"Youth flies." --Horace

Oh, the Greek island summers of my youth! There were Fat Boy chopper rides on cliff roads high above the shimmering emerald Aegean. There were days of cold beer and salty beach and juicy souvlaki, tart tzatziki. There were cool night sea breezes, hot moist lips, smooth untethered breasts beneath silken bodices, passionate embraces on the warm sand. There were rendezvous under the stars, stars that in their horizon-to-horizon spread of diamond light and faraway luster suggested infinite possibilities, endless time, an eternity to realize a glorious, ever-distant future.

Memory embellishes the past: Now that I think of it, the Fat Boy chopper was actually a sputtering moped, and there were mosquito bites and stained sheets and other sticky annoyances. But I was green then -- in the early 1980s -- and youth was in me, and I was spending summers on the Greek islands, and there was no AIDS. The Mediterranean setting and the allure of romance commingled to create a brew heady and redolent of mystery. All this was new to me then, new.

One afternoon in Moscow not long ago I stared into the mirror and compared myself to a picture taken of me in Athens in 1984. At first I thought, to my satisfaction, that I appeared the same now as then, with the dignifying exception of a few gray hairs at the temples. But I began examining my reflection more closely: Something, some solid cast of jaw and gravity of gaze, had settled over me in the intervening years. My life as it had developed had taken its toll on me: I had spent the last six years in a cold northern land where youth withered early, corruption and deceit were the norms and bullets riddled the frivolous. I had, unmistakably, grown "grim about the mouth," as Ishmael put it.

Suddenly, I yearned to be the carefree youngster in the photo, and a reflexive question arose: How would I do now, at age 37, on those same Greek isles? I had never really noticed time passing; was I in truth no longer young? To counter what the mirror hinted, I decided I needed concrete answers to these questions in the form of a romantic fling, bodice and sand and sticky annoyances and all, that would validate me as who I thought I was and chase away the doubts.

I decided to storm the gates of my past. I recruited my 40-year-old (and skeptical) Dutch friend, Serge, as a travel companion, outfitted myself with summer attire, including a cool Animal wristwatch and cooler Armani shades, bought a plane ticket to Athens and set my compass for the island stomping grounds of my youth.

---

A week later our Flying Dolphin hydrofoil was skipping a frothy white V across the blue Aegean, its snout leveled at the isle of Ios. Ios! A breast of brown rock pointing heavenward, nippled with a white church! The fabled burial ground of Homer, Ios, over the past few decades, has garnered notoriety as an island on which crowds of college-age satyrs and Bacchae re-create ancient Greek rituals of orgiastic revelry with "Animal House" aplomb. I had first visited Ios in 1985 and left it feeling like a pleasantly ragged-out but sated survivor of a week-long frat party. Topographically speaking, it is a windy rock with one village, a few beaches and 113 bars.

We stepped off our Dolphin into a notias, or Southerner -- a wind from Africa notable for its sweltering heat. Soon after arrival, a hotelier was leading us to our rooms. A Greek matriarch who had, no doubt, seen it all before, she ministered to us as might the seasoned matron of a cut-rate Dionysian temple.

"We have an m-m-good barbecue here every night and all the brand-name hooch you could want. Stay out all night and bring girls to your rooms, but just don't lose my keys! Got that?"

Two hours later we were reclining on chaise longues on Milopotas Beach. Music pounded from the pool at the nearby Far Out Club. All around us were buzz-cut teens from northern Europe, teens with hair napped in purple, yellow and orange clumps. Some wore pirate scarves. Others sported silver coins on leather necklaces, scorpion tattoos, navel piercings, tongue studs and nipple and nostril rings. The crowd resembled a "Trainspotting" cast of thousands, and I wondered what drugs they must have taken to keep themselves in such perpetual motion: They couldn't stop paddling balls, whirling Frisbees, snorting into snorkels. What was all this activity for?

Next to us sat three Irish girls drinking beers. Maybe they were 19 years old, maybe 20. They were works in progress; their skin looked dew-fresh, their cheeks baby-fat plump.

Their voices carried.

