K
Kennick
Guest
I woke with a startle. Where was I and who had his hand on my inner thigh? Where I completely nuts to lay around on lonely beaches far away from any civilization -the villas along the one side of the beach seemed to have been reduced to rocks- and with a total stranger?
I jumped up and wasn't able to conceal at all what was going in inside of me. Tassos continued to sleep and just moaned something that sounded like my name, but it could have been also the name of the dish he had had the day before. The whole place seemed wrong to me. The blaring sun, the hot sand all over me, the vast beach without a spot of shadow except for the small shadow under the tamarisk tree, the menacingly blue and deep sea that stretched endlessly and the ear drum piercing chirp of the crickets. I felt trapped.
My directionless steps led me to a rock that was standing on the rim of the water, as if to guard the sand from the water, but the water could easily flow around him and take any sand it wanted. I started to shiver despite the heat and sat on the rock to warm my feet and my ice-cold hands. The rock was me, there I stood trying to keep everything that belonged to me together, but in spite of all my efforts I couldn't prevent anybody from taking from me anything he/she wanted.
Back at the airport in Dusseldorf I was standing in front of the big window panes looking on the planes before the take off. Outside the sun was celebrating the German summer with a incredibly high humidity, everything was clinging on me, the T-shirt, the new bermuda shorts in vivid orange to chase my sorrow away, my sunglasses with orange glasses to cheer me up, my backpack, my photocamera, everything.
The moment I tried to get rid of a thought the next clung to me like a humid cloth: My flatmate who had let me do all the move out after our big exams, my ex-boyfriend who had decided to dump me, because he had thought that it would be the best for me to be alone, my parents who were afraid of letting me go to Spain after my holidays in Greece, my other ex-boyfriend who had also dumped me, because I would be better off without him, my tormenting dreams about some guys in my term that were hugely attractive
to me, my incessant hard-ons everytime I thought of the dreams during daytime.
At last a rather mechanical voice called us to board the plane to Athens and the usual chaos broke out. Everybody wanted to board first, to spread out his
hand luggage. With my shoulders hanging and with a face worthy a visit to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem I moved closer to the gate. Somebody took my boarding ticket out of my hand and said that it was always nice to fly with happy people on board. My glance shot up and met the friendly-ironic face of a flight attendant with a nametag saying Stavros, I took off my glasses and prepared to fire back, but I was hit by the hand luggage of a very well brought up lady in the small of my back and so I moved on cursing my fate. Lucky me that I had got the only seat next to the emergency exit and had nobody next to me to cling on my arm or to tell me the story of his successful life in Toronto, Geneva or Perth. The hand luggage was stowed away, the seat belt fastened, the eyes focused on endless and the ears blocked to the ongoing trouble with my diskman, when I felt a tap on my left shoulder.
The "what" that broke out of me couldn't have been more vitriolic and hardly any louder, the people around me froze in their motion, annoyedly turned around and stared at me, as if I had broken the silence in a holy place. The flight attendant called Stavros again smiled his unnerving smile and informed me that sitting there would mean to be able to open the door in case of an emergency and swiftly explained me how to open the door, how to get my life-jacket over my neck. A huge hairy man way in his sixties wanted to know why he wasn't instructed as well about what to do in such a case and also demanded such an especially for him explanation. Stavros' perplexion moved from friendly-ironic to business-like-frozen and he gave him the unmistakingly curt answer that he could easily have my seat that would demand from him to take over the responsibility for the front part of the passengers. The fat guy shup up and Stavros turned back to me with the sudden question whether I wanted to have anything special from the galley. My reply -again without thinking at all- was a new life. Stavros smiled at me and that he would see for that and left me. I relaxed the moment the plane started to move and the faster we were running and the higher we were flying the better I felt, it was as if I left some of my sorrows behind. Stavros and two other girls handed out juices, beers, cokes etc. but a ginger ale and a small bottle (0,1l) of champagne landed in front of me with a small note saying the following: "Don't be sad, my brother also is gay and it took him a while to deal with it. He partly ruined his best years and now he is getting better. You better brighten up now, take it from a person that is a stranger to you."
My mouth went dry, my eyes filled with tears, my ears hummed a strange tune and my stomach twisted and turned. I don't know for how long I was staring at the slip of paper, until a little kid that must have been running up and down the corridor yelled across the front part that I weren't sleeping and that he had won the bet. Great! What a humiliation! The whole plane knew of the morron sitting on seat 14A. The food was served and Stavros took away the untouched bottles, folded away the slip of paper, gave me my food and smiled his so far warmest smile. I barely touched the Greekoid food and stood up to go to the washer, my vividly orange bermuda shorts announced my coming and I got into the washer without any further ado. My stomach decided to get rid of some fluids, my head started to ache and I could her the choir of my relatives and my school-mates singing that they all knew that I was gay. What did this paper know of me? Who had written it? Why? What for??
