The Man from Mykonos
‘Sailing’ by Christopher Cross came out the summer I traveled to Europe at the age of 20. I was halfway through my Berkeley undergraduate education and experiencing a mind and body-meltdown. I wanted time off from school. Instead of having a semester to think for myself, I had only the summer and a backpack with which to explore.
In 1980 I spent eleven idyllic days on Mykonos, making friends with the natives. Their day job was to transport tourists on their fishing boats from Plati Yialos (the main beach with small hotels on the sand) to the island’s three separate and distinct southern beaches: Paradise (mellow mainstream), Super Paradise (quite nude), and Elia (blatantly gay).
Most of those days I spent on the boats sailing from one beach to another, smelling sun tan lotion and souvlaki, watching bikini-clad and completely bare hedonists find their spot on the sand or up at the bar where the beer was cheap and cold. Day after day, I was a treasured guest on ancient boats handed down from one male member of the family to the next. I loved the back-and-forth motion, dropping people off, picking people up, and moving them to another beach, all the while drifting my hands and feet along in the cold ocean rhythm. Long hot hours in the sun, feeling the stiffness of salt water dried onto my appendages, zoning out amidst the many mingled foreign voices I couldn’t understand and didn’t need to comprehend, I found peace. I dropped my Type-A personality overboard. For the first time in my life, I knew what the word relaxation meant. I floated along with no cares or responsibilities. No books I had to read or papers I had to write. No bills I had to pay or hours I had to show up and smile. Even the meals miraculously appeared before I was hungry.
As unwound as I’d ever been, I started to fall for Georgos, the captain character. I'd been told he was like a king of the island. In his early 40s, with a macho gruffness, his face was weathered, his teeth not all present under the thick long mustache he kept unkempt, and his entire body was like a moving sculpture made out of milk chocolate. Every day I’d quietly watch him entertain his passengers, standing on one hand, dancing around the boat, pulling all sizes and shapes of people onto his lap, nonchalantly steering the boat on its familiar voyage with his bare foot on the tiller. Male and female tourists alike favored him as the captain worth waiting for, and they waited until they could get a ride on his boat. I, too, after just a few days in his presence, could only be found on this aging Adonis of a man’s stern. By the end of the trip, when he cooked octopus and crab and kept filling my glass with Ouzo, I slipped into bed with him. Like the sea urchins he caught and shucked for lunch one day, he was prickly on the outside but raw and vulnerable when alone in his home. His love for me was complete protein for my soul. The next morning it was as if the whole island knew that Georgos had found his woman. He asked me to stay, and when I left the island two days later, pushing myself forward into uncertainty, no one could believe that I would leave him or Mykonos.
“Sailing takes me away to where I’ve always heard it could be. When the wind is right, you can find the joy, feel the sense again.” When I returned to the states after another four weeks of traveling alone in Europe, that song was a big hit. Every time I heard it, I was transported back onto the boat with its peeling paint and primitive man.
For some inexplicable reason this newsletter went into my 'Promotions' tab of my gmail account! By sheer dumb luck I clicked on that tab and found this newsletter. Christopher Cross's Sailing is one of my all-time favourite tunes! This is another quality read.
After chatting with you in the ‘Writers office’ and responding to your comment, I decided to check out your newsletter and I'm glad I did.
I almost didn't want this piece to end. I wholeheartedly enjoyed it and you've given me another reason to put Mykonos at the top of my islands to visit.