Salon Wanderlust | Death on Ios

[Salon Wanderlust: Travel with a passion]

T A B L E_T A L K
How useful are travel guides? Share your misadventures and miraculous finds in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y
This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news
(10/30/98)
Naked and in hot water
By Simon Firth
A proper Brit ventures to a clothing-optional resort and discovers that nudity offers more than meets the eye
(10/29/98)
Man bites dog
By Rolf Potts
Koreans and Americans both love dogs -- they just have different ways of showing it
(10/28/98)
A tipsy tasting in Burgundy
By The Surreal Gourmet
It's not easy sipping 200 to 300 great wines a day, but someone's got to do it
(10/27/98)
Dancing with the dead
By Gina Hyams
Life lessons from Mexico's Day of the Dead
(10/25/98)

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-------------------------Could he recapture his youth on
----------------------------Greece's most hedonistic island?
-----------------------B Y J E F F R E Y T A Y L E R
"Youth flies." --Horace
Oh, the Greek island summers of my youth! There were Fat Boy chopper rides on cliff roads high above the shimmering emerald Aegean. There were days of cold beer and salty beach and juicy souvlaki, tart tzatziki. There were cool night sea breezes, hot moist lips, smooth untethered breasts beneath silken bodices, passionate embraces on the warm sand. There were rendezvous under the stars, stars that in their horizon-to-horizon spread of diamond light and faraway luster suggested infinite possibilities, endless time, an eternity to realize a glorious, ever-distant future.
Memory embellishes the past: Now that I think of it, the Fat Boy chopper was actually a sputtering moped, and there were mosquito bites and stained sheets and other sticky annoyances. But I was green then -- in the early 1980s -- and youth was in me, and I was spending summers on the Greek islands, and there was no AIDS. The Mediterranean setting and the allure of romance commingled to create a brew heady and redolent of mystery. All this was new to me then, new.
One afternoon in Moscow not long ago I stared into the mirror and compared myself to a picture taken of me in Athens in 1984. At first I thought, to my satisfaction, that I appeared the same now as then, with the dignifying exception of a few gray hairs at the temples. But I began examining my reflection more closely: Something, some solid cast of jaw and gravity of gaze, had settled over me in the intervening years. My life as it had developed had taken its toll on me: I had spent the last six years in a cold northern land where youth withered early, corruption and deceit were the norms and bullets riddled the frivolous. I had, unmistakably, grown "grim about the mouth," as Ishmael put it.
Suddenly, I yearned to be the carefree youngster in the photo, and a reflexive question arose: How would I do now, at age 37, on those same Greek isles? I had never really noticed time passing; was I in truth no longer young? To counter what the mirror hinted, I decided I needed concrete answers to these questions in the form of a romantic fling, bodice and sand and sticky annoyances and all, that would validate me as who I thought I was and chase away the doubts.
I decided to storm the gates of my past. I recruited my 40-year-old (and skeptical) Dutch friend, Serge, as a travel companion, outfitted myself with summer attire, including a cool Animal wristwatch and cooler Armani shades, bought a plane ticket to Athens and set my compass for the island stomping grounds of my youth.

A week later our Flying Dolphin hydrofoil was skipping a frothy white V across the blue Aegean, its snout leveled at the isle of Ios. Ios! A breast of brown rock pointing heavenward, nippled with a white church! The fabled burial ground of Homer, Ios, over the past few decades, has garnered notoriety as an island on which crowds of college-age satyrs and Bacchae re-create ancient Greek rituals of orgiastic revelry with "Animal House" aplomb. I had first visited Ios in 1985 and left it feeling like a pleasantly ragged-out but sated survivor of a week-long frat party. Topographically speaking, it is a windy rock with one village, a few beaches and 113 bars.
We stepped off our Dolphin into a notias, or Southerner -- a wind from Africa notable for its sweltering heat. Soon after arrival, a hotelier was leading us to our rooms. A Greek matriarch who had, no doubt, seen it all before, she ministered to us as might the seasoned matron of a cut-rate Dionysian temple.
"We have an m-m-good barbecue here every night and all the brand-name hooch you could want. Stay out all night and bring girls to your rooms, but just don't lose my keys! Got that?"
Two hours later we were reclining on chaise longues on Milopotas Beach. Music pounded from the pool at the nearby Far Out Club. All around us were buzz-cut teens from northern Europe, teens with hair napped in purple, yellow and orange clumps. Some wore pirate scarves. Others sported silver coins on leather necklaces, scorpion tattoos, navel piercings, tongue studs and nipple and nostril rings. The crowd resembled a "Trainspotting" cast of thousands, and I wondered what drugs they must have taken to keep themselves in such perpetual motion: They couldn't stop paddling balls, whirling Frisbees, snorting into snorkels. What was all this activity for?
