The Traveller by Afrodykie
K is for … Kiss Kiss and Kiss Again
KISS KISS bliss bliss, you write in your other life as the (unpublished) poet, RMD.
You love the locking of lips, the tease of the tongue; oh the smell of her breath as she aims for amour.
You wanna suck face, babeeeee?
But you’re not the expert, not even after years of devoted and intent practice.
Hugh Morris is.
“When you have made a complete round of the lips, return immediately to the centre bud and feast there,” he writes in his 1936 illustrated treatise, The Art of Kissing.
He knows that Kisses are Preludes to Love.
“Be so close that the rise and fall of each other’s bosoms is felt by one another,” an extract from his book advises on a post in http://www.brainpickings.org.
Kissers take him seriously.
An online customer, in a review of the book, said: “What I found particularly insightful was the overarching philosophy that a kiss is really a poetic piece of art — to be slowly savoured, deliberately dwelt upon, and absorbed by all the senses.”
He was pleased with the results of applying the information he had garnered.
“She’s a goner,” he said.
“I tried to explain to her that since I was far less experienced in kissing matters than she, I should be given another chance. She relented, I read the book, and the last time we were together, I guestimate that we kissed 12 960 times over a four day period.”
Yes, it all starts with a kiss.
It’s a sublime indication of surrender; you succumb to a mutual attraction with a kiss.
Morris’ book mentions many types of kissing, and it’s best to develop a repertoire.
The auto-erotic almost-asphyxiation kiss, the vacuum kiss is one of them.
You suck life’s air from each other’s hot mouths: your lungs just about burst — it’s a kiss that takes trust, trust to create a burning beautiful burgeoning lust.
“In a very short while, the air will have been entirely drawn out of your mouths. Your lips will adhere so tightly that there will almost be pain … But it will be the sort of pain that is highly pleasurable … Pain becomes so excruciating as to become pleasurable,” Morris writes.
The 47 page manual also mentions the spiritual kiss (you think all kisses are spiritual, dammit) and the eyelash or butterfly kiss, that tender and ticklish entwining of the hair on your lids.
Cute!
But you like to start, sometimes, with the friendly Eskimo kiss: rub noses and please, grow up and resist the mischievous temptation to combine it with the lizard kiss ie making your tongue dart out to separate her lips for better things to come.
Don’t startle her, for Pete’s sake.
If she hesitates, gently take her hand and kiss the back of it. Let your lips become a sort of mist settling on a flower.
You could then embark on a journey up her arm (the inside of her arm, you klutz) and linger at her inner elbow.
Navigate towards her ear lobe and remember, it’s a delicious detour on the way to her moist and marvellous mouth.
No racing!
You’re probably breathing quite heavily now so try not to blow a gale through your nose onto her tympanic membrane.
You don’t want to be responsible for those types of reverberations.
You need her to be still so you can nibble, sort of absent mindedly, on the lobe, the seat of many nerve endings and rushes of blood, like the other erogenous zones of her body: armpits, behind the knees, lower back, navel area — oh the entire skin throbs for touch.
So ferret around her neck too, while you’re about it.
Because you’ll probably want to move on to, thank you http://www.typesofkisses.net, to the piece de resistance, the French kiss, the tango of tongues that’s surely a precursor to the mattress mambo.
While the going’s good, and your tongues need a break, try the single lip kiss.
Take either her bottom or top lip into your mouth. Explore it. You have teeth too, remember. So dowhat you will with that lip, provided of course your biting is one step short of a piranha’s.
Of course, if this is all too much for her, all this arms, legs and boomsie daisy, you can always say: Boogaloo, let’s dance! You’ll slowly draw her closer, and closer, until you’re wrapped in the eloquent and erotic dancing kiss – the hip to hip lip to lip kiss. It’s one way to sway her!
(ends)

