Date Posted:18:18:46 01/05/08 Sat Author:Zustara Subject: (s) "Mediterranean Blue" Part 1.
The warmth and moisture hit me in the face as I got off the airplane, it was like a physical wall - although a soft and comforting one - compared to the chilly dryness of the cabin.
We were lucky, amongst the first to get off after the doors opened. Often airplanes get very stuffy once the engines are turned off and the AC stops working, with two hundred people or more all jostling each other impatiently and trying to get off at the same time. Not this time, not for us at least.
It wasn't my first time flying, but it was the first time I'd flown that far. Over four hours, they'd even served food for us on the plane! I always hear people complaining about airline food and how bad it is, I thought it was exciting, those tiny little trays packed with stuff. The cutlery came in its own sealed cellophane package, along with salt and pepper seasoning packages and a paper napkin.
Then there was a small plastic cup for the small can of soda, the small and extremely hot aluminium tub with the main course - chicken, rice and mushy veggies for me, fish, mashed potatoes and mushy veggies for Jon-Jon and my mum. I don't know what Jon-Jon's parents had since they sat in the row behind us. Then there was the tiny cup holding the quite nice and fresh salad that had exactly one cherry-sized tomato per cup, and the equally tiny cup with almost freezing cold tiramisu dessert - which I did not like but Jon-Jon happily scooped into his mouth using my spoon, since he'd managed to lose his own down on the floor in one of the frequent bumps that had spiced up our meal, sending my rice flying as I attempted to bring the little ant-egg-like grains up to my mouth. As I said: exciting!
And they offered drinks to us constantly, to keep us from drying out, Jon-Jon's dad told me.
Jon-Jon's my friend by the way, he's the reason we're even going on this trip in the first place. His family won the trip in a TV lottery, they got to go to the studio and spin a wheel and open numbered boxes and stuff. They could have won tons of cash, but their luck wasn't THAT good. They got to spin the wheel many times to open lots of boxes, but none of them had any of the really big prizes in them. So in the end they won a new car - which is pretty big too I guess - a camper to be pulled behind the car, and two vacation trips for up to eight people, and gift cards to exchange for lots of food, and a five year cable subscription with all the TV channels you could possibly imagine and broadband internet access; things like that. ...But not much money.
"Spending money for the trip", Jon-Jon's dad had said and laughed.
"No, we'll put half of it in the bank", his mother cut in. "At least half, for a rainy day." She's the responsible one. I think Jon-Jon takes after her mostly, with his sister acting a little bit more like their dad.
Anyway, it was really exciting for me, with the food and the drinks and all. I probably drank four cans of coke I think, and tomato juice, and mineral water, and some of my mum's Sprite which she claimed she couldn't get down. Plus more water from all the ice the flight attendants gave me; I like quickly chewing the half-melted ice cubes. This made Jon-Jon quiver with disgust; he claimed it sounded like I was chewing my own teeth!
Of course, all this fluid had a predictable effect on me. I had to run to the bathroom three times to pee, which meant both Jon-Jon and my mum had to get up from their seats, since I had the window seat. That was cool too, by the way. The airplane bathroom, I mean. It was really cramped in there and brightly lit with fluorescent lights, and it smelled funny, and there was an air nozzle on the wall that was stuck and blew a torrent right into my face, and you could get liquid soap and packages of wet napkins out of dispensers next to the sink. Awesome! There was even a 'Call' button in there to send for a flight attendant. I briefly considered pushing it and ordering some more soda just for the hell of it!
Jon-Jon's actually mostly what I'd call a sligthtly distant acquaintance rather than a real friend. We don't interact that much at school, and almost never outside of it. We both play football (the 'proper' kind of football you actually play with your feet, just so there's no confusion here), but we're on different teams and practice on different days of the week. To be honest I really don't know why he picked me to get to go with him.
