by Mike Gayle
‘From scooters to quad bikes,’ said Tom as two guys riding pillion passed by flicking the ‘v’s to their friends. ‘Do you remember the scooters we hired last time we were here?’
‘I still bear the scars from when I skidded off mine racing you and Charlie,’ laughed Tom.
‘Maybe we should hire one of these each for a bit of a laugh?’ said Andy, enviously eyeing up a quad bike parked up in front of our hotel.
The last thing I wanted to do was let Andy talk me into hiring a quad bike so that we could relive our youth. My days of taking part in pointlessly reckless activities were long behind me. Now I no longer had a live-in girlfriend to look after me should the need arise I needed to be careful.
As we headed along the road towards the beach with the general aim of finding somewhere reasonably nice and cheap to have breakfast we played holiday resort bingo. Clothes shops selling T-shirts bearing comedic gems like ‘I’m with stupid’? Tick. ‘Authentic’ Greek restaurants advertising ‘English-style roast dinners with all the trimmings’? Tick. Grocery stores selling copies of the Sun, the Star and the Daily Mirror? Tick. Bars with ridiculously traditional English pub names like ‘The Royal Oak’? Tick and bingo! Every cliché, everywhere, and they were all repeated on a constant loop along every single inch of the road. It was like a reproduction Blackpool but with better weather. It was a simulated Skegness without the North Sea. It was Little England in the sunshine.
We ate breakfast at Stars and Bars, an American-themed bar and diner with a British slant. The whole of the outdoor terrace had been empty when we’d sat down but the bar’s owners had compensated for this by attempting to import a ‘happening’ ambience into the bar via three large TV screens positioned above our heads, showing various MTV channels. Their attempts were hampered by the fact that the sound had been turned down on all three screens.
Half distracted by the soundless MTV screen, we had barely glanced at the menus by the time our waiter arrived to take our order. Andy and I ordered lager (because it was cold and large) and then followed up with the ‘Killer’ English breakfast (bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, hash browns, toast, tea and jam). Though Andy and I spoke to the waiter in English, for some reason Tom made the whole process more complicated by pulling out his Rough Guide book and earnestly murmuring a few sentences in Greek. At first we assumed that Tom’s pronunciation was so awful that the waiter had failed to understand a single word he’d said but it turned out that Kevin wasn’t Greek at all. He was actually from Bloxwich near Wolverhampton and was spending the summer in Crete helping out in his uncle’s bar to earn some money before going to university. It was all Andy and I could do to stop ourselves from spluttering with laughter as Tom sighed and mumbled: ‘I’ll have what they’re having.’
Susie
Following on from our late breakfast we ventured to a grocery store to buy bottled water and a couple of day-old English tabloid newspapers and continued on our journey towards the beach. At various junctures along the way, one of us would point out a landmark that we recalled from our last visit. Tom indicated Kato’s, a small nightclub that Andy had once got thrown out of for falling asleep on the dance floor, which had now changed its name to Eden. Andy pointed out the once open ground where we had played mini-golf every afternoon, now a new block of holiday apartments. And finally I spotted Ming House, the all-you-can-eat Cantonese restaurant that was now Luigi’s, a takeaway pizzeria.
‘They’ve even renamed the beach,’ said Andy as we finally reached our destination.
I glanced up at the official-looking sign above Andy’s head. ‘Laguna Beach – this way’. ‘What was it called before?’ I asked trying to recall its name.
Andy shrugged.
‘I think it was just called “the beach”,’ said Tom. ‘That’s how sophisticated things were back then.’
Laguna Beach was exactly what I expected of the Malia I had encountered so far. It was less a beach in the traditional sense of the word and more an alfresco nightclub. Two huge speakers were carefully positioned at the top of the beach to ensure maximum exposure of the kind of club tunes that I spent my whole life trying to avoid.
