Photo by Aitana Valencia for Fucking Young! (2026)
Tyler distrusted men… including Kyle. And there was a reason for that.
It was something their parents had never spoken about, at least not in front of him. Yet Kyle had always known that something terrible had happened during that summer by the sea. Something that caused Tyler to retreat into a painful silence and refuse to leave his bed. Something that made both families weep behind closed doors. Something that brought the police to the house, speaking in hushed voices before taking Tyler away.
Their holiday ended that day.
Soon afterwards, Tyler’s family moved away from the neighbourhood. When Kyle asked where they had gone, his father sat him down and told him, “There are some things that don’t concern little boys.”
For years, Kyle wondered whether it had somehow been his fault.
Then, ten years later, he overheard his mother speaking on the telephone.
“I shall ask him,” she said. “I’m sure he will agree.”
That summer, Kyle and Tyler saw each other again for the first time since their childhood. They returned to the same house where their families had once stayed — the house that overlooked the beach where they had played, swum in the sea, and laughed at each other’s terrible jokes.
It was there that Kyle finally discovered what had kept them apart all those years.
Tyler distrusted men… and it had become impossible to ignore. His therapist had suggested that the only way to confront the past was to return to the place where it had happened, accompanied by somebody he could trust.
Image: The Picture of Dorian Gray – Gregrory Manchess
‘One evening about seven o’clock I determined to go out in search of some adventure. I felt that this gray, monstrous London of ours, with its myriads of people, its splendid sinners, and its sordid sins, as you once said, must have something in store for me. I fancied a thousand things. The mere danger gave me a sense of delight. I remembered what you had said to me on that wonderful night when we first dined together, about the search for beauty being the poisonous secret of life. I don’t know what I expected, but I went out, and wandered eastward, soon losing my way in a labyrinth of grimy streets and black grassless squares.’
From ‘A Picture of Dorian Gray’ by Oscar Wilde (1890)
A deeply coded text. While The Picture of Dorian Gray does not explicitly describe sexual acts, it is widely considered a foundational queer or homoerotic novel. The language, deep obsession between male characters, and themes of hidden desires heavily reflect same-sex attraction, which led to the book being used as evidence in Oscar Wilde’s 1895 trial for homosexuality.
“C’è un ragazzo che viene a trovarti ogni giorno e ti chiede quando torni.” There is a boy who comes to visit you every day and asks when you are coming back.
Bianchi had been turning up at Signora Bruschi’s doorstep daily.
“Credo di essere nei guai. Sono nei guai grossi.” I think I am in trouble. I am in serious trouble.
Bianchi messaged me too, sometimes several times a day, and each time I replied with words designed to prolong the chase.
“Torna presto, per favore. Ho bisogno di parlarti.”
“I will come over soon,” I promised.
But that was last year, and I never did.
Bianchi was now seventeen, and on his birthday I sent the same number of red roses. His sister, Cinzia, provided me with updates. In her eyes, I had crossed a line. The time had come to make a commitment.
Cola, meanwhile, painted another picture.
“There is only one way to end his heartache,” he wrote. “There is only one way to calm a stormy sea.”
I was never entirely certain what he meant.
I had missed Cola.
He was now nineteen and no longer the skinny boy I remembered. I suspected that he had been spending time in the gym. His body had broadened, his shoulders were stronger, and he seemed taller than ever. With temperatures stuck in the mid-thirties, he wore sunglasses, a baggy white T-shirt and black shorts that showed off his long, sun-darkened legs.
But some things had not changed.
He still drove too fast, as if the possibility of death around the next bend had never occurred to him. He pushed the bright yellow Abarth 500 along the E70 before leaving the main road and cutting through the countryside towards San Giorgio in Salici.
Before I had arrived, Cola had sent me one of his strange messages:
In love, conversation is direct but risks becoming too harsh; measure your tone. In love, you desire stability, but someone is testing you.
I wondered whether it was a warning.
San Giorgio is a highly venerated figure in Italian Catholicism. He is also St George, the patron saint of England.
“Maybe it is a sign,” Cola said, his arms stretched along the steering wheel as he reclined in his seat.
I had arrived in Verona the previous night. Cola had collected me from Villafranca Airport and wasted no time suggesting that we visit his girlfriend, Cinzia, and her brother, Bianchi.
His mother, Signora Bruschi, had been less enthusiastic.
“The boy is too young,” she warned. “He is not old enough to know what he wants. Are you not happy with your boyfriend?”
