Joe College

Joe College, Part 23

In the second half of junior year, my buddy Andy Trafford did a semester in Italy.

He had a good life in college but he didn't feel it in his lungs. He had friends and at least three actual, proper, public boyfriends. He ran a couple of marathons, got elected to Berkeley's student government, and volunteer-coached a high-school debate team in Oakland. He majored in poli sci and became roughly as adept with Italian as I was with Arabic. But like most of my friends from high school, college didn't consume him. When he said that he was doing the semester in Italy, I pretended to be enthusiastic, but actually thought he was missing the best time of his life just to look at frescos, which is the way that I now think about friends who get engaged in their twenties.

It was a fifty-person program run by a department out of UNC, but they took applicants from all over. They were housed in a converted villa in the hills a couple of miles outside of Florence. Almost everyone was from the U.S., along with some Brits from LSE and three Russians who spoke fluent English.

Andy went there not knowing anybody, and while he was out of the closet and comfortable at Berkeley, he was perplexed as to how to handle himself in Italy. He resolved that he wouldn't tell anybody that he was gay. At least not at first.

"It feels like I'm going on The Real World," he said. "I don't want people to think of me as the gay character. If I get there and get to be close with some of them, yeah. But who knows. I've never known anybody from the South, and maybe they'll all be like, `We hate faggots,' or whatever. I just want them to know me before they judge me like that."

His roommate went to the University of Texas. His name was Steve.

"He seems standoffish," Andy wrote in his first e-mail.

"Is he hot at least?" I replied.

"He's kind of cute, but I can't think of him that way. Would just mess me up. He's not my type so I don't foresee any issues."

Andy is such a likable guy that it took only a few days to become friends with Steve and everybody else in his program.

Andy did not hook up with Steve.

He didn't hook up with anybody. It became a problem.

Unlike most gay guys I know, Andy is a serial monogamist. He wants relationships, even if they only last a few weeks. The most frazzled I've seen him, it's been times when he meets a guy, they hook up the first night, and then the guy just disappears. I try to tell him that this is standard for a lot of guys, at least in New York; that doesn't lessen his confusion and hurt.

Anyway, there he was, in Florence, on the edge of 21, at peak attractiveness and physical condition, lurking back inside the closet, with no other known gay guys in that group of fifty people in Tuscany. Even finding the privacy to jerk off was a struggle. Their weekdays were tightly organized and at night, he had to share a room with Steve. He couldn't even jack it in the showers because the curtains in the shower stalls didn't facilitate maximum privacy. Hot water was frequently an issue anyway. Andy found himself making excuses not to go out, just so that he could lock the door to the room, load some gay porn on his laptop, rub one out, and erase his browsing history.

We had the following exchange on AIM:

ANDY: are you hooking up with anybody? JOE: Sort of. Why? ANDY: you're lucky. ANDY: i need something to think about. JOE: Perv. ANDY: what does he look like? JOE: ... ANDY: is he hot? ANDY: does he look like anybody we know? JOE: Oh God. JOE: You're alone in your room and about to take your dick out. ANDY: hahaha ANDY: not exactly. but, like, something to think about. JOE: Jesus Andy. Shut up. ANDY: ugh ANDY: joey ANDY: i accidentally saw this english guy's butt this morning when i was going to take a shower. ANDY: i started to get aroused. ANDY: this is absurd. ANDY: the english guys aren't even that hot but one of the russians is stunning. ANDY: like, hotter than a male model. i didn't know russians were so hot. JOE: Well. JOE: The poor fat alcoholic Russians don't speak perfect English and study abroad in Italy. JOE: He's probably the son of an oligarch or Putin crony. JOE: In 15 years he'll be bribing officials and/or bombing Chechens. ANDY: stfu joe. don't be so extreme. ANDY: sergei is so hot, i can't stand it. ANDY: physically can't stand it. ANDY: his body is ripped and he has this face. ANDY: he plays hockey. ANDY: god. JOE: Okay. JOE: I'm signing off now. JOE: You need alone time. ANDY: okay good idea; later.

