Wrestling a shirtless ex-neo-Nazi in the Black Forest

(Or "I wish I hadn't been so asexual when I was 21...")

My first sexual experience with another person was on top of a hill in eastern Germany twenty years ago with a “straight” guy who later turned up on Shark Tank. (Or as it’s known in most of the rest of the world, Dragon’s Den.) I can still taste the summer night air, feel his hands running through mine, recall the thrill of brushing his bristly arms and legs. I gazed up at the Milky Way, my head in his lap, drifting in and out of nirvana. We didn’t even go very far - I’m not sure it would qualify as second base, more just an extended session of affectionate, sensual touching - but it felt like being born.

This isn’t the story of that time, but of its dark flip side a year later - how that balmy night re-enacted itself with a different “straight” male friend (who I’ll call Tobias) on a different pine-covered hill in a different part of Germany, with far more chaotic results… but with the same heady emotional connection, the same sense of might-have-been, the same Sehnsucht nach verlorener Zärtlichkeit. Most of all, it’s about how the weight of 20th century German history violently refracted itself through a human prism.

It’s August 2004, I’m 21 and coming to the end of my first year in Germany, where I arrived on an Erasmus placement in October 2003. I live in student accommodation on the university campus, sharing a kitchen with the ten other guys on my floor, who are an eclectic bunch. There’s a Vietnamese guy called Boone whose parents named him after Pat Boone. A long-haired German guy who smokes dope and is into Monty Python and The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. A Greek guy who always keeps his curtains closed and hardly ever leaves his room. A gay beauty pageant winner. A sociology postgrad from a family of East German communists. And me.

And Tobias. A hot, blond, athletic German guy several years older than me, with intense blue eyes. Quite frankly, he’s gorgeous - and also scary. There is something Garak-like about him; he has a certain fascination for me and also puts me at an unease in a way that I like. Over the course of the year, he’s one of the people I hang out with the least, because he doesn’t seem to be around a lot and we just don’t run into each other much. Yet when he is there, there’s something I find compelling about him - the way he puts me on the spot, fixes me with his gaze, makes me squirm slightly. One of my English friends who met him at my birthday party comments on his crazy eyes.

At the end of term, Tobias invites me to come and stay with him in his hometown in the Black Forest for a few days. He’s going to be having a big birthday bash with lots of his local friends, which sounds like fun, and being based there for a long weekend will be a nice change of scenery and give me the opportunity to sightsee in the region. I’m also just curious. So I say yes.

A couple of weeks pass uneventfully, and I pack and prepare. Finally, the day comes. When I arrive by train on the Friday evening, he meets me at the station and apologises for his nose, which he says he broke the previous weekend after taking three ecstasy tablets and running into a door.

We meet a friend of his and go to a supermarket to buy alcohol for the party the next day. I get an odd vibe off his friend, and between that and the state of Tobias’s face, my brain is already going "What have I got myself into?"

His friend leaves again, and we head to Tobias’s home in the hills above town, right on the edge of the Black Forest. He has a whole annexe to himself, essentially a very large open-plan apartment; his parents live in the adjoining house. We chat amiably and he cooks mushroom pasta for dinner. It’s delicious. As we eat, Tobias opens up about his background, telling me he spent his childhood in six different foster homes, belonged to a neo-Nazi cell for two years as a teenager, and once stamped six times on a Turkish taxi driver's head.

We drink. And talk. He decides we should go to a gay bar in town. This comes out of the blue, as I’m still in the closet to most people and didn’t think he had any idea I was gay. When I tell him, he says “I know”. And he didn’t hear it from anyone else; he could always see it in me, that much I’m sure of. We drink some more, and he says he wants to give me a makeover before we head out. He wants me to look attractive and have a good time, so he dresses me in some of his clothes, which are too tight for me. I roll with it.

The town centre is a 45-minute downhill walk away on dark country lanes. On the way, Tobias has a breakdown and collapses onto the asphalt as he tells me about his grandfather - who throughout all the chaos of his childhood was the person who loved him most and had the most positive impact on his life, but who was also an unreformed and enthusiastic Nazi. Trying to emotionally reconcile this paralyses him. I tell Tobias that the most important thing is that his grandfather loved him. We reach the gay bar, and on the way down the stairs to the entrance, he squeezes my arse. I return the gesture.

