The Nude on the Balcony

I knelt there on the artist’s couch between Rafa’s spread thighs, my hands gripping his knees—moving his knees out as I buried my cock in him and moving them together as I withdrew my cockhead almost to his opening, never, though, losing purchase inside him. The young Greek man, not more than nineteen by my reckoning and as handsome as Apollo, slitted his eyes, arched his back, palmed my left pectoral with one hand, pressing his thumb into my nipple, and threw the other over his head, gripping the top of the inclined end of the burgundy velvet-covered couch to hold himself in place as I slowly plowed him.

“Eime étoimos na hýso,” he whispered in a gaspy voice that ended in a deep moan.

“Yes, come for me. I want you to come. You can come now,” I responded, maintaining the steady rhythm of the fuck, moving his knees apart as I pushed up into the quick of him, holding to listen for his gasp, and then moving his knees together as I withdrew and he exhaled with a raspy sound. He may be a whore, but I could feel that he had opened to me in a surrender that most whores will never give. I had taken time in preparing him. This wasn’t a quick poke and release. This wasn’t, I was sure, what he was used to in earning his supper.

He no doubt had thought that my primary interest was in painting him. That was important to me, yes, but what I wanted most from one of my models was fully conquered total surrender—surrender to my cock.

The trembling hand pulled back from my chest and encircled his cock. He stroked himself, emitting little gasps, arching his back, pushing his chest up. I leaned over and took his right nipple in my teeth.

“Pió dynatá, pió sklirá. Káne me na hýso!—Work me faster, harder. Bring me off!” he cried out. “Eime kavloménos. Éhis megáli poútsa, min to paratravás. Min me kánis na ypoféro.—I am suffering from need. You are too big to be in me so long. Don't be cruel to me.”

“Min polymilás. Kai min to rýhnis sto dráma. Dóse mou ti agórasa.—Don’t talk so much. And don’t be so fucking dramatic. Just give me what I paid for,” I growled. I reached up and slapped him across the face and covered his mouth and nose with my hand, while I continued fucking him, but I also picked up the speed of the thrusts and deepened them. He whimpered with a plaintive, muffled sound, and bucked against me, trying to regain oxygen. The bucking increased the friction, and thus the pleasure, of the fuck. However, I loosened my breath control grip. He relaxed, I slipped my thumb into his mouth, and he sucked on it, smiling at me with his eyes, while I continued fucking him.

He was such a studied slut. I would have preferred more struggle and reluctance than artifice.

My hands were gripping his knees again and he settled down to panting and moaning low. I gave him two quicker, off-rhythm thrusts and bit his nipple. With a gasp and a shudder of now genuine reaction, he came, and I felt the wetness of his ejaculate on my belly. I continued fucking him, back on rhythm, and he relaxed under me. But as he felt me tense and stiffen and grip his knees hard, he cried out again.

“Mésa mou. Xýse mésa mou!—Inside me. Come inside me!”

With a sigh, I did—not that it meant what it could—or so I thought. I was sheathed. I’d picked the Greek youth up in a male whore bar near my studio apartment, high on the hill of Fira, the capital of the Greek island of Santorini in the Mediterranean. I had no idea where he’d been before and who he’d been with. I was a fine arts painter taking a working vacation for a year in the Mediterranean. Painting nudes of young men was one of my chosen art themes, and I always painted them after I’d fucked them. Happily enough, my body had stayed firm and presentable enough that this, combined with money and a promise of eternity in oils, ensured I had no trouble convincing beautiful young men to model for me and to let me fuck them.

I was also blessed with virility. We held there, Rafa clutching me too him, murmuring, “Éla, éla. Dóse mou to. Eísai gamíkoulas!—Yes, yes. Give it to me. You are a stud!” as I tensed and jerked and spouted, tensed and jerked and spouted, tensed and jerked and spouted.

“Ah, gamóto, mai paragémises!—Oh, fuck, you’re flooding me!” he cried out. But he had reached down and grasped my buttocks to him and rocked on me during the slow roll of the ejaculation, so I knew he wasn’t objecting.

