And Derrick Tynan-Connolly, who played volleyball with Puckett and spoke with him at length about his past and future, remembers that Puckett emanated a forced aura of confidence.
"He was trying to really present a sense of 'everything is fine,' " Tynan-Connolly says. "In my experience, that's really a thin layer. And when he said he was hanging around mostly in the Castro, I got worried, because many young people don't get the emotional support they need in the Castro.
"Young people use the Castro as a survival tactic. Older rich men use them, and in the end, everyone gets used."
So what happened in the house on Rheem Boulevard in Orinda, at about 6:30 a.m. on the morning of Aug. 31, 1997?
Was Poliakov so high on drugs and alcohol that he radically broke character, coming after Puckett in a violent fashion, refusing to take no for an answer?
Did Puckett, dazed on drugs, unable to think clearly, simply overreact to a simple come-on?
Or could it be that this killing had nothing to do with an inappropriate sex proposal at all? Could this be a senseless, accidental murder, in fact a lover's quarrel gone bad?
"If they can prove I'm gay, they can prove it was a lover's quarrel," Puckett told Walsh in a taped interview. "If it was a lover's quarrel, then it's murder."
And what if the killing was not about love, but a car, or money, or drugs? Was the killing, while appearing so spontaneous, in fact premeditated?
"Only Josh knows what really happened," Sheriff's Detective Wells says. "Absolutely why and how the killing occurred, I ask myself that to this day."
Those who don't believe Puckett's story of self-defense point to a simple statistic as proof: 5 feet 8 inches, Poliakov's height. Many people close to the case (including several jurors) say they find it hard to believe that Puckett could have felt threatened by the victim, who weighed just 130 pounds. Puckett stands 6 feet tall, and weighs about 185 pounds.
How much of a role did drugs and alcohol play in the equation? In an interview with Walsh, Kisner said that Puckett was only "pretending" to drink vodka at the house that night and morning, instead drinking water. "I guess he was trying to pretend to Steve that he was really fucked up," Kisner said.
Some people, including Puckett's father, Brian, wonder whether the killing was, if not premeditated, at least more complex than Puckett's explanation of "wigging out."
"The whole idea that this could have been premeditated doesn't really fly, because records show that it was Poliakov who was trying to get ahold of Puckett that night, not the other way around," says Detective Wells. "And I'm not really ready to believe anything that Kisner says about vodka or whatever. I'm almost inclined to believe Puckett's story that he freaked out and overreacted when the victim hit on him, but it still doesn't answer the question: Why didn't [Puckett] just throw Poliakov off him?"
"All we know for sure is that it's a tragedy, and a man's life was lost for no reason at all," says Brian Puckett. "Now, we just have to hope that Joshua can somehow come to grips with the anger and danger that's inside of him, because unless he can find a way to fix that, his life -- and the life of people he comes in contact with -- is going to be filled with pain."
It's 3 a.m. on a recent Sunday morning at Club Universe, more than a year after Poliakov's death.
The crowd here this morning is a bit younger than usual, which could be a testament to gay men coming out earlier, or simply to a laid-back doorman. Either way, the music is still fast and loud, and the shirts are still very much off.
Poliakov's small group of friends -- who frequent the club often -- are probably somewhere in the mass of sweaty bodies in the nightspot's big dance area, but finding someone here at this hour takes effort and luck. A young club kid standing at the bar -- he is thin, pale, and a welcome sign of diversity in the sea of muscles and tanning-salon tans -- says he remembers Puckett and Poliakov.
"Sure, I heard about Puckett and the guy he killed," he says, declining to give his own full name even before he's asked for it. "What happened just goes to show you what I've always said about hot boys who say they're straight, but go to gay clubs all the time. They might be cute and all, but they're usually more trouble than they're worth."
A friend standing nearby leans forward and nods his head in hearty agreement. "If they're that hot," he says, "there's always a catch.
