by Cash Peters
Stifling a yawn, I collapse into a chair.
These are early days, but already the workload from shooting this series is starting to catch up with me. Tanna Island left us for dead. And that was only our fourth trip! Since then there have been seven more, including New Zealand, Moscow, and Transylvania, all of them shot rat-a-tat, one after the other in rapid succession, and it's utterly exhausting.
To complicate things further, I was so busy at the start, impressing on everyone my prohibitive list of food sensitivities, that I completely forgot to mention my prohibitive list of phobias too. These include heights, enclosed spaces, spiders, high speeds, authority figures, flying, wild animals, large dogs, genitalia,1 snakes, horses, and, ever since a time years ago when a psychic told me I would someday die by drowning, water. Of course, none of these things figures very much in my world back home in Hollywood, where life is comfortable, bordering on luxurious, and I have total control over my environment. But out here on the road it's a different story. I'm confronted almost daily with one ghastly hazard after another. For instance, despite repeatedly underscoring my phobias to people and insisting I be pampered without cease, already I've been forced to walk through untamed jungle (spiders, dogs, snakes, germs), been crammed down a tiny, stifling mine shaft in Australia (enclosed spaces), sent jet-boating on a turbulent river in New Zealand (speed and water), made to stand on the rim of an erupting volcano in Vanuatu (heights), and taken snowboarding on a mountain in Colorado (heights and speed). As if that wasn't enough, I ended up getting stoned in one episode, hideously drunk in three others—this is becoming my calling card—was stripped completely naked in our Navajo Indian show, then again in our Moscow show; and on our trip to Guadalajara, a Mexican wrestler gripped me so tightly around the neck that my contact lenses almost popped out.
As you can imagine, this, plus the rapidfire turnover of destinations and activities, coupled with insane working hours and flight schedules, is monumentally wearing. Other people wait their whole lives to visit just one of the incredible places we've been to. Me, I've seen the whole lot in under two months, and quite honestly I'm whacked. Clinically whacked. And ask any doctor; he'll tell you that clinically whacked is the worst kind of whacked. Even jet lag has no effect on me any more. Day or night, my body never has any idea where the hell it is.
Eric's still tossing his phone from hand to hand by the window.
“So you're telling me,” I address the back of his head, “that there's nothing about this place or this culture that's fun? Nothing at all?”
“Well,” Tasha says, hesitating slightly, “there is one thing …” she's giggling already, “… it's kinda known for.”
“There is? Great.”
“The only thing actually,” Eric continues. And he smiles broadly.
So does Mark.
“Excellent,” I say. “Let's start there, then. What is it?”
Pelasgia, one of this place's many names, is in the Aegean Sea. It's the third-largest of the Greek Islands, and, viewed from above, is male-pattern-baldness-shaped, like a horseshoe, or one of those inflatable pillows people use on aircraft to rest their neck. To reach our hotel we traveled through the southwest region in a two-hour white-knuckle ride across spectacular mountain scenery, to the village of Skala Eressos (pronounced Shkala Erreshosh), a dreamily pleasant matrix of narrow streets, dazzling white facades, blue doors, and red-tiled rooftops that ooze history from every cracked shutter and broken drain.
Pelasgia has been inhabited since Time Immemorial (see footnote on page 55). By 6 B.C., during Ancient Historical Times, it was regarded as the center of global civilization and was the birthplace of many notable Greeks, who obviously considered it just as boring as we do, because most of them packed their bags the first chance they got and hoofed it to somewhere else instead. These included:
Terpander. Musician. Couldn't get away fast enough. Moved to Athens, where he became famous for inventing a seven-note scale that could be played on the lyre. A lyre is basically a hollowed-out tortoise with strings, and possibly THE most annoying musical instrument ever. That's why you've never heard of Terpander.
Arion. Poet. Left Pelasgia as soon as he could and moved to Corinth. Most noted for (a) developing an ancient type of hymn called a dithyramb, and also—because nobody gives a rat's ass about dithyrambs—(b) being rescued by dolphins after he was thrown off a ship by pirates, which is far more interesting.
Theophrastus. Known as the Father of Botany. Doesn't sound like much now, but back then it could get you the best table in restaurants. Author of the book Enquiry into Plants, he too left the island ASAP. Famous for saying, “We die just when we are beginning to live,” shortly before he died.
Phanias. Eminent historian. Inventor of Thermopylae, the Greek board game, and friend of Theophrastus. Spent years writing a book about music, but forgot to make a backup copy. Then he lost it and, well, that was that. Died before Thermopylae caught on. Bit of a loser all round, really.
Sappho. Ah, now you're talking! Highly strung female aristocrat in 620 B.C. Made homosexuality cool and acceptable by writing erotic gay love poems. But there was political unrest. Fear-filled pre-Christian Christian-types destroyed her work by setting fire to the parchments or, worse, crumbling them.2 Bastards. Exiled to Sicily. Fell in love with Phaon, a ferry boat operator. But it didn't work out. Well, of course not: he was a man! Distraught and confused, Sappho threw herself off a cliff and died, ending the “Will she, won't she commit suicide?” speculation once and for all.
