Landscape With Traveler

by Barry Gifford

  They sat staring at me for a long moment, and that one little moment put control of the situation into my hands. “Now,” I said in my most businesslike manner, “I have indulged in all the more usual ‘perversions,’ as you call them, except annilingus. I have enjoyed both serial and mutual, simultaneous fellatio, anal intercourse, mutual masturbation, even, at times, the ‘Princeton Rub.’ These things I have done times past counting and, if I do say so, do them very well. Is there anything further you desire to know?” (I would have said, “my good man,” except that there were two of them and that expression loses something in the plural. “Good sirs” was a possibility, but I rejected it as too servile.)

  My inquisitors looked at each other. I suddenly loved them. One said, “It’s time for lunch.” Against all regulations, I would suppose, they invited me to lunch with them at a nice little restaurant in Georgetown, where we had a lovely, real conversation, about homosexuality, the law, freedom, “life,” love, me. I told them freely that I had, in a sense, “engineered” this whole thing, and why. Facts were facts and rules rules, so they were mated and had to let me have my discharge. There was even a small tender sadness and mutual sympathy acknowledging each other’s predicaments—acknowledging each other, in short. Then silence and rumination. We had finished our coffee. “Well,” I said at last, gently this time, “shall we go?”

  22

  So

  Finally

  I

  Was

  Free

  So finally I was free. I had spent two years in the Navy and had enjoyed it, as I enjoyed everything else in my life. Only as I was leaving it I realize I’d not set eyes on a ship. Portia took me out for a farewell dinner, and the next day I left for the big city—New York—got office jobs, studied dance in the evenings, and had a ball. My most serious college girl friend, Maggie, came back from a year in Italy, decided to stay in New York, and we took an apartment together. Two months later we were married.

  It was fun getting to know Maggie again. We both had regular nine-to-five jobs, and I had nightly ballet classes, after which I got home by 7:30 to find one of Maggie’s great dinners waiting. We’d sit for hours drinking wine or brandy and talking—good friends and perfect roommates. It’s amazing how much we had to say to each other. Finally we’d wash the dishes and go to bed—separate couches. Until, one night, we’d had more wine than usual and ended up on one couch. Hugging led to kissing and on to sex. It was my first experience, or first full experience, with a woman, and I believe it was Maggie’s first with a man. We were both surprised that we’d managed it, and when repeated experiments brought equal success, we decided to get married. The reasons for our decision are even now unclear. Since we both had strong unconventional leanings, it surprised everyone that we did something as conservative as getting married. Perhaps our eccentricity was more superficial than we suspected, or perhaps the conventional is the most unconventional thing eccentric folk can do. More likely is the possibility that we wanted to buy familial approval with a wedding. If so, we succeeded. Certainly my father breathed a sigh of relief that could be heard all the way from Texas.

  So we worked and played house. We had many friends, and weekend evenings rarely found us without dinner guests. It was good fun. Maggie was wonderful company. We were happy with our roles as grownups. I started getting dancing jobs (I wasn’t a bad dancer, actually) in small companies like Lazlo Karpovski’s Polish Dance Company, and finally stock jobs. I did two seasons at a huge summer theater in Ohio, where we did Broadway musicals with big television stars like Tony Bennett and Liberace (with the shows changed to accommodate the stars’ specialties).

  During this time I had a part in a show starring the famous old actress Theda Duvall. A dancer in the show had worked with her before and told me how fond she was of telling Tallulah Bankhead stories. Once, my friend said, Theda and Tallulah—who was well known for her preference for her own sex—were trapped together under a large black curtain that fell on them backstage. As they were struggling to free themselves, Tallulah was screaming and screaming. Afterward, Theda was laughing and Tallulah, who was still upset, wanted to know what was so funny. “I can’t help it,” Theda said to her, with the rest of the cast gathered around them, “it reminded me of the time we had with those nuns in the taxicab.”