I thought he'd ask Lukas, his regular super buddy, but all Jon-Jon would say, stuttering and looking all awkward, was that Lukas had to go on a vacation with his parents and couldn't come. I knew it would be tough convincing my mother to come and I told Jon-Jon so, because she hates charter travel in general and sun tourist charter travel in particular, making him flash me both a disappointed and anxious look that I don't think I was supposed to have noticed.
"It's just a lot of fat, rude Germans stomping around all over the place!", she used to say (or words to that general effect) whenever the topic of going someplace south during the summer months came up while dad was still alive. She wasn't at ALL keen this time either. First she resisted the idea altogether, but by then I had become excited about the prospect of flying thousands of kilometers and spend two weeks on a genuine Greek island, so instead she insisted I should go along with Jon-Jon's family, without her.
This however alarmed me a fair bit I must say - to my own great shame and embarrassment I have to admit. I've never been alone anywhere, and the prospect of flying away for so long without my mother actually scared me. She wasn't trying to get rid of me was she? I actually started crying there for a minute because I so wanted to go, but I also wanted her to come along with me so I wouldn't feel lonely, so then she held me and comforted me, assuring me that of course she didn't want to get rid of me. Damn, and I thought I had outgrown stuff like that! I am twelve now after all and not a baby anymore.
So there we were, all five of us.
The airport seemed rather run-down. We walked down an airstair that had been hastily rolled up to the plane, there wasn't a proper gangway like when we'd departed. The constant whine of a turbine howling somewhere inside the aircraft was almost deafening as we crossed the tarmac, and it was HOT in the sun. Really REALLY hot!
I wore a long-sleeved white shirt made out of fine Egyptian cotton that had been given to me by my grandmother as a birthday gift that spring, I thought that would protect me against the chill on the plane, and it was thin enough so it wouldn't bother me once we arrived. Well, that was the plan anyway! It was a lot warmer than I'd expected in that supposedly thin and airy shirt I have to say, and I was already sweating by the time we entered the airport terminal, which mostly resembled a huge shed made of ill-fitting panels that had been dirtied and discolored from years and years of dusty winds, rainfall and sunbaking and wasn't airconditioned. There were ceiling fans which all spun at their own individual (and mostly leisurely) pace, and a few not at all. Fans, which when put all together made sweet fanny adams of a difference when it came to bringing down the temperature to a level us pasty northerners are used to I might add.
Jon-Jon seemed as comfortable as a fish in the ocean and as happy as a clam; he wore a short-sleeved striped tighr-fitting stretch tee and snug cotton shorts, which meant he'd been showing goose bumps for most of the airplane trip, but were utterly comfortable upon arrival. Damn, how I envied him!
We went to the luggage pickup - which actually went rather quickly even though Jon-Jon's mum worried their bags would have gotten lost - and then through the security checkpoint and customs, which went equally quickly and seemed very brief and cursory I think, manned by staff in tan uniforms which all seemed as badly affected by the heat as I was. Or maybe it just was the tedium of watching even more damn foreigners arriving to what had once been their own pittoresque tranquil home before it'd been shrinkwrapped and sold as a product by the tourist industry...
Who knows? Do I care? No, not really! I'm just a kid here to have a good time I told myself, and gave Jon-Jon a grin. He's just marginally shorter and lighter than me - perhaps because he's almost three months younger, he only just turned twelve as well - but we're still both of about the same proportions. Average height, average build I suppose, but my hair is fairer than his, and he's got some freckles around his nose. Also, he could be a little trimmer around the waist than me I suppose. Maybe I drink a bit too much Coke or something.
Anyway, it was a feast to my eyes standing in the main arrivals hall, my backpack carry-on on my back and my nylon hockeybag slung over my shoulder. There were people everywhere! Not just from our flight, but other planes too. Lots and lots of families of course, boys and girls of all ages along with their families dominated, but there were some childless couples too (mainly younger ones) and even a few seniors that I could see. I couldn't stop looking everywhere at once.
Seeing me smile, Jon-Jon also grinned and reached out and put an arm across my shoulders. I was surprised for sure by this, but at the time it didn't concern me much. We walked outside into the bright, scorching sun together like that, his hockeybag held in the other hand, making him lean in next to me to counter its heavy weight. I put my free hand on his waist to help steady him and he almost jumped! It made us giggle together.
