Mykonos Island
“Hey there, sexy. You awake?”
L wakes inside his tent. He’s alone in there, with his large rucksack beside him and wetness beneath him and all around. Water has seeped into the tent and saturated the clothes he wears, but his bag seems to be untouched by the water.
L has no idea where he is.
“Sexy, you in there? The boat’s gonna dock in about an hour.”
“Hello?”L calls out.
“He’s alive!” the female voice exclaims from outside the tent.
“Let me change into some dry clothes. I’ll be right out!”
Ten minutes later L unzips the moist tent flap and opens the world to a bright, Mediterranean day. He steps outside and onto the deck of a large ferry boat, beside a swimming pool where the overflowing water drains directly around his tent. Several groups of people, girls in bikini tops and spaghetti straps, boys in the shortest shorts modesty allows, all young and active in the early afternoon. The sun pierces L’s eyes, and for the first time he digs into his rucksack, deep into an untouched crevice, and pulls out his sunglasses. They are flat, dark little circles, and one ear piece is slightly bent, but it bends back into place and they fit comfortably.
“Thought you could use a cool beer,” a girl says as she approaches the tent. She is tall and slender, clothed only in a bikini, with a dark tan and blonde highlights in her hair. Her voice is familiar, but L does not recognize having ever met her.
“Thanks. Uh, it was a pretty crazy night, huh?”
“You’re telling me! I’ve never seen anybody work a crowd like you!”
“You saw that, huh,” L says without recognition. “By the way, what’s your name? I’m–”
“I know who you are, Lethe.” She giggles. “Pretty much everybody on this boat knows who you are. Man, you really weredrunk last night, weren’t you?”
L stammers and sits down on a deck chair.
“Name’s L, actually.”
“Your name isn’t Lethe? That’s what you told everyone last night.”
“Sometimes I get, um, I get in a mood.” L struggles. “But please, call me L.” He registers the rest of what the girl just said. “Why does everyone on this
boat know me? Did I make a fool of myself?”
“Not at all!” she giggles. “You were the life of the party! It wasn’t towards the end that I thought you might be a little wasted, but I was the closest to you the whole night. You got three frat boys to puke off the side of the boat with all the whisky shots you fed them. You went toe-to-toe with each of ‘em, never slurring a word!”
A flash of the deck in darkness enters L’s memories. The girl he’s talking with sitting cozy beside him, a deck of cards sprawled out in a drinking game, his harmonica in hand, and people singing “Oh Canada” all around him. L scans the bright deck and recalls what it looked like at night. Several tents all around, pitched from L’s example, some of the men without clothes on, and many women topless.
“Christy!”L exclaims, brought back to the daytime.
“You remember!” Christy laughs and leans down to kiss L’s cheek.
“Bits and pieces.”
“Where do you stop having constant memory?”
“I remember missing the first midnightferry, and–”
“Therewas no midnight ferry, silly. You told me this last night, and I had to correct you then.”
“That’s right, Jim…um, my friend…told me the ferry left Bari at midnight, and I got there around eight to see the dumb thing sail away. So I stayed the night in Bari, thinking I was going to get killed for interfering with the checkers game the mob guys were playing on the wharf there. I found a place, learned the ferry leaves at eight each night, had dinner…wandered around the city alone the next day, bought my ticket, and was one of the first people on the boat. We’re going to, ah, Athens…right?”
“Of course! You didn’t seem that drunk when we first set sail.”
“I can be quite deceiving,” L says. “Listen, I don’t know what we did, but I’m sorry if I misled you or did anything inappropriate.”
“You talking about the German girl you started fooling around with last week? You told me that story already, along with the one about the mob people in Bari. These stories are what made you so popular last night, you were telling everybody of your crazy adventures out here. The girl’s ex is your best friend, the wife in the group almost threw you by the wayside, the epic dream you had outside Barcelona…you’re a great storyteller!”
L does not remember any of this.
“Why you calling me sexy, Christy?”