Next to us sat three Irish girls drinking beers. Maybe they were 19 years old, maybe 20. They were works in progress; their skin looked dew-fresh, their cheeks baby-fat plump.
Their voices carried.
"Well, we drank on the plane. And on the bus to the port. And on the ferry. And in the pension. No wonder we all puked!" Uproarious laughter, gulps of beer for all, an adjustment of wrap-around shades.
"Let's hit the Square at 10 tonight ... Grandma and Grandpa gave me 300 pounds for this trip ... My nose piercing itches ... You've got a bee on your bum ..."
Serge sipped his Heineken.
"Jeff, I can't talk to girls that age. I just can't."
I shrugged off his negativism and swatted at a wasp. We were in Ios for night life anyway; beach impressions meant nothing.

By day, Khora, Ios' village, is a dainty labyrinth of whitewashed alleys peopled by doddering Greek dowagers and mustachioed fruit merchants leading donkeys loaded with baskets of fruit. By night, it's a cross between the Crazy Horse Saloon and a modern-day Babylon where the streets flow with beer, piss and vomit. It is not by chance that one of the island's most popular T-shirts reads: "Ios -- Drink Until You Puke, Puke Until You Die."
The nexus of night life is the Square, which is basically an alley with an olive tree on one end, a church on the other and a dozen watering holes in between -- the rest of the bars and clubs fan outward from there.
Around 11 p.m., Serge and I left the hotel, fell in with the crowd, passed the Orgasm Bar and the Lemon Club, and made it to the Square. We hadn't planned it, but we ended up dressed thematically alike -- I in black loafers, a Polo shirt and Levis; he in Trussardi jeans, a silk shirt and square-toed loafers. I note this here because around us streamed ripped-up knee-length shorts, Tevas sandals, "Take Me Drunk -- I'm Home" T-shirts and pierced cartilage. With our intact attire and dearth of facial metal, we stuck out like white crows.
Joni's Electric Bar and Frankie's Ios Blue -- we looked inside the clubs on the Square and moved on. We surfed the crowd and landed in Shooter's, one of the more sedate bars just off the Square.
A guy in his early 20s with a shaved head and two girls in tow pointed to the empty seats beside me and raised his eyebrows.
"C'n we sit here?"
Sure, I said.
Herb was his name. Twenty-three years old. From the Midwest. Just finished a magnus opus in which he expatiated upon every tenet and principle of his philosophy. I found myself nodding off into my Corona as he nattered on, his nasal voice droning like an anopheles mosquito -- until, that is, he slowed down, took a deep breath and huffed, "Boy, do I feel old here!"
I snapped awake. "Old? You? You're 23!"
"Yeah, but these chicks I'm with are young. I c'n hardly talk to them" (the music was too loud for them to hear us). "Just last night I was out on the beach with the brunette here -- she's from England and her name's Fiona -- and I was explaining my philosophy and she just pulled me down on the sand and took off her clothes and made me do it. She didn't wanna hear about my philosophy."
Old?
I looked at Serge. The other girl grabbed Herb's Corona and tried to steal a sip; he grabbed it back. "Hey," he said, "I told you I don't buy you drinks. That's not my philosophy." He turned to me: "Violetta here can be a pain."
Right. I looked at the "pain" and did a double take, like a character out of a 1950's sitcom. Violetta had long curly blond hair, a billowing front, a saucy little nose and wore a petulant frown. She called to mind a Benny Hill tart, the kind of voluptuous temptress the bawdy comedian would have chased at show's end in fast-motion around tree trunks in a public park. I felt a warmth in my gut, a rush of blood, a visceral attraction. I had the urge to buy an entire crate of Coronas and toss them at her ankle-braceleted feet.
Herb tickled her. She smiled but looked away.
"I'm out for the impossible dream tonight," he said to me. "I'm gonna try and sleep with her. It'll be tough seeing as how I just did her girlfriend." He took another lusty gulp and wiped his lips. "Also, she's 17, and you see, I'm wondering --"
My jaw dropped. I had no idea she was so young.
"-- I'm wondering, if I have sex with her, can I be sued for it? I mean, she's English, but I'm American and we're in Greece. So, like, which legal age applies? Which jurisdiction?"
Later, Herb pontificated on the merits of shaved heads -- his own noggin, he said, was of a particularly manly contour and therefore drove girls insane with desire ("It's all in the shape of your cranium"). Whatever. I stole looks at Violetta: She was ravishing, but that she could be so young had never entered my mind. Until that moment, I hadn't paid much attention to age differences. Almost all the people I knew were past college age, in their 20s or 30s or older. And besides, in my mind's eye, I still saw myself as college age.
But perhaps to her, I, with my head of unnapped hair and without a nipple ring to my name, was an old codger, a hoary dinosaur washed up on this isle of youth.
