Off to Naples

The Bay of Naples is quite large and there are a bunch of ports to choose from. We head for the north part of the bay. Our first choice of ports, Pozzuoli is full. I knew it was a small port, but hoping the off-season would give us a berth. So we head a little further north to Baia. It too looks completely full, but as we are cruising for a gap in the rows of boats, I see a guy leave and we manage to squeeze in between two pretty large yachts. Two Italian guys hand us the slime lines and take our stern lines. At first they tell us it is not possible to stay here, but then make a magical phone call and tell us if we can open up our wallets enough and pay the high port charges, we are welcome to stay a couple of days. We end up staying three. Getting into the center of Naples on public transportation proves to be a bit of a challenge. We had to catch a bus that took us to the train station, which took us to a second station that transferred us to the Metro, which finally took us to the final train. Yeah it was a bit of a challenge that felt like we were trying to shake some sinister shadow from a John Grisham novel. Ok, maybe I have been reading one two many novels lately. Naples is a very old town dating back to the Etruscans and Greeks. There are ruins scattered like Easter eggs hiding throughout the area. Even the port of Baia has significant ruins of mostly Roman origins. It is said that the port takes its name from Baios, the navigator of Odysseus. It is from Baia that Caligula built his bridge of ships and rafts across to Pozzuoli so that he could exclaim how he had walked across the water from one city to the next. Yeah he was a bit unbalanced. Here also Nero murdered his mother Agrippian and brutally suppressed the conspiracy of Piso. And then ever looming in the background is Mount Vesuvius whose eruption buried Pompei and Herculean in as much as 150 feet of mud. Kip and I explore Herculean for a day, strolling where ancient Romans built villas with beautiful intricate mosaic floors, bartered and sold food and slaves, and relaxed in the ancient grand baths together. It was at the ancient baths that Kip channeled with the ancient Romans and wanted to feel what it was like to be one of them. We were all alone so he stepped into one of the baths and stripped naked while I took his picture, hoping that the ghosts of other Romans would somehow magically appear on the film along side of him. It didn’t take much to talk me into getting my picture taken the same way. There is a time-leap feeling of connecting and sharing in lives long forgotten that were not too different from our own journey through life.

The men of Naples are some of the most beautiful in all of Italy. Olive skin that in the Mediterranean sun easily turns to the golden brown of a marshmallow roasted in a campfire, strong facial features, classical straight Roman noses, dark thick hair and easy smiles flashing perfect white teeth. They are all lean and every muscle shows through their trim bodies. You could pick out a dozen to take home with you on any given block. We went to a bathhouse one night called the Blue Angel. After searching around for a while, we found an unmarked black door on the first floor of a modern glass high-rise. It seemed like an unlikely place for a gay bathhouse, but well worth visiting if you are ever in this part of the world. We weren’t disappointed.