I did not have the energy to explain about Charlie. I had neither seen nor heard from him since our falling-out in Paris, and the likelihood was that I never would again. My future suddenly seemed to contain too many possible paths.
Cola had not told Cinzia that we were coming.
“She is working this morning, but it is a half-day and she will be home around lunchtime. There is always somebody at home.”
I had my reservations.
My appearance in San Giorgio in Salici might reopen wounds that had only partially healed. Bianchi still messaged me, though now perhaps only once a week. It felt as if he was slowly moving on, while leaving a door open in case I chose to meet him halfway.
Cinzia was different. She had hoped that I would satisfy her younger brother’s desires and now believed that I had treated him badly.
Would I still be welcomed in the same way as the year before?
“I must tell you that Lorenzo will be there,” Cola warned.
“Who is Lorenzo?”
“Cinzia and Bianchi’s older brother. I suggest that you ignore whatever he says.”
“What do you mean?”
“Lorenzo is trouble — for his family and for himself. He makes life difficult for Bianchi because he is gay.”
Cola ran his hand through his short hair, leaving only one hand on the steering wheel, which did little to calm my nerves.
San Giorgio in Salici emerged from the Veronese countryside, surrounded by flourishing vineyards, a village that seemed little more than a collection of houses stretching along its roads. Cola screeched to a halt on Via Celà and announced that we had arrived.
The building where Cinzia and Bianchi lived looked tired. Four storeys high, its crumbling exterior had been patched with uneven concrete repairs. The ground floor contained a garage and storage rooms; the floors above were residential.
“They live at the top,” Cola said, pointing towards a balcony that stretched across the façade.
I followed him up the communal stairs. There was no lift. On one of the walls somebody had sprayed a single word of graffiti.
Vaffanculo.
“Go fuck yourself,” Cola translated.
I had long realised that Italians rarely knocked on doors or rang bells when they were not strangers. Once Cola had made sure I was behind him, he walked straight into the apartment and moved down a long corridor lined with family photographs.
The living room was filled with more memories — framed pictures, hand-painted ceramics and Catholic iconography: crucifixes, rosaries and a statue of Padre Pio. A large dining table stood by the window, covered with fine linen and carefully arranged dinnerware.
A young man — presumably Lorenzo — was stretched across a sofa watching a game show. He looked at us but did not move. Cola greeted him with a high-five and exchanged a few words in Italian.
Lorenzo turned his eyes towards me.
There was suspicion there.
He spoke quietly to Cola, but his expression suggested that he had already decided he did not like me.
“Cinzia is not home yet,” Cola explained. “Bianchi has gone to the grocery store with his mother and will be back soon. Sit down.”
There was an obvious resemblance between Lorenzo and Bianchi, although the older brother was taller, with shorter hair and the kind of beauty that seemed almost commonplace among young Italian men.
I remembered something David Hockney once said: if handsome New York boys ranked at one hundred, handsome Italian boys were almost certainly at one thousand.
But Lorenzo lacked Bianchi’s warmth.
“He does not speak English,” Cola said. “But Bianchi has been learning at the liceo.”
I remembered the days when our conversations had relied on Cinzia’s excellent English and her willingness to translate.
“Be careful of Lorenzo,” Cola continued in a lowered voice, although Lorenzo undoubtedly knew we were discussing him. “He hates that Bianchi is gay and will not like the idea of you being here, especially if he thinks you have come to take his brother away.”
“Then why did you insist that I come, Cola?” I asked.
“They are family to me,” he replied. “Just as you are like a big brother to me, Miles. But Lorenzo spends time with bad people — criminals who go into Verona to steal from shops and tourists. I do not like it, but he is Cinzia’s brother, and I must respect him.”
Suddenly, the apartment door slammed.
“Bianchi. Vieni qui. C’è qualcuno che ti aspetta.”
“Aspettare?” he replied.
There was a muffled exchange in the kitchen, followed by the sounds of cupboards opening and closing. Then their mother laughed — a sharp, joyful shriek, as though Bianchi had said something unexpected.
“Bianchi!” Lorenzo shouted impatiently.
It is difficult to describe the expression on his face when he appeared.
He stood in the doorway.
His eyes widened. His eyebrows lifted. His mouth fell slightly open as he struggled to draw breath.
