A rumor:
Dude, you have to go the Greek Islands. It’s fucking beautiful, and the girls are all hot and down to fuck. Dude, I’m telling you…
Like any fool with a wiener, I believed it. The guy who started the rumor showed me several dazzling pictures of an extravagant beach party. His proof was enough justification, so a month later, when it came time to decide on a vacation, I remembered his pregnant words of untold stories, and I booked a trip to the Greek Islands. Just me. There would be no roll-dog, nor a soul in the Mediterranean who knew of my mysterious past or sneaky intentions. The unknown is so fucking sexy.
Athens
After a thirteen-hour flight and over twenty hours of absolutely no sleep, I finally touched down in Athens. When I arrived at my hotel a little after noon, Athens time, the cab driver tried to pry an extra three Euro from me with the pitch, “It’s the driver’s fee.” I refused and gave him the agreed thirty Euro we had pre-arranged.
The hotel offered little relief from the 100-degree heat. The hotel was supposedly four-star, but the lack of air-conditioning in the lobby and in my room demoted it to one-star in my book. Marble floors, flat-screen televisions, and cool leather couches do not compensate for shitty ventilation. To make matters worse, the hotel was empty, and after talking to the deskman, I discovered that my tour didn’t meet until evening the next day. I had idiotically miscalculated the dates when booking my flight.
The hotel was neighbor to a gas station and another hotel. The nearest commercial buildings were over two miles away. My screaming hunger took precedence over my exhaustion; I had to eat something substantial before I considered sleeping. Besides, I was in a short race with jet lag. With my long black shorts, bright red shirt, black socks and shoes, I looked more out of place than Lebron James at a Bingo tournament. I didn’t care. After the blistering thirty-minute walk to a shopping street, I accumulated a fiery case of itchy balls and ass. I settled on an overpriced Italian restaurant only because the air conditioning was extra cold. The restaurant had an open wall facing the street and consisted of thirty tables. With the exception of a table of three middle-aged men focused on a ten-inch TV showing a soccer match, I had the place to myself. I relaxed and allowed all of my body sweat to evaporate, eating and leaving within an hour.
After the slime-bag cab driver from earlier, I was boycotting taxis for the time being. As a result, I arrived back at my hotel at 5 p.m. freshly soaked with a new coat of sweat. I took a lukewarm shower and then dozed off wearing nothing but my boxers on my twin bed that was maybe two feet longer than my teacher’s desk. When I woke, it was four in the morning.
I passed the next fourteen hours reading a bland Surfing magazine and watching BBC–it was the only English-speaking channel. As much as I wanted to explore the city, our hotel was on the edge of nowhere, so I decided to wait for the tour the following day. The group meeting was set for 6 p.m.; I planned to arrive at 6:10. Most chicks find “late guys” to be mysterious or imagine they “don’t give a fuck.” That was the first impression I was going for. I have theories.
With the exception of a girl who was later revealed as a scatter-brained flower child who was religiously into Sodoku, I was the last to arrive at the meeting. The meeting room consisted of about fifty chairs all surrounding about a dozen circular tables. Wearing essentially the same outfit as the day before but with a blue shirt, I entered the room of my forty-nine tour mates and made my way around the side to the back of the room, conveniently finding an open chair at one of the tables. I secretly took note that the guys spared me nothing more than a quick glance, but roughly 75% of the girls gave a good three-second stare. I arrived at 75% because in an instant my mathematical mind broke it down as: forty-nine people on the tour, which means an estimated twenty-four were girls, and about eighteen of them gave me a stare, which equated to 75%. The remaining 25% kept their eyes transfixed to the front of the room, as if they had on blinders.
It’s in rooms like these that I become judgmental. After using my strategic scanning and peripheral vision skills, my mental notes were as follows: 1) Six girls were attractive; 2) Of the six attractive girls, only three of them gave me a stare; 3) The staring 75% were probably horny and looking to fuck–perhaps not me, but definitely someone; 4) The non-staring 25% were closed-minded followers who always dumped their pessimistic views into adventurous conversations. Or they had a boyfriend back home. Either way, something must be off if a heterosexual person doesn’t even glance when someone possibly attractive enters their peripheral vision in a quiet fifty-person room.