It was only then that I realized that I indeed was coming inside him. The condom hadn’t held. Damn cheap Greek rubbers, I thought, but there it was. It was done. And he hadn’t seemed to mind. In fact, he seemed fine with it. It was all left in the hands of the gods now. Luckily, we were in Greece, where there was a god on every hill, a god that didn’t blanch at men loving men. If the Christians hadn’t spoiled everything centuries ago, we’d all still be fully Greek and sex with the same gender as well as with the opposite would still be natural.

I adhered to the ancient Greeks.

“Ah, re, ti poutsáras pou eísai. Kai tóso paidarás. Gemátos spérma. Páme yia éna déftero.—Shit, you are big. And so virile. So full of seed. Fuck me again. Akápoto. Horís kapóta—Raw. No rubber.”

Such an accomplished little whore he was. And a calculating vixen. I’d told him if I fucked him twice I’d do an extra painting of him and give it to him. That would be worth more than his fee. But he was sweet. And such a looker—a young Greek god. He would paint up a treasure.

I pulled out of him, rising up from between his legs. I stood there, beside the artist’s couch, deciding what pose to put him in. The pale blue sheet under him, placed there to protect the burgundy velvet of the posing couch at the studio end of my large, one-room flat, was nicely rumpled. I would render those as luxurious folds. I painted folds well, if I did say so myself. He was nicely posed already too, stretched out there, with his legs bent and spread, his feet flat on the surface of the couch, one hand over his head, gripping the top of the curled couch arm and the other encasing his cock. His perfectly muscled torso was stretched out by the arm being flung over his head. I was already considering the shadow angles.

“Kátse akrivós étsi pós eísai. Tha se zografíso étsi. Tha xaná gamithoúme argótera—Stay there, just like that. I will paint you that way. We will fuck again later,” I said.

“And you will paint one of me for me then?” Rafa said, seeking assurances.

Why did he doubt me, I wondered in slight irritation. But then I thought that his having to work the streets meant he had to be in constant concern for agreements made. Greeks were honest, even the ones on islands like Santorini, but you had to pay very close attention to what was being agreed to. They were always playing the angles for personal gain.

“Yes, little one, I will paint one for you.” We had agreed how big it should be, so it could be a miniature to save oils. I did miniatures well; he would have no reason to feel slighted. I knew he was just going to sell it anyway for the money.

I picked up my robe and pulled it on, not closing it in front. I went to the easel and paints already set up and started sketching him. I had everything positioned just right—not just the beautiful, spent body of the Greek youth, but the velvet-covered couch he was on and my easel as well, so that the sunlight streaming in from the only opening to the outside, a double glass door out onto a balcony, with a gorgeous view down the levels of the Fira and to the sea, was just right.

I worked quickly, sketching in the lines of the beautiful youth’s body and starting to build a foundation with the paint. I dispensed with the miniature first, that being so pleasing to the eye that I had half a notion to keep it and do another for him. I, though, realized I couldn’t take that long in the painting. I had regained my libido while I was sketching him. Suspending the work, far enough along that I now could complete it without him being there, and, in erection, I moved back to the couch.

He was asleep, softly snoring. I laughed. I wasn’t so old that I couldn’t exhaust them in sex. I went to my bureau and took a cigarette out of an open pack there and lit it. Looking down, I saw the string of foiled condoms. I swept them up and tossed them in the wastebasket. If one was defective, the rest on the strand were suspect. I’d bought a Greek brand. It would be American or British now, while I was here. And I wouldn’t need any with Rafa again—at least not today—and, with the erection I’d regained, I would be fucking him again today. What would be would be, with Rafa, now. The lad seemed to like the barebacking, and I certainly did too when I could get it. I’d have to go to the clinic next week, but the cat was out of that bag for now regardless. A small chill went up my spine at the knowledge that I could bareback him again and not do any damage that hadn’t perhaps had already accidentally been done.