Resignedly we began making our way across the beach in search of a patch of sand without a sun-lounger parked on it. Ten feet on to the sand, however, we were intercepted by a tall bare-chested bronzed guy wearing black wrap-around sunglasses, cut-off shorts and a bum bag.
‘Five Euros each,’ he said in heavily accented English.
‘We’ve got to pay?’ said Tom incredulously.
‘For that you get a pass, a sun-bed and umbrella.’
‘No thanks, mate,’ I replied. The idea of paying to lie on a beach just seemed wrong on all kind of levels.
‘Come, come,’ he said confidently. ‘I will show you someone who will explain.’
I looked at Andy and he shrugged and then Tom looked at me and he shrugged too and because we were English and didn’t like to offend people if we could help it, we followed him across the sand to three empty sun-loungers. The man waved across the sand to a pretty blonde in a bikini top and cut-off denim shorts who came running across with all the urgency of a lifeguard in action. When she reached us the bronzed guy gave me a cheeky wink and then disappeared, leaving the girl to introduce herself.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m Susie.’
‘Nice to meet you, Susie,’ said Andy shaking her hand. ‘Is that a Newcastle accent I detect there?’
Susie nodded. ‘I’ve just graduated so I thought I’d come out here for the summer. I’m here during the day and then in the evening I work at Eden.’ She paused and smiled. ‘So how long are you guys here for?’
‘A week,’ said Andy. He winked at Susie. ‘But it could be longer if you play your cards right.’
Even I could see that Susie was merely chatting us up in order to soften the blow when she asked us for money for our so-called beach card but Andy was lost in a fantasy world where he imagined that this girl really fancied him. I was reasonably sure that his flirtatious manner was more out of habit than actual intention. But thankfully before he could get round to proving me wrong she got to the point.
For the princely sum of five Euros each we would receive a card that would entitle us to three sun-beds and umbrellas for a week, ten per cent off any meal at Spetzi’s Chicken Grill and a free cocktail (choice determined by the barman) at the Cool Breeze beach bar. We all signed up without the slightest hint of struggle. It was pathetic really. The fact that this very attractive girl was even talking to us seemed to render our cognitive faculties redundant.
Susie thanked us for our money, assured us that she would see us later and then shimmied back across the beach to where the tall bronzed Greek guy was standing with some other tall bronzed Greek guys. Suitably emasculated we arranged ourselves on the sun-loungers (left to right: Andy, me, Tom) and took in the view.
There were literally hundred of girls on loungers. Girls of every shape, size, race, colour and, presumably, denomination. Some were tanned to perfection. Others lobster pink. It was as if a women-only container ship had run aground and carefully thrown up its precious cargo on the beach right in front of us.
‘You can’t even see the sea,’ complained Tom as he pulled out his Rough Guide book from his rucksack and began reading.
He was right too. You couldn’t see the actual sea at all from where we were because there were too many bodies around us. But there was a sea in front of us – a sea of flesh, long legs, tantalising upper thighs, tattooed backs, toned midriffs, lower buttocks peeking out through g-string bikini bottoms, side breast and (yes) even the occasional full breast with nipple. And though technically it should have been a glorious sight to behold I couldn’t help but feel intimidated. It was as if every single one of the young women who surrounded us was fully aware of the power and allure of the feminine form. And uncharacteristically I longed to see these women clothed, if only because it would have provided a moment’s respite from the feeling tha
t I was never going to stand a chance with any of them.
The three of us had been keeping ourselves to ourselves, quietly reading on the beach for over an hour when suddenly a group of yobs barely old enough to buy alcohol legally in England began play-fighting in front of us in a bid to impress a group of girls sitting across from us.
‘This is like a school field trip from hell,’ said Tom slamming down his Rough Guide.
‘I know what you mean,’ I replied peering at them over the top of my sunglasses as one of the yobs dropped his shorts and mooned his friends. ‘I keep looking at them and thinking: “Where’s your responsible adult? Who’s actually in charge of you lot? Surely at some point someone’s going to round them all up and take them back to whichever borstal or secure unit they’ve escaped from.”’