With the greenest of all faces (matching my bermuda shorts as cherries on top of fried fish) I left the washer and ran into Stavros. He pulled me into the galley and asked whether I had read the paper. I nodded. Whether I had understood it. I shook my head. He took of the wedding ring of his finger and told me to hold it for a second. I denied to do so. He told me that his brother was 4 years older and a splendidly looking, handsome, intelligent guy, but that he got married just to fulfil their families expectations and fell in love with the waiter of the café next door, got divorced, left his family for about 2 years without any trace of life and only came back last Christmas to announce that he was gay and living together with the waiter. Stavros told me to hold the wedding ring for a second time. I reached for it, but on the way I changed my mind and said, okay, what if I learnt from his history, brightened up and started my gay life all over new, how would I know that it would work out well for me. He smiled a cryptic smile (the third type of smiles I saw on his face) and said that I should look out and follow my instinct, that I should leave my logic behind and trust my emotions.
He sent me back to my place with a fresh ginger ale in my right hand and some biscuits (dry, horrible, worse than Greekoid food) in my left hand. I didn't see him for the rest of the flight, but on my way out he stood there at the exit and with his farewell smile he gave me another slid of paper saying that Naxos, Amorgos, Chios or Zakynthos would be nice islands to pass my
holidays and reboot my gay-life. My attempt to answer him was blocked by the same wonderful lady with the pointy hand-luggage aiming at the small of my back. I stumbled forwards and went to pick up my luggage.
In my travel guide I found the address of a small pension on Naxos called Pension Kastelli in the medieval part of the old town and I booked a room there.
Behind me somebody coughed and expressed his bewilderness that I was sitting on a rock in the blasting sun, as if I were a penguin on an ice floe. My head turned around and within splitseconds I realized that I wasn't at the airport anylonger, that I was at the beach and that Tassos was standing nude in front of me mildly bewildered and with a twist of a mocking smile around his mouth, but also with a concerned frown to be seen on his forehead. Yoga, I snapped back. He burst into laughs and inside me something cracked and crumbled down to the sand on which my rock was standing, I got off the rock, covered the few steps between us in no time, reached out and slapped him my hand across his face. Tassos stopped laughing and looked puzzled at me, what that would be good for, he asked. That was, because you woke me up, and that (I raised my hand again, but he was quicker and held it with his hand in a firm lock), because you did all too well in waking me up, kiss me.
Never will I forget this face struggling with excitement, anger, fascination, bewilderment and something close to tenderness that belied my hesitations. He pulled me closer and asked me whether he was allowed to kiss me again. I nodded.
I jumped up and wasn't able to conceal at all what was going in inside of me. Tassos continued to sleep and just moaned something that sounded like my name, but it could have been also the name of the dish he had had the day before. The whole place seemed wrong to me. The blaring sun, the hot sand all over me, the vast beach without a spot of shadow except for the small shadow under the tamarisk tree, the menacingly blue and deep sea that stretched endlessly and the ear drum piercing chirp of the crickets. I felt trapped.
My directionless steps led me to a rock that was standing on the rim of the water, as if to guard the sand from the water, but the water could easily flow around him and take any sand it wanted. I started to shiver despite the heat and sat on the rock to warm my feet and my ice-cold hands. The rock was me, there I stood trying to keep everything that belonged to me together, but in spite of all my efforts I couldn't prevent anybody from taking from me anything he/she wanted.
Back at the airport in Dusseldorf I was standing in front of the big window panes looking on the planes before the take off. Outside the sun was celebrating the German summer with a incredibly high humidity, everything was clinging on me, the T-shirt, the new bermuda shorts in vivid orange to chase my sorrow away, my sunglasses with orange glasses to cheer me up, my backpack, my photocamera, everything.
The moment I tried to get rid of a thought the next clung to me like a humid cloth: My flatmate who had let me do all the move out after our big exams, my ex-boyfriend who had decided to dump me, because he had thought that it would be the best for me to be alone, my parents who were afraid of letting me go to Spain after my holidays in Greece, my other ex-boyfriend who had also dumped me, because I would be better off without him, my tormenting dreams about some guys in my term that were hugely attractive
to me, my incessant hard-ons everytime I thought of the dreams during daytime.
At last a rather mechanical voice called us to board the plane to Athens and the usual chaos broke out. Everybody wanted to board first, to spread out his
hand luggage. With my shoulders hanging and with a face worthy a visit to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem I moved closer to the gate. Somebody took my boarding ticket out of my hand and said that it was always nice to fly with happy people on board. My glance shot up and met the friendly-ironic face of a flight attendant with a nametag saying Stavros, I took off my glasses and prepared to fire back, but I was hit by the hand luggage of a very well brought up lady in the small of my back and so I moved on cursing my fate. Lucky me that I had got the only seat next to the emergency exit and had nobody next to me to cling on my arm or to tell me the story of his successful life in Toronto, Geneva or Perth. The hand luggage was stowed away, the seat belt fastened, the eyes focused on endless and the ears blocked to the ongoing trouble with my diskman, when I felt a tap on my left shoulder.