“Because you know this thing with the German ain’t gonna last. You were asking people to put in their two cents, saying you, like, love her and everything, and some people are romantics, but most said it’s not worth it to get a few weeks fun and go messin’ up the friendships you have.” She laughs, sitting beside L and holding his arm. “After getting several people naked with that game you had going on, you called out for anyone to have sex with. A fat girl offered herself, but you said you wanted to get fucked in the ass for the first time, something about hurting your friends and the girl, that you wanted to get yourself hurt.”
L panics, feeling for any pain.
“One guy with a huge dick offered, but you laughed and said the only thing you’d do with that thing was slug it over your shoulder and burp it like a baby! The guy got so embarrassed we didn’t see him again the rest of the night!”
“Bet that was the first time that guy was embarrassed about the size of his penis.” L laughs, finally at ease with the girl who’s holding him close.
“I don’t know why you’re laughing, you have a bigger dick than that guy.”
“How do…” L blushes. “Did I get naked last night? In front of everybody?”
“No, you won that game. You also kept me safe and clothed – you just successfully got, like, a dozen boys and girls completely nude.” She looks out for a second, then whispers in L’s ear, “I did offer you a blow job after unsuccessfully trying to get you to your tent to tear all your clothes off…after the third time you asked my name, I figured you were so drunk you’d be completely limp.”
“So, we didn’t do anything.” L sighs. “Then, ah, how could you have seen my, um, penis?”
“I didn’t get you to your tent, but I did stay beside you the rest of the night.”Christy smiles. The rush of cool wind around his body, and the sight of dim lights across the dark, empty sea, punctures L’s cloud.
* * *
“You need some help there, son?”
L looks up fro his crouched spot on the dirt to an old man, in his eighties or so, white, shirtless, deeply tanned and burnt, with the twang of an Alabama accent.
“I’m good,” L says. “But thanks, old man.”
“Well, you’d be better back in that club there, with all the young people your age having all that fun.”
“Foam parties aren’t for me,” L says. He looks out from his dirt plot to the Mediterranean just a few steps away, dark and flickering under the full moon. “They’re too dirty, I guess.”
“You have to get a little dirty in life,” the man says. “And that’s no matter how clean you live. Mind if I sit a spell?”
L gestures to the dirt beside him, and the old man sits. They silently look over the water.
“Beautiful, ain’ it. Even more beautiful than the beautiful people back inside.”
“Pretty flesh,” L chuckles, and the old man laughs heartily.
“Tha’s a way of sayin’ it.”
Silence.
“You live on the island?”
“Goodness me, you are a sharp one, ain’tcha? Most tourists always assume, from my accent I suppose, I’m like them. Moved out here back in nineteen-and-eighty-two with my dear, departed wife. Sold my company, small as it was, to give us a retirement out here. See, I was born in nineteen-and-sixteen, and I worked hard always thinking of tomorrow, the future, a family I didn’t even have yet, and when I had it I couldn’t enjoy it because I was working for savings accounts, college tuitions, inheritance, that sort.” The old man’s calm eyes flicker with the sea. “So much tension, pressure, ya know?”
“I believe so, old man.”
“Old,” he laughs, “ninety years young next month, and only ‘bout thirty of ‘em truly lived. Haven’ worn a shirt in little more than a decade. It’s true! Took ta not wearing pants so often neither, back in aught two. Only wear shorts when too many tourists come round. No offense, young’un, you look like a hep guy, but most of ‘em want adventure, freedom, but they only want ta look at it, scoff at it, have stories ta tell their children – almost as a warning – on down the road. All the tourism modesty and repression. This beach here is usually nude, I just bring a towel to sit on when drinking at the bars. Yeah, whole island don’t get clothed but in the high season when y’all bring yer clothes and yer expectations. See this, but don’t see that. This is good, for a vacation of course, but never is that okay.” The old man tosses his hand this way and that. “Back in the war – the big one, ya see – I was a fighter pilot, and a damn good trainer at that. Trained the group that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Didn’ know what we were training ‘em fer, they just told us it was gonna be bigger ‘n we’d seen. Several crews trained for this one, only my crew got selected to hold the bomb. They gave us all metals, even me though I didn’ go, and said privately they chose me ‘cause of my skills a’ crop dusting before the war. That was my business, ya see, Had myself a great formula fer fertilizer – bunch a’ shit mainly – and I trained ‘em ta crop dust but much higher so they could get away as quick as can get.”