‘The Curse of Idaho’ – River Phoenix with Rodney Harvey
In December 1998, Holly Millea wrote a piece for Premiere magazine about the death of actor and model Rodney Harvey, who had died eight months earlier. It is a long and painful read — almost too painful to finish — but it remains the definitive account of a young man who had everything placed before him and slowly watched it disappear. It was an extraordinary piece of journalism.
Rodney Harvey. A half-Italian, half-Irish boy from the rough streets of South Philadelphia who grew up wanting to be one of two things: an actor or a horse jockey. And when I say he was bad, I mean it in the most endearing sense. If there was trouble to be found, it was usually Rodney who found it. Fighting, petty crime, drugs — the catalogue of youthful misbehaviour seemed to follow him. Yet everybody adored him. He was charming, fearless, mischievous… and impossibly beautiful.
So beautiful that he achieved one of his ambitions almost by accident: spotted on the street while attempting to buy a gun, he was cast as Jose in Mixed Blood (1984), a film about Brazilian drug dealers in Manhattan’s Lower East Side who go to war with a rival Latino gang.
That was the beginning.
Other roles followed in Five Corners, Salsa, Guncrazy, Twin Peaks, and My Own Private Idaho. But perhaps he became best known to a younger audience as Sodapop Curtis in the television adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders.
His looks also made him a favourite of photographer Bruce Weber, who photographed Harvey alongside Madonna for Life magazine and cast him in his Chet Baker documentary Let’s Get Lost. His face was so striking that Calvin Klein used him in a campaign for Obsession for Men.
For a while, there seemed to be no stopping Rodney Harvey.
“He was one of the biggest life-grabbers. I don’t know many people that beautiful and fun and exciting and sensitive and strong and anxious about life,” said his friend Drew Barrymore, who was part of a circle that included David Arquette, Balthazar Getty and Amanda Anka.
Then there were the women — relationships with Lisa Marie, his Salsa co-star Magali Alvarado, and later Roxana Zal. Harvey could attract almost anyone he wanted, but his addictions and destructive behaviour left a trail of pain among those who cared for him.
The life of crime and drugs that had followed him from South Philadelphia eventually returned to claim him.
Some pointed to My Own Private Idaho, Gus Van Sant’s film in which Harvey played Gary, a street hustler. Stories circulated about excess, wild parties and drug use around that period, and some believed that this was when his heroin addiction became impossible to control.
Drugs had always existed in Harvey’s world, but money and fame gave him the means to descend further.
Bruce Weber later recalled photographing the cast of Idaho and noticing a change in Harvey. The brightness remained, but there was a sadness behind his eyes that nobody seemed able to reach.
The so-called “Curse of Idaho” had already claimed the life of River Phoenix in 1993 and became linked, in the public imagination, with Harvey’s own tragic decline.
Rodney Harvey (1967-1998)
By the time Guncrazy was released in 1992, Harvey’s reputation in Hollywood had deteriorated. The young man who had once been considered a rising star was now consumed by addiction. He spent his money, stole from friends and strangers alike to support his habit, and was repeatedly arrested. There were stories of wealthy older men who continued to help him, even after he had betrayed their trust — perhaps unable to resist the memory of the beautiful young man he had once been.
Even his appearance changed beyond recognition. The striking face that had graced magazine pages and advertising campaigns disappeared. In its place was a man ravaged by addiction — thin, scarred and physically broken.
Millea’s article contained part of a letter Harvey wrote while serving one of his many jail sentences:
“I knew that the life I was leading was going nowhere. I had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. My acting career was over, my respect, all my morals, were gone.”
The end came in April 1998.
Harvey checked into a small room at the Hotel Barbizon in Los Angeles. A maid discovered him dead the following morning.
“A pair of black sunglasses lay at his feet on the linoleum floor along with some used syringes, an empty balloon, a hollow metal tube, and the bottom half of a 7Up can sticky with brown residue.”
A spent syringe still hung from his left forearm.
That final attempt to find euphoria, relief and escape had instead become the moment that ended everything.
Perhaps the greatest sadness is that generations who came afterwards barely know that Rodney Harvey ever existed. A young man who was once photographed by the greatest artists of his era, who moved among Hollywood’s brightest stars and who seemed destined for immortality, has largely faded from cultural memory.
And yet that may be his legacy. Rodney Harvey remains preserved in photographs, films and the memories of those who loved him — a haunting reminder of how beauty, talent and opportunity can never, on their own, save a person from themselves. A rose that bloomed brilliantly, withered too soon, but whose brief fragrance still lingers.
