Yesterday's Decisions

*** Content Warning: Contains sexual situations. ***

I never thought I’d come back here. My father had brought me to Cyprus as a gift to celebrate leaving school at eighteen.

I stood in the grounds of the Forest Park Hotel in Platres. It had been modernized, but I could still see it as it was then. It was more sophisticated than anything I had encountered before. I ate salami for the first time. I drank cocktails. I tried to teach myself to dive into the pool from the high board. I was in the process of becoming an adult.

My father had traveled a lot, and although I’m sure he knew about the history of the hotel, he wasn’t intimidated by it. This was a man who had cycled around Europe as a young man in the 1930s. Cultural and language differences didn’t bother him. He would strike up a conversation with anyone. I had only traveled alone once before, and I was that odd teenage mixture of confidence and fear. It was a safe place as far as I was concerned. Back in 1970, no one worried about a teenaged girl walking alone in a strange place. I was fascinated that men were starting to take interest in me.

I had just made my first adult decision – I was not going to go to university because I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. It seemed a waste to spend three years at Oxbridge getting a degree to prepare me for nothing in particular. My schoolteachers had tried to push me towards reading Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford. They wanted me to be a data point in their success statistics. After looking at the various universities with my father, I’d decided that I should get a job instead. Neither of my parents interfered with my decision. At the time, I didn’t realize how lucky I was.

I had been writing poetry to keep myself sane since the depression emerged when I was thirteen years old. I was actually quite good, but undisciplined. I didn’t study the art form, or take note of word choices, images, themes and structure. I just opened a vent in my mind and spat out the toxic buildup in my head. Most days, I would walk down the road from the hotel, looking for a peaceful place to stop and write. One particular afternoon, a car pulled up beside me. The driver was a man, about ten years older than me. A Greek Cypriot, by the look of him. Thick black hair, and a serious face. I thought I had seen him earlier, near the hotel pool. He asked me if I wanted to go for a drive. I stared at him, intrigued, but shook my head. “No, I’m just going to find a place to write some poetry.”

He smiled. “Would you believe me if I told you I write poetry too?”

I believed him. He looked so cool, so sure of himself. I nodded, then turned as if to walk on. He spoke up again. “Would you like to go out tonight?"

I stopped and said “OK. What time?”

He said he’d pick me up at the hotel after dinner. That worked well for me – I didn’t want to alarm my father by disappearing for the whole evening.

The next morning, over breakfast, my father commented that there was a healthy maidenly blush on my cheeks. I assumed it was a careful enquiry into the status of my virginity. He need not have worried. I was still virgo intacta, but only marginally so. From the age of thirteen, I had been approached by young men in the cinema or on the train, and they had kissed and groped me, and in some cases exposed themselves requesting a hand job. My world had changed when I was that age – menstruation, boys, and depression. What a trifecta. But this young man had been different, and I was falling in love.

A year later I returned to Platres alone, staying in the same hotel. Demetrios and I had been writing letters to each other. He had sent me cards and poems. I had started work in London, and before leaving for Cyprus I informed the guys in the office that I planned to have sex with him. They had laughed at my determination – it seemed like excessive planning and expense when I could have got laid at home.

When we met up he spoke to me about his life. He had spent time in other countries. He had recently completed his national service, and he told me about one of his trainees pulling the pin from a hand grenade by mistake. He had grabbed it and thrown it to safety before it exploded. As we talked, I realized that he had life experiences and I was fresh out of school with all that ahead of me.

Losing my questionable virginity was a strange experience. I remember him making the mistake of leaving the room when I was partially undressed. I covered myself, and he shook his head and unwrapped me again. I remember he was gentle and had the biggest penis I had ever seen (and I had seen a few by then). I remember sitting up in bed and staring at the blood marking on the sheet. I didn’t know how I felt about it. He saw me staring, and said quietly “You won’t miss it.”

In the morning, I knew what I had to do. If I stayed with Demetrios, I would never live a life of my own. He would overpower me with his knowledge and experience, and I would be in his shadow, not a fully developed person. I packed my bags and left for Kyrenia. Cyprus is a small country. I’m sure he could have found me if he wanted to. I spent a few days playing tourist, and the owner of the hotel started to take me out on dates. When I left Cyprus, I was older and wiser, and determined to live a life that was mine, not someone else’s. Cyprus remained a magical place for me, but I had no intention of ever returning.

When I stepped off the plane again in Nicosia, fifty years had flown past. Cyprus has changed, of course. The brief war between the Greeks and Turks on the island in 1974 displaced many of the inhabitants as the land was divided. The hotel I had stayed at in Kyrenia was no longer there; the former Greek owner must be long dead by now. The UN Peacekeeping Force had been evident when I was there, but now it controls a buffer zone across the country.

But the things that had made me fall in love with, and on, the island were still there. The scent of honeysuckle and jasmine still hang in the air, as I remember all those years ago. Resulting in a wave of perfumed heat that caresses you as you pass by. The shocking white of the red-roofed houses against an azure sky gives the villages a romantic feel. The beauty of the Orthodox churches and the stark hills and olive trees make me feel at home. The sea is clear and blue, the Troodos mountains covered in both evergreen and deciduous trees, with the scent of pine and cedar evident as you walk through them.

I was no longer awed by the Forest Park Hotel. I had lived in five countries, on three different continents. I’d trekked through the Andes to Machu Picchu and drifted down the Amazon. I’d visited South Africa while apartheid was still in force and visited the Soviet Union before it fell. I’d driven across Europe stopping wherever seemed tempting – as I imagine my father had done on his bicycle nearly 100 years ago. I stayed in first class hotels, ate at world class restaurants. I’d lived close to the poverty line several times.

Had I ever loved again? It’s hard to say. I married twice, and both were good men in their own very different ways. Neither measured up to the one I left behind. But leaving all this behind allowed me to live the life I have lived, and that means a lot.

I stayed a week at the hotel in Platres. I did not look for old friends. But I once again found myself walking down the road each day, looking for a quiet place to sit and write.