Whores, Love, and the Filth of Athens

On being in love in Athens.

Love.

Athens. 13th July, 2025.

Last night, I had a dream.

I was walking along a railroad track that stretched for miles. It was straight. On either side, it was lined with pine trees. Pine cones had fallen to the ground in desperation. It was raining pine cones.

Despite there being thousands, not one of them touched me. I just kept walking. Motivated by some kind of divinity. As though a god of some sort had put the tune in my mind, and I just kept walking with it.

For hours and hours, I walked. Not a train passed me by. There was never any indication that a train would arrive, but somehow, I was expecting one to pass by. Although it would have made my life easier to just jump on it and ride it to the end, I didn't. I had to walk.

No train ever passed.

They're running the bulls right now in Pamplona. I wanted to be there for it, but I hope there will be another chance next year.

But I am in Athens. I feel, in a sense, I have taken my first step in the promised land. To tell you why that feels like the case would be a great travesty for the coming moments. However, when we reach the end of this journey, my greatest hope is that you will understand precisely what I mean.

I keep telling myself that I'm here to learn something. I don't know what that is yet. I suspect this is the last time I will ever feel this young, and I can't decide if that comforts me or terrifies me.

You wouldn't find Baloo Hostel unless you were looking for it. Or unless you'd already given up on looking for anything else. It smells of ouzo and burnt toast, and there is a hollowed-out piano in the garden, but it's glued to the wall. They're trying too hard.

Lena arrived two hours after me. The van is in good shape, having travelled over a thousand miles. When she arrived, I was already sun-licked, and the beer I was having for lunch wasn't sitting well with me.

My mind was already hot from overthought. Truly, very hot. The cogs were spinning. The grease was dripping. The anxiety was going to wring at least another litre of vinegar out of me.

Lena has been in many a dream, and I suspect she would have been in my most recent had I not awoken in a fit of exhaustion. Usually, my dreams of her evoke a childish hard-on. I want to ram my tongue down her throat and pull her close. But today, my libido is muted.

When she finally arrived with that glowing face and blonde hair travelling slowly down her back, I was stuck for words. I had rehearsed conversations before she came, but I quickly learned that was futile.

So, for the moment, we didn't really say much at all. Years of silence were filled with that one message, and thus, everything that had needed to be said was spake.

The problem with whores that love one another is that you know each other far too well, and so the need for verbality is redundant.

The sun has hit me hard, and I need to sleep. I needed to get a couple of hours, and when I excused myself for those two hours, Lena looked at me with indifference. Confirmation that one should rest is always validating.

Athens is filthy. I mean, it is very filthy. I was surprised at just how dirty it was. Alas, it was charming. Charming in ways that I had not expected. The people, although they smiled very little, were not too dissimilar to Turks, although I kept that fact about myself very quiet.

But one thing is for sure, Athenians don't give a shit about Athens. They've been worn down. They've been worn down by the migrant crisis. By the economic crisis. By crisis after crisis.

Athens is the only city I've been to where you can see a skip full of shit next to a historical monument dedicated to gods. They've really fucked this one. I can assure you.

That doesn't mean to say I dislike Athens. I don't. I believe it to be beautiful and one of the most actual examples of humanity. They've been setting that example for a while now. Thousands of years. God bless them.

We took a walk to the Parthenon last night. It was still light. I'm trying to keep my eyes off Lena, even though I know that isn't what she wants, which is perhaps why I'm doing it. She's still just a woman. Still just a friend.

But no one is really just anything, are they? Not really. It is never that simple.

I was pretty breathless by the time we reached it, and in such crowning glory, there was a gang of junkies on the way up, all with crazed looks, and all were sand, desperate for the tide. I know this feeling.

Perhaps there was a knowing look of sadness in my eyes. Lena likely saw it, and I, for one, could not escape the feeling that Lena truly believed that I didn't want to be there with her.

There has, for lack of a better term, been this mutual distrust, mostly on my part, that I am merely a wounded bird for Lena. She scraped me up off the street all those years ago and taught me how to fly again.

There are things Lena and I have never spoken about. I realise that in the coming days and weeks, we will be forced to talk about them.

In her view, our association is one of indebted obligation rather than a genuine kinship.

The truth is much more complex, but I'll do my best to simplify it.

There is nowhere in this world I would rather be than beside a woman who I hold in such esteem. A wildwood flower. It is rare for me to hold anyone in high regard. I am seldom inspired by the words of others.

Only because the ice of my natural cynicism is much thicker than the optimism of the beautiful people I so carefully surround myself with just to affirm it.

But Lena, I hold her in the highest of regards. In eleven years, come hell or high water, come crack, come natural cynicism, I have remained focused on every word she has ever said to me.

I do that because I love her. I love her so much. I love her more than I have ever loved anything before, and I always have.

It's there in everything she is. A grandness of her heart. The way her fingers dance when she rolls a cigarette and the way she sniffles when she does it. The smell of her perfume and the shape of her face. The way her eyes shine when she smiles. It's there.

And I believe, to the truest extent of my heart, that we are both bound to love and glory.

Tonight, she is asleep across from me, her face turned to the wall. Little breaths escape her lips, and I'm lulled into heavenly peace by them. I wonder if she dreams about me the way I dream of her.

I think about the train in my dream that never came and how maybe it was never late—perhaps it was never even coming.

-xo

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