J is for … Joy
Joy is a little word with a big effect.
You know it when it visits for the simplest things become profound.
Take the unkempt sheep that wobble on spindly legs loose at the knees.
Their bells shake out a chorus of tinkles and tonkity tonks.
Oopa.
One has a skirt of raggedy wool that fans out and bobs above its tail when it hops over clumps of grass.
Joy.
They scuttle along the river bank, this flock of about 40 sheep.
Some jump and stretch their necks to latch their jaws on to a moist green leaf.
The others, more sedate, they bury their faces in the forage.
They may stop a while, and lift their heads to look at you, mouths in a sideways chew, a bit of grass hanging from a lip.
The shepherd flops into a sitting crouch.
He simultaneously steadies himself by clamping a knobbly hand around a long staff that’s solid on the soil.
Ah, he says. Kalimera. He nods his head.
Joy.
These early mornings with the sheep ….
There they are now, on the other side of the village.
They’re hurtling down the mountain, almost rolling down it they’re moving so fast
They can’t wait to get to the water trough and plunge their faces into the liquid.
Vento wags her tail. Your girl, so pretty, her black coat shines mink in the pink of a new day.
The mountains are stoic in their restraint; they don’t flinch when the sky smashes its Eressian blue into their mottled green.
Joy.
Sam the showman serves smiles and five languages with his food on the platia.
He’s famous, says Anthony from London.
You’re sitting on the pavement outside Elizabeth’s shop, across the cobbles from the Happy Club, where the walruses lodge themselves and their memories, never smiling on the terrace of Kolones.
The sun sears.
You’re telling Anthony about a BBC documentary, Aristotle’s Lagoon.
It shows that Aristotle – in the 4th century BC — spent two years at the Gulf of Kalloni, not far from Eressos, here on the island of Lesvos.
Theophrastus, the progenitor of botany had invited him, old Theo, who like Sappho the Tenth Muse (thank you, Plato), was born in this village.
Aristotle consolidated his classification of animals there, at the teeming gulf.
And a bust of the genius philosopher scientist will be unveiled at 8pm in the Kalloni harbour on August 6.
Like the documentary, the event will draw attention to Aristotle’s pioneering role in science and the contemporary threat of pollution and overfishing in the gulf.
Anthony laughs.
This history goes so far back.
A car swishes by, almost shearing our toenails.
The Americans think history begins with the Wild West, he says, that Jesse James is their Aristotle!
Anthony and Thelma burn tarmac during their island rendezvous.
They’re out every day exploring but they love coming back to Sam’s.
Lebanese-Greek, that’s Sam.
Yes, says Anthony. A Leek!
You eat there too, when you can bear to tear yourself from your office, Kafene, and this week you taste Revani at Sam’s, for the first time.
You’re with Mr G-Spot. He’s got his lips in an O and he’s looking worried because the oven-baked lamb is HOT. That’ll teach him. He couldn’t wait to fill his mouth with flesh after his meditation at Osho Afroz.
As for you, you’re enjoying your tzatsiki and tabbouleh (piously) – one would swear you were the sanyasa!
Hmmm.
It’s de rigueur in Greece that a complementary dessert follows your meal.
You learnt this when madame pointed it out to you on the banks of Aristotle’s lagoon, no less.
In this instance, it’s the revani.
Mr G pats his stomach, then slides his Greek semolina cake with orange syrup across the table to you.
Something sweet, and a friend!
Joy.
You have a lot of it this week.
Nabakov’s Lolita – your favourite book — on TV in English, you find the library on the way to your new house, there’s the Sappho show on Monday night, a delicious swim ….
You laugh with the Denizens of Debonair, and slap your thigh with the Gallivanting Brits.
You settle into your own place that has, wait for it, a doorbell and a big sunny kitchen.
Vento has her own little cottage and you make plans to go shopping.
Joy. Joy. Joy.
Yes!
It’s the song in your heart, it’s the light in your eyes.
It’s everything. It’s now.
(ends)

