The night I stepped into a black van with Bahraini oil dealers
A black van, a Greek party island and a reformed high school loser all collide in one fateful night.
I spent the first 22 years of my life being a punishing bore: Friday nights at debate club; Saturdays at musical theatre.
Never a kiss at a school dance, never a drink before I was of age. The designated driver of every university party, a full-time job every holiday break, a criminal record that consisted solely of late library book returns.
A parents’ dream perhaps? That was until a charismatic stranger invited me to join her on her annual voyage to our motherland (Greece) the following year.
“You haven’t been to Europe as an adult?” she asked in disbelief.
If it would please the court of public humiliation, I’ll admit I hadn’t been to a proper party as an adult at this stage.
It was on my third night in Mykonos that I would become the cliche – a character development rationalised by a proximity to mischief, a distance from responsibility and heat-induced delusion.
Clad in an all-black number fringed with faux-onyx jewels, my dear friend was flanked by two security guards attempting to pry me off a palm tree as I refused to end my residency in the island’s coveted beach club.
“Time is a construct! Democracy is dead! My body, my choice!”
I was escorted out, my philosophical slogans falling on deaf ears except for the passengers of a black van parked ominously outside the front.
“Great outfit,” one shouted with a finger thrust in my direction. “Would you like a ride to town?”
Recklessly, we let the lacquered doors slide open and hopped in, sandwiching ourselves between four hulking men in pressed linen and hideous beaded necklaces. One in a fedora struck up small talk with us, where we learned: 1) they were a group of Bahraini oil merchants; and 2) not to ask too many questions.
Enough driving time had elapsed for it to dawn on me that we were not heading to town, a brief ride away.
I wondered at this point, stress-stricken and stupefied by the lack of escape routes, whether my Liam Neeson-adoring father possessed any of the rescue skills from the actor’s Taken movies.
“So … where exactly are we going?”
“We said less questions.”
The paved roads turned to gravel, jolting the tyres in synch with my now erratic pulse. I was a portrait of glum regret, mirrored in the tinted windows.
And then – a pause, a pathway adorned with festoon lights, a cavernous beach mansion with panoramic views of the island.
“We invite you to a party,” one of the men whispered, deep within my ear. In a crowd shimmering with the glam of holiday-edition designer ensembles, bikini bodies crocheted together in close knit, and the sounds of the ocean battling against hypnotic tunes from a rotating roster of musicians, I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to ditch our escorts. Hands clutched, we pushed through people to examine our sense-igniting surroundings.
The bar served everything but water, the outdoor projector beamed 1970s French cult classics and the guests bathed in neon and the infinity pool’s salted chlorine.
My friend swiftly adopted a crowd of like-minded self-promoters, swapping between English and Greek to indoctrinate herself in A-list society.
She had a slew of suitors lined up beside her while we swayed, cemented to the cliff by the fear that our mothers would kill us if they saw us right now.
I learnt that evening that Mykonos’s economy was built off the back of Australia’s depressing night-life culture, with half of Sydney’s eastern suburbs starlets exaggerating their relevance to crowds of strangers. In one corner, the owner of a salad bar chain proclaimed to be something of an archbishop of fine dining; in the other, a posse of influencers known for 30-second beauty supplement ads professed success on par with Kate Moss.
As the night sky inked with plumes of pink, purple and early-morning orange, so too did I begin “painting with colour”, claiming to be an award-winning writer of three novellas, published all before the ripe age of 25. It worked the moment someone in the crowd said, “That’s cool. I don’t read much.”
My confidence brimming and a symphony of Latin techno fuelling my steps, I struck up a conversation with one of the off-duty artists, screaming at him from my cliff stage. He squinted through blue-tinted spectacles, an alluring smile peeking through the 400th exaggerated moustache I’d seen that evening.
If wars were ever waged over the beauty of men, I’d managed to enlist Henry of Troy. He spoke about his fledgling music career and passion for twirling women to Arab-influenced disco while I envisaged our life together.
“You know who owns this house, yeah?” he asked, as I feared I wouldn’t pass his metric of social acceptability. Fortunately he was a man who liked to answer his own questions.
“Pretty sure it’s Lindsay Lohan – I think she filmed her show here.”
The woman famed for telling MTV spectators how to throw a “party in Mykonos, bitch” had lived up to expectations.
As the sun rose, revealing a crowd of partygoers worth name-dropping, my final conversation was with the resident geriatric of the club music scene, a silver fox with a pearl choker and no shoes. Given his capacity to walk in a straight line I assumed he was the host and passed on my gratitude for the evening.
“I like to do this, you know, give the kids a place to play their music outside of the club,” he said, sipping on the only bottle of water I’d seen for the past 16 hours.
My Bahraini oil acquaintances passed through, shaking his hand on their way out, forgetting my existence.
We exchanged brief details of our lives. He was a prominent executive of a global music group, holidaying in Greece “like the rest of us”. I told him I was something of a journalist, acute dehydration evaporating the last remnants of my party persona.
“A career telling other people’s stories? Let’s hope tonight was a good kick up the arse to get a few of your own,” he said, laughing.
Leaving with a stolen pair of sunglasses and no clue where we were, we sought out a ride home.
Such youthful recklessness set a new pulse for life’s unexpected evenings to come as I waltzed into 40C heat, a winding uphill path and the rude awakening that this is what I’d been missing out on all those Friday debate-club nights before.
Bianca Farmakis is The Australian’s video editor.