L is transfixed on the old man’s dancing eyes, still distant in the deep Mediterranean.
“I didn’ tell those men with the metals, of course, but I thought it must’ve been more than that why’s they sent my boys,” he continues. “See, I don’ know if you know much about Roman and Greek history, but a squadron of fighters had a brotherhood between them. Nothin’ was left out, everything was shared. They ate, shat, slept together, they fucked and sucked when the loins felt right, ya know? And that was my boys, I was their leader and every single one of them sucked my cock. Not because I commanded it, because they felt they had to, but it was an honor for them, and for me as well, beyond the sexual. We bonded, they trusted me with their lives, and I trusted them completely. Their mission went off without a hitch, and – fer a brief time – they were big war heroes. Bet it’ll never say in the history books that they were all cocksuckers.” The old man laughs. “What’m I sayin’ here. Ah, yes, I tell this story because I understand the bond of war, of men, of sex. I understood why the Greeks would suck each others’ cocks before battle, because of the bond me and my men had. After the war we all went ta our hometowns, married our sweethearts – they still waited for ya back then, ya know – and I was prepared for the bland life of marriage and monogamy fer the rest of my life. I grew up in the Depression and fought in the War, so’s I could take on anything. But, I was lucky. Didn’ know it fer another thirty years, but I was. See, my girl, my lovely wife, she was jus’ like me, but the times and our own repression forced us to never acknowledge it until our kids were grown and gone. It was out here, in the Mediterranean, where’s we had our first orgy. We met some swingers on a cruise, smoked some tea with the locals they knew, and came ta understood that our desires weren’t no evil, not wrong, but jus’ different from the Christians back in the States. I still love God, and I knew he still loved me. So we’d see other people, sometimes together and sometimes not, men, ladies, couples. We didn’ jus’ fuck ‘em, we loved them. We weren’ swingers like our friends. We didn’ do it for the sex, well not usually, but for the beautiful connections with everything behind the – how’d you say? – beautiful flesh. When my dear wife departed, some seven years ago now – God bless her soul I’m so glad she never lived to see the twenty-first century, and I know I’ll be with her again – she was surrounded by so many who had loved her and cared for her.”
The dancing in the old man’s eyes swell out like the sea, dark and empty but also bright. This man’s wrinkles consume his body, his flab hanging down as he sits, showing his burns and dark tan in different shades as everything rolls along. He sits there silently, more alive than anyone L has ever seen. L breathes in, sighs softly, and leans to kiss the old man, soft and subtle on the lips.
“Well, now,” the old man says, “you’re younger ‘n my grandkids.”
“It wasn’t anything like that,” says L. “I just wanted to thank you, and didn’t know anything to say.”
* * *
4/7 ~ Happy Fourth of July! I suppose. I’m so far removed from it all, except for the tourism on this island, which isn’t many Americans anyway…lots of Brits and Germans here, actually. I’m stuck here. I’m stuck in Paradise, the camping ground I found at four in the morning four days ago. The overnight ferry from Bari to Athens was amazing, as far as I’ve been told. I don’t remember any of that night, and didn’t get too many answers from Christy the next morning. I may or may not have already cheated on Gelka with this Christy girl, who lives in Philly and says we should hook up when I get back to the states, but I’m flying out to see Gelka in less than a week and I have all these feelings for her, and it seems she really likes me. She can’t stand my friends, not Jim and Lissa at least. Boy stayed behind with the couple when Gelka and I went to Bari – she flew home and I stayed an extra day because I missed the ferry that night. I haven’t heard much yet, but the last I heard Boy was to spend the last of his days up in Bonn with Gelka before flying out of Paris. I won’t see him again. I may not see the couple, either. Jim just sent a letter saying they may or may not stay an extra day in Athens before starting their journey northward back to our flight out of Dublin at the end of the month.
Yeah, I’m stuck in Paradise. The winds last night were so strong no ferry docked at the island piers to pick us up. They weren’t even that strong, but this is what all the ticket people told me at the ferry when I could see the boats in the Mediterranean distance. They say it should be better tomorrow, but if not I’ll just have to wait until they’re good again. My ticket is good for the first ferry out, so they say.
