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Platres Conclave Ch. 01

By: sr71plt



(Note: This is a five-chapter novella, which should all post within three weeks of the posting of chapter one)

Who could have guessed that the sense of freedom and exhilaration could come in the form of a feeling of calm and of floating above the world and of experience and rejoicing in every moment? I had escaped—escaped Nicosia and the embassy and the American Center and all of the questioning—and judging—eyes. I was beyond the reach of Carolyn—of her antiseptic, instructional phone calls and, most of all, of who she was. The who that she was was diminishing the who that I was. But not today. Not on this mountain road up under the peak of Mount Olympus. Not in this classic Jaguar XKE I bought in defiance of my wife's admonition that the embassy standard was to buy Kias and, as she already was shipping the BMW, one of us should follow the standard.

The weather was fantastic—quite warm, the sun shining, as it almost always did in Cyprus—and the smell of the spring flowers and the filling out of the grape leaves in the vineyards on the sides of the slopes were transporting me to the world of "no worries." I put a Wes Montgomery CD in, the CD player being the only modern convenience that had been added to the green 1968 Vicarage XKE I'd fallen in love with on the dealer's lot on Grivas Avenue. I sat back into the soft leather seat, fully alert, not just to the road but to life to its fullest, and luxuriated in how well the ragtop held the curves as I climbed into the Troodos mountains, past Galata and Kakopetria, on my way to the Forest Park hotel in Pano Platres.

It had been both a brilliant and a desperate idea, I was thinking as I drove the winding road, to retreat to the mountains for two weeks before Carolyn descended. I had been pulling my hair out, harried at all sides, and tired of the constant looks I was getting in the embassy, everyone wondering how I fit in, how deeply I was going to intrude into their business and normally well-ordered community. The nonfunctional male spouse appendage of a woman of substance always raised questions that were both a nuisance and an invitation to worry about favoritism and the informal pecking order. These worries were natural, I knew, even though I didn't want to intrude at all. All I wanted to do was become invisible and write. Imagine my surprise and delight when not only could I get a reservation at the stately old British colonial mountain resort hotel, the Forest Park, but I could also book the room Daphne du Maurier had occupied while she was writing Rebecca. This was the best of all worlds.

I had come out to Cyprus two months ahead of Carolyn because she was still facing confirmation hearings in Washington, the lease was up on our New York apartment, and I fancied I'd be getting time to work on my new book. Thus far, though, I hadn't been able to write more than a couple of pages of prose, and I very much suspected those would have to be ripped out before I was finished. I couldn't concentrate in Nicosia.

First it was settling on a house, a process that wrung me dry as I played middleman between the embassy housing board and the persnickety Carolyn. She won out on all of her demands in the end, which, of course, I could have told the housing board she would before they even started the process. Then our shipment arrived, and it was a matter of making the house a home, combining what the embassy was providing and what Carolyn had sent. Carolyn had not sent any of my favorite furnishings, of course.

It wasn't much better at work. Even though I hadn't made such a request, A job had been found for me at the American Center—as an assistant director. This seemed natural, as I had gained a fair reputation as a novelist. But it wasn't a full-time job. Everyone I asked to apprise me of its duties could do little more than hem and haw and, in the end, could do no better than suggesting I'd be the artistic representative of the embassy, attending gallery openings and such—which I'd already be doing as the husband of the deputy chief of mission, the deputy U.S. ambassador. The more snide of the employees managed to let me know in indirect ways and looks that there really hadn't been a position before Carolyn was assigned to the mission and would be coming with a husband in tow. There was another assistant director of the American Center, and she handled the business and financial end and gave no indication she would be giving up any of her duties, DCM's husband or not.

So, that was me at the embassy—the informal cultural ambassador, "have scissors, will cut ribbons."

Everywhere I went while we were all waiting for Carolyn to make her entrance drew back a step from me and scrutinized me for signs of gigolo, aka useless appendage. Everyone knew Carolyn. And if they didn't like her, they did respect and fear her. She cut quite a swath in the State Department. This, while her first, was certainly to be her last DCM position. It would be ambassador after this. This was just a short training course for her to greater, more visible positions. If her own blonde beauty, dynamic personality, and driving ambition wouldn't see to that, her daddy, U.S. Senator Lawrence Grayson, certainly would.

It was natural that people would think that I had jumped on Carolyn Grayson's bandwagon for the cushy ride—and, yes, of course she kept her own name rather than taking mine. She was the dynamo and I was twenty years younger than she was and, in the eyes of many, of no substance and merely her trophy joystick. It didn't really matter that I'd had a couple of "almost" best-selling novels. What is a novelist anyway in the world of international affairs, if not just a nonfunctional dilettante—especially an eye-candy sort kept by a powerful woman as a well-dressed escort and nice cock to ride in bed?

It was nice, though, to be granted the "nice cock to ride" status. It did lead to some flirtatious moments with embassy secretaries.

And how much more dismissive would they have been of me, I wonder, if they knew that indictment now was only half true. Carolyn hadn't thrown me out of her life when she discovered the affair I was having with the poet, Richard Thornton, but she had insisted on separate bedrooms since then. She'd known I was bisexual when we'd married and it hadn't bothered her then, but I suppose she thought it some sort of defeat that she couldn't "straighten" me out completely and consume me all on her own—and Carolyn didn't like even the hint of defeat.

But neither the absent Carolyn nor the present staff of the American embassy in Nicosia could consume me now, today. With each of the ninety kilometers I was clicking off between Nicosia and Platres as I snaked around the climbing, winding mountain road in the luscious sports car my wife would give me hell for buying, the burdens of the reality of my life were slipping away and I was being lifted up in a cloud of calm exhilaration.

The Forest Park hotel was everything I had imagined and hoped it would be. Set high on a ridge in a deciduous forest, far different from most of the semiarid climate of the island of Cyprus, the Foreign Park was a slice in a much slower, more elegant, colonial period. It had been built in the 1930s in a community that had been an exclusive British colonial summer retreat for the governing officials when Cyprus was under British rule. Like such hill stations everywhere in the British Empire that were able to serve this purpose, the buildings here were of red-brick Victorian architecture. Nearly everything here was unlike almost anywhere else on the island—a very definite expression that here, if nowhere else, was a slice of England at the height of its power.

The hotel itself was several stories tall and sat on twenty acres of manicured hilltop property. Everything in the interior was set to an early time period too—to the 1980s, just before the British were forced off the island. The amenities were modern enough, but the veneer and the pace of life here was British colonialism at its height. And the service was white glove and impeccable, if slightly seedy—which I'd found also to be representative of that slice in time.

What first hit me as I entered the lobby was how quiet it was—and deserted. Someone stood behind the reception desk in stiff welcome, and a bellboy showed up instantaneously to take my suitcase, just as a car hop had materialized as soon as I'd driven into the tight forecourt circle and took the keys to my Jaguar. But if there were other guests, they were hiding behind the heavy brocade drapes against the wood-paneled walls on either side of each of the double doors into other parts of the hotel.

"It's low season here, sir," the receptionist provided by way of explanation. "Our high seasons now are summer, when the plains become unbearable, and winter when the ski slope is open up on Mount Olympus."

I thanked him in a hushed tone that mirrored his, which would have seemed strange in the deserted lobby if I were not in awe of the "back-in-times" elegant surroundings, and followed the bellboy to a small brass and black enamel elevator, which cranked its way up to the third floor.

The only thing that marked the room he took me to as that of Daphne du Marnier when she was writing Rebecca was a small brass plaque beside the door. As we had walked down the carpeted hall toward this room, I had notice several other such plaques beside doors, and I promised myself that I would explore and read them all as I had time.

Time. That seemed to be what I would have the most here at the Forest Park—and it was what I had sought. Quiet time to think and to write. To think about my life with Carolyn and where I fit into her life now, which seemed like not much at all. In New York I could be a person in my own right—have my own friends, pursue my own interests. Carolyn had been assigned to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations, and it had consumed her attention and time. We had even agreed that we would talk about the affair with Richard at some point—at the time she designated. But six months after she'd put a stop to the affair—via a telephone call to Richard from her senator father—we still hadn't found the time or opportunity to address the issue. Here in Cyprus, though, I was just that younger, dilettante unnecessary appendage of the deputy U.S. ambassador, a man living on whatever favor she gave me.

Most of all, though, I was here to write. In preparation for Carolyn's assignment to Cyprus, I had started to read about Cyprus and the Greeks and the Turks. As I often did, I approached the region in its poetry. Thus, I had found the Greek poet and diplomat George Seferis and had been taken by his laments of detachment from the things he loved. He had written much while in exile from Greece on the island of Crete during World War II. Reading of the recent history of Cyprus, I saw parallels where both Greeks and Turks were displaced from their home villages and still were prevented to return there.

I had written a book paralleling the life of the American novelist, Thomas Wolfe, who, after having written scathingly and tellingly about the society of the southern city of Asheville of his youth, felt both drawn to return there and repelled by the fear of how he would be received there. I added a dimension of alienation and danger in my novel. It had done very well in the market place.

It thus had come to my mind to write such a parallel novel to George Seferis's life and exile and meld in the feelings of isolation from one's own past that many in Cyprus must know. I had started the work in New York while I was engaged in a torrid affair with Richard Thornton. The loss of him had drained the creativity from me. I had looked forward to the change in venue to Cyprus to regain the creative juices. Thus far they had alluded me, however, in the minutia of preparing the way for Carolyn's arrival and of trying to convey to the embassy and American Center staff that I would draw on no favoritism if I possibly could help it. In truth, I knew Carolyn would show me no favoritism that wasn't connected with exhibiting my subordinate position in her life and world. This, I think, was her punishment for the affair with Richard.

