the restaurant where he works. He immediately called Alfio and instructed him to come over, only for him to be mistaken for a member of the paparazzi upon arrival and denied entry. In the end, Severin smuggled Alfio into his room above the restaurant, from where he was able to watch Russell Crowe dining through the window.

Severin’s colleagues dared him to ask for an autograph, no doubt hoping that he might provoke the actor’s notoriously volatile temperament. Alas, Severin was far too busy.

“After work,” Severin complained, “I had such a difficult time getting Alfio to leave because he was expecting to stay the night. And when I finally managed it, I discovered that my best boxer shorts were missing — although he denied knowing anything about them.”

Severin has also asked when I intend to return to Taormina, though that is unlikely to be for some time. Instead, he has already begun making plans for the autumn.

“I am going to go on a world tour, and I would like you to come with me,” he announced.

It soon became clear that his definition of a ‘world tour’ was somewhat more modest — Rome, Madrid, Lisbon, and Paris; a Gen Z interpretation of the Grand Tour.

The flaw in his plan is that he is unlikely to save enough money to accomplish it — and neither, for that matter, am I. Instead, I have suggested that, once the season has ended, he might join me in Verona at the home of Signora Bruschi, an idea which currently holds little appeal for him.

“But we would have such fun together,” he pleads.

The truth is that, when the time comes, Severin may find it far more difficult to leave Taormina than he presently imagines.

On not knowing where to go …
Dark clouds. I’m in a wide open space. I’m standing. I’m all alone and staring into space. They blow across the landscape not knowing where to go. I tell myself, that is exactly how I’m feeling. Days and weeks have become one; time wasted on someone who doesn’t understand you. 

On meeting someone from Archer City …
Levi, the Polish boy with the broad Yorkshire accent, refers to those who attend the documentary festival as “lanyard wankers”. The bar where he works plays host to large numbers of them and he has very little time for their sort.

“They come in wearing lanyards around their necks and treat us like shit. Like they’re big shots with the most important jobs in the world and we should be grateful for their presence. Fucking wankers.”

Well, we met a lanyard wanker. He was American, and the badge around his neck informed us that he was called Michael and had worked on a documentary exploring border security between Mexico and Texas.

“You must try and see it,” he drawled, “and tell me what you think.”

When somebody says this, it usually means that you are contractually obliged to tell them that it is wonderful, even if it turns out to be a complete pile of shit.

But much to Levi’s disappointment, Michael was actually rather sweet, and unusually interesting.

“I come from Archer City,” Michael proudly told us. “About twenty-five miles south of Wichita Falls.”

Levi immediately broke into a rendition of Wichita Lineman to demonstrate that he had at least heard of the place.

“Wrong Wichita,” Michael corrected him. “That song is about Wichita, Kansas, although Jimmy Webb actually got the inspiration for it while driving through the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles. Archer City and Wichita Falls are most definitely in Texas.”

Michael asked what we did. I explained that I was a writer, which was somehow misconstrued as meaning that I was an author, and I saw no reason to correct him. Levi grinned and explained that he was merely a handsome barman.

“You ever heard of Larry McMurtry?”

The question was aimed squarely at me, because handsome barmen are apparently incapable of knowing anything about Larry McMurtry.

“McMurtry came from Archer City. It’s where they filmed his novel The Last Picture Show back in ’71, and its sequel, Texasville, in 1990.”

I had never seen the film, but it turned out that the handsome barman had.

“The Last Picture Show. Black and white. Classic film,” Levi declared. “Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd and Timothy Bottoms.”

Michael looked impressed.

“Well, I have to admit, it’s a bleak film.”

“What’s it about?” I asked.

“Pitfalls, escapades, sex — but really, it’s about a teenage boy growing up in the 1950s. Back in the 70s, my grandpa was a Baptist deacon and a school board member who was fiercely opposed to them filming in Archer City. ‘Sickness in the stomach and further degradation and decay of the morals and attitudes we foist upon the youth of this county,’ he declared.

