Saturday, afternoon
“The best sunset in all of Milos,” Stavros said before we left Medusa, “is at Plathiena.”
“The best?” said John Anthony. “We only want the best.”
“Yes,” said Stavros, his piercing blue eyes boring into my soul. “It will make you get on your knees.”
“Phew,” said John Anthony, echoing my thoughts exactly.
For some reason, I found myself chauffeuring the three of us to Plathiena, the worst driver of the group. GoogleMaps had directed us onto a dirt path that had increasing potholes and only went up in elevation. Our tiny horrible rental car seemed to be actively stopping us from driving uphill, only going at the max speed of 10 mph even though my foot had the gas pedal pressed all the way down. It was a European car that only masqueraded as an automatic, adopting its makers’ attitudes that you were only worthy of having a license if you understood how to drive stick. The car shuddered and creaked, air conditioning straining after baking in the hot sun all day, trapping us in its sauna.
“WHY IS SHE THE ONE DRIVING?” Mckenzie shrieked from the back after a particularly intense bump.
“I DON’T KNOW,” I squealed back, no more confident in my abilities to get us there.
“THERE HAS TO BE ANOTHER ROAD ON THE WAY BACK,” shouted John Anthony. “WE’RE NOT DOING THIS AGAIN.”
We got there, half an hour to sunset. We collapsed on beach chairs and dozed off, figuring if anyone wanted us to pay, they would let us know. No one did. And then the full, unobstructed view of the setting sun, torching the landscape on fire. We giggled giddily, happy to be there together, looking at paradise.
Saturday, evening
We were finally going to my favorite restaurant, affectionately named “O! Hamos!”, on Milos, and I couldn’t wait to be reunited with my precious piglet couscous dish from 2019 that I still thought of fondly from time to time. When we got there, it was already 10 pm, and we were informed that there was still a 45 minute wait. We decided to drink while waiting, at the beach across from the restaurant. I was still awaiting A Text from my beautiful new fiancé, the server Stavros.
“What do I do?” I whined at my friends.
“Text him first!” They chimed.
“What do I textttttttt,” I whimpered. It was moments like this that I proved myself so sexually unconfident, it was a wonder how I ever got any.
“It literally does not matter,” said John Anthony.
“Well, I’m actually getting kinda tired,” I said, attempting to take the easy way out.
“No one’s making you do anything,” said Mckenzie. Fine.
I texted Stavros a picture of the sunset that made us get on our knees. We took your advice.
Beautiful, he texted back right away. Where are you now?
“WHERE ARE YOU NOW!!!!!” I screeched. “HE’S IN LOVE WITH ME!!”
“OH MY GOD!” John Anthony screamed back. “What are we gonna reply?”
“Let’s workshop this,” said Mckenzie. “Tell him you’re at dinner. Invite him to come for a drink!”
“Oh my god!!!!!!! Okay,” I typed and sent, then immediately threw my phone onto the sand.
“NO!” said John Anthony, picking my phone up. “Phone stays on the table. We have to know what happens next.”
“Ugh, whatever you guys. It’s chill,” I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if we meet up or not.”
“Literally shut up,” said Mckenzie.
“AHHHH! Fine, fine,” I said. My phone dinged. I am going to shower and get ready. Would you like to meet the two of us tonight or all of us?
“Oh my god,” I said. “He wants to fuck.”
“Well, obviously,” said John Anthony. “He probably does this all the time.”
“What do I say?”
“Well, say all of us, and we’ll go and sus it out. And if it’s chill, then we’ll leave. No pressure,” said Mckenzie, very reasonably.
“Okay,” I said, energized. He responded again, quickly. I will meet you all after dinner at a bar called Akri. “We have a date!” I yelled. “You guys think he’s definitely uncircumcised right?”
“For sure,” said Mckenzie.
“An uncut gem,” replied John Anthony.
The hostess called our name. Do you guys care about the dinner part or should I just skip ahead?
