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The Stavros Chronicles: Schinias

Marathonas is the site of the famous Battle of Marathon, when the Persians were defeated by the considerably smaller Athenian army in 490 B.C. The 192 Athenians who were killed are buried in a massive burial mound, surrounded by olive trees, not far from the ancient battlefield. Actually, pretty much everything in Greece is surrounded by olive trees, but here, it’s particularly poignant to see a source of sustenance so close to those memorialized. Marathonas gets its name for the Greek word for “fennel,” and means “a place with fennel.” The long distance race, marathon, gets its name from the town. Legend has it that a single runner ran the entire distance from Marathonas to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated. Another legend says that he ran from Athens to Sparta to seek help. The legend about the announced triumph over the Persians is the one that seems to hold the most traction with the public imagination, but whoever did the running and to where, it was quite a hike.

Schinias Beach, near Marathonas, is a long stretch of sandy beach surrounded by whispy umbrella pine trees, about 45km northeast of Athens. The water is tranquil, the sound of the wind in the pines mesmerizing, and a few nudists are kind of tucked away in the shrubbery and sand dunes, adding to the sensory experience.

South of the beach, there is a temple dedicated to Egyptian gods, currently closed due to archaeological excavation, and a museum with artifacts and sculpture from the area, which I hope to visit before heading back to San Francisco—if we make it back to the beach. With just a week left on the trip, I’m kind of content just to stare at Stavros, my favorite visual experience.

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The Stavros Chronicles: Shirley Valentine The Sequel

Well, here I am, back in Greece. I don’t know why the tourist season ends exactly when it’s the most pleasant time to be here, but I’m enjoying the empty beaches and not sweating. Stavros and I have been alternately at each other’s throats or adhered in liplocked bliss. Thankfully, mostly liplocked bliss.

A lot of our confrontation stems from his notion that a long-distance relationship, including this one that seems to be going so well, is impossible. I’ve told him that he doesn’t have to decide that it’s impossible and then so actively pursue not making it possible. If it’s impossible, it just won’t work out, he doesn’t have to do anything. But if something is possible, stop resisting and let it happen. I feel him holding back—words that aren’t spoken, thoughts not articulated—and I know it’s not because of some stupid macho cultural thing, or that he doesn’t care about me, it’s because of his fears and anxiety. He’s dealing with what all Greeks are dealing with, how to survive in the current economic climate, and let me tell you, the Greek people are being asked to sacrifice so much, you can almost see how some of them could be brainwashed by the right-wing extremist Golden Dawn fascists and their anti-austerity proposals, the closest they’ll get to “read my lips.” One United Nations official has already warned that the current austerity measures could represent a violation of human rights. Against this dire economic backdrop, he asks, how could romance be possible? Well, it is, and it’s blossoming, so sit back and let it flower. To paraphrase Auntie Mame, “Love! love! love!!”

We spent last weekend with two of his friends, Giorgos and Filios, guests in their home in Methana. They were delightful hosts, very well-read, each actively pursuing artistic endeavors, truly a pleasure to while away a weekend with. Methana is a sub-peninsula of the Peloponnesus, attached by a tiny sliver of land. It’s almost an island, entirely of volcanic origin, the smell of sulphur still in the air. The area is only sparsely populated, but with lush vegetation and dense forests, boulders everywhere, like the volcano just erupted. Giorgos and I hiked up to the peak of the highest volcano, enjoying beautiful views of the mainland and the islands of the Saronic Gulf.

Swimming in the sea, it felt like we were the only people in the entire Gulf. For a moment I thought of the housekeeper’s warning in the original The Haunting (not the stupid remake) “No one can hear you scream… in the dark… in the night…” but the water is so inviting, and so comforting. It doesn’t seem like you’re going to be sucked under by a giant sleeper wave or frozen to death like when swimming in the Pacific. Even when there’s a volcano above you and teetering boulders on the hillside ready to tumble down.
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A Chicago Quicky

After leaving the comfort of the Quad Cities, Chrissy and I drove to Chicago, to spend a few days with his dad. We wolfed down a stuffed pizza, which you can’t go to Chicago without doing, then saw the Roy Lichtenstein retrospective at the Chicago Art Institute, such a pleasure to see those works in person and to experience how painterly they are. Market Days, a two-day street fair in Boyville, was happening around the corner from Chris’ dad’s place. We actually squirmed our way through the dense crowd of groping teenage girls and middle-aged gay men to hear Olivia Newton John’s performance. I’ve never really listened to her music, except when playing in the background at the houses of boyfriends even more sentimental and sappy than I, but I actually enjoyed her set. Do we suddenly shift into Easy-Listening people after 45? Hmmm… Anyway, she sang every one of her treacly bubble-gum hits. The gay men, and these annoying teenage girls, mostly born way after her time (what were they doing there?) seemed to know every word, even to “Xanadu,” and sang along tearfully. As she ended her set, she said to the crowd something about it being the time to say goodnight, when she’d usually disappear from the stage and then return to perform a surprise encore song. Instead, due to her age and the time of night, she asked if she could just pretend that she got off the stage and go directly into her encore. The crowd enthusiastically roared, and joined her in an a cappella version of “Let me be there,” hands clapping above our heads, smartphones recording, swaying from side to side, that annoying teenage girl pressed against my butt… Just let me be the-ere.