Rafa didn’t seem to care. He was a whore. He surely had his methods of post-sex protection, when necessary.

Still in half erection, instead of going back to the canvas, for which I wasn’t in the mood anymore, I went through the open glass doors out onto my balcony and took in the vista of the white-walled, with splashes of rich color, buildings spread along the top of a cliff and cascading haphazardly down the slope the town of Fira perched on to the sea beyond. What I saw was a pleasing pattern of housetops, balconies, and terraces. The streets here were so narrow and the houses so haphazardly arranged that I wouldn’t be able to tell where anything was from ground level. The natives, of course, had centuries of acquired knowledge of the layout of their island and its towns.

I had painted this landscape several times already and would do so again, even though everyone else and his brother had painted the cobalt-blue domes of Fira marching down white-washed terraces to the sea. I’d have no trouble finding buyers for the paintings. They could be handled openly in galleries. My paintings of young men post coitus would go to private, discerning collectors—for far more money than the landscapes brought in. Combined, they easily would pay for my sojourn in the Greek isles.

My attention went to a balcony to my right and perhaps two streets down toward the clifftop, with the blue water below. The youth was maybe the same age as Rafa—eighteen or nineteen—and, if anything, even more beautiful than Rafa was. Rafa was a dark beauty, jet-black hair, sultry, and foxlike mystery. He was less of a mystery now that I had caressed every inch of him with my hands and gotten my cock inside him. The youth on the balcony was all blond curls and sunshine. My hands and dick itched to do the same with him. My erection had waned, but upon any stimulation would be raging again.

He was naked, standing there, looking not down toward the sea as I had been doing, but up the slope, up toward me. I fancied he could see me and had been arrested by the sight of me, standing there, robe open, my naked torso showing, my cock in half erection, and nonchalantly smoking a cigarette. Even in half erection, my cock was arresting, even if I say so myself. The musculature of my torso also was quite arresting for a man my age.

My eyes latched onto his and we drank each other in. His body was so beautiful and I was going into full erection again, and I unabashedly brushed my robe more open to expose my body better, took my cock in my hand, and began stroking myself. The blond youth on the balcony did the same, and the two of us stood on our separate balconies, half a town away from each other, and stroked ourselves and feasted on each other’s nudity—his perfect Michelangelo youth, mine more Zeus but still, I fancied, Michelangelo perfection—with our eyes.

Neither one of us came. I’m sure we would have—and would have been so much in synch despite the distance that we would have come off together, but, as we got close, a tall, muscular, dark-skinned and -haired man, much older than the youth but much younger than I was, came onto the balcony across the way. He was naked and in massive erection. He too was magnificent in the nude—Roman warrior magnificent. He gathered the young blond Greek god up in his arms and took him inside, off the balcony.

I could see into the chamber the young man was carried to, if only dimly because of the shadows. But I could see the man lay the youth on a bed on his stomach, climb over him, run an arm under the young man’s belly and pull him up onto his hands and knees. The blond god was docile, giving over to however the man was positioning him, prepared to take whatever the man did with him. I reasoned then that he must be a whore, which didn’t deter my interest in the least.

Then I could see the young man’s body move rhythmically, as the man mounted and penetrated him and set up the rhythm of the fuck. The man’s cock was formidable, long and thick. He didn’t fuck the young man at full depth, permitting me to observe the shaft moving in and out of the passage. The youth turned his face toward the doorway, and I fancied that he was looking at me, across the stretch of the town, as the man rode and fucked him.

In erection and panting, I tossed the stub of my cigarette off the balcony, moved back inside, and slipped the robe off my shoulders.

Rafa woke as I lifted his body on the couch and turned him over onto his belly.

Half awake, he murmured, “Xaná, xaná,” and I answered.

“Yes, Rafa, again. And maybe yet again, if you please me and can take care of this erection.”

