Secret Dinners And Parties Revealed

I had heard about it years ago – back in 2010: the secret dinners and parties of Hora. Both an Italian guy on a day boat and a British professor and his wife told Emily and I that Hora has an entire secret life – largely of intelligentsia and elite who mix and mingle at private dinner parties. This came as a shock because most days, you can't find a single person on the "streets" of Hora past the monastery. It feels like ghost town or a national park dedicated to a once important place. So how do these power cliques with dinner parties even meet?

One possibility is yoga. At least that's how it worked for me. My new French friend Bruno's girlfriend Agnes owns a small house in Hora. They kindly invited me to their Monday evening cocktail party and truthfully, I didn't think much of it besides it was a kind invitation. I should have known better. 

An assemblage of well-educated and successful French people in incredibly fashionable linen outfits, a collection of Greek artists and architects and the only golden retriever I have ever seen on Patmos were all there, sipping and mingling to the Patmos sunset and eventually under the incredibly starry Patmos night sky.

I brought nothing besides shorts and t-shirts to Patmos. As a lowly Skala American, I hadn't imagined a soiree with the Hora glitterati. So I came in my best pair of cargo shorts and a black t-shirt, because black is as elegant as a t-shirt gets.

Agnes' house is on the backside of Hora – facing opposite Skala to the sea and hills of the south, under the shadow of the monastery up and to the right. It's outside the old city walls in what might one might consider a "newer" part of Hora, so I had to approach it from the south up a small road I had never traversed. Amazingly, there was parking for my scooter at the corner. Finding Agnes' house was a bit of a challenge because – like all houses in Patmos – it has no address. Bruno sent me a pin to use in Google Maps, which in turns gave me directions that were simple a list of left and right turns with distances between them – no street names or descriptions of any kind. All the same, I was able to find my way within two houses before parking – but I needed to wander carefully because many homes leave their front gates and doors open to take advantage of the breeze. I didn't need to wander into some unsuspecting people's courtyard or house.

Three gates down looked like a likely choice. I had seem some well-dressed people head in there and the gate and door were position very wide open. Moreover, the steps leading down to the house and entrance way looked recently remodeled and very elegant – a strong sign someone French had been there. I carefully made my way down the wide, white steps into a small, but beautiful house the fused traditional Patmian elements – such as a built-in, elevated wood bed in the center of the main room – with nouveau trends such as flat, clean, red floor tile and quartz countertops in the outdoor kitchenette. This was a beautiful vacation house – almost a studio. I saw people in the backyard and walked out onto a terrace as large as the house itself and just as beautifully designed and manicured. Greek stones making multiple levels, gardens, sitting areas and an incredible array of views of the sunset, sea on two sides and the monastery. Agnes has her own private, Hora paradise – and I was one of the lucky people invited in.

Bruno greeted me warmly, offered me a drink – I took a small glass of the chilled French white wine – and met one of his friends, a older gentlemen who is a French architect who attended University of Chicago and later Harvard before returning to life in Paris. He designed Agnes' home and has three of his own on Patmos plus a few on a handful of other islands in the region. working within the medium of traditional island Greek architecture is one of his pleasures – but he also has a business in Paris where he resides from October to May. 

A predominantly French cocktail party is a fantastic place to engage my French language skills and I was able to follow along and join in conversation about how corrupt local officials are with their permitting and plan approvals – and how a new property in Grikos has its own private helicopter pad which is clearly prohibited by law. Moreover, to get his own projects complete, the French architect has to pay a local "expediter" – who seems to get government officials to sign-off on things much faster and with less hassle than the architect could do himself.

Eventually, I met his business collaborator, Theordoros a Patmian architect who knows every house and building on the island. When Theodoros learned which house was mine, he not only could tell me its history, but his suggestions for how to add not one, but two small bathrooms and why it's important never to dig too deep underneath the house and the existing well (it could tap into brackish water trapped lower in the ground).

I learned about people's friends in New York and Los Angeles. I learned about one Greek woman's pursuit of making large mosaic art installations and her plans to spend a year in Rome now that her youngest daughter has left for college so that she can immerse herself, not just in a language and culture she enjoys, but to do research on history around ancient Roman water mythology related to the Tiber River in order to present at an art forum next year. I learned how certain people were connected to others, what they did at home, who was just staying in rentals vs who owned their own Patmos homes. The crowd was kind enough to always offer to accommodate me in English and pleasantly surprised when I reciprocated with French. Except the golden retriever who must have been French because he did not want to stop for me in either language – and what golden retriever in America would turn down affection from anyone?

Using a style I had never seen before, the hosts called the party from 7:30 to 9:15 – I believe so that people could then disperse for dinner. The fare was strictly appetizers and nibbles – and 9:30 is a very respectable Greek dinner hour. It all made sense and probably kept the scope of the party manageable – especially for a house that had no real kitchen – nothing that could support hosting at a larger scale.

By the end of the evening, my language brain felt exercised, I was happy to have enjoyed such intelligent conversation and thrilled with accessing my first Hora secret party. This is very much what I believe life abroad could afford me – or specifically life on Patmos with its international crowd plus its warm and welcoming local community. Something about the evening felt promising.

This morning's yoga didn't yield me new friends, but my errand afterward did. I finally got around to stopping by the fire suppression shop. Yes, the fire suppression shop which seems to sell a variety of alarms, systems and extinguishers for boats, vehicles, homes, restaurants and hotels. Prokopis who owns the hardware store referred me to this shop and its owner, Stavros – who is also Australian-Greek and and a good friend of Prokopis. Besides selling me a large fire extinguisher that puts out fires using clean CO2 instead of sprayed fire retardant dust or foam, Stavros told me his story – moving from Australia to Patmos (where his family is from) in his teens and all the people I know he's related to, most of them first cousins.

I learned about the donkey taxis that used to gather near my house to take people up to the monastery and the unfortunateness of the new helmet laws the police are stating to enforce. Greece was better when it was more relaxed and free. We discussed energy policy, the pitfalls of economic development, where Leonidas – the man who had the restaurant over Lampi – is now cooking and how heartbreaking the story of Maria's son is (the Australian-Greek woman who sold the house to me, whose eldest son developed bone cancer that led to the loss of his entire leg). 

My visit to Stavros' shop was not as glittered and intellectual as last night's party, but perhaps equally interesting and educational. Moreover, I have another friend within the community who is connected to so many others. It's another step down the path of being part of Patmos.

Imagining life post-divorce has been challenging for me. During my time on Patmos last year – prior to Emily's final decision to divorce – I had come to realize that life as a single-dad in Westlake Village was not appealing. It's a flat world for me, and there's so much more I want for myself. That's when Patmos became a real possibility. Had hoped to spend half my time here and half in Westlake with the kids – in longer time blocks. For reasons I won't get into here, that concept didn't work out. So for now, I have summers in Patmos – with and without my kids. Perhaps in the future, there will be an opportunity to be here more of the year. There is a life to be had that I think will benefit me far more than Westlake (except maybe the yoga – it really is better at home).

The past few days were humid and stagnant. Last night, breezes from the north returned and all the air came back into the island and my life.