At last she stood up to blow me a kiss.
I waved back and called, “Get your book!”
She looked down and saw the upended, thick black paperback, laughed, and stooped for it.
“Ciao!” she called. “Bye!”
“Ciao!”
I walked back through the Piraeus market, under the iron roofs with their dirty glass panes above tomato and sea-urchin stalls, eggplant and octopus counters, through the red-light district (where, for a week, on my first return from the islands, I’d stayed with Ron and Bill and John), past blue and white doors and small wooden porches, to the subway that would return me to Athens.
II
“I may be bringing someone home with me,” [Turkish] John said. “A man, I mean.” John had a long nose. “You won’t mind, will you? We’ll use the bed in the kitchen; I promise we won’t bother you. But…” John’s blond hair was half gray; his skin was faintly wrinkled and very dry — “it probably isn’t a good idea to mention it to DeLys.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I promise. By the time she’s back, I’ll be gone anyway.”
“I meant in a letter, or something. But believe me,” he said, “I only pick up nice men. Or boys. There won’t be any trouble.”
And later, on the cot bed in the front room of the tiny two-room Anaphiotika house, set into the mountain behind the Acropolis, I went to sleep.
In ’Stamboul, just off Istiqlal, John had had a sumptuous third-floor apartment, full of copper coffee tables, towering plants, rich rugs and hangings. When I’d been staying at the Youth Hostel, one afternoon he’d fed me a wonderful high tea at his place that had kept me going for two days. A pocketful of the leftovers, in a cloth napkin, had — an hour later — even made dinner for timid, towering Jerry.
I woke to whispered Greek, the lock, and two more Greek voices. One laughed as though he were coughing. Shhhing them, John herded two sailors, in their whites, through the room. The squat one halted in the door to the kitchen (in which was DeLys’s bed that John used), to paw the hanging back. He had a beer bottle in one hand. He laughed hoarsely once more. Then the tall one, towering him by almost two heads, shoved past, with John right after.
I turned over — then turned back. Frowning, I reached down and pulled my wallet out of the pocket of my jeans where I’d dropped them over the neck of my guitar case sticking from under the bed; it was also my suitcase. I sat, slipped the wallet behind the books on the shelf beside me. Then I lay back down.
John came back through the hanging. All he wore now was a blue shirt with yellow flowers. He squatted beside me, knees jackknifed up, to whisper: “There’re two of them, I’m afraid. So if you wanted to entertain one — just to keep him busy, while I did the other one — really, I wouldn’t mind. Actually, it would be a sort of favor.”
“I’m sorry, John,” I said. “Thanks. But I’m awfully tired.”
“All right.” He patted my forearm, where it was bent under my cheek. He smelled drunk. “But you can’t say I didn’t ask. And I certainly don’t mind sharing — if you change your mind.” Then he said: “I haven’t spoken Demotiki with anyone in more than a year. I’m surprised I’m doing as well as I am.” Chuckling, he was up and back into the kitchen, thin buttocks grinding below blue and yellow shirttails. He disappeared around the hanging, into the lighted kitchen, Greek, and laughter.
I drifted off — despite the noise…
Something bumped my arm. I opened my eyes. The little lamp in the corner was on. The squat sailor stood by my bed, leg pressed against my arm. Looking down at me, with one hand he joggled his crotch. Then he said, questioningly, “Poosty-poosty…?”
I looked up. “Huh…?”
“Poosty-poosty!” He rubbed with broad, Gypsy-dark fingers. A gold ring hugged deep into the middle one’s flesh. Pointing at my face with his other hand, he began to thumb open the buttons around his lap-flap. Once he reached over to squeeze my backside. Hard, too.
“Aw, hey…!” I pushed up. “No… No…!” I made dismissive gestures. “I don’t want to. Dthen thello. Phevge! Phevge!” (I don’t want to! Go away! Go away!)
“Ne!” Then he repeated, “Poosty-poosty,” emphatically.
The flap fell from black groin hair, that, I swear, went halfway up his belly. His penis swung up, two-thirds the length of mine, but half again as thick. His nails were worn short from labor, and you could tell his palms and the insides of his fingers were rock rough.
“Hey, come on!” I pulled back and tried to sit up. “Cut it out, will you? Dthen thello na kanomeparea!” (I don’t want to mess around with you!)
But he grabbed the back of my head to pull my face toward his groin — hard enough to hurt my neck. For a moment, I figured maybe I should go along, so he wouldn’t hurt me more. I opened my mouth to take him — and he pushed in. I tasted the bitter sharpness of the cologne he’d doused himself with — and cologne on a dick is my least favorite taste in the world. Under it was the sweat of someone who’d been drinking steadily at least two days. While he clawed into the back of my neck, I thought: This is stupid. I tried to pry my head from under his hand and push him out with my tongue. And thought I’d done it; but he’d just moved, fast — across the bed, on one knee.
It was a hot night. I hadn’t been sleeping with any covers.
He grabbed my underpants and, when I tried to dodge away, ripped them down my legs.
“Hey — !” I squirmed around, trying to pull them back up.
But he pushed me, hard, down on the bed. With a knee on one buttock and leaning full on my shoulders, he shouted into the other room — while I managed to lift myself (and him) up first on one elbow, then on the other.
I was about to try and twist him off, so I didn’t see the tall one come through; but suddenly he loomed, to grab my arms and yank both, by my wrists, forward. I went off my elbows and down. The sailor on top began to finger between my buttocks. “Ow!” I said. “Ow — stop!… Pauete!” That made the sailor holding my arms laugh — because it was both formal and plural; and it probably struck him as a funny time for me to be asking him formally to stop.
The tall one let go one wrist and made as if to sock me in the face. He had immense hands. And when he did it, his knuckles looked like they were coming at me hard. I jerked my head aside, squeezed my eyes, and said, “Ahhh…!”