In an effort to break the ice, after going through rules and itinerary, our entire tour walked through the eighty-degree night to a lounge twenty-five minutes down the same stupid road I’d walked before. I bounced around from person to person, questioning and answering “Where are you from?” in my best interested voice. I wish I could say that I genuinely care about where strangers are “from,” but I can’t. No real knowledge or growth comes from knowing such information, but I ask that question voluntarily for the same reason I read the first chapter of a six-hundred-page novel. Background information is essential, but it’s the rest of the book that interests me.
I wasn’t stupid enough to talk too long to any one girl. When it comes to first impressions on women, I’ve learned mystery is much more attractive than aggression. Some of the other guys disagreed. One fellow with short, curly black hair, rosy cheeks, glasses, a tucked-in dress shirt, slacks, and loafers looked like Egon from Ghostbusters. This dipshit was so aggressive that he went from girl to girl, forcing the longest conversation possible. He didn’t talk to a single guy. Needless to say, Egon was a very lonely man for the rest of the tour.
I talked to some of the guys and a few girls briefly, never getting beyond their occupations. There was plenty of time for that later. After an hour of small talk, I left with a few of the Australian guys I befriended. We had a long day ahead.
The next morning I was up early; I’d successfully trumped the jet lag. All forty-nine of us did a bus tour through the city and hiked up to the Parthenon where we took pictures and stood before the Greek Gods. No one went out that night because the 4:45 early morning bus departure to Athens port put a damper on our enthusiasm.
Mykonos awaited.
Mykonos
The boat to Mykonos was nearly the size of a cruise ship, stuffed with cars and motorcycles on the bottom deck and people on the two upper decks. The seats were organized like an airplane, except there was actually room to walk around. A buffet and a lounge area were already overflowing with people. The atmosphere was calmer than I expected. I spent most of my time reading in one of the airplane seats, and would get up every half hour to socialize with some of my tour mates.
The trip took just over six hours, which included a half-hour wait for a giant Star Wars door to open from top to bottom. The moment it touched down, motorcycles–loaded with one, two, or even three people–zoomed down the ramp.
As I set foot on the island underneath the blue Aegean sky, I was greeted by the powerful Mykonos wind, my swagger violently altered. Mykonos is of average size–roughly forty square miles–in comparison to the rest of the Greek Islands. I walked a quarter-mile to our awaiting island bus, and the forty-nine of us made the twenty-five-minute drive to our resort.
Though blemished with overwhelming winds, our beachside resort was stunning. Painted in traditional Greek blue and white, the multi-acre resort offered over a hundred rooms in five different buildings on a small hill overlooking the sea. The tiled lobby always had a breeze coming through because the doors were constantly open. It was modernized with Internet, couches, and a gift shop. Just outside the lobby was a pool already lined with tattooed, muscle-bound douchebags and girls in bikinis. The seven-Euro-per-beer (which equated to $11) resort bar stood adjacent to the pool. Already thinking ahead to the night, I strolled through the pool area, went to my room, and took a nap to recharge.
My roommate situation was a mess. The second night in Athens, Wally, a soft-spoken fellow with a feminine voice was my roommate. When Wally found out another guy had an entire room to himself, he spoke with our tour manager and somehow swindled his way into the only single room on the tour. My guess was that he was homosexual and looking to have several one-night-stands while on the island–Mykonos is supposedly world-renowned for its gay population. But with the exception of a place called Club Ramrod, I never really noticed much gayness. I’m sure Wally would disagree.
My new roommate was Raymond; I’ll call him Ray. He was a tall, ingratiating thirty-year-old man from Hong Kong and venturing out of China for the first time in his life. While he was a master at fixing gadgets, Ray lacked interpersonal skills. He had a loud, accented voice, and he forced laughs after every humdrum question he asked–all of his questions were yes-or-no questions irrelevant to anything having to do with anything. One time while I was taking a dump, he yelled from his bed, “Dave, have you seen The Simpsons movie?”
One thing Raymond definitely had was tact; perhaps not verbally, but he understood that when I told him I was taking a nap, it was quiet time. He went about his gadgets silently, often leaving the room, and he considerately turned off the lights and TV. This combined with the absence of snoring made Ray a good roommate.