The Du Maurier room was nothing special, certainly not a suite. But it did have a desk in one corner that probably symbolized her presence whether or not it was the actual desk she had put her typewriter on. I had read enough about her to know that she did use one to compose with. It would serve me just as well as some place to set my laptop. I vaguely wondered whether another novelist's muse could be captured as easily by a computer as by a Remington typewriter. There was even a chair I could use. Before unpacking, I tried out the desk and chair to see if it would be the right height and I found myself composing. I was writing more on the manuscript I had already tentatively titled "Sleep for the Nightingale" than I had written since the end of the affair with Richard. It seemed that muses didn't reject the march of technology.

Two hours later I realized that there was a stitch in my back from huddling over the laptop, and I stood and stretched and moved to the window.

The view from the window was down into the back garden, across a raised patio with tables—where I had been told breakfast would be served if the weather permitted. Beyond that, the grounds terraced away to a line of tall pines, a surprising and pleasant sight on a semiarid island. From this angle in a hollow beyond the breakfast terrace that would be shielded from view from the patio I saw a rectangular, midnight-blue bottomed swimming pool, surrounded by a stone deck. The short side of the pool was toward the hotel, with the diving board at the opposite end.

There was one lone swimmer. A man. He was swimming for exercise—or maybe to improve his diving form, which didn't seem to need any improvement. He appeared to be older than I was, but not by more than a few years. Dark haired and tall and well-muscled. He was probably one of those beautiful Greek Cypriot men I'd seen on the streets of Nicosia, a virtual Apollo before thirty but then starting a long, but steady decline into one of the shriveled, pot-bellied old men sitting and drinking ouzo at the sidewalk cafés throughout the day, ogling the young girls with toothless smiles as they passed on the street, and weaving stories with each other of "the good old days."

As I watched, I became aroused. I had been virtually celibate for six months now—since the affair with Richard, which had been torrid, with him taking any opportunity to come together, even in public places, and demanding that I fuck him twice or three times in quick succession and then for him to return the favor in one, long, languid coupling. In watching the man at the pool execute his perfect dives from the board and swim to the end of the pool and then return to the board to start the cycle all over again, I realized that I truly felt free for the first time in months. I was thinking of sex with a man. I had shrunk from any such thoughts in the face of Carolyn's judgmental frigidity toward me for months.

I opened my suitcase and felt around for my bathing suit and changed and descended to the lobby level and took the designated path to the outdoor pool. May in Cyprus was quite warm enough for those of us from more northern climes to swim. When I reached the pool, though, the man was gone. I told myself that this was quite all right with me, that he had only inserted in my brain the desire to take a swim myself.

I dove into the pool and did a quick ten laps and then came out and laid down on one of the pool beds and let the late afternoon sun, dappled here there the sighing pine trees bordering the swimming pool on three sides, dry me off. I'd brought one of George Seferis's poetry books with me and I read and drifted off into a pleasant near sleep.

When I became fully awake, I was still alone, the shadows were growing long, and it was turning a bit chilly. However I wasn't fully alone after all, I discovered, because when I looked up at the façade of the hotel, I saw that curtains were drawn from a window on the same floor my room was on and that there was a man standing at the window, naked, and looking down at the pool. I couldn't be sure, but I thought it might be the same man I'd seen swimming in the pool earlier. I could see that his body was magnificent, even from this distance, and I tensed up in arousal. I couldn't take my eyes off him until he withdrew from the window and pulled the drapes.

I remained there for another fifteen minutes, savoring the smell of the pines, the golden silence, and the solitude. I had been just as glad to be alone. While I had dozed, my mind had been racing on where I was in the manuscript. The call of the laptop drew me away from the pool, I padded back upstairs and sat back at the desk in my still-damp bathing suit and buried myself in my work. I trilled at the discovery that the muse hadn't left me, that my earlier, intense writing session hadn't been an anomaly. 

The next time I became aware of anything but my writing, I was three thousand words to the good in a section of the book I was well satisfied with, and the only light in the room was the backlit computer screen.

I stood and stretched again, padded into the small, somewhat dated bathroom and showered, and went to the closet to pull my evening wear from the closet. I had come with semiformal dress, a black dinner jacket and pleated shirt and black bow tie. The hotel brochure had suggested it for the main dining room, and I didn't mind, because I knew I looked good in a dinner jacket. Carolyn was always careful to compliment me on my dress—as if this was her primary interest in me, and quite likely it was.

It was late when I descended to the ground level for dinner, and I was ravishingly hungry. But I also was well-pleased with myself. I had written five thousand words—every good words, I thought—on the manuscript and had devised a significant new subplot that hadn't occurred to me before.

I assumed I was the last diner when I arrived in the Blue Restaurant, the hotel's main dining room, as no other diners were present at 8:30 p.m. when I arrived. There were, however, eight or nine waiters standing at various stations in the room playing at "statue." As the time ticked on—service was impeccable but not particularly rapid, being set to European rather than American standards—I could hardly keep myself from laughing. Just me eating, surrounded by a battalion of waiting waiters—waiting for any sign that I needed something or had finished something. I would have felt extremely self-conscious except that my creative juices were still working and I entertained myself with thoughts of plots and subplots and turns of phrases.

I had finished a delicious dinner and was arising, with one waiter holding my chair and another brushing imaginary crumbs off my sleeves, when I no longer was the only guest in the dining room.

The handsome man from the swimming pool—I was sure that it was him—entered the dining room as I stood and was shown to a table across the room from where I was sitting. He looked entirely comfortable in the surroundings, and he looked fully as good in his evening wear as I fancied I did. He glanced at me in passing and gave me a slight smile and nod of his head, but he didn't break stride en route to his chair. He indeed was a handsome man. He could have been a movie star—which I later had occasion to recall and be amused by—and he was so well groomed that I thought that he must be a man of substance and importance. The waiters obviously were impressed by him.

I went back to the room and worked feverishly again on the manuscript until I felt exhausted—and profoundly thirsty. A room refrigerator was not likely to be something they would install at the Forest Park in the current century, so, still in my tux pants and pleated shirt, but minus tie and jacket and with the shirt comfortably open at the collar, I left the room again and went looking for the Olympus Bar, which the hotel brochure assured me was open until 3:00 a.m. It was almost midnight now. Still feeling the solitude of the hotel—not that I objected to that—I took up the George Seferis poetry book and a biography of him with the subtitle "Waiting for the Angel," and tucked them under my arm.


Platres Conclave Ch. 02



"Please, Sami, Mr. Stevens is breakfasting with me. Sit him here please."

The waiter on the breakfast table did a delicate dance step sashay to the right and pulled out a chair for me at Nico's table.

"I see both of us have gotten out of bed earlier this morning," Nico said, as Sami handed me the breakfast menu. He followed this with a wicked smile and murmured "Pity, that," as Sami moved off.

"I should have closed the drapes last night," I answered as I looked over the menu. "When I opened my eyes, the sunshine was so dazzling, I couldn't stay in bed."

"Oh, damn, another beautiful day."

"What?" I asked, not being sure I'd heard him correctly.

"It's a saying we have here in Cyprus. The weather is so glorious that it's a local joke about going to the door in the morning and looking up into the sky and saying, 'Oh, damn, another beautiful day.'"

"Yes, I can see where that would be amusing—and fitting. I guess it's like being in heaven. One would become bored after a few centuries."

"That's why I like a little wickedness in my life," Nico said, flashing the same smile he had greeting me with when I sat down. "Do you have a bit of wickedness in your life, Mr. Collin Stevens? You certainly have more than a little bit in your earlier books."

"Please, call me Collin," I answered. The waiter had appeared and I'd given my order. "And beautiful day or not, I came here to write, so it looks like the beautiful day is wasted on me."

"You use a laptop, don't you?"

"Yes, of course."

"Then the day need not be wasted. You could compose by the pool. As you saw yesterday, any guests who are here in this season have other ways to spend their time than staying around the hotel. It would be very private here in the afternoon. The staff neither sees nor talks. Most everyone, including most of the hotel staff, would be at their siesta, or as we would say mesimerianós ýpnos. We would be alone and most certainly unobserved at the pool."

"We?" I asked in amusement. "'We' wouldn't be working on my laptop."

"It's really a very civilized tradition, our siesta. Between 3:00 and 5:00 p.m., everyone is supposed to go home and take a nap in the hottest part of the day. Silence is supposed to reign. Of course, that was in the old days. Now we still have siesta, but we use it differently."

"Oh? How so?"

"Now it is a time to work on your house—most of our houses in Cyprus are built by the people living in them—or it's a time to visit your mistress, a time to fuck." I looked up quickly into his face then and he was smiling at me. "So that is siesta in Cyprus. See, you have so much to learn about us—from me. You say you are writing something parallel to George Seferis's life and context, did you not?"

"Yes, the underlying issues, certainly. Not too literal."

"And when you wrote Homeward Bound to be parallel to Thomas Wolfe's life, did you first try to learn what made that city of his, that . . . where was it?"

"Asheville. In the mountains of North Carolina, one of our southern states."

"Did you not try to learn about this Asheville that he wrote about and was so deeply engrained in?"

"Yes, certainly."

"So. You must learn more about Cyprus—its cultural and arts—especially as it will be your job to be some sort of cultural ambassador to us—to try to destroy our culture and give us a present of the American one. And so, you are in luck. I will teach you. Starting today, this morning."

"I hardly think that going to bed with you will increase my understanding of Cyprus, Nico." I was returning his wicked smile. I wanted him to know that two could play this game.

