Story of Matt, Part 6 - our travels begin

Lenore kept her promise and left the next day, but not before I shared breakfast with her on the patio while Matt was showering. I found the courage to finally tell her that Matt and I were lovers. She said she figured something was up between us, but the look on her face was more like shock. I figured telling her would keep her from our doorstep, or at least if she did return we wouldn’t have to hide our relationship anymore.

I certainly didn’t want to hide it, certainly not from those who spent time with us. I was still glowing from the sweetness of last night. It seemed clear to me that Matt had overcome the reticence he showed when we met in Syntagma Square the day before, and I was more in love with him than I had ever been.

We spent that second day walking around, doing errands and checking out the local sites. The first stop was to a phone centre so he could call Canada. His bank had frozen his account through some misunderstanding and he had spent the past couple days trying to get access to his savings. He was assured the money would be released but it might take a few days.

Before it got too hot, we climbed up the Acropolis. It is stunning site to visit, steeped in so much history that I was studied in school. Mary Renault’s novel “Last of the Wine”, about two gay lovers caught up the Peloponnesian Wars against Sparta, was the most romantic gay story I had ever read. It was so exciting to be walking through the various settings of the novel, especially with a man I loved. But many of the buildings, including the most famous Parthenon, were covered in scaffolding as efforts were being made to slow the erosion of the marble carvings caused by the constantly thick blanket of smog over the city.

We climbed down a trail to the famous Agora at the base of the hill, slipping on the dusty marble outcroppings that had been polished smooth by millions of feet over the past three thousand years. When our explorations were over, we ate dinner in a sidewalk café. The sidewalks, I noted, were made of rough cut marble too, and we found out they could be deadly slippery when it rained.

On the way home from what had been one of the best days of my life, Matt turned to me and said that he didn’t want a relationship with me. I was blindsided by this as it made no sense. What did he mean, I asked him. Did he not like what was happening between us, did he not want to travel with me or to see me as a friend? Now, you’re making too much of my words, he replied. Then he refused to talk about it for the rest of the way home.

I didn’t want a public scene any more than he did, but my anger was boiling over by the time we reached our hotel room. He didn’t want to talk about it then either, but I gave him no choice. He had worried and disappointed me several times over the past year with his oscillations between hot and cold, but this was the first time I wanted to blow up at him. That fact that he would so casually spoil such a beautiful day pissed me off more than anything else.

I demanded that explain what he meant or he’d be looking for somewhere else to sleep that night. To keep the upper hand, he tried to make me look like the culprit. He said I was too emotional, that I loved him too much. That can be changed, I snapped at him angrily. I made it clear that I was prepared to book a flight to Cairo the next morning if he didn’t want my company. That’s when he broke down and started crying, something few people ever saw Matt do in his lifetime. The big man crumpled into a frightened child who begged me not to leave him. His tears totally melted my heart. Suddenly, there was no crime greater than causing this beautiful man such pain, and all I wanted to do was hold him.

He admitted that he liked my company and that he cared for me deeply, but he was worried that I would expect something of him that he might not be able to give me when he returned to Canada. I admitted to loving him as much as I had ever loved anyone, but I could accept that he didn’t want to be chained to expectations, especially when he was traveling, so we agreed to stick it out and just not call each other boyfriends. The only thing that changed is that I began to doubt his sincerity. We went out that night to a local gay bar and two older guys came onto him strongly. To stave them off, he told them we were boyfriends.

Tired of hanging around the city centre waiting for his money to come through, we decided to catch a bus to Cape Sounion, 70 km from Athens at the southern tip of Attica, the peninsula Athens is built on. Sounion rises to high promontory surrounded by the sea on three sides, at the top of which stand the ruins of the Temple of Poseidon, designed by the same architect who had built the Parthenon. Sounion is famous for its fabulous sunsets.

We scrambled around the ruins for a couple hours, waiting for sunset. It was Matt’s wish to sleep amongst the ruins but it was a popular wish amongst backpackers and the guards had been onto it for ages. They made sure everyone was off the property before dark.

We climbed down the hill and crossed onto the east side of a facing hill where we laid out our sleeping bags under a small tree five metres above the shore. We went to sleep there with the silhouette of the temple standing against the last light of the night sky. In the morning we stripped off our underwear and jumped naked into the Aegean Sea. After frolicking around for several minutes, we climbed back up and lay in the warm morning sun until we were dry. Then we made love right there, out in the open, with no sign of human life in view except for the ruins of the temple in the distance. That is, until a busload of school children poured into the picture. They didn’t see us as they raced to see who could get up to the ruins first. We reluctantly dressed and caught the next bus back to Athens.

The next morning Matt learned that it would be a week before he’d get access to his money so we decided to take a longer trip. It was still a bit cool and rainy so we decided to head south to Crete. The passenger ferry left Athens’ port, Piraeus, in the next evening and arrived in Iraklion, the largest town on Crete, the following morning. Matt brought his bike for he wanted to cycle with me there. He had read that there were places in Iraklion where I could a rent a bike for myself. What we didn’t need we stored at the hotel.

We brought a bottle of wine, which we weren’t supposed to have open on board, but it seemed everyone else was doing it. We shared it with a very cute 21-year-old American named Paul who was going to spend the summer studying the administration of the European Union, or something equally dull. Between the wine and Paul, Matt was in heat. We were all crammed in closely on my lower berth and Matt begun conspicuously rubbing his leg against mine, hoping this would excite Paul. I could have died with embarrassment but Paul, though he couldn’t help but notice, went right on talking as though nothing was happening. A few minutes later he said good night and wandered off. I lay in my berth below Matt’s that night, wondering what kind of relationship this was turning into.