I awoke fresh from a two-hour siesta to discover that everyone was already pre-partying at the pool. I took a quick shower, got ready, and headed down. There were two other tours staying at our resort, packing the pool area with nearly a hundred and fifty people. Being out of the loop, I soon discovered that there were three buses heading to one of the best clubs on the island, Cavo Paradiso. I cracked open my first beer and began my night.
The club was impressive, situated on a cliff overlooking the harbor. A pool in the middle of the club was surrounded by three levels of walkways, patios, and bars. For the night I went 2 for 26 but just make-out sessions. The first girl, a brunette twenty-two-year-old punk rock chick, “had a boyfriend,” but I called her bluff and continued to pursue her until she caved and started kissing me. Ten minutes into our make-out session, she was stripped away from me mid-make-out while my eyes were still closed. I opened my eyes to see three vicious cock-blocking bitches drag her through a crowd. Story of my life.
Her “boyfriend” comment amused me. I’ve never understood why girls choose to repel guys even though they’re attracted to them. These “tests” should only be reserved for the dating world. Why these girls choose to test guys at clubs thousands of miles away from home perplexes me.
The second girl was a thirty-seven-year-old Greek Australian. She had apparently come to Greece looking for love. While staying at our resort, she and a twenty-four-year-old bartender had gone on a candlelight dinner date after his shift. She told me he was supposed to meet her at the club, but I convinced her that I was cooler than him. We made out but not without apprehension. Every fifteen seconds or so, she would stop kissing me and look around the club to see if he had arrived. Then she would kiss me some more. We made out in intervals ranging from six seconds to forty-five seconds. Things never got further because of the bartender-lovebird factor, and because her hideously overweight roommate was observing us like one of those haunted house paintings where only the eyes move. The fully clothed roommate had stayed in the shade by the pool reading Harry Potter all day. I let Harry Potter win the battle, and I took the next bus home. When I arrived back at the resort, the sun was about to rise.
The next morning I walked into the cafeteria for breakfast wearing the same green T-shirt from the night before. I sat down with ten people from my tour, and within five minutes, I was bombarded with questions and comments. “Who was the cougar you were making out with?” “I saw you by the bathroom eating some chick’s face.” “Damn, Dave, you had quite the night.”
Bastards.
At least three of the ten people at the table had witnessed me hook up–all three were girls; two of them were of the “attractive six.” First of all, I could automatically assume that none of these girls would hook up with me now. Secondly, thanks to these blabbermouths, word of my sleaziness would inevitably find its way to every female on the tour, thus rendering my “ten-minute-late” thing useless. I wish I could say I was devious and strategic in my way of womanizing. Unfortunately, all it took was a few blabbermouths to make me look like a dirtbag.
I spent the day lounging at the beach admiring a hot Australian brunette with godly blue eyes I had crossed off of my list of “the attractive six I had a chance with.” It didn’t help that she was a member of the 25%-non-staring group. Every time I spoke, she turned away. When I sat in one of the foldout chairs next to her, she crossed her legs the other way. She didn’t even look at me once. She was far too smiley and friendly to be playing the hard-to-get thing, so I assumed the worst. Either I was on the wrong side of the spectrum of her “type,” or she had also secretly seen me making out at one point last night, and was now judging me as outright scum.
The itinerary for the night was “party at the resort club.” After waking from a nap a little past 10 p.m. and then getting ready, I didn’t arrive at the party until eleven. The party was a major disappointment. The “club” was a joke; just because the music was blaring didn’t make the place “happening.” And the beers were just as pricey as a real club would charge. The once-crowded resort of a hundred and fifty people only consisted of forty on this night, Ray included. Maybe eight people circulated in and out of the dance floor, and all the cute girls from the other tours were already hooking up with dudes. I tried to round up some people to head to a club, but it was the same bullshit with everyone: “Nah, I think I’m just going to hang here for the night.” Fuck that. I didn’t travel all the way to Mykonos to have a “chill night.”
After probing through everyone on my tour, I finally found an Australian guy on my tour named CJ who said he and “some of the girls” were heading to a club. I hung around this guy like a hungry rottweiler. He led me to the lobby where I saw three other girls I’d seen at breakfast; they were waiting for a cab. Two of them were ugly; the other was the girl with the godly blue eyes. My chances of catching a ride with them had suddenly been cut in half.