Saturday, after dinner
We speed walked towards the bar. “I’m getting really nervous,” I said. “Can you guys hold on!” My sandals kept sliding on the sidewalk tile. No one slowed down for me. “GUYS! I’m starting to sweat!”
Mckenzie and John Anthony kept up their New York pace ahead of me. “Stop dragging your feet then,” she called back to me.
“We’re on vacation!” I moaned. “Why are we going so fast!”
“I can’t with your clomping,” said John Anthony, laughing. “Stavros is waiting for us!” Date waiting or no, I am unable to walk like a normal human being. It’s just one of my follies, one of the things that make me human. However, the humidity and the labored walking were making my armpits wetter and wetter, and unaccustomed to dealing with someone so hot, I feared that he wouldn’t find me attractive anymore. We entered the bar, now in a full body sweat, a winning combo from nerves and heat.
“He said he’s in the backyard,” I said, charging ahead of my friends in case we had to bail the second we saw him again. I spotted him sitting alone in the back, nursing a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. I saw with both relief that he was in fact, hotter than I remembered, and with a little disappointment that he was still wearing those outrageous acid wash jorts with neon yellow zippers from earlier and it wasn’t just apart of his work uniform. I decided to chalk it up to Euro trash fashion. He doesn’t know better!
He spotted me and smiled, standing up to hug me. I didn’t remember him so tall at the restaurant, towering over me to crush my face into a hug. He was wearing an oversize summery knit. I noticed with pleasure that it seemed kind of expensive. Then I made the mistake of breathing in—he had said he was going to shower, didn’t he?! So tell me why his BO invading my senses?! Wearily now, I decided to chalk that up, again, to a cultural difference. Maybe deodorant wasn’t a thing on Milos! It’s certainly not in Paris (right?)! I guessed I had finally met my sweaty match. Just two stinkers in the end, really.
“You look beautiful,” he said, smiling.
“Thanks,” I said, smiling back. “So do you. Should we go inside for drinks?”
“No,” he said. “She will come.”
We all sat down. A moment of silence. “So,” John Anthony started. “How was work?”
“It was not so bad,” he said. “I got to leave early today, and I get to make good money while I am here, so I can’t complain.”
“So how often do you work?” I asked. “It must be so nice to spend your summers here.”
“Yes, but when I’m here, I work every day.”
“Every day?” We gasped. “No days off?”
“No, he said, furrowing his brow. “But I like it. It’s so much more real than modeling. That kind of life, it’s not real. I like to come back and experience this, and remember where I came from.”
A humble king. I personally can’t relate to why a person would want to do such a thing as “remember where they came from,” but we all nodded compassionately. The waitress came by and took our drink orders. “So do you actually believe in the Greek gods and everything?” John Anthony asked, half joking.
“Haha, no. Not Gods. But I believe in energy and spirits,” he said. “Stuff like that. I’m a very spiritual person. I think there’s a lot here we can’t see.”
“My friend says he saw aliens on Santorini,” I cut in, laughing. “Because Atlantis is actually underneath Santorini. And the aliens are very drawn to that energy. What do you think about that?”
“No, not aliens,” he said very seriously. “But I do know something about Atlantis.”
“Oh?” We said, the three of us leaning in. “What?”
“Yes, so you know the Northern Lights,” he said. We nodded. “So, Atlantis actually has its own sun at the center of the Earth. And it’s like a tube with holes at the top and bottom, the north and south pole. The Northern Lights are actually a reflection of Atlantis’s sun.”
Another pause. “Okay,” I said diplomatically. “I can see that.”
“So you really believe in Atlantis?” asked John Anthony.
“Yes,” he said. “There’s actually a lot of evidence of it, and you know how the earth is flat and everything, but yes, you can actually dive there and see the ruins. But you know—there is a lot about our world you can’t see, different dimensions, but we don’t have to get into all of it now—“
“Wait, wait—“ said John Anthony. The waitress came with our drinks just then. “Caipirinha?”