"Ah, you are very funny. Yes, you are. I think you will let me fuck you, but I think it will be when there is no doubt about it—when I can just slip in. That is not what I mean here. I mean that today you are mine—to show more of what makes Cyprus Cyprus. To show you that we have art and culture worth your attention and that we have interesting customs—like dinner at ten and siesta and being bored of glorious weather and living life to its fullest. Yes? We must go by car, though. We take the Jaguar, yes? I think Anastades would want me to drive in his Jaguar again."

He was like a whirlwind; I could see that here was no arguing with him. And he was right, in any case. I needed to know more about Cyprus and its culture and customs—not just for my job but for the book I was writing as well—and I had no doubt that he could show it to me. I did have some anticipation that he was some kind of con artist working the hotels and that I would regret this financially. But he was fun, an escape from what I was escaping from. But there was my manuscript—my plan and schedule.

"I came here to write, Nico. I can't just toss it all away and run away from what I came here to do."

"You said you'd written yesterday. How much did you write yesterday?"

"Oh, about five thousand words."

"You just arrived yesterday. How many words did your schedule say you were to write yesterday."

"Good point," I answered. And it was a good point. I hadn't intended on getting any writing done the day I arrived. I had assumed I would have to sneak up on the writing when I got bored from just being a tourist. "OK, Nico. You've convinced me. Where do we go first?"

"Today is Limassol, on the northern coast. Maybe forty kilometers down from the mountain."

"OK," I said, starting to rise. I hadn't finished my breakfast and I could use some more coffee, but action is the only response to a whirlwind.

"Not yet. Sit down and enjoy the terrace. We'll have one, maybe three more cups of coffee."

"But just now you were insisting we were off on an adventure," I said, settling back in my chair.

"Ah, good. An opportunity for another lesson on Cypriot culture. We savor our meals. You are not expected to leave from here until at least your third cup of coffee. It would be an insult. You Americans are always on the go, go, go. Also, 'now' in Greek culture doesn't mean this minute—nothing happens 'right this minute' in the Mediterranean. We are on Cypriot time today. Sit, relax. Sami. More coffee, please."

* * * *

"So, I've told you what brought me to the Forest Park. It's your turn now to tell me why you are there in low season. You've indicated to me that that is some sort of faux pas, coming to Platres in the off season." We were driving to Limassol, and I had negotiated most of the blind-curve mountainous road and could see the sea ahead of us. A fairly good-sized town, what presumably was Limassol lay in the crook of the stubby peninsula jutting out into the water below us. I wanted to know more about Nico before we got to the town. I increasing was thinking that Nico was some sort of gigolo hotel con artist, but I thought it would be amusing to hear what he'd have to say for himself.

"The Platres Conclave. It starts the day after tomorrow, and I came up early. Many of the others will be gathering tomorrow, and some of those will be staying at the Forest Park."

"A conclave? Don't tell me that you're a Greek Orthodox monk."

"Hardly." He laughed. I was amused myself that I could make him laugh. "This is the spring gathering. We also gather for a week in the fall. It is called by Elias Mikalaides. You've possibly heard of him—or maybe you are such a virgin to Greek culture that you haven't."

"The naïve artist?"

"The same. He may be our most revered fine artist of the day. He has a home in Platres—right on the main drag across from the Plaka taverna—the taverna in the square. He has homes in Nicosia and Paphos as well. He is one of our displaced refugees—his native home is in Kyrenia on the northern coast. He moans so well at the loss of that in his art, though, that the government has given him three houses to replace the one lost. The one in Platres is easy to find. Right across from the Plaka. You know what a plaka is, don't you?"

"Yes, I do know what the Plaka taverna is in most Cypriot villages," I answered. "I've been taken to most every one in the towns that were swallowed up by Nicosia. It's where they take you for dinner when they feel obligated to entertain you, and then you are inundated with so much food over so long a time that they don't have to think up anyplace else to take you that evening."

"Elias calls the conclave together. It is his child. It's held here in the spring and at his house in Paphos in the fall. The other seasons, we sometimes meet at his house in Nicosia. We don't do art then, though. We drink and otherwise entertain ourselves. The conclave is more structured, though. It's somewhat of a broad-based artists' retreat. We form in the morning for discussions, and we all work on a creation in our own discipline in the afternoon and evening—all working to a theme Elias has given us—and then we carouse at the Plaka or at Elias's village house half the night. At the end of the week, we all have something to contribute to an exhibit that's later given somewhere on the island. We often creative other masterpieces as well, which can follow the conclave theme or be inspired by something else altogether. The key works are auctioned off and each time there is some worthy cause that we put the money to. This year I think it's the School for the Deaf in Nicosia."

"It sounds like quite an inspiring week," I answered, more impressed now with the man sitting so comfortably in the passenger seat of my Jaguar. "It must be a real honor to be invited to come."

"Oh, it is. Often there are reporters permitted in near the end of the week to interview the participants and give coverage to the works they have made."

"And is this primarily for fine artists?"

"No, not at all. This conclave will include a poet, a composer, a couple of fine artists plus a sculptor, an actor-playwright, and a novelist."

"And is one of those you?"

"I'm the actor-playwright. I work with the Theatro Ena inside the old walls in Nicosia. I trust you have heard of that?"

Ah, that's what I had identified him as at the restaurant the previous evening, I thought, congratulating myself for my perceptiveness. "Yes. I was given listings of the cultural and artistic organizations. It's the national experimental theater, isn't it?"

"Yes, very avant-garde. I think you prudish Americans would probably cringe at some of what we stage there. I find it all quite amusing."

"I'll have to try it out."

"Yes you will. Warn me far enough in advance and I'll have something very special on stage for you—and afterward we can go someplace private and critique the underpinning themes. Or better yet," and here Nico brightened up and I almost thought he might be serious, "I could write to the theme of one of your early books. Wouldn't that be something for Cypriot-American cultural exchange?"

"I think it might get me sent home by the embassy," I said. We both got a chuckle out of the idea, though.

I had underestimated Nico. He knew his art—and his drama and his music. In Limassol we visited several art galleries with first-class art in them.

"Here is one by Elias. I'm sure you will be able to recognize his work instantaneously after seeing just one or two canvases. The technique is naïve, although I can assure you that he can paint breathtaking traditional and abstract styles as it suits him as well. But the vibrant colors he uses and the perspective that almost jumps off the canvas at you—it's simply glorious. Can you see his signature element?"

I peered closely at several of the canvases and saw nothing of a central motif until Nico pointed it out to me—and then I couldn't avoid picking it out immediately in all of the canvases.

"It's his cat, Eleftheria. We call her Ele for short. She's been in every canvas he's painted for years. She was a feral cat who adopted him, up in Platres. Very independent."

"Eleftheria means freedom, doesn't it?" I asked.

"Yes. That's what Elias embeds into all his canvases. He's quite a character. He leads an openly flamboyant life, and some of what he does is technically a crime on Cyprus. But he is such an institution that he lives almost above the law. Freedom is his catchword."

"Above the law?"

"Yes, he has quite a temper. He once castrated a boyfriend—a young boy—for sleeping with another man. And his temper is volatile. One moment he is your best friend and the next he is chasing you around the room with a knife. But," and here Nico shrugged, "he is a master artist. And speaking of master artists, here is work by Spiro Charalambou. He'll be at the conclave. He specializes in nudes. He'll want you to pose if he sees you."

"Hardly fitting for an American embassy official," I answered, with a laugh. "It's beautiful work, though. A haunting look about it."

"American embassy or no American embassy, I doubt you will be able to resist his charms if he wants you to model for him."

We lunched near the Limassol waterfront at the Pyrkos Taverna, an open-air communal table taverna serving traditional Cypriot meze—a never-ending parade of small dishes of food. Nico was well known here, and they begged him to sing while we were there, but he good-naturedly said he couldn't now because he was engaged in a teaching job.

"You sing too?"

"An actor has to do everything. I dance as well. But of all the things I do, lover is the best."

He was looking intently at me then, his expression changed, the twinkle still in his eye, but his expression more serious, searching. I had a hand on the surface of the table and for the briefest moment I thought he was going to cover it with his own. But he didn't. And at the moment, I realized what it was about him that I was finding so attracting and frustrating at the same time. He hadn't touched me—not physically, with a hand. He hadn't even brushed up against me, intentionally or otherwise. Usually when a man was trying to seduce me, he would have his hands all over me. But Nico was reserved in that way. I realized that, in refraining from the physical touch, I wanted him all the more. I wanted him to touch me.

After lunch, we visited Limassol Castle, where Richard the Lionhearted's bride, Berengaria, had been held for ransom after being shipwrecked off the coast, and where Nico gave me a chronology of all of the owners of the island going back through Richard and Cleopatra to the Phoenicians and farther back in time—giving me the short course in the strategic importance of the island along with its rich cultural heritage. After that we drove toward Paphos to the nearby Kolossi Castle, a solid cube of stone stronghold that was home at various times of the Hospitallers and Templers and thus served as the first bank of the neighboring nobility.

At the top of the castle, I stood at the wall looking out toward Episkopi Bay over one of the British sovereign base areas. As I stood there, Nico came in behind me and grasped the rail at either side of my body with stretched arms. It was very private. Being late in the afternoon, we were the last visitors in the castle, and I thought then that he would move in to embrace me and that we would kiss. But, while he stood tantalizingly close to me and I could feel the heat of him, he didn't touch me. I felt myself breathing heavily and waiting for the contact. But it didn't come, and then he was gone, waltzing away from me and declaring that we needed to hurry if we were going to make the play.

"The play?" I said. Surely we weren't going back to Nicosia to his Theatro Ena.

"You will be enchanted," was all that he said in turn.

In the hour before dusk, we stopped at a roadside grill house to the west of Kolossi and ate the most delicious kabobs while standing and watching the sun start to sink over the Roman ruins at Curium.

