In a foreign country

The sun shone on Jake’s alabaster skin that Saturday afternoon in Munich’s English Gardens. He felt the cool summer air sweep across the field, where hundreds of sunbathers lay in that segment of the park by the stream leading to the Isar. It was the nude section of the park, carefully noted by signs on both sides. Grandmothers and grandfathers, young children, middle-aged couples, young men and women, all enjoying the sun al fresco – including Jake.

He’d certainly never had this kind of freedom in Pittsburgh, where the closest he came to public nudity had been that two a.m. romp in the bushes of Schenley Park with William and that hairy muscle boy from Cleveland. They didn’t call that glen the Fruit Loop for nothing, Jake remembered. But Munich – thank goodness he’d gotten the student exchange from Bucknell. He supposed some unlucky Bavarian was bored out of his mind in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

Gruss Gott, the swarthy Turk said to Jake, luring him out of his sun-soaked reverie. Jake had been cruising him more than an hour, twenty feet from where he’d been sitting. Lucky that Jake spoke German - which he made clear in his reply. Was machst du, denn? “What’s up with you?”

“On my way to the beer garden, thought you might like a beer,” the Turk said, also in German. He introduced himself as Attila, and Jake could barely stifle his snicker – though Attila was so good-looking, Jake managed it. Like Jake, he’d been sunbathing in the nude, but he’d put on his jeans and stood there – shirtless, a dark hairy chest thrown into profile by the jeans in the foreground, the sky in the background, and Jake admiring him from the ground.

“Sure,” Jake managed to say, portraying a non-chalant attitude as best he could. He got up and dressed, followed Attila to the beer garden. Like Jake, Attila was an exchange student at the Technical University – studying astronomy, unlike Jake’s international relations. They clicked beer steins when they got their Hacker-Pschorrs, drank them down quickly.

“So what’re you into?” Attila asked after the second round of beer.

“I like English literature and film noir.”

Attila laughed. “That wasn’t what I meant. Thought you and I could meet in the gardens later tonight. Around two a.m.”

No invitation to his flat, Jake asked himself – no dinner invite? No different from Pittsburgh, Jake thought. And yet, that hairy chest …

“I’d love it.”