"Well, we drank on the plane. And on the bus to the port. And on the ferry. And in the pension. No wonder we all puked!" Uproarious laughter, gulps of beer for all, an adjustment of wrap-around shades.

"Let's hit the Square at 10 tonight ... Grandma and Grandpa gave me 300 pounds for this trip ... My nose piercing itches ... You've got a bee on your bum ..."

Serge sipped his Heineken.

"Jeff, I can't talk to girls that age. I just can't."

I shrugged off his negativism and swatted at a wasp. We were in Ios for night life anyway; beach impressions meant nothing.

---

By day, Khora, Ios' village, is a dainty labyrinth of whitewashed alleys peopled by doddering Greek dowagers and mustachioed fruit merchants leading donkeys loaded with baskets of fruit. By night, it's a cross between the Crazy Horse Saloon and a modern-day Babylon where the streets flow with beer, piss and vomit. It is not by chance that one of the island's most popular T-shirts reads: "Ios -- Drink Until You Puke, Puke Until You Die."

The nexus of night life is the Square, which is basically an alley with an olive tree on one end, a church on the other and a dozen watering holes in between -- the rest of the bars and clubs fan outward from there.

Around 11 p.m., Serge and I left the hotel, fell in with the crowd, passed the Orgasm Bar and the Lemon Club, and made it to the Square. We hadn't planned it, but we ended up dressed thematically alike -- I in black loafers, a Polo shirt and Levis; he in Trussardi jeans, a silk shirt and square-toed loafers. I note this here because around us streamed ripped-up knee-length shorts, Tevas sandals, "Take Me Drunk -- I'm Home" T-shirts and pierced cartilage. With our intact attire and dearth of facial metal, we stuck out like white crows.

Joni's Electric Bar and Frankie's Ios Blue -- we looked inside the clubs on the Square and moved on. We surfed the crowd and landed in Shooter's, one of the more sedate bars just off the Square.

A guy in his early 20s with a shaved head and two girls in tow pointed to the empty seats beside me and raised his eyebrows.

"C'n we sit here?"

Sure, I said.

Herb was his name. Twenty-three years old. From the Midwest.

Just finished a magnus opus in which he expatiated upon every tenet and principle of his philosophy. I found myself nodding off into my Corona as he nattered on, his nasal voice droning like an anopheles mosquito -- until, that is, he slowed down, took a deep breath and huffed, "Boy, do I feel old here!"

I snapped awake. "Old? You? You're 23!"

"Yeah, but these chicks I'm with are young. I c'n hardly talk to them" (the music was too loud for them to hear us). "Just last night I was out on the beach with the brunette here -- she's from England and her name's Fiona -- and I was explaining my philosophy and she just pulled me down on the sand and took off her clothes and made me do it. She didn't wanna hear about my philosophy."

Old?

I looked at Serge. The other girl grabbed Herb's Corona and tried to steal a sip; he grabbed it back. "Hey," he said, "I told you I don't buy you drinks. That's not my philosophy." He turned to me: "Violetta here can be a pain."

Right. I looked at the "pain" and did a double take, like a character out of a 1950's sitcom. Violetta had long curly blond hair, a billowing front, a saucy little nose and wore a petulant frown. She called to mind a Benny Hill tart, the kind of voluptuous temptress the bawdy comedian would have chased at show's end in fast-motion around tree trunks in a public park. I felt a warmth in my gut, a rush of blood, a visceral attraction. I had the urge to buy an entire crate of Coronas and toss them at her ankle-braceleted feet.

Herb tickled her. She smiled but looked away.

"I'm out for the impossible dream tonight," he said to me. "I'm gonna try and sleep with her. It'll be tough seeing as how I just did her girlfriend." He took another lusty gulp and wiped his lips. "Also, she's 17, and you see, I'm wondering --" My jaw dropped. I had no idea she was so young.

"-- I'm wondering, if I have sex with her, can I be sued for it? I mean, she's English, but I'm American and we're in Greece. So, like, which legal age applies? Which jurisdiction?"