  23

  My

  Great

  Idol

  My great idol in ballet was always Youskevitch. I used to pray that I’d wake up one morning not only dancing but looking like him. He had (and still has) one of those wonderful, bony, sunken-cheeked Slavic faces, almost ugly, really, which I found most compelling. Besides which, he was the greatest dancer I ever saw. Most male dancers, straight or gay, seem to find it difficult to appear masculine onstage. Even Eglevsky, who was a huge hunk of a man and totally straight (so far as I know), couldn’t resist flipping his wrists. But not so Youskevitch. He oozed masculinity, and when he was onstage you smelled balls! And not perfumed balls, either.

  However, once I’d proven to myself that I could be a dancer, my interest flagged. Obviously, I was not going to be another Youskevitch (who was?!), though I would have served as a minor soliste. That fact along with the vacuousness of theater life in general killed what interest remained. And by that time, three years of marriage later, Maggie and I were having second thoughts, I more than she. It had been easy to live together at first since we shared so many interests and were in fact very good friends. We had both had homosexual liaisons before we married (again, I more than she), and both knew this. Once married, there was no question of infidelity or even of temptation—at least there certainly wasn’t on my part, and I would have said the same for Maggie at the time, but time teaches us, among other things, that so far as another person is concerned, we know nothing for sure. The marriage wasn’t going well. Maggie began to suspect I was bedding down with Freddo, a young painter who was one of our closest friends. To do Maggie justice, everyone thought the same. When my mother died and left me a tiny little income from the sale of some property, I quit my job and took classes full time. Freddo and I spent much of the day together. I don’t believe it ever occurred to either of us that we might make love. What the hell—I was a married man! And I believe Freddo looked upon Maggie and me as surrogate parents. Whatever, Maggie’s suspicions hurt. We never talked about things serious, of course. Maybe she was tired of the whole thing. In any case, it finally didn’t work. When I got back from my last season of stock that fall of 1958, I ran to Freddo and told him to pack a bag and come to Europe with me, and that was that.

  24

  One

  Went

  First

  to

  Paris

  One went first, of course, to Paris. Was one not, after all, a French major? And an American?

  Paris was a success.

  The Parisians, on the other hand . . .

  Rome and its people were another matter. Freddo and I arrived on the first of February and watched the city bloom slowly into spring, then stretch on into summer. Piselli at Romolo’s, fragolini, cherries from Ravenna, apricots, figs. The contrast between warm, sunny Rome with its laughing, earthy inhabitants, and gray Paris with its cold, dour citizens was emphatically in Rome’s favor. In Paris I felt nothing but avarice, suspicion, and what—had it not been so energetic—might have passed for indifference on all sides. I did not imagine that this small-mindedness was a xenophobic attitude, as it was even stronger between compatriots. The Romans, however, seemed to be exactly the opposite, and though this was an illusion, they really were a much nicer sort.

  We had many adventures, of course—the usual “Americans abroad” sort of things. Lots of fun. Freddo, though, was becoming restive, convinced he had left the great love of his life in New York, and was impatient to get back. So I was soon alone. It was time for Greece.

  I was fortunate enough to come to Greece before the world at larg
e took it up. I arrived in Athens in July 1959, and though there were tourists even then, they rarely deviated from the paths beaten by guided tours. The Acropolis—Zonar’s—the National Museum—Zonar’s—the Grande Bretagne—a taverna—the Syntagma cafés. The Mykonos I knew was a quiet, dignified island with no electricity or running water. There were two hotels (really one “hotel,” as we think of them, and one place I would call an “inn,” if that didn’t conjure up too clean and English an image). Day was day, and night, night. One ate what the season ripened. One instinctively avoided excess, though realizing it only back in New York. Plain simplicity, and gentleness, as in heaven. People walked and sat quite comfortably on earth. I felt I had come home. It wasn’t exactly relief that I felt, but comfortableness (as opposed to comfort), rightness. It’s not like that anymore.