‘But it’s not just these yobs that are winding me up,’ replied Tom, warming to his theme, ‘have you seen that lot over there?’ Tom discreetly gestured to a group of guys, roughly in their twenties, who were all defined upper body muscles, tattoos and perfect tans. They were flirting with a group of girls who, with their perfect hair, bodies and flawless skin, appeared to be their female counterparts.
‘That bloke there has got a washboard stomach,’ I said squinting in the group’s direction. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen an actual six-pack that wasn’t on the cover of some sort of fitness mag.’
‘But do you know what’s worse?’ added Tom. ‘Look around us and what do you notice that makes us the odd ones out here?’
I did as Tom instructed but as far as I could tell there were so many things that made us the odd ones out that it was difficult to choose just one. ‘Is it the fact that we’re the only blokes on the beach who look like off-duty geography teachers?’
‘Nearly,’ replied Tom. ‘It’s actually that we’re the only people here wearing T-shirts.’
I looked all around. Tom was right. Most of the girls were in bikinis and every guy was topless. ‘Do you think we should de-robe so we blend in a bit?’
‘You can if you like,’ replied Tom. ‘But I’m keeping my T-shirt firmly on. I thought I wasn’t in bad shape until I saw this lot. But this bunch of body fascists will probably call the police on us.’ Tom paused and adopted a high-pitched Monty Pythonesque voice: ‘Hello, is that the police? I’d like to report three lumpy thirty-five-year-old men on the beach lying around making the place look untidy.’
Tom and I laughed and then fell into an uneasy silence.
‘But it’s easy to look like that when you’re twenty-one,’ I said after a while. ‘You don’t have to exercise, you can just eat what you want and burn it all off arsing about all day.’ I paused as a different bunch of guys ran past, pursued by a group of giggling girls. ‘Do you know what? I’m half tempted to whip off my top and yell: “Enjoy yourself while you can because this will be you in ten years time!”’
‘So why don’t you?’ asked Andy, his first contribution to conversation.
‘It wouldn’t make any difference if I did. They’re already enjoying themselves as much as they can. Anyway, one way or another they’ll learn that the party’s got to end sometime.’
Andy had just returned from a trip to the grocery shop near the top of the beach to get various essentials like water, crisps and sandwiches when he paused and said in reverent tones: ‘Now that is a work of art.’
Tom and I sat up and followed his line of vision as a blonde minus the top half of her bikini strode past our loungers towards the outdoor shower.
‘She might be a work of art,’ I replied as the girl stood underneath the shower and turned it on, ‘but she knows it.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Andy unashamedly standing up to get a better view. ‘If I was a girl and I had a body like that I’d spend most of my life walking around completely naked. I mean it – all the time. I’d be there prancing around stopping traffic, watching guys crash their cars and blokes on motorcycles smash into lampposts. I’d cause mayhem.’ Andy laughed and finally sat down. ‘The world is so lucky that I wasn’t born a woman.’
As Andy returned to his newspaper and Tom returned to his Rough Guide, I settled back in my lounger and momentarily found myself thinking about Sarah. On our last holiday I found myself staring at her while she was engrossed in some book that she’d bought at the airport. And I remember thinking to myself that she was mine. This beautiful woman lying next to me was mine and nobody else’s. And unlike the girls around us playing frisbee in the sea or the girls sunning themselves on the loungers or even the girl my friends and I had just watched take a shower, Sarah didn’t know how beautiful she was. I liked to believe she didn’t think stuff like that mattered. And in my eyes at least that made her even more beautiful. As that thought began to fade, I deliberately tried to stop thinking about Sarah because I wasn’t sure how much I could take. And so I closed my eyes and enjoyed the calming sensation of the heat of the sun on my eyelids. And though my head was still full of thoughts, my heart remained as broken and as empty as ever.