I is for … me! Jokes … it’s for Intense and Interesting
STOP whining about not having a lover, says the Joburg Serenity Sister.
And do some solid travel writing!
Hmmm.
You think there is enough of that stuff and some flourishes are called for, the ones she says you ought to dump.
Yes, discard the unique part of your work, and make it like everyone else’s.
Not a chance.
Fluid and fresh … you like it like that.
It’s what springs from within, like the comment oh what a bevy of beauties.
Indeed, there they are. The A-team, sprawled out on the sand in a mountain range of perky nipples, and endless hillocks of scarlet derrieres.
Fur enough. They’re on holiday, unlike you.
You’re here in Eressos, on a mission to madness, the madness of believing in a dream!
You swim, swim for a long time, far out into the sea. For peace, and tranquillity.
You revel, gambol in the arms of the ocean, you relish its womb with a view.
Like the chocolate torte with ice cream and the Turkish apple tea you sink into at margaritari.
It means pearl, says one of the owners.
It’s lovely sitting there, on the deck with its legs in the sand.
You submit to the sighs of the shy sweet sea.
You taste the treasure of today, savour the niceness of now.
There is more to come, a second serving of special — the Sappho concert in the vast open air cinema down the road.
You walk, and the humid air smothers your skin.
It makes it shiny sheen sweat, so intent is it.
The show, organised by the Cultural Association of Eressos, it moves you to tears.
First, a fine documentary made by Katerina, Katerina of Portakali, she says when you ask her for her telephone number.
Then some of the 7BC poems of two prominent lyric poets, Sappho and Alkman, and Orphic hymns – all sung to music played on a lyre. It looks like a blesbok skull with long horns.
Its friends are a djembe drum, a flute, rattles and other percussion instruments.
They make their appearances not all at the same time; antiquity meets today in the hands and voices of three artistes.
It’s a beautiful, haunting, enthralling performance.
The choirs play with your heart strings. Just like that.
They sing traditional Greek songs. They take you into the deep recesses of your love.
The music is so melancholy, so evocative it melts into your sheltered guarded spots and swells there.
Sto pa kai sto ksanaleo, sung by both choirs, the children and adult singers of Eressos, it pulls ropes and ropes of tenderness from you, ropes that bind you, inexplicably inexorably, to the Hellene of your heart.
It makes you cry hot tears, so warm is the feeling inside.
(ends)

H is for … Happy
YOU put an empty arm round some waists, but alas, none yields.
It is that kind of night, hot and unrelenting, music and voices at full volume to celebrate the 50th birthday of Miss CasaConcept.
But where’s the birthday girl?
Oh, she’ll make a grand entrance I’m sure, says someone next to me.
Alas, no trumpets announce her arrival and she quietly mingles into the noisy crowd at Belle Ville in Skala Eressos.
The microphone’s all set and then boom! The speakers blare.
Katerina Vrana’s comedy teases tears of laughter from our crinkled eyes.
Then, just as the dancing begins, something makes you put your hand in your rucksack next to your chair.
The phone’s ringing. It’s Miss Muscles and the Kaftan One calling from Arendal, Norway.
There’s a heat wave there (surprise surprise) and they’re making the most of it.
They’re sitting outdoors, on the Kaftan One’s balcony, drinking wine!
The call lifts your spirits.
And you feel brave, so brave you make (unsuccessful) forays into friendliness.
Miss Panama, in disguise to avoid the paparazzi (ha ha), swings a video camera your way.
You blow kisses at the unwavering lens, and hope it’s a good picture!
The music ends, at 2am or so, and into the sea you go, you and some other women who obey the instruction to swim.
You all strip on the sand. The water feels like liquid velvet.
It’s full moon. Bliss, the best part of the night, for you, those minutes floating, staring at the star speckled sky.
That is a delight, and meeting the gents from Paris.
They come to sit next to you, these veterans of Greek island holidays, these oh so charming denizens of the debonair.
Reminisces of Mykonos in the 60s and 70s still make their eyes sparkle.
Yes, and we have a spectrum of things to talk about, a veritable spectrum my dear.
You enjoy their elegant and erudite company on the beach the next day too.
Hallelujah, kindred spirits.
Adam and Adam and Eve so bare are we.
You give them an apple, an apple for a sore stomach.
Grate it, let it go brown for a while, then eat it.
Ah, says Jean opening his eyes wide, and tilting his head as if to better examine the red fruit.
Not too brown, says Claude, with care in his eyes.
(ends)