Then I learned what he meant by "play." We were driving into the area of the Curium ruins where the open-air amphitheater was located. We didn't have tickets, but they recognized Nico at the gate and waved us right through and showed us where to park in a specially designated area.

The amphitheater nudged right up against the sea, its orientation such that the Mediterranean served as a backdrop to the stage. We sat there, with several hundred other theatergoers, mostly British expatriates, as the sun set over the Mediterranean. At the last flickering away of red fingers of light on the surface of the sea, the lights came up on stage and the local English-language theatrical group performed Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. That I would be enchanted was probably an understatement.

"And that is only a smattering of the Cypriot culture I can show you," Nico said to me as we were leaving the amphitheater. "I can take you to a very interesting club for a more wicked look into our culture if you like. But perhaps more private, intimate entertainment would appeal to you at this moment."

"This moment is after midnight, Nico," I said. "If we are to sleep at the Forest Park tonight, perhaps we should be on our way up the mountain."

"They have perfectly good hotels here on the coast," Nico said. "Comfortable beds. Ones where the springs make no noise when you fuck."

"Come along," I said, acting as if I hadn't heard him. "You'll need to guide me to the proper road to Platres, I'm afraid. At night, I have absolutely no sense of direction here."

"I think you'll find the mountains are up and the sea is down and that we now stand between them," Nico said. Of course we both laughed at that. I was being made to feel very comfortable with Nico.

As we rode up the elevator at the Forest Park, I thanked Nico for being my guide for the day and told him how impressed I was with his knowledge and talent.

"I have not shown you my principle talent yet," he said to me in a low, throaty voice. "I do believe you owe me a fee for my services today. Are you going to let me come into your room and make love to you?"

If he had refrained from touching me throughout the day, he had no such restraints once we were inside the room. He was holding me close. We were standing in the middle of the room, rocking our bodies against each other, as his hands raced over my body, unbuttoning, unzipping, disrobing—his body as well as mine. We were kissing, and I was fully engaged in that. But beyond that, I just leaned back, supported by a strong arm encircling the small of my back and let him strip me bare—physically as well as emotionally. He had signaled that he wanted me to let him make all of the moves. He was larger, more muscular, more powerful than I was, and I just arched my back, my arms dangling at my side, dipping closer to the floor as his mouth moved down my throat and onto my nipples.

I felt his free hand encasing our cocks together and slowly the stroking them. I gasped as I felt his cock head drag across my lower belly. I moved a hand down there to confirm that he had a thick ring embedded in his cock head. I shuddered at what was surely to come. I'd never been fucked with a cock ring before—and this one was thick.

He lifted me off the floor, moved me to the bed, and laid me down on my back. Crouching over me, he kissed down my chest and sternum and belly and sucked on my cock until I was whimpering for him. Then he went lower, moistening me and opening me up. I stroked my cock and rolled my hips for him as he tongue-fucked my hole.

When I had ejaculated, he rose up and crouched over me again—and as he promised he would—just slipped inside me. I cried out as the cock ring rubbed across my prostate. He laughed and pulled out and rubbed across it again. And then again and again. I was moaning and babbling and incoherently begging him to do what he was already doing. Then he was fucking me deep and shuddering and jerking and spilling his seed.

We moved up to full stretch against each other on the bed and he kissed and fondled me until a dozed off—exhausted as much from his expert lovemaking as from the activities of the day.




Platres Conclave Ch. 03



After our shower, Nico turned to all business, directing me to go to the laptop and start writing and that he'd order an in-room breakfast for me and would see me at 1:00 p.m. on the terrace for lunch.

That dispelled all doubt in my mind that Nico too was a writer. He was able to see and honor the needs of a writer.

I, of course, couldn't start composing immediate, although the prompt room service obviated any suggestion that I wouldn't be able to compose. As I ate, I considered what I had let Nico do last night. The march to seduction of it wasn't a surprise to me. I had had this effect on both men and women all of my life. One lover had once told me that I must have special pheromones, a scent or come-hither aspect to me that made both men and women want to bed me. I had sensed that about Nico ever since I'd seen him at the window of the hotel while I was swimming—even without having any idea, for sure, who was at the window. There was something in me that drew certain other people, like Nico to the window, to me.

And when I'd seen him cross the floor at the Blue Restaurant and felt him looking at me, even as briefly as he did, I knew that we probably would fuck, unless some act of nature intervened.

I hadn't realized it when I'd set up this vacation, but I had to admit to myself now, that I knew that the freedom I felt in coming up to Platres was the freedom of knowing, subconsciously, that I had come here to let loose—to fuck my way through the week—as one last hurrah before Carolyn descended upon me and I had to shut my instincts down again and walk as if on eggshells. The writing had just been an excuse. I knew I had come here to let loose.

The danger now was not to let it control me and for me to be able to walk away from the week and back into my embassy life with no problems. Nico was a champion cocker; I needed to be careful not to want more than that. I had gone over that line with Richard Thornton, and it had burned me badly.

After I was finished with the breakfast—the sex having famished me—I sat down in front of the laptop and fingers started dancing on the keys, giving print to what my mind had been spinning out since the last time I sat here. The sex had been good—very good. It had been the same with Richard. It served as inspiration. The character I was weaving into my manuscript had taken on life. It was Nico. But that was OK; the book was about someone very much like Nico. He informed, in real life, how my character would respond on the page.

When I next looked up from the laptop it was twenty minutes after one. I jumped up from the desk and went straight to the window and saw that Nico was at a table on the terrace below—but that there were two men with him now. Panicked that he might leave with them, thinking I wasn't showing up for lunch, I slipped my feet in loafers, took a swipe at my hair in the mirror of the bathroom in passing, and rushed out the door and down the stairs.

"Ah, we'll make a Cypriot of you yet," Nico said in a jolly voice as I approached the table.

"Meaning?" I asked.

"Because Cypriots always are late. I was only on time because I assumed you were on the American clock and I didn't want you to desert me for not showing up. Costas's and Thano's excuses are that they are still eating breakfast. Come, sit. Meet the new arrivals for the Platres Conclave. Costas, Thanos, This is Collin Stevens, a certified cultural ambassador of America. And, yes, he's that Collin Stevens, the man who writes heart-thumping gay novels."

"Not anymore," I interjected immediately. "I've gone legit."

"Yes, I know of your work," the smaller, ferret-looking of the two men said. "And I've read some of your recent work too. Lyrical. Quite good."

"That's high praise," Nico said. "Costas Spyrou here is our poet. I caught our Mr. Stevens reading George Seferis, Costas, so we can dream that he got his lyrical bent from good precedence."

The other man, in maybe his early forties and short and a bit paunchy, but with very expressive hands, acknowledged the introduction, but I was somewhat taken aback because he was studying me closely and I felt like he was just itching to take my face in his hands, as if he were a blind man trying to give me a unique identity.

"Thanos here is our sculptor, Collin," Nico said. "I believe he is already imagining you in clay or marble. Isn't that so, Thanos?"

"Yes, certainly," Thanos answered. "He is beautiful. He would live and breathe beauty in marble. I do hope you will sit for me while we're here, Mr. Stevens. I could take time away from the exercise—if you would consent to model for me."

"Which leads to the question of what theme Elias has picked out for us for this conclave," the ferret-like poet said.

"Oh, I know that. He has picked 'beauty,'" Nico answered. "Isn't that a coincidence?"

"Of course you would know what Elias picked before the rest of us do," the sculptor shot back. I deduced a bit of venom in his voice and was taken back a bit on how quickly it was snapped back.

"Thanos here was a favorite of Elias at one time," Nico said, turning toward me. "You know how finical Elias can be, Thanos. By the end of the week, he'll probably be sighing in your lap again."

"Beauty again?" Costas then said, a bit pouty, I thought. "It seems he strikes on a variation of this every other conclave."

"Yes," Nico said, "But it will be convenient for Thanos. He already has his inspiration. He can do a bust of Collin here. I will be bringing Collin to the conclave with me."

"Bringing him the conclave?" both Costas and Thanos said at the same time, with a tone of disbelief.

"Elias has invited him?" Costas then asked.

"I am inviting him," Nico said.

The heads of both of the men swiveled to me almost in unison.

"Don't look at me," I said. "This is the first I've heard of it."

"But you will come, won't you?" Nico asked in a low voice.

"Yes, if you want," I said. "And if it leaves me time to write."

"There will be the morning," Nico answered. "And then the siesta time. We congregate to be serious in the early afternoon, we each work our own art after siesta, and we congregate to drink and entertain ourselves in the late evening—and into the night."

"When is Elias arriving?" Costas had addressed the question to Nico, which won another sour look from Thanos.

"He said he'd come up this evening and meet us at the Plaka tonight."

After lunch I returned to the room and worked on the manuscript. I was so engrossed in my work that it was with shock that I looked up and saw Nico standing there, watching me, in his bathing suit. He was wearing sandals and had a hotel towel over his shoulder.

"It's siesta time," he said. "But for us it is time to swim in the pool."

We fucked in the shadows in the covered pavilion at the other side of the pool. Nico had wanted to do it on a lounge beside the pool, but I was too chicken to do it where we might be seen. This time it was I who made love to him. He sat on a café chair and I knelt in front of him and sucked his cock—fascinated with the thick cock ring and playing with that with my tongue. When Nico couldn't take any more of my play, he lifted me up and sat me down on his cock, and I fucked myself on that, raising my pelvis up and down, leveraging off my heels on the stone floor of the pavilion.

Afterward, we both ran for the pool, naked, and dove in and swam laps until we came up side by side in the shallow end, and there he moved behind me and held me trapped between his arms, the heel of his hands on the edge of the pool, and, both of us facing the rear of the hotel and scanning it for anyone watching or approaching. And he fucked me again from the rear.