Despite a population–tourists included–of over 30,000 people, the shitty thing about Mykonos was their lack of cabs. There were only fifty cabs that circulated through the island. Those battling a recession might consider buying a yellow car and moving to Mykonos. You will flourish.
After waiting in the lobby for well over an hour, the cab finally arrived. The driver refused to take five; as I suspected, the girls all made sure they got in first. In times like these I wish I were a brutal asshole; I would have thrown all three of the dumb bitches out, told CJ to hop in, and the two of us would have driven off triumphantly. Instead of acting like the rottweiler I claim to be, in that opportune moment of radicalism, I shrunk to a poodle. CJ and I stood beside the shotgun door momentarily, both realizing one of us would be assed out. CJ had priority over me since he hadn’t been dubbed as scum yet, and the girls liked him more. I ceded the seat to him and stood by the road like a middle school loner, watching the cab drive away.
I was stranded. I had two options: call it a night or party at Ray’s nightclub. I was wide-awake, so I went back to the club to fish for any scraps that remained. I was delighted to find a fresh batch of girls sitting around a table. I went inside to the bar, ordered two beers, pounded half of one, and then crept my way back outside. Six chicks–two of them cute–were at the table along with three dudes. The dudes were inexplicably situated around the ugly girls. I grabbed a chair and sat behind the two cute girls, slightly out of the circle. The two girls looked at me for a moment, and before I had time to say anything, one of them asked in an Australian accent, “Are you down to go skinny-dipping with us?” I was back.
“Yeah, let’s go,” I said without hesitation. As it turned out, the skinny-dipping was all talk, so, in the meantime I focused on conversing with the cute chicks, eventually directing my attention to the cuter of the two, a busty brunette named Amy. Amy oozed sexiness, and I seized the opportunity to convince her to go skinny-dipping immediately. “These guys look pretty flaky; let’s just go right now,” I urged. Acting like she couldn’t stand up, she smiled. I got the message and gave her my hand; she grabbed it and off we walked, a pair of hopeful fuckers.
I went naked; she was topless. I swam around in the 80-degree pool, stopping at the edge in front of her and pulled her in for a make-out. Moments later, a lanky security guard threw us out. “Spa only, guys,” he said. I got out, semi-hard wiener flopping, put my shorts back on, and walked to one of two spas. They were circular and right next to each other, reminding me of boobies. We got naked, but once we got in realized it was colder than the pool. Being in an optimistic mood, I felt it was a good thing; there was probably less semen floating around. She started yanking on my cock, but a minute later, an unattractive couple hopped in the other spa and came together violently. They ripped each other’s bathing suits; he bit her breast; she bit his neck; they kissed passionately while pulling each other’s hair. Their moans resonated. Instead of inspiring us, their ferocity made us uncomfortable. They reminded me of vampires. “Let’s get out of here,” I told Amy. We got dressed and discussed our options.
“My roommate is sleeping; we can’t go to my room,” she declared.
“We can try my room. I think my roommate may still be out,” I replied, my hopelessness concealed.
I knew my room was a dead end. Ray was obviously crashed out at that point. My master plan was to get her wet to build up the anticipation for wild sex. I thought the walk to my room would give me time to come up with an acceptable sex venue, but my brain was on hold.
When we arrived at my room, not only was Ray inside, he was snoring. Monstrously.
“Uh, well I guess that’s it then,” she said, her body squaring away as if to leave.
No!!!!
Out of pure wit, instinct, and experience, I came up with something brilliant as I rapidly walked toward her. “Let’s go to the beach,” I announced. Had I just stood there and asked, she would have seen my fear of rejection and lack of poise and possibly turned me down. Walking briskly while talking confidently was my way of deciding what we both wanted. She grabbed my hand, and we made our way down to the blackened sea.