Rodney Harvey for Calvin Klein’s fragrance Obsession (1990)
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.
Sonnet to Youth (No 1076) Youth, beautiful and daring, and divine, Loved of the Gods, when yet the happy earth Was joyful in its mourning and new birth; When yet the very odours of the brine Love’s cradle, filled with sweetness all the shrine Of Venus, ere these starveling times of dearth, Of priest-praised abstinence, made void of mirth, Had given us water where we asked for wine.
Youth, standing sweet, triumphant by the sea All freshness of the day and all the light Of morn on thy white limbs, firm, bared and bright For conflict, and assured of victory, Youth, make one conquest more; and take again Thy rightful crown, in lovers’ hearts to reign!
Words credited to the artist Henry Scott Tuke (1858-1929). From The Artist (1889)
This text appears attached to the entry for Perseus and Andromeda (R121) in Tuke’s Registers. According to Charles Kains Jackson, who later informed the compiler S.E. Cottam, a sonnet published in the 1889 issue of The Artist was written by Henry Scott Tuke. The poem in question is likely the same work; however, the evidence is insufficient to confirm Tuke’s authorship with certainty.
Henry had spent the morning sketching on the beach while his model sat naked upon a rock, gazing out to sea. He tried to capture the figure before him: broad, well-defined shoulders flowing into a powerful back that narrowed elegantly at the waist; sculpted arms, the muscles cleanly delineated beneath pale skin; strong, athletic legs whose proportions conveyed both grace and strength. The healthy glow of youth accentuated every subtle interplay of light and shadow across his form. Yet Henry knew that no matter how many times he put pencil to paper, he could never truly recreate the beauty before him. Johnny had cost half a crown, and he had earned it by remaining perfectly still for the better part of the morning.
It was shortly before midday when they heard the shots—two sharp reports that reverberated around the cove, causing Henry to drop his pencil and Johnny to start. Both looked about for the source of the disturbance, but nobody was in sight.
“It came from down there,” Johnny shouted, pointing towards the caves.
Before Henry could react, the boy was already running along Newporth Beach, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was still naked.
“Be careful, Johnny!” Henry called, hurrying after him.
The body lay in the first cave. By the time Henry arrived, Johnny was standing over the motionless figure.
“Is he dead?” Henry asked.
“As dead as he’ll ever be,” Johnny replied. “There’s a gun on the floor, but no blood.”
Henry picked it up—a six-chambered revolver—before kneeling beside the corpse and turning it onto its back.
“Two shots to the mouth,” he murmured.
The strangest thought crossed his mind: the seed of a painting. The naked youth standing over a dead man. Absurd, he told himself.
“I’m afraid I know who this is,” Henry said at last, a note of sadness in his voice. “Harry Tilly, of Boslowick.”
He rose and turned to Johnny.
“Run along and find the policeman. Tell him to come here at once. But get dressed first, or the scandal will be greater than it already is.”
*****
David pieced the story together in his head as he followed Joshua down the steep track—or what passed for one—towards Sunny Cove. He had recently come across a newspaper article from 1894 describing how the artist Henry Scott Tuke and one of his models had discovered the body of a Falmouth solicitor in a cave on Newporth Beach. Most of David’s ideas grew from forgotten histories, but only now had it occurred to him that the incident might provide the foundation for a novel.
Brambles, nettles and dense undergrowth crowded the route, obscuring their footing. Before long, the path dissolved into a treacherous slope of loose slate, fractured rock and powdery earth. One careless step could send them tumbling onto the beach below, though ropes had been fixed to the cliffside to assist those bold enough to attempt the final descent.
‘Tuke’s House’ had once stood on the clifftop, but it had vanished long ago. Seventy years earlier, thousands of tons of rock and soil had collapsed into the sea near Pennance Cottage, forcing its occupants to abandon it. The empty building soon became a playground for local children, who tore up floorboards and left a trail of destruction until the structure was deemed unsafe. Its owner, Mrs Trench Fox, eventually ordered it demolished. Tuke had been dead for twenty-five years, and few mourned the loss.
Most of Tuke’s male nudes had been painted on the beaches below—Tuke’s Beach, Sunny Cove and Newporth Beach—names familiar only to locals. To outsiders fortunate enough to find them, they appeared to be a single uninterrupted stretch of coastline.