I worked on the manuscript through the late evening, and at 9:30, not being able to stave off the hunger anymore, dressed and went to the Blue Restaurant for dinner. There were a few other patrons there by then, mostly elderly British couples, but, although I expected Nico to join me by 10:00, he didn't.

When I couldn't spin out my dinner courses any further, I left the restaurant and went upstairs to Nico's room. He didn't answer the knock on the door, so I went back to my room.

There was a note on the door reminding me that the early arrivers at the conclave were meeting at the Plaka taverna and that I should go there. I presumed the note had been on the door when I left for dinner, put there because Nico didn't want to interrupt my writing, and that I had just missed it when I'd left the room.

I left the hotel and walked down the curved drive and then down onto the main street of Platres, which ran along the top of a ridge below the higher rise that the hotel perched on. There was essentially only one main street to Platres, with a square halfway between the ends of it. In recent years a couple of streets had been added off to either side, where the rich friends of the government and government officials of the capital had built vacation villas, but almost all of the amenities of the village lined the main, ridge-top street.

The Plaka taverna couldn't be missed. It was at one corner of the village square. Most of it was devoted to an open-air taverna with tables and mismatched chairs sitting precariously on the beaten-earth ground. Strings of colored Christmas lights on poles marked the parameter of the café, and paper lanterns hung in the olive trees inside the set-off area, giving soft illumination to what was quite a happy and boisterous crowd for after midnight.

Nico was standing just inside the interior portion of the café, open to the outside with a long string of accordion doors. Another man, if anything more handsome than Nico, all sultry looks and expressive eyes and brilliant smile, was sitting beside Nico in a bright-blue, rush-seated wooden village chair. This man was strumming a guitar—quite expertly—and Nico was singing a song, also quite expertly.

At the center of the café, a group of men sat at a long, rectangular table, jesting with each other without paying much attention to the music. Their table was littered with quart-sized beer bottles, mostly empty, and a mountain of small plates, also empty. I could see the poet, Costas Spyrou, and the sculptor, Thanos Adamou, sitting among the men at this table, and although Thanos smiled at me, he made no gesture for me to join the group. Costas had glanced my way, but he had quickly looked back at the man sitting at the head of the table.

All of the men at the table were focused on the man at the head of the table. I could see why. His was the most arresting visage in the restaurant. The first impression I had was of a giant toad. He was perhaps in his mid-to-late fifties and was squat without being short. He was quite heavy and had drooping eyelids as well as a mustache falling lower than his beard. His gray hair was wild on his head as if he'd put a finger in a light socket. And he was wearing a garish orange kimono.

There was little doubt that he was in charge of this little confab. He was the loudest of those at the table, and he interrupted whatever anyone else said at will and, when he did, all eyes at the table turned to him in supplication. I had no trouble identifying him as Elias Mikalaides, the host of the Platres Conclave.

I stood at the entrance for several moments, having received no signal to join the conclave and not being greeted by anyone to be taken to another table. Most of the tables were occupied and everyone was having a good time. Feeling awkward, I found a small table of my own on the periphery of the swirl of festive people inside the strung lights, and a waiter instantly appeared with a tray of small plates of food, which I politely declined and then offered to bring either beer or wine. I asked for the wine, which was quickly produced.

At the conclusion of Nico's set of songs, both he and the guitar player gave way to a woman singer and both moved back to the central table. My heart tugged and my stomach did a little flop when I saw Nico lean down and give Elias Mikalaides a kiss on the lips, a gesture that Mikalaides seemed to accept as his due, while the guitarist sat down at the table and reached for a bottle of beer. Nico started to sit down next to Mikalaides, but Thanos said something to him and he looked up and saw where I was sitting.

Then he was moving toward me, telling me to come join the group when he reached my table. I picked up my wine glass and the bottle and followed him.

"Elias, I would like you to meet Collin Stevens, novelist and American embassy cultural affairs officer," Nico said as we came up to beside Mikalaides. The Buddha-like man didn't stand, but he swiveled his head around and gave me a piercing—not entirely friendly—gaze.

"I've invited him to join the conclave this week," Nico continued.

At hearing that, Elias's gaze turned to ice, and I couldn't possibly have missed the look of surprise, anger, and distaste that flashed across his face.

"You invited him to attend the conclave?" Elias asked in a disbelieving voice. Suddenly silence reigned all along the table, and every eye there was turned to Elias.

"Yes. He's quite a well-known novelist in America," Nico said, "and he's just arrived in Cyprus and I've taken him under my wing for a crash course in our culture and arts. He will find our discussions quite useful, I'm sure."

"I don't wish to intrude," I stammered. "It's quite all right if—"

"Nonsense, Mr. Stevens," Mikalaides said. His tone was ponderous, though, and his words clipped, like he was on the edge of anger. "Please, please, do join us. There's a seat down there between Thanos and Spiro."

Nico sat down beside Mikalaides and the two of them put their heads together and spoke in muffled, intense tones while the others around the table introduced themselves to me. It seemed they all wanted to be friendly, but it also seemed like most of them weren't sure if that was permitted. That was all except Thanos, the sculptor, and the guitarist, who was sitting on the other side of me and who introduced himself to me as Spiro Charalambou, an artist. He showed interest in me immediately, and after I'd been introduced to the others, they rather retreated into the background as the sculptor and the artist both told me how good looking I was and what good bone structure I had—and that they both hoped I would pose for them during the week.

"Our topic is beauty, we've been told," Spiro said to me, his thick eyelashes fluttering and his smile seductive, "and I think I see my chosen project right here."

In addition to those two, I was introduced to Xanthos Economou, the music composer, and Nemo Constantinou—a novelist who told me he'd read my novels, but who I didn't really believe. Economou was as old, if not older, than Mikalaides, but tall and would have been distinguished looking if he didn't come across as so limp wristed. I thought I could see the flaking of lipstick about his lips, and it struck me that he was probably a cross-dresser—not just from that but also from his general demeanor. Nemo Constantinou came across as a coarse peasant type. He was in his forties, was hulking and moved with strong, expressive gestures. His features were hard edged and a bit crude, but he moved with assurance and with straightforward, strong flow. He had his arm around the back of Economou's chair, possessively, and I surmised that they were a couple.

"Did you like our music, Nico's and mine," Spiro asked in a whisper, bringing his lips close to my ear.

"Yes, very much so," I answered.

"I will be playing a song again shortly," he said. "I will be singing it for you—for your beauty. And then, perhaps, tomorrow, you will model for me?"

"Yes, perhaps," I said with a smile.

"I specialize in nudes," he said.

"So I've heard," I responded

He rose soon after that and went back to the blue rush-seated chair and began playing a slow, haunting melody on his guitar.

I was so mesmerized by what he was playing that I didn't notice that Nico and Mikalaides had left the table. As Spiro's song came to an end, though, I saw the pair entering a long bungalow across the road. The one-story stuccoed building was close to the road, but a deep porch ran the full length of the side toward the road.

But then Spiro was back at the table, where Thanos and I were having a conversation about the various sculpture galleries on the island. I felt a hand on my upper arm, and I turned back to Spiro who was leaning into me, his other arm across the back of my chair.

"Did you enjoy my song for you?" he asked.

"Yes, it was beautiful."

"Like you. The right song for you then," he whispered. "I am staying in a guest house just up the road. Would you like to come back to my room with me? We could drink. I have some fine old Cypriot brandy. And I would like to fuck you. It will help me bring more life to the painting when you model for me."

I didn't know if I was finding this casual open talk of sex and intentions among Cypriot artists refreshing or disturbing. But on the whole, I opted for refreshing. Certainly the artists felt no constraints to say what they wanted to.

"No, I'm sorry. I think not. I do find you attractive, but it's much too late for American hours, I'm afraid. I will need to adjust to Cypriot time." And, indeed, it was nearly 2:00 a.m. and the festivities were still going strong, although there were fewer tables occupied now than when I'd come into the Plaka. "And if I am going to attend your morning session—which is where, please?—I will need to get some sleep."

"We meet for our daily discussions across the road there, in Elias's house." It was Thanos who answered this, and I turned to him when he spoke. Spiro was running his fingers along my arm, which was sending chills down my spine.

"But perhaps I should not come," I said. "I'm not sure I'm welcome."

"Nico should not have invited you, I must be truthful with you," Thanos responded. "Only Elias invites to his conclaves. But now Elias has said you must be there. And so you must. If you now didn't come, he would take that as an insult."

"Then I must come, I suppose," I said. "But for now, I must go get some sleep." I bid my good-byes to the four men still at the table, and each now was much more friendly and less reserved than they had been with Mikalaides was there.

Spiro gave me a wistful, almost forlorn look. "Is it because you do not let men fuck you? If so, that is much a waste of beauty."

"No, I said," leaning over and kissing him on the lips, "it is not either that I don't let men fuck me or that I don't find you attractive. I have come into the mountains to write, and I must have my sleep. As an artist I'm sure you understand."

He had a hand cupping one of my buttocks. "And you didn't sleep last night because a man fucked you all night?" Spiro asked.

I just smiled, which was as much an answer as if I had spoken one.

"And was he good?"

"Yes he was very good," I answered in a whisper.

"I can be better," Spiro whispered back. He was a beautiful, muscular man exuding a musky scent and a heady sensuality. I thought it possible he could do as well, if not better.

With another smile, I turned and walked away. I was finding this freedom to talk of sex openly with these men invigorating—and a just slightly deliciously wicked.