Before we fucked, I somehow got talked into going skinny-dipping in the ocean. It didn’t last long when we realized the water was four times colder than the pool. In addition, shrinkage had diminished my penis to a noodle when I wavered out of the water in obvious discomfort. I built it back up to normalcy with some foreplay, but the air was cold too. We eventually fucked on a foldout chair, but it was a major disappointment. Despite our efforts to remain on the chair the whole time, sand was everywhere–in our hair, between our naked bodies, on our backs, in our assholes. The angle of the chair made it hard to find a comfortable sex position. She tried to get comfortable leaning back in the chair, and I got on top, missionary position. But my knees kept slipping off and I was scraping the inside of my thighs, which didn’t help considering the sand that was grinding into me. We were both slender, but the damn chair definitely wasn’t designed for sex. If we hadn’t been so horny, we might have giggled at our silly predicament. But instead, we frantically switched places, which was even worse. When she got on top, the chair teetered like a boat, almost sending her plummeting into the sand. Our attempt at fornicating had materialized into a rickety disaster.
To make matters worse, a shadowy figure with a duffel bag strolled by us mid-fuck, causing us to halt our already-awkward sex and curl into a ball with our thighs to our torso, and our hands tightly clasped around our knees. We looked like two campers getting ready to sing “Kumbaya” around a bonfire.
We waited thirty seconds–trying not to laugh out loud–for the shadow man to pass before we made another feeble attempt at sex. Ultimately, with potential frostbite looming, my wiener maxed out at seventy percent. I couldn’t even finish, so she sucked me off instead. I doubt I had satisfied her needs. “Sex on the beach” is better fit for fantasies. Once it becomes a reality, provocative dreams are shattered into a grainy pile of sand.
The following day was being advertised as “The big day.” Supposedly, there was a huge beach party in the late afternoon at a place called Paradise Beach on the other side of the island. Buses were scheduled to leave at 3 p.m. After I rested, I put on my flip-flops, no shirt, and the same board shorts from the previous night. I was ready for anything.
We began drinking at a beach bar called Tropicana. The beers were relatively cheap, giving me more incentive to consistently double fist. As the minutes passed, the people began to pour in. One hour and four beers later, the music was blasting, the place was packed, and hot women were dancing on the bar. The party had begun.
There comes a time in every great buzz that is the summit in the parabola of our bliss. At this point, rules go out the window, self-consciousness evaporates, and we become lost in the cadence that is life. My summit approached midway through my fifth beer. I began doing something that I rarely do: I started dancing…with nobody. They played Bob Sinclair’s “Love Generation,” and I went absolutely berserk. I got up on a table in the middle of the party, still shirtless, and started dancing as if possessed by Justin Timberlake just after he fucked 2001-Britney for the first time. Three blonde Australian girls on my tour danced below me. One of them, Jada, who was part of the attractive six and the only one I still had a chance with, got up on the table behind me and started dancing with me. The two other Aussies followed. Down below, chicks were eyeing me; my tour mates were pointing in approval or high-fiving me; and the blonde Aussies were requesting me to pose with them in photos. On that July afternoon, I was the party.
The three blonde Aussies, Jada included, left the table for a pee break and were quickly replaced by another hot blonde Aussie named Alex–not on our tour but staying at our resort. Ten seconds later, Alex and I were making out on the table. All I said to her in those ten seconds was, “What’s up?” accompanied with a smile. My entire tour watched as we made out, but I paid no attention. I had already blown it anyway. As for Jada, fuck it. She left, I was horny, and her no-bullshit substitute was doing a fine job in her stead. Alex and I continued to indulge.
There also comes a time in every great buzz when a man thinks he is invincible. It usually occurs at the boundary between buzzed and drunk. Some guys use this time to start fights. Some guys use it to call women “bitches” and “whores.” Some guys use it to punch walls and thrash objects. I used this time to drink as much alcohol as possible; nothing could stop me.
When Alex left for a pee break, Jada, appeared out of nowhere, grabbed my arm and asked, “Do you want to split a bottle of wine with me?” I agreed, of course, and continued dancing. She returned shortly with a bottle of white wine with a picture of a toad on it. The wine had to be legit. Lost in my euphoria, Jada and I–mostly me–mindlessly swigged that bottle empty over the next half hour as we danced on the table. Alex returned at some point, but Jada had reclaimed her spot on the table along with the other two Aussies. The table was small, only big enough for four people. There really was no room to dance side by side, so I maintained my favorable position facing the crowd while Jada danced behind me. Since Alex had already satisfied my drunken urge to make out with a chick, I didn’t even make an attempt at Jada. My killer instinct told me Alex was a sure-thing fuck later on, so there was no point in taking a risk getting caught making out with Jada. I continued to swig away, not caring about anything but dancing and drinking. I had no idea that my parabola of rapture was on a rapid descent.