Later, Herb pontificated on the merits of shaved heads -- his own noggin, he said, was of a particularly manly contour and therefore drove girls insane with desire ("It's all in the shape of your cranium"). Whatever. I stole looks at Violetta: She was ravishing, but that she could be so young had never entered my mind. Until that moment, I hadn't paid much attention to age differences. Almost all the people I knew were past college age, in their 20s or 30s or older. And besides, in my mind's eye, I still saw myself as college age.

But perhaps to her, I, with my head of unnapped hair and without a nipple ring to my name, was an old codger, a hoary dinosaur washed up on this isle of youth.

Aeolus puffed up his cheeks and blew and blew. The next morning the notias was gone and the meltemi, or wind from the north, was tearing through Khora: Teal plastic garden furniture flew from balconies, empty plastic water bottles swirled by, alley whirlwinds battled each other like vicious dogs, plastic baggies raced over the beach like panic-stricken rodents. Serge and I sat up in the hotel garden and watched the molten-red ball of the sun slither into the sea and illuminate a fairyland of islands hitherto hidden in the bluish haze of the horizon. A fellow Methuselah -- he must have been 38 or 39 -- got up from his beer, patted his belly and gave us a companionable nod. I wanted to retch.

I was thinking of Violetta.

Serge took a drag on his cigarette and looked at the sea, then stood up.

"Come on, let's go into town. You're not really moping over that 17-year-old, are you? She looked like Ginger Spice."

"I just can't believe she's so young."

"You're an old-timer now. Get used to it."

"It just seems so unfair. I don't want to get used to it."

"Does that mean you'll be chasing a 17-year-old girl around this bloody island?"

"That would be a pathetic sight, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, and I'd like to see it. So let's go into town."

---

Serge and I started off at another bar we had heard about -- Sweet Irish Dreams. On the way there I decided to stop moping and cheer up. Age was all in my head. Why, I was even able to fit into the same bathing suit I had worn when I was on this island in 1985! Nothing had really changed. Tonight would be the night.

Irish Dreams turned out to have a spill-your-cookies, get-outta-my-face-mate! air. It was messy and dark and filled with teeny-boppers on table tops and stumble-drunk blokes. Everyone was in T-shirts and bathing suits and sandals. The crowd was too much. I went to the men's room. Two teens followed me inside and took up positions at the toilets.

I splashed water on my face.

Teen No. 1 (had hair, wore wraparound sunglasses, spoke with an American accent): "So, like, we were all totally drunk in this hotel and couldn't make it to the bathroom, so, like, we just pissed in the drawers of this dresser. I mean we just took drawer after drawer out and just pissed in them all night when we needed to."

Teen No. 2 (shaking off the last drops): "You're kidding."

Teen No. 1 (clanking his buckles into order): "Naw, man, I mean, like, then Bart got to feeling sick. He just took this dresser drawer and blew chow in it."

Teen No. 2: "That's incredible."

Teen No. 1: "Yeah, Amsterdam was great. But you know what drinking beer does to your bowels, man. I mean, I felt this rumble in my gut so I took a drawer and --"

I hurried out. This place was not for us. As we were leaving, a tipsy, very cute Irish girl raised her hands and gave us a double thumbs-up -- "Glad to see you, Uncle!" I fancied her to be saying. I couldn't help smiling back at her, but ... I wanted to retch.

We circled back to the Square and ended up in a club decorated in 1970s-grotto style. Four or five young women danced gracefully by themselves in the center of the floor. Within minutes, however, the door flew open and a threesome of young lads, their black hair crew-cut and their necks draped in gold chains, sailed past us and threw themselves into the midst of the females. One of the fellows, gyrating like an animated boneless chicken, rubber-necked and bandy-legged, set out after a brunette. He and his buddies were like cheetahs on the loose in a flock of gazelles.

The brunette, escaping from him, bumped into me and apologized. She said her name was Sarah, she was 19 years old and from Belfast and she worked for the bar as a dancer.

"Oh, these Israelis! I just can't stand them," she panted. Her hair was cut bowl-style, monklike and goofy; her thighs were white sugar, her ankles and wrists were wispy-thin. She wore a short, black, backless dress and no brassiere; her breasts were heavy torpedoes but they stood erect under the thin cotton.

