We passed by the new house to have a hot water boiler installed. The house has solar heated water but this isn’t much cop during the cooler months when hot water is most needed to keep our important little places well sponged and in tip-top condition. Canny Hanife, our new matriarchal landlady, popped round with the front door keys and a tray of tea with fancies on the side. She was followed by dusky lad in cheap tight jeans with more than ample tools. The boiler was up in no time. The one drawback to this dual fuel solution is that one of us will have to use an old rickety ladder to climb onto the roof to turn the solar system on and off.
Category: Turkish Men
Get the Madam
We suspect a couple of waiters at a local Yalıkavak hostelry are just a little bit gay. Jamal is in his forties and unconventionally unmarried. It is the custom for Turkish men to greet each other with a firm handshake and a gentle touching of cheeks, left and right. Jamal on the other hand, proffers a limp hand and purses his lips to land a big sloppy kiss on his male victims. Young Rasheed is a hirsute, handsome chap with bad teeth. He is a local boy who lives with his mum, wears high-waisted trousers and smokes a cigarette like Bette Davis. He is adamant that he will never get married. Get the madam.
Bedlam in Bodrum
We took a sunny dolly ride to Bodrum to see how the ambitious townscape transformation is progressing. Much has been done since our last inspection but there’s still much to do and so little time. Work so far has revealed the grand plan. Tired old crazy-paving is being replaced by top-notch slabs and the marina road is being narrowed to a single lane to provide a broad costa-style esplanade to saunter along on balmy summer evenings. Nuisance parking will be banished and the pestering from the hassle bars should be reduced.
Only about a third of the new Iberianesque promenade is complete. The re-paving of Bar Street continues apace though side sokaks resemble the Gaza Strip. It’s still a mystery what is proposed for the main road into town which is being ripped apart by Caterpillar diggers leaving deep trenches in their mighty mechanical wake. I assume this is all part of the project to upgrade the water mains.
The start of the season ominously approaches. A legion of swarthy lads in cheap jeans, sweaty vests and rusty tools has been drafted in from the east in a frantic rush to complete the work on time. Already early bird visitors of the elderly Teutonic type in straw hats and socked sandals have landed. They waddle through the rubble in bemusement. Bedlam in Berlin? Unheard of. Finished by Easter? Not a hope.
Bubba’s Gobbler
Perking the Pansies has exceeded 50,000 hits in just five short months. How did this happen? I know the winter months are long and bleak but we all really do need to get out more. As the orbit of the Earth slowly warms the northern hemisphere with longer days, pansy fans will emerge bleary eyed from centrally heated hibernation. We can free ourselves from our enforced virtual lives and enjoy the bountiful summer. Alas, I guess my hit rate will plummet accordingly. Oh well, maybe my bacon will be saved by renewed interest from a wintering south plunged into darkness. So far, South America, southern Africa and Australasia have been immune to my pansy pulling power.
To lift my spirits I thought I’d celebrate my minor success with two pansy parables from America. In Blighty I was casually thumbing through the gaypers (the free gay publications distributed to pansy establishments). In between the relentless diet of pop, porn, prossies and pec pics I came across a more serious journalistic piece. Called ‘Distant Voices and Gay Lives’ the writer David McGilliveray profiled long forgotten pansy pioneers. The subject that most caught my eye was dashing William Haines who was a major box office star in the twenties and early thirties. One of his first talkies, ‘Way Out West’ (1930) included the immortal line “I’m the wildest pansy you’ll ever pick.” Obviously Billy never visited Bodrum.
Haines’ stubborn refusal to stay in the closet and play it straight eventually killed off his Hollywood career. He didn’t seem to mind and became an interior designer of some note. He met his partner Jimmie Shields in 1926 and they stayed together until William’s death in 1973. Three months later Jimmie killed himself because he found it “…impossible to go on alone and I’m much too lonely.” This is a tragic though strangely tender tale that belies the notion that gay men can’t sustain a relationship beyond a nanosecond. Joan Crawford called William and Jimmie the happiest married couple in Hollywood. I asked Liam if he would consider suicide if anything terrible happened to me. He said he was considering suicide because nothing terrible has happened to me.
From the delicious to the ridiculous, the second entertaining tale concerns my namesake and distant cousin Jack Scott, turkey trapper. Jack Scott’s affair with wild turkeys spans more than 30 years. Read all about Jack’s ever popular box and the legend of Bubba’s gobbler here.
And finally, spare a thought for the spring-loaded wannabe VOMIT who googled “im a woman wanting casual sex with a man in turkey where would i go” and returned Perking the Pansies. The lusty lass must have been devastated to find friends of Dorothy. Of course, the obvious answer is jump on the next plane for the ride of your life (or so the local boys think).
Nutty Professor
Tariq the Toothed was very pleased to see us when we got back to Tepe Houses. He shook my hand with an iron grip only Turkish men possess and nearly broke my fingers. It seemed to entertain him. He may be the hired help but he was making sure I knew who was really in charge.