The "what" that broke out of me couldn't have been more vitriolic and hardly any louder, the people around me froze in their motion, annoyedly turned around and stared at me, as if I had broken the silence in a holy place. The flight attendant called Stavros again smiled his unnerving smile and informed me that sitting there would mean to be able to open the door in case of an emergency and swiftly explained me how to open the door, how to get my life-jacket over my neck. A huge hairy man way in his sixties wanted to know why he wasn't instructed as well about what to do in such a case and also demanded such an especially for him explanation. Stavros' perplexion moved from friendly-ironic to business-like-frozen and he gave him the unmistakingly curt answer that he could easily have my seat that would demand from him to take over the responsibility for the front part of the passengers. The fat guy shup up and Stavros turned back to me with the sudden question whether I wanted to have anything special from the galley. My reply -again without thinking at all- was a new life. Stavros smiled at me and that he would see for that and left me. I relaxed the moment the plane started to move and the faster we were running and the higher we were flying the better I felt, it was as if I left some of my sorrows behind. Stavros and two other girls handed out juices, beers, cokes etc. but a ginger ale and a small bottle (0,1l) of champagne landed in front of me with a small note saying the following: "Don't be sad, my brother also is gay and it took him a while to deal with it. He partly ruined his best years and now he is getting better. You better brighten up now, take it from a person that is a stranger to you."
My mouth went dry, my eyes filled with tears, my ears hummed a strange tune and my stomach twisted and turned. I don't know for how long I was staring at the slip of paper, until a little kid that must have been running up and down the corridor yelled across the front part that I weren't sleeping and that he had won the bet. Great! What a humiliation! The whole plane knew of the morron sitting on seat 14A. The food was served and Stavros took away the untouched bottles, folded away the slip of paper, gave me my food and smiled his so far warmest smile. I barely touched the Greekoid food and stood up to go to the washer, my vividly orange bermuda shorts announced my coming and I got into the washer without any further ado. My stomach decided to get rid of some fluids, my head started to ache and I could her the choir of my relatives and my school-mates singing that they all knew that I was gay. What did this paper know of me? Who had written it? Why? What for??
With the greenest of all faces (matching my bermuda shorts as cherries on top of fried fish) I left the washer and ran into Stavros. He pulled me into the galley and asked whether I had read the paper. I nodded. Whether I had understood it. I shook my head. He took of the wedding ring of his finger and told me to hold it for a second. I denied to do so. He told me that his brother was 4 years older and a splendidly looking, handsome, intelligent guy, but that he got married just to fulfil their families expectations and fell in love with the waiter of the café next door, got divorced, left his family for about 2 years without any trace of life and only came back last Christmas to announce that he was gay and living together with the waiter. Stavros told me to hold the wedding ring for a second time. I reached for it, but on the way I changed my mind and said, okay, what if I learnt from his history, brightened up and started my gay life all over new, how would I know that it would work out well for me. He smiled a cryptic smile (the third type of smiles I saw on his face) and said that I should look out and follow my instinct, that I should leave my logic behind and trust my emotions.
He sent me back to my place with a fresh ginger ale in my right hand and some biscuits (dry, horrible, worse than Greekoid food) in my left hand. I didn't see him for the rest of the flight, but on my way out he stood there at the exit and with his farewell smile he gave me another slid of paper saying that Naxos, Amorgos, Chios or Zakynthos would be nice islands to pass my
holidays and reboot my gay-life. My attempt to answer him was blocked by the same wonderful lady with the pointy hand-luggage aiming at the small of my back. I stumbled forwards and went to pick up my luggage.
In my travel guide I found the address of a small pension on Naxos called Pension Kastelli in the medieval part of the old town and I booked a room there.
Behind me somebody coughed and expressed his bewilderness that I was sitting on a rock in the blasting sun, as if I were a penguin on an ice floe. My head turned around and within splitseconds I realized that I wasn't at the airport anylonger, that I was at the beach and that Tassos was standing nude in front of me mildly bewildered and with a twist of a mocking smile around his mouth, but also with a concerned frown to be seen on his forehead. Yoga, I snapped back. He burst into laughs and inside me something cracked and crumbled down to the sand on which my rock was standing, I got off the rock, covered the few steps between us in no time, reached out and slapped him my hand across his face. Tassos stopped laughing and looked puzzled at me, what that would be good for, he asked. That was, because you woke me up, and that (I raised my hand again, but he was quicker and held it with his hand in a firm lock), because you did all too well in waking me up, kiss me.
Never will I forget this face struggling with excitement, anger, fascination, bewilderment and something close to tenderness that belied my hesitations. He pulled me closer and asked me whether he was allowed to kiss me again. I nodded.