Andy tried to exhaust himself into chaste thoughts. He woke at 5:30 and jogged through the city. It was two and a half miles downhill from the villa into Florence proper. He would run at sunrise past the Duomo, through Piazza della Signora and by the Uffizi, on Ponte Vecchio and back over the Arno. He finished with a long uphill climb, sweat-soaked and spent even before everyone else woke. Andy became expert at the city's narrow streets, the piazzas and fountains and cathedral facades, before the squares and sidewalks sprouted German tourists.

JOE: Running makes me hornier. JOE: An hour or two later, I need to get off. ANDY: yeah, similar for me. ANDY: but at least it makes me tired. ANDY: by the end of the day, i'm too tired to worry about it. JOE: Wow, sounds like you're having a great time. ANDY: haha ANDY: no, it's not that bad. you'd love all the stuff we're doing about dante. JOE: He's great, right? ANDY: yeah, amazing. JOE: I'd rather study Dante than get laid. Wouldn't you? ANDY: i don't have the luxury of making the choice. but probably not.

When I asked whether it would be better to change his plan and come out to everybody, he said that it wouldn't matter, anyway. He didn't think anyone else in his program was gay. It's not like telling them would get him laid. And it risked putting him at a distance.

From what I understand, Florence is the world's study-abroad capital.

Everybody between Bowdoin and UCSD sends their undergrads to Florence.

Apparently you can't walk a block without seeing a Michigan or Notre Dame sweatshirt. If Grindr had been around then, his phone probably would have lit with the bare torsos of other horny, lonely American guys getting lectures about The Birth of Venus and Ghibellines. Those guys obviously were around. Andy had no access to them.

Six weeks into the trip, he ventured solo to a gay bar. Back at school, he had a fake ID and had gone to a few gay bars in San Francisco with his friends, mostly for the people-watching. He'd never gone alone and never hoping to meet someone. It was a Friday in late February.

ANDY: these guys just stare at you. JOE: Were they hot? ANDY: no, i don't mean like hot guys our age. ANDY: like, creepy middle-aged guys. ANDY: you walk in, and they stare at you and don't look away. it's intimidating. it gave me new sympathy for what guys put women through. JOE: Oh. Well, that's unnerving. ANDY: tell me about it. JOE: Maybe it's a European thing? ANDY: could be. ANDY: but you just make a point not to look at them or acknowledge their attention. ANDY: so I pounded a vodka tonic and then had another, and then started talking to this guy. ANDY: he was older, like 25, but he was attractive and he was friendly and his english was good. ANDY: and they were playing this music -- god, you would have hated the music, but anyway -- ANDY: we're kind of having a shoutly conversation over the music and he's asking me about florence and what i'm studying and all of this smalltalk, which was nice. JOE: Oh, cool. ANDY: yeah, so I was kind of, "oh is it annoying that you live here and you always have tourists and college students around?' ANDY: and he said, "no, that's fine, it's very good for us because it brings in a lot of money," and then he goes, "BUT, the thing that's ruining italy is the gypsies and the africans." JOE: Oh shit. ANDY: i know. so he starts ranting about how gypsies and africans are criminals and diseased and they have no respect for the culture or property and abuse social welfare, about how i should be careful never to talk to gypsies on the street, about how you should never trust them. ANDY: and I was just listening to this, i wasn't really reacting, but it was awkward as hell. JOE: Yeah, of course. ANDY: so he finishes this racist rant and then immediately was like, just so you know, i only top. i never bottom. is that a problem for you?' ANDY: i'm not quick on my feet, so i should have just said, i actually have to leave and meet my friends at midnight, but instead, like an idiot, i was just like, no, that's fine.' JOE: HAHAHAHA ANDY: not because it's actually fine, just because i didn't know what to say. JOE: You didn't actually hook up with this guy. ANDY: no! but i didn't know how to extract myself! so i told him that i had to go to the bathroom, and then i just snuck out of the bar JOE: HAHA ANDY: like, once i was outside, i fled! i ducked around the corner and kept looking behind me! JOE: Well, he was a racist italian who was uncomfortably forward, not a serial killer. ANDY: i know, and he didn't seem creepy until he got into the racist shit, but then he immediately went from being racist to basically saying that he wanted to fuck me. maybe those are cultural differences. ANDY: also, english with a heavy italian accent. it can go from hot to scary very quickly. JOE: So you didn't get laid. ANDY: nah. :-(

The complication was Florence itself. It wasn't a normal city, but a jewel of the preserved Renaissance that had incorporated a Teutonic-Anglo-American tourist colony. He couldn't melt into a neighborhood, the way you can in New York, Paris or Berlin; there weren't tens of thousands of gay dudes.