  But, aside from Mykonos, which I will visit again, if ever, only in winter, Greece still feels right to me. I’ve never wondered why, but things I see and understand are part of the reason. Aside from the beauty of the place—never a very important aspect for me—the people are good. They like each other, like a huge, harmonious family. They enjoy each other. They are gentle and avoid hurting one another, in any sense. They are generous. They share. They take care of their land. They love. Malice is a foreign (“barbarian”) word representing an incomprehensible turn of mind.

  I don’t mean that they’re perfect—life in Greece can be, and frequently is, exasperating in its everyday details. But after business hours all that disappears and there is an atmosphere of universal goodwill and sympathy (in the deep, etymological sense of the word), which makes it easy to believe that everyone loves everyone else. No one is afraid of the earth, I suppose that’s really it, however grand and vacuous it may sound.

  25

  It

  Was

  in

  Greece

  That

  I

  Met

  Ilya

  It was in Greece that I met Ilya, with whom I recently spent a most pleasant afternoon. It is strange to see him now. I look at him, talk with him, sunbathe (nude) with him, and have no sensual sense of him whatever. Between us there is now no trace of anything that used to be there, and only by an act of will can I remember that once just looking at him gave me what felt like a fever. But, of course, strangeness is nothing new between us. From the first, I felt it was strange, having such a violent physical response to a man for whom I never had anything resembling respect—what I first felt was more akin to mild contempt. Ilya’s only passions were Hershey bars, Cokes, Time magazine, and rather effeminate young men (this latter craving being all but incomprehensible in one so apprehensive of discovery). He was also an habitual and obvious liar. At that time, however, I had never responded so (what’s another word for “violently”?) violently to anyone sexually, and aside from that the most attractive thing I was ever able to feel for him was a stubborn pity. But the sexual tide was too strong to battle, and I let it take me. It carried me, of course, to a ravaged, terrible place. But travel broadens one, and this trip was no exception. Let me remember, then.

  26

  After

  a

  Winter

  in

  Rome,

  I

  Conquered

  My

  Inertia

  After a winter in Rome, I conquered my inertia and went to Greece—the object, after all, of my going to Europe in the first place. Friend Willy (an old friend from college days, at the time living in Europe) came down from Paris to join me. We spent a week in Athens doing the usual touristy things, but what we really wanted just then was to lie in the sun. Someone had told us of an island called Mykonos (unknown at the time to most foreigners), so we went there, expecting I don’t know what and finding paradise. We had intended to stay for a couple of weeks, a month at the most, and I ended up staying for two years. We heard of an American who had a small house to rent. That was Ilya, and we took the house.

  Ilya was very slick and dashing, always in just the right clothes (which were, however, always just a little in need of attention), always correct, if a bit sardonic (though this was not a thoroughly convincing pose). But there was also an insistent question deep in his blue eyes (“What do you think of me?”—that banner of insecurity), and he was ever on guard, defensive, secretive. He had a craggy, handsome face, hard despite his pout and clear smooth skin—the effect of his features was anything but soft, or I’d not have been interested. His hair was steely, prematurely gray, and his legs were charmingly bowed. He had also been left in his natural state (Ah, Douglas!). Ilya was thirty-eight years old, I was twenty-nine. He operated a bar and small restaurant on the waterfront in what was Ada Petrakis’s family’s old summer house, but the business was not doing well. He was glad to rent his little house on the hill, and Willy and I moved in.

  We had breakfast and dinner every day at Ilya’s restaurant and thus became better acquainted with him. The conversation was generally a monologue, with Ilya cataloguing his accomplishments and his grandiose plans for the future. He also frequently spoke about “remittance men,” which I found odd. Only later did I connect his insistence on the subject with the fact that I was paying all the bills (Willy had no money and I was still receiving a monthly check from my “inheritance.”). Disabusing Ilya of his error seemed hardly worth the trouble—he would find out soon enough. At about this time Maggie divorced me, and there were legal papers to tend to with lawyers, which probably clinched Ilya’s ideas about my remittances.

