The Tree of Idleness

I opened my eyes to find that I had pushed my bathing trunks down and was stroking myself. Dusk was approaching, and the villa was whispering to me. Or was that the wind filtering through the pine trees higher up on the slopes of the Kyrenia Range mountains? And the surf. I could hear the surf. And the masculine, sing song voices of the Turkish men rising up from the Tree of Idleness café down the slope in the Bellapais square.

I rose up from the chaise lounge, like a zombie, stripped off my bathing trunks, and went through the French doors into the bedroom. I pulled on a pair of baggy cargo pant shorts and a mesh athletic T and a pair of sandals and moved toward the front door. I made a short detour into the studio. All this time and the painting wasn't finished. He still didn't trust me. We could not be complete, safe until he did. I could not be strong; as long as he questioned me, I could not trust myself. I was so weak.

I drifted down the narrow cobble-stone street, drawn by the light laughter and joking of the many-toned masculine voices. I sat at a café table beside a trellis supporting a rampant-bloomed climbing rose vine, just like the vibrant backdrop against which Val had painted me in England but had denied me on the canvas, and ordered a bottle of Cankaya wine. There was a brief silence across the square when I moved to the table, and then the chatter resumed. They seemed to be talking about me, though. They were ogling me and I ogled them.

It wasn't long before one of the younger, more handsome, more adventuresome of the Turkish men drifted over to my table and sat down and wondered if I might share my wine with him. That was fine with me. His smile was beautifully infectious. Once seated, though, he didn't want wine; he wanted Efes beer. This was fine with me; more wine for me. In time, two of us friends, also very presentable and good-humored, joined us and were more than pleased and convivial and attentive when I ordered more beer—and wine.

Later that night, the four of us stumbled up to the Bellapais villa. The first of the young men who had come to my table fucked me on the iron bed, me on my back with my legs spread and him standing between my legs and commanding my full attention with his flashing, laughing eyes as he enjoyed me in long languid strokes, while one of the other men got the fire going. When the first of the Turks was finished, he turned me on my belly, and the stouter, thicker-cocked of his two friends knelt at my head with his knees wedged below my chest and face fucked me while the third, profusely hirsute and muscular young man thrust hard and long and noisily inside me from the rear. The two exchanged places and the stouter of the Turks stretched me to the limit with his throbbing cock.

We all took a midnight swim in the lap pool on the terrace then, and they each fucked me again on the chaise lounge before prompting me to empty my billfold for them and stumbling jovially and satisfied back down the cobble-stone street to the coffee shop in the square, where the men's evening was still in full swing.

* * * *

Three days later, after a bout of heavy drinking on my part and a very satisfying but ultimately bitter sweet fucking of Val in our iron bed in front of a roaring fire, I awoke to an empty house. I called his name from the bed, wanting him again before we started our day. But there was nothing but silence. A strange silence. I heard no crashing of the Mediterranean surf, no masculine babbling from the square below. No whispering from the house. The house had won; it need not whisper enticingly to me again.

I knew he was gone before I rose from the bed. I pulled out bureau drawers and opened the closet, only to see what belonged to me, nothing that belonged to Val. I took up my robe and wrapped it around my shoulders and tied off the sash. I padded out to the study. There, on the top of the desk was the damning document. I looked down at the top sheet, and saw my own handwriting.

And then back down to the square in the twilight after dinner with those fairy lights in the olive trees around the fringe of the stone café terrace, and, in that soft light and twittering laughter of the Mediterranean men and wisps of strong Turkish tobacco drifting up, eyeing and being eyed until I got the certain look from one I fancied and took him back up to the villa and let him fuck me in long, slow, sweeping strokes on the terrace under the stars.

I was sure I had not left that out on the desk for Val to see.

I moved into the studio area of the room, hoping that I was wrong, that I would find him there, happily painting on our portrait. But, of course I wasn't wrong. The only evidence of Val still there was the painting. I went over and stood in front of it. It took me several moments to really see it, to realize what he had done to it. The painting was finished now, but it no longer was a painting of Val and me at the table, saluting each other with raised glasses of wine. Where his figure had been was now, once again, a starkly sun-drenched ochre-painted stone wall fronted by an empty café chair. Val had evaporated. I knew then that Val irrevocably was lost to me. I sat alone at the table in the painting now. Had I really looked so sad in that painting all along?

