Do I really think that about the publishing industry?
Who, me?
Readers of my novel LADIES' NIGHT may recognize Dee Dee/Diana as one of the characters. Except in that book she doesn't make it home from the bar at all, she turns into a slavering beast instead. For reasons which have nothing to do with her dissertation. But then in that book she didn't have our dauntless hero to escort her.
OLD MEN DANCING
(published as DANCIN')
There were only two things wrong with Ios and the first was the hotel Spence was living in. The landlord was probably the wealthiest man on the island which had made him surly. He was young and good-looking and the only nasty Greek Spence had ever met. He knew he shouldn't stay there. But the ship had arrived at dawn, he hadn't had any sleep the previous night and the hotel was right there on the docks. It was convenient to drop his bags and get some rest. At the time he gave no thought to the fact that it was expensive by island standards or that he'd immediately disliked the Greek. He just wanted the mosquitoes out of there so he could sleep.
The landlord grudgingly went up and sprayed the room and Spence crawled in under the covers, his eyes smarting from bug spray. Only eight hours later did he consider that on his budget it really was damned expensive. But to hell with it for now. He'd get out of there the following morning and up into the hills where the rooms were a dollar-fifty a night and where the action was.
But that was the second problem. The action began at 1:00 a.m. and Spence could never drag himself down the hill before dawn. That meant he awoke around two in the afternoon. Too late to get out of his room without having to pay for an additional day. So he stayed there and watched his money disappear into the hands of the surly Greek, not to mention what he was spending in the bars nights.
Actually there was a third problem too though Spence didn't like to think of it. The truth was that he sometimes felt too old for this sort of thing. Sure, his body looked good enough, he could still compete with the backpackers in that department. But he was thirty-five and Ios was an island of twenty-year-olds. What they could do until six in the morning Spence couldn't do. After hours haunting the discos his back ached and his eyes began to close with the whiskey. He had to score fast or not at all. But there were maybe four men to every woman on the island. So the women could afford to shop around till dawn and that was what they did.
Spence looked bad by then. The strain was apparent. He'd finish up most nights drinking with an Aussie named Colin who was two years younger than Spence but who had even less tolerance for the late hours and none at all for the whiskey. Colin's solution to the problems was that they should leave the island. For him Mykonos was the promised land.
"I tell you, Spence, that's where we should be. I've never had such women! The most beautiful women you can imagine. Not kids like you've got here. The truth is we don't belong here. Mykonos, that's the place for us. I swear to you, Spence, that all the men on Mykonos are queer! Women come from France, from Germany, from Britain, everywhere, all of them looking for sex, looking for a good time and they see all these beautiful men around them but half of them, more than half of them, are queer. So they get frustrated, don't you know. It's a straight man's paradise! We'd do marvelously there. I don't see why you want to stay on Ios. And damned if I want to leave without you. Let's get out of here, all right?"
"I like this island."
"So do I. But it's killing me, Spence. A man's got to have a woman sooner or later. You've got to be realistic. We're too old for this place. We're looking for women, not little girls. Listen, there's a ship for Mykonos at 8:30 tomorrow morning. I want to be on it."
"It's 5:30 now, Colin."
"We'll stay up all night. What do you say?"
"All right."
"You won't regret it. Wonderful. It's set, then."
They ordered another round at Spence's insistence. One last try at the island, he said. And the dancers danced and he and Colin sat watching them, the luster of their open glances fading fast. Once he got up to dance. The girl was polite but in his style, in his moves, in his lean good looks, uninterested. When he returned to the table Colin was more than ready to leave. He wasn't.
"A little longer," he said.
"All right. But I'm going home to pack. I'm going to be on that ship, Spence. Will you be there?"
"Yes. I'll try, Colin. I promise."
And that was the last Spence saw of him. Later he regretted missing the boat to Mykonos. Colin was good company. But there was a girl in the bar with long dark legs who yielded as she danced. He watched her, thinking that her partner was not half what she deserved. She marooned him at his table until, in the half-light of morning she and her incomprehensible young man walked out the door. Spence followed them at a distance. Down the winding cobble stairway to the port. When he awoke it was past noon, the ship was long gone and he was faced with yet another day to make a shambles of his budget.
But again by evening he was in fine form. It had been a good day. He'd gone to the nude beach for a change and this time had not burned. In the mirror he saw that his body was a deep golden brown. Not even a tan line where, on more modest days, his trunks had been. He'd rarely looked so good. He drew strength and well-being from the mirror and resolved that tonight could hardly be like the others.
Nor was it. By midnight there was a tall, blonde, talkative Canadian girl sharing his table. But the talk irritated him. She was after reassurance of some vague order and Spence would not give her any. He was feeling bold and powerful and when he saw the German girl across the floor he decided that a younger man would be more to the Canadian's liking.
He asked her to dance and they danced well together. When the music stopped they laughed and fell into each other's arms as though to test their embrace. Her name was Uta. Her body against him was slim and girlish and the flesh of her arms was very soft.