I had to pass Mikalaides's bungalow on my way back to the Forest Park. The window was open to his bedroom and a light was on, so I couldn't avoid seeing them. Mikalaides was on his belly on the bed, and Nico was astride his hips, riding his mountainous, bare buttocks. It was a shock to see that beautifully formed man, who had made love to me, fucking what looked like a water buffalo, especially with the orange kimono bunched up around his shoulder blades. I couldn't stand there and watch.

Angry, I turned and returned to the taverna, seeking Spiro out. But he had already left. I hurried up the hill and then up the curved drive on the Forest Park's grounds.




Platres Conclave Ch. 04



"English. English, please. We have an American guest."

I normally would have taken that as a friendly gesture, but I felt the sarcasm and condescension at the core of Elias Mikalaides's request that the men of the conclave discuss their topic in a language I could understand when he had gathered at Elias's bungalow late the next morning. It was like he was sticking their bilingual fluency at me, and I wondered how good his French was.

And as if to punctuate his tone of superiority, all of the men immediately switched from Greek to impeccable British English. It wouldn't have mattered much, really, if they had remained in Greek, as I was sitting off to the side and they were discussing esoteric references in ancient Greece to the concept of "beauty." I didn't understand much of what they said, no matter what they said—and didn't much care. I was beginning to feel trapped just being here, and I tried turning my thoughts to mulling what I wanted to write next in my novel manuscript. It wasn't until they progressed to talking about what they said was the overworked motif of Venus—Aphrodite here in Cyprus—arising from the sea on a clamshell that I could be completely sure that they were talking about the concept of beauty at all.

This was the first time in the day that Nico had turned to me and directly addressed me—he hadn't answered my knock at the door to his room at the Forest Park before breakfast, and I'd seen him just finishing his breakfast here in Elias's house as I arrived. So, I then assumed he'd spent the night here, with Elias.

I almost hadn't come. Elias had been dismissive of me the previous day, and I couldn't get the image of Nico topping him the previous night out of my mind. Just the thought of it disgusted me—but it also raised my hackles and my jealously. This, in turn angered and frustrated me, as, though I had wanted Nico to fuck me—continuously—I'd told myself it was just a week's fantasy fling before returning to real life. I didn't have any claim on Nico. It was obviously that these men were inbred and fucked each other almost indiscriminately affected only by their own insular jealousies. I could either fit in for a brief time or take a hike. I intellectually accepted that. I had no right to want anything more from Nico—or any of the rest of them.

When the names "Venus" and "Aphrodite" were invoked and were being used interchangeably, Nico turned to me. "Venus is the mainland Greek version and Aphrodite is ours, Collin. Our Aphrodite rose from the waves near some distinct rocks out in the water on the coast between here and Paphos. We'll have to visit there."

I merely nodded, still stinging that he had so readily deserted me—for this . . . this walrus of a man sitting there on his throne in his own living room. Living room was a good term for it, I thought, as I looked around. It was a large room—an enormous room, really. There were a couple of conversational areas situated around composed of old, run-down, but comfortable-looking upholstered furniture, but the room swallowed these up. This also was Elias's dining room. The conclave was sitting around a massive pine table, aged almost to black—all except for me, of course. I was sitting off to the side in a rush-bottomed peasant chair. All of the chairs at the table were similar to mine except the massive armed and carved oak chair at the end of the table where Elias sat.

The room, mainly, though, was Elias's studio. Paintings in various stages of finish were hanging on the walls and propped up against each other and various pieces of furniture throughout the room. As Elias's primary style was exuberant naïve landscapes, the room was dressed in a riot of color. There also were some abstracts—Elias had had his Picasso period, apparently—but these too were quite colorful. The impression I got from Elias's paintings was that he insisted that the painting dominated, almost to excess, any space it was in. In this, I thought the paintings reflected the artist well. Set at the far end of the room from where the conclave sat was a raised wooden dais, positioned under theatrical lighting trained at it from the ceiling. At the moment a high-legged bench was sitting on the dais, covered by a gold lamé cloth that glittered in the stage lighting.

"What we could do in art, of course," Spiro Charalambou said, "was turn the clichés on their heads. For instance, I could take the Aphrodite image and substitute a sexy man—a George Michael or a Ricky Martin, or the movie star Henry Cavil—rising naked from Petra tou Romiou—that's Aphrodite's Rock in English," Spiro said, turning his face and a sultry smile to me.

"And so, you have already chosen your model for this week, have you?" the novelist Nemo Constantinou asked in a gruff voice?

"Yes, yes, I have," Spiro answered, still looking directly at me, "It is none of those men. But it is someone every bit as compelling and sensual."

After that, the discussion drifted off into esoteric points of ancient Greek legend on the topic of beauty that, again, went completely over my head. As I sensed the discussion coming to a close, with the more frequent mention of hunger and the possibilities of what and where for lunch, I quietly left the house. Although I had been seeking him ever since the night before, I suddenly felt I didn't want to endure a meeting with Nico. I didn't know what to say to him. I could hardly be indignant; I had no hold on him. His change in focus had just been too abrupt. But I should be able to understand that. Elias Mikalaides undoubtedly was the island's foremost artist. It didn't matter really what he looked like; the strength of his personality obviously was enough to attract Nico, who was no slouch in the charisma category himself—at least in relationship to me.

I walked briskly back to the hotel, hoping that Nico would not come after me—but aching for him to do just that. When I reached there, rather than going into the hotel, where Nico may, in fact encounter me at lunch—I asked the attendant at the entrance to bring around to my Jaguar and I drove up to Prodomous, just below the peak of Mount Olympus, for lunch and then on up to the peak, the highest point on the island. It seemed that every highest point in a Greek region was named Mount Olympus—as a signal to the gods where they could touch the earth no matter what region they came to to play. I had intended to make this excursion during my vacation anyway, so I wasn't really escaping anything in Platres—or so I could pretend to myself.

I managed not to return to Platres until almost 5:00 p.m., having driven on from the peak to the Kykkos Monastery and arriving when the monks' choir was in the process of giving a concert of Gregorian chants through the ages. Sitting and listening to them calmed my nerves—at least until I looked at the program, which was in Greek, but was able, with the lessons I took before arriving in Cyprus, to pick out the name of Xanthos Economou among the composers of the modern section of the concert—the same composer who was in the spring Platres Conclave. It seemed I could not escape this group now. I couldn't be inside it, but I couldn't draw away from it either.

I had intended, really, just to cut away from the group, but as I came down from the heights and into Platres, I found myself parking on the main road of the village rather than driving up to the hotel, and my feet carried me to the door of Elias's bungalow, where the conclave was scheduled to reconvene for individual work on their projects at nearly this precise time.

Most of them had already gathered in Elias's spacious studio living room. Nico wasn't there and Elias wasn't in the room either. He was still snoozing away his siesta in his bedroom, which opened directly off the main room and the door of which wasn't closed. He lay on his bed like a beached whale, once again in his orange kimono and—as it had partially fallen away from his body—in nothing else.

The composer, Xanthos Economou, wasn't there either, and I noted in my mind that I should mention when I saw him that I'd heard his music at Kykkos and was very impressed.

Costas Spyrou, the poet; Thanos Adamou, the sculptor; Nemo Constantinou, the novelist; and Spiro Charalambou, the fine artist, were all sitting at the table. Arrayed in front of them was a massive collection of wine bottles.

"Come, come, Collin," Spiro called out to me with a big smile and an expansive wave of an arm, "as we contemplate the beginning of our separate searches for beauty in art, we are having a wine sampling—trying to decide what the best wine produced by Cyprus. Come help us decide."

I had already developed a weakness for Cypriot wine, so I moved to the table and sat in the chair Spiro was holding out for me—close beside him.

We sipped and, increasingly, more fully drank of the wine there. And we laughed and joked, and I came as near as I ever had—or ever would—to feeling part of the conclave in the hour and a half in which we all became quite mellow indeed—with the possible exception of Nemo, who kept himself mainly in glowering reserve, although he didn't stint on including himself in the drinking.

Spiro started me with the light, white Aphrodite as, he said, a bridge from the discussion earlier in the day, and we moved to the Palamino, which was my favorite white. I'm not sure at what point we switched to reds, but I do remember the full-bodied Othello and the much fuller, almost port, Commandaria. It was during Spiro's explanation to me, with me very much in a haze but enjoying the musky thickness of the wine, that Commandaria was the oldest named wine still in production, dating back to 800 B.C., but named during the crusades of the King Richard's time in the twelfth century, when he suddenly changed gears and asked if I would be his model now. He was touching me lightly on the arm again with that soft, electric touch of his and looking at me under his thick eyelashes like I was some sort of sweetmeat.

He was gorgeous, and I was frustrated by whatever was or was not happening between me and Nico, and I was more than half way to drunk. So, I said yes.

"And then we fuck?" he asked, his smile tentative.

"Yes, why not?" I answered, giving him a level stare.

"I fuck you?"

"Yes."

From the other side of me, Thanos said he would also like to sculpt me as his image of the beauty theme, which I found flattering. He also said that he too would like to fuck me, which I also found flattering. There didn't seem to be a bit of competition expressed or exhibited by the two on who would get to do what when. Again, I found the casual frankness of it arousing.

"Yes, I would like that," I answered.

"We could perhaps fuck you together?" Spiro asked.

"If you like."

Spiro than reiterated that I'd model in the nude, which I said was fine, aglow with the attention I was receiving and not thinking a bit about the risk of exposure in the real world. I was buzzed on the wine—and I increasingly was convinced this wasn't the real world. And I just didn't care. All of this openly expressed attention was exhilarating.

Nemo, who had been glowering at us from across the table, stood, said something about starting to work on a short story, and retreated to a desk in the corner. This appeared to be a signal to the poet, Costas Spyrou, as well, and he went to the porch across the back of the room, overlooking a ravine, and sat in an armed bamboo patio chair with a tablet of paper on his lap, a pencil in his hand, and a pensive, withdrawn look on his face.