What the heck am I going to do with Gelka? Maybe it isn’t so much that she doesn’t get along with Jim and Lissa, but that Lissa and Jim don’t like her. That’s the feeling I get. They are the ones who’ll be in New York with me come the fall. Gelka may possibly move to the Southwest to finish her degree, but that wouldn’t be for another year at the earliest…am I ready for something like that? Long distance relationship? I haven’t really been in any serious relationship, not beyond Scarlet; am I ready to have a serious relationship across the ocean? I can’t have anything insignificant casual with her – it’s beyond that already. She is too close to me, regardless of how far she’ll be.
I don’t know.
Maybe Christy is right. Lissa too, for that matter. Maybe it isn’t worth it, regardless of what I feel. We’re too different. We’re too far apart. I’m only here for another few weeks. I don’t want to hurt her, but would it just hurt her more to drag it all out if there really is no “solid ground,” like I can still hear Lissa saying?
Dang-it. Whatever.
I tried to find the Greek theatrical wine my customer told me about out here, but I just couldn’t find it. Didn’t really look. Maybe it’ll be in Athens. Maybe the couple will have already left. I need to get out of here. I need my friends back. I will spend the time with Gelka as a friend, I won’t have sex with her (don’t take it too far, L) regardless of what she says. I want to maintain our friendship, and maybe something can form once she makes it out to the US. Shit I just don’t know what to do, and I feel more alone than ever. There was a foam party last night. This is what I got instead of Athens. That and the last of a great soccer game. Portugal beat England and will take on France in the semi-finals. Some of the people at the foam party recognized me from the infamous boat from Bari. I guess I made an impression. I don’t remember leaving an impression on anybody. Some people got naked. That was nice, “pretty flesh” as she always said, but I stayed clothed and had to leave before the nasty foam dirtied everything I touched. I met an old man, and he talked about the war. Probably the best thing on this island. Maybe more on that later.
I have to get out of Paradise.
L wakes inside his tent. He’s alone in there, with his large rucksack beside him and wetness beneath him and all around. Water has seeped into the tent and saturated the clothes he wears, but his bag seems to be untouched by the water.
L has no idea where he is.
“Sexy, you in there? The boat’s gonna dock in about an hour.”
“Hello?”L calls out.
“He’s alive!” the female voice exclaims from outside the tent.
“Let me change into some dry clothes. I’ll be right out!”
Ten minutes later L unzips the moist tent flap and opens the world to a bright, Mediterranean day. He steps outside and onto the deck of a large ferry boat, beside a swimming pool where the overflowing water drains directly around his tent. Several groups of people, girls in bikini tops and spaghetti straps, boys in the shortest shorts modesty allows, all young and active in the early afternoon. The sun pierces L’s eyes, and for the first time he digs into his rucksack, deep into an untouched crevice, and pulls out his sunglasses. They are flat, dark little circles, and one ear piece is slightly bent, but it bends back into place and they fit comfortably.
“Thought you could use a cool beer,” a girl says as she approaches the tent. She is tall and slender, clothed only in a bikini, with a dark tan and blonde highlights in her hair. Her voice is familiar, but L does not recognize having ever met her.
“Thanks. Uh, it was a pretty crazy night, huh?”
“You’re telling me! I’ve never seen anybody work a crowd like you!”
“You saw that, huh,” L says without recognition. “By the way, what’s your name? I’m–”
“I know who you are, Lethe.” She giggles. “Pretty much everybody on this boat knows who you are. Man, you really weredrunk last night, weren’t you?”
L stammers and sits down on a deck chair.
“Name’s L, actually.”
“Your name isn’t Lethe? That’s what you told everyone last night.”
“Sometimes I get, um, I get in a mood.” L struggles. “But please, call me L.” He registers the rest of what the girl just said. “Why does everyone on this
boat know me? Did I make a fool of myself?”