"Why can't you stand them?"

"Well, the other night one of them kidney-punched me for no reason. Anyway, I came down here on holiday but my money ran out so I got this job ..." Sarah's girlfriends came up and said hello, all Ivory-fresh-faced. They chirped and twittered: Life was a blast, the bar cool, the beach great. I couldn't accurately judge their ages until their male contemporaries, also from Belfast, sauntered over: Goateed, blue-and-yellow-haired, wearing baggy shorts, they were dorky-looking. But I censured myself: Why shouldn't they dress and style themselves this way? They hadn't a boss to impress, a living to make, a care on this earth.

There was one other man my age in the bar: the manager. He stood in the doorway counting a fistful of drachmas. He was all in black and he wore a bulky silver bracelet. He was not simply grim about the mouth; he was positively ferocious.

"Get back to work!" he growled as he passed Sarah. She turned gazelle again and sprang back onto the floor. He went back to counting his money, and Serge and I left.

Shooters. Herb was nowhere to be seen. Violetta and Fiona were there, though, dancing on the tabletops and miming Spice Girls tunes. They were escorted by two apes, two crew-cut monsters in Hawaiian shirts and Birkenstocks. I tried to wave hello to Violetta, but one of the Frankensteins tore her from the table and carried her cave-man style to the bar. There he tipped her to a martini glass, the bartender set the liquid within it aflame and she sucked it down through a straw. Frankenstein burped her, then grabbed a beer and poured it down her throat. In fact, he and his buddy had lined up a score of beers and cocktails on the bar; the rest of the evening was a medley of Spice Girls tunes, piggyback rides to the booze and piggyback rides back to the tabletops, accompanied by Neanderthal grunts and ape scratches and girlish squeals. I followed all this dejectedly, struggling to poke a recalcitrant slice of lemon down into my Corona.

"This is bull," said Serge. "Let's get out of here."

Later I saw Violetta riding down the main street drunk as a spring lark on her ape's shoulders, holding her hands to the breeze, shrieking with schoolgirl glee. Fiona, walking with her arms crossed, looked pained and tried to keep up.

---

The next afternoon Serge and I sat on the beach watching the water-skiing and Frisbeeing. A fat teen with a pumpkin-size shaved head and a tiny goatee flathandled a sub sandwich. Topless German girls, so young that their breasts had barely budded, rubbed coconut oil into their tummies. An image from Sweet Irish Dreams came to mind: It was of a Swedish blonde, 18 or so, dancing on a tabletop to the M People. She wore flowers in her hair, a yellow halter, a white sash around her tanned midriff; she was barefoot and her toes were brown. Her eyes radiated joy -- she was so happy to be on Ios, on that tabletop; she was beautiful and she knew it and she was flying high on the crowd's adoration. The world was hers and everything would be wonderful.

I suddenly felt robbed -- I could only think these thoughts on behalf of others now. When I was first on Ios I simply took and took from the world without thinking; now I cogitated myself into a funk and concluded that I had lost the urge to grab.

Serge poked my arm and nodded. Violetta. She was taking small steps toward the surf, gripping herself in her arms as though she were the sole survivor of a catastrophe. Her eyes were red, her hair flat, her face white. She dipped her feet in the water, shivered and tread slowly back up to the pool.

---

Sunday was our last evening in Ios. We spent the first hours watching "True Romance" at the Fun Pub. Serge was tired, I was disillusioned. I told him how sad I felt at perceiving -- for the first time, really -- how quickly time was passing. Then I paused and suggested -- sagely I thought -- that maybe I was exaggerating my plight.

Serge sat back. "Don't live in dreams, Jeff." He walked to the door and looked at the crowds passing by the pub. "Hey, we should take one last walk around the Square."

Shooters was nearly empty when we arrived. Except for Violetta and Fiona.

"We're not drinking tonight," Violetta told me. "See, we just stopped drinking today at 1 in the afternoon." Giggles. "Well, actually, we could maybe have a Flaming Lamborghini."

Serge ordered four Flaming Lamborghinis. The bartender poured liqueur after liqueur into the bulbous glasses. Violetta's eyes lit up and she squirmed.