David and Joshua had discovered Sunny Cove the previous year. On that occasion, the weather had been cool and overcast, and they had the beach entirely to themselves. Few people ventured here; only those who knew where to find it. Together they had wandered along the narrow stretch of pebbles, exploring the rocky ledges and platforms while imagining the summers when Tuke and his models had spent long, sunlit days on the shore.
This time, however, the weather was glorious, and the beach no longer felt as though it belonged exclusively to them.
“Shit,” muttered David. “There are people here.”
“And an eyeful of old man penis,” Joshua added.
It was true. Half a dozen men were sunbathing completely naked.
“I didn’t realise it was a nudist beach,” David said.
“Not just a nudist beach,” Joshua replied in a low voice, “but probably a good place for blokes to go cruising.”
David slipped on his sunglasses and pretended to check his phone, giving himself an excuse to study their fellow beachgoers.
“My God,” he said. “The place is full of gay grandads.”
It was not entirely unfair. Most of the men were well past their prime, their sun-darkened skin weathered like old leather.
“The truth is, they’re probably younger than you are,” Joshua replied with a mischievous grin.
“Maybe, but at least I haven’t lost my looks. And I still have a decent figure.”
David felt obliged to maintain the fiction that he remained an Adonis, though deep down he knew the evidence was becoming less convincing with every passing year.
As they spread out their towels, he became acutely aware that the other men were watching them too. The object of their attention was clearly Joshua, who had already stripped down to his underwear.
“Henry Scott Tuke had an endless supply of beautiful young models,” David grumbled. “I get naked old men with tiny dicks.”
He found himself wondering whether Joshua intended to go completely nude. Even in a pair of Calvin Kleins, Joshua was striking: handsome, slim, and blessed with long, elegant legs. More importantly, he knew it. David had no doubt that Joshua would make the most of every advantage nature had given him.
Joshua made his way into the sea, wincing as the sharp pebbles bit into his feet. It was, he seemed to think, a small price to pay for the opportunity to perform before an audience.
David heard footsteps crunching across the shingle. One of the men—a naked, pot-bellied figure—waded into the water a short distance from Joshua. David watched with growing irritation as the pair splashed through the waves, as though participating in some obscure mating ritual.
Joshua had always been attracted to older men; after all, that was how he and David had ended up together. Lately, however, David found that fact increasingly difficult to ignore. He searched for the correct term. Chronophilia? Gerontophilia? When he had been Joshua’s age, older men had held no appeal for him—certainly not men old enough to be his father. In that respect, at least, he had remained remarkably consistent. He still preferred younger men, although the age gap widened with every passing year.
Joshua eventually returned to his side.
“That guy’s dick is too shrivelled to appeal to anybody,” David muttered.
“It’s because it’s cold,” Joshua replied, shivering. He glanced around as though only just noticing the older man who had joined him in the sea. “Hmm,” he said thoughtfully. “I wonder what he’ll say about me when I get naked.”
“I think not,” David said sharply, unhappy with the direction of the conversation.
“I think you should take off your clothes,” Joshua suggested.
“I think not,” David repeated.
He pulled a book on Italian cinema from his rucksack and opened it. Beside him, Joshua stretched out and closed his eyes.
*****
The young man wore shorts and a T-shirt and appeared to be in his early twenties. Handsome, though not in a conventional way, David thought. Perhaps interesting was the better word. There was something about him — something difficult to define — that immediately drew David’s attention. He chose a spot near David and Joshua.
David found himself reading the same sentence of his book again and again, unable to concentrate as the young man began removing his clothes. If there is a God, he prayed silently, let him strip naked. It seemed, for once, that God was listening, because that was exactly what he did. Joshua, meanwhile, appeared to have fallen asleep.
The young man settled onto his towel, drawing his knees to his chest.
“Hi,” he said to David.
David returned an awkward nod, reluctant to speak too loudly and wake Joshua.
“I’m Daniel,” the young man continued.
Joshua raised a hand in a vague gesture of acknowledgment, waving at nobody in particular. He seemed to have little interest in the newcomer, but made it clear that he was aware of his presence.
David searched for something clever to say — something that might break the ice, but nothing that might reveal too much of his interest.
“It’s a lovely day,” was all he managed.
The brief exchange gave David an opportunity to study Daniel more closely. He was slender, his pale body possessing a quiet, unassuming beauty that held David’s attention.
“Are you on holiday?” Daniel asked.
“Yes,” David replied. “And you?”