During one of my pee breaks, Alex chased me down and convinced me to get on the parked bus with her. I had been dancing for nearly two hours at that point, and my buzz had transgressed into “severely drunk.” I followed her lead beneath the setting sun.
The bus was loosely packed with drunks like me. In the back row was a lone dark-haired, blue-eyed cutie staring at me. Our eyes remained transfixed as I gravitated to them like a junkie to a needle. Alex eluded my short-term memory as I instinctively walked to the back of the bus, sat down next to the blue-eyed hottie, and began making out with her using body language and telepathy. I said nothing. Silence was probably for the better; had I said something, I probably would have said something like, “Who-r-ooo-Ca-I-sihere?” She stopped kissing me after ten seconds and said, “Wait a minute, you were hooking up with my roommate.” I said, “Pssh,” then smiled and laid my head down on her lap. Moments later Alex joined us and gave the blue-eyed hottie a giant wet kiss. A threesome was certain; all I had to do was stay composed.
First came the excess spit. Then came the spinning. After making it through the bus ride and short walk to the girls’ room, I demanded a beer to feign energy. But before the girls could serve my command, I involuntarily collapsed onto one of their beds. They laughed, expecting me to get up, but I remained on the bed, motionless. Both of them got on top of me and begged me to get up, but my eyes refused to stay open. My end had come. The girls stopped begging when it was obvious I was a worthless pile of cock. They fled to the resort bar, leaving me alone in their room.
About an hour later, when my bladder screamed for relief, I awoke. After pissing, I exited the room and slowly inched my way over to a railing and vomited my fantasies into the plants. I went back inside the lobby and collapsed into a couch, a pathetic excuse for a single virile male.
Two resort employees awakened me sometime that night. They were laughing, and I, in my alcohol-addled brain, thought they knew of my blown threesome. Everyone probably knew. My day had come crashing down with the magnitude of the RMS Titanic. My once-legendary parabola of ecstasy on which I traveled now looked something like this:
When I woke up again, this time in my own bed, it was three in the morning. As I lay there dazed, the disappointment of the previous day hit me in the face like a powerful cumshot. My cock and balls were about ready to pack their bags and leave. As for my sperm? They were probably looking at me like the warden of Shawshank, a million Andy Dufresnes unjustly imprisoned. I jerked off a short while later, but my important body parts still held a grudge.
We left for the port around noon the next day. As we waited for our bus to arrive, I received several questions and comments about my antics at the beach party. While the girls silently eavesdropped on my conversations with an occasional glance at me, the guys commended me. “Dude, you were a party animal yesterday.” “Dave, I was in awe of your dancing. I didn’t think you had it in you.” “Whatever happened with that blonde?” I modestly thanked them, concealing the catastrophic reality. A long boat ride loomed ahead.
Santorini
It was beautiful; I had fun; but the bars all sucked, the chicks on my tour wouldn’t hook up with me, and everyone else on the island was on a honeymoon.
Next.
Ios
I’d heard good things about Ios. It would be difficult to top the dynamic opportunities I had in Mykonos, but I was hopeful. I came ready to party the first night. Unfortunately, I was ready too early, and I blew it. Like most European countries, people didn’t start partying until 1 a.m., but I failed to take a nap during the day, I got drunk too early, and when the night peaked, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I went to bed at 3 a.m.
The next morning, after an uninterrupted eleven hours of sleep, I ripped the sheets off my body with determination to take control of myself. My body had betrayed me the previous night, poisoning my energy, my game, and my attitude, eventually sending me home at the vertex of the night. And I had let it happen. I had to stick to my usual plan for the two remaining nights: 3 a.m. bedtimes in Europe were unacceptable.