N E X T+P A G E | Teeny-boppers on table tops and stumble-drunk blokes


	T A B L E_T A L K How useful are travel guides? Share your misadventures and miraculous finds in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news (10/30/98) Naked and in hot water By Simon Firth A proper Brit ventures to a clothing-optional resort and discovers that nudity offers more than meets the eye (10/29/98) Man bites dog By Rolf Potts Koreans and Americans both love dogs -- they just have different ways of showing it (10/28/98) A tipsy tasting in Burgundy By The Surreal Gourmet It's not easy sipping 200 to 300 great wines a day, but someone's got to do it (10/27/98) Dancing with the dead By Gina Hyams Life lessons from Mexico's Day of the Dead (10/25/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		-------------------------Could he recapture his youth on ----------------------------Greece's most hedonistic island? -----------------------B Y J E F F R E Y T A Y L E R "Youth flies." --Horace Oh, the Greek island summers of my youth! There were Fat Boy chopper rides on cliff roads high above the shimmering emerald Aegean. There were days of cold beer and salty beach and juicy souvlaki, tart tzatziki. There were cool night sea breezes, hot moist lips, smooth untethered breasts beneath silken bodices, passionate embraces on the warm sand. There were rendezvous under the stars, stars that in their horizon-to-horizon spread of diamond light and faraway luster suggested infinite possibilities, endless time, an eternity to realize a glorious, ever-distant future. Memory embellishes the past: Now that I think of it, the Fat Boy chopper was actually a sputtering moped, and there were mosquito bites and stained sheets and other sticky annoyances. But I was green then -- in the early 1980s -- and youth was in me, and I was spending summers on the Greek islands, and there was no AIDS. The Mediterranean setting and the allure of romance commingled to create a brew heady and redolent of mystery. All this was new to me then, new. One afternoon in Moscow not long ago I stared into the mirror and compared myself to a picture taken of me in Athens in 1984. At first I thought, to my satisfaction, that I appeared the same now as then, with the dignifying exception of a few gray hairs at the temples. But I began examining my reflection more closely: Something, some solid cast of jaw and gravity of gaze, had settled over me in the intervening years. My life as it had developed had taken its toll on me: I had spent the last six years in a cold northern land where youth withered early, corruption and deceit were the norms and bullets riddled the frivolous. I had, unmistakably, grown "grim about the mouth," as Ishmael put it. Suddenly, I yearned to be the carefree youngster in the photo, and a reflexive question arose: How would I do now, at age 37, on those same Greek isles? I had never really noticed time passing; was I in truth no longer young? To counter what the mirror hinted, I decided I needed concrete answers to these questions in the form of a romantic fling, bodice and sand and sticky annoyances and all, that would validate me as who I thought I was and chase away the doubts. I decided to storm the gates of my past. I recruited my 40-year-old (and skeptical) Dutch friend, Serge, as a travel companion, outfitted myself with summer attire, including a cool Animal wristwatch and cooler Armani shades, bought a plane ticket to Athens and set my compass for the island stomping grounds of my youth. A week later our Flying Dolphin hydrofoil was skipping a frothy white V across the blue Aegean, its snout leveled at the isle of Ios. Ios! A breast of brown rock pointing heavenward, nippled with a white church! The fabled burial ground of Homer, Ios, over the past few decades, has garnered notoriety as an island on which crowds of college-age satyrs and Bacchae re-create ancient Greek rituals of orgiastic revelry with "Animal House" aplomb. I had first visited Ios in 1985 and left it feeling like a pleasantly ragged-out but sated survivor of a week-long frat party. Topographically speaking, it is a windy rock with one village, a few beaches and 113 bars. We stepped off our Dolphin into a notias, or Southerner -- a wind from Africa notable for its sweltering heat. Soon after arrival, a hotelier was leading us to our rooms. A Greek matriarch who had, no doubt, seen it all before, she ministered to us as might the seasoned matron of a cut-rate Dionysian temple. "We have an m-m-good barbecue here every night and all the brand-name hooch you could want. Stay out all night and bring girls to your rooms, but just don't lose my keys! Got that?" Two hours later we were reclining on chaise longues on Milopotas Beach. Music pounded from the pool at the nearby Far Out Club. All around us were buzz-cut teens from northern Europe, teens with hair napped in purple, yellow and orange clumps. Some wore pirate scarves. Others sported silver coins on leather necklaces, scorpion tattoos, navel piercings, tongue studs and nipple and nostril rings. The crowd resembled a "Trainspotting" cast of thousands, and I wondered what drugs they must have taken to keep themselves in such perpetual motion: They couldn't stop