Spiro decided to pose me as an ancient Greek boxer resting from a victory in the games. As I stripped for him, he and Thanos went out into the garden and selected laurel vines, which Thanos formed into a wreathed crown as Spiro went through a door into what seemed to be a bedroom at the other end of the bungalow from Elias's bedroom and next to a kitchen. Through the door, I could see the figure of a woman, with short hair, in a red silk dress sitting at a vanity. The image surprised me, and I suddenly felt conscious of being nude in a way that I didn't feel just in the company of just men.

Spiro shut the door on the room when he came back into the main studio. He was carrying a pair of lace-up leather sandals and some earthen-colored leather thong strips. As he posed me on the bench on the dais, he explained to me that all I would be wearing as an ancient Greek boxer were the sandals, which laced in criss-crosses up my calves to just below my knees, and the thongs, which he said were called himantes when used this way, wrapped around my knuckles to protect them from scrapes during a boxing match, which was a no-holds-barred one in the ancient tradition.

Both men touched and ran their hands along the lines of my body as Thanos set the laurel wreath on my head and then held my head this way and that and ran his long, sensitive fingers along the contours of my face and neck, getting the measure of me so that he could start working on a clay lump sitting on a small pedestal stand nearly. Simultaneously, Spiro was manipulating my body to the pose he preferred. I was sitting in the middle of the bench, still covered in the gold lamé, one foot resting on the bench at an angle from my body, with the elbow of one of my arms propped against this leg. The other leg dangled off the front of the bench, only touching the surface of the dais as my toe reached down for it. My other arm was stretched out toward the end of the bench. This left me, chest stretched out at an angle, in a pensive pose, as if at rest, contemplating a recent hard-won victory. Spiro set the wreath slightly askew around my brow and asked me to smile slightly and luxuriate in a victory reverie.

In the process of arranging my body for posing, each man, in turn, kissed me on the lips, and I let them know I enjoyed it. I could feel them trembling in anticipation—of the art they were going to create or of getting their cocks inside me, or both, I didn't know and didn't care. I was trembling too. This would be a unique experience.

I was glad that they didn't take too long in manipulating my body, as I was working hard to control its response to their delicate, seductive touch.

Spiro went to an easel and Thanos to his pedestal, and for a good hour silence reigned over the studio. Eventually, however, I realized that I could hear a hum from the room where I'd seen the women. She was humming a haunting tune in a low contralto, and she seemed to be playing with the tune, developing it. It was start and go for several bars and then stop and start again and go for a few longer bars than the first time.

It became clearer, as if no longer beyond a closed door. I so wanted to turn my head to see if she had come out of the room, and I felt trapped, not wanting a complete stranger to see me naked like this. Then I knew that she was coming into the room; I could both sense her presence—and there was a floral scent in the air—and hear the rustling of the silk dress. She floated into my peripheral vision and beyond. She was moving over to the desk where Nemo was furiously writing. She leaned down, over his shoulder, lifted his face up to hers with a hand under his chin, and the two began to kiss. Nemo lifted a hand to her bodice, unbuttoned her dress there, and inserted his hand.

I watched as they became increasingly intimate and then, nearly lost my pose in shock and surprise as Nemo stood and turned the other figure in an embrace and started to guide them both over to an overstuffed parlor chair. It wasn't a woman at all, I realized. It was the composer, Xanthos Economou, in a woman's dress. Nemo sat in the chair and Xanthos knelt in front of him and unbuttoned the fly of Nemo's trousers and fished out a short, but impressively thick cock and began to suck him off.

I tore my eyes away from that spectacle at the sound of someone entering at the front of the bungalow. It was Nico. He walked in and then stopped, dead in his tracks, as he saw me on the dais. I saw his eyes narrow and a flash of anger slice across his face, which immediately after turned into a look of nonchalance and detachment. I followed the movement of his dance-like gait as he turned and went into Elias's room.

With an anger and frustration of my own, I watched him put his hands on Elias and move the kimono away from the older artist's corpulent body and then move a hand down to cup Elias's cock and balls while Nico leaned over and kissed Elias's nipples and throat and then his mouth until Elias stirred and opened his arms to Nico.

My eyes went back to Nemo and Xanthos. Xanthos was sitting in Nemo's lap, facing him, the red silk dress gathered up around his chest, his channel skewered on Nemo's cock. Their chests were plastered together and they were kissing deeply as Nemo pumped his cock up into Xanthos's channel. Xanthos's legs were spread and raised over the back of the upholstered chair. Xanthos's pasty legs were sheathed—but only up to the knees, in sheer silk stockings.

I shuddered at this image and looked back into Elias's bedroom, where Elias's legs were open to Nico now and Nico was crouched between them and lost in the rhythm of the fuck.

I shut my eyes for several moments, trying to close it all out. When my eyes were shut, though, I realized how tipsy I had become. When I was all alone within myself like this, I realized how easily I had agreed to strip and sit here in the nude—and then to fuck two men afterward. The world of my mind was spinning in flashes of images and swirls of color on the insides of my eyelids.

I felt the lips on mine before I opened my eyes. And I left them closed, as I opened my lips to him and gave the sweet taste of his tongue—the Commandaria still thick on his tongue—free access. He was flicking his tongue in and out between my parted lips and I sighed for him.

I opened my eyes to see that it was Spiro leaning over me, adjusting my pose now, so that I was fully facing him and he was leaning into me between my knees. he was naked and I felt his hard cock pressing at my belly. He embraced me in his arms, supporting my torso as I leaned back and moaned at the touch of his lips moving to my throat and then to my nipples. My sternum, pausing to flick his tongue in and out of my navel. Down my lower belly into my tightly curled pubes and swallowing my cock and pressing his tongue into my piss slit and flicking it there until I jerked and came, filling his mouth with my cum.

He rose back up to where he was looking down into my face and smiling as I rolled my buttocks up and hooked my legs on his hips.

"There, I want to capture that look in your eyes in a painting too," he murmured. "Postcoital, satisfied and mellow."

I lurched and started to give a little cry as he began to enter me, but he leaned down and took my lips in his again and we went into a deep kiss until he had entered me fully.

"And your expression like this, too. Possessed. Giving yourself to another man."

He pulled his face away from me then and gave me a questioning look with his eyes.

"Yes, oh yes," I whispered and then I groaned and starting moaning deep in my chest as he began to take me in long, deep strokes.

I looked beyond Spiro and saw that all attention was on us now. Xanthos was still mounted on Nemo's cock but their faces were now turned to us. Thanos was standing nearby, this hands covered with clay, the bust on the pedestal already well formed into a human head. The poet, Costas, was standing in the doorway to the porch, watching. Even Nico and Elias were watching. Elias had come out of the bedroom and was seated at an easel with a large canvas in front of him. He was peeking around the side of the easel at us, and his right hand, in which he held a paint brush, was racing across the canvas.

Nico was lounging in the doorway into Elias's bedroom, leaning provocatively against the frame, his cock-ringed manhood hanging low between the legs that were crossed at his ankles. He had a tight little smile, but his eyes were frowning and were dull, as if he had transported himself somewhere else altogether.




Platres Conclave Ch. 05



In the ensuing months I shouldn't have gotten so busy in my duties of following my wife around or earning my keep in keeping up with cultural affairs on the island. If I'd gone less with the flow in my attempt to fit into the embassy community and into Carolyn's life as she wanted and try to concentrate on who I should be rather than who I wanted to be, I might have been able to avoid what was coming. Then again, perhaps it was just inevitable.

I had only seen the tip of the iceberg of the rich cultural heritage of Cyprus when I came down the mountain from Platres. In the following months I discovered not only the depth of art and culture in the country but its breadth as well. The gallery exhibit openings and plays and concerts were almost constant, and it was my duty to be almost continually in attendance and to encourage those putting them together—sometimes two or three events each day. And I did whatever I was asked to do at the American Center, taking on anything that was a burden or beyond the scheduling capabilities of the other officers there, whether American or local staffers. I was polite and solicitous and helpful so that, when Carolyn arrived, I had managed to carve out a function of my own. That helped considerably in keeping me from being seen as just her nonfunctional appendage and boy toy.

Invitations came in by the bucketful and only increased twofold when Carolyn arrived, and she had whole new categories of political and economic and ceremonial events to cover—including ones where the spouse was expected to accompany her. I had thought that two tuxedos and three dinner jackets would be enough, but I had to have two additional sets of each tailored just to keep up with the dry cleaners. It didn't help that Cyprus had such a hot climate.

The only invitations I strove to shunt aside were those to attend performances at the Theatro Ena, the national experimental theater. I didn't give too much thought as to why I avoided these invitations, but, of course, it was because I was afraid of coming into contact with Nico Christou again. It was rather funny that I didn't feel the same way about the others I'd encountered at the Platres Conclave, and from time to time I did find myself in the same room with one or the other of them. But I just pretended not to know them—or only to know them in passing—and, if they recognized me, they were pretending to do the same. No one conversing with us together would have had any inkling that they all had fucked me—all but Elias, of course.

Mercifully, I never again saw Elias in the flesh.

What suffered most in those months of me pretending that I could control what my life was to be was my writing. I wrote not a word on my new manuscript from the last day I had worked on it in the Du Maurier room at the Forest Park. I picked it up from time to time in the rare evening when I or Carolyn and I weren't scheduled for some dinner, event, or concert, but nothing came of the effort. My protagonist had become Nico. He had become who I, in my fantasies, had made of the Nico that I wanted. But Nico hadn't been that man. And to continue my manuscript, I would have to go back through and tear Nico out. But what it was becoming with Nico in it was so much better than it had been before. I just couldn't bring myself to gut the manuscript before I knew what would make it better again—and these revelations just weren't coming.