I mounted his ass, grasped his shoulders, holding him pressed to the couch, and, as he cried out “Nai! Nai!—Yes! Yes!” I thrust inside him and fucked the shit out of him. As requested, I fucked him Akápoto—bareback. All the time I was fucking him I was fucking the naked blond youth on the balcony in my mind and imagining what that dark-skinned stud was doing to him now. I didn’t tell Rafa that, though, and he didn’t take it personally. I fucked him at only half depth, as the man was doing to the blond beauty, and thus I could transport my thoughts to doing it with the blond myself. But I was fucking Rafa deep enough to make him moan.

When I was done, Rafa was lying there moaning, his arms and one leg dangling off the sides of the couch, blowing bubbles, panting lightly, and emitting a sustained, low moan.

“Me pethéneis kalá. Den tha boró na perpatíso ávrio—You are killing me good. I won’t be able to walk tomorrow,” he whimpered.

“Se thélo apópse sto kreváti mou. Tha se pliróso gia ali mía méra—I want you to stay tonight, in my bed. I’ll pay you for tomorrow,” I said. I was standing beside the couch. I slapped him on the rump to make him gasp and inserted my finger in his ass, sliding through the cum I had deposited inside him, searching for and finding his prostate. He raised his ass to me and moaned.

“Se ikanopoíisa loipón?—So, I have pleased you? Mou eípan óti eise apaititikós. Óti tha éprepe na válo óla mou ta dinatá yia na se ikanopoiíso.—I was told you would be demanding. That I would have to give you everything.”

“Nai, me ikanopoíises kai me to parapáno—Yes, you have pleased me well.” I didn’t add that this most recent time was as a surrogate for the gorgeous blond boy across the town on the balcony. I was horny and would be perpetually horny as long as the mystery youth was on my mind.

“Tha me xaná gamíseis?—You will fuck me again?”

“Sta sígoura tha se xaná gamíso—Oh, yes, I most certainly will fuck you again, Rafa.” And I would again and again in the night, as often as I felt like coupling with the sultry youth—as often as I had an erection I needed to try to assuage. I was a highly sexed man still—perhaps more so in the exercise of the libido because of the premonition that old age would not be forever in coming to me and leaving me perpetually flaccid. In my youth I fucked for pure pleasure. Now it had an edge of desperation to it.

“Tha se pliróso gia áli mía méra—OK, fine then.” With a contented sigh, he lowered his rump as I withdrew my finger from his ass and he dozed off again. I had exhausted him. I would exhaust him again before the next dawn. He would earn his euros. He would receive two paintings of himself. He would sell one, but he could keep the other. I think I would do the same with larger canvases—painting two, selling one, and keeping the other. But when I looked at the one I saved, would I be seeing Rafa or the nude on the balcony?

I liked the pose so much that I renewed the easel with a new canvas and sketched out another painting of Rafa. So, someday I’d get twice the profit out of what I’d paid the young whore I’d met in a gay bar on Santorini and cajoled to model for me and lay under me and who I had unintentionally at first taken akápoto—raw—and then raw again and again, with pleasure.

All was going well until I realized that, as I had feared, I was painting Rafa’s dark, straight hair in golden-blond curls. I didn’t bother to correct that. Over the next several days, I had painted several other paintings from memory of and longing for the blond youth on the distant Fira balcony.

* * * *

For three days I fell into a routine, working on finishing sketches I’d started plus working on four oils of My Eros from observation, memory, and wishful thinking. I was calling the young blond youth I spied on the balcony across Fira and interacted with from afar My Eros now. Eros was the Greek god of love and attraction. My Eros certainly was attracting. There didn’t seem to be a Greek god of sexual obsession, although I could certainly understand why if there were, so I settled on Eros. And the “My” was added, of course, because he had become my obsession.

He fell into my obsession without trouble, appearing nude on his balcony at nearly the same time every day, in the early morning softer light, before the Mediterranean island sun began to burn the earth and then again, in late afternoon, as the light continued, without the intensity of the middle day, but making the white-washed walls of the Greek buildings glow. I assumed the young man worked somewhere in between these two appearances. And chances were good he was working the two times a day I saw him, as well, being drawn out on my own balcony precisely on the chance we would be floating over Fira together. I thought he might be at work during those times, because five out of the six times I saw him on the balcony those days, a man, naked as the young My Eros was, appeared eventually on the balcony and drew the young god inside and fucked him on the bed near the glass doors to the balcony. And it never was the same man.

