Greece
Greece.
Danish sat on a patio chair, in front of a bourgeois villa, on a cliff that overlooked the sea and the golden sand that it brought to the shore, in remote Greece. To his desi eyes, beaches had races and this one was charmingly caucasian. He looked at the stars that generously filled the night sky and followed them right to the horizon where the sea swallowed them whole. The 25th summer of his life was turning out to be the best. “Danish,” said the old professor who owned the villa, as he nudged him. “Look at Crowley's girls,” he said. “What about them?” Danish asked. “The have such wide noses,” the professor squinted, as he looked at the girls bringing out bowls of salad to the dining table set up out in the yard, on top of their beautiful blonde heads. “And?” Danish looked at him. “Crowley and the Mrs. have incredibly narrow noses. Should we tell him or should we wait for her to come clean?” the professor said, as he chuckled. Danish scoffed and burst out laughing. “Between the sea, the stars and rhinoplasty, you have a lot of things to ponder over, in your free time it seems,” Danish said, as he stood up and put his arm around the old man. “Just thinking out loud. You do that a lot when you're on the cusp of turning into an old bag of bones,” he replied. Both men walked towards the dinner table. The older one was wearing a bowling shirt with some shorts and his younger protege wore a t-shirt that said “Hawaii,” with a pair of blue jeans. Renowned author Mr. Crowley walked out of the house dressed in a black shirt and some shorts. His wife and the professor's wife followed him, carrying dinner plates in their hands. The women donned pretty sundresses. “See, that's how a man dresses,” the professor said to Danish, as he pointed towards Mr. Crowley. “A middle aged, man. I'm young enough to slip into tshirts that reek of alcohol and hostility,” Danish smiled as he helped himself to some salad. The others followed his lead. “You're wearing a shirt from pig-land,” the professor pointed towards the palm trees and the “Hawaii,” decal on the shirt. “I think it looks nice on him,” Crowley's wife said, as she poured Danish some wine. “Of course you do. Face like that, he'd look good in a lacy corset,” the professor said, as he ate his food. The middle aged woman scoffed and blushed. “Toast,” Said Danish and everyone raised their glasses. “To the generous professor who flew us wannabe writers in for the vacation of a lifetime,” he said. “On university funds,” Crowley added. “On university funds indeed,” Danish said, as he raised his glass. “Both of you are incredibly talented and it's an honour to host you,” the professor said, as he sipped his wine. “But I'm far more superior in terms of style and just the sheer size of the balls on me,” he added. “Ayyy,” the table lit up with a playful uproar. They ate, they drank, and they talked their hearts out. Candid conversations about love, life, therapy and sex and all the possible iterative combinations of those were shared. The evening had a romantic and easy, yet also a crass and downright honest quality about it, much like the great whores of ancient Greece.
“How many years in LA?” Danish said, as he smoked a cigar. It was about 12 at night, and the stars shone bright in all their glory, both in the untainted sky, and in the deep, dark sea. Everything was serving Danish and he had been nothing but a generous master, treating everything with respect and fondness, appreciating the place like he would, an uptight yet gorgeous belle at the ball. “About 3. To and fro from Jersey where the girls and the Mrs. Lived,” Mr. Crowley said, as he took a puff out of his cigar. The men were still out on the patio, while the professor napped indoors, like a drunk baby at the end of the night.
“Sounds like a good time,” Danish said. Crowley : “Sometimes, I guess. The city of angels is ironically a simmering pot of shit filled to the fucking brim,”
Danish : “Yeah? *he smirked.
Crowley : “See, kid. It's all fun and dandy until they ask you to write movies..”
Danish : “What if I want to write movies?” Danish interrupted.
Crowley : “Then you better direct that shit too. There's not too many directors out there who are willing to do justice to what you're writing. There's the odd genius that really gets it, you know? Really gives in to your vision or imposes his, better one which gives the script a WHOLE new layer, just the thought gets me a little hard,” Crowley chucked,
Danish : *so did Danish.
Crowley : “But other than that, Hollywood just expects you to get a nice mani pedi and then wrap your recently done hands around it's cock for a good old fashioned handjob,” he continued.
Danish : “Writing films is a big grey area. I don't even know if I want to keep writing books,” he said.
Crowley : “Shame. The one so far has been exceptional,”
Danish : “Nowhere close to the masterpiece that the “Fuck if I know,” trilogy is though,”
Crowley : “Ha. I practically rambled on for a few hundred pages after getting hammered in bars back in my 20s and boom. There was another one of those,” Crowley said, as he shrugged.