“Not at all!” she giggles. “You were the life of the party! It wasn’t towards the end that I thought you might be a little wasted, but I was the closest to you the whole night. You got three frat boys to puke off the side of the boat with all the whisky shots you fed them. You went toe-to-toe with each of ‘em, never slurring a word!”
A flash of the deck in darkness enters L’s memories. The girl he’s talking with sitting cozy beside him, a deck of cards sprawled out in a drinking game, his harmonica in hand, and people singing “Oh Canada” all around him. L scans the bright deck and recalls what it looked like at night. Several tents all around, pitched from L’s example, some of the men without clothes on, and many women topless.
“Christy!”L exclaims, brought back to the daytime.
“You remember!” Christy laughs and leans down to kiss L’s cheek.
“Bits and pieces.”
“Where do you stop having constant memory?”
“I remember missing the first midnightferry, and–”
“Therewas no midnight ferry, silly. You told me this last night, and I had to correct you then.”
“That’s right, Jim…um, my friend…told me the ferry left Bari at midnight, and I got there around eight to see the dumb thing sail away. So I stayed the night in Bari, thinking I was going to get killed for interfering with the checkers game the mob guys were playing on the wharf there. I found a place, learned the ferry leaves at eight each night, had dinner…wandered around the city alone the next day, bought my ticket, and was one of the first people on the boat. We’re going to, ah, Athens…right?”
“Of course! You didn’t seem that drunk when we first set sail.”
“I can be quite deceiving,” L says. “Listen, I don’t know what we did, but I’m sorry if I misled you or did anything inappropriate.”
“You talking about the German girl you started fooling around with last week? You told me that story already, along with the one about the mob people in Bari. These stories are what made you so popular last night, you were telling everybody of your crazy adventures out here. The girl’s ex is your best friend, the wife in the group almost threw you by the wayside, the epic dream you had outside Barcelona…you’re a great storyteller!”
L does not remember any of this.
“Why you calling me sexy, Christy?”
“Because you know this thing with the German ain’t gonna last. You were asking people to put in their two cents, saying you, like, love her and everything, and some people are romantics, but most said it’s not worth it to get a few weeks fun and go messin’ up the friendships you have.” She laughs, sitting beside L and holding his arm. “After getting several people naked with that game you had going on, you called out for anyone to have sex with. A fat girl offered herself, but you said you wanted to get fucked in the ass for the first time, something about hurting your friends and the girl, that you wanted to get yourself hurt.”
L panics, feeling for any pain.
“One guy with a huge dick offered, but you laughed and said the only thing you’d do with that thing was slug it over your shoulder and burp it like a baby! The guy got so embarrassed we didn’t see him again the rest of the night!”
“Bet that was the first time that guy was embarrassed about the size of his penis.” L laughs, finally at ease with the girl who’s holding him close.
“I don’t know why you’re laughing, you have a bigger dick than that guy.”
“How do…” L blushes. “Did I get naked last night? In front of everybody?”
“No, you won that game. You also kept me safe and clothed – you just successfully got, like, a dozen boys and girls completely nude.” She looks out for a second, then whispers in L’s ear, “I did offer you a blow job after unsuccessfully trying to get you to your tent to tear all your clothes off…after the third time you asked my name, I figured you were so drunk you’d be completely limp.”
“So, we didn’t do anything.” L sighs. “Then, ah, how could you have seen my, um, penis?”
“I didn’t get you to your tent, but I did stay beside you the rest of the night.”Christy smiles. The rush of cool wind around his body, and the sight of dim lights across the dark, empty sea, punctures L’s cloud.
* * *
“You need some help there, son?”
L looks up fro his crouched spot on the dirt to an old man, in his eighties or so, white, shirtless, deeply tanned and burnt, with the twang of an Alabama accent.
“I’m good,” L says. “But thanks, old man.”
“Well, you’d be better back in that club there, with all the young people your age having all that fun.”
“Foam parties aren’t for me,” L says. He looks out from his dirt plot to the Mediterranean just a few steps away, dark and flickering under the full moon. “They’re too dirty, I guess.”
“You have to get a little dirty in life,” the man says. “And that’s no matter how clean you live. Mind if I sit a spell?”
L gestures to the dirt beside him, and the old man sits. They silently look over the water.