He walked her home. It was 5:00 a.m. and the Canadian girl watched them go. They had both had a lot to drink. They walked up past the corral. Spence could feel his good shoes slippery with mud. He hoped it was mud. On her porch they turned and kissed and soon his hands were beneath her ass and his cock was hard against her. Her flesh was moist beneath the tight jeans. She wrapped one leg around him and pumped submission to him in the dark.
"Not here," she said. "I have a roommate."
"My place, then," he said.
They walked the broad steps to the harbor, the girl tucked neatly and comfortably beneath his arm. For a moment he thought of Colin leaning over a bar in Mykonos. Of course he'd been right. Sooner or later a man had to have a woman. But Spence was glad he'd found his woman in Ios. You could not refuse to compete. If you did you were already beaten.
He opened the door and cleared his belongings off one of the beds. They undressed in the dark. They came silently together and when he touched her cunt it was already wet for him. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her full soft breasts against him and they fell together to the bed. He was still a little drunk but his head was clear enough. He bit deeply into her soft breast and heard her moan. He took her chin in his hand so she couldn't move her head and stroked her clitoris until he felt the thick heavy sweat well up between them, until she twisted over on the hand between her thighs, wanting his entry.
Then he was deep inside her, the wide lips of her cunt closed over him and the girlish ass in his broad hand, he could feel from beneath each stroke of his cock within, each swell and closure. With her head still immobile between his fingers and her body twisting hard against him he bit her breast again and then her neck and the soft juncture of arm to breastflesh. He felt her open further and his cock swell to meet her and then again the even moist slide that shook them with each stroke until finally she arched against him and her mouth fell open wide. In the thick warm come of her his cock flung off the weeks of loss and longing.
Afterwards he pulled the covers over them and she fell asleep, her head resting on his arm. He looked out the windo
w and saw that it was dawn. He wondered where Colin was now. He brushed away a mosquito. It was strange that he couldn't sleep.
Tonight there was a wildness inside him. It was not the wildness of a younger man, it was a considered violence self-inflicted upon his past, a breach with all that baggage of his years which had weighed him down. He had no modesty, no shame, no responsibility. Anything could be attempted and accomplished. It was possible to be reborn in an instant now.
He moved his fingers into Uta's cunt again and waited to see if she would wake. He saw her lips curl into a smile as she grew aware of him, her eyes fluttering in half-sleep. That was what he wanted, to fuck her at the edges of a dream. Her thighs were wet with come as he spread them gently apart and settled in between. He moved into her slowly. She was thick with semen. He drew himself up so that he was barely touching her and began a long slow rocking glide. The cool soft tips of her nipples grazed his chest. She began to stir beneath him, her thighs straining slowly upward. Yet he did not want her fully awake this time.
He stopped, poised above her. His cock was all that joined them now. He felt her relax. Then he began moving again but only barely this time, thrusts so small and slow they were almost painful. She responded, moaned, began to match his rhythm and pressed toward him, the muscles inside her clutching him convulsively, spreading semen out over her thighs. When he realized she was coming again he lengthened his strokes and soon he was coming too with a power which hardly seemed his own, his cock throbbing out an ecstatic rhythm, his body stopped, still and trembling.
We're too old, Colin had said but that was absurd now. Uta was the proof of it. Though it had honestly worried him for a while. What was he doing here in Ios? he'd wondered. Where if you were not a native Greek you were probably a kid just out of college having one last taste of freedom before career and family became more important than freedom. But Spence had deserted wife and career nearly a year ago and missed them not at all, knew very well the value of freedom and in that sense had more than an edge on all of them. Still he'd felt hemmed in, oppressed by the island, all that youthful energy had oppressed him. It was different now. He was on the upswing, he knew. Now, he thought, we will have to see what the energy of a somewhat older man is good for.
He brushed away another mosquito. Dammit!
"What is it?"
"Just a mosquito."
Soon she was asleep again. He watched her. He recalled the pleasure he'd taken in her and relived it, watching. It was fucking, not medicine, which was the healing art. It was wonderful to have a woman again, especially one like this. He hoped Colin was as successful. Colin was a good fellow but in truth Spence worried about him. He was still on the run. You needed to be both more aggressive and at the same time more patient and flexible. You needed to wait and watch and trust yourself.
And to allow yourself a very wide margin for error.
Suddenly he was wide awake.
Dammit! he'd been bitten again! Jesus! They were everywhere! Now that he was aware of them his ass felt itchy. Probably it was just his imagination but he decided to have a look. He moved his arm out from under her and lit the bedside lamp. He was glad when she did not waken. He looked in the mirror.
There were bites on his ass, all right, and up his spine as well. It was worse than he'd suspected. They'd probably had quite a time of it while he and Uta were fucking. His wrist, the one that had been exposed above the covers, had gotten the worst of it. He counted over a dozen bites there in a neat little semicircle. It was beginning to swell. In the lamplight he saw them circling Uta's body in bed. She'd be a mess by morning, he thought. It made him angry. That goddamn Greek! It was impossible to sleep. He didn't know how Uta was managing it. He drew the covers up over her and pulled on a pair of pants and went downstairs.
Even now he was still a little light-headed from the drinking but that didn't matter. The morning was cool and bracing. He knocked at the landlord's door but there was no answer.