“Grandpa Joe was the stereotypical Texan — a bolo tie on Sundays, polished cowboy boots, a white shirt and khaki trousers. But he lost the battle, and do you know what he did, boys? He only went and appeared in the film as an extra.

“My folks never let him forget that. I don’t think they ever stopped reminding him.”

On finding out that I am a Zillennial …
Nobody has ever described me in such a way before. I was somewhat startled to discover that I am apparently a Zillennial — a member of a curious micro-generation born between 1993 and 1998, the very year in which I entered the world. I only just made it.

It places me on a peculiar threshold: old enough to remember the final days of an analogue childhood, yet young enough to have grown into adulthood alongside the digital revolution. I belong to that brief moment in time when children still played outside until the streetlights came on, but later found themselves navigating a world of smartphones, social media, and an existence increasingly lived through screens.

There is something rather comical about discovering, at the age of twenty-eight, that one belongs to a category that nobody had previously thought to tell them existed. I mentioned it to my friend Joshua, who described my birth year as 1998 B.W. Intrigued, I asked him to explain.

“Before Wikipedia,” he replied.

On the cute and willing…

Alex Bocco. Photo by Roberto Paolini

 My Week, For What It Was Worth

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We Two Boys Together Clinging. David Hockney (1961). Its name derives from a poem by Walt Whitman and two lines from it are scribbled to the right. It also references a newspaper clipping detailing a climbing accident – ‘Two Boys Cling to Cliff All Night’ which Hockney interpreted as an illusion to his idol, Cliff Richard. (Arts Council Collection)

On the life of David Hockney…
A strange thing happened. I mentioned to a friend that I wanted to watch A Bigger Splash — the 1974 documentary about the artist David Hockney, in which his lover of three or four years, Peter Schlesinger, leaves him during filming.

I still hadn’t watched it, and the following day, it was announced that Hockney had died at the age of 88.

The news reminded me of a few years ago when I was given a Hockney print, Two Boys Clinging Together. I made a convincing show of being overwhelmed by it, but the truth was rather different. The print never made it onto the wall; to my eye, it looked like something I might have painted when I was four. His work never entirely won me over.

That said, I have always liked his California pool paintings from the 1960s and 1970s, although nobody has ever bought me one. My favourite is Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool (1966), which depicted the 19-year-old Schlesinger climbing from a swimming pool at the Hollywood apartment block where art dealer and gallery owner, Nick Wilder, lived.

I spent a few hours reading about Hockney — a man who, if I am honest, irritated me immensely. His dour Yorkshire monotone seemed at odds with the loud bow ties, red braces and trademark spectacles. He occupied the same corner of my imagination as the writer Alan Bennett; the two could almost have been twins. Yet it is impossible not to admire his courage. He was painting gay love at a time when homosexuality was still effectively illegal in Britain.

America held a particular attraction for him:

“I must admit, I’d begun to be interested in America from a sexual point of view; I’d seen American Physique Pictorial magazines when I first came to London. And they were full of what I thought were very beautiful bodies. I painted Domestic Scene from a photograph in Physique Pictorial, where there’s a boy with a little apron tied around his waist, scrubbing the back of another boy in a rather dingy American room; I thought, ‘That’s what a domestic scene must be like there.’”

But my favourite Hockney quotation comes from David Hockney in Paris, a BBC documentary from 1975:

“Men in white socks are very sexy. White tee-shirts are quite sexy, but not so sexy as socks.”

Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool. David Hockney (1966).
Rodney Harvey (1967–1998) was an American actor, dancer, and model celebrated for his appearances in critically acclaimed 1990s films like My Own Private Idaho.

On good looking guys who died young…
It is an unhealthy fascination. I have a curious interest in those young guys who left us too soon. I have a list of the unfortunates and will get to them in future posts. But the list is tragically long. There’s something mythic about it. At the height of beauty, talent, or promise, they stop aging while we keep going. They are fixed in our memory and will never change; permanently charged with youth and possibility. Although, there are too many stories where death came about due to self destruction – the doomed poet, the tragic actor and the brilliant addict. I mourn them all and kid myself that if I’d been around them their fate might have been different.