I went back to the bedroom and sank onto the iron bed and cried myself to sleep. When I awoke, it was dusk. I rose, pulled on a pair of shorts, a T, and a pair of sandals, and gingerly made my way down the narrow cobble-stone road to the café in the Bellapais square. I picked out a table beside the trellis holding up the cascading vine of roses as darkness descended and the fairy lights in the olive trees around the fringe of the stone café terrace began to twinkle. And, in that soft light and twittering laughter of the Mediterranean men and wisps of strong Turkish tobacco drifting up, I eyed the men and I was eyed in return until I got the certain look from one I fancied. I spoke briefly with him and his equally hunky friend and took them back up to the villa and let them fuck me, in succession and then together, in long, slow, sweeping strokes on the terrace under the stars.

For the remainder of my time on the island, I frantically searched out the best artist I could find in Kyrenia, and when I found one, I had him paint me out of the painting as well—I could not bear being there alone—so that all that was left were two empty chairs and a table in front of an ochre-colored, sun-drenched stone wall.

I left the painting in the villa, hung over the desk where my damning thoughts had been confined to paper and discovered by my lost lover. Temporarily lost, I hoped. I knew I would be drawn back to the Bellapais villa—and I hoped that Val would be returning with me. And when he did, he would restore the two of us to that painting. Regardless of my urgings, I knew it was the two of us, together, eternally, who were meant to be in that painting and that it would have to remain devoid of humanity until we both were there.

Chapter 2: Kent Possession

I had come there to my small rented villa in Bellapais for rest and inspiration and to escape from the crowded fast-paced life of America. As a writer myself, I had been enchanted by the romance of taking the British writer Lawrence Durrell's villa for six months, interested in seeing what inspiration it might hold for me, after I had found a unique and magical voice in the novels that formed his Alexandria Quartet—books he had written while living in the villa twenty years before. And I had soon been captivated by the island's rough bareness and the moods of the sea, by the old houses and the yachts moored in the small harbors. And by the men. Always at the villa my days had been filled by the men.

The villa itself seemed to raise my heat and urge me to go down to the café of the Tree of Idleness and return with company.

Ahh, the days of drifting down to the square after lunch and sitting around ogling the local Turkish Cypriot men and letting them ogle me. Until I got that certain look and took him up to my small rented villa and let him vigorously and noisily fuck my brains out on a lounger under the sun on the terrace overlooking the Mediterranean.

The villa itself always seemed to hum in the afterglow, as if it was pleased to be filled by the sights and sounds of sex, whether by day or night.

Or down to the square in the twilight after dinner, with those fairy lights in the olive trees around the fringe of the café's stone terrace. And, in that soft light, hearing the twittering laughter of the Mediterranean men and watching the wisps of strong Turkish tobacco smoke drifting up, as I was eyeing and being eyed. Until I got that certain look, and took him back up to the villa and let him fuck me in long, slow, sweeping strokes on the terrace under the stars.

While I lived in the villa I wanted more and more of what I found available under the Tree of Idleness in the village square, and I wanted it wilder and rougher. I was infatuated by what I had found, and I felt the villa tugging at me and urging me on to ever more abandoned behavior.

And maybe, if he was really, really beautiful and masterful, taking him back to my bed for a night of sleep broken up with brief periods of wanton lust, waking to the feel of a hot poker at my hole and a wheedling whisper for permission at my ear. Sighing "yes" and arching back to accept the homage of his throbbing need to be deep inside me. Breakfasting on the terrace by the small pool. Then pulling him into the pool and wrapping my legs around his waist, and letting the swirling water soften the rhythmic in and outing as I threw my head back and watched the morning Mediterranean light filter through the sighing branches of the olive trees. Thinking then about my after-lunch visit to the café on the square, already assessing which eyes I would respond to that day.

