COCK-SUCKER: A GREEK INVENTION - THE BACKPACKER'S TALE
by TRISTAN TROTSKY
Greece didn't invent Gay sex, but it's still something special here...
Do you believe in magic? We have an open-ended schedule, with just an
'Island-Hopper's Rough Guide To Greece'
to work our way south, until at last we're coasting through the open-arms of this harbour into the port. Not one of the new catamaran high-speed ferry-links either, but an ancient rust-bucket heaving with locals, grizzled nitty-whiskered Greek men sucking pipes, assured coiffured girls in endless mobile-phone conversations, leaning on railings that betray the granular texture of painted corrosion. The tang of diesel oil. First there had been a two-and-a-half-hour delay at Iraklion for the overdue ferry out to Thera. Lost time we fritter through bars in the curve of the harbour where back-packers doze or eat sandwiches out of silver foil. Then further. Until eventually me and Anton find ourselves here, some magical off-trails near-forgotten island... and it's breath-taking.
Mountains rise steeply to the back, a tumble of white cream and lemon houses straggling down through the greenery of fir trees and dark groves of ancient olives gnarled into ghoul-faces like those from Arthur Rackham illustrations, spider-webbed with nets to catch falling fruit. Houses that grow out of the rock to face the sea, as if one element with the land and sky. A gradual descent divided into terraces enforced by rings of dry-stone escarpments, down into the crescent-sprawl of the town itself, tavernas and bars scattered around the sparkling sea-rim deluged in oleanders and bougainvilleas. Fishing-boats sleep in the certain sun, barely rocking on the lap of tide. Their names are Pygros, Spiradon, Meandros, or they're in that indecipherable old Greek blocky script that hints at but never quite gives up its secrets. The leisurely activity they suggest barely disturbs the old town's basking serenity. And a line of five calamari-bound octopus hang suspended like descending aliens above them.
This, I decide, is the place. We'll spend some time here, settle in. Weeks perhaps. Even months. We'll see how it goes. Wasn't Odysseus snared by sexual sorcery on a lost Greek island? Entranced by this realm of myth and sensuality? We only have what's in our backpacks. With dwindling Euros. We drink chilled Mythos in the shade of the 'Babis Plase' tabepna where a mynah-bird harangues us. The proprietor doesn't speak much English, why should he? But he directs us – 'Accommodation? Zimmer? Sure,' up the steep narrow cobbled alleyways past the orthodox church. To the 'Blue Monkey Apartments'. Fairly basic, but adequate. Inside, a white arch leads into a shaded bed-space, two low beds which we pull together. An antique bedside unit grooved and cratered with old cigarette burns. It comes with a small kitchenette equipped with utensils and two white moulded-plastic chairs. It'll do. There's even a view out over the headland to the west, to where a single white church delineates the extent of the wide blue bay before it vanishes in rocky promontory into the tide. We can be happy here, sure we can. He grins up at me from the bed.
We've been together some months now, clear down the Peloponnese. I like him a lot, and I guess it's time to demonstrate just how much. I slouch down there beside him and start unfastening his frayed stonewash-denim shorts, reaching inside to find what I need. He arches his back, and lets me. Laughing softly as I seek him out. Then shucking off his Green Day 'T'-shirt as he catches the playful mood. Moving round to divest me too. Soon our naked bodies are slither-gliding together, licking our way down, nipple, toned tanned stomach, navel, pubic tangle, his sweat so sour – yet so sweet, navigating each other's geography to those most singular points of fixation where they burn hard with quivering anticipation, until we're suction-locked into the most perfect closed energy-loop, a soft fusion feeding on each other's cocks in immaculate reciprocation.
