Platres Conclave Ch. 04

"English. English, please. We have an American guest."

I normally would have taken that as a friendly gesture, but I felt the sarcasm and condescension at the core of Elias Mikalaides's request that the men of the conclave discuss their topic in a language I could understand when he had gathered at Elias's bungalow late the next morning. It was like he was sticking their bilingual fluency at me, and I wondered how good his French was.

And as if to punctuate his tone of superiority, all of the men immediately switched from Greek to impeccable British English. It wouldn't have mattered much, really, if they had remained in Greek, as I was sitting off to the side and they were discussing esoteric references in ancient Greece to the concept of "beauty." I didn't understand much of what they said, no matter what they said—and didn't much care. I was beginning to feel trapped just being here, and I tried turning my thoughts to mulling what I wanted to write next in my novel manuscript. It wasn't until they progressed to talking about what they said was the overworked motif of Venus—Aphrodite here in Cyprus—arising from the sea on a clamshell that I could be completely sure that they were talking about the concept of beauty at all.

This was the first time in the day that Nico had turned to me and directly addressed me—he hadn't answered my knock at the door to his room at the Forest Park before breakfast, and I'd seen him just finishing his breakfast here in Elias's house as I arrived. So, I then assumed he'd spent the night here, with Elias.

I almost hadn't come. Elias had been dismissive of me the previous day, and I couldn't get the image of Nico topping him the previous night out of my mind. Just the thought of it disgusted me—but it also raised my hackles and my jealously. This, in turn angered and frustrated me, as, though I had wanted Nico to fuck me—continuously—I'd told myself it was just a week's fantasy fling before returning to real life. I didn't have any claim on Nico. It was obviously that these men were inbred and fucked each other almost indiscriminately affected only by their own insular jealousies. I could either fit in for a brief time or take a hike. I intellectually accepted that. I had no right to want anything more from Nico—or any of the rest of them.

When the names "Venus" and "Aphrodite" were invoked and were being used interchangeably, Nico turned to me. "Venus is the mainland Greek version and Aphrodite is ours, Collin. Our Aphrodite rose from the waves near some distinct rocks out in the water on the coast between here and Paphos. We'll have to visit there."

I merely nodded, still stinging that he had so readily deserted me—for this . . . this walrus of a man sitting there on his throne in his own living room. Living room was a good term for it, I thought, as I looked around. It was a large room—an enormous room, really. There were a couple of conversational areas situated around composed of old, run-down, but comfortable-looking upholstered furniture, but the room swallowed these up. This also was Elias's dining room. The conclave was sitting around a massive pine table, aged almost to black—all except for me, of course. I was sitting off to the side in a rush-bottomed peasant chair. All of the chairs at the table were similar to mine except the massive armed and carved oak chair at the end of the table where Elias sat.

The room, mainly, though, was Elias's studio. Paintings in various stages of finish were hanging on the walls and propped up against each other and various pieces of furniture throughout the room. As Elias's primary style was exuberant naïve landscapes, the room was dressed in a riot of color. There also were some abstracts—Elias had had his Picasso period, apparently—but these too were quite colorful. The impression I got from Elias's paintings was that he insisted that the painting dominated, almost to excess, any space it was in. In this, I thought the paintings reflected the artist well. Set at the far end of the room from where the conclave sat was a raised wooden dais, positioned under theatrical lighting trained at it from the ceiling. At the moment a high-legged bench was sitting on the dais, covered by a gold lamé cloth that glittered in the stage lighting.

"What we could do in art, of course," Spiro Charalambou said, "was turn the clichés on their heads. For instance, I could take the Aphrodite image and substitute a sexy man—a George Michael or a Ricky Martin, or the movie star Henry Cavil—rising naked from Petra tou Romiou—that's Aphrodite's Rock in English," Spiro said, turning his face and a sultry smile to me.

"And so, you have already chosen your model for this week, have you?" the novelist Nemo Constantinou asked in a gruff voice?

"Yes, yes, I have," Spiro answered, still looking directly at me, "It is none of those men. But it is someone every bit as compelling and sensual."