paddling balls, whirling Frisbees, snorting into snorkels. What was all this activity for? Next to us sat three Irish girls drinking beers. Maybe they were 19 years old, maybe 20. They were works in progress; their skin looked dew-fresh, their cheeks baby-fat plump. Their voices carried. "Well, we drank on the plane. And on the bus to the port. And on the ferry. And in the pension. No wonder we all puked!" Uproarious laughter, gulps of beer for all, an adjustment of wrap-around shades. "Let's hit the Square at 10 tonight ... Grandma and Grandpa gave me 300 pounds for this trip ... My nose piercing itches ... You've got a bee on your bum ..." Serge sipped his Heineken. "Jeff, I can't talk to girls that age. I just can't." I shrugged off his negativism and swatted at a wasp. We were in Ios for night life anyway; beach impressions meant nothing. By day, Khora, Ios' village, is a dainty labyrinth of whitewashed alleys peopled by doddering Greek dowagers and mustachioed fruit merchants leading donkeys loaded with baskets of fruit. By night, it's a cross between the Crazy Horse Saloon and a modern-day Babylon where the streets flow with beer, piss and vomit. It is not by chance that one of the island's most popular T-shirts reads: "Ios -- Drink Until You Puke, Puke Until You Die." The nexus of night life is the Square, which is basically an alley with an olive tree on one end, a church on the other and a dozen watering holes in between -- the rest of the bars and clubs fan outward from there. Around 11 p.m., Serge and I left the hotel, fell in with the crowd, passed the Orgasm Bar and the Lemon Club, and made it to the Square. We hadn't planned it, but we ended up dressed thematically alike -- I in black loafers, a Polo shirt and Levis; he in Trussardi jeans, a silk shirt and square-toed loafers. I note this here because around us streamed ripped-up knee-length shorts, Tevas sandals, "Take Me Drunk -- I'm Home" T-shirts and pierced cartilage. With our intact attire and dearth of facial metal, we stuck out like white crows. Joni's Electric Bar and Frankie's Ios Blue -- we looked inside the clubs on the Square and moved on. We surfed the crowd and landed in Shooter's, one of the more sedate bars just off the Square. A guy in his early 20s with a shaved head and two girls in tow pointed to the empty seats beside me and raised his eyebrows. "C'n we sit here?" Sure, I said. Herb was his name. Twenty-three years old. From the Midwest. Just finished a magnus opus in which he expatiated upon every tenet and principle of his philosophy. I found myself nodding off into my Corona as he nattered on, his nasal voice droning like an anopheles mosquito -- until, that is, he slowed down, took a deep breath and huffed, "Boy, do I feel old here!" I snapped awake. "Old? You? You're 23!" "Yeah, but these chicks I'm with are young. I c'n hardly talk to them" (the music was too loud for them to hear us). "Just last night I was out on the beach with the brunette here -- she's from England and her name's Fiona -- and I was explaining my philosophy and she just pulled me down on the sand and took off her clothes and made me do it. She didn't wanna hear about my philosophy." Old? I looked at Serge. The other girl grabbed Herb's Corona and tried to steal a sip; he grabbed it back. "Hey," he said, "I told you I don't buy you drinks. That's not my philosophy." He turned to me: "Violetta here can be a pain." Right. I looked at the "pain" and did a double take, like a character out of a 1950's sitcom. Violetta had long curly blond hair, a billowing front, a saucy little nose and wore a petulant frown. She called to mind a Benny Hill tart, the kind of voluptuous temptress the bawdy comedian would have chased at show's end in fast-motion around tree trunks in a public park. I felt a warmth in my gut, a rush of blood, a visceral attraction. I had the urge to buy an entire crate of Coronas and toss them at her ankle-braceleted feet. Herb tickled her. She smiled but looked away. "I'm out for the impossible dream tonight," he said to me. "I'm gonna try and sleep with her. It'll be tough seeing as how I just did her girlfriend." He took another lusty gulp and wiped his lips. "Also, she's 17, and you see, I'm wondering --" My jaw dropped. I had no idea she was so young. "-- I'm wondering, if I have sex with her, can I be sued for it? I mean, she's English, but I'm American and we're in Greece. So, like, which legal age applies? Which jurisdiction?" Later, Herb pontificated on the merits of shaved heads -- his own noggin, he said, was of a particularly manly contour and therefore drove girls insane with desire ("It's all in the shape of your cranium"). Whatever. I stole looks at Violetta: She was ravishing, but that she could be so young had never entered my mind. Until that moment, I hadn't paid much attention to age differences. Almost all the people I knew were past college age, in their 20s or 30s or older. And besides, in my mind's eye, I still saw myself as college age. But perhaps to her, I, with my head of unnapped hair and without a nipple ring to my name, was an old codger, a hoary dinosaur washed up on this isle of youth. N E X T+P A G E \| Teeny-boppers on table tops and stumble-drunk blokes