The rest of the day slipped away without a fight. We lay on our loungers, stared at the sea and watched the girls go by. And now that we had experienced our first full day in the sun I felt as if I could relax. I could easily imagine how our daily routine might go and because of that I was sure that for the ‘daytime’ section of our holiday there wouldn’t be too many surprises to encounter ahead. The ‘night time’ section however would be a completely different beast altogether. And I was well aware that, like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, daytime Andy and night-time Andy were two different creatures altogether.
Leaving the beach towards the close of the afternoon we headed back to the apartment and came up with a plan for the evening: ‘free time’ until nine o’clock, then a drink in the hotel bar, followed by a meal out at the nearest half-decent restaurant. Then the main event: the bars and clubs of Malia until the early hours. Tom called his wife and kids and then took himself off for a walk; Andy meanwhile went to bed and promptly fell asleep; and I returned to the balcony to continue with Touching The Void. A short while before we were due to leave I came in and had my first (vaguely warm) shower of the day and got ready to go out. By ten minutes past nine all three of us were standing in the kitchen (aka Tom’s bedroom) in our best glad rags (me: T-shirt and jeans; Tom: button-down polo shirt and chinos; Andy: T-shirt and cut-off camouflage trousers).
It had felt good having some time to spend getting ready for our big night out. As if the effort I’d put into making myself look half-decent would somehow pay off in admiring glances. Ultimately, however, the focus of my efforts for the evening was the girl-in-the-cowboy-hat. In spite of some initial reservations I was beginning to believe that something might actually happen between us. So much so that I began to imagine her name on what I hoped would be a long list of women whom I’d always refer to as ‘The ones that came after Sarah’.
Hiya, boys
It was now just after eleven and Andy, Tom and I were in a taverna near the beach called Taki’s Place, having just consumed our first authentic Greek meal of the holiday: chicken souvlaki in pitta bread with chips and tatziki followed by a litre of Carlsberg. As we waited for the bill to arrive we watched as a continuous stream of shirtless revellers screeched by on their quad bikes yelling to each other at the top of their lungs whilst attempting to run over anything that attempted to get in their way. It was like watching a junior facsimile of a hell’s angels rally.
Leaving Taki’s we began our expedition towards what Steve-the-barman had referred to as ‘the main strip’ – the dozens of cafés, bars, clubs and takeaway restaurants that made up the heart of Malia nightlife. It was like on the streets around Wembley on Cup Final day: with each step we were joined by legions of merrymakers whose destination was the same as our own. Young guys and young girls, all ready to party like it was a Saturday night back home. We passed smaller bars and restaurants that tried to tantalise us with offers of cheap beer, football matches on TV and pirate films that hadn’t
even been released at the cinema yet but not a single one could match the allure of our objective. As we reached the crossroads at the heart of the resort we were finally able to see our promised land in all its neon glory and hear it in all its stereophonic disco splendour.
Crossing the road to the main strip was like journeying across a checkpoint between two different countries: in one there was law and order and in the other anarchy reigned supreme. Even before we’d reached the other side of the road we saw a girl throwing up on the pavement while her friends held her hair out of the way; two paramedics attending to a shirtless guy propped up against the window of a fried chicken takeaway; and a gang of guys with their trousers around their ankles mooning a group of giggling girls.
‘I’ve got a horrible feeling that tonight is going to be pretty grim.’ Tom shook his head in despair as we stepped over a patch of sick on the pavement.
‘You are so wrong, my church-tastic friend,’ countered Andy. ‘I’ve got a feeling tonight is going to be a night to—’ he stopped suddenly as an attractive dark-haired girl caught his eye with a killer smile and reeled him in right in front of us.
‘Hiya, boys,’ she said standing directly in our path. The accent was English and northern. ‘I’m Tasha. Where are you guys from?’
‘I’m Andy,’ said Andy. ‘And I’m from Hove.’
