After barely more than a day in Athens, John knew he needed to get out of the city. The August heat, the awful snarls of traffic, the exhaust that hung heavy in the noxious air and—not least of all—his own shaky state of affairs: It was all too much. Even the small hotel he remembered from before (Martin had insisted back then that they stay in the old Plaka district, within walking distance of the Acropolis) seemed changed, diminished in charm. His room was clean and pleasant enough, with whitewashed walls and a French door that opened to a wrap-around balcony connecting the outside rooms. If he leaned carefully over the edge of the wrought-iron railing, John could see a corner column of the Parthenon rising high above the jumble of open-fronted shops and taverna signs and rooftop umbrella tables.
But had it been this noisy, even in the early afternoon? Maybe he and Martin hadn’t spent much time in their room, at least not during the day, he reflected wryly. At night, tired and eager for the tiny bed they shared, they wouldn’t have noticed or minded the din of passersby in the narrow street below or the incessant sound of bouzouki music that lasted into the early hours.
John had headed straight for the Acropolis when he arrived from London the day before. To his surprise, he was feeling relatively relaxed, hopeful, even, for a good afternoon. He climbed the steep, winding street that led from his hotel to the entrance to the citadel, where he waited in line with a swarm of Japanese tourists taking photographs of everything in sight. A handsome Scandinavian or possibly German couple, healthy and blond and dressed in identical khaki shirts and skimpy shorts, asked if he’d take their picture.
He obliged, but replied, “No, I’ve no camera,” when they asked if he’d like his taken too. Not this time, he thought, remembering the expensive Canon, complete with light meter and tripod, that Martin had insisted on lugging absolutely everywhere on their trips.
As John returned the camera, he noticed the large bulge at the young man’s button fly. As if aware of John’s glance, the man adjusted himself even further to one side with a quick hitch of his fingers. He smiled and walked away, his calves rounded and muscular, his buttocks two perfect mounds moving beneath the stretched cotton of his shorts.
Once past the ticket booth, John was disappointed to find that the Parthenon, rising before him and dominating the rocky terrain, was now chained off to visitors. On their earlier visit he and Martin had spent the whole morning on the Acropolis, wandering around the rocky expanse but repeatedly drawn back to the magnificent temple. They had roamed its vast open interior and later sat on the sun-baked steps under the east pediment, eating oranges and basking in the heat.
“You’re right beneath where the horse would be, my dear,” John had said, referring to that majestic head now sitting, incongruously, in the climate-controlled confines of the British Museum.
“No, no,” Martin had replied, “We’re under the chariot of Helios—remember, it’s approaching on the left, for sunrise. I’m Helios and you’re sitting facing me—Dionysus, if I remember correctly. Actually, since you’re the swimmer in the family, by rights you should be Poseidon, but he’s over on the west pediment. Dionysus will do, but you must sit back and open your legs a bit and look at me with lust in your eyes.”
John had dutifully obliged. Martin threw back his head and laughed, the narrow chain around his neck glinting in the noonday sun. His shirt was open in the front, and a line of brown hair peeked over the waistband of his jeans.
John had an urge to run his tongue up and down that wavy line of hair, but instead he watched the juice of the orange run down Martin’s big-veined hand. Martin slowly licked his fingers before leaning back against one of the massive columns. That moment was a long time ago, but John could still see that hand so clearly, Martin’s hand, warm and strong even when the rest of his body had diminished.
Now, after spending just a few minutes circling the exterior of the Parthenon, John headed back down the narrow street into the Plaka. He told himself he’d return the next morning, before the hordes of tourists descended. He stopped in a small café and ordered a Greek coffee, which he drank quickly. He sat for a while and watched a little black dog methodically clean scraps from under each of the café’s tables. The coffee had made him jittery, and he decided he wanted a walk. He headed in the direction of Syntagma Square, in the center of the city.