Sometimes the man was as beautiful as the young blond was, but older. On those occasions, I watched to the climax, mesmerized by the beauty of the dance of sex. Sometimes the men were old and fat and I turned away, not wanting to see the young man used by such as that. Once, at the end of the fuck, I saw the young man taking money.

I wanted to be one of those men.

It had become a routine that I would come looking for My Eros twice a day and he would be there—perhaps not right away, but if I was patient and spent my time observing the life of Fira descending down to the sea, where large cruise ships came in for a day, day after day, and the tourists came up into the town on the cable car, I would be rewarded by My Eros coming out on the balcony, naked, as I would almost be, wearing my robe but letting it flare open when he appeared, and masturbating himself in concert with me before he was drawn back into his flat. The time waiting for him wasn’t wasted. I was painting oils of the much-depicted city scape of the beautiful island of Santorini at a faster rate than I ever had before in my months here.

I had made an appointment across town, in the vicinity of where the young god’s flat must be with a clinic to check on whether my unsheathed copulation with the Greek model, Rafa, had been folly or glorious. I arrived in that sector of the town early and wandered around, looking up at the balconies of the buildings haphazardly set on the narrow city alley-type stone-clad streets, more paths than streets. I was trying to discern where the balcony was of My Eros. If he sold himself to men, and I was sure he did, I wished to buy—and I wished to paint him as well, even though I had already painted four oils of him in provocative, post-coital poses. That had all been from imagination, though, and I ached to bring reality to coupling with him and capturing him forever on canvas. These paintings wouldn’t be for sale to other men. They all would for my pleasure alone.

I longed to find the balcony and to ascend the stairs of the building to find My Eros. But I wasn’t able to. The clifftop town of Fira was just too much of a jumble of white-washed buildings and terraces and balconies cascading down to the cliff edge before dropping to the sea.

My tests at the clinic confirmed that the fucking of Rafa had been glorious, and I came back into the clinic waiting room with a smile on my face, finding that I was looking into the equally smiling face of a handsome dark-skinned young man who had been sitting and worrying a bit as I had been while my results were being processed. This was a gay men’s clinic, so I assumed he was here for the same purpose as I was, and when our smiles met and merged, I knew he had gotten the same “clean” results as I had. He was a beautiful young man, unusual a bit here because of his dark skin, but a colony of North Africans inhabited the island, and I assumed he must be one of those. He was beautiful enough that I would have liked to paint him, and as we had been waiting for results, I devised poses in my mind for him. Of course, all of them involved coitus. It wasn’t hard to believe he would cooperate as we were in a gay men’s clinic and I had observed him observing me. I assumed he was here for the same reason I was—to be checked for having had unprotected sex with a man. If he would do it for another man, I assumed, encouraged by the looks he gave me, that he would do it with me too. I shifted my stance in my seat, being more than half hard, for him to see the curve of my cock within my trousers if he wished.

I intended to proposition him, but I was distracted by the receptionist to pay my bill, and when I turned back to talk to him, he was gone.

Exhilarated by a verdict of “clean” from a bareback coupling that had pleased me greatly, I walked the narrow streets of the sector again, searching for the balcony of My Eros, but still not finding it, I looked for and found a street café instead. That was easier to find, although there was only one small table, with two chairs unoccupied at the edge of the street stones and the open shop front into the cooler interior of the restaurant. The interior was dark, though, and I was in a mood of “light.” I took the only free table. I caught the sense of a young, blond waiter, dressed in black, moving around between the tables, but he didn’t come immediately for my order and I gave him no more than a cursory glance. The café was busy. I just got an impression of blond and young from seeing him in the periphery of my vision.