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Our State Fair is the Best State Fair

Big Chrissy and I recently took a trip to Illinois and Iowa to spend some time with his family and to put all that California cuisine behind us and do some serious hunkering down with the sublime and artergy-clogging tastiness of our country’s heartland.

Chrissy’s sister and family drove us to the Iowa State Fair, a beautiful drive through rolling hills of corn, farms and past the World’s Largest Truck stop. There are over 50 items that you can eat “on a stick” at the Fair. I asked to see the fried-butter-on-a-stick, just to see it, to confirm that it wasn’t part of some anxiety dream I had before getting my last cholesterol test. A half stick of butter, battered and deep fried. Butter reigns supreme here, there’s even a life-sized cow made of the stuff. And a butter Snow White, the queen and the seven dwarves. Or are we calling them the seven little people now?

The fair is pretty grand as fairs go, with so many things to do and see, all those prize-winning vegetables and flower arrangements… but the highlight for me was the Women’s Chicken-Calling contest. I don’t know how effective these calls are, as there were no chickens nearby to answer, but each woman chick-chicked and cluck-clucked and sang and hollered on an almost operatic scale that I couldn’t imagine any chicken not being completely seduced by.

Downtown Davenport, on the Iowa side of the Mississippi, is a lovely old town, with quaint brick buildings and interesting new architecture, like the Figge Museum. We visited the Davenport Main Library, designed in the 1960s by Edward Durell Stone, a building “designed for tomorrow.” The architecture indeed feels like it belongs in a future that hasn’t quite happened yet. Or that was supposed to have happened in the late ’60s but didn’t, except in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In Moline, on the opposite, Illinois, side of the Mississippi, we stopped at the Belgian Village Inn for sandwiches. Chrissy had the VandeRueben, a modified rueben sandwich the size of a laptop. Completely stuffed, we then ate ice cream sundaes at Lagomarcino’s, which has been around for 100 years, the interior unaltered.

I’m so comforted by things that never change, food from another time, when men lived to be 56 and died of heart failure, eating whatever tasted good. Back to California and whole grains and free range edible creatures… ho hum.
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Sonoma Sausage

My sister Carol and brother-in-law Bruce came out for a visit, to see their kids who have fled West, and visit their recent offspring. Megan, Carol’s daughter, is currently not dating Matt, who works on a ranch in Valley Ford, in Sonoma County, near the coast, beautiful minimally developed hilly farmland.

There seems to be a whole movement in the Bay Area of young ranchers and farmers newly discovering the land and the many opportunities to grow things to consume. Engaged with the whole process, they grow, process, sell, and, in Matt’s case, cook.

We all took a drive up to the ranch to visit Matt and the animals. It’s such a peaceful place, no sounds other than the wind in the trees and the occasional chicken cluck. Rabbits periodically hop by. Matt makes his own salumi from the pigs on the ranch. It’s funny to see him interacting so lovingly with the animals whose flesh he’s going to be flaying soon. Funny, but also nice to see the animals so cared for and blissed out.
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The Dating Game: Series Finale or Cliff Hanger?

I was beginning to think that perhaps this post would never come, but this season of the Dating Game—it seems, and I hope—is, okay, very well could be the last. The season finale in Greece found Stavros taking my heart and everything else that’s attached to it. Actually, to be on the safe side, let’s say that the season ends with a cliff-hanger, the two of us taking tentative steps towards bridging the distance between us. Meanwhile, I secretly pray for the continued collapse of his country’s economy and a future together somewhere beyond 60% pay cuts and 23% value-added-tax on food.

I’m writing this on the airplane from Athens to Philadelphia. Since leaving him at the airport I’ve been crying, for a few hours now, my already red face even redder, my glasses fogged, face puffy, like a big puppy, the door clicking shut as my master goes off to work, for the day, maybe forever, will he ever return, who’s going to fill my bowl, pat my head…

Stavros is beyond anything I’ve fantasized about, a contemporary and breathing incarnation of the statues of Hercules, Apollo, Silenus, Hadrian, Poseidon, italian river gods—representations of idealized male beauty and virility that have spurred my erotic yearning and artistic production for years. But physical perfection isn’t all that is contained in this magnificent vessel, he’s charming, witty, smart, honest, good teeth, a vibrant presence so thrilling to be around. There’s nothing else I can learn about him, nothing more needed to confirm or validate the overwhelming desire I have for him.