Over the centuries, as I said, the island's name was changed repeatedly (depending on which invading nation had control of it at the time) from Pelasgia to Aeolis to Lassia to Makaria to Mytonis, and a whole bunch more, most of which, because they sounded like brands of cough syrup, never caught on. Eventually, though, the locals did manage to agree on a name, and that's the one it's still known by:
Lesbos.
Since Sappho's day, the island has been a place of pilgrimage for lesbian couples vacationing in Europe, same way penguins congregate in Antarctica, and people who can't get laid attend MacWorld. In fact, after olives and cheese, homosexuals are probably its most widely available natural resource, much to the consternation, I gather, of the Lesbian government, whose members, being incredibly hetero and butch—grrrr—would prefer their homeland to be famous for something a little more wholesome. Oh, and one other thing: if it's all the same to you, the islanders dislike being referred to as Lesbians. Particularly the men, for some reason. They much prefer the drearier, less amusing term “Lesbonians.”
Shame nobody else does.
So, Lesbians it is!
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Rrrrr. Rrrr. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Braving a 95-degree morning high, and with the crew at my heels, I stride into the heart of the village in search of something worth making a TV show about.
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
My first task as host is to pretend I've just been washed up on a mystery island, but with absolutely no clue which one. Every episode starts that way, and I've developed a special look to handle it: I call it My Mystified Look. It's more of a sequence of looks, really. Glance left, glance right, frown, squint, purse my lips, then walk out of shot at a brisk pace, as though intrigued by something off-camera.3 Works like a dream every time. Catch me wandering around on-screen with that look on my face and you instantly say to yourself: “Now, there's a fella with no clue where he's at.”
We make a sharp right onto the main drag, a sleepy, paved conduit of blinding white walls running parallel to the shoreline, dotted with restaurants and pokey little coffee bars that are very inviting, and seem all the more so when you're busy working and can't go in them. Outside each is a chalkboard menu, either balanced on a chair or hooked onto the wall, listing a bunch of specials in Greek: items such as noykanikoxopiatix and kotonoyoeoy. That's how they spell stuff over here, in code. Makes their language very difficult to
pick up, and their Scrabble games a nightmare, I should imagine.
Seated at tables along the sidewalk, old men—and I mean old old, their bodies pickled by ouzo, tobacco, and a lifetime living in an unrelenting furnace—sit playing backgammon, or in some cases Thermopylae, with their shirts off, unself-consciously exposing their hunched, leathery Crypt Keeper physiques to the public. And if they catch you laughing and pointing, they merely laugh back, lips hitching up like badly creased theater curtains around a proscenium of crooked brown teeth and raw red gums.
There are lots of old men in Lesbos; lots of weary middle-aged housewives, too, lugging heavy shopping bags up hills to their homes; and lots and lots of statuesque youths tearing up the streets on motor scooters …
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Rrrrrrrr. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
… wimples of flowing brown hair straight out of a Clairol commercial rippling godlike in their slipstream, along with their baggy white shirttails.
Rrrrrrrrrrrr. Rrrrrrrrrrrrr. Rrrr. Rmrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
But, oddly, no lesbians.
Given its reputation, I expected the village to be teeming with them, strolling along, holding hands, openly enjoying the free expression of their love in an environment which, if not exactly endorsing of it, has yet to find a way to stop it. But so far we haven't seen a single one, and that's not good for the show. Maybe they have a herd mentality, I'm thinking. Find one, and you'll find a thousand of them. It's just a matter of time.
So I set off on a sort of minisafari, dropping in on butcher's shops and bakeries along the way to scrounge scraps of food, exactly the way someone who had just been stranded on this island with no money might—only in my case with significantly better results.
In fact, this is becoming a problem. There's a worrying inauthenticity that comes with having a camera with you. Something none of us foresaw when we started. It's virtually impossible, we now find, to be “all washed up” in any place in the world and not survive quite adequately, and probably in considerable comfort actually, when there's a TV crew and two producers following you around. Everyone you meet goes out of their way to make a good impression. Nobody wants to be the one to refuse hospitality and look like a total jackass when the program goes out. And although I'm very grateful, obviously, since it makes my job so much easier, their eagerness to please defeats the purpose of the show, removing any real element of challenge or struggle.
I mean, not to malign people's generosity or anything, but in real life it's nonexistent. Fact. They simply don't give stuff away to strangers. If you doubt me, try it. Try walking out of a Greek patisserie carrying four muffins and an onion pie you've not paid for, see how far you get. So to watch them being magnanimous on-screen is not only highly irregular, but it's bound to set alarm bells ringing in the viewer's mind.
Example: I step into a cheese shop and tell the man behind the counter that I have no money. Instantly, he wraps a large chunk of local sheep's cheese in paper and hands it to me. But of course he does, he's on television!
Another example: I saunter into one of many breezy bars lining the ocean's edge, and the waitress, straight out of the gate, volunteers to make me a free cocktail. Just like that! “It's a special promotion we're running today,” she announces.
Well, how lucky that I happened to stop by, then.
“We call it a Hula-Mula Wonder. Would you like to try one?”