After that, the discussion drifted off into esoteric points of ancient Greek legend on the topic of beauty that, again, went completely over my head. As I sensed the discussion coming to a close, with the more frequent mention of hunger and the possibilities of what and where for lunch, I quietly left the house. Although I had been seeking him ever since the night before, I suddenly felt I didn't want to endure a meeting with Nico. I didn't know what to say to him. I could hardly be indignant; I had no hold on him. His change in focus had just been too abrupt. But I should be able to understand that. Elias Mikalaides undoubtedly was the island's foremost artist. It didn't matter really what he looked like; the strength of his personality obviously was enough to attract Nico, who was no slouch in the charisma category himself—at least in relationship to me.

I walked briskly back to the hotel, hoping that Nico would not come after me—but aching for him to do just that. When I reached there, rather than going into the hotel, where Nico may, in fact encounter me at lunch—I asked the attendant at the entrance to bring around to my Jaguar and I drove up to Prodomous, just below the peak of Mount Olympus, for lunch and then on up to the peak, the highest point on the island. It seemed that every highest point in a Greek region was named Mount Olympus—as a signal to the gods where they could touch the earth no matter what region they came to to play. I had intended to make this excursion during my vacation anyway, so I wasn't really escaping anything in Platres—or so I could pretend to myself.

I managed not to return to Platres until almost 5:00 p.m., having driven on from the peak to the Kykkos Monastery and arriving when the monks' choir was in the process of giving a concert of Gregorian chants through the ages. Sitting and listening to them calmed my nerves—at least until I looked at the program, which was in Greek, but was able, with the lessons I took before arriving in Cyprus, to pick out the name of Xanthos Economou among the composers of the modern section of the concert—the same composer who was in the spring Platres Conclave. It seemed I could not escape this group now. I couldn't be inside it, but I couldn't draw away from it either.

I had intended, really, just to cut away from the group, but as I came down from the heights and into Platres, I found myself parking on the main road of the village rather than driving up to the hotel, and my feet carried me to the door of Elias's bungalow, where the conclave was scheduled to reconvene for individual work on their projects at nearly this precise time.

Most of them had already gathered in Elias's spacious studio living room. Nico wasn't there and Elias wasn't in the room either. He was still snoozing away his siesta in his bedroom, which opened directly off the main room and the door of which wasn't closed. He lay on his bed like a beached whale, once again in his orange kimono and—as it had partially fallen away from his body—in nothing else.

The composer, Xanthos Economou, wasn't there either, and I noted in my mind that I should mention when I saw him that I'd heard his music at Kykkos and was very impressed.

Costas Spyrou, the poet; Thanos Adamou, the sculptor; Nemo Constantinou, the novelist; and Spiro Charalambou, the fine artist, were all sitting at the table. Arrayed in front of them was a massive collection of wine bottles.

"Come, come, Collin," Spiro called out to me with a big smile and an expansive wave of an arm, "as we contemplate the beginning of our separate searches for beauty in art, we are having a wine sampling—trying to decide what the best wine produced by Cyprus. Come help us decide."

I had already developed a weakness for Cypriot wine, so I moved to the table and sat in the chair Spiro was holding out for me—close beside him.

We sipped and, increasingly, more fully drank of the wine there. And we laughed and joked, and I came as near as I ever had—or ever would—to feeling part of the conclave in the hour and a half in which we all became quite mellow indeed—with the possible exception of Nemo, who kept himself mainly in glowering reserve, although he didn't stint on including himself in the drinking.

Spiro started me with the light, white Aphrodite as, he said, a bridge from the discussion earlier in the day, and we moved to the Palamino, which was my favorite white. I'm not sure at what point we switched to reds, but I do remember the full-bodied Othello and the much fuller, almost port, Commandaria. It was during Spiro's explanation to me, with me very much in a haze but enjoying the musky thickness of the wine, that Commandaria was the oldest named wine still in production, dating back to 800 B.C., but named during the crusades of the King Richard's time in the twelfth century, when he suddenly changed gears and asked if I would be his model now. He was touching me lightly on the arm again with that soft, electric touch of his and looking at me under his thick eyelashes like I was some sort of sweetmeat.

He was gorgeous, and I was frustrated by whatever was or was not happening between me and Nico, and I was more than half way to drunk. So, I said yes.