But then there was a day when there had been few men about at the café when I went there, and the rough handling I'd had from half a dozen men the night before had left me wanting something different. So that for a change a beautiful young man's big dark bedroom eyes and demure long lashes had caught my attention and my thoughts.

He was staring at me from several tables away, his eyes filled with longing in a serious brooding way, and somehow that afternoon it had been him I had taken back up the hill to my villa. And he was carrying a bag I hadn't noticed had been sitting under his table. Halfway up the path I can remember being uncertain and fleetingly regretting my choice. But I knew I could go back to the café that evening and find another man more to my taste. Bigger, stronger, rougher. The brooding young man accompanying me was only for the afternoon.

At the villa, it was I who fucked his brains out, as he surrendered to me, lying back and lifting and opening his legs wide. His big eyes closing and the long lashes fluttering against his cheeks as he threw his head back when I entered him. His cries and whimpers at my rough taking of him satisfying my need to possess forcefully for a change.

But when he was naked, I had found that his lithe olive-skinned body was surprisingly strong and muscular and flexible, his arms strong, his fingers long and slender and alive. And his cock was large. Large and thick. But it was my turn to fuck someone. He was still there in the evening when I was finally exhausted and fell into a fitful sleep, wondering if I should tell him to go.

Like most of the men I brought home, he spoke English with a broken local accent and I gave little thought to who he was. But he knew who I was, and seemed impressed that I could write well, though I was hardly famous then. I had only had one book published, in my native America. Not what I would have expected a young man living in Turkish Cyprus to have read, and it amused me, but I gave it no more thought.

I awoke early the next morning to find him sitting on the bed, gazing at me broodingly with his bag in his lap. Then his eyes dropped to the bag and he pulled out a worn copy of my book and his fingers moved to open the pages and he read passages from it in his quaint accented English, and told me how wonderful he thought it was.

I took the book from him, flattered at his admiration, and he looked up at me then with a small smile on his lips and complete concentration on his face, and it was a look that also connected me to him. Then his eyes dropped to watch my hands as I signed my name and wrote a short dedication in the front. "To Lawrence, with thanks and fond memories."

"I am named after the first great writer who lived here, many years ago. After Lawrence Durrell," he said shyly.

When I gave the book back, he placed it carefully in his bag, and I ran my hand up his inner thigh and between his spread legs and began to stroke his partly full, long, thick cock. It was a tool that had surprised me on such a lean, young man, a rod I would have wanted to feel making its way into my ass if I had thought he wanted to take and possess me. And would do it roughly.

But I was the one doing the possessing with him, and as I stroked him up, I moved my mouth to his and pushed him back on the bed. He lifted his legs for me again, and when I ended the kiss, I began tonguing at his hole, which quickly loosened to my attention. Then I was holding my cock and pressing the head to his entrance and beginning another journey inside his passage. He arched back, surrendering to me again, and I reached out and stroked a hand through the trail of hair running up his belly to his pecs and pinched his nipples, making him gasp and reach for me, to pull me closer to him. But I stayed back, watching him stroking his own tool as he felt my length stuffing him deep.

His beautiful cock spouted cum, and I came myself at the sight of it, before leaning in and licking the cream from his belly and chest. Then with a deep sigh, I slipped out of him and went to shower and dress.

After that, I was hungry and needed food, and we left the villa together, with him carrying the bag he had so carefully returned my book to. He shook my hand seriously as we parted where the laneway joined a wider lane just before we reached the village square, and he shyly reminded me that his name was Lawrence. Then he turned along the path that ran to the back of the village as I turned toward the café on the square among the olive trees, and I forgot him.

Inside Sami Ergun's café, the Tree of Idleness, the atmosphere was the same as always, but different in some way, and I was ogled by a dark young man with rough strong hands, who I found when I took him home, was very forceful and full of stamina, so that I moaned and cried out how he was taking me as I had never been taken before.

Then I had to finish some research in Turkey and left on the Monday, flying to Istanbul. But a couple of weeks later I was back at the villa. On that first night, I walked down to the café in the soft warm air of the evening, coming upon the wonderful sight of the fairy lights in the old olive trees and welcomed by the whisper of men's voices and their quiet laughter.