Outside the airport there were tons of buses belonging to various charter companies, and some taxis too. Everything was dusty, a pale-brown dry kind of dust that seemed as bone-dry as the sun itself. Even the trees and plants had a fine layer of this powder covering them, trees and plants that were all new to me.
"Look Oliver, those are olive trees up on that slope", I heard my mother's voice speak from behind us.
"Ha ha. Very funny."
"No, it's true", came Jon-Jon's mother's voice chiming in.
"Don't those grow in Italy? This is Greece, you know."
"Yes, Italy, AND Greece, and Spain, and Portugal, and Turkey and Lebanon and Israel. Probably all around the Mediterranean Sea I suppose."
"I didn't know that."
"There's lots of things we don't know. That's why we travel, to learn things about new places."
"And to check out cuties!", piped Jon-Jon, giving me a broad smile.
"Doesn't sound like a bad reason to me", Jon-Jon's dad said and chuckled. He was carrying most of our bags, even my mother's, and it was easy to see his eyes were roaming the scantily clad bodies of all the teenage girls swarming out of the airport.
"Oh no you don't!", his wife growled, and everybody laughed.
We found our bus, which was kind of old, and brown, and dusty of course. It had the name of our company on a cardboard plaque stuck against the windshield, and two of the company guides were there, and the chauffeur - who was a short but burly (and hairy!) Greek guy with a dark moustache to help us load our bags into the compartments along the sides. Slowly the bus filled up with people, and then once everybody had been checked off against their list we rolled away.
The short and burly driver drove like a maniac I thought, honking his horn every now and then, Jon-Jon just smiled and enjoyed himself. He had the window seat this time, since the sun shone in and I didn't want it touching me more than neccessary in my long-sleeved shirt and trousers. The bus did have AC, but the streams of air that flowed out of the vents was both complacent and sort of luke-warm. At least it was better than the 40C+ degree heat outside!
The charter guides sat at the front and presented themselves, they were both young and tanned and good-looking, and they were giving out general information at first about the island, and about how to get in touch if there was a problem or what to do if there was a medical emergency. We were told not to drink the tapwater, but rather buy it in bottles at the supermarket, and to not flush down used toilet paper because it clogged the sewage pipes. Jeez, YUCK! Both me and Jon-Jon made faces upon hearing that.
The guides moved on, making jokes to make people laugh and talking about the island and a little about its history and the villages we would drive through - now mostly tourist traps full of hotels and souvenir shops and restaurants rather than ACTUAL villages. It was interesting at first, but I was steadily getting motion sickness because of the fast pace we drove along the narrow, curvy road, and just wanted the trip to end.
Luckily the bus slowed down when we entered one of the "villages" to stop at the first hotel on the list. Several families got off, and it took some time getting all their stuff out of the baggage compartment. During that time my stomach settled down again, and I got the opportunity to look at the hotel we'd stopped at. It seemed very nice, most of it was hidden behind a white-washed wall, but I could see some of it through the arched front gate, there was a nice green lawn out front, and what looked like palm tree fronds stuck out from behind the wall.
"You feeling alright?", Jon-Jon asked me quietly, concern showing in his voice.
"Mmm. Better now."
"Good." He rubbed my shoulder slowly.
"Did it show?"
He giggled. "Yeah, I could tell. You were turning a little green in the face I think. Let me know if you start feeling sick again, we'll trade places."
"That wouldn't help much I think. It always gets worse if I feel hot."
"Oh! Well, let's see if we can..." He fiddled with the vents above us, trying to point them at my head as much as they would allow. "There. Better now?"
Not really, but he HAD tried. "Yeah, much", I exaggerated, and he rewarded me with an awesome smile.
"Just look out the window, okay? That'll help too."