"And then we fuck?" he asked, his smile tentative.

"Yes, why not?" I answered, giving him a level stare.

"I fuck you?"

"Yes."

From the other side of me, Thanos said he would also like to sculpt me as his image of the beauty theme, which I found flattering. He also said that he too would like to fuck me, which I also found flattering. There didn't seem to be a bit of competition expressed or exhibited by the two on who would get to do what when. Again, I found the casual frankness of it arousing.

"Yes, I would like that," I answered.

"We could perhaps fuck you together?" Spiro asked.

"If you like."

Spiro than reiterated that I'd model in the nude, which I said was fine, aglow with the attention I was receiving and not thinking a bit about the risk of exposure in the real world. I was buzzed on the wine—and I increasingly was convinced this wasn't the real world. And I just didn't care. All of this openly expressed attention was exhilarating.

Nemo, who had been glowering at us from across the table, stood, said something about starting to work on a short story, and retreated to a desk in the corner. This appeared to be a signal to the poet, Costas Spyrou, as well, and he went to the porch across the back of the room, overlooking a ravine, and sat in an armed bamboo patio chair with a tablet of paper on his lap, a pencil in his hand, and a pensive, withdrawn look on his face.

Spiro decided to pose me as an ancient Greek boxer resting from a victory in the games. As I stripped for him, he and Thanos went out into the garden and selected laurel vines, which Thanos formed into a wreathed crown as Spiro went through a door into what seemed to be a bedroom at the other end of the bungalow from Elias's bedroom and next to a kitchen. Through the door, I could see the figure of a woman, with short hair, in a red silk dress sitting at a vanity. The image surprised me, and I suddenly felt conscious of being nude in a way that I didn't feel just in the company of just men.

Spiro shut the door on the room when he came back into the main studio. He was carrying a pair of lace-up leather sandals and some earthen-colored leather thong strips. As he posed me on the bench on the dais, he explained to me that all I would be wearing as an ancient Greek boxer were the sandals, which laced in criss-crosses up my calves to just below my knees, and the thongs, which he said were called himantes when used this way, wrapped around my knuckles to protect them from scrapes during a boxing match, which was a no-holds-barred one in the ancient tradition.

Both men touched and ran their hands along the lines of my body as Thanos set the laurel wreath on my head and then held my head this way and that and ran his long, sensitive fingers along the contours of my face and neck, getting the measure of me so that he could start working on a clay lump sitting on a small pedestal stand nearly. Simultaneously, Spiro was manipulating my body to the pose he preferred. I was sitting in the middle of the bench, still covered in the gold lamé, one foot resting on the bench at an angle from my body, with the elbow of one of my arms propped against this leg. The other leg dangled off the front of the bench, only touching the surface of the dais as my toe reached down for it. My other arm was stretched out toward the end of the bench. This left me, chest stretched out at an angle, in a pensive pose, as if at rest, contemplating a recent hard-won victory. Spiro set the wreath slightly askew around my brow and asked me to smile slightly and luxuriate in a victory reverie.

In the process of arranging my body for posing, each man, in turn, kissed me on the lips, and I let them know I enjoyed it. I could feel them trembling in anticipation—of the art they were going to create or of getting their cocks inside me, or both, I didn't know and didn't care. I was trembling too. This would be a unique experience.

I was glad that they didn't take too long in manipulating my body, as I was working hard to control its response to their delicate, seductive touch.

Spiro went to an easel and Thanos to his pedestal, and for a good hour silence reigned over the studio. Eventually, however, I realized that I could hear a hum from the room where I'd seen the women. She was humming a haunting tune in a low contralto, and she seemed to be playing with the tune, developing it. It was start and go for several bars and then stop and start again and go for a few longer bars than the first time.

It became clearer, as if no longer beyond a closed door. I so wanted to turn my head to see if she had come out of the room, and I felt trapped, not wanting a complete stranger to see me naked like this. Then I knew that she was coming into the room; I could both sense her presence—and there was a floral scent in the air—and hear the rustling of the silk dress. She floated into my peripheral vision and beyond. She was moving over to the desk where Nemo was furiously writing. She leaned down, over his shoulder, lifted his face up to hers with a hand under his chin, and the two began to kiss. Nemo lifted a hand to her bodice, unbuttoned her dress there, and inserted his hand.