Danish : “Still a masterpiece. The most in your face, zany, stylistic description of life in NYC to date,”
Crowley : “Flattered,” said Crowley as he bowed in his chair. “Why'd you write yours?” He added.
Danish : “Just,”
Crowley: “Bull! I've read about 30 books over the last year, only 'Wolf Ruin' had something real to talk about. Made me reach for the tissues,”
Danish : “You clearly haven't read ‘Fuck if I know : Women’ by Nathan Crowley then. Still on my nightstand,”
Crowley : “That's just fucking foul man,” Crowley laughed. “It's this cheeky charm that's somehow amalgamated with some beautiful philosophy that gets me, whenever I think of your book. It's like it's written by a 15 year old Tibetan monk,” he continued.
Danish : *Danish sighed and leaned back in his chair. “When I was about 13-14, this reader's digest…”
Crowley : “You got those back home?”
Danish : “It's a third world country but I grew up in Bombay, in a well to do bourgeois household. We had subscriptions,” Danish said.
Crowley: Crowley nodded.
Danish : “Yeah so, I read this issue, and there was this story, about the depopulation of some rural European villages because the wolves were killing their cattle. They had some pictures of the place too, in there. And I just wanted to be there. I wanted to visit the ghost village because of how beautiful it seemed to me, for some strange reason. When I grew up, I realised I loved how eerie it made me feel, to think of the ruins. Like the people left a mark on the wall. The population wasn't zero as much as it was, negative. The absence of people grew in the dark like radium stickers. I was travel sick when I didn't even know what it meant,” Danish said.
Crowley : “In the words of Geoffrey Chaucer, Holy fuck,”
Danish : *Danish chuckled with humility and tasteful embarrassment.
The professor, now dressed in a shirt, nice ironed trousers and suspenders walked out. The women followed.
“I would've dropped him off to the airport,” Crowley said. “Oh no, it'd be rude of the host to not accompany to the airport. I was just down for a little nap,” the professor replied. “You could've stayed a little longer though,” the professor's wife interjected. “You'll most probably see me again shortly when I call to bail me out of police custody in Helsinki," Danish replied. "Don't be out starting too many fires kid. And get yourself a new pair of shoes for fuck's sake," the professor smiled. Danish wore an incredibly stained light blue pair of sneakers that had bananas printed all over them. "Eh, they're fairly new. Just stained," Danish said, as he looked at them. “I'll be looking forward to bailing you out,” the old lady chuckled, hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. “I'll get my things,” Danish smiled and walked towards the house. “He's, something,” Crowley stood up from his chair, next to the professor. "Like a younger you, genius. Sans the absinthe soaked word vomit,” the professor said. Crowley smiled. “Where's he off to?” The professor asked. “Uh, Helsinki, I think,” “Remember those days? 7 cities in a fortnight, even more if weren't caught up in the hotel room doing unholy things to each other,” Crowley added, as he gently held his wife's waist. “Yeah” his wife replied, as she sighed, rolled her eyes, then smiled and leaned onto his shoulder. Danish walked out of the house dressed in a plain black tee and a pair of jeans. He carried a backpack and a handbag. “Until next time,” he hugged the old lady. She stroked his back. “Pretty lady,” he looked at Mrs. Crowley. “Pretty boy,” she replied, as he hugged her. “I hope to run into you again,” he said. “Jersey's not too far away if you can cope with the jet lag,” she pecked him on the lips. Danish smiled. The men walked towards the car in the driveway. “Where are the girls?” Danish asked, as he got into the car. “Asleep,” Crowley replied. “Hope they can share,” Danish reached into his bag, pulled out an illustrated copy of ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream’ and handed it to Crowley. "Of course," he smiled. The professor got in the driver's seat, and the men set out on their way to the airport, driving through a road that looked over the sea. “When's the flight?” the professor asked. “3:30 in the am,” Danish replied as he looked towards the sea from the window. “Oh, you have time. Do you want to stop by the ruins on the way?” The professor looked at his watch as he drove. “Isn't it a little too dark for that?” Crowley interjected. “It's a moonlit night. If you can keep yourself from accidentally cupping me or the young fella, I think we should be fine,” the professor replied. “Sure. I have time,” Danish said. The sea leapt towards the shore and crashed gloriously onto the sand, as the broken waves let out broken waves into the night. It was arguably the best hour out of the 24 that a man could choose, to be wide awake at. If second, then only to the hour that followed. The professor reached out for a pack of cigarettes in the glove box. He put one in his down and lit is, as he rolled the windows down. "Danish?" The professor said. "Yeah?" Danish replied. "Permission to get candid?" The professor asked. "By