He and his new friends took a weekend trip to Rome. They'd gone before.

On the prior trip, they'd caught the major tourist sites, hitting the Coliseum and the Sistine Chapel and the Spanish Steps. This time they went to party. Before they left, Andy looked up a website that listed the city's gay bars. The most promising-sounding ones, he wrote their names and addresses on a torn-off strip of printer paper, which he folded and stuck in his wallet.

He thought that he'd slip away late at night, pleading exhaustion and saying that he was going back to the hostel. Nobody would question that.

He could head off to one of these places. He didn't need to hook up with any guys, but he needed something. He'd never made out in public, and he imagined a scenario where he would find a tall, blond guy (a Brit or a German?) or maybe a nice Italian guy his own age, chat with them for an hour, and then passionately make out in the corner before saying good night and walking home alone. Or it might be like "Before Sunrise," and he'd walk the city all night with the guy, breath showing in the cold air, holding each other warmly and kissing before the Trevi Fountain, exchanging e-mail addresses and yearning for each other for years afterward, occasionally meeting for 12-hour romances in New York and London as years passed. Troppo romantico.

That night, perhaps haunted by his solo excursion, Andy fell in with his group and couldn't summon the ambition to leave. They danced in a club.

The girls in the group loved him. He got drunk and loosened up. It seemed silly to leave that. They were only together for the semester.

This was how you made memories; these were the people that should matter to him, not a German tourist that he might have made out with in a Rome gay bar. He wouldn't have gone out to a club like this at home, with a DJ playing cheesy electronic music, dancing with these girls until his white button-down was damp with sweat, drinking Red Bull and vodka and shouting over terrible bass. Some of the others had done ecstasy and they kept putting their arms around each other, telling them how much they loved everybody. Study abroad is the adult version of summer camp, Andy thought.

When they got back to the hostel around 5 a.m., Andy collapsed into bed.

Some of them were still hanging out. With Red Bull in his system and his body accustomed to waking at 5 a.m. for libido-numbing runs, Andy had a terrible time getting to sleep. There were six of them -- all bros -- in the room at the hostel. A couple of the guys kept coming in and sifting through their bags -- toothbrushes? condoms? maybe pot? -- which kept Andy fitful. There was enough light that he could observe Sergei undress, naked down to his black briefs, before he put on a fresh T-shirt and climbed into a top bunk. Later, somebody was snoring. The room smelled like dude. The sun was well alive and birds were chirping by the time Andy finally slept.

He woke thinking it was noon but it was only a little after 9:30. Everyone else was still in bed. Andy walked down the hall to take a piss and study his reflection in the mirror. When he came back, he saw that Sergei had kicked the covers from himself. He was lying on his back, morning wood at full erection. Sergei wore these tight black briefs -- a Russian thing, probably -- and the way he was positioned in his sleep, thickets of dark, curling hair swirling from the borders of his briefs. Sergei's dick looked like it was about to break out. The room was motionless and silent except for the snorer and heavy sleep-breathing. Pausing, Andy could make out the contours and formation of Sergei's cock, heavy and oblivious to his study.

Ah, fuck.

Andy caught himself, walked back to his bed, and balled tight against the wall, giving himself the luxury of an erection and no more. He thought about walking back to the bathroom and jerking off, but that was fucking sketchy behavior, man. I mean, I would have done it, but that's not Andy's style. That was blatantly dishonorable what he just did, perving on an innocent hot guy who had the misfortune of promiscuous Russian briefs, an uncomfortable mattress and an undersexed gay American. Of course Andy wasn't getting to sleep after that. Following an hour of tossing in bed, he showered down the hall and then waited for everyone in the first-floor lounge, skimming a recent issue of The New Yorker that his mom sent in a care package.