Ladies first. They dipped in their straws, their faces as cheery as those of children about to get their first glimpse of a department-store Santa Claus. The bartender set the stuff alight, and as they were sucking it down, he dolloped in still more alcohol from another bottle. He then presented them with chaser bottles of Amstel.

We drank next. Their pupils dilated and so did ours. An easy mirth crept over us all; I felt a rising gusto, an inflation of ego -- my cause was not yet lost! They said they were from London. I told them we lived in Moscow. I talked at length about life there, about the boulevards streaming with Mercedes and mobsters and beautiful molls. But they responded with giddy laughs and uncomprehending stares; I might as well have said we had just flown in from Saturn. Despite the Flaming Lamborghinis, a trenchant unease began rolling in, washing away the mirth.

Serge took imperious drags on his cigarette; I did my damnedest to act relaxed and glib.

"What, by the way, is your favorite music?" I asked.

Violetta's eyes lit up: "The Spice Girls! The Spice Girls! We like to dance on the tabletop to the Spice Girls!"

I cleared beer bottles off a nearby table. Serge hung back, shaking his head. Violetta requested "Human Touch" from the DJ, then, grabbing Fiona's hand, pulled her aloft.

"Stop right here" -- the two raised their arms -- "thank you very much" -- choreographed hip swivels -- "I need somebody with a human touch" -- a forced smile stretched my cheeks apart, a thousand thoughts of tender pity and alienation and estrangement rattled through my mind -- "get outta my face" -- here they slapped an invisible man's cheek.

I was the only Spice fan, and I felt their enthusiasm for their dance melt away. Another "human touch," a lackluster hip swivel, a final, flailing slap in the face of that imagined brute, and I helped them back to earth. I couldn't wipe the putty smile off my face; it masked an unbridgable gulf yawning wider and wider between us. Our conversation foundered -- none of us had anything left to say. The desire I had felt for her waned under a crushing alienation that derived from -- yes -- the difference in our ages. She belonged to another world, to Sarah's world, to a world of youth that now, I finally understood, was closed to me.

"Well, ahh, we have to meet these blokes in a bit," Violetta said.

"It's their last night, you see. We'll be back in half an hour. So wait for us here, OK?" She grabbed Fiona's hand and they were off.

Serge smirked.

"They won't be back. That's their routine -- get the old guys to buy them drinks, then take off." They did not return.

---

The meltemi persisted, forcing the cancellation of the Flying Dolphin the day of our departure from Ios. We would take the slow boat out.

I once thought of aging as a beast that could be held at bay by exercise, a proper diet, the right hair gel, a practiced tailor. It was something that happened to careless people, to other people. Before my return to Ios, I believed my options were open: Life was a revolving smorgasbord and I had the power to choose my dish. I thought I would always have that power, at least until I achieved true seniority -- the age of 80, say -- when a pleasant dash of dotage would set in, an endearing shuffle would ensue, my features would mature into a mien of sublime gravitas, and I would be, well, regal. Feel free to laugh at my misguidedness because I am laughing at it myself.

Youth, I now see, was a gift that Life bestowed then yanked away before I knew it, with unexpected results. Like some reincarnation of Odysseus brandishing not a sword but a trendy wristwatch and shades, I returned to my Ithaca and found I had outgrown my Penelope -- but it hurt that she would not have had me, anyway. She showed me that there were walls in my life that I could not breach.

Now, waiting for the boat out of Ios, I resolved to recognize the imprint that the years had left on me. I still cherished my youthful romps on the islands, but in a flush of insight, I saw that time, like a river, flows in one direction only, and I must ride the current and accept its gifts. There is no choice, anyway.

Our ferry, the gold-trimmed Maria Pa, honked and rounded the cape on its way into Ios harbor, fighting the meltemi, hissing as it sliced the waves, honking again as it backed up to the dock, churning the glaucous water into foam. Serge and I joined the crowd in pushing our way aboard. With another honk we pulled away, our bow swinging round until it pointed north.

With a roar of engines we lurched ahead and steamed seaward. I didn't look back.