“I’m a student. Film studies at Falmouth University. I noticed you’re reading a book about Italian cinema, so I guess you’re interested in films too. What do you do?”
It was the question David always dreaded. He preferred people not knowing who he was. Though, he admitted to himself, there was a part of him that wondered whether Daniel might be impressed to discover he was speaking to a famous author.
“I’m a chef,” David lied.
Joshua let out a small laugh.
“Do you mind if I join you both?”
David, naturally, raised no objection and gestured for him to move closer. He watched as Daniel spread his towel beside them. At that precise moment, Joshua removed his Calvin Kleins and stretched himself fully beneath the sun.
David felt decidedly overdressed and, despite himself, slightly guilty; everyone else on the beach was naked except him. Daniel looked along the shoreline, his gaze taking in the scattered sunbathers before briefly settling on Joshua.
“Arthur’s Beach,” he remarked. “Why is it called Arthur’s Beach?”
The words Arthur’s Beach had been painted in yellow on a prominent rock overlooking the shore.
Joshua spoke for the first time.
“Because,” he said wearily, “many years ago, a local man named Arthur used to greet people by asking, ‘Had a good afternoon on Arthur’s Beach?’ before wandering off again.”
The story was true, and the name had endured so completely that it now appeared in naturist guides and travel forums alike.
“Looking at you sitting here, Daniel,” David interjected, “you could have stepped out of one of Tuke’s paintings.”
The expression on Daniel’s face made it clear that he had no idea what David was talking about.
“Henry Scott Tuke? The painter? Famous for his young men on the beaches of Cornwall?”
Still no reaction.
David searched his phone for some of Tuke’s most famous paintings and handed it to Daniel. He studied the images carefully, but his expression revealed nothing.
“Most of them were painted here,” David said. “On this very beach.”
Daniel raised an eyebrow, and David found himself charmed by his innocence — not an innocence of youth, but of someone who had simply never encountered this small corner of artistic history.
“The interesting thing about Tuke’s male nudes is that they are remarkably tasteful. Not once does he reveal any genitalia.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, David’s eyes drifted instinctively towards Daniel’s body. He immediately looked away, a flush rising to his face, as though he had inadvertently betrayed his own curiosity.
“I think I may have seen some of these paintings before,” Daniel conceded.
David detected a flicker of mischief in his eyes.
“Tuke was a gentleman,” David continued, eager to defend the long-dead artist while also diverting attention from his own embarrassment. “His models wrote about his kindness and his integrity.”
“The figures look quite young.”
“Yes,” David admitted, with a trace of uncertainty.
“We can guess,” Daniel said.
“But it is difficult to prove. We’ll never know the exact ages of all his models.”
David waited for Joshua to come to his rescue, to offer some reassuring observation that might settle the discussion. Nothing came. Instead, Daniel’s expression shifted into something approaching a smirk, and David realised he was being gently provoked.
“Well, if you really think I could have stepped out of one of Tuke’s paintings, then I’m flattered if you think I look young enough.”
Joshua opened his eyes and turned towards them.
“There seems to be an element of flirting taking place here,” he observed with a playful smile.
“Not at all,” David replied too quickly.
“Take your clothes off, David. Stop spoiling the party.”
David stared at Joshua in disbelief. Then he looked at Daniel, who merely shrugged, as though to say, Why not?
But Joshua knew David would never undress—not anymore, and certainly not in front of Daniel. Instead, David steered the conversation elsewhere.
“There’s another Tuke painting you might find interesting.” He searched for it on his phone. “It’s called A Cadet on Newporth Beach, near Falmouth, with Another Boy in the Sea. You’ll notice that the cadet is fully clothed.”
He showed the image to Daniel.
“Do you know who the cadet is? It’s T. E. Lawrence — Lawrence of Arabia — and it was painted here as well.”
“Yes, fully clothed,” Daniel agreed. “But probably in the process of getting undressed.”
‘I will send you a book,’ said Severin. ‘It is a German classic, but I shall make sure you get the English translation. But before you read it, you must promise me one thing: research the dead author first. Then you will understand the sadness behind it.’”
True to his word, a package appeared on the doorstep a few weeks later. Inside was a copy of At the Edge of the Night by Friedo Lampe.
Cut to 2 May 1945. Kleinmachnow, a municipality on the outskirts of Berlin. Hitler has been dead for two days. Soviet troops occupy the capital. Germany is collapsing, and everyone is afraid of what comes next.
