Not Afraid of the Fall

by Kyle James

  I forgot I was talking to a little Greek kid. “Yes, come on,” I said, leading the way.

  We counted down from three and jumped. I watched his face inflate like a blowfish as he held his nose with his fingers. It was actually much scarier than I thought it was going to be because I couldn’t see when I would land. I came up to the surface, laughing, as did he.

  “Again?” he asked, concerned that this was a one-time thing.

  “Yeah, let’s go!” I said. His face lit up, and the other kids noticed that we were having much more fun than they were now. You guys should have played with him when you had the chance, I thought.

  Chris was from Rhodes. If I had to guess, I would say he was probably about eight years old. I asked him if he knew any of the other kids and he replied, “Yes, but they don’t play with me.”

  I felt bad, but I knew if I played with him, it would be more fun anyway. I was great at playing like an eight-year-old.

  After too many face-to-face jumps to count, Chris saw his mom waving from shore and said, “My mom is calling me for dinner. I have to go. Thanks for being my friend,” and took off swimming.

  “Thanks for being my friend, too!” I yelled back. Chris had brightened up my day, and to see the looks of the cool kids’ faces when Chris was playing with the older guy and having more fun than them was priceless.

  8/24/15

  Rhodes, Greece

  We made sure to be up bright and early to have a full day of exploration up to Lindos. There were far fewer people out here at 7:30 a.m., and the Old Town was actually visible. I felt like I was seeing the cool shops and white buildings for the first time.

  We reached the moped rental shop, and I asked to rent a 250cc moped. “Sure, I will just need your license,” the owner replied. I handed him my license and started looking at the massive scooters to pick out the color we wanted. “I will actually need your moped license,” he said.

  What the hell is a moped license? “Uhh, they don’t have those in the US. This license covers everything,” I said, confused.

  “Sorry, man; in Greece, a moped license is required, but you can rent a car if you want.”

  Are you shitting me? I thought. We thanked him and tried a few more places, but they were all the same—each one required a moped license.

  As we headed to the beach, dejected, we passed a kiosk for the Blue Star Ferry. Ash wanted to go get tickets to Santorini, and I tried to convince her we could just get them online later, but she was relentless. The ferry to Santorini only ran on Mondays and Wednesdays, so she wanted to get it out of the way.

  “Two tickets to Santorini please,” I said to the woman at the only desk. She replied with the five worst words since the curator said, “David? In a different museum.”

  “The tickets are sold out.”

  “Excuse me?” I politely asked, hoping she had said, “The tickets are so cool.”

  “Yes, sold out, unfortunately,” she said, looking at me blankly.

  “They are already sold out for Wednesday?” I asked, just to confirm.

  “Oh no, just sold out for today,” she said. “You are in luck: there are only five tickets left for the Wednesday ferry. Had you waited any longer, you would have had to wait until next Monday.”

  I tried not to look at Ash, but I could feel her eyes branding I told you so into my skin.

  With it apparent that we weren’t going to be visiting Lindos today, we started the walk to home base. No, not our Airbnb. Ellie Beach. We took naps on the beach.

  I woke up at ten thirty and immediately swam out to the platform to jump my brains out. As I approached the platform, I saw Chris pacing on the lowest level, smiling at me and waving. When I got closer, he jumped and nearly landed on me.

  We played some jumping games, and, as Chris and I ran up the steps to the top to jump again, I noticed a Greek man in his forties literally trembling on the middle platform.

  “Sir, are you okay?” I asked him.

  “Oh yeah,” he said, half smiling. “I want to jump, but I am very nervous.”

  “Oh, okay! Well, good luck, man!” I said encouragingly. “It’s not scary at all.”

  Eventually he jumped off the middle platform a couple of times, and I congratulated him between each one with a fist-pump, to which he smiled back and gave me the thumbs-up. He tried to make his way up to the top platform, but halfway up he would start trembling again like he was having a seizure, and then return to the middle platform. This man had an actual fear of heights. I had never seen anything like it. Chris and I passed him on the way back up to the top, and I assured him of two things: one, it really wasn’t that bad; and two, he definitely didn’t have to jump. I was trying to make him feel better with either decision he chose to make.