I was about to bring the waiter into focus to order a coffee and cognac, when I heard the voice.

“Sygnómi. Aftí eínai I móni ádeia karékla. Se pirázi na kathíso dípla sou?” And then, when I gave the young man who had spoken to me a daze look, he said, “I’m sorry, do you speak English? I said that there doesn’t seem to be another free chair at the café. May I sit with you?”

I didn’t hesitate because I didn’t understand Greek—I did, although I did prefer speaking in English—but because of the surprise to find the dark-skinned young man from the clinic standing there.

“Yes, by all means sit. Either English or Greek will do.”

“But you are an American, yes?”

“Yes.”

“So, English it will be. We all want to speak American now. It is the language of the world.” The waiter had arrived, but, again, I was too busy looking at the milk-chocolate beauty to focus on him. The young man was still standing and gave his order. “Éna expresso parakaló. I have ordered an expresso for myself. Would you like me to order for you too?” I told him what I wanted and he ordered an expresso with cognac. Then, as the waiter bustled off, he sat opposite me. The table was small. Our knees pressed against each other.

“I saw you in the clinic,” I said.

“Yes,” he answered. “I hope your news was good.”

“Very good, thanks. And you?”

“I’m free to do it as I like to do it, yes,” he said. Not reticence there. “I was a bit carried away and thoughtless.”

“An equipment malfunction in my case,” I said. We shared a comfortable laugh. “I was doing exactly what I intended to do,” I added. He gave me a little smile.

“We are far from the clinic,” I said. “Were you following me?”

“Yes, you gave me a very clear signal at the clinic. And I must say you were taking quite an erratic route and had an unusual interest in the sky.”

“I was looking for someone,” I said. “Someone I had seen on a balcony in this neighborhood.”

“And did you find him?”

“No, I did not. But why do you assume it was a ‘him’?”

“Because, with a man like you, it could only be another man—a younger man.”

“That’s quite an assumption,” I said. But I was making assumptions myself. I pressed my knee between his and he opened his legs to me, and when I was between his thighs, he pressed them closed again. Our coffees were delivered and we were quiet, but letting our eyes do the talking, until the waiter had wafted off again.

“I could tell by the way you looked at me in the clinic—and only me with older men than me about—that you preferred younger partners. And I could tell by how you moved your body, showing me that you were hard. The care you took in that told me you were hard for me.”

When I didn’t demure from that, he continued. “My name is Kamal and my family is from Morocco,” he said, resuming the conversation in the wake of the waiter’s departure. “And your name is Cole Williams. You are a painter of scenes—some scenes of landscapes, other scenes of young men you have just fucked. You pay them. I have a friend, Rafa, who has just been with you and recommended you to me. He said I would like to lay under you very much and that you pay well and paint very well.”

“Ah, Rafa. So, you knew who I was and what I liked when you saw me at the clinic. You are a beautiful young man, Kamal,” I said, “and you live up to the meaning of your name.”

“You know the meaning of my name?”

“Yes. I study men’s names. I use them to title my paintings. Your name means ‘perfection,’ and it suits you perfectly.”

“You are a beautiful man too,” Kamal said. “Older men who have kept themselves in perfect shape are always more enticing—and experienced—than younger men. And Rafa tells me you have a giant cock. I could tell so myself from what you were showing me at the clinic.”

“Does that scare or excite you, Kamal? Not just the size of the shaft but the demanding expertise that an older man will wield with it?”

“Yes, both.”

“So, you will go with me for 100 euros and let me paint you?”

“And fuck me?”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“Yes. And we’ve both just gotten clean verdicts at the men’s clinic, so—”

“Yes, to that, as well,” Kamal said.

“Drink up your coffee, Kamal, and let’s get to it.” I stood and dropped more than enough money on the table to make the waiter happy.

I fucked Kamal in a large rattan fan chair in my studio room, sitting him in the chair after we’d gotten undressed and in the mood while standing, embracing, and fondling each other. He had gasped when I had unzipped myself and placed his hand on my shaft, hard in its want for him. When he had been pressed down to sitting in the chair, I came up on it in front of him, kneeling on the arms on either side, grabbing the top of the fan chairback, and presenting my cock for his oral attention. He knew how to give great head.

