Ugly, isn't it?

“Don’t leave me here!” I thought to myself.  As the ferry rumbled away leaving my friend P and me – and no one else – on an unfeasibly remote Greek island, I felt little panic moths nibbling away at my stomach lining.  How would I cope with a week on an island whose inhabitants would fit comfortably on a single bendy bus?   Brought up in London, even sprawling Berlin is small enough to make me feel a little claustrophobic at times.  Here there was one bus, one bar, one restaurant, one priest, one resident foreigner (a Pole, referred to as “the Pole”) and just two gays – us.

Chances of gay action were therefore precisely zero.  P is a friend strictly without benefits, while the only other tourists were five buff, dead-eyed, apparently straight young Greek men who spent all day drinking beer and discussing basketball (so Greek-speaking P told me) ignoring their lithe, dead eyed young girlfriends looking on in mute protest.  True, there were a few bearish fisherman types lolling round the port playing backgammon, but while the odd lewd bit of ancient pottery gives many false hopes that many Greeks still swing, no one gets away with anything surreptitious in a community of only 200.  Still, what the island lacked in amenities, it made up for in rocks – they were everywhere, making the wild, rugged terrain look like a slightly dessicated version of Mordor.

Rather jaded as I have been lately about the gay merry-go-round, this wasn’t a problem – but one thought did strike me.  Lying under a shady bush on a deserted beach with P (I burn like buggery), I realised that my holidays are increasingly resembling honeymoons, just without the sex.  Last time I went away, to Morocco, I was with another old friend with whom I was routinely mistaken for a couple.  Here once again, the sight of two men alone on a far-flung island had something matrimonial about it, equally false.   Wasn’t this a bit odd?

Don't let ancient statuary mislead you about contemporary Greek mores

Possibly, but it’s an experience many of my friends, gay and straight, are going through.  Realising as their thirties draw on that we aren’t going to fall effortlessly into relationships we’d really choose to stay in, lots of us are making alternative plans to make sure we get the lives we want.  My single female friends are starting to consider having children without a committed live-in partner rather than waiting for some imaginary, infinitely fertile Mr. Right.  Meanwhile, men like me have noticed that, possibly because we don’t have partners, our friendships are often more close and supportive than other people’s, and that we already have the love and support around us to see us through.  On our trip, my friend P was infinitely generous, kind, funny and interesting – and without his enthusiasm I would never have seen that obscure, rocky island, which I must grudgingly admit was wildly beautiful.  Coming back on the ferry, I was sad to see it turn to a distant speck, but felt peaceful, cared-for and happy.  My life isn’t going to go according to the hazily conceived plan I had in childhood – but seeing that involved a wife and kids and a semi in the ‘burbs, I can’t bring myself to regret it.  In fact, I hope the honeymoon continues.

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