  This was when Spidos, the trembling man, told me the story of him jumping off this very platform as a ten-year-old kid and hitting his arms so hard, they bruised. I nodded and casually put my black-and-blue arms behind my back. He told me this had haunted him, and he had to jump to get over this fear. I told him if he just pinned his arms by his sides and jumped like a pencil, he would carve right through the water and feel nothing but euphoria. I may not utilize this method, but I was sure it worked.

  Poor Chris had no interest in this man’s trials and tribulations and was tugging on my arm to come jump face-to-face. I told Spidos I would be right back, and jumped with Chris, laughing the whole way to the sea. When we climbed back up to the top, Spidos pulled me aside and said, with the most serious face a human could put on: “Hey, Kyle, will you face-to-face with me?”

  It took all my power not to burst out laughing. Not at Spidos, of course; I was more than happy to help him overcome his fear. I was trying not to laugh at the fact that in a matter of twenty-four hours, both an eight-year-old and a forty-year-old had sincerely asked me to “face-to-face” with them.

  “Of course, Spidos, follow me.” We positioned ourselves on the edge and made sure our feet were in the prime position to jump. He was sweating profusely, and his face was white. “You ready?” I asked, smiling and trying to reassure him.

  “Yes, I am ready,” he said, and exhaled loudly.

  “Okay, on the count of three, we jump. One … two … three!”

  For the rest of my life I will remember the next five seconds. Spidos and I left the platform, and his face flashed a fear I have never seen in a human before—not like being frightened by a spider, but true fear. I just wanted it to be over, for his sake. We hit the water, and I think I may have audibly said, “Thank God,” underwater as if it would have been my fault if we’d somehow defied gravity and didn’t make it.

  I hurried to the surface. Spidos emerged from the water, flailing with laughter and tears of joy. Not the kind of joy when you hit one hundred Instagram likes, but true elation that only comes with changing your own life. He half hugged me, half high-fived me in the water, and I couldn’t stop laughing.

  “I did it!” he screamed.

  “You did it, and it wasn’t that bad, was it?”

  “Yes,” he screamed. “Yes, it was—it was awful!”

  As the sun set, we all decided to swim back and go our separate ways.

  “Hey, Kyle!” Spidos screamed from across the bay.

  “Yeah?” I yelled back, treading water.

  “Thank you so much. I will never forget what you did for me!” Before I could respond, he began swimming away again.

  8/25/15

  Rhodes, Greece

  I ventured into the bathroom, half-asleep, and looked in the mirror to see red staring back at me. I rubbed my eyes, shook my head, and refocused. My haphazard sunscreen application yesterday had not kept my skin safe from the blazing star in the sky. “Ashhhh …” I whined. When I walked out of the shower, I found her staring in the mirror at herself. She looked like a beet wearing a blond wig. We both lathered up for half an hour before leaving the room. Sunburn sucked, but sunburned sunburn was sleep suicide.

  Ash and I played some card
s at Thanassius’s, and the game got a bit heated. I was crushing her. We decided to give each other a little space, so I left for the platform, and she stayed to read at the café.

  To both my disappointment and delight, Chris was not there. I loved the little kid, but he was exhausting. I walked to the top of the platform, and for some reason I just didn’t feel like jumping. I let my legs dangle and meditated. As I was deep in thought, the warm air and soft music of swimmers put me in a trance. My mind wandered from fantasy football, to my family, to what we would do when we got home. I lay down on the platform and fell asleep. I woke up to the sound of nothing but water hitting the platform. I looked around and realized it was dark out and everyone had left. I had a moment of panic.

  It wasn’t going to get any lighter (unless I spent the night), so I got a running start and tried to cover half the swim with my jump. I landed in the sea, and the fear of sharks filled my thoughts to the point that I swam back like my life depended on it, which it very well could have. Who was the last person to leave the platform? I knew they’d seen me sleeping. Dick move, last person. Dick move.