all means," Danish replied as he helped himself to a cigarette too. The professor lit it with his own cigarette. "Never write shit that you think will sell. At Least not only because you think it'll sell. You can't write without a voice, and the only way you'll find one is when you write with a certain earnestness. Tell the stories you want to tell. Writing is too intimate an affair to be undertaken for anybody else's sake but yours," the professor said. "All I want to be is what the world has always lacked. A rare breed. Someone with a goddamned vision," Danish said. "You hear that Crowley?" The professor said. "Yuhhuh. He's witnessing the descent of his own balls and it's not even New Year's Eve yet," Crowley replied. The men laughed in unison. They drove for a while, until the sea disappeared and then stopped by what looked like the ruins of an ancient city, on the way. Moonlight lit the barren land and the grey ruins that stood on it. Everything looked like it was made of crude silver. Shades of black and white wove poetry, making the ruins look as melancholy as they were pretty. “The greatest novelists of all time couldn't have conjured up what has happened to me in the past 6 months,” Danish sighed as he looked around. The professor looked at the moon through an almost broken arc of stone that stood there. “All of our lives have been more eventful than our books. The books just find some base in reality, then drift off towards the much less stranger, romanticized realm of fiction,” Crowley ran his hands through a huge piece of carved stone. “Fiction is but just a subset of the truth,” the professor smiled, as he looked at Danish. Danish looked at him with sheer admiration. He now very clearly saw why this man was one of the best modern novelists Europe had ever seen. “She was the only person I was actually sure about being in love with, in the most exhaustive sense of the word. Every other manifestation of it didn't make complete sense for some reason. For 5 years, my relationship was somehow my full time job. It was the most I could ever lose, and we just had to lose it. It was the only way out,” Danish sat down. The professor and Mr. Crowley both sat next to him, amidst the ruins. “That's why you wrote the book?” The professor asked. “I guess. I just got drunk, met women or wrote for a couple months. Nothing else. You know, she's the one that got away,” Danish explained. “All of us have one. I love my wife very much, but I still think of this woman sometimes, on odd nights,” the professor picked up a small rock that was next to him and threw it over the horizon. “It's okay for her to be in a very small corner of your head for the rest of your life. As far as you can still write, see the world, meet beautiful women, start memorable bar brawls that leave jerk off male paraphernalia on your face in the form of a nasty scab, just live with yourself, it's not a real problem,” Crowley said. “There's something liberating about hitting rock bottom. About catching flights to places with nothing to leave behind, nothing to lose,” Danish smiled. “Said poor man's Kerouac,” Crowley scoffed. Danish scoffed and chuckled. “We're fed this thing ever since we develop so much as half an appetite. These ‘Love completes us, shared soul’ concepts. You can't share souls kid, you have to be okay with the fact that they only get a small slice of your life, and you only get a small slice of theirs,” the professor interjected. Danish felt a little heavy and a lot lighter, all at the same time. “You're promising. A brilliant writer, and god knows you're pretty. Love yourself for now. When you absolutely fucking loathe yourself, you try to get another person to love you. To give in to you so you can feel good about yourself all the time. That ends up fucking both of you up,” Crowley said. “I'll take care of that,” Danish looked into the distance.
Crowley : "You're planning on going to Paris anytime on this trip?"
Danish : "No, I don't think so. It's a long train ride and it's anyway too romantic for me,"
Crowley : "Greece is romantic,"
Danish : "Yeah but Paris is more in your face romantic. It's one big glimmering romantic postcard of a city. This is more subtle, I can handle this. If Paris was dining in a fancy restaurant, Greece is taking a light tinkle in the washroom when she's brushing her teeth by your side,”
Crowley : “And who exactly would be brushing her teeth next to you?”
“They have call girls in Greece who work on retainers?” Danish smirked. “Said like a true protege,” Crowley chuckled. “What's next after Helsinki?” The professor asked. “I don't know. Maybe Stockholm, maybe Sofia. All I know is that it's too soon to go back home already,” Danish said. "It's never too soon for home. Take that from a man who's grown nauseating weary of neon brothels where he spent his youth. The pleasure in Indulgence seems to dwindle as a man gets older," the professor said. “I guess I'm running away from the life that I once led. As soon as I gather enough of this new one to take home with me, I'll be on my way,” Danish said. The professor smiled. "You do you,kid," he said, and the men got up and walked towards the car.