There is nobody in the gay bar. Well, not nobody - about three people, maybe. That’s provincial gay bars for you. We chat to the bartender, a nice young straight woman who wants to come to the UK to study English. Tobias, far from making a move on me, is adamant that he wants me to score. He has brought me here because he wants me to be happy - he is completely sincere in this - and encourages me to go into the dark room and find someone I want to have sex with. Aside from the fact there’s no-one there, it’s the furthest thing from my mind. He’s also oddly protective, telling me to stay safe in the (empty) dark room and to call him if I get into trouble. As the gay bar is completely dead, we go back to his place. On the way, he asks me to kick him in the balls, and I say no.

When we return to the apartment, Tobias takes his shirt off and says he wants to show me how to wrestle. I go along with it. Maybe I’m too Louis Theroux, too passive, but 21-year-old me always wants to ride things out, to see what’s going to happen next. The wrestling is extremely hot - how could I say no? We’re both quite drunk. He asks me to strangle him. I express reservations, but agree to mock-strangle him. He wants me to do it harder. I do it as hard as I think I safely can. We wrestle, my hands around his neck. Then the blood comes.

It’s not his blood; it’s mine. The wrestling got too rough and I’ve had a nosebleed. Tobias flies into a state of panic, terrified that he’s hurt me. His extreme care is the most unnerving thing all night. We attend to the nosebleed, which stops again.

A short while later, on the sofa, he pours an entire bottle of beer over me.

I’d planned on staying for a long weekend, maybe 3-4 days. Now, just a few hours after arriving, I’m wearing his clothes, drenched in beer, with tissue paper stuffed up one nostril, trying to keep him vaguely emotionally controlled… doing as much as I can to listen, counsel him, reassure him, downregulate him, to be a good friend to him without aggravating him. The main thought in my mind: "If this is what the first night has been like, how am I gonna survive the weekend?"

Tobias tells me about his drug-taking friends in Karlsruhe who died of overdoses. He says to me that there are ways that two men can have sex without doing anal. He also keeps talking about a girl he likes in Bielefeld who he wants to come to his party tomorrow. It’s almost 3am, and obviously she isn’t coming, because she's in Bielefeld.

He calls her and talks to her, then puts me on the phone with her. I chat to the Bielefeld girl for a few minutes, then hand him the phone back.

The conversation ends. When it sinks in that she isn’t coming, Tobias blows up and starts throwing items around, picking up anything he can lay his hands on (including my luggage) and hurling it across the room. He's also not remotely interested in me anymore; I'm no longer the focus of attention. So the potential emergency escape plan I’ve been formulating goes into action. I’ve decided that under no circumstances is it safe and advisable for me to stay, so I’m going to make a run for it.

I discreetly pack. He doesn't notice. As he goes for a shower, I tell him I'm going outside for some air, then sprint as fast as I can down the country lane.

I lose the way, hide behind a hedge and cross a field to get back to the road again, but by aiming for the lights, within an hour I reach the town centre and find the station. Before long, there's a train. As soon I get on it, I text him to apologise for leaving and explain that I’ve gone home because I didn’t feel safe staying him with anymore. I change trains at Karlsruhe and fall asleep; when I reach my destination (the train’s final stop) I’m woken by a guard. I head back to my room on campus and go straight to bed.

I wake up in the afternoon and tell a couple of friends about what happened. I check my phone: I have eight voicemails from Tobias. He didn't get my SMS. I know I sent it. I listen to the voicemails - eight increasingly frantic and abusive messages that document how he's spent half the night driving around looking for me. His voice is contorted with worry and fury. Irrationally, I feel enormously guilty for abandoning him.

I call him back that evening. There are voices and music in the background; he's at his party, which has just started. He responds completely calmly. I tell him, again, "I didn't feel safe there."

The worry and fury are gone; the tone in his voice is one of resignedness.