Story of Matt, Part 5 - reuniting in Athens

As the plane began to descend into Athens I was doing my best to keep my cool. It was my first time outside of North America, not counting the last three nights in London, and my first time in a non-English speaking country. If that wasn’t enough to make me nervous, I was only a day away from reuniting with Matt, who hadn’t exactly sounded thrilled to see me again in his last postcard.

A young Australian woman across the aisle from suddenly took an interest in me and did her best to get a conversation going. I was in no mood to engage her attentions. I was polite but dismissive, but she was harder to shake than a lamprey eel. Finally, losing my Canadian correctness, I told her I had too much on my mind to be interested in conversation and asked her to chat someone else up. She was taken aback a bit, but she cut to the chase. She was looking for someone to share a hotel room with.

I was dumbstruck. To save some money, of course, she explained, and besides, she didn’t feel safe in this strange city alone. I don’t know…., I started. I told her I was meeting a friend the next day to go traveling together. It’s just for one night, she insisted. She would be catching a bus to Piraeus in the morning and from there a ferry to the island of Kos. Reluctantly I agreed, uncertain whether I was making a big mistake. Lenore, she announced, extending her hand to introduce herself.

We caught a cab from the airport to the Keramikos district just north-west of the Acropolis at my insistence. According to the guide books it was close to the only gay bars are in town as well as the best restaurants and Syntagma Square where I was to meet Matt. We found a clean-looking, medium-priced hotel which had a room facing the Acropolis a kilometre away. Lenore made a big show of getting a room with two single beds. She made it perfectly clear that she wouldn’t be sleeping with me. I didn’t object.

I didn’t regret my decision to share with her. It did save some money and she was excellent company, keeping my mind off my nerve-wracking worries about what I would do if I couldn’t find Matt the next day, or what he would be like when I did. We found a pleasant sidewalk café in the area with a view of the floodlit Acropolis and shared a bottle of wine while she told me her story.

Lenore had been traveling for a few months. She too had a boyfriend and she was planning to meet him soon. He was a Russian, living in Australia, and they had met a few months before she started her travels. She said he was getting restless and anxious for her to return home. I wasn’t bold enough to tell her about Matt, but if I had been I might have suggested that we swap boyfriends for a while.

We passed the hotel manager on the way back to our room. I caught his disgruntled look. I assume he didn’t approve a young unmarried couple sharing a room, and that our insistence on two single beds was just a rouse. I just suppressed a smile and nodded politely.

Lenore kept her word. She didn’t try to crawl into bed with me and she left the next morning and we shared a light breakfast on the hotel patio. After we checked out, I even walked her to Syntagma Square. Ironically that was where her bus departed for Piraeus. She asked me to wait with her until it came. I casually scanned the square looking for Matt. The bus left right at noon, the exact time I was to meet him. As soon as it pulled out, I raced to the centre of the square to look for him.

I found him sitting on a bench. He greeted me in quite a disinterested manner as though it had been quite a bother for him to show up at all. I was horrified, but did my best not to let it show. I asked if he would like to get a coffee somewhere and we headed off in the direction of where he was staying to a cheap place he had found. It was nothing special, but it was on a quiet side street where we could hear ourselves talk. I fed him questions and let him do most of the talking, fearing I would say something stupid or pathetic if I was the centre of attention.

We talked for a couple hours. He opened right up and told me so many things he didn’t have the time or space to in his letters. His icy manner melted away in the warm afternoon sun and he finally seemed happy to see me. He showed me his pathetic, dirty, windowless room in some apartment hovel where he had already stayed three nights. I asked him to share a room with me in hotel where Lenore and I has stayed, but it was cost more than his skeletal budget would allow. It upset me that he’d forego a romantic night with me after an eight month absence just to save a couple dollars, but he relented when I promised to three-quarters of the cost.

He locked his bike and unloaded his gear while I went inside to book another room. The hotel manager asked if I wanted the same room with two single beds. I asked if I could have one with a double bed, also facing the Acropolis. He eyed me suspiciously and produced a key for a different room. Then Matt joined me at the counter, his bike bags tucked under his arms. The manager looked quite surprised and confused, not being sure what to make of us. We thanked him and ran up the stairs to our room.

The room worked its charm on him when he saw the sun pouring in and the view of the Acropolis. He gave his signature nod of approval, accompanied by his broad, silly grin that meant he was pleased. As he stripped down for a quick shower, I took in the changes in him that had occurred since the previous summer. He was beautifully tanned all over, except for the parts covered by his cycling shorts, and his legs, if it was possible, had grown larger. He looked like an Egyptian statue with its over-sized legs meant to give the impression from below that the statue was taller than its actual size.

When he was dry again he threw on his T-shirt and shorts and sat beside me on the bed. He asked me about my life in Canada and my visit to London, and while I was in the middle of some story he stretched out on the bed beside me, exposing his rock-hard stomach in the process. I stopped talking and stared at him. He was grinning ear to ear and the bulge in his crotch was rising.

It was the sweetest, most passionate sex we ever had. Afterwards we cuddled, looking at the view and basking in the hot Athenian sun, which by then was hitting the bed. We were still wet with cum when the phone rang. It was Lenore’s voice. The schedule was all wrong. Her boat wouldn’t leave until the next day. She was in the lobby and had our room number and was on her way up. No! I shouted into the receiver, a bit too emphatically. I fumbled for a reason why. I told her Matt had just had a shower and was still dressing, and that I’d meet her on the patio in a five minutes. We splashed water on ourselves and flapped our towels around to dissipate the smell of semen.

Matt didn’t seem to mind if Lenore shared our room or not, and not knowing how to explain why I wanted to be alone with him (Oh, how times have changed!) I said it would be OK. We went to reception to ask for an extra cot. The hotel manager searched our faces for clues. He had no idea what to make of us by this point.

We shared the day with Lenore, most of the talk centering around her. Matt was charming and engaging as always and she seemed impressed. But when bedtime came she was emphatic that she was not going to share the bed with either of us as she readied her cot. Matt slipped me one of his sly smiles but said nothing. That night we dared not do anything that would make noise. We lay close, tracing the contours of each others' bodies with our fingertips, caressing our erections and kissing ever so softly. I doubt we slept more than an hour or two, but it was a night to remember.