That afternoon, on the short train ride back to Florence, he sat next to a girl named Emma who went to Illinois. She found opportunities to brush a hand against his leg, to touch his shoulder. They'd been dancing the night before. Andy bought her drinks. He didn't think anything of it. Emma had a boyfriend at school.

A couple of days later, Emma arranged to be alone with him. She told Andy that he was so good at Italian and that she sucked with languages. They had to translate a passage from Vita Nuova and the passato remoto was a bitch. She didn't want him to help her cheat. She just wanted to talk it through while she worked.

Emma's laptop was broken so she wrote by hand. At a certain point, she put down her pen in frustration and placed her palm on Andy's elbow.

"Rome was so much fun last weekend, wasn't it?" she said.

Ah, fuck.

"It was awesome," Andy said. "I was so drunk that I barely remember any of it."

"Oh," she said, understanding his suggestion. She withdrew her hand. Emma wasn't the hottest girl on the trip, not like Stacey from UCLA or Amy from Wash U, who got the prizes of being Sergei's rotating fuckbuddies, but Emma was still very cute, and sincere about the classes and Italy. For some of them, the entire semester was a blow-off, but Emma, like Andy, was in the contingent that studied absolutely everything.

"Dude, don't be embarrassed," he said to her. "It's okay. I know you have a boyfriend at Illinois. I hadn't thought about it."

"No, it's okay," she said, her cheerfulness betraying the vulnerability.

"I understand. I didn't mean anything. I assume you've got a girlfriend at Berkeley."

"We broke up before finals last semester," he said. When he saw her crease of hope, he said, "His name is David. He's a good guy but it wasn't really a match. He's kind of high maintenance."

She looked confused, and then, Andy thought, horrified.

"I didn't want anyone here to know," he said, pleading. When she still didn't say anything, he stammered, "No, no, it was, like, a bad joke-"

"No, no, it's fine."

"I just didn't want anyone to know," he said, "but you're so sweet and so nice. I didn't want to hurt your feelings."

"No, it was okay," she said.

"Honestly, I'm so flattered," he said. "Are you, like pissed?"

"No!" she said. "Of course not."

"Okay, cool."

"You're so sweet." She kissed him on the cheek and patted his back in a mom-like way. "We had so much fun last weekend. So I misread."

"I'm out at school," he said. "I'm out at home. I just didn't want to come here and not know anybody and all of a sudden, I'm, like, stereotyped as the gay one. Like, Sergei is the hot Russian and Naomi is the party girl and Timmy is the the brooding intellectual. But then I'm the gay guy."

"Like on The Real World, yeah," she said, "but it wouldn't be like that.

Everybody here is so great." She put her arm around Andy and pulled him in. "Oh, you're such a nice guy. You are just the sweetest guy. Thank you for telling me this."

He didn't tell Emma to keep this to herself, but he assumed that it would be understood. Instead, by Friday, everybody knew. He could tell the next morning. They greeted him with a new sheen of friendliness and formality.

"Hey, bro," Steve said to him, "I just want you to know that it's cool.

I'm glad that you're my roommate. I don't want you to think that this is a big deal."

"Oh, cool," Andy said. "I'm glad that we're roommates too."

"Dude, my mom's cousin's gay," he said. "I get it."

JOE: So it sounds like everything's cool then. ANDY: yeah it's fine but i wasn't worried about that. ANDY: it's still different. ANDY: you've never had a bunch of gay friends. it's just me and matt canetti and neither of us are even at school with you. it's different when you have gay friends around. JOE: Why? ANDY: it's just, like, you understand each other in different ways. ANDY: it's more comfortable. it's hard to explain. JOE: What, like you talk about guys' butts and Lillith Fair? ANDY: no, you huge moron. ANDY: god, you sound like a succh a homophove sometimes i swear to god. ANDY: and lilith fair isn' even a gay thing it's a lesbian thing you fucking idiot. JOE: Oh, relax. ANDY: if you were next to me i'd punch you so hard right now. JOE: I'm sorry. JOE: No, tell me what you meant. I'm actually curious. ANDY: no ANDY: because it's kind of vulnerable sounding and you'd make smartass commenst that make me feel bad. JOE: Awww, I'm sorry. You know I didn't mean to do that. ANDY: question: how come everybody i know is nice to me but you? JOE: DUDE. It was a stupid joke! I'm sorry!