I suck until his cock merges into a natural extension of my mouth, as he becomes a natural extension of mine. And we have become extensions of each other. If the world has a more powerfully intense experience to offer than this, I've yet to discover it. If this is not what we're destined to do forever, why does it feel so perfect, so right? I think of all the centuries of pain, warfare, torment and suffering that men have inflicted upon each other, if only they'd done this instead it would solve all the problems of history. The universal panacea. I imagine all the races of men linking together to form one continuous daisy-chain of nude cock-suckling bodies circling the Earth, girding the entire planet, all interlocked one to the next, all sucking each other's erections, the bishops and mullahs, prime ministers and presidents, generals and field-marshals, politicians and diplomats, criminal masterminds and warlords, princes and paupers, black and white, Asian and Eskimo, heroes and villains, lovers and losers, catholic and Hindu, professors and students, cops and junkies, gay and straight... me and Anton, and it's a breathtaking vision of global harmony with the potential to save the world... until the passion comes sharp and hot to rip and scald with those near-simultaneous trapped detonations of warm fluid gush-bursting in your mouth like raging narcotic.
Later, I leave him to sleep it off, still tasting the aroma of his body on my tongue, while I check out some of the tavernas and bars, hoping to find casual work. Enough to cover day-to-day living expenses at least. A moment later I'm lost in a labyrinth of backstreets, a maze of steep ways where the cobbles are worn to a treacherous shine by generations of feet, narrow steps leading up to brightly coloured courtyards where washing hangs out of the windows and crones in black wish you 'kalispera', dozens of plants lined up on haphazard display, and vines run across terraces to provide zones of cool shade. Where old men with bristling moustaches play prayer-beads from hand to hand. The streets have a sickly pungent aroma. The rich smell of sun-baked rubbish in the corner-bins, blended with jasmine and pomegranate. The ochre-earth between them with its consistency of baked clay. But there's little response from Vasilis, Yai Sou, Minos, trade is slack, off-season, all jobs are filled locally. There's an expensive colony of villas and millionaire yachts moored further down the sea-line, a few hidden coves down the coast, but...
Until eventually I find it, a small book-shop, dark and packed to the ceiling with volumes, just off the main strip, down a brief tumble of steps, behind spiralling wire-racks of foreign-language newspapers and magazines. Do you believe in magic? Or something very like it. I come across it almost by accident. Meandering around crammed shelf-space, German literature, a section of French and English, some tourist guides to classical sites. Dense wedges of Greek poetry and myth. Byron, of course. There's even a Gay section which naturally draws my attention.
'Yiasou,' the owner, Frederick, is a large guy with long beatnik hair and a beard, late forties, he notes my interest and strikes up conversation. 'Work? a job? Well – you speak English, that will help you sell English editions. Sure.'
We talk terms. He's not offering much. But then again, we don't need much. I return back to the apartments where he's still sleeping, high on enthusiasm. This is going to be wonderful. Evenings, we drink each other's sperm washed down by cheap local wine, trading mouthfuls wet and delicious. Beneath dusty grey-green leaves of olive trees. While behind the houses, a donkey brays mournfully, a lament to poor working conditions and the unbearable harshness of life. We'd met in an Athens bar. He's blonde and attractive in that lazy laid-back San Francisco way, a face you can't help but watch, but intense and torrid when it comes down to sucking cock, and being sucked. We backpack together down through Corinth, skinny-dipping in blue secluded coves with such an incredible sense of freedom, rising naked from the surf he looks amazing, an athletes body, a figure from mythology, from the age of heroes, a rising shipwrecked Odysseus climbing the surf onto the beach of another fantastical isle. Then slaking on each other's lean bodies. Until we gravitate to here.
Weeks spin by. I enjoy working for Frederick, although it's hardly demanding work. I re-organise his shelves, file away piles of scattered books. Sit in the shade reading from his stock, Sappho, Thucydides, Aristophanes, as he talks animatedly to surly dark-haired friends. I wonder how he ever makes the place pay, the tourist-trade is infrequent, a rare cruise-liner that calls off for an hour, but they're more interested in the bars and restaurants where they lay on extra places than they are in perusing literature. I know he has mail-order clients, 'special' collectors he contacts through a website. And above, he tells me, he has a photo-studio which he uses to generate cash. Portraits of local people mostly.