Our new neighbour moved in while we were in Blighty. He is Turkish with a shock of wild silver hair and long unkempt salt and pepper beard. He walks around semi-naked regardless of temperature and resembles an elder caveman from One Million Years BC. He’s having huge shelves installed in the house so we assume he is some kind of nutty professor from Istanbul.
My Family Jewels
London calls again. As we waited for our taxi to take us to Bodrum airport, Tariq our newly dentured caretaker playfully tweaked my nipples and tried to push me into a flower bed. He has also taken to pointing to my lower furniture and snapping his fingers in a scissor-like action. I’m not sure if he is referring to my intact prepuce (which would be amusing enough to anyone who’s never seen one) or his desire to rid me of my family jewels altogether and keep me as his personal eunuch. Maybe there was some truth in that old Ottoman adage that women are for procreation and men are for recreation.
Mother’s Ruin
I rode the dolly to a bar we know in Turgutreis. I was warmly welcomed by Mehmet, the jolly owner. As usual he was very much the worse for wear, indulging his infamous tendency to drink the profits. After initial reticence his new waiter started to give me the serious glad eye. Tall, slim and handsome, in a previous incarnation I might well have been tempted. These days I am a fine and faithful married man. In any case, I know through bitter experience that encounters with Turkish men are invariably complicated and often require recompense for services rendered. My advanced inebriation was such that I couldn’t tell if this young man’s favour was genuine or if he was just another member of the gay for pay brigade.
Discounting the waiter’s flirtation, I engaged Mehmet in drunken conversation. I was supping gin. He ordered one of the waiters to fetch the Bombay Sapphire from the store room and proceeded to lavish it upon me. My reputation as a drinker is legendary and Bombay Sapphire is my favourite tipple, but even I couldn’t handle the quantity of mother’s ruin he overpoured into my glass. I tipped much it on the floor when his back was turned. Sensing I had reached my limit, I paid my bill, made my excuses and staggered off to the taxi rank. The winsome waiter waved ruefully as he watched his bounty disappear into the night.
Don’t Mention the War
The Turkish scooter fraternity rarely wear crash helmets. For the few that do, Second World War style German helmets have become this year’s latest must have accessory. Young men foolishly speed along the pot holed rain-soaked roads like extras from ‘The Great Escape’ suicidally weaving through the traffic in reckless abandon. I doubt these fashion hats offer much cranial protection as they look a trifle flimsy and the riders seldom bother to fasten the chin strap. These boys have a death wish. I can’t see the craze catching on across the water. The Greeks have long memories of real life German military bikers washing their boots in the sea on their side of the Aegean in 1941.
Pounds and Porn
I was casually surfing the net and stumbled across a web page published in 2008 that promoted Turkey as the low cost destination of choice for those wishing to live out their dotage in the sun. In between the usual flannel and hype I found a couple of blasé declarations that leapt from the page and beat me viciously about the face. The first stated that electricity costs “should be no more than £10 per month” and the second is that “Turkey will remain a low cost alternative for years to come”. Even if this was true at the time it certainly isn’t true now. Our last electricity bill was over 80 quid and the cost of our daily essentials seem to rise month on month. I don’t know how the locals manage and, with plummeting interest rates, I’m not surprised some of my fellow compatriots are struggling to make ends meet. I hear talk that, like the stateless nomadic tribes of yesteryear, emigreys are migrating en-masse to greener, cheaper pastures in the land of the Bulgars. We won’t be joining the camel train any time soon but if it carries on like this Liam and I will have to give up the sauce. Never!
Talking of web surfing, I was amused by the “gay hairy Turkish men” search that led someone to click on Perking the Pansies. I hope he (and assume it was a he) didn’t get too hot under the collar by the absence of hard core images of swarthy, hirsute men laying bare their assets and doing what Ottoman men have done for centuries. Now I’m getting hot under the collar.
Educating Rashida
Tariq has acquired a brand new set of dashing, shiny dentures so Tariq is toothless no longer. He proudly grins all over the site flashing his novel knashers at random passers by. Tariq and the missus are archetypal village types; she in a head scarf and clashing floral baggy pantaloons and he in a tatty vest with a fag permanently jammed in his gob – honest people with simple needs. It is to their credit that they are raising their two daughters as thoroughly modern types.
Tariq’s eldest daughter came by the house waving a piece of paper which she handed to me with much excitement. I thought it was yet another bill but it was her last school report. I called Liam out to the patio and we examined it together. She had received tip top marks in virtually every subject (except English, unfortunately) and beamed with pride. Quite right too. We were chuffed that she thought to show us, and the next day bought her a box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray. My eternal hope is that her parents resist the pressure to marry her off at 16 to some country cousin.
We mentioned her glowing report to Clement, but he simply doesn’t approve of educating Turkish girls “lest they get above their station.” Honestly!
Perking the Pansies 