The bus navigated the cramped village streets and stopped once or twice again, before driving on to the next 'village' to make more stops. Close to 2/3rd of the people on the bus had probably disembarked already by the time it was our turn. And MAN, what a hotel! It was HUGE! There was around 8-10 floors, all terraced one above the other along the sloping bank going down to the ocean. The pool area was actually a part of the roof of the 2nd floor that jutted out far ahead of the rest of the giant building, with the main restaurant on the ground floor.
Our hotel wasn't the seemingly universal whitewash, but rather a more sandy type hue, with the tiles around the pool a pale tan colour, with reddish-brown terracotta paving stones making up the paths at ground level. All the potteries everywhere were also made out of the same terracotta material, some of the pots being rather gigantic, large enough to hold small decorative trees.
It was difficult to imagine who might own a place like that, surely it had to be someone who was extremely wealthy!
Mum tutted to herself at all the people swarming everywhere; it was still early afternoon by the time we arrived at the hotel and it was much too early for people to start moving into the nearby town for their evening meal.
There were Germans, and yes, some were fat, but Jon-Jon's dad had said they weren't rude anymore. Not these days, they'd learned some manners since the last time mum and dad had travelled together, well before I had even been born. And he'd chuckled a lot, of course.
There were also many Dutch families I could tell, and some Frenchmen, and lots of Scandinavians, and some English, but not terribly many. Jon-Jon was smiling happily, his eyes darting here and there and everywhere as we walked up to the main entrance and went inside. The lobby of the hotel felt cool and dark, compared to the stark sunlight outside it was almost like a tomb. In climate at least, though not in activity. People were constantly walking and running back and forth between the beach and their rooms (younger ones running more than the older it might be added), and most dressed in little more than bathing clothes, sometimes with a towel wound around a waist or slung over a shoulder. Sometimes this made us grossed out, and other times me and Jon-Jon looked with joy and giggled!
"Hurry, mum! Hurry!", Jon-Jon demanded. "I wanna see our room!"
"Cool your jets, young man. We haven't got the key yet!", she admonished.
"What do you mean, three beds?"
"Well, isn't what you ordered? You're three, and you're tree...right?", the lady behind the desk said and gestured first at Jon-Jon's parents and sister, and then at me, my mum and Jon-Jon.
"No, we're FOUR", Jon-Jon's dad said and grabbed his son and pulled him in towards himself as if to demonstrate. "We ordered six beds total, yes. A room for four, and a room for two."
"Oh my! I'm so sorry, there must have been a mix-up somehow... We've changed our computer system recently." She shrugged in that universal, "well, you know" manner.
"Could we have a spare mattress brought to our room then?"
"Yes of course, but someone would have to sleep on the floor."
"Oh no! Don't look at me", Jon-Jon's sister protested. She's almost two years older than us, and a little scary. She's already got boobs and paints her nails, and has a boyfriend. He smokes, and doesn't like little kids; this meaning us.
"And I've not come all this way to sleep on a spare mattress on the floor", Jon-Jon's mum exclaimed firmly.
"Dad! Dad! Can't I sleep with Oliver then, in their room? Please?!"
His parents looked at each other, with the lady behind the desk studying the whole debate without speaking.
His parents shrugged. "If it's alright with...?"
Mum shrugged also. "I don't see why not. If it's alright with you...?"
"Well, it's settled then."
"Here you go", the young lady behind the desk said quickly and handed over the big, heavy keys. Probably glad to be rid of us.
Our rooms were on the fifth floor, which gave us a pretty good view out over the ocean. Well, the key to OUR room had a view out over the ocean. The key which Jon-Jon's dad had kept for themselves faced the other way, out towards the parking garage and the busy street and some buildings running along the shore. Then came the roofs of the nearby 'village', but beyond that, the green, tree-covered hills further inland, and that did look pretty nice I have to say.
"Don't worry, we can trade", mum offered, holding out her key.
"No, no... Keep it", Jon-Jon's mum replied firmly. "We won't spend much time in our rooms anyway."