He signed off.

And then e-mailed an hour later to apologize for snapping, which made me feel a bit worse.

He was losing hope for his trip to Berlin when he noticed the two guys visibly talking about him. They pointed in his direction and conferred.

Embarrassed, Andy felt himself go red. He looked away.

"Excuse me," one of the guys said, as they approached, "but did you just order a beer in English?"

"I did," Andy said, and laughed nervously.

"Oh, thank God!" said the guy.

"We've been traveling for the last six months," said the other.

"You have no idea how good it is to hear someone speak normal, American English."

"I'm tired of trying to make myself understood."

"It gets exhausting."

"Are you here alone?"

"Yeah," Andy said. "I'm just, like. Trying to check things out."

"Cool."

"We heard you order a beer and I said, `I think he's American. We should go talk to that guy.'"

By late March, with a month left in his program, Andy decided to get away.

It would be either Berlin or Paris, but the flights to Berlin were cheaper. He told his friends in Florence that one of his friends from Berkeley was doing a semester in Berlin. No one suspected a thing.

Berlin was a real city in the way that Florence and Rome weren't. It reminded him of New York, if New York were stripped of its pretension and money hang-ups. His first night out, he went to a metal bar down the block from his hotel. He ended up in a two-hour conversation with the bartender, a wiry women in her forties who grew up in East Berlin before the wall fell. The first beer he ordered, she described as "undrinkable." Her chopped silver hair had pink highlights. She spoke near-perfect English and spent a summer in the 90s tending bar in Philly. She offered to take Andy out when her shift ended at ten.

But Andy hadn't come to go out with a woman. He went into a gay bar a few blocks away. It reminded him of the East Village. The walls were covered in furry pink carpet. The bartender was a fat Scottish woman whose lit cigarette dangled from a corner of her lip.

The whole time that he was in Berlin, whenever Andy ordered a beer in English, he ended up in conversation. He immediately found himself with a group of guys his age. As soon as he said that he grew up in New York, they were interested.

They were nice guys, but Andy knew right away that he wouldn't hook up with them. It wasn't that kind of rapport and they weren't attractive to him, anyway. Not that he was disappointed -- he was just glad to have company instead of sitting solo like a jackass. They were three friends -- jovial, talkative guys who spoke English well and seemed excited to have a friend for the night in an American from New York, back before New York expats would overwhelm their city.

"What do you think of George Bush?" one asked him.

"Oh, we fucking hate him," Andy said.

"You're so rude," a second guy said to his friend. "Why do you ask him what he thinks of George Bush? Why would you do that?"

"It's an interesting question to ask," said the first guy.

"It's okay," Andy said. "Everybody hates him. He's embarrassing."

"Why did you ask him that?" the second guy persisted. "How would you like it if you visited New York and the first thing someone asks is what do you think about Hitler?"

"No one is voting for George Bush again," Andy said.

"I was just interested in what he had to say," said the first guy.

He hung out with them until conversation ran out of steam and the guys chatted among each other in German. Before they left, they recited bars and clubs that he should check out before leaving, which Andy promptly forgot.

Alone for less than 10 minutes, someone new overheard him order a drink.

The guy was blond, trim and cleancut, exactly the kind of dude that would have interested him.

"Why are you here?" he said in his German accent.

"My hotel is close. It's, like, interesting."

"You don't want to be here."

"I don't?"

"You'll never get laid here," the guy said. "You want to get laid, go somewhere else. There's a club around the corner. Walk out the door, go down the alley to the right. I just left. Tons of hot guys. I found somebody. A really hot guy. We're going to my place, otherwise I'd go there with you."

Andy pounded his beer and departed. The alley was more of a narrow sidestreet. The bar was, indeed, packed. He struggled to subtly elbow his way through the crowd. There were too many guys, too many groups, the kind of crowd where it seemed like everybody knew each other. He finally ordered a beer, then skulked to the wall, leaning back and trying to scope the room. He hoped that somebody would see him and pick him out. He lacked the moxy and experience to strike on his own. When the guys next to him lit a joint and offered him a hit, he thought that it might be his opening. They were hot. Andy took a couple of hits, passed the joint back, and cheerfully introduced himself in English. They said hello and continued their conversation.

