Elani in Normal entries

I’ve been thinking about people, songs and places that I haven’t thought about in years. Compulsively, not like a passing fancy, but in depth; old friends, old attractions, old acquaintances. The last couple of days I’ve been thinking about Elani Touleoudis (I’m pretty damn sure I spelled the last name wrong, though allow for the possibility that I spelled it so wrong I managed to get it right. Phonetically it was like tow-lee-otis). Elani was memorable, as was her husband who really was a friend of mine. Elani showed up because she was the female part of an arranged marriage. I met her almost exactly at the same time her husband had.

George (Elani’s husband) and Demetri were sent to the States when they were young men or old kids Depending on your idea of 17 and 19. I’m not sure Demetri was ever a kid and George refused to grow up, emotionally, last time I saw him he looked like the wrong end of the portrait of Dorian Gray. There was some reason just the boys were sent, I don’t remember it. The parents remained in the small coastal city on the Greek piece of the Mediterranean. This was where the marriage between George and Elani was arranged when one was still in diapers and the other probably kept a sling shot in his back pocket.

In the States without parental supervision and a lithe greek boys body, George proceeded to fuck anything or anyone that consented. He was and still is one of the few people I’ve met who was genuinely bi-sexual. His taste was always a mystery to me. I mean we talked about sex about as often as any two friends over the age of eighteen talk about sex (When I met him I was twenty and he was late twenties). But, even if I wanted to, I could never manage to phrase “Why on earth would you fuck that?” and I didn’t want to, not because I wasn’t curious, but it seems like a hostile question.

Elani was beautiful, with the possible exception of my current GF, she might be the most physically beautiful woman I have ever personally met ( I’d say person but I know how poor I am at estimating the sexually or aesthetic beauty of men. Several years back it was trendy for gay men to ask straight ones what made them straight, a twist on the honest bigotry of straight men’s assumption that homosexuality was a deliberate choice. A friend of mine asked me that. I explained in explicit detail how silly I thought a dick looked and a man with defined musculature made me think of sweat and pain not sex. It’s true, I’m neither impressed nor depressed with that answer. I assume that homosexuals of both genders feel that way about the opposite gender.). Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that they both had a lot of greek in their backgrounds and features. Elani 100 percent, GF 50 percent.

GF is one of the most polite and proper person I know, for all her exoticness and travel she has the social acumen of the Midwesterner and the social grace of European royalty. Elani was mean as a snake. For her first year in Portland she was mean as a snake in greek, although her body language and timbre told you she was obviously mad, if you didn’t understand the content you didn’t know how visceral her distaste of you was. Of all my accidental achievements (stuff I done did without intending to or even knowing how) having Elani like me was among the most rewarding. She didn’t like many people and thought anyone who was a friend of her husbands was a natural idiot and part goat. She would curse George out if I came in and didn’t have a drink immediately in front of me. I was also privileged to join her in the illegal consumption of ouzo. It’s hard to get a liquor license in Oregon, there are a lot more pubs in Portland than bars. The place didn’t serve ouzo, they didn’t have a license to, but there was a friends and family bottle under the counter from the minute Elani showed up.

I suppose I could tell stories, but that’s not how my compulsive memories of people, songs and places has been working of late. More like dreams where a single image is pervasive and connotes everything. I’ve been thinking about Elani lately. Last I heard of George he was arrested for peeing in front of his bar, the charge being public indecency. He probably would have been let off with a warning and without an article and pic in cuffs in the Oregonian if he wasn’t drunk enough to argue about his right to piss on his own property. My life might be entirely different if Elani was the one caught peeing on the sidewalk in front of the bar (which, sorry George, was actually city property and not his).