Rowland Byass

Jop: Where are we, what is this place?
Rowland: It’s called a finca — a house and piece of land I bought nearly three years ago in the countryside just outside Valencia, Spain. It’s this unusual house. I’m living and working on a project to develop all this land into something more like a permaculture-forest-slash-landscape-garden. Eventually I’ll have some cabins and other accommodations were people can stay and work as artists-in-residence.
And the house has the most amazing dome.
Yeah!
It’s a remarkable house.
A local man named Ramón was the designer — an interior architect, something of an artist… I think this place was a bit like a local meeting place for, I guess, artsy and musical locals. They’d throw parties and symposia type things. He built this house like a casa de campo, a weekend gathering place for events. He was totally in love with Santorini, he went there many times, that’s why it’s called “Casa Santorini”. But curiously from some angles it looks like a mosque. Apparently, the locals call it “La Mosqita”.
If you think about Greek architecture, you don’t think of domes so much, do you?
When I think of Santorini, I do. The village houses along the slopes of the caldera are all whitewashed with blue domes.
Is this building a queer expression?
Maybe there’s a secret queer history to this place. I think the jury is out. My boyfriend José looked at pictures of Ramón saying, ‘No that’s a straight Spanish man.’ But then again you never know…
All the signs are there, all the red flags! (laughs)
It’s telling! I’m lucky to have found this place. I was looking for a place where I could use my background as a garden and landscape designer and bring together everything I’ve been interested in and learned over the years. It had all I wanted. It had enough land.
Is everything around here yours?
Everything up until the palm tree is mine.
It’s an orchard, right?
It’s a mandarin orchard. Two different kinds. They’re still productive but neglected. I’m gradually trying to get them back to life, taming them, but I want to diversify and plant trees for timber, and some olives, fruits and nuts. A designed woodland is the goal. The goal for this place is to make it economically diverse. Also thinking of planting aromatic herbs, for culinary and medical purposes.
When do you plant trees over here?
Winter and spring that’s the season to get everything done. Summer is just too hot.
Valencia never gets really cold, does it?
You do get a winter here and it gets cold. A lot of Mediterranean houses aren’t built for winter, they’re drafty and damp. It’s a house made for summer.

Do you originally come from the country?
I grew up in the English countryside, but lived in London for nearly 20 years. Then I lived in Berlin for two years. It’s partly by chance and partly by circumstance that I ended up in Spain. In a weird way it’s not so dissimilar around here from where I come from. Just a different country and a different climate. It’s working countryside, agricultural and productive, not a retirement countryside.
So it’s not retirement.
I’m a bit young to be retired. This place is my project. I’ve got a lot more work to do. I had some kind of pivot 10 years ago where my work went from being a garden designer to making ceramic sculptures. I’ve barely gotten started with that. I want to have a second career and see what I can do — I don’t think artists ever retire.
No, they don’t. It’s interesting to create an active place to get things done. For a lot of queers, there’s a fear of disconnection, isolation in the countryside.
I can tell you something about that as well! (laughs) It’s actually a lot — A LOT — of work. Just keeping the place going, let alone making progress. And I’m the type of person that never wants to do nothing.
It’s also a lot different from living somewhere part-time in a holiday home.
It could be a holiday home, but for me it’s a place to live and work. A whole environment I want to create. Who knows? Maybe someone will come and live here with me at some point. That’d be nice. Now that it’s summer, I actually have to fight people away. In the winter, it’s much quieter.
For a lot of young people, the gay experience is wanting to escape the isolation and rejection you grew up with, especially if you grew up in the countryside. A lot of queers escape to the big city. How was the reverse trek for you?
When I was living in London, I was always aware that I wanted another chapter where I wasn’t living in the big city. There are other lives I wanted to live. The classic thing, I spent the first half of life out in the world, defining my role in society. And the second part is the inward turn. Also in a spiritual sense, I spend a lot of time on my own since moving to Spain. Unlike in the city, you can hear yourself here, you learn a lot by being by on your own.
There are also so many people moving back to where they came from these days.
Maybe it was less possible 15 years ago. You can now live in the countryside and stay culturally connected with the wider world. It’s also something in the zeitgeist, especially since the pandemic. I know of a lot of queer people who moved to the countryside, by themselves, as couple, or doing some sort of communal living thing.
A lot of young people are being pushed out of big cities because they’ve become so expensive. London is a real survival, but so are Berlin and Amsterdam.
Totally. I’m making a place for myself and for other people. My vision for this land is that it’s a shared space for people who can work here and escape the overstimulation and pressure of living in the city.
Like a community, a form of utopia where queers come together in the countryside.
Yes, a little queer utopia in the countryside. My own version of that.