Andy returned to his hotel room at about three that night, drunk, stoned and alone.

The next day he did tourist Berlin, going through the Cold War and World War II sites, watching a few dozen anti-war protesters congregating around the Brandenburg Gate and wanting to cheer them on. After scarfing a double order of currywurst, he went back to his hotel and napped for two hours.

He showered and dressed for the night, trying to pump himself up that it would be different.

Not long after, his Nebraskans found him.

Nick and Will were boyfriends from Omaha. Nick was 29 and Will was 27.

About eight months ago, Nick sold his house and used the money to fund their trip around the world. They were nice-looking guys, above average, but in the context of Andy's longrunning loneliness, on that night, they looked to him like models.

They traveled so much that it left them slightly jaded.

"Amsterdam is the best place we've been," Nick said. "Going out there was the best time of my life."

"Vienna was good. I liked Vienna a lot."

"But not for the gay scene," Nick said.

"No, not the gay scene," Will said. "Prague was good too."

"Scandinavia is nothing special," Nick said.

"Yeah, there's no reason for Scandinavia."

"Plus it was so fucking cold there. Oslo in February. We're the assholes who went to Scandinavia in February."

"Cheaper, though," Will said. "We saw reindeer. Got our photos taken with reindeer."

"We did it all backwards," Nick said. "We went to Asia when it was hot and Europe when it was cold. It was cheaper that way but that's not why we planned it."

"Where did you go in Asia?" Andy asked.

"Oh, all over," Will said. "Japan."

"Japan, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia. We got visas to cross into Burma. Isn't that wild? We crossed into Burma for a day. They made you check your passport at the border and gave it back to you when you returned."

"India," Will said.

"Yeah, then India and Sri Lanka," Nick said.

"Incredible beaches in Sri Lanka."

"Dubai is the most amazing place in the world," NIck said.

"Really?" Andy said. "Dubai? I thought it was all slave labor and new architecture."

"The architecture is amazing," Nick said.

"If you asked me what's the one place you've been that you must see for yourself, I'd say Dubai," Will said.

They were eager for fresh company, even moreso than Andy. They had such quick rapport with each other, stepping on each other's sentences and completing each others thoughts -- Nick especially, like he word-raced Will's every other thought. It was a function of being on the road together for six months.

Andy kept paying for their rounds because he didn't want them to go. Then it became evident that they'd continue hanging out. "Where should we go next?" Nick eventually asked.

They decided to try a big club. It was six months before the Berghain opened and dominated Berlin nightlife, but their first choice still had a line running four blocks long. They waited for a half hour behind a group of bickering French high schoolers, the line barely moving 20 feet, before they left. It was almost 1 a.m. but it didn't feel late. They took the trains back to Schonenberg, only because it was Berlin's gay district and they didn't know where else to go.

Andy understood that Will and Nick weren't like him. I sometimes have moments in my own life where I realize the absoluteness of my social bubble, and it's staggering. Like me, everybody Andy knew was getting a fancy liberal arts degree and practically lived on the internet. We debated HBO shows and snarked against Dan Brown novels. Will and Nick weren't unlettered dolts, but Will had dropped out of college and they'd spent their whole lives in Nebraska. Nick underwrote mortgage applications in a bank; Will was vague about what he did for work, but Andy picked up allusions about making deliveries and some kind of office job that he didn't like. They'd talked about moving to Chicago someday but were happy enough in Omaha, where they'd met, which seemed like a gay mecca to them in context of where they'd grown up. Gay life there was still insular but they had a real community. Neither of them had been abroad until their trip around the world.

They were such nice fucking dudes. They were unpretentious. His world seemed calculating and guarded in comparison. You couldn't speak your mind if it came out wrong. Your tastes in songs, books and jeans could be judged. If you thought that you were supposed to know about something, you couldn't confess ignorance. Jesus Christ, why? What was the point? Who gave a fuck? You could be the kind of guy who sold his place and traveled for a year without a safety net. It wasn't going to ruin your life. So you move back to Omaha and start saving from scratch. So what? You were going to trade experience for the illusion of material security? Always being judged, always judging others without calculation, just by reflex of education and circumstance? Christ, Andy, what's wrong with everybody?