“Beautiful, ain’ it. Even more beautiful than the beautiful people back inside.”
“Pretty flesh,” L chuckles, and the old man laughs heartily.
“Tha’s a way of sayin’ it.”
Silence.
“You live on the island?”
“Goodness me, you are a sharp one, ain’tcha? Most tourists always assume, from my accent I suppose, I’m like them. Moved out here back in nineteen-and-eighty-two with my dear, departed wife. Sold my company, small as it was, to give us a retirement out here. See, I was born in nineteen-and-sixteen, and I worked hard always thinking of tomorrow, the future, a family I didn’t even have yet, and when I had it I couldn’t enjoy it because I was working for savings accounts, college tuitions, inheritance, that sort.” The old man’s calm eyes flicker with the sea. “So much tension, pressure, ya know?”
“I believe so, old man.”
“Old,” he laughs, “ninety years young next month, and only ‘bout thirty of ‘em truly lived. Haven’ worn a shirt in little more than a decade. It’s true! Took ta not wearing pants so often neither, back in aught two. Only wear shorts when too many tourists come round. No offense, young’un, you look like a hep guy, but most of ‘em want adventure, freedom, but they only want ta look at it, scoff at it, have stories ta tell their children – almost as a warning – on down the road. All the tourism modesty and repression. This beach here is usually nude, I just bring a towel to sit on when drinking at the bars. Yeah, whole island don’t get clothed but in the high season when y’all bring yer clothes and yer expectations. See this, but don’t see that. This is good, for a vacation of course, but never is that okay.” The old man tosses his hand this way and that. “Back in the war – the big one, ya see – I was a fighter pilot, and a damn good trainer at that. Trained the group that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Didn’ know what we were training ‘em fer, they just told us it was gonna be bigger ‘n we’d seen. Several crews trained for this one, only my crew got selected to hold the bomb. They gave us all metals, even me though I didn’ go, and said privately they chose me ‘cause of my skills a’ crop dusting before the war. That was my business, ya see, Had myself a great formula fer fertilizer – bunch a’ shit mainly – and I trained ‘em ta crop dust but much higher so they could get away as quick as can get.”
L is transfixed on the old man’s dancing eyes, still distant in the deep Mediterranean.
“I didn’ tell those men with the metals, of course, but I thought it must’ve been more than that why’s they sent my boys,” he continues. “See, I don’ know if you know much about Roman and Greek history, but a squadron of fighters had a brotherhood between them. Nothin’ was left out, everything was shared. They ate, shat, slept together, they fucked and sucked when the loins felt right, ya know? And that was my boys, I was their leader and every single one of them sucked my cock. Not because I commanded it, because they felt they had to, but it was an honor for them, and for me as well, beyond the sexual. We bonded, they trusted me with their lives, and I trusted them completely. Their mission went off without a hitch, and – fer a brief time – they were big war heroes. Bet it’ll never say in the history books that they were all cocksuckers.” The old man laughs. “What’m I sayin’ here. Ah, yes, I tell this story because I understand the bond of war, of men, of sex. I understood why the Greeks would suck each others’ cocks before battle, because of the bond me and my men had. After the war we all went ta our hometowns, married our sweethearts – they still waited for ya back then, ya know – and I was prepared for the bland life of marriage and monogamy fer the rest of my life. I grew up in the Depression and fought in the War, so’s I could take on anything. But, I was lucky. Didn’ know it fer another thirty years, but I was. See, my girl, my lovely wife, she was jus’ like me, but the times and our own repression forced us to never acknowledge it until our kids were grown and gone. It was out here, in the Mediterranean, where’s we had our first orgy. We met some swingers on a cruise, smoked some tea with the locals they knew, and came ta understood that our desires weren’t no evil, not wrong, but jus’ different from the Christians back in the States. I still love God, and I knew he still loved me. So we’d see other people, sometimes together and sometimes not, men, ladies, couples. We didn’ jus’ fuck ‘em, we loved them. We weren’ swingers like our friends. We didn’ do it for the sex, well not usually, but for the beautiful connections with everything behind the – how’d you say? – beautiful flesh. When my dear wife departed, some seven years ago now – God bless her soul I’m so glad she never lived to see the twenty-first century, and I know I’ll be with her again – she was surrounded by so many who had loved her and cared for her.”