For the fuck, I suspended his legs over the chair arms and knelt in front of him, encircling his waist in my arms, working his cock and balls with my mouth, and licking down his perineum until, with a low moan, he took my head in his hands, guided me lower, rolled his buttocks up, and I ate his ass out until he was begging for it.

“Atni guzebek al-lanah ali!” he cried out.

“Come again?” I asked. That wasn’t Greek. It must have been Arabic. The lad was disconcerted.

“Give me your cock!” he declared. “Fuck me!”

So, I did. I rose up over him, grasped his buttocks in my hands, rolled his pelvis up toward me, crouched over him, and began the long, difficult journey of getting what I had inside him—entering, entering, and entering him as he gasped and clawed at my bare buttocks—and taking my full pleasure of him.

“Al-haraa! Al-laneh! Ant dakham lain!” he cried out as I worked myself inside him. Again, that wasn’t Greek, but I got the gist. They all complained about the size of me while I was opening them up. But Kamal, like all of the rest, settled down to burbled whimpers and sobs moving into groans and moans and, eventually, with moving their hips in rhythm with the fuck and sighing and whimpering while I plowed them, murmuring to me of the painful pleasure I was giving them.

I barebacked him, and he discovered I had multiple loads. He jerked and gasped with each blast, and lay there, trembling, as I pulled away from him.

“Stay like that,” I said. “Keep your hips rolled up like that. I want to see your gaping hole and the cum dribbling out of it.” I already had my easel and paints set up, and I went to them and started sketching and painting. I had worked, frenziedly, for some time when he complained of cramping up in that position, crumpled into the fan chair—very dramatic; it would make a great painting.

“Uh, sorry,” I said. “I was absorbed in the painting. You did great. You can move if you like now.”

Kamal did move. Groaning, he pulled himself out of the chair and went to the French doors, opening them, and going out onto the balcony, still naked. Shortly afterward I realized the change in the light. This was late afternoon, when the worst of the sun’s blast was wearing off—when I’d gone out on the balcony and seen My Eros on his balcony for the past three days.

With a sigh, I put the paint pallet down and drifted out onto the balcony. I hadn’t closed up my silk robe since flaring it to cover Kamal in the chair and was otherwise naked. Kamal was leaning on the balcony parapet and staring down into the sea, where a large cruise ship was standing off the pier and shuttle boats were tendering tourists back to the ship.

My eyes went elsewhere, though, across the city, to My Eros’s balcony. He was there. He wasn’t alone. A dark-skinned giant was standing behind him, hands on My Eros’s hips, nuzzling the Greek god’s neck with his mouth. He probably was an Arab, maybe even a Moroccan. As I watched, My Eros, his eyes picking me out across the town, grimaced and gave a jerk.

The dark-skinned man had entered My Eros.

The Arab had mounted him from behind and was beginning to fuck him. I came up behind Kamal and embraced him, one arm going around his chest and the other one around his waist. He sighed and nestled his buttocks into my loins. As I watched My Eros being fucked by the Arab and My Eros maintain eye contact with me, I became fully erect and lifted Kamal’s body up and settled his passage down on my cock. He was still open from the initial fuck.

Kamal moaned and arched his head back into the hollow of my shoulder, surrendering totally to my penetration and stroking. As My Eros’s Arab fucked him on a balcony across the width of Fira in the late afternoon shadows, I fucked my Arab on my balcony. But the real connection was between me and My Eros. We were the ones fucking each other.