What's wrong with you?

He could hang out with them for the night and do whatever the fuck he wanted. They wouldn't object or scorn him later.

When they found a flier about an all-night party in an event space, he questioned nothing. Like me, Andy felt like an idiot when he danced, but he danced for hours. Will disappeared for a half hour ("He's probably trying to get coke," Nick said, with a roll of the eyes) and when he danced alone with Nick, he let himself imagine that Nick liked him. It wasn't real; it was just a shadow of affection. Andy would never have pursued something that might complicate a relationship. It had been four months since another guy had been close to him, so when they danced and Nick's chest approached his, Andy granted himself the illusion of possibility.

JOE: How late did you stay at that club? ANDY: it closed at 6 a.m. we were still there when it closed. JOE: Awesome. JOE: Wait, did you go home with them? ANDY: wait, no, it gets better. ANDY: we get outside and it's not even light out. we'd been drinking vodka and red bull for hours so everybody was wired and we didn't feel like going to our hotels. ANDY: we get outside and there's this, like, short fat german guy in his fifties named frankie and he and will are talking like they know each other. ANDY: apparently they were talking earlier in the night.

Frankie was extremely flamboyant.

"Nobody ever wants to go home," Frankie said, in his extravagant German accent. "You should go to Kit-Kat."

"The fetish club?" Andy said.

"Fetish club? Yes, I guess it's a fetish club. It's very chill."

"Won't we have a hard time getting in?" Andy said, pointing at their jeans and their nylon spring jackets. "Look at us!"

"A hard time getting in?" Frankie said. "You won't have a hard time getting in. You are young. You are attractive. You can check your clothes and they will let you in in underwear."

"In our underwear?" Nick said.

"In your underwear? It will be fiiiiiine," Frankie said. "The whole vibe there is very chill. It's a very chill place."

"But it's a fetish club," Andy said.

"Fetish club?" Frankie said. "It is very mellow. The first person you will see is a lawyer from Hamburg who is masturbating. He is very fat. He takes the train from Hamburg every weekend and sits there, masturbating.

It is his thing."

How this was a selling point, Andy wasn't sure. He and the Nebraskans exchanged looks, and without discussion, it was understood that they would be going to Kit-Kat, the fetish club.

The club was in a non-descript building on a normal commercial street. A hairless bouncer at the front door looked them over. He knew they were English speakers before they said a word.

"I'm sorry, guys," he said, "but the thing is, you have to understand that this is a fetish club. I couldn't possibly let you inside looking like this."

"Oh yeah?" Nick said, full of confidence. "What about this?"

Nick lifted his shirt and tugged the top of his jeans, revealing the rim of what appeared to be ordinary blue boxer shorts.

The bouncer raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth to comical effect, as if sincerely stunned and surprised by the erotic deal-sweetener. "Yes," the doorman said, in his deep German monotone. "That is extremely hot.

You are all together?"

"Yes," Nick said, grabbing Will by the arm. "This is my boyfriend."

"You are all gay?" the doorman said. "You can go in."

ANDY: if you ever tell anybody about this, i'll kill you. ANDY: like, don't tell rick or sanjay or danielle. i don't want them thinking that i've become completely hedonistic.

The coat-check was a clothes-check. They walked in to a naked man stepping into his jeans.

"Here we go," Andy said, as he started to unbutton his shirt.

Because he didn't want to be barefoot in a place like that, Andy found himself naked except for red boxer shorts, black socks and black sneakers.

As promised, the first thing they saw was the Hamburg lawyer sitting alone on a couch, masturbating.