“Me.” I said, raising my hand. She dropped off our drinks. We all looked at each other with big eyes. What did he say?
“So anyway,” I said loudly. “What was growing up here like?”
He smiled. “It was very nice, but it is a very small island. We all know everyone.”
“Ah,” said John Anthony, wiggling his eyebrows. “So did you ever get in trouble with any of your friends? Date the same person?”
“Actually, I have a story about this,” he said, looking sad. “My best friend and I are not so close with anymore. He slept with my girlfriend.”
“Whoa, really?” said Mckenzie. “That’s not nice.”
“No, it was horrible, actually. She was vacationing on this island for a week, she was a lot older than me. I was 19 at the time,” he said. “She had a twelve year old daughter.”
“Wow,” I said. “She was your girlfriend?”
“Yes. She was here for a week, and we met and had a lot of fun. She said, why don’t you come back to Argentina with me? And I said okay, and then I went to go to live with her.”
“You went and lived with her after a week?” John Anthony exclaimed. “What about her daughter?”
“Yes, that was the thing.” His brow furrowed. “So I couldn’t work in Argentina. But I had no money and she had a lot of money. So I stayed at her house and cooked for her and took care of her daughter. Took her to school, did her laundry, all of this. And I asked her, please, can I go to the city and try to find some work, or can I go to London with you, because I know I can find modeling work there, and she said no.”
“Why would she say no?” I asked, shocked.
“I don’t know. And I couldn’t get the money to come back to Milos, either. So this is when this happened. She went to London, and at the time, my best friend from Milos was there too. And they slept together.”
“What!!” We exclaimed. “Why would he do that? Why would she?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “So I had to ask my parents for the money to fly back to Milos.”
“So do you still talk to her?” I asked.
“Actually, she was here last week. I was working at the restaurant and she texted me to look up, and she was waving to me from her yacht.”
“That’s horrible,” Mckenzie said. “Do you still talk to your friend?”
“I forgave him now,” he said. “But we still are not very close. We just get drinks every once in a while.”
“Whoa,” I said. We were silent for a moment. “I have talked enough,” he declared. “Tell me a story about you.”
We looked at each other. “No, it’s okay,” said John Anthony. “We’re learning a lot.”
“So what’s like, a typical day on Milos for you?” I asked. “Since you don’t get to have any days off? Do you still get to enjoy the ocean?”
“Yes of course,” he said. “But I have lived here all my life, so I am used to it now. I usually just get up, work out, and I look into the sun, do you know this?”
“What?” I said.
“You look into the sun?” said John Anthony incredulously.
“Yes, you can get a lot of energy from looking into the sun,” Stavros said seriously. Mckenzie excused herself to go to the bathroom.
“You can also go blind,” said John Anthony slowly, as if talking to a child.
“No,” he shook his head. “That is what they want you to believe. You can actually transcend into a different dimension if you look for long enough.”
“Have you ever actually looked into the sun?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Every day.”
John Anthony and I made wide eyes at each other. “It’s just like Trump, right,” I laughed nervously. “Looking directly into the sun.”
“He’s a very smart guy,” Stavros said very seriously again.
“Are you joking?” John Anthony said with a smirk.
“No, I’m serious. He is doing very good things for the world. He and his daughter. You’ll see,” he said. “But I shouldn’t talk about things like this.”
“Wait, no,” John Anthony cut in. “No, he’s not a good man. What?”
It was getting worse and worse with every line coming out of his mouth. “They’re hiding a lot of things from us, you know,” he said, sounding stressed. “I dated a French girl whose family is very, very important in the media. And the things they hide…” he trailed off, shaking his head. “You have no idea.”
“Well, of course the media and the government hide things from us,” I said. “That’s basics. But that doesn’t explain how you think Trump is a good person.”
“You’re going to see very soon,” he said nervously, wiping his brow. “But I’ve said too much.”