G is for … G-spot
YES, that elusive and controversial location of spontaneous ejaculation and involuntary writhing.
Does it exist? Does it?
You’re sitting in Kafene, wondering what to write about.
G is for Glamour? Grace? Guts?
Hmm. Not even your morning walk with Vento prompted an answer.
Then you ask the man who spends just as much time as you do in your office.
Our office, he laughs, brandishing a bulky film script.
Today he offers triangles of watermelon. Once. Twice.
It helps with the … and he indicates flushing.
He sits at a table nearby and wants to know what you’re doing here, in Eressos.
You tell him you write a blog three days a week and today it’s G. But you’re stuck.
He sticks a fork into a triangle of watermelon and contemplates its ruddiness.
His eyebrows travel almost to the top of his bald head.
Then he looks at you and says: the spot.
You mean the G-spot?
He shrugs his shoulders.
It’s not because I’m Italian or anything. Maybe it’s this place that makes me think of it.
There go the shoulders again.
Yes! G for G-spot.
There’s no mistaking the feel of it, either as the lover or lovee.
You remember The Gusher.
Yes, not only did she turn into a cavorting banshee and thrash around the bed like a rogue windmill, she also spurted fountains of whatever it is women shoot in ecstasy.
Blush. You don’t want to brag or anything, but you have an inbuilt GPS that leads you, without fail, to the G-spot.
It’s not rocket science, this navigation. But you do have to know how to multi-task.
And yes, it does involve penetration.
And some nimble finger work.
It works best with the thumb on the clitoris, and your middle finger and index finger exploring inside.
It’s not a small spot, usually, this G-spot. It is ridged, sort of corrugated.
There is no mistaking it. For either of you.
Start a stroking movement, slowly backwards, forwards. Inside.
Meanwhile, don’t forget your thumb has to do some work too.
Round and round, up and down.
This actions demands some dexterity, dears. Some nuance, too.
Pause and kiss. Let your tongue tour her body.
If you’re successful, she will say something like ah … yes! Yes!
She’ll draw your loser. Don’t stop, she’ll say.
She’ll lift her buttocks (without knowing it).
Her kisses? They’ll become decidedly raunchy. Wilder.
At this point, stay calm.
If you want her to go really ballistic, let your tongue trawl her body, especially in the pelvic area, her neck, yes, in the folds of her arms. Don’t bite. Yet.
You have to be supple in this business.
Subtle. Imaginative. Sure.
She must trust you because the pleasure of the G-spot journey is unremitting.
It can even be startling, for G-spot virgins.
You go with the flow though, both of you, to the place where angels sing a rapturous song, the bliss of seventh heaven.

(ends)

F is for … (scratches head) um … frolic

YES. Frolic, it’s a lovely word.
It has a child-like quality: to play merrily. Gambol.
A sunny innocence prevails, in fun.
It smiles it’s so light-hearted, open and unguarded.
The word laughs with an inherent and beautiful joy.
You feel it, deep deep inside, the meaning of it.
It is the essence of you.
Frolic.
The happy beautiful child, it romps in the bright light of love, self love.
You like it, a lot.
This emotion, it’s a manifestation, an acceptance, an inherent celebration of the intrinsic you.
You revel in it, this innate and fulsome joy.
You hold it close. Close.
Frolic.
It’s a clean slate, a springboard, a refuge.
It’s yours. A treasure, everything.
Frolic.
It lives.
A gleaming sun, it glows — from deep deep inside, the terrible place too, where shadows rise.
(ends)

E is for … Eressos
THE heat is on, and the clothes are off. You’re baring all too, as you always do. Grin and bare it.
That’s your motto for the summer! Cheeky.
The sun slaps your arse. Yes, a red bum’s fun. And you’re not the only one with an all over tan.
The signs are explicit, all two of them. Nudity is forbitten, they say, very sternly, in Greek and English.
Of course, nobody in Eressos can read. Or else the relentless sun blinds them. Or else their hair’s been whipped across their eyes by this cracking and cruel wind.
Gale force.
Umbrellas buckle and turn inside out, beach tarpaulins shudder, tethers strain to free themselves from sand-filled plastic bottles.
Who cares? Nobody.
There’s the placid Aegean to plunge into if you seek relief. Brown bodies wallow in it quite nicely, thank you. Splish splash.
Then they float, fancy free. Windsurfers streak across the ocean’s choppy surface. Fast. Bounce.
The village and Skala are busy. They’re plump with potential, with people, people who come back again, and again. Hug and kiss. Embrace.
The summer’s shifting gears. It’s warming up for a searing August. Everything’s fuller, fatter.
The tents, also forbitten, are springing up metres from the sand, for a mahalla sand in your hair holiday. The bamboo and palm leaf rooms, they’re being erected too … one in your favourite spot near Sappho’s rock, on the beach.
It’s an elaborate thing, with a generous porch, enclosed against the wind.
Families, hippies, children, you name it, everyone’s heading for the beach, to swelter in the sun.
Yes, the world comes to Eressos, in summer, the world and tra la la the big spending Athenians.
It’s that sort of place, Eressos.
So swathed in summer you can feel its pulse.
Yes, it drips desire, and you want some.
Ela, agapi mou!
(ends)

