High life
Cabin fever
Taki
Athens hishis is the time of year when the Greek countryside looks its best. I took the boat out and steamed around Cape Sounion down to Paros and all those craggy island shores were greenish and lovely. One can't see the ugly houses from afar, just the green and blue hues, and they never looked better. Even on the drive back to Athens from Sounion — typically, now that I'm a tycoon, I had to abandon boat and lovelies and drive back to the armpit of the world to see a minister — the daisies, the pansies and cherry blossoms were in full bud. They say that the Ionian sea is female, while the Aegean male. The former is a softer sea, at times with that gauze-like haze which hangs over the landscape, the latter clear-cut and explicit, the way a man should be. Ironically, I come from the
female sea, with the ambiguities of a woman. And not so ironically, I prefer the Ionian. Mind you, I have more fun with the boys, just as I have more fun on the Aegean.
Where else but on a brothel-island like Mykonos can one drop anchor and know that he is sure to sin that night? Certainly not on my island, Zante, nor Ithaka, and forget about Cephalonia. Now my favourite place is Paros, on the Aegean, an island that resembles Mykonos before the pansy invasion, and I don't mean the flowers.
The Mykonians are among the country's most unpleasant and greedy people. Only the Spetsiotes are worse. The trouble is that the Mykonians were nice once upon a time. The Spetsiotes have been filth since the time of Taki the Great, in 333 BC. The Mykonians got this way because of the root of all envy. The average income of the island used to be on a par with that of Kuwait before August of last year, which may be an omen of sorts. The last time I was there I had Whipper Wallace and Chuck Pfeifer on board and the two were roundly booed when they got up and per- formed a rather torrid dance. When I went up to them trying to stop Chuck from cool- ing somebody, the crowd thought I was cut- ting in on Whipper and began to cheer. I hope you get the picture.
Needless to say, I never got to Faros, and it was just as well. I have such great memo- ries of the place, it simply would not have been the same. For starters, although I was with more or less the same people as last year, the girl I was pursuing the last time wasn't around. Worse, her brother was, and with one of the sexiest Greek girls I've seen since they started shaving. She wasn't beau- tiful or anything like that, just sexy as hell.
Now there is nothing more frustrating than being cooped up in a boat with some- one you're dying to grab hold of, and that someone is spending all her time in her cabin with someone else. Even ruder was the fact that when they came up for air they spent their time being awfully chummy with each other, ignoring their host and great provider.
It was a perfect excuse to drown my sor- rows, but also to lie in my cabin and read about Pericles and the birth of democracy in Athens. My, what a reasonable and peaceful man Pericles was. His enemies may have called him tyrant, but he was annually elected public official — strategos — along with ten others. He never placed himself above the law and was as moral as Aspasia was faithful. He even helped put up a building or two like the Parthenon. Now what I want to know is how it's pos- sible to go from Pericles to Papandreou in a mere 2,000 years. The more I read of my ancestors, the more convinced I am I have to claim a different nationality, maybe Monaco. The Monegasques at least haven't changed. They've always been a bunch of croupiers. Anyway, Taki Monaco isn't too bad a pen name.
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