A foaming pink vodka shake slides from the blender into a frosted glass big enough to hold a bunch of carnations, topped off by a quarter-moon of cantaloupe.
“Hula-Mula is a village in Australia,” she says, handing it to me.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the place she's really referring to is Woolloomooloo, but who cares where the drink comes from? I only know where it's going. And I chug down half of it and instantly order another, refusing to pay for that one too.
See what I mean? It's disturbingly easy.
Every bar and restaurant skirting the beach has its own little private cabana, sheltered from a harsh sun by some kind of tiki thatch, or else a colored tarp that puffs and heaves in the wind. Today, a noticeable air of desolation hangs over the place. Most of the bars are empty, the streets are quiet. It's the height of the tourist season, too.
“So how come everything has a chilly funfair-in-winter feel to it?” I ask Joanna.
We have three extra women working with us on this episode. Joanna's one of them. A brunette in her midthirties; runs a travel agency in town; helped set up our flights and hotel; knows everybody. A bit on the small side, a lot on the loud and bossy side, but a real pistol. Heaps of fun. She's also very overtly sexual, with pouting lips and ramekins for eyes. Seductive, green, mirrored ramekins, big as solar panels, that would, in his day, have been the downfall not only of Jason, but of half his Argonauts as well; eyes that one suspects could be put to far greater use than merely seeing out of.
“Why is nobody in the bars today?”
“Well, it's still early,” she explains, but with a worried look that tells me this probably isn't the whole story. “Also, our …”
I knew it!
“… numbers are way down because of the Games.”
Ah yes, the Games.
The Olympic Games.
After lesbianism, cheese, and ouzo, they're the biggest thing Greece ever gave us.
The event of Summer 2004, though, turned out to be disastrous for some of the islands. Drawn by the celebrations, thousands of tourists were sucked away to Athens, ripping a great hole in the local economy. Hopefully it's only temporary, but right now Joanna's not so sure. Her business is still suffering.
“Some people, they come back to us year after year. But new people,” she sighs, “they are not coming. And we need them to come. That's why your show will be so good for us. It'll bring tourists back.”
Er … well, you might want to watch an episode of it before you go leaping to crazy conclusions like that.
As she talks, she stares with undisguised lust toward the ocean and two athletic young guys mindlessly tossing a white beach ball back and forth in the surf.
“Okay, Cash,” Director Mark says. “Here's what's happening. You've arrived in this bar, you've been given a drink, and you see a woman at the table over there. So you sit beside her, the two of you get talking—chat chat chat, whatever you want to talk about about—and she invites you to a restaurant for dinner.”
“She does?”
“Yup.”
“So … I just run into her, and she immediately invites me out to dinner?”
“Yup.”
Hm, okay. Nothing unnatural or forced about that.
“Action.”
When I next turn around, by the magic of television, the cabana is no longer empty. There's a solitary barfly sitting at one of the tables, sipping a beer and staring lustfully at the two muscular guys tossing their ball. The woman's name is …
“Oh … hello.”
… Joanna. Our Joanna!
Joanna is now also doubling up as a colorful local character, apparently, since this bar is one of her regular haunts.
Caught off guard, I do my best to pretend I don't know her. “So are you a—” I begin.
“Yes.” She smiles before I can finish. “I am a—”
“—lesbian?”
“—local.”
“Oh.”
Joanna is most definitely not a lesbian, I can vouch for that, because I overheard her recounting her long, turgid life story to Tasha earlier, including how she's secretly in love with two men right now but can't decide which of her two paramours to run off with and which, by default, to make suicidal.
Rigid with nerves before the camera, she first pretends she doesn't speak English, which brings the scene grinding to a halt straight away. Then she starts bantering with someone off-camera and giggling. Finally, on the retake, she blows every last ounce of believability this chance meeting between two complete strangers might have had by saying, “H
ello, Cash” before I've even introduced myself and by being far more friendly than she'd ever be in a bar to a man she's never met before. Or maybe not. Maybe if she were a little less open and friendly to men in bars, she wouldn't be in the trouble she's in now, paramour-wise. Just thinking aloud.
Anyway, a special event is being held tonight at a restaurant nearby, she explains woodenly in her thick accent. “It's a very nice Greek night—a bouzouki night.”
“What's a bouzouki?” I ask.
“It's the most fun instrument in Greece.”
Remember the lyre? Well, you hollow out your tortoise in much the same way, only this time you give it a longer fret board. Played correctly, it sounds like a grand piano being thrown down two flights of stairs. Very traditional.
“We drink ouzo,” she continues, “we dance on the table, we dance under the table, we smash plates. Do you want to come?”
Not really. But our show is desperately short of material and I've always wanted to see someone dance under a table, so yes, I'd love to come.
“The Blue Sardine. End of the boardwalk. 7:30 tonight.”
Great.
“See you there,” Joanna says.
“Okay,” I say, and step out of frame as if I have somewhere else to go, which, as we know, is most certainly not the case at all.
“Cut!”
Congratulating ourselves on a successful morning's work, we break for lunch and head for a boardwalk restaurant Joanna picked out for us. En route, she eases in close to me and begins asking questions, some about the show, others more personal.