A shabbily dressed man walks along the street, shoulders hunched inside clothes that hang too loosely from his thin frame. To suspicious eyes he resembles one of the many fugitives trying to disappear into the chaos of defeat. Two Soviet soldiers stop him and demand identification.
He hands over his papers.
But the photograph shows a sturdier, healthier-looking man. The exhausted figure standing before them looks nothing like it.
The soldiers shoot him dead.
That is almost everything we know about the death of Friedo Lampe — librarian, editor, and novelist — a writer who experienced remarkably little good fortune during his lifetime.
Born in Bremen in 1899, Lampe suffered from bone tuberculosis in his left ankle as a child, leaving him permanently disabled. He studied literature, philosophy, and art history in Heidelberg, Munich, and Freiburg before eventually working as a writer and editor.
His debut novel, Am Rande der Nacht (At the Edge of the Night), appeared in 1933, the year Hitler came to power. Lampe later remarked that the book had been “born into a regime where it could not breathe.” Writing to a friend shortly after publication, he confessed: “What do you think of it now it’s in print? Very shocking? I’m worried.”
He had every reason to be.
The Nazis quickly placed the novel on their list of “damaging and undesirable writings.” Its dreamy nocturnal atmosphere, homoerotic undertones, and depiction of a relationship between a Black man and a German woman were enough to condemn it. Copies were seized; many were almost certainly burned.
Yet even then, perceptive readers recognised its brilliance. Hermann Hesse admired the novel in 1933 and later wrote that what had struck readers “as so beautiful and powerful has not paled… it proves itself with the best, and captivates and delights just as then.”
Lampe continued writing despite censorship and growing political danger. After working for Hamburg’s public library, he moved to Berlin in 1937 to work as an editor for Rowohlt. His prose ballad Das dunkle Boot (The Dark Boat) appeared in 1936, followed by the novella Septembergewitter (September Thunderstorm) in 1937. Neither achieved significant recognition, and Rowohlt itself was seized by the Nazis in 1939.
Throughout the war Lampe lived in quiet fear. Under Paragraph 175, homosexuality remained criminalised, and gay men faced surveillance, arrest, imprisonment, and deportation to concentration camps. Lampe, himself homosexual, lived cautiously and privately. In 1943 he narrowly escaped catastrophe after being blackmailed by a male prostitute in Berlin; only the intervention of his publisher’s lawyer prevented the affair from escalating into a criminal case.
Friends described him as reserved rather than solitary: a chain-smoker, obsessive reader, and compulsive buyer of books. “It really is an illness with me,” he once admitted. “I simply must buy every book, even when I don’t have the money.”
Misfortune seemed to pursue him relentlessly.
“I never had much luck with books,” Lampe remarked bitterly in 1944. The previous year an air raid had destroyed his Berlin apartment and with it his vast personal library. Two weeks later another bombing raid destroyed the Leipzig printing works preparing a new volume of his stories, Von Tür zu Tür (From Door to Door). In 1944 he was conscripted into the German Foreign Office, where he worked analysing intercepted enemy communications.
Then came the end of the war — and his senseless death on a roadside in Kleinmachnow.
Lampe was buried beneath a simple wooden cross bearing the words: Du bist nicht einsam — “You are not alone.”
For decades he remained little more than a literary footnote. Am Rande der Nacht was republished in expurgated form in 1949, 1955, and 1986, with supposedly offensive passages removed. Only in 1999, the centenary of Lampe’s birth, did the first complete unexpurgated edition finally appear.
That restoration transformed his reputation.
Modern German critics increasingly came to regard Am Rande der Nacht as one of the great lost novels of the Weimar era: lyrical, melancholic, cinematic, and unlike anything else produced in Germany at the time. Lampe’s readership steadily grew into something close to a cult following. His collected letters were published in 2018; an English translation of At the Edge of the Night finally appeared in 2019, introducing him to a wider audience decades after his death. Johann-Günther König’s long-overdue biography followed soon after.
Today Friedo Lampe occupies the strange position reserved for certain artists: neglected in life, cherished in retrospect. The writer once condemned and erased by the Nazis is now included in The Oxford Companion to German Literature and discussed as an important rediscovered voice of twentieth-century German fiction. Perhaps that is the consolation history occasionally offers — that literature can outlive the regimes, prejudices, and accidents that once tried to silence it.
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 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)
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 