He’s a little more practical. Even though we’ve already talked about marriage, and he brought it up, not me, when I told him I loved him, he didn’t reciprocate. I started strangling him and said, “Say it! Say it! Say you love me! I know you do!” He responded that love takes time, that he would tell me in 2 years. 2 years?? Not content to wait that long, and fully aware that his reticence had only to do with his lack of experience (he’s never told anyone that before. As you all know, I fall in love pretty swiftly and decisively. Sometimes, well, often, it’s the guy that’s not right, but never my feelings, they’re always authentic and deeply felt. This time, though, my feelings finally landed on the right guy), I took his head in my hands and, stroking his beard, said for him, “Chris, I love you so much, I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” He didn’t protest. He just slapped me and said “Snap out of it!” in his Greek-Cher Brooklyn accent. I am Ronny Cammareri.

Last week we took a few day trips, a beautiful boat ride out to Agistri island, where we kept missing the bus to the other, potentially more interesting section of the island with the isolated nude beaches, walking back and forth on the hot road between our tiny little sliver of desolate beach and the bus stop. Another day we drove to Sounio, and the lovely ruins of the temple of Poseidon. Byron was there and carved his initials on the temple and wrote a poem. Everybody else started carving his initials, too, so now it’s roped off. Supposedly this was the spot where the distraught Aegeus leapt to his death after his stupid son Thesseus sailed into port under a black sail, rather than the agreed upon white one, which would have sent the message that he had slain the minotaur and was alive. Like how do you forget something like that? The Aegean is named after him, this loving father of our stupid hero.

We went to several open-air cinemas in Athens, one with the lighted Acropolis as dramatic backdrop, another with comfy couches, all serving beer and food, the stars twinkling above.

We spent a few more days swimming in the sea off the rocks near Vouliagmeni. Stavros has a special spot on a stretch of secluded rockiness peopled with naked sunworshippers, segregated into groups of young gay, young straight, old straight, and our group, the sagging graying daddies. These guys must go out there every day, for their skin is the color of rich Corinthian leather, and of course no tan lines, just dark honey skin dramatically setting off their gray pubes. There’s no beach, no sand, just rock and blue crystal clear water and the occasional voyeur.

One night we met up with some friends and stood around and drank beers in a bar called “Big” where everybody is big and nearly everybody smokes. Stavros spends hours and hours doing this. Except for the smoke, I was in heaven.

Six more hours to go on this flight, not even half way. Ugh.

So my dear readers, thanks for tuning into my dating adventures all these years. My narrative trajectory will now be called The Stavros Chronicles and will concern my new interest in furthering positive Greek relations. When will we see each other again? When will he tell me he loves me? Will I ever learn Greek? Will we indeed get married and live happily ever after? And where, exactly, is this happy-ever-aftering to take place?

I expect everyone of my crowd to make fun
Of my proud protestations of faith in romance,
And they’ll say I’m naïve as a babe to believe
Every fable I hear from a person in pants.

Fearlessly I’ll face them and argue their doubts away,
Loudly I’ll sing about flowers in spring,
Flatly I’ll stand on my little flat feet and say
Love is a grand and a beautiful thing!
I’m not ashamed to reveal
The world famous feelin’ I feel…

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The National Archeological Museum

The National Archeological Museum in Athens is a spectacularly impressive repository of ancient Greek art and sculpture. Yesterday I waded through Mycenaean and Cycladic artifacts, kore, stele, classical bronzes and sculpture, my buddies Hercules and Silenus, Dionysus… Standing in front of Poseidon, a bronze work from the 5th century BC, I was moved to tears, the body is so serenely balanced, the gesture so confident, such power and intensity—and just exquisite craftsmanship. Most of the surviving bronzes from antiquity were found in shipwrecks, or buried, the rest melted down for military use. We can speculate on some of what has been lost, as many copies were made in marble, but because of the relative lightness of bronze, and the cast being hollow, something like the life-sized galloping horse below couldn’t be easily replicated.

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flow’ry tale more sweetly than our rhyme…
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Cupbearer Coco

I really do feel like a metrosexual Ganymede, swept away by Zeus to urban Athens, although instead of taking the form of an eagle, he whisked me here via airplane, then transformed himself into my Stavros and made me his cup-bearing catamite. (Stavros, despite looking older than me—or I like to think so—is actually 6 years my junior, so we’ll stick with this vision of Olympian pederasty. And hopefully eternal youth and immortality.)