  8/26/15

  Rhodes, Greece → Santorini, Greece

  My day started with a migraine. With twelve-plus hours of travel ahead of us, my head had picked a poor day to act up. To make matters worse, we had to be out of our place by 11:00 a.m., but we couldn’t board the ferry until 2:00 p.m. These purgatory travel periods were the absolute worst, because we had to haul our backpacks with us wherever we went.

  After forcing myself to eat a Greek salad, pop ibuprofen like Skittles, consume two cups of coffee, and drink water like I was being paid to, the headache subsided. We reached the port and had nothing but time to kill, so we joined the other early birds and sat in a shaded area against a fence. I watched as cars and trucks drove onto the ferry cargo area. This ferry was massive. It looked like a cruise ship that had eaten another cruise ship.

  We were the first passengers to board the ferry, and we rushed up the flight of stairs to the seating area. We weren’t sure how hard it would be to find outlets near seats, so we wanted to get a head start in the scavenger hunt. When traveling, outlets were as important as food.

  We found a plush love seat and rotating chair with a round table in the middle and set up camp. Ash sprawled across the love seat and set a new trip record as she took an hour-and-a-half nap and woke up before we had left the port.

  Our ship sailed north for an hour or so before we slowed down and pulled into port. Someone speaking Greek came over the intercom. I waited patiently for the English version: “We have arrived in Kos.”

  I hadn’t realized our ferry was stopping at the island of Greece where most of the immigrants were fleeing to from their war-torn countries.

  I zoomed out of the map that had our current location pinned, and it really hit me how close we were to Libya and Syria. According to Google Maps, we were only 350 miles from Libya and 430 miles from Syria. To put that into perspective, it is 800 miles from San Francisco to Seattle.

  When we were safely anchored in the port, a good chunk of people exited the boat and a much larger chunk boarded. Obviously no one had on shirts that read I AM A FLEEING IMMIGRANT, but it was safe to say that the majority of these passengers fit the category. I couldn’t have been happier to see them board.

  Every person on this boat who was running from something horrible was a success story in my eyes. Can you imagine what the conditions must be like for people to gladly risk their lives and their children’s lives to board a raft and cross the Mediterranean, where the odds of surviving were probably not great? I can’t either, but I know it was something worse than a bad economy or poor living conditions. These people were escaping rape, murder, or a combination of the two. These people were living in hell, and the fact that they had made it this far in their escape made me proud to share this boat with them.

  I stood up to go to the bathroom and realized the boat was rocking furiously. I opened one of the cabin doors to the balcony outside and saw waves that were much larger than I was comfortable with. Kids who looked to be immigrants were crying as their mothers consoled them by rocking them back and forth. All I could think of was how absolutely petrifying it must have been for the people on rafts. The waves were easily rolling fifteen feet over the surface of the already rough water.

  We reached Santorini several hours later, and stepped off the ferry into chilly, howling winds. It was midnight, and the port was located at the bottom of a large cliff. There was one road that switch-backed all the way to the top of the island. We scanned the small crowd for our Airbnb host, Petros, who had offered to pick us up for twenty dollars. We spotted a shorter Greek man with a great beard holding a sign with Ashley’s name on it. He greeted us with big hugs and two-cheek kisses.

  We drove to Kamari, where Petros’s hotel on the hill was. He brought us into the lobby excitedly, being sure to open the door for Ash. Because it was midnight, he didn’t have to be awake, but he poured us each a glass of OJ and outlined the map of Santorini. I was having trouble listening to his advice because of his thick Greek accent and because I was so stunned at how kind he was being. I tuned back in when he said the words complimentary breakfast. “Come here from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. for unlimited breakfast. We can talk about renting mopeds in the morning. Now follow me!”

  We reached our room, and it had all the essentials: big bed, Wi-Fi, AC, bathroom, and a porch with a view of the Mediterranean below. Santorini was a place Ash had been looking forward to her entire life, and I was starting to see why. After twenty-five years of dreaming and a ten-hour boat ride, she had finally made it.