And I couldn't blame Nico, really. I had gone to Platres for just the sort of fling I had gotten, although I didn't realize I had until I had arrived there. From the beginning, expressed even while Nico and I were coupling, I had declared that I was only investing the weekend in the relationship. Could I really blame Nico for not even investing that much time—or in believing, when he saw me taking on the rest of the conclave, that I had no serious interest in him? How could he know that my interest in him had become very serious indeed?

This whirlwind of keeping myself busy and exhausted to pretend that life was wonderful came to a tempest the night Carolyn and I attended a special exhibit opening at the Famagusta gate, which was a commodious cultural center established inside what had been one of the major gates, a long, wide, winding tunnel, through the sixteenth-century city wall of the capital of Nicosia.

Carolyn had told me that the exhibit had been established to honor one of Cyprus's greatest artists, who had recently died. What she didn't tell me, however, was that the artist was Elias Mikalaides, who had succumbed to a heart attack just a few weeks after I'd last seen him, and that the exhibit was a combined showing of the works on "beauty" from his last conclave—the very same spring Platres Conclave I had attended and fled from in its initial day.

I got a hint of what was to come, although I didn't identify it as such at the time, as we entered the stone floored, walled, and ceilinged space through an old city gate. The gate area was wide—it had been designed to accommodate four horsemen abreast as well as market stalls at the sides. What first assailed our senses was a haunting melody that played over and over for the time we were at the exhibit. It, of course, was the self-same tune that Xanthos Economou had been composing in his mind and humming on his lips that day in Elias's bungalow when I had provided the principle entertainment.

It did not occur to me where I had heard this tune before, though, until we walked into the exhibit space and before us, in all of its glory, under lights that brought out all of its life and vibrant colors, was the last major painting of the celebrated Elias Mikalaides.

"It's gorgeous, whatever it means, isn't it?" Carolyn murmured to me as we walked toward it.

"Yes, it is," I choked out, my eyes immediately going to the criss-cross work on the two oblongs of color flowing out from the sides of a center oblong with its two globes at the base—the oblongs with the criss-crosses representing my spread legs in the ancient Grecian sandals, and the centering oblong being Spiro Charalambou's back rising up from his bulbous buttocks.

We stood there for several moments, Carolyn looking bewildered. "But what is it?" she whispered.

Dutiful husband that I was, I moved closer and leaned over and read the title on the brass plaque on its frame.

"It says it's the 'Eternal Dance of Beauty,'" I faithfully reported.

"Ah, yes, ah, yes," she murmured. "I see it now," she continued, ever the diplomat. But of course I knew she didn't see it for what it was. Thank God. I, however, couldn't help but see it and feel in slicing into me, viscerally, as the insult and put down that Miklalaides had intended it to be. I was sorry then that I hadn't destroyed it.

We moved on, or, I must say, Carolyn dragged me on, into the exhibit. I didn't know if my debacle would come when she saw the other painting and bust or when we encountered the members of the Platres Conclave. But the knife didn't fall anywhere near that fast. Happily the conclave had produced other work that week, which was on display and which took the spotlight off the works I could see in all their damning glory.

We stood in front of the painting by Spiro, which he had titled "Grecian Boxer," and I held my breath for the "oh, but that's you" from Carolyn. But it never came. I had suspected that Carolyn hadn't really looked at me in years, and now that was confirmed, because Spiro was an excellent painter—and I had not the least bit of trouble identifying myself in the painting.

No one else seemed to be doing that, either, with that painting or Thanos Adamou's bust of me that he had titled "Perfection." Still, as we moved through the hall, I kept lowering my face and avoiding large groups of people. I kept waiting for the exclaimed, "but isn't that . . .?" but it never came. I learned something interesting then—that people saw only what they expected to see most of the time. For some reason that made me feel more free in one sense—even in the current context where I was feeling more constricted in another sense. I think that revelation had something to do with how easily I fell into what followed the next day.

We had arrived just before the ceremonial part of the evening, during which I had to stand there and endure, my cheeks turning red, I knew, the reading by Costas Spyrou of his poem "Shared Beauty," in which I both heard—knowing that I was personified as beauty in his poem—words that he had whispered in my ear directly to me as he fucked me and "beauty" used as a metaphor that men of culture and art shared to inform their art and set lose their creative juices. Nemo Constantinou's short story was typically straightforward and brutal on controlling beauty by mastering it and sucking everything out of it that the artist needed to survive and thrive. It typically was about Nemo himself—and he probably didn't realize that it also was about me.

Nico mounted the platform next, and I shrank behind Carolyn, using her as a barrier between him and me. He started into a dramatic soliloquy on the delicacy of beauty and how it had to be nurtured and not neglected or it would melt away and leave only despair and regret in its wake. He had a beautiful voice. Like the two before him, he gave his contribution in Greek and then in English, and the people in the hall were held spellbound by the richness of his voice and the sincerity of his delivery through both versions. His eyes were searching the crowd, but I cast mine down, not wanting to meet his.

We only stayed for a while during the ensuing cocktail hour, as I heard over the din the voices of Spiro, Thanos, and, Nico, their voices ringing out over the din of the crowd in the stone, echoey vault. It was almost as if I was on their wavelength, as they were nearly on the other side of cavern. I instinctively made the mistake of looking up and locking eyes with Nico.

If abject apology and contrition and longing can be rolled together in one facial expression, Nico had mastered that look. And at that moment, that's what I had to believe—that he was acting. The man he had curried favor with and given precedence to in all, Elias Mikalaides, was dead. Nico was free now to backtrack, to make amends, to reclaim whatever he wanted. Nico was a master actor—not only had he told me he was, but I also had seen him turn on the charm and treat each person as if they were the only one in the universe throughout the day we had spent on the southern coast together.

That would not work with me, I was determined. I was creating an entirely new persona for myself here. I had even managed my way back into Carolyn's bed.

Claiming I was bored and reminding Carolyn she had a stack of documents to work on, I coaxed her to leave with me even as Nico was trying to work his way toward us—this being very difficult for him to accomplish, as everyone in the hall wanted to greet and have a few words with Cyprus's premier dramatic actor.

It wasn't at all difficult to convince Carolyn we should leave. She had endured the core ceremonies, and she neither understood nor cared for art and culture. She was an ecopolitical person to the core. She never even had read any of my books, which I considered quite fortunate indeed, considering how free spirited and revealing I'd been in the earlier works.

We made it home with me entirely unscathed despite the disaster that had loomed over my head in the Famagusta Gate. I deemed it a miracle that was a dream.

Dreams can become nightmares too, though.

The next night was one in which we ourselves were holding a dinner party. A congressional delegation was in town, and Carolyn had managed to snag just the right Cypriots to rub elbows with the senator and two U.S. representatives and their bandwagon of accompanying staffers. One last guest was expected—the Cypriot foreign minister. I didn't hear the door chimes, so Carolyn's motioning of me to the door she had answered was all the warning I got. Within the context of the evening's event, though, it was no warning at all.

"There's a gentleman here to see you Collin," Carolyn turned and whispered to me as I approached the door. "I do believe he is one of the artists from last night."

Nico Christou was standing out at the edge of the light. He was wearing a tuxedo—typically in charming dishabille, though, just as he was that first night he had approached me in the Olympia Bar in the Forest Park Hotel. And he looked magnificent.

Not far behind him a limousine had drawn up and the Cypriot foreign minister was approaching. Carolyn's eyes immediately went in that direction.

Nico's held his hand out and said, "Please come with me, Collin. I cannot go on without you."

Carolyn hadn't heard him well enough to understand what he said, and she was already all smiles and welcoming words for the foreign minister, who was now parallel to Nico and moving closer.

I looked into Nico's face and crumbled. I put out my hand and he gripped it and pulled me gently down our front steps as the foreign minister was climbing them and Carolyn was turning to take the foreign minister's arms in hers. She turned and looked at me over her shoulder with a question in her eyes, but after only that brief look she and the foreign minister had entered the house. She had made her decision many months ago.

It was time now for me to make mine.

The first time afterward that Nico fucked me was half way down the hill from the mesa that our house stood on in the Makedonitisa suburb of Nicosia, near the Green Line that divided the Greek sector from the Turkish zone. He pulled into the drive of a half-finished house and, after pulling me into the backseat of his Mercedes, covered me with kisses and apologies and declarations of undying love and unbuttoned and pulled my tuxedo trousers off and popped the studs on my shirt and devoured my nipples while he unbuttoned his own fly and pulled out an already-hard cock. He pulled my channel down on his cock as the ankle of one of my legs was hooked on his shoulder and the sole of my other foot found the ceiling of the car and I used that for leverage to counterpunch his thrusts.

The second time we made it into his apartment, but only half way toward the bedroom, when he pushed me down on all fours on the living room carpet, mounted me, and doggy fucked me.

The rest of the night, he was civilized and fucked me in his bed.

He nudged me awake for what he said would be breakfast. I held his head in my hands and kissed him as he lay on top of me and fucked me again.

"Please, please, let me apologize and explain," He murmured as we were laying stretched along each other's bodies and panting ourselves back toward regular heartbeats. "I thought it was only—"

"Shush," I said, laying two fingers on his lips. "That's not what I want from you now."

"Oh, god, I don't think I can do it again until I've had something to eat, Collin," he whispered in an exhausted voice.

"No, that's not what I mean. If you have a laptop, I want you to bring it out. You can go fix breakfast. My mind is exploding on what I want to write into the manuscript for my new book. I have to get this down before I lose it. If it flies away, you'll have to do exactly what you say you're too exhausted to do—fuck me until the muse returns again."