The place was busy, and I settled onto a stool to ogle the men and wait for that look from one I wanted to look at me. But almost at once someone started playing the baglama, the favorite instrument of traditional Turkish musicians, and there was a man singing and I looked over and saw that it was him, my recent lover, Lawrence, sitting to one side of the baglama player on a chair, his look brooding and intense as he sang the words to some traditional melody.

The baglama player was lost in the beauty of his music. I had learned his name was Kemal, and I had tried to attract his attention for weeks. He was one of the most handsome of the young men who came to the square. But he only had attention for his music—and for the young student who sat beside him, playing the second baglama. That was Basir, I knew, the son of my Landlady, Layla Ergun, Lawrence Durrell's old friend. I had met the boy, shy but winsome, down at Layla's house in the harbor town of Kyrenia when I had picked up the key to the villa.

Lawrence, the singer, looked up at some point and saw me, and for a moment a connection flared briefly between us, and after that his eyes frequently fixed intensely on me. All the other men's eyes were on the three achingly beautiful young men as they played and sang, and I felt oddly alone as the men who usually ogled me admired them instead. But it was the music, I told myself, that made them watch the trio.

Then a beautiful man who had made forceful love to me before was giving me that look, and he rose and left the café and I met him in the dark on the cobbled lane, and we made our way together up to my villa.

He was as rough with me as he had been before, and after he had taken me on the lounger on the terrace, we went inside to the bedroom, where he pushed me back on the bed and, holding my hands high above my head, fucked down into me, his cock circling and pumping shallowly, and I was moaning and had closed my eyes, moving my hips in time with his, lost in heat. But then he stopped moving, and I felt his weight shift. I looked up and saw him backing off, pulling out of me.

"Hey, No, no. Don't stop," I cried huskily, reaching for him in confusion and then seeing someone behind him.

It was Lawrence, looking wild and angry and pulling my partner back. Pulling him away as I tried to pull him back to me.

"Hey, what's going on?" I shouted, confused.

And even in the aroused state I was in, the change in the look of Lawrence's dark eyes was obvious and made me frightened.

In a moment my companion was free and pulling on his clothes in a rush. But Lawrence was gripping my ankles and jerked my body roughly down the bed. I tried to grab hold of something to stop being pulled to the floor, but Lawrence was surprisingly strong, and his big dark eyes were blazing black with fury. And I couldn't get a grip on anything but the sheets.

"What are you doing?" I yelped.

"You, you American writer, you . . . ," he hissed at me.

My earlier companion was hurrying out of the door as my feet hit the floor hard, and Lawrence gripped my upper arms tightly, his long lean fingers biting into them like steel hooks.

I was now as much frightened as confused and aimed a kick at him that landed badly. In reply, he gave my face the back of his free hand, and I cried out in shock, feeling the pain of a small cut in my lip and briefly tasting blood.

"I am a real man," he hissed, "Do you think I would have let you take me like, like that, if I had known what you really are?"

It took me a moment to understand what he was saying. "You didn't have to do anything, I didn't force you," I replied in confused helplessness.

I understood what it meant to be a real man in Turkish Cyprus, that it was acceptable to fuck and be sucked off by another man, but not considered manly to be the one taken. But I was totally confused, because Lawrence had given himself to me so willingly.

He was dragging me out of the bedroom, and I struggled to pull free. To kick him, to do anything to stop whatever was going on. He was no longer the lean and gentle young man I had fucked the previous weekend. Now his eyes were black ice and cold, his mouth thin and cruel. And I was shocked to find he was far too strong for me.

Lawrence dragged me through the doorway into the courtyard of my villa, where he held me by the upper arm as he pulled the wrought iron gate that I never used, closed over the entrance to the house. It banged into place with a heavy clang. Then he pushed me back against it, hard.

Anyone high up on the adjoining roofs and houses could see us there. Me naked and looking out, Lawrence still dressed and hunched over, holding me there, one long, elegant hand grasping both my wrists together painfully as he reached for something. He changed hands briefly, then he had his shirt off and pushed my wrists high up, stretching me, using his extra height and power.