We were already on our third beer, looking at tourists sailing on the Aegean when Nikos leaned over the table. “You’re not straight enough ‘til you fuck a guy up the ass,” he said. It was 1991 and that was my last summer at my father’s village in Greece.
That fall I left my country repressed and hungry, and lived around the world collecting Masters, getting smart jobs, liquor and drugs, fucking and getting fucked up the ass. But I never forgot Nikos’ paradox. I never got over the phallic pride and anal shame that ruled sexuality and gender in rural Greece. Straight or gay, masculine or feminine, fucking or getting fucked was the qualifier in my beginnings. More…