Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [41]
Sappho. Ah, now you're talking! Highly strung female aristocrat in 620 B.C. Made homosexuality cool and acceptable by writing erotic gay love poems. But there was political unrest. Fear-filled pre-Christian Christian-types destroyed her work by setting fire to the parchments or, worse, crumbling them.2 Bastards. Exiled to Sicily. Fell in love with Phaon, a ferry boat operator. But it didn't work out. Well, of course not: he was a man! Distraught and confused, Sappho threw herself off a cliff and died, ending the “Will she, won't she commit suicide?” speculation once and for all.
Over the centuries, as I said, the island's name was changed repeatedly (depending on which invading nation had control of it at the time) from Pelasgia to Aeolis to Lassia to Makaria to Mytonis, and a whole bunch more, most of which, because they sounded like brands of cough syrup, never caught on. Eventually, though, the locals did manage to agree on a name, and that's the one it's still known by:
Lesbos.
Since Sappho's day, the island has been a place of pilgrimage for lesbian couples vacationing in Europe, same way penguins congregate in Antarctica, and people who can't get laid attend MacWorld. In fact, after olives and cheese, homosexuals are probably its most widely available natural resource, much to the consternation, I gather, of the Lesbian government, whose members, being incredibly hetero and butch—grrrr—would prefer their homeland to be famous for something a little more wholesome. Oh, and one other thing: if it's all the same to you, the islanders dislike being referred to as Lesbians. Particularly the men, for some reason. They much prefer the drearier, less amusing term “Lesbonians.”
Shame nobody else does.
So, Lesbians it is!
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Rrrrr. Rrrr. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Braving a 95-degree morning high, and with the crew at my heels, I stride into the heart of the village in search of something worth making a TV show about.
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
My first task as host is to pretend I've just been washed up on a mystery island, but with absolutely no clue which one. Every episode starts that way, and I've developed a special look to handle it: I call it My Mystified Look. It's more of a sequence of looks, really. Glance left, glance right, frown, squint, purse my lips, then walk out of shot at a brisk pace, as though intrigued by something off-camera.3 Works like a dream every time. Catch me wandering around on-screen with that look on my face and you instantly say to yourself: “Now, there's a fella with no clue where he's at.”
We make a sharp right onto the main drag, a sleepy, paved conduit of blinding white walls running parallel to the shoreline, dotted with restaurants and pokey little coffee bars that are very inviting, and seem all the more so when you're busy working and can't go in them. Outside each is a chalkboard menu, either balanced on a chair or hooked onto the wall, listing a bunch of specials in Greek: items such as noykanikoxopiatix and kotonoyoeoy. That's how they spell stuff over here, in code. Makes their language very difficult to pick up, and their Scrabble games a nightmare, I should imagine.
Seated at tables along the sidewalk, old men—and I mean old old, their bodies pickled by ouzo, tobacco, and a lifetime living in an unrelenting furnace—sit playing backgammon, or in some cases Thermopylae, with their shirts off, unself-consciously exposing their hunched, leathery Crypt Keeper physiques to the public. And if they catch you laughing and pointing, they merely laugh back, lips hitching up like badly creased theater curtains around a proscenium of crooked brown teeth and raw red gums.
There are lots of old men in Lesbos; lots of weary middle-aged housewives, too, lugging heavy shopping bags up hills to their homes; and lots and lots of statuesque youths tearing up the streets on motor scooters