ANDY: i know this sounds crazy and you'll think that i've lost it, but after a few minutes, it seemed normal. it was weird and fun. ANDY: there was the hamburg lawyer sitting on the couch with his dick out stroking, and there were women there in these, like, leather vests with their boobs hanging out. ANDY: this skinny guy, pretty young, was sitting in what looked like a dentist's chair, totally naked, jerking off with these girls standing around him. we walked past right as he jizzed. JOE: Jesus, Andy. JOE: You're freaking me out a little. ANDY: no, but here's the thing. JOE: I always think of you as so innocent. ANDY: yeah, but in a weird way it seemed so innocent. ANDY: like, hear me out. ANDY: it was just such a random collection of people. nobody was bothering anyone. like, you could never do this in new york. people would be too out of control. ANDY: but there was every type of person, gay, straight, guys, chicks, all ages. there were people in leather, guys wearing diapers. it was just this crazy hodgepodge, like you're at a sex costume party. ANDY: and, like, nothing REALLY graphic was going on. no intercourse. i saw some kissing. they were just chilling and doing their thing. ANDY: so there'd be a guy in his 70s in assless chaps next to a really hot guy wearing a speedo and a life preserver. ANDY: the nebraskans and i hung together and danced in our boxer shorts and sneakers. nobody bothered us, on one even came onto us. ANDY: we were the most vanilla people there. ANDY: if this had been nyc, people would have been grabbing our asses, trying to sell us drugs, trying to wedge their way in and grind up against us. ANDY: europeans are so much more relaxed. ANDY: you probably would've loved it. it was kind of sweet and hilarious.

There was an enclosed patio behind the club. It circled an outdoor pool, which was empty of water in March. It was pretty cold, somewhere in the upper 40s, and lightly misting, but Andy and the Nebraskans stepped outside. The Nebraskans smoked. For just five minutes, it felt good to feel the cool mist hit and evaporate on his bare skin.

"This was unexpected," Andy said.

"No, didn't expect this at all," Nick said.

"Think my favorite is still the skinny guy who jizzed," Will said.

"No, I like the hot guy in the life jacket," Andy said.

"Naked lady with the feather duster," Nick said. "She's wonderful. She's so happy."

"Feather-duster fetish is specific," Andy said.

"I can see it," Will said. "Feathers feel nice and feathery. I don't get the thing people have for leather. Leather feels tight and nasty, doesn't it? I don't even like leather couches."

"That's why they're fetishes, I guess," Andy said. "If it was everybody's flavor it wouldn't be a fetish."

At 9 a.m. they decided to leave and get food. Breakfast in Europe sucked for Andy -- lots of cured meats and cheese, not enough omelettes. The three of them looked drained. Andy found himself struggling for balance when he got up from the table to hit the men's room. They'd been together for 13 hours.

The Nebraskans were leaving Berlin on Tuesday. They were spending at least a couple of weeks in Italy before hitting Spain and Morocco.

All night, Andy had had it in mind that at the end, he was going to hook up with both of them. He liked Nick more, who was taller and thinner and more outgoing, but Will was cute enough too -- definitely acceptable. He'd been thinking about how to invite them back to his room, but like you know, Andy was bad about being proactive in these situations. He didn't want to offend them; he didn't want to mess with their relationship or end the night on a sour note. At points in the night, he'd realized that this was what he'd needed for months, more than getting his rocks off with some Italian dude or hot German tourist and feeling grubby about himself afterward. He needed an outlet to let himself go; the goal of getting off with another guy had only been a vehicle for that.

As they ate breakfast and Andy suggested places in Italy, he realized that even if they wanted to hook up with him, they all were too tired. Too much alcohol and Red Bull and spread through their systems. His hangover was beginning while he was still awake.

"I don't want to be presumptuous," Nick said, "but we're planning to spend at least a couple of days in Florence. Maybe we could get together there and you could show us around."

"Yeah, man," Andy said. "That would be perfect."

"You don't have to cancel any plans for our benefit."

"No, man, I'd fucking love it," Andy said. "I know this sounds crazy because we've only known each other for a few hours, but I was just, like, thinking about how much I'm going to miss you guys when we leave."

"Awww, man, that's so sweet of you."

"We'll miss you too, man. You've been good company."

"And maybe I could, like, take off for a weekend when you guys are there.

Show you Siena and Pisa. Siena is great."

"Oh, man, that would be perfect," Will said.

They swapped e-mails. Andy hugged them on the street when they said good-bye. His flight back to Florence was supposed to leave in six hours.

He went back to his room, showered and fell into bed. Italy wouldn't collapse without him.

He didn't return to Florence until Monday night. For the first time in his life, he got in trouble for missing a day of classes. It didn't even bother him. The Nebraskans would be there in just two weeks.