On Gigolos

     In June of 1983, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, my father rented a house on the Isle of Gigolos in the Sporades to which the family embarked en masse. We flew from New York to Athens where we took the boat from Piraeus to Gigolos, arriving in the late afternoon to a wild scene of dockside bedlam. A cacophony of horns and whistles merged with the roar of idling engines, motorcycles and shrieking stevedores, an exotic aural kakavia spiced nicely with the raging mandolins of “Never On Sunday” blaring from the café loudspeakers nearby.

    

    

Flanking the gangway on both sides as we disembarked, a hundred young Greek men, writhing astride their purring Guzzis and Hondas, Suzukis and Vespas, flattered and cajoled in a dozen languages the steady stream of seemingly unattached blondes flowing from the ferry like a pool of honeyed Oikos.

   

 While we stood in a small knot waiting for Dad to make a scene about our luggage or transport or whatever, one of these young men wheeled over, introduced himself with a radiant smile as Theologos Gorillas and offered to make any arrangements required to get us to our destination. In the brief moment it took my father to move from unabashed skepticism to resignation, I noticed that Theo had begun chatting up my sister.

   

     Gigolos rises steeply from the concrete ferry slip and main, commercial village in a series of stark, treeless hills and plateaus. Following Theo in a mini caravan of hired carts and canopied, two-stroke “taxis”, we wound through a couple of small squares, each with a café or two and tiny streets and alleys radiating precipitously away in all directions. Typically Greek, white stucco houses and courtyards lined these streets and squares, random and choc-o-block, sprouting from one another like mushrooms and unified by the ubiquitous glare, the arched doors and windows and the red tiled roofs. Most of these homes let rooms out to tourists and our rental was at the end of one of these small streets about two thirds of the way up the slopes; a lovely, spacious spot with a beautiful terrace overlooking the town below.

    

    

All went relatively well for that first week or so: Dad slathered on the Sea & Ski and occupied himself with his watercolors, Mom sat a few feet away alternately sketching Dad or reciting mangled phrases from the Greek-English dictionary – ostensibly to herself – which drove him to distraction. I explored the island in a vintage white linen suit from Cheap Jack’s on 4^th Avenue and developed a taste for five-star Metaxa and those sour little Mediterranean pistachios. Theo showed up every morning and whisked my sister away on the back of his bike clad only in bikini, her Jackie-O’s and wide, straw hat.

    

     One evening while sitting at the café watching the ferry disgorge its cargo of adventurous damsels and the attendant swains jockey for position, I met a German girl, Gisla and her mother, who settled in at the next table. No doubt attracted by my fine, fine suit, Gisla soon made it quite clear that, Greek boys on scooters notwithstanding, she’d be delighted to spend an evening with me! One thing, of course, soon led to another - as things evidently did on Gigolos – and, as I balked at using the twin bed next to her mother’s, we absconded through the window on to the rooftop of the adjoining house. There, caressed by the warm Ionian breezes and bathed in Grecian moonglow we drifted off to sleep….

    

     Until about three in the morning when I awoke to a hot, stiff wind blowing the hard, stinging Sahara before it. Pulling on my jacket, grabbing for my glasses, I stumbled up from the blanket just in time to see my pants fly off the parapet, blend with a vortex of detritus and vanish. Naked from the waist down save for a pair of classic, two-toned saddle-shoes, I bid the confused Gisla a hasty farewell, barged back through the window, past her sleeping mother and out into the streets of Gigolos in hot, if somewhat undignified pursuit of my trousers.

    

    

The break of dawn found me scurrying about the alleys with my suit coat tied by the arms around my waist. I had long since given up on the pants and was just trying to find my way home when, rounding a corner I came face to face with my father. Clad in a lavender caftan, black knee socks and Tevas, Dad was shouting for my sister and cursing the Gorillas name with a litany of colorful oaths as he stumbled down the hillside toward the main town. So distracted was he that my appearance seemed to make no impression on him at all, as though finding one’s second son butt naked at daybreak in a foreign land was par for the course. With only that wild glance we passed each other in the half-light, I on my way back up the hill to slip undetected and relieved into my room, my father on his way down to create an international incident in search of my errant sister.

   

     It seems she and Theo had stayed out all night with the fishing fleet, lustily jigging for calamari and had lost all track of time. According to reports, my father was not only able to find the House of Gorillas at five in the morning, but, after much door pounding, produced not only Theo’s father but half the neighborhood as well. In wild polyglot passions raged until, at the end, all agreed that Theo was a cad who had brought dishonor to his family, while my own family’s honor had been restored despite my pantless midnight ramble.