"So, boys... Where you wanna sleep?", Jon-Jon's dad asked, as we stood in our room. Which actually was more like two rooms. One livingroom type room, with a couch and a table and a wide sliding window door leading out onto the balcony and some clothes cupboards built into the rear wall, and a single bed opposite the sofa. The room nextdoor to the left was the bathroom, and to the right was the bedroom, with a double bed and some more cupboards and another sliding door to the balcony.
"I guess they could take the double bed", my mum said. "I mean, I doubt Oliver would want to share with his mum at his age."
"Yeah! And it would get lonely for me to sleep all by myself out here as well", Jon-Jon quipped and sidled up next to me, so close actually that he actually bumped into me.
His parents shrugged. "Alright, well, let's go unpack then." Me and Jon-Jon followed them, and their rooms were exactly the same as ours, except their layout was mirrored so that the bathroom was to the right and the bedroom to the left.
"Dad! Can we go down to the pool right away?"
"Don't you want to check out the beach first?"
"Well, yeah, but there's time to do that too. I just wanna see the pool. I only saw it on the pictures on that internet site and there weren't any people or anything."
"There were some people."
"Hardly any at all! I wanna see if there's lots of people."
Jon-Jon's mum and dad chuckled. "All right. But make sure you rub yourselves with sunscreen. Ten minutes under this sun and you'll be burnt to a crisp without protection."
"Jeez, Dad! We're not stupid you know."
"Not stupid, just thoughtless." Jon-Jon glared, but didn't say anything. "And go down to the reception first and pick up your spare keys so you can get in to change on your own if needed, alright?"
"And leave your cell phone in your room", his mum instructed. "I don't want to hear you had an accident and dropped it in the pool or anything like that."
"Yes, mum."
Then my mum called for us to start unpacking, so we went into our bedroom to get that over with, shoving and jostling each other just for fun. Then after we were finished - which due to horseplay had taken a couple minutes longer than neccessary - Jon-Jon then began undressing. I was wondering when he was going to yell and complain about me still being there, because Jon-Jon had always been one of the prudest people I've ever met, never undressing in front of anyone as far as I know. Whenever we had football training, he always arrived with his gear worn beneath his regular clothes. How on Earth he managed physical education in school I don't know, because we didn't share classes.
Anyway, he simply tugged his stretchy shirt off of his slender pale body, then got started unbuckling the sandals he wore. I just stood there, a bit dumbfounded.
"Oliver! Come on, jeez. Let's get going!"
"Oh, right." I too started undressing, kind of slowly. Jon-Jon was out of his shoes in a flash, and his jeans shorts fell to the floor immediately after. I thought he'd stop there, but his tight little green briefs followed the shorts, leaving him completely, totally naked. I sort of gulped quietly.
Jon-Jon hurried to find his swimming trunks, not because he was embarrassed to be naked in front of me, but because he was eager to get down to the pool and jump into the water. He dug around in his drawer and pulled out a pair of light-blue Speedos! I'd never seen him wear anything like that before.
"You're as slow as a snail, Oliver", he taunted me and began wriggling into the tight-fitting lycra garment. I couldn't help studying his beautiful, slenderly muscled body, and the way his little willy poked right out from his groin...
My heart was suddenly thudding in my chest, and I gulped again.
I had my shirt off, but now I was afraid to drop my pants, because I had a total stiffy and it had just come without me asking it to, and I wasn't sure why. I mean... Yeah, Jon-Jon's a totally sweet-looking kid, but he's just a kid. Right? But my dick was hard, and I couldn't take my eyes off him... Especially the way his willy was sticking out teasingly like that, even inside the speedos, and jerking slightly with his heartbeats.
Jon-Jon finished tying the string around his waist and tucked the loose ends inside the speedo, then looked up at me and saw me standing there, bare-chested and bare-feeted, and with a nervous expression on my face.
"Nobody knows us here, Oliver", he whispered, stepping in close. "Don't worry. And I promise I won't look."
Then he reached the short distance and unbuttoned my pants. The heavy fabric took my loose-fitting boxers with it until they stuck, halfway down my thighs. My rigid shaft snapped right up, and of course, Jon-Jon looked.