I am a man who likes to party at an optimal level. I take naps so I have a hundred percent of my energy: I eat an ample dinner so I can consume more alcohol; I drink three glasses of water right before going out so I don’t get hung over the next day; and I don’t start drinking until 9 p.m.–midnight for Europe–so I don’t pass out when the party gets good. Following these simple guidelines has done wonders for my ability to hook up with chicks and party with the best. My bedroom may be a mess, but my thoughts are organized spic and span with bookshelves and filing cabinets.
I awoke from my nap just before 10 p.m. I still had a couple hours to eat and freshen up. I completed both tasks within the hour. Ios is a small island, its two primary locations are located on opposite sides of a small hill. You could walk from the main town to the beach side of the island in forty minutes. My lavish resort was on the beach side, so I took the 1.25 Euro bus into town to save time and avoid swamp-ass.
Our tour was pre-partying at a brightly lit bar called the Fun Pub. We drank a few there and left a little after midnight to begin the bar crawl. Ios was all about the bar hopping. There was no bar that was considered superior. You just went from bar to bar and left if it sucked or got uncomfortably crowded, and stayed if the crowd was fun and the music was good. The alleys between the bars were narrow, and crowded in some zones where there were lines to neighboring bars. I was surprised at the overwhelming amount of European high school and college kids. They stood out like drugged mice, swaying and yelling and laughing for no reason except for the pure elation of being unsupervised.
After a couple hours of bar hopping, already 0 for 15 with my pick-up lines, a group of six of us, all guys, ended up at a bar called Kandi. I began talking to two elegant Brits who turned out to be sisters. I went for the taller of the two, a slender brunette with short hair. At nearly six feet, she looked as if she were straight out of a Vogue magazine. After discussing whether her hair was naturally straight or curly, she abruptly lifted up my shirt. She gazed at my stomach, smiled, and we continued our conversation. “Do you approve?” I asked.
“Yes. I was just making sure,” she answered.
“Ah,” I said, smiling.
She whispered in my ear, “My sister can’t find a boy.”
“I have friends,” I replied and pointed out every guy I knew. The sister disapproved of all of them. Dammit. I had to eliminate the sister, so I started pointing out good-looking strangers. She accepted one guy, so I approached him. “Hey, man, that chick over there likes you. What do you think?”
The guy, an American probably from the Midwest, became starry-eyed. “Yeah, she’s hot.”
“Let’s go.” Despite my leading him over to her, he got nervous, not knowing what to say. When he saw her lose interest, he walked away self-consciously.
The sister got up to pee, giving me alone time with Vogue. I capitalized.
“Okay, I have to kiss you,” I said, staring unwaveringly into her eyes.
“You do?”
“Yeah.” I pulled her in and allowed her time to retreat. She made no movement. We started making out.
The “Okay, I have to kiss you” thing is one of my favorite make-out lines. Its success rate is probably higher than any other kissing line I’ve ever used. As long I can sense that the attraction is high, I speak confidently, and I stare into her eyes (no smile). I have been able to pull off dozens of make-outs with this line.
Things began to go south after her sister returned. Vogue began to lose her composure, and deep-rooted insecurities arose. Some of the questions she asked in succession:
“Why are you talking to me?”
“There are so many girls here. Why me?”
“Don’t you think those girls are prettier than me?”
I fed her ego like Jerry Maguire fed Rod Tidwell’s after he left him in the lobby for Kush. But it did no good. Without warning, Vogue stormed off. She began hitting on other guys, frequently turning around to see if I was watching. I watched her using my peripheral vision, never looking straight at her. I wasn’t the kind of idiot that would actually feed her immaturity. I posted up against a wall, observing the dance floor. Predictably, five minutes later she approached me and started kissing me again. I led her outside, only to watch her pull the same hit-on-another-guy-to-make-me-jealous thing. Fuck that. I will never put up with such bullshit just to get laid. I started walking up the hill, back to my hotel. It was nearly 5:30. Just twenty-five steps into my walk home, Vogue jostled by me and power-walked her way ahead, arms folded. There was a time in my life when I would have chased her down and tried to get her back to my room, but I have since evolved into someone who lets shitbags like that carry on within their own turbulent world.