When I had cum, Kamal sighed and slipped away from me and into my room. I remained at the balcony, watching, as the taking of My Eros by the giant of an Arab continued. The Arab picked up the blond beauty and took him into the bed just beyond the open French doors. He lowered the young man to the bed on his knees, embraced him from behind, one arm around the young man’s chest and the other cupping My Eros’s chin, pulling his head into a hairy chest. He penetrated the young man again, and their hips rocked in unison as the Arab fucked him and fucked him and fucked him. He released his embrace on My Eros, and the young man collapsed onto the bed, his arms extending in sacrificial surrender. The Arab leaned over him, fists pressed into the bed on either side of My Eros’s shoulders, and the fuck continued to a frenzied ejaculation on the part of the Arab, the blond beauty just lying there in surrender.

In the last couple of moments of the fucking, though, My Eros turned his face toward me and a beam of light picked out his expression. It was beatific, his mouth open and tongue hanging out, his eyes lustful, seemingly hazing over with the film of the cum being pumped into him. The smile, though, seemed to be for me rather than for the Arab, who was clutching at the young man’s waist and tensing and jerking and ejaculating repeatedly, his own head arched back, crying his victory to the ceiling. It was as if the blond god recognized me and wished it were me inside him. At that moment I had a flash of recognition.

I stood on my balcony, powerless and captive, and, sobbing slightly and stroking my shaft, watched the distant coupling to the climax before turning and returning to my room. In the interval, Kamal had dressed and was fixing us an evening meal.

I was restless in my sleep that night, all sorts of strange dreams, laced with actual people and events, swirling around in my mind. In the darkest of night, I sat up in bed, fully awake, Kamal lying next to me, lightly snoring, thoroughly exhausted from taking my cock again and again.

At the prolonged moments of climax in the bed beyond the distant balcony I had realized something. The waiter. The waiter at the café that morning. That had been My Eros. It was clear as a bell now. My Eros was the waiter at a café I’d been to earlier in the day.

* * * *

“Antinous? Antinous Kouris? Aftón enoeís? Ton nearó servitòro pou doúleve sti veránda tou kafeníou echthés to proí?—Is that who you mean? The young waiter who was working the cafe patio yesterday morning?” the manager of the café said when I accosted him to ask him where My Eros was.

“Nai, ton nearò xanthó servitòro—Yes, the young blond-haired waiter,” I answered breathlessly. I’d run nearly all the way across town as soon as I thought the café would be open. Kamal was wide-eyed, thinking I wasn’t satisfied with him when I unceremoniously kicked him out of my flat so that I could leave. I had to reassure him that he was just fine and that I would engage his modeling—and other—talents again. His talents were considerable, and paintings of a sexually exhausted perfect Moroccan youth would sell well. But none of that was on my mind now. I was feverishly seeking My Eros.

“Antinous? Antinous Kouris? Aftó eínai to ónoma tou? Poú eínai? Pou ménei?—Is that his name? How fitting that was. Antinous had been the young man the Emperor Hadrian had loved. Where is he? Where does he live?”

The café manager must have taken my frenzied speech as speaking Greek only with difficulty, as he reverted to English.

“He lives here, right across the street. Up there.” He pointed up the side of the building across the street from the café, and, sure enough, there was My Enos’s balcony. Or Antinous Kouris’s balcony, I guess I needed to say now. I thanked the man and turned to go across the street, but he put a hand on my arm to restrain me.

“Antinous lives there, on this street, and if you have the money for it, you can visit him there when he’s home. But he isn’t there now. And he isn’t here. He’s gone.”

“He’s gone? What do you mean he’s gone?”

“He lives up there when he’s on Santorini and he works here when he’s in Santorini and when he’s not working on his back,” the man gave a snort here, “but his main job is as a waiter on cruise ships. He left this morning on the one that came in yesterday.”

“When will he be back?” I asked, nearly beside myself in frustration.

The man shrugged. “A month. Maybe more? He takes jobs on the ships as he can. Maybe two months.”

I left the café, frustrated, but determined. I went directly to the rental office for my building of flats and extended my stay on Santorini by six months. Then I went home and returned to my routine of fucking and painting young Greek men. But every morning and every late afternoon, I went out on my balcony and waited for the day that My Eros would return and I would see him, watching me, from across the city.

He was worth the wait.