Héraklès Archer – Hercules the Archer . Antoine Bourdelle (1909) .

On a sculptor and a real-life model…
I’m not entirely sure I like the sculpture, but I’m fascinated by how it was created. Hercules the Archer (1909), by the French sculptor Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929), now exists in several versions, although it was originally commissioned by the financier and philanthropist Gabriel Thomas as a unique work.

Bourdelle modelled the sculpture in clay during the summer of 1909, using his friend Paul Gustave André Doyen-Parigot (1854–1916), a captain in the French Army, as his model. An accomplished sportsman, Doyen-Parigot possessed the physical strength and athleticism required for the pose. The dramatic extension of the body and the intense muscular tension of archery allowed Bourdelle to emphasise the model’s powerful physique.

At Doyen-Parigot’s request for anonymity, however, Bourdelle altered the head, distancing the finished figure from a direct portrait and transforming it into the heroic image of Hercules.

Paul Gustave André Doyen-Parigot modelling for Antoine Bourdelle.

On having childhood regrets…
What if I had understood what was happening? What if I had been brave enough to acknowledge it? What might have become of us? Would he still have been my best friend?

Why was I thinking about Darren this week? Perhaps because some questions never quite leave us. When he later discovered that I was gay, he drifted out of my life. We have not spoken since.

On finding a poem about Manly Love…
Douglas Malloch (1877–1938) was an American poet, short-story writer and Associate Editor of American Lumberman, a trade paper in Chicago.

Manly Love…
Deep in your heart understand
the love of a man for a man;
He’ll go with you over the trail,
the trail that is lonesome and long;
His faith will not falter nor fail,
nor falter the lilt of his song.
He knows both your soul and your sins,
and does not too carefully scan,—
The Highway to Heaven begins
with the love of a man for a man!

– Donald Malloch

The poem is preserved in modern literary history as an early piece of Western gay literature. It is notably featured in The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature, compiled by Byrne R. S. Fone. It was also collected in historic specialty anthologies such as Men and Boys (edited by Edward Mark Slocum), which curated historical verses exploring Greek love, male friendships, and same-sex devotion across different eras.

On the cute and willing…

Johannes Knop shot by Gabriela Bluske (2026).

 My Week, For What It Was Worth

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The City of the Sun. Photo by Sam Wright, 2024.

On considering my dwindling finances…
I’ve no concept of saving money, which is fine when your job allows a comfortable lifestyle. But that isn’t the case anymore. Work is disappearing fast. People are still interested in reading about European cities – history, best places to go and the secrets that they provide. People still want to read about these places and occasionally make good use of my observations. The number of posh magazines that cost a fortune to buy is increasing and there are thousands of websites wanting to make themselves look good. But the winds of change are making me redundant. First, it was decided that they didn’t want me to travel  anymore – stay at home and research them or, better still, find somebody who lives there to do it. That saved them a lot of money. And now, with AI, they don’t need anybody at all. I’ve considered writing about other subjects but, guess what, nobody wants a real person to write it, especially one that will want to be paid. I read an interview with the author Lee Child, who, in a time now covered in cobwebs, was made redundant and decided to write a novel. He became a millionaire with Jack Reacher. But that’s not going to happen either. As one magazine editor told me, those days have gone, and it was bad luck that I chose a career at the wrong time.

On the missing ‘squatting boy’…
I found a photograph of a sculpture and immediately fell in love with it. It formed part of a three-piece installation titled El problema del caballo (The Horse Problem), displayed in the historic Arsenale — the former cannon foundry- at the Venice Biennale in 2017. Its creator, Claudia Fontes, born and raised in Argentina but now living in England, constructed a scene suspended in time: a monumental horse flanked by a life-sized woman and a squatting boy, all facing a shower of rocks hanging motionless in the air, their shadows scattering across the space to form the fractured outline of the animal itself. The boy seems caught between witnessing the event and studying the fragments at his feet, as though unsure whether he is observing destruction or deciphering it.

