TI first met Tanell Jean as he stood by the fountain at a gay nightclub on a hot Melbourne summer’s night in 2010. We exchanged hesitant glances at first, but after our eyes met by the bar’s fountain, we started chatting and walked out of the club together into the muggy night air.
We walked arm in arm through the alleys and parks of Collingwood, talking about life and dreams. He had arrived in Australia on a working holiday visa and had just taken up a temporary job in the hospitality industry, but he was actually a screenwriter working as a cultural manager in the small town of Rakvere in northern Estonia.
Tired of spending too many nights alone in that club, I told him the problem with Australian men on the gay scene is that they don’t know how to love – they just don’t know. “I know how to love,” Tanell Jean said without a moment’s hesitation. “It’s simple.”
Although Estonia is often described as one of the least religious countries in Europe, he told me that Estonians have a strong belief in nature, nature-based spirituality, and love. He also told me how, as a child, Estonia launched a song revolution as a show of nonviolent solidarity and resistance when Soviet tanks invaded.
Love and love of nature. These are the qualities that drew me to Tanel Yang from an early age. He drew my attention to the little things I might have missed, like a blooming flower or a sparkling butterfly. I was captivated by his independence, joy and loving spirit.
A few months later, we took a trip to my favorite beach in the world, Kings Beach, a gay nude beach just south of Byron Bay, New South Wales. The only way to get there is to walk about a kilometre through lush, mossy rainforest until the path opens up into clear water. It was January, so there were other nude sunbathers sprawled on the sand and adjacent bushland.
We stripped off and waded into the ocean. Watching Tanel Jan frolic naked in the warm, shallow waves, diving in and out of the waves naked in nature, I felt so close to him. In that moment, I realized he was my soul mate. I was amazed at how lucky I was that we had met only a few months earlier. The realization was even more intense because I had brought him to his most precious natural location.
Then I entered a Mardi Gras competition, which asked participants to write about the best experience of their summer. The prizes included a round-trip flight to Sydney, free entry to all Mardi Gras events, and condoms and a five-liter bottle of lubricant. I described that day at the beach and won. We didn’t get the condoms or lube, but we got everything else and Tanell Jean had a blast at her first Mardi Gras.
It was the first of many moments of good fortune to come from our relationship, and I think it was born in part from the joy that Tanel Jan radiates and how much he cares about the things I never really spent much time on: the meaning of dreams, and the joy of wearing the Estonian wool socks his mother sent me in the winter.
Fourteen years later, we’re still happily together. I don’t mean to give the impression that our relationship has always been easy — we’ve joked that his spirit animal might be a sloth, while mine is more like a lynx — but somehow we balance each other out.
For now we are based in Tartu, Estonia’s second largest city, Tanel Jan’s hometown. Spring is in full bloom with cherry blossoms, lilacs, jasmine flowers and wild granny roses. There is also a nudist beach on the Emajögi River where we swim and sunbathe, just like that day at King’s Beach.
I feel like I am the luckiest man in the world to have found a soulmate who knows how to love.