  Ilya began making advances, which I accepted on a whim. Actually, I rarely turned down sex in those years. It seemed such a logical thing for two people, of whatever sex, to do, and really not a matter of such moment as to cause one to take a stand about it. So we went to bed, rather casually, and it was pleasant enough. Hardly what I would call “advanced.” We quickly got rather regular about it, and for all practical purposes I moved into the big house with Ilya.

  Willy was amazed. So was I, especially when, rather quickly, the attraction grew, became insistent, then violent. It was then I became convinced that the vague theories about sexual attraction being an electrochemical reaction were indeed true. Nothing else adequately explained my growing fascination. I thought I was in love with Ilya.

  He began to pick on Willy. It was obvious he wanted to get rid of him, and Ilya made it so disagreeable that finally Willy could stand no more. I bought him a ticket back to Paris, and then there were three—Ilya, Ada (who had by then become my friend, too), and me.

  27

  Ada

  Ada: Greek, born in Russia, her father (even though a foreigner) had feudal holdings—huge tracts of wheat land, including the peasants who tended them, the villages they lived in, and a fleet of ships to take the grain to Europe. He was also the Greek consul. An extremely rich man, a passionate collector of everything. A nice man, too, apparently. Big family, with the girls taught almost nothing but music, needlework, reading and writing, and that they had a bright future ahead. The boys were free to study where and what they liked.

  Then came the Revolution, escape back to Greece, and relative poverty. Three of the daughters eventually married “beneath themselves,” unhappily—in Ada’s case disastrously, with her man finally going off with her best friend, classic case. The family’s poverty progressed from relative to real, with family pride and ancient position forbidding any lucrative employment, even had they had any marketable skills. Ada’s work consisted of piano lessons, needlework, and companioning genteel old ladies. In exchange for helping Ilya, who was Greekless, to operate his business, Ada had her room and meals and four months or five each summer in her familiar summer home where she could, if she wanted, imagine that nothing had changed since her carefree girlhood.

  Ada and I were friends from the start. As the summer wore on, after Willy left, and we became an intimate trio, we developed a style of beha
vior which seemed to hint that we were doing our best to hide the fact that we were three impoverished members of the high nobility united by our misfortunes, which we doggedly ignored. I believe each of us knew this, nurtured it, and enjoyed it, though we had not set out deliberately to create this illusion. Not that we actually did anything—we boasted of nothing, complained of nothing, were cheerful and hospitable, were agreeable and lent ourselves to any plans for entertainments, dinners, etc., were totally unpretentious and simple in our manners and dress, spoke impeccable French and several other languages, spoke ill of nothing and no one. Ergo, to the impressionable, we seemed aristocratic. It became a game, and on the quiet, lonely, heavenly island that Mykonos then was, small diversions were welcome. We did a fine job of it, too, and people who like that sort of thing were enchanted with us. We made no claims, but we didn’t deny anything either. It seemed that our very availableness and affability kept our “admirers” at a respectful distance.

  For Ilya and me, it was a time of floating. Whole days passed in which nothing happened but a smile. We lay in bed, or made love on distant beaches, returning to la vie quotidienne only in time to open the bar in the early evening. Everything—the air, the earth, the sea—seemed to be at body temperature. In my perception the world was a place of simple unhurried happiness (we will never know how Ilya saw it), and the summer passed. Too quickly.

  28

  Ada

  Returned

  to

  Athens

  Ada returned to Athens at the end of September. Ilya and I stayed on in Heaven for six weeks, closed up the house and bar, and followed to spend a month with Ada, making huge spaghetti dinners with much wine and laughter. Then he and I went off to Spain and Morocco, where we lived in the cheapest of cheap pensions (at that time, very cheap indeed), lazed around, made love.