The first time I saw Tanel Jan, he was standing by a water fountain in a gay nightclub on a hot Melbourne summer night in 2010. We communicated at first through tentative glances but, after making eye contact by a water fountain on the bar, we started chatting and left the club together to walk through the sultry night air.
We strolled arm in arm through the alleyways and parklands of Collingwood, talking about our lives and dreams. He had just arrived in Australia on a working holiday visa and landed a casual job in hospitality – but he was really a scriptwriter who had worked as a cultural manager in the small town of Rakvere in northern Estonia.
Feeling jaded from too many nights alone in that club, I told him that the problem with Australian guys in the gay scene is they simply don’t know how to love – they just have no idea. “I know how to love,” Tanel Jan said, without missing a beat. “That’s easy.”
Estonia is often referred to as one of the least religious countries in Europe – but he told me Estonians are strong believers in nature, nature-based spirituality and love. He also described how, when he was a child, his country had staged a singing revolution when the Soviet tanks rolled in, in a non-violent show of solidarity and resistance.
Love and a love for nature – I was attracted to these qualities in Tanel Jan from early on. He would draw my attention to little things I might have otherwise missed, like a flower in bloom or a resplendent butterfly. I found his independent, joyful and loving spirit intoxicating.
Some months later we took a trip to my favourite beach in the world, Kings beach, a gay nude beach just south of Byron Bay in New South Wales. It can only be accessed by foot through a kilometre of lush, mossy rainforest, before the track opens up on to pristine water. It was January and other naked sunbathers were sprawled on the sand and in adjoining bushland.
We stripped off and stepped in. Frolicking naked in the warm shallow surf, and seeing Tanel Jan so comfortable naked in nature, diving in and out of the waves, I felt very close to him. In that moment I recognised him as my soulmate. I was astonished at how fortunate it was that we had met just months ago. The realisation was all the more potent because I’d brought him to my most cherished wild place.
Later on I entered a Mardi Gras competition that asked contestants to write about their best summer experience. The prize included return air fares to Sydney, free entry to every Mardi Gras event … plus condoms and a five-litre bottle of lube. I described that day on the beach – and won! We never received the condoms or lube but we did get everything else, and Tanel Jan enjoyed his first Mardi Gras in style.
It was the first of many good luck moments resulting from our relationship. I think that partly springs from the joyfulness Tanel Jan projects, and how he values things I hadn’t given much time to before: the meaning of dreams; the joy of wearing Estonian woollen socks in winter, sent by his mother.
Now, 14 years on, we are still happily together. This is not to give the impression our relationship is always easy. I’ve joked that his spirit animal could be a sloth, while mine is more like a lynx. But somehow we balance each other.
For now we’re based in Tanel Jan’s home town of Tartu, the second-largest city in Estonia, where springtime explodes with cherry blossom, lilac, jasmine flowers and wild granny roses. There is even a nude beach on the River Emajõgi where we swim and bask in the sun, just like that day on Kings beach.
I feel like the luckiest man in the world to have found a soulmate who knows how to love.
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