The Guy with the Cow and the Sledgehammer
On our final day on Naxos, after five dishes and two liters of wine at a fabulous taverna near Kastraki, Stavros and I headed to the sea for a late-afternoon swim. During our few days on the island, we frequently noted, enthusiastically, the preponderance of beefy bearded men, their skin darkened by their work under the sun to a shimmery dark chocolatey olive brown patina. One passed us on the road to the beach, in a dirty old pickup truck. I glimpsed briefly only the whites of his eyes framing two dark pools of black longing, the rest of him melting into the shadows of the interior of his truck. He pulled over to the side of the road, and when he stepped from his truck, Stavros and I looked at each other with a big wooooah!-did-you-see-that-guy?? sort of gasp and screeched our car to a halt.
He wasn't wearing much, just a chestful of hair, shorts and sandals. He parked in front of an abandoned villa where there was a cow tethered to a stake in the ground. Grabbing a sledgehammer from his truck, he made his way to the cow, intent on hammering the stake more firmly into place. I'd seen this all over Greece, animals tethered to things, or two of their legs tied together to prevent them from... I'm not sure what exactly, are cows more aggressive there? Anyway, the gesture seemed just for show, his muscles glistening under the afternoon sun like a Tom of Finland illustration.
Stavros and I eyed him from the road as we walked in the opposite direction, towards the beach, turning around every few steps.
"Is he looking at us"
"No, he's checking his cow."
"No he's checking us out."
"Did he stop for us?"
"No, let's go to the beach."
"He's definitely checking us out."
"Okay, let's check him out..."
We turned around and walked towards him. Stavros waved and asked him some innocuous questions about the villa, very friendly-like. The guy didn't say much, and didn't seem to convey much beyond his concise grunted answers to Stavros' questions. Disappointed, we turned around and headed back to the beach. Almost there, I turned around again, and then again, and he turned towards us again, and then again. Finally, remembering something I'd read as a kid about homosexual behavior by Masters and Johnson or maybe in the Hite Report, I put my hand on my swelling special place. And then he did too!
"Okay, Stavros, I've read about this, he wants us, let's go!"
My heart started pounding like a jackhammer. We turned around again, and followed him past the cow to the rear of the villa. He sat down on a low concrete wall and wordlessly sort of offered himself to us, his big dark eyes beckoning. Stavros immediately started pulling on his right nipple, and, following his lead, I squeezed the left, which elicited no response at all. I leaned in to kiss him, but he turned slightly and looked away from me.
Now, I should take a moment to explain that I've never done anything like this, I've only read about these kinds of encounters but never thought that they really happened. And certainly I've never done anything like this with my boyfriend! I didn't know how to engage in, much less enter, this kind of sexual dialogue. So I just pulled his shorts off.
Gasp.
A large chocolate blimp sprung up into my face, sheathed in skin so tight that it puckered like a juicy sausage, nestled in angel hair made with squid ink. The smell was like a cigarette in a field of dried grass and wild oregano. I breathed in and went down
.Without diverting myself from my task, I wordlessly handed first my hat, then my glasses, to Stavros, standing behind like a magician's assistant.
He mumbled something to Stavros. Stavros later told me that he asked if I swallowed. "Don't swallow," Stavros said in English to me. It was too late. This all happened in about 30 seconds.
Stavros pulled me, dazed, off of the still engorged Naxian sausage and, wiping my lips as I walked away, I said "epharisto!" or "thank you" in Greek. He just looked away. When we got to the road, our dark furry friend sheepishly reemerged from behind the house. From the road, I waved and wished him a good day. He looked away again. Stavros laughed at me, telling me that the guy was probably from a small village, was most likely married, and probably didn't want anyone living on this small island to see a middle-aged American in flip flops and tented square-cut Sauvage swimwear frantically waving at him.
I hadn't even thought about the hammer. This guy was carrying around a sledgehammer.
In the sea, I savored the herbal perfume still in my beard, avoiding getting my head wet until Stavros made me rinse out the last of the cowman's lingering flavors from my mouth with seawater.
Our encounter that day was solely about physical sensation, an intense physical interaction condensed into a minute. No kissing, no talking, we hardly even looked at each other. I didn't feel bereft in any way, however, because it had been so sensorially rich, the incredible smells, his beautiful skin color, the taste of him. It was like eating the best chocolate eclair that you could imagine. You wouldn't kiss an eclair, or expect it to talk to you. It just tastes great.