Are you looking for queer connection here?
I recently joined one of the apps again. Gay people live everywhere. The young guys around here tend to live with their parents. The downside of the countryside is there’s not so much queer life, or cultural life, out there. But my idea is to create it. I should have a party here this summer, for my 50th birthday.
Oh? When’s that?
…It’s actually in November. (laughs) But I’ll do it when it’s still warm, in September. People can camp here. I gotta get that organized. This place was made for parties and socializing, that’s when it comes alive. With lots of people around.
Let’s talk about Spanish men.
There are certain men in the Spanish countryside that I’d have never met while living in the city. They are usually not closeted, but discreet. And they’re definitively not in the gay cultural world, and not gay identified. Low key, ordinary guys who like having sex with men. They might be somewhat conservative, a bit shy. Some of them are very sexy. They can be more complicated as well and more prone to, I guess, hang ups about their sexuality.
Which you discover while having sex?
No, they’re usually very hot in bed! It’s more about getting them into bed. (laughs) But not so much has happened recently. I have been almost celibate over the winter, which is for me not typical.
What happened?
During the winter I went through a bit of a dark moment while living on my own. I’d go to the edge of the steps here and look out over the overgrown orchard and I’d get a sense of…panic. I spent the winter months working out for myself whether I was really committed. I realized it’s really great idea — living in the countryside and restoring a house, developing a piece of land… But it’s daunting.
I can imagine that, yes!
They say that when you buy land you should spend a year living on it before you do anything to it. The purpose reveals itself to you as you live with it.

Tell me about your last name, Byass. I mean I have to ask this question of course! (laughs) Is it pronounced “by ass”?
No, it’s not “by ass”, it’s pronounced like the word “bias”. It’s not a common name in England. Quite unique, actually. I got a lot of stick for it at school. I was also the fat kid until the age of 12, 13. And then I started going to the gym. (laughs)
Is that how you got so muscular?
I did something athletic most of my adult life. It’s part of my mental health protocol.
You were also a go-go dancer in LA for a bit, right? So you must’ve had a certain level of buffness.
I’m not so buff as some of the guys who do that.
In America they’re all on steroids.
The ones that are mega buff, yes. I got this gig at The Eagle in LA doing go-go dancing and hosting. I mostly walked around with a tray of shots in a jockstrap. It was a lot of fun. Met super interesting people. And soon enough I was making enough money to pay for my entire trip to California. Most of the money I made was in Palm Springs with all the retired gentleman there. They are quite generous in Palm Springs.
When was the time you did porn?
Well…! I did some studio porn around 2009. Just for kicks. I had lost my job and the money wasn’t bad. Around 2015, I met the film maker Antonio da Silva, whose work is somewhere between porn and art. He made a film about me, called ‘Ecosexual’. That was his name for it. Making love with plants and nature. We spent a week in Portugal filming. Afterwards, back in London, we wrote a voice over together. It’s a story of my life at that time. Part of the over voice is me complaining about being objectified even though I was fully objectifying myself!
It’s very vain and very generous at the same time.
Exactly. It’s also true.
And that was the end of your porn career?
Um, pretty much. I recently have revived my OnlyFans. It’s free and I don’t have that many followers. I may do some new content, like pay-per-view. For me, it needs to be fun and not a job. I read somewhere, porn is a place to visit, not a place to live. I’m definitively into showing off and objectifying myself, but I don’t want it to be the foundation of my entire identity.
What turns you on? Are you an ass guy or dick queen?
I definitively love eating a nice ass. I can do that for a long time. Natural hairy guys, too.
Lots of that in Spain!
Yeah, potentially. Spain is a sexy country. But sexually speaking, I’m always a foreign person.
But they do love a blond.
They do.