Last weekend we took a day trip to Delphi, stopping first in Livadeia, a quaint little town perched at the base of a medieval castle. The spring-fed Herkyna River spills down from the hillside and cuts through town under a canopy of trees, providing a cool respite from the summer heat. The cathedral here houses a head of St. George. The use of “a” makes me wonder how many heads of St. George there are out there. Walking along the cool river bank, we heard the sound of plain chant coming from the cathedral, calming in the dappled shade.

The monastery of Hosios Loukas is picturesquely situated on the side of Mount Helicon, founded in the 10th century by the hermit Venerable (Hosios) St. Luke (Loukas). His remains are still there, in a glass sarcophagus sort of wedged between the original 10th century structure and the later 11th century church, his bony hand beckoning. Supposedly his remains exuded some sort of healing perfumed gas, and ailing pilgrims were encouraged to sleep by the side of the tomb in order to get a whiff of the miraculous vapors. The buildings are amazing works of Byzantine architecture, once lavishly decorated with mosaics and murals. Little remains of the original decorative elements, but the structures themselves are so beautiful, as are the few remaining monks.

Delphi is pretty spectacular, built in terraces along the side of Mount Parnassus, thought by ancient Greeks to be the earth’s naval. Apollo, as an infant, and supposedly with his first arrow, slew the serpent Pytho. The serpent’s body was tossed into a fissure in the earth and the vapors emanating from his decomposing body put the Oracle, seated on a tripod over the opening, into an intoxicated trance. It was in this state that she raved, her ravings then translated by the priests of the temple into elegant hexameter. I was unable to consult with the Oracle, as emperor Theodosius I closed down the operation sometime in 395 AD.

After Delphi we drove along the coast and took a little dip in the waters near the town of Galaxidhi.  Prior to 1890, Galaxidhi was one of Greece’s major harbors, but as with so many of these little coastal areas I’ve been to, shipowners failed to accept and convert to steam power, so the town became another quaint tourist destination.
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The Stavros Chronicles: Hydra

This weekend we (I’m already using the proprietary “we”) went to this perfectly picturesque little island in the Saronic Gulf, Hydra. It’s a film set of an island, formerly an important ship-building center, a tiny port village with 18-19th Century buildings. Jules Dassin’s Phaedra and Jean Negulesco’s Boy on a Dolphin (with Sophia Loren, her character also named “Phaedra”) were filmed here. There are no cars, or even bikes, although they do have mules for hire. Actually, if they allowed bicycles they’d probably have to put up guardrails, of which now there are nearly none, just sheer drop offs to that beautiful blue sea.

We swam in that amazing crystal clear water, ate delicious local seafood, took long walks around the island punctuated by our occasional dips into the sea. Stavros is the ideal flotation device, bobbing around without even having to tread water. The village was celebrating their involvement in the war of independence from Ottoman rule, which culminated in the burning of a boat in the harbor, fireworks spewing out from the boat and into the sky, histrionic music blaring, everyone in period costumes. There was dancing and much merriment.

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The Stavros Chronicles: On the Plane to Athens, then Landing & Finally, Waking

So Stavros and I have continued our virtual romance, spending hours a day chatting via Skype, exchanging teasing imagery and extreme longing across the world-wide web. And now I’m on a plane to Athens, about a month and a half after our initial online encounter. The love of my life, or of the next 3 weeks? We’ll see. In either case, I’m hoping to find expression of this desire that has consumed the better part of the last nine years, my quest for Mr. Right. I say things like, “Oh we’ll see how it goes,” while thinking that the only way I want this to go is for us to be together forever. But how in the heck is that going to work? And how do they expect us to sleep on these planes when they pack us in here like sardines? I’m sitting next to a Greek American woman, a 63 year old ballerina, who is so charming and beautiful and hasn’t stopped talking since take-off 4 hours ago, so at least the not-able-to-sleep portion of the trip is filled with her delightful commentary.

So I’m here, finally, since yesterday morning. Stavros had, until yesterday morning, existed as a 320 x 480 pixel representation of the man of my dreams. Now he’s the living, breathing embodiment of the man of my dreams. I will never forget seeing him at the airport for the first time, in his flip-flops and extended arms, a big grinning bear lumbering towards me. I still can’t believe he’s real, that someone could so perfectly conform to everything that I find desirable and attractive in a mate. He’s beautiful, sexy, attentive, silly, protective—he’s every favorable adjective I can think of.

Last night we went to the Acropolis Museum, which was celebrating its third anniversary by offering discounted admission and a public concert. The museum houses the decorative elements from the current Parthenon (frieze, metopes, sculptures, etc…), as well as the remnants of previous versions and archeological finds from the Acropolis. It’s an amazing museum, with glass floors providing visual access to the layers of archeological digs on the museum site. The experience of walking through the museum is to experience how this stuff was discovered and assembled, a walk through history, time and physical space.