What If . . . .?

As I prepare for my trip to Greece in October I am reminded of the first time I was in the country in August of 1962, arriving in fact the day after or the day Marilyn Monroe died, a fact I learned because to my intense satisfaction I, a professor of ancient Greek, could construe the modern Greek in the headlines of the newspaper.  I was going to be traveling with a student of mine, a fellow ten years my junior, and our plan was to meet at the airport, where he would come to meet my plane.  Stupidly enough, we had no back-up plan, and since he absent mindedly stayed on the observation deck roof of the airport too long, and I and my fellow passengers had long since disembarked, and when he came downstairs finally we did not find ourselves in the throng, and of course there were no cell phones in 1962, he went on back to the downtown thinking to find me somehow.  I was alone in Athens airport and did not know what to do, but a young man with whom I had struck up a conversation suggested I come with him to a hotel suite, his father, a wealthy French businessman, maintained.  It was a strange evening since the young man, maybe all of twenty, was a European playboy, aimlessly traveling, this time to Turkey, as I remember it.  He invited me to come along, mentioning yachts in the southern Mediterranean and other fun things.  It was entirely disconcerting, especially since he was the kind of guy I only saw in French movies, not exactly an airhead, and certainly very intelligent, but very unfocused.  I remember that we had sex sometime in the course of the evening, more, I think, because he sensed my proclivities and thought it was only right and proper to indulge them rather than from an ardent desire for same sex activity.  In the morning I remembered to call a colleague of mine who was spending the summer studying at the American School of Classical Studies for his advice only to be told by the operator there that my friend was not at the school that week, and then suddenly wanting to know if I were the same person who called yesterday, mentioning the name of my prospective summer companion.  He gave me the name and telephone number of the hotel that had been left in the message, and I quickly called, and with great relief made contact.  Within the hour, I was greeting my missing companion who had rushed over to get me at the hotel where I had spent the night, and I had said goodbye and thanked my new friend who regarded me and my friend with amused curiosity.  And so life went on as planned, whereas I might have been swept up in an Alain Delon type bikini clad beach intrigue played out across the Levant.  Ah, those fantasies!