John passed the Odeum of Herodes Atticus, the mammoth open theater where he and Martin had watched from an upper tier, enthralled as the Greek words of Sophocles rang out in the starry night. The stone slabs on which they sat still held the day’s heat, though the evening air was chilly. Now, the glare of the late afternoon sun blinded him, and John’s eyes began to tear from the exhaust-filled air, worse than he remembered from before. The din of the traffic was overwhelming, the horns of the cars and trucks and buses a dreadful cacophony of hoots and wails.
As he walked, John was reminded of the beauty of the Greek men, young and old alike, who passed him on the street. He loved the blackness of their hair and the somewhat sinister allure of their thick moustaches and piercing eyes.
Did he imagine that a couple of them glanced at him with a certain interest? A handsome youth with curly dark ringlets walked toward him, definitely making eye contact as he passed. John turned to look back, but the boy had already disappeared in the crowd.
John reached the towering, rust-colored columns of the Temple of Zeus, rising unexpectedly amidst the asphalt and concrete on its tiny island of greenery. He negotiated, barely, the careening taxis on Olgas and walked along the border of the lush National Garden, near the Memorial to the Unknown Soldier.
From around a corner, two Greek soldiers approached, dressed in the uniform of the Euzones, the ceremonial military guard. Each wore a tasseled hat, a blousy white shirt, an embroidered vest, and a foustanella—a short pleated skirt that bounced mid-thigh around their white-hosed legs. Had these serious young men not been so swarthy and muscled, the effect would have been disconcerting or amusing, but somehow even the fluffy pompons on their hobnailed shoes were of a piece with the heavy brown rifles they held at rest against their shoulders.
By the time John reached Syntagma Square, he was drenched with sweat, a bit dizzy, and slightly out of breath. The air was really foul. So much for my tranquil state, he thought. He collapsed in a chair at an outdoor café near the edge of the square and ordered retsina. As he raised the narrow glass to his lips, John remembered the surprising jolt of the clear liquid with its bitter but not unpleasant taste of resin.
John was finishing his wine when he noticed a man leaning against a stone post further into the square, near a kiosk overflowing with newspapers and colorful magazines. The man was bearded and dressed in a very white loose shirt and white pants. Like the youth John had passed in the street, he too seemed to be smiling. Emboldened by the retsina, John smiled back.
The heat and the wine made the air seem to ripple in front of him, the effect not unlike the feeling John frequently experienced underwater, when everything before him was magically transformed into silence and shimmering movement. He fanned the air in a half-conscious gesture of beckoning, but this ambiguous effort got no response. The man continued to stare and smile. He took a long drag on the cigarette he was smoking, slowly exhaled, and then flicked the butt in John’s direction.
No more, enough, I must get up and leave now, John thought. He motioned to the waiter and paid his bill. As he left the square, he glanced back and realized the man had moved from his station near the kiosk and appeared to be following him.
The walk back to the Plaka cleared John’s head, and he tried to fix on a plan of some sort and not think about the man. What about tonight? Tomorrow? What had he come to Athens to do? This? He wondered if he was still being followed, but decided not to turn his head to see. He began to think of Martin and felt worse, although he knew that Martin would not be judging him. “Don’t stop your life after me, John, promise. Stay alive,” Martin had said many times, especially in those last weeks.
When John got to his room, he opened the door to the balcony and peered down cautiously into the narrow street.
The man was standing at the corner. John stepped back quickly, not sure if he had been observed.
He closed the shutters, took off his clothes, splashed cold water on his face from the tiny sink in a corner of his room, and lay face-up on his bed. He was aware that his door was unlocked and that his balcony windows were open as well, offering entry from any of the outer doors or rooms on the floor. Glancing to his left, he could see himself in the framed mirror on the low dresser. The sight of his pale, naked body in the shaded room excited him and he began to fondle himself. He was surprised when he immediately became hard.
John heard a slight tap on his door. His heart began to pound but he did not lose his erection.
