Martin's startling paintings hung in the lobby, art that showed his penchant for the sexual and the physical. As I looked around the auditorium I thought how Martin would have been pleased at how many hunky men had taken time to honor him. Big men. Men with hot thighs and chiseled muscles. Men in the company of striking women, equally Martin's friends, and men with men and women with women. There were older folks too, straight and gay.

The only mention of AIDS was made by his nurse who told "last days" anecdotes. His religion, he'd said, was composed of two elements: the ocean and his work. Yes, his art had been partly the ocean, all right. Martin had arrived on Space Coast 25 years before, surfboard in hand, a Conan among artists, his own towering frame bigger than life, rippling with muscles, his long blond hair streaming behind him as he made his way down the beach, his dog bounding ahead to sniff logs on its way with him to the pyramid of stones he'd built with his now-dead lover, Alvoro.

Handsome Alvoro! Handsome in the extreme! Latino. Passionate. Pretty-assed. Hedonistic. Direct. Together they'd lived through the years on the beach, exercising, painting, drinking in the beauty of the sea.

At the Cocoa Beach gay bar, Alvoro had early shocked traditionalists by dancing alone on the dancefloor, obviously stoned but graceful nevertheless. I'd attended his memorial service too, in a garden where, at the service's end, white helium balloons were released, representing Alvoro's spirit ascending over the telephone wires and into cloud puffs.

There were no religious trappings at Martin's memorial service. In the lobby a pianist was celebrating with Cole Porter. A bit of John Lennon's stuff played from the stage, starting with "Imagine there's no heaven..."

A friend of Martin's who'd known him twenty years spoke haltingly about how tongue-tied he felt at this moment. A sexy stud stood at the microphone and wept that he'd loved this man, that Martin had taught him to relax, that it was OK to show feelings. "That was very important to me," he insisted.

A young girl, a neighbor handicapped by who knows what, unable to speak with clarity, made herself well understood, nevertheless, as she shrieked, "I will miss him! I will miss him!"

A young woman, another neighbor, told how she'd known and loved him for 12 years.

Earlier, in September, when Martin had been beaten unconscious by 'phobes in the gay bar's parking lot, Florida Today had said that this man, my friend, was an immensely popular person. I'd always known Martin had many friends, that he'd gone out of his way to be friendly to me.

But I wasn't really sure what his popularity amounted to, what it meant in a small seaside town. Now, at this memorial service, I was finding out. I was seeing and hearing the intersecting of life and art.

Another man took the mike and stammered, "I will never forget this man, never!" Another used nearly the same words. There was no doubting their love. The sincerity of their grief was unmistakable. There was no concealing it.

I thought back to when I'd gone to one of Martin's art shows. I'd climbed the stairs. Behind me, out on the sidewalk, had stood a plethora of conventional artwork by beach artists, those interminable seashells and seashores. At the top of the stairs Martin greeted a group of elderly women who'd climbed too. This upstairs area, he explained, was "the alternative section for art."

The women were greeted by a long bizarre painting, bright-colored, shamelessly sexual. It showed three male bodies on a sandy beach. One, a priest, had masturbated and was spewing blood from his penis. One other, a Minotaur, was coming normally, while a third figure, an aging man, was doing the same. All came separately on the sand.

So this was some of the work Martin had begged me to come and see!

At a second show he listened to conventional souls gasp and complain at how uncomfortable his paintings made them. He smiled.

He used bones. "I like to paint bones," he explained.

In the wake of these recollections, another man who'd known him 20 years stood up and said Martin Hoose's work would be of lasting importance to Central Florida, maybe to the nation. Well, he'd left his artist's mark on Central Florida, no doubt. He was well-known and respected in the area.

I'd learned to like Martin slowly. Much of the time I'd spent getting to know him found me baffled by what he stood for. I admitted to him that I didn't quite understand him. I'd once interviewed him at length, had gone through the picture books of his life, had known Alvoro, had seen them together and apart.

In my first interview he'd dodged my attempts to categorize his outlook, but later he told me frankly that he was a hedonist. He'd certainly lived like one. A kindly hedonist.

A woman spoke of his passion and of Alvoro's too. They'd fought developers to save an oak, she recalled. I thought about the pyramid they'd built, and how, after Alvoro died suddenly, some 'phobe tore it down regularly and scattered the stones. Each time Martin patiently rebuilt it.

The 'phobe would return and tear it down again.

"Isn't that weird?" I said to Martin.

"What's really weird," he explained, "is the stones are so heavy, and whoever's doing it carries them into the woods, and I have to go searching for them. It really takes a lot of energy, tearing that pyramid apart."

But now the 'phobe has won. He probably hasn't yet realized that Martin won't show up next week to rebuild. The pyramid will be scattered in the woods and across the sands and the 'phobe will return again and again. Will he be satisfied, I wonder, when he finds he has no more lifting and hauling to do? No more difficult destruction to waste his strength upon?

The other 'phobe, the one who jumped from a car full of 'phobes' and broke a bottle over Martin's head, the head of a man with AIDS, at least we know what that man thought. He read in the paper the gripping story of the artist he'd attacked and was overcome with remorse. He called Martin and without giving his name, asked forgiveness. He'd been drunk, he said, egged on by others.

I'd encouraged Martin to tell his story to the newspaper. He thought about it and called a Gannett reporter. Nothing was said in her article about AIDS, and yet she did a fine job and commissioned a good color photo of Martin to go with her article. His arms were folded, and he stood proudly in front of his artwork.

"I'm proud of my work," he used to tell me. He felt good about the reporter's job in her queer-bashing article too, about how it had treated him as a respected artist, listing colleges and Florida shows where his paintings had been shown.

The last two months of Martin's life had been difficult. His trial by AIDS had erupted into full-blown meningitis, the withering of his strong spine, those tortuous headaches. He went blind in one eye and deaf in one ear. And then, suddenly, he was dead.

Leaving the auditorium with others, filing out onto the street, I knew I had a better understanding of this unique man than when he'd lived. I'd seen a community honor him. I saw how that community had felt he'd honored its members.

One man who'd spoken had said, "Martin wouldn't want us to mourn. He'd just want us to remember him."

No, Martin Hoose wasn't the type of guy who'd wax sloppy sentimental. Sure enough, he'd have opted for a good-time memorial party. After all, he was a good time boy, a hedonist.

"Imagine there's no hell..."