When I got back to my room, Ray’s bed was empty. He better have a story for me, I thought. There was no explanation for Ray being out this late. I conjectured Ray had gotten tricked into taking either ecstasy or shrooms, which resulted in him being passed out next to a tree or a bush mumbling commands into his wristwatch. I stripped down to my boxers and passed out instantly.
Ray didn’t have a story. As we walked down to breakfast the next morning, he had these disappointing words: “I went with some people to a club. It was cool.”
I was ready to go by 11 p.m. that night, but I didn’t start partying at the Fun Pub until midnight. If I were asleep before dawn, the night would be a failure. Only two hours into the bar hopping, I ran into Vogue again. Something was different about her. She was sober and normal. From the way she ignored her friends in favor of me, I could tell she wanted to hook up again. “If you act like last night, I’m not hanging out with you,” I declared.
“I know. I’m so sorry. I just got too drunk,” she said. I looked away, but I could sense her staring at me, silently acknowledging her own idiocy.
We didn’t fuck around. In less than an hour, I convinced her to detach herself from her lame sister and even lamer friends, and come party with me and my group. An hour later, we ditched the group and walked to a club that was conveniently on the way to my resort. The club would have been cool if I hadn’t come with her. But bringing a girl to a club is about as fun as bringing a Gameboy to an arcade. We only stayed for one drink before leaving. Ray had better not be home yet.
Although I didn’t make it to dawn as I had promised myself, since I brought a girl back, I considered my night acceptable. It was 4 a.m. when I slipped the keycard into the door, and as luck would have it, Ray was inside, lying on his twin bed, just a foot separated from my bed. I told Vogue to wait outside for a minute. I went inside, and the begging began. “Ray, can you just give us thirty minutes?”
“No, Sorreee,” he answered, turning away from me.
“Come on, man. What about twenty minutes?” I was having flashbacks to Mykonos, only this time the beach was too far to be an option.
“No, Sorreee. Sorreee, Dave. Sorreee.”
Fuck it. I opened the door for Vogue, told her the roommate situation, and we considered our options. We couldn’t go to her room because two of her friends had stayed in. Then she impressed me. “Whatever. Let’s just stay here. Hopefully, he’ll get uncomfortable and leave,” she said, placing her purse on the nightstand. Ray didn’t get uncomfortable. In fact, Ray turned on his side to face us the moment we started hooking up. Not a fan of entertaining a voyeur, I freaked out, and we moved to the floor between my bed and the wall. After lengthy foreplay, I took out my condom. As I put it on, I realized I wanted to fuck her doggie-style. Ray’s creepiness was too overbearing to remain in the room. I wasn’t about to put on a show for Inspector Gadget. We went to the bathroom.
I do not recommend bathroom sex. It is bumpy, boney, and bruising. It was our only option. We fucked doggie-style in the bathroom next to the toilet where I had taken several dumps not too long ago.
After finishing, she gave me her email address, her London phone number, and then I walked her out. I went back to my room and crashed, satisfied.
The next morning began with Ray smiling mischievously at me as we packed our bags. I cut the silence. “So did you see anything last night?”
“Yes. I saw,” he said, smiling.
I fake laughed, shuddered inside, and finished packing.
Two days later, as I sat on my flight from Athens to LAX, I pondered. How much longer would trips like this be enjoyable? What would happen when I’m married? Does the unknown lose its charm? It’s a scary thing to think about the future. I don’t know where I’ll be in five or ten years. I don’t know with whom I’ll be. But I take comfort in knowing that at one point in the continuum of time, I was the party on that July afternoon in Mykonos. At one point, I had sex on the shores of the Aegean Sea. At one point, guys like Ray and CJ and all the dumb bitches were a part of my life. I may die one day, but my life will last forever.
I woke up at 7am to bake the bread I prepared the night before. I ate three eggs on top of it, it was lovely. I left at 9:15am and got there at 9:25am. My race was not to start for another 70 minutes and it was like 5 degrees celsius. Fortunately the Morris Family was still making a killing selling coffee and snacks to these races! These guys took me in like a son 5 years ago, and became my cycling family. Took me to races. Made fun of my Spanish. Gave me a jersey. Drove me to all the races. Gave me free food and coffee. So I fought off the cold with some banter and a coffee this morning.