D is for … Guess

HA HA. That’s funny, hey?!
Yes, D is for a lot of things, but mostly desire, dancing and delicious.
Desire? Uhoh … that pesky little beast of banality, it just won’t behave.
Sit, you say, sit!
Grrrr, it says, GRRRRRRR.
There’s just no end to its insistence.
It’s doing its damndest to make you move but you don’t know.
You can’t see a signpost. No, not anywhere, not even on the quiet roads where kindred spirits manifest —- in your fertile imagination.
You lope along being you, and talk to your hunting dog Vento.
Dammit, you scower the horizon but your desire is all at sea, floundering…
The shopkeeper laughs when you sit alone to enjoy the Greek dancing, the school’s end of the year performance in Eressos Square.
She will come, she will come, he says, narrowing his eyes as he draws on a cigarette.
You love the dancing, and the music that goes with it. There’s a new moon and the entire village it seems, is watching the performers.
First, the carefree little ones, full of gusto and awash in the innocence of cherubs.
They know their moves and sync their steps, sort of.
They’re followed by the group that exhibits an awkward restraint.
Budding breasts and gangly legs get in the way of nonchalance but oh, what beauties.
The seniors, well, you recognise some ex-pats in the dancing group and they seem too cerebral in their movements, not enough give in the knees, you know.
Nevertheless, it’s a lovely evening, and then it’s time for delicious.
You have a yawning taste for warmth, and sweetness, so your honey milk and cinnamon, she takes you to bed. Your delightful dairy belle.
(ends)

C is for … corner … also the one you have turned                                

THERE’S a taverna for just about every day of the week on Eressos Square, ok granted, a short week of four days.

 There’s life on the cobbled stones, sometimes more sometimes less.

The’re always fish sellers shouting over their loudspeakers, and the walruses are plonked, as usual, on their assets at Kolones.

Their Greek coffees thicken to mud at the bottom of tiny cups. Do they care, these rotund dons of the erstwhile drachma. No.

Even their lips don’t move.

At Kafene, your office, the internet fiends blink at their screens under one of the huge plane trees that shade the square.

A local, one of the people who empties the bins, he walks in panting, and helps himself to a 500ml beer from the fridge.

The beverage, whatever the brand, comes in half litre bottles.

Anything less doesn’t touch sides at 30 deg C, and rising — and it’s just 11am.

Other mavens of the good life the easy life, they do crossword puzzles, or simply sit and read, their frothies at alert.

It’s a good place to be, Kafene, if you don’t know the town, and even if you do.

Yiannis will raise his eyebrows, in his own Eureka moment, and tell you who fixes computers, who’s got a house to let, who’s who in the zoo — for whatever you need.

Next door, at the taverna run by a woman – a woman!, younger men sit flicking worry beads backwards and forwards over their hands.

They haven’t perfected it yet, that passive pose, but hell, the intention is obvious!

At Sam’s – Sam who gave you vegetables from his garden — at Sam’s on the opposite side of the square, regulars slap down backgammon discs from yellowed finger tips. Tobacco smoke twirls above their heads.

They sit in the shade and plant their feet at right angles to the chair legs. They’re open at the knees.

Yes, they stare too, but their mouths sort of open and close.

They flutter, a bit, when they shift in their seats to plot their next moves

All very good, but it’s time for a change, time for a yiro where the hill flattens out into the straight road to Skala.

Bingo! It’s the perfect spot for a delicious and cheap meal (E2), and you can watch the passing parade from your chair on the pavement.