“Too much?” John Anthony exclaimed. “You haven’t said anything! Trump is racist, xenophobic, a rapist—“
“On September 11th, everything will be revealed. You’ll see,” he said again.
“What’s going to be revealed?” John Anthony asked, all humor gone now. Mckenzie came back from the bathroom, unaware of the tension there was between us. “So are you going to do it?” she whispered to me. I made help me eyes at her. “I don’t think I can,” I whispered back. “He’s crazy.”
I announced I was going to the bathroom now. Stavros and John Anthony didn’t look up, too engaged in the conversation. I left Mckenzie to discover just what was so wrong with Stavros. When I came back, she had her voice raised. “—but you don’t understand, that in America a vote for Trump means that you’re endorsing for people who are racist, who are homophobic, who believe in the right to bear arms—you don’t understand that for us it’s actually so scary to walk into a store and be afraid that a shooter is going to come in and kill us at any random moment—“
He kept shaking his head and saying refrains like “You’ll see. I’ve said too much. We shouldn’t be talking about these things—“
“And a vote for him means that you’re endorsing people who continuously kill our children, people who don’t believe that women have rights—“
But it was impossible to get through to him. He held fast in his belief that all would be revealed shortly, that we only knew a fraction of what was really going on in the world, and that he wishes we had been able to see the things that he had seen, then we’d understand everything. We decided to move on. He was a goner.
“So why did you break up with this French girl?” I asked. “If she showed you so much.”
“Yeah, wouldn’t her family, like get you for revealing their secrets?” John Anthony asked sarcastically, totally over it now.
“It was very intense,” he said, seeming sad. “She showed me a lot of things. Whenever we had sex, we would go into another dimension.”
“Another dimension?! What dimension is that?” John Anthony said, fully laughing in his face.
“How would you get to the other dimension?” Mckenzie asked.
“Sound frequencies,” Stavros replied, dead serious.
It was time to go. “We’re going to pay for our drinks now,” said John Anthony. Three of us stood up. “Okay,” he said, smiling stupidly up at us.
“I’ll be right back,” I said to him.
We went inside the bar and we burst out laughing. “Oh my god,” I said. “Holy shit. He’s like.. dumb dumb.”
“It’s true what they say about models,” Mckenzie giggled.
“Are you going to do it?” John Anthony snickered.
“Oh my god! How can I? He’s a flat earther. And that’s the most normal thing about him!”
“I think you should,” said Mckenzie with a devilish grin.
“Yeah, why not,” shrugged John Anthony. “Maybe you’ll go into another dimension.”
“Oh my god, you guys,” I rolled my eyes. "Just give me a second to say bye.”
I walked back to Stavros. He looked up at me with his big blue eyes. “Um, so. My friends are paying. I think we’re going to go.”
“You too?” He asked.
“Yeah,” I said. I tried to arrange my face to look apologetic. He patted the seat beside him. I sat down.
“You look very beautiful tonight,” he said, turning the charm on all of a sudden. “I would like to kiss you goodnight.”
“Well…” I said. It seemed less ridiculous without everyone else here. What was a kiss anyways. “Why not.” He leaned forward and kissed me. His lips were soft. All of a sudden, he started darting his tongue everywhere. I tried to catch his tongue with my tongue but it was very awkward. I broke free.
“Hold on,” I said. I held his face still. This time, I took the lead. I opened his lips with my tongue, softly. He followed my lead, slowly, sensually, and then more intensely for a few minutes. It started to get pretty heated on this bench. We both adjusted, now flustered.
“Should we go somewhere?” He asked, fluttering his long beautiful lashes.
I looked at him. He really was so gorgeous. And it was such a warm summer night. I suddenly really wanted to take my clothes off. “Just give me a second.” I fired off a text to my friends, I guess I’m staying after all lol. I looked up at him. “Okay, where?”
“I know a place,” he said, standing up. He held his hand out to me. I took it.