“Come in,” he said.
The door quickly opened and the bearded man entered. Without a word, he approached John’s bed and stood over him. He loosened his shirt and raised it over his head, tossing it on the floor. His chest was heavily matted, and he was wearing a chain with a cross half-hidden in damp swirls of black hair.
John rose to a sitting position, unbuckled the man’s belt, and tugged at his pants. As they slid to his feet, the man’s erect cock bobbed up and down in front of John’s face. John licked its warm, veined underside and drew the man down on top of him.
The fan above the bed did little to cool the steamy August air, and soon both John and the man were drenched. John’s hands slid against the wet of the man’s back as they probed each other’s mouths with their tongues. The smell of the man’s body, mixed with the tobacco smoke in his hair and beard, was intoxicating.
The man raised himself for a moment, and John was drawn to the glint of the golden cross reflected in the mirror as it dangled between their naked bodies. At that instant he thought of Martin’s chain and how it had flashed in the sunlight that day on the Acropolis. Martin….
John couldn’t take his eyes from the mirror. He tried to continue, but it was no use.
“I’m sorry,” he said, gesturing downward.
“So…OK.” The man shrugged. He straddled John and began to jerk off. Even in the shaded dusk of the room, John could see the shiny, purple head of the man’s cock, a faint drop of moisture glistening at its tip, as the foreskin easily slid back and forth under the powerful thrust of his fist.
John grasped the man’s heavy thighs and watched as his strokes became more urgent. The man played with John’s nipples and slapped John’s wet belly with his free hand.
Suddenly, the man arched his back and cried out. John could feel the hot liquid fall on his chest and stomach. The man remained motionless, his eyes closed and his weight heavy on John’s thighs.
Finally, he swung his leg over John’s body and moved off the bed. He washed himself in the sink and dressed quickly. With a quick tug of John’s foot, he turned and walked to the door, and then he was gone.
John remained motionless on his back, his body gradually chilling under the silent fan circling above him. He was unsure of how he felt. He thought of Martin and of the heat and smell of the bearded man and again of Martin and the small bed they had occupied on another floor. He lay awake a long while listening to the music in the street below before drifting into a fitful sleep.
It was when he awoke very early the next morning that John knew he needed to get away from the noise and pollution of the city. Through the owner of the hotel he arranged for a car, and purchased the makings for a picnic lunch at a small grocery next door. After more than ample directions from the clerk at the nearby rental office and a tense fifteen minutes negotiating the rush-hour traffic, he found himself on the coastal road heading south to Sounion.
The day was clear and sunny and the breeze against John’s face invigorating. Already he was feeling much improved. He followed the narrow highway as it wound in and out of rocky coves and past tiny sandy beaches. He considered stopping for a quick dip, since already he was missing his daily swim back home. John glanced at the sea only steps away from the road and thought ironically of his club’s pool, whose venerable mosaics and faded seaside murals were meant to evoke some spa from classical antiquity.
Soon, however, he saw rising in the distance, outlined against the brilliant blue sky, the pillars of a temple. John immediately recognized this as the shrine of the god of the sea, Poseidon—for over two thousand years a lonely talisman for sailors heading out into the Aegean, and a welcoming beacon for those returning home.
John drove into a small parking lot near the foot of a hill leading to the temple. There was no one in attendance, so he carefully rolled up the window and locked the car. From a distance, the ruin had appeared small and insignificant, but as he walked up the sun-baked incline of scrub and sandstone, he became aware of its majestic proportions. A lone figure— perhaps another early riser, but without a car?—emerged briefly from behind a white column before disappearing on the other side of the rise.
John reached the top of the bluff and entered the exposed interior of the temple. He ran his hand along a pitted shaft of marble and gazed at the Aegean below…Homer’s wine-dark sea, today an azure blue, motionless except for the slow movement of a boat far off to the south, sailing in the direction of distant Santorini and Crete.