  8/27/15

  Santorini, Greece

  Something in my mind was telling me to wake up. I couldn’t figure out why, but I was actively trying to break through the chains of unconsciousness. When I finally stirred awake, my eyes naturally followed the only provider of light and stared out the window in a trance at the sunrise. The oranges and reds were more vibrant and passionate than I had ever experienced. The sun was not yet over the curtain of the sea, so the plants outside our windows served as silhouettes against the fiery sky. I took it in for a few seconds and then woke up Ash to share the experience. She grumpily stirred, groaning, and then followed my finger to the sky outside and whispered, “Shut … the … fuck … up …” in a soft, sleepy voice. I went back to sleep. My work here was done.

  I awoke again to the sound of our 8:30 a.m. alarm. I was not in the mood to be awake, but we (literally) couldn’t afford to miss a free breakfast.

  I threw on my UNC jersey and gym shorts and sleepwalked into the lobby. We took seats, and a beautiful woman immediately came over, smiled, and dropped off a carafe of OJ and a plate with little biscuit crackers and Nutella. She also brought a basket of bread and asked if we wanted coffee or tea. “Coffee would be great. Thank you so much!” Ash and I said in unison. The woman seemed taken aback by our response and beamed at us once again.

  When we had sufficiently filled our tanks, we set off down the steep road to Kamari. Road is a bit of an overstatement; it was more of a group of rocks that had been pounded flat after thousands of years of being traveled on.

  Kamari was Ash’s dream world. A nicely paved street lined with boutiques, affordable jewelry shops with items from the local volcanoes, and other stores full of clothes and trinkets. Where there weren’t boutiques there were cafés and bars that all led to the sea. There was a very specific demographic walking around. The people in Santorini were all on vacation and all had money to spend. (Well, everyone except us.) We watched from our café porch as people jumped from the cliff ledge and disappeared into the blue sea. It was time for us to make a name for ourselves.

  We reached the platform where people were leaping off. Someone jumped near us, and it was much longer than I would have liked before I heard the body hit the water. I looked down. Big mistake. The scary part wasn’t the ten more feet of height than the platform in Rhodes; the scary part was that
we were on a cliff on a mountainside, and the waves were crashing against the cliff.

  Oh well, no time to think, I ironically thought, and jumped as far as I could out to sea. For some reason, it was not scary at all. I was so used to jumping off things at this point that it just felt natural. I swam in the rough water and back up to the ledge.

  After three or four jumps at this height, I was ready to take it a step further. I wanted a little adrenaline, and this jump was just giving me a long swim back to shore. I watched a local guy scale the mountainside and climb up a few easy rocks that gave him another fifteen feet of air time.

  “Kyle …” Ash warned when she noticed me studying the Greek acrobat’s steps.

  “Baby, it doesn’t look that hard,” I replied.

  He leaped to the cheers of the crowd, and to be honest, I wanted the limelight. I climbed up to his exact spot and peered over the edge. Okay, well, shit. This was why he got paid the big bucks. This was probably forty-five to fifty feet above some pretty rough water. I took a deep breath, gained my composure, secured my footing, and propelled myself out as far as my body would allow.

  I had forgotten the feeling of true free-falling until then. Even with the last jump, which was only fifteen feet or so shorter, I felt like there was an end in sight as soon as I left. From this point on the mountain, I was flying. I could hear the faint sound of cheers and clapping right before I hit the water. I wish I could have paused before the surface and basked in the applause. People only like you while you are flying; no one cares when you go under. Ash and I spent the entire afternoon jumping until it became time to go to Thira for the sunset.

  I thought Kamari was a nice village, but Thira was a step beyond Kamari on the bougie spectrum. We walked until we found a restaurant that had a view of the sea, and took seats. Our table sat on a balcony seven hundred feet above the water. We could see the Nea Kameni volcano a short distance away. We drank two glasses of red wine each and watched the sun take her sweet time setting on the Greek isles.