I tried to discover what became of the work afterwards, but it appears to have simply vanished. Does it lie forgotten somewhere now — draped beneath a tarpaulin, gathering dust and cobwebs in some anonymous warehouse? Or worse, was it dismantled and destroyed? There is something almost unbearable in the thought that a work of such strange beauty could disappear so completely. Why create something so haunting, so precise in its evocation of wonder and catastrophe, only to hide it away from the world? I am told that, in contemporary art, the act of creation and the conceptual gesture can hold greater value than the object itself. Yet that explanation feels strangely unsatisfying when confronted with something one longs to see.

The Squatting Boy’ – Claudia Fontes (2017)

On the benefits of hot weather…
Heatwave. Black shorts. White tees. It has become the standard summer uniform: simple, effortless, and quietly revealing. There is something undeniably appealing about the combination — the clean contrast of dark shorts against sunlit skin, the casual ease of a white T-shirt worn loose in the heat.

Part of the attraction lies in a natural appreciation for fit, athletic legs and the relaxed confidence that warm-weather dressing encourages. Well-shaped calves, strong thighs, and defined muscles suggest health, balance, and physical vitality without seeming overly deliberate. Summer style works best when it appears unforced.

More than anything, it conveys ease. The look belongs to long evenings, beaches, city pavements shimmering in the heat, holidays, freedom, and movement. It suggests someone comfortable in their own body and unconcerned with trying too hard — a kind of self-assurance that people instinctively respond to. There is also an air of fun and openness to it, something approachable and youthful that feels inseparable from summer itself.

On dabbling with Bailey…
Bailey is cute, but I can’t cope with his hypochondria. A nosebleed needs major surgery. He says that his nose bled so much that his teeth hurt. Beauty sometimes hides intelligence, but, there again, maybe it isn’t intelligence that I’m looking for. It’s not about sex either. It’s about getting naked, cuddling in bed and hoping that he doesn’t talk too much.

La sieste, circa 1960. Drawing by Raymond Carrance

On the Lamentation for Jonathan…
A poem from ancient Hebrew literature, The Lamentation for Jonathan — also known as David’s Lament or The Song of the Bow — is among the most celebrated elegies in the Bible, appearing in Books of Samuel (2 Samuel 1:19–27). It forms part of King David’s mournful response to the deaths of King Saul and Jonathan — Saul’s son, David’s closest companion, and the man with whom he shared a profound and fateful bond. Both were killed in battle against the Philistines on Mount Gilboa.

Jonathan and David had made a covenant together, for Jonathan loved David “as his own soul.” Jonathan stripped himself of his robe and gave it to David, along with his garments, his sword, his bow, and his girdle:

The beauty of Israel is slain on the high places;
How are the mighty fallen!
I am distraught for you, my brother Jonathan;
Very pleasant have you been with me!
Your love was wonderful : passing the love of women!
How are the mighty fallen:
And the weapons of war perished!

The passage has an emotional intensity that still feels startlingly intimate. The language of grief, devotion, and physical closeness moves far beyond the formal language of political alliance or military comradeship. It is beautifully homoerotic — though there are always those who insist that we should not read too much into it.

On agreeing with Joseph Caprio…
“I have often been criticised for photographing only beautiful men, for creating images than are purely aesthetic and rather superficial. On first impression, that may seem to be the case. In my defence, if I had to justify my work – if justification is necessary – I would say that I am made anxious by the passing of time and that I have a certain distaste for the world and so, when I am in the studio, I seek one thing: to forget reality for a moment and to dream. To dream that I am in a world where there is only beauty, a world where time takes no toll. Yet my mind, my soul, is ever present and casts its shadow as I work. It would therefore be a mistake to stop at first impressions.” – Joseph Caprio

Romeo. Photo by Joseph Caprio

On considering writing a biography…

On the cute and willing…

Mattis Perez and Alex Joos. Photo by Anton Patdu, for Fucking Young! Online (2026)