John seated himself against a fallen stone slab at the edge of the temple. He was suddenly hungry for the feta cheese and olives and bread he had bought before leaving Athens. He was tempted to open the bottle of wine he had also purchased, but it was rather early, and he was still feeling a bit ragged from the day before. He decided to wait awhile.
A steady breeze blew in from the sea, tempering somewhat the heat of the summer morning. The sun beat down on the white marble, and the droning rhythm of cicadas underlay the faint rustling of the low brush. John closed his eyes and raised his face to the sky, conscious of the solid warmth of the stone under his bare legs. He thought again of that day with Martin at the Parthenon, and he imagined the taste of the orange that Martin had held in his hands.
Some minutes later, the gust of a stronger wind from the sea stirred him. When he adjusted his gaze, John became aware of someone at the opposite end of the ruin. It was the person he had spotted a while ago, but as his eyes became focused, John could see with a start that the man was not a tourist. He was barefoot and wore loose-fitting trousers and no shirt, and he was unusually tall. The two columns that framed him were massive, but they did not diminish him as he straddled the space between.
What was most astonishing was that, except for his exceptional height, he bore a striking resemblance to the anonymous man of the previous evening. John would have been somewhat afraid but for this man’s incredible beauty and the serenity of his presence. He had a black beard and long hair that curled around his forehead and shoulders. He was not slim but his tanned body was perfectly proportioned, effortlessly graceful, as he stood motionless against the panorama of sky and temple. Like a sculpture in an ancient frieze or the silhouetted figures in a terra-cotta vase, he seemed of no particular age.
Eventually, the man turned away and began to make his way down the hill on the opposite side of the temple. John slowly rose and followed what seemed to be a path leading to the sea.
As they reached the bottom of the steep incline, John saw that they had arrived at a small beach, a secluded inlet with a white patch of sand no more than fifty or sixty feet wide. They were alone except for a young man and woman stretched out on a blanket, both very blond and tanned and naked. My picture-taking couple from the Acropolis, thought John. How extraordinary.
The man passed the sunbathers but they seemed to take no notice of him. He reached the edge of the sea and, without pausing, waded slowly into the water. When he was waist-deep he began to swim and soon disappeared around an outcropping of smooth boulders at the entrance to the inlet.
The light and the heat were intense. John shielded his eyes and gazed from the glittering blue of the sea to the blinding whiteness above. Helios riding his chariot across the heavens, John thought. Look, John, look, he’s almost halfway there, Martin would have said.
John stripped to his shorts and walked over to the couple. They were both on their stomachs, their bodies close together and their faces touching.
“Well, hello there!” John said, before he realized that this was not his blond pair at all. “Oh, sorry, excuse me…may I?” he asked, pointing to his clothes and then to the sea.
As he turned over to acknowledge John, the man instinctively made a motion to cover himself, but then he laughed and raised his hand to his eyes to shield himself from the sun. He had an erection, and as he moved, his pink cock slapped taut against his stomach. His partner smiled sleepily and stroked the man’s chest with her fingers. “Ya, sure, please,” he said, motioning to a corner of the blanket. The man’s teeth were very white against his tanned face, and the pale hairs on his body gleamed in the sunlight.
John placed his clothes near the man’s upturned feet, and then he turned and walked into the warm water. The only sound in the still air was the soft and measured splash of tiny waves. The sea was very clear, and schools of little silverfish darted in every direction as John began to swim slowly from shore. He spotted a tiny sea horse floating upright near the sandy bottom, motionless as if waiting for its rider to return.
John reached the white boulders where the man had disappeared. He cupped their smoothness and made his way around to another small inlet that led, not to a beach, but to a sheer wall of rock. The man was about forty feet in front of him, swimming slowly in a wide circle. He had taken off his white trousers and tied them around his neck, where they billowed behind him like gauzy wings.