It’s as dead as a door nail, GB in Joburg says when you post a picture on Facebook.

Wrong! Everyone who comes in and out of the mountain village passes here.

There’s movement at least every five minutes — at peak hour!

Take the grey-haired couple on a clapped out scooter.

They’re travelling uphill and the vehicle starts to complain. It slows down. The man, in front, steadies it on his tippy toes.

His passenger, well, she’s sitting side saddle behind him. Very demure!

She’s not even holding on to him and sort of slides off the saddle to retrieve her shopping bag in the crate on the back.

The driver revs the engine and leaves, without so much as a twitch of his ample moustache.

Then there’s another motorbike, chugging up the hill. The bloke on it urges it forward.

He’s leaning over the handlebars but the bike’s going so slowly he’s almost got to get off and push!

Other vehicles whip back and forth. You’re starting to recognise a lot of the people.

Ah, the tomboy on her two wheel mean machine, so black it glints in the setting sun.

Then there’s a guy in a clapped out red car, with no back window.

Castro he shouts, waving his arm.

And then the schoolgirls … four of them … so lithe in their long legs and short shorts.

They glide along the asphalt, they lead with their hips and kick their feet out in front of them.

They talk to each other in whispers, in glances from the sides of their eyes.

The words peep out from under their lowered lashes. O youth … resplendent in summer’s heat.

You’ve finished your yiro and It’s time to go. But alas, the shopkeepers don’t have change.

Never mind. Pay another day, they say, and decline to note your telephone number.

That’s Eressos, old school Eressos too — and you love it.

(ends)

B is for … no-no, not butch … it’s for Bins

GREEN wheelie bins are an integral part of the Eressian landscape.

They’re parked in random rows of about three, four or five, these visible sentries of stink.

They pop up anywhere, even on the gravel road outside the village, ugly things, without lids, and they get uglier and smellier the fuller they become.

Overflowing they are hideous! An eyesore and blight on this rugged agrarian landscape.

The bees and flies love them though, and so do the gangs of feral cats that guard each line as their private territory.

They stand their ground, these felines. They hiss with plastic bags hanging from their bad teeth, their eyes turned up to view the dogs who charge at them

Silly dogs, they invariably have to back off. The cats don’t budge.

They are intent on tearing apart the bags, vehemently. They won’t let go, not for anything.

 They know what they want: food.

One-eyed cats, scraggly straggly cats, cats with black noses, — yes, they have black tips on their noses the bin cats – they slink close to the ground, prowling, heads turn this way and that.

They protect their bounty, on their turf.

The Kaftan One, she points out their black noses to you, the Kaftan One who joined the Europride parade in Oslo this last weekend with Maria, her grandchild. Miss Muscles and Krolle were also there, and The Grunter.

Ah, your Norwegian friends. You miss having them here, to cook for, to love.

But you can’t miss a trip to the bins.

Oh no. Everything goes in or around those bins: all, all the waste from the house, including human waste, even mattresses and old chairs, tiles, discarded toilets, fish heads and entrails, you name it.

Yes. Mediterranean plumbing demands that you put your soiled toilet paper in a plastic bag and dispose of it yourself. Of course, you — everyone, even the tavernas, or any place you go – you let the receptacle next to the lavatory get full before you tie the bags handles and lob them into the greenies.

One old duck dressed in black, bent back and bandy legs, you see her leaning on her walking stick, about 6m from the bins near your place.

She’s not taking any chances. She twirls her bags — one, two, three four — and lets them spin through the air towards their landing place.

Yuk. The bags spray their contents and land splat on the ground.

The startled cats shudder then pounce.

They’re so at home at the bins that they sometimes recline on the detritus.

Comfortable. The kings and queens of the reeking castles.

They watch you as you walk by, each cat more dishevelled than the next, each cat smugger than the other.

It’s as if they’re saying bin there done that. But you’ve never heard one miaow.

Ps: You’re on your way home from your morning walk with Vento today and there’s Sam, from Sam’s on the square. He’s in his vegetable patch. He gives you beetroot, cucumber, green pepper, carrots. You’re eating from the soil of Eressos he says.

You love it. Eressian generosity. It’s a culture.

Ask the cats!

(ends)