"Come on out, dammit!" he said. "And bring that spray!"
He pounded again.
The Greek was dressed in striped pyjamas. "What is the problem?" he said. The contempt in his voice made Spence even madder.
"I'll tell you what's the problem. Your damned room's infested with mosquitoes."
"Infested? Dthen katalaveno."
"You understand me well enough," he said. "Here, look at this."
He raised his wrist.
"If it's mosquitoes you complain about, I told you, I spray two days, maybe three, but then you must buy your own spray. You want me to spray for you, ten drachmas."
Had the man really told him that? He couldn't remember.
"You're not getting a fucking cent. You're already paid three times what they get up on the hill and I want some service for it. You go up and get that goddamn bug spray."
"You Americans," the Greek snarled, "you want everything perfect but you don't want to pay for it."
"Don't you give me that 'you Americans' crap. You see this?" He pulled an old battered press card out of his wallet. It had been void and useless for years.
"I'm a writer," he said. "A travel writer. And your hotel is going to get some very lousy notices, mister."
The lie felt good.
He was surprised to find that he was truly furious now. He was shouting and that felt good too. Almost as good as the fucking.
"Exactly what we expect from you!" said the Greek. "You come home at six o'clock in the morning smelling of whiskey and then you try to blackmail me. Well, write what you want. You Americans are all sons of bitches anyway. I want you out of here. Now! Today!"
"Did you expect me to stay? I'll get out, all right. But first I want some sleep. So you get those damn mosquitoes out of my room."
The man turned and stalked away and Spence knew that he had won.
Uta was sitting up in bed. "You have had quite a morning," she said.
"We'll get some sleep now."
Spence lit a cigarette and waited for the Greek. Uta fell asleep again. Soon there was a knock at the door and Spence opened it. The Greek uncapped the aerosol can and began to spray. Then he stopped and pointed to the bed.
"What's this?" he said.
"What does it look like?"
"You didn't tell me there would be a woman."
"Why should I?"
The Greek said nothing further and finished spraying. The small room was thick with poison now.
"I'll be down before checkout time to settle up," he said. "Have my bill ready."
The man closed the door behind him and Spence climbed into bed. He set the alarm for 10:30. He'd get four hours anyway.
In his dream he saw Colin trapped in the belly of a transparent whale and understood somehow that the whale was Colin's mother and about to give him birth. Colin did not particularly want to leave the whale but neither was he so comfortable that he wished to stay. There was a sort of dialogue between Spence and Colin as to which environment was preferable, the belly of the whale or the open sea. The alarm woke him before it was finished.
He roused Uta and packed his clothes while she used the bathroom. It was a rush job but it would have to do. They arranged to meet in the town square for dinner that evening. In the meantime Spence was going to leave his things with some friends and find himself an inexpensive room up on the hill. He apologized to her for any discomfort he might have caused her. It occurred to him now that he was sober that all this might have seemed very ridiculous from her point of view.
"I slept through most of it," she said.
He went downstairs and into the hotel office and there was the Greek impassive behind the desk. His passport was already out and the Greek was adding a column of figures.
"I do not charge you for the mosquito spray," he said.
"Good."
"You have three nights at one hundred-fifty drachmas and one night, tonight, at two hundred fifty drachmas. You see I do charge you for the young lady. It is a double room so I must be compensa
ted double occupancy. Seven hundred drachmas, please. You may check with the Tourist Police if you wish. I am within my rights."
Spence did not have to check. Nor did he want to. The Greek's face looked grey and ashen. He wondered how such a complexion could exist beneath such a sun as Ios had. He counted out seven hundred-drachma notes and one fifty and tossed them on the table.
"The fifty is for the bug spray," he said. "No, the fifty is to buy you a new disposition, at least for the rest of the day. If you try to give it back to me I promise I will wring your neck. You've got a loser here, right? No argument from me. But this loser doesn't care a shit for you and will buy you for fifty drachmas. Katalaves?"
The Greek looked perplexed.
"That is my pleasure," said Spence.
He regretted the money later. He regretted, also, leaving his razor and comb, soap and soap dish and washcloth in the bathroom in his haste to pack. But he did not go back for them. It couldn't be helped. Nor could it be helped that Uta did not meet him for dinner that night. He'd half expected it.
But late in the evening he found himself in a small taverna up in the hills where two drunken fishermen bought him cognac and danced together, danced until they were exhausted, strong male dances they had learned as children and perfected in the lonely hours at sea. They were old men, yes, but Lord they could drink and dance. There was one dance they seemed to favor which fascinated Spence. They would hold a sponge between them and one man would balance the other as his partner spun across the floor, leaped and feinted in every direction, always close to falling yet always held to point by the sure equilibrium of his partner. And they finished each dance with a slap to the boot and a fresh glass of cognac all around. Spence knew only a little Greek but they taught him all he needed to know to enjoy their company. And it was no trouble to forget the morning when there had been Uta the night before. A man could get by on very little. A man could be patient and flexible. Hang the money, the soap dish, even hang the girl. In a few days there would be Mykonos.