When the man saw John, he paused and appeared to stand. The water was up to his shoulders, which told John that it was way over his own head. The man leaned back and shook his mane of black curls. Drops of water exploded and evaporated in the sunlight. He looked toward John and inclined his head slightly—in greeting or invitation, John couldn’t be sure.
John swam a bit closer and circled about the man. He dove underwater, where he could see the man clearly in front of him, arms bent on either side of his waist and legs spread wide apart, like some colossus of the deep. His cock, long and milky white in the pale aqua of the water, swayed slowly to the rhythm of his slightly moving body.
John surfaced, and this time the man smiled and then laughed. John dove again and swam underwater toward him. The man’s hand rippled slowly through the water, beckoning. As John moved through his outstretched legs, the sides of his body brushed against the man’s thighs. He felt the heaviness of the man’s genitals softly grazing his back as they bobbed up and down in the still water.
John surfaced again and exhaled deeply. He took a deep breath and once again glided silently toward the man. This time, when he reached the man’s massive legs, John grasped hold of them and kneeled on the fine-grained sand of the sea floor. The man lifted his cock with the palm of his hand and guided it to John’s lips. He became hard as soon as John began moving back and forth. Despite its thickness, John was able to take the entire shaft of the man’s cock. Soon he could feel its engorged head touching the back of his mouth. At each thrust, John’s forehead brushed against the silky hair and knotted muscles of the man’s lower body.
When he finally came up for air, John noticed a gap back against the rocks behind them. He took the man’s hand firmly in his own and they began to swim toward the cliff, the man smiling enigmatically, as if amused by John’s assertiveness.
Through the small arched opening, they swam into a little cave whose narrow roof was open to the sky. At the opposite end was a small strip of dry sand, hidden from the outside. John eased out of the water and lay back, raising his buttocks and stripping off his shorts. He beckoned the man to join him. For a while they remained motionless, the sun quickly drying their bodies. John was excited, exhilarated even, yet at the same time strangely at ease.
The man gestured at John’s cock, and he realized that he had become hard. He leaned over to take the man in his mouth again, but instead the man motioned John to move up to his face.
John leaned over and the man began to suck John’s cock, his huge hands and fingers kneading John’s ass. John knew he could not hold back for long, and he pulled away, motioning for the man to stop.
He moved down to the man’s feet. He kissed and sucked the man’s toes and rubbed them gently against his cheek. John moved past the man’s legs, burying his face in the warmth of his inner thighs.
John then moved on top of the man, straddling his chest and rubbing his cock against his own. He thought of his hot and sweaty visitor from the night before, dimly silhouetted in the mirror. He thought of all the Greek men he had passed in the street, and the beautiful man on the beach with his big hard cock. He thought of Martin, this time remembering with joy and passion the nights they had spent in that little room in the Plaka. And finally he thought of nothing but the feel of the man’s body beneath his own, the hardness of his muscled thighs, and the damp warmth of his stomach and chest.
John came quickly, the sound of his cries echoing in the small cave. He opened his eyes and looked down at the man stretched under him, his face in profile, his body bathed in the light from the narrow opening above. The man slowly rubbed John’s semen into his furry chest. John breathed deeply and rolled over and lay beside him. He watched the man’s upturned foot make slow, lazy circles in the air, his arched toes circling around and around in the silence.
When John awoke the man was gone, and the rays of the sun had shifted. The cave was shadowed and peaceful, quiet except for the gentle lapping of waves. John slowly rose, put on his shorts, and paddled back out into the sunlight. As he made his way to the shore of the beach, he began to swim with increasing power and speed. He stopped midway to catch his breath and raised his head to the still-blazing afternoon sun— Helios more than halfway home, but still there, always there guiding me, he thought. John smiled to himself.
He yelled and dove deeply into the blue-green sea. As he resurfaced, the water exploding around him, he cried, “I’m alive, Martin. I’m alive, my dear. I am alive.”