I watched as they became increasingly intimate and then, nearly lost my pose in shock and surprise as Nemo stood and turned the other figure in an embrace and started to guide them both over to an overstuffed parlor chair. It wasn't a woman at all, I realized. It was the composer, Xanthos Economou, in a woman's dress. Nemo sat in the chair and Xanthos knelt in front of him and unbuttoned the fly of Nemo's trousers and fished out a short, but impressively thick cock and began to suck him off.

I tore my eyes away from that spectacle at the sound of someone entering at the front of the bungalow. It was Nico. He walked in and then stopped, dead in his tracks, as he saw me on the dais. I saw his eyes narrow and a flash of anger slice across his face, which immediately after turned into a look of nonchalance and detachment. I followed the movement of his dance-like gait as he turned and went into Elias's room.

With an anger and frustration of my own, I watched him put his hands on Elias and move the kimono away from the older artist's corpulent body and then move a hand down to cup Elias's cock and balls while Nico leaned over and kissed Elias's nipples and throat and then his mouth until Elias stirred and opened his arms to Nico.

My eyes went back to Nemo and Xanthos. Xanthos was sitting in Nemo's lap, facing him, the red silk dress gathered up around his chest, his channel skewered on Nemo's cock. Their chests were plastered together and they were kissing deeply as Nemo pumped his cock up into Xanthos's channel. Xanthos's legs were spread and raised over the back of the upholstered chair. Xanthos's pasty legs were sheathed—but only up to the knees, in sheer silk stockings.

I shuddered at this image and looked back into Elias's bedroom, where Elias's legs were open to Nico now and Nico was crouched between them and lost in the rhythm of the fuck.

I shut my eyes for several moments, trying to close it all out. When my eyes were shut, though, I realized how tipsy I had become. When I was all alone within myself like this, I realized how easily I had agreed to strip and sit here in the nude—and then to fuck two men afterward. The world of my mind was spinning in flashes of images and swirls of color on the insides of my eyelids.

I felt the lips on mine before I opened my eyes. And I left them closed, as I opened my lips to him and gave the sweet taste of his tongue—the Commandaria still thick on his tongue—free access. He was flicking his tongue in and out between my parted lips and I sighed for him.

I opened my eyes to see that it was Spiro leaning over me, adjusting my pose now, so that I was fully facing him and he was leaning into me between my knees. he was naked and I felt his hard cock pressing at my belly. He embraced me in his arms, supporting my torso as I leaned back and moaned at the touch of his lips moving to my throat and then to my nipples. My sternum, pausing to flick his tongue in and out of my navel. Down my lower belly into my tightly curled pubes and swallowing my cock and pressing his tongue into my piss slit and flicking it there until I jerked and came, filling his mouth with my cum.

He rose back up to where he was looking down into my face and smiling as I rolled my buttocks up and hooked my legs on his hips.

"There, I want to capture that look in your eyes in a painting too," he murmured. "Postcoital, satisfied and mellow."

I lurched and started to give a little cry as he began to enter me, but he leaned down and took my lips in his again and we went into a deep kiss until he had entered me fully.

"And your expression like this, too. Possessed. Giving yourself to another man."

He pulled his face away from me then and gave me a questioning look with his eyes.

"Yes, oh yes," I whispered and then I groaned and starting moaning deep in my chest as he began to take me in long, deep strokes.

I looked beyond Spiro and saw that all attention was on us now. Xanthos was still mounted on Nemo's cock but their faces were now turned to us. Thanos was standing nearby, this hands covered with clay, the bust on the pedestal already well formed into a human head. The poet, Costas, was standing in the doorway to the porch, watching. Even Nico and Elias were watching. Elias had come out of the bedroom and was seated at an easel with a large canvas in front of him. He was peeking around the side of the easel at us, and his right hand, in which he held a paint brush, was racing across the canvas.

Nico was lounging in the doorway into Elias's bedroom, leaning provocatively against the frame, his cock-ringed manhood hanging low between the legs that were crossed at his ankles. He had a tight little smile, but his eyes were frowning and were dull, as if he had transported himself somewhere else altogether.