The dancing in the old man’s eyes swell out like the sea, dark and empty but also bright. This man’s wrinkles consume his body, his flab hanging down as he sits, showing his burns and dark tan in different shades as everything rolls along. He sits there silently, more alive than anyone L has ever seen. L breathes in, sighs softly, and leans to kiss the old man, soft and subtle on the lips.
“Well, now,” the old man says, “you’re younger ‘n my grandkids.”
“It wasn’t anything like that,” says L. “I just wanted to thank you, and didn’t know anything to say.”
* * *
4/7 ~ Happy Fourth of July! I suppose. I’m so far removed from it all, except for the tourism on this island, which isn’t many Americans anyway…lots of Brits and Germans here, actually. I’m stuck here. I’m stuck in Paradise, the camping ground I found at four in the morning four days ago. The overnight ferry from Bari to Athens was amazing, as far as I’ve been told. I don’t remember any of that night, and didn’t get too many answers from Christy the next morning. I may or may not have already cheated on Gelka with this Christy girl, who lives in Philly and says we should hook up when I get back to the states, but I’m flying out to see Gelka in less than a week and I have all these feelings for her, and it seems she really likes me. She can’t stand my friends, not Jim and Lissa at least. Boy stayed behind with the couple when Gelka and I went to Bari – she flew home and I stayed an extra day because I missed the ferry that night. I haven’t heard much yet, but the last I heard Boy was to spend the last of his days up in Bonn with Gelka before flying out of Paris. I won’t see him again. I may not see the couple, either. Jim just sent a letter saying they may or may not stay an extra day in Athens before starting their journey northward back to our flight out of Dublin at the end of the month.
Yeah, I’m stuck in Paradise. The winds last night were so strong no ferry docked at the island piers to pick us up. They weren’t even that strong, but this is what all the ticket people told me at the ferry when I could see the boats in the Mediterranean distance. They say it should be better tomorrow, but if not I’ll just have to wait until they’re good again. My ticket is good for the first ferry out, so they say.
What the heck am I going to do with Gelka? Maybe it isn’t so much that she doesn’t get along with Jim and Lissa, but that Lissa and Jim don’t like her. That’s the feeling I get. They are the ones who’ll be in New York with me come the fall. Gelka may possibly move to the Southwest to finish her degree, but that wouldn’t be for another year at the earliest…am I ready for something like that? Long distance relationship? I haven’t really been in any serious relationship, not beyond Scarlet; am I ready to have a serious relationship across the ocean? I can’t have anything insignificant casual with her – it’s beyond that already. She is too close to me, regardless of how far she’ll be.
I don’t know.
Maybe Christy is right. Lissa too, for that matter. Maybe it isn’t worth it, regardless of what I feel. We’re too different. We’re too far apart. I’m only here for another few weeks. I don’t want to hurt her, but would it just hurt her more to drag it all out if there really is no “solid ground,” like I can still hear Lissa saying?
Dang-it. Whatever.
I tried to find the Greek theatrical wine my customer told me about out here, but I just couldn’t find it. Didn’t really look. Maybe it’ll be in Athens. Maybe the couple will have already left. I need to get out of here. I need my friends back. I will spend the time with Gelka as a friend, I won’t have sex with her (don’t take it too far, L) regardless of what she says. I want to maintain our friendship, and maybe something can form once she makes it out to the US. Shit I just don’t know what to do, and I feel more alone than ever. There was a foam party last night. This is what I got instead of Athens. That and the last of a great soccer game. Portugal beat England and will take on France in the semi-finals. Some of the people at the foam party recognized me from the infamous boat from Bari. I guess I made an impression. I don’t remember leaving an impression on anybody. Some people got naked. That was nice, “pretty flesh” as she always said, but I stayed clothed and had to leave before the nasty foam dirtied everything I touched. I met an old man, and he talked about the war. Probably the best thing on this island. Maybe more on that later.
I have to get out of Paradise.