For decades now we’ve been told that having a big arse is not a good thing.
Asking “does my bum looks fat in this?” is so far beyond a cliche, it almost sounds novel. South Park‘s Cartman is derided for being a ”fatass”, while ’80s aerobics videos cashed in with promises of “buns of steel” in a time of rife and unforgiving fluoro bikepants and acid-wash denim. In Fight Club, Tyler Durden’s group of anarchists make soap from liposuction clinic waste products, revelling in the fact that they ”sold rich women their own fat asses back to them”. And this is nothing to say of today’s reality shows where the winner is a loser.
It seems that the only pop-culture figures who have given big butts a fair go, so to speak, are rappers, renaissance artists, and Freddie Mercury. Yet, even in these contexts, said backsides were only revered aesthetically. They weren’t owed consideration beyond that.
And why would you give it a second thought? Whatever its size, an arse is, more often than not, something you sit on and forget about – like a desk chair or street press when the grass is too wet.
However, the Greeks decided that a proportionally-gifted rear-end was worthy of more than disdain or objectification. A big butt can be a thing, almost, of destiny…
kolofarthia (“koh-lo-far-THEE-ya”):
Greek. n.
Arse-wide luck.
Forget a narrow escape or just scraping through or winning by a nose. Bargearse had the right idea.
“It means your butt is so wide that whatever enters it cannot hurt you,” the wife explains to us on the boat to Santorini. I write it down in Greek and show it to her. She nods.
We speak to this Canadian couple sitting across from us for the entire three-hour boat ride from Mykonos. The wife tells us about her formative years in both Greece and Canada, how funny and crass the Greek sense of humour is, and how great a life her octogenarian mother has in Greece that she wouldn’t have in north America.
They’re a rosy pair, clearly inseparable, and have this particular type of good fortune in abundance.
They tell us how they decided to get married only two weeks after they’d met – 30 years ago.
“What’s your secret?” Marilyn asks them.
“Chemistry,” says the wife. ”You have to be so hot for the guy that just the fact that he walks the earth makes you happy.”
“Luck,” says the husband.
We learn a lot about this couple, their jobs, their kids - everything but their names.
As we approach Santorini, we talk about accommodation. We’re booking stuff online as we go and have our first night in Santorini sorted, but the couple plans to haggle with hotel reps waiting at the port. It sounds like they’re set to score a great last-minute deal, but they have a fluent Greek speaker in their favour. We do not.
* * *
We step off the boat at sunset onto the new port at Fira. It’s like entering a king’s tomb - every surface lined with gold.
The guy from the hotel Nautilus Cauldera greets us with a sign, and as we walk to the van with him, I look up at layer upon layer of rock that’s been carved away by a giant ice-cream scoop. For a moment, I wish I were a geologist.
The van climbs the roads etched into the cliff, while the sun and the sky go to town in a light show to rival New Year’s fireworks. So this is the famous Santorini sunset – the kind of spectacle you could watch every day for a lifetime and never see the same thing twice.
Our first night’s accommodation is passable but a little too far out of town. We spend our next two nights right in the middle of Fira at Hotel Atlantis – a place where we literally jumped for joy when the concierge opened our balcony door.
If ever we felt lucky on this trip, it was when we first got an eyeful of this view:
We didn’t haggle at port, but we still did pretty damn well with our fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants internet bookings – or so we think.
But then we run into the couple again and they’re simply beaming. They rave about the accommodation they scored for a steal – normally 350 Euro and they got it for 130. They fling around superlatives and grandiose images like silk scarves: caves dug right into the cliff… used to be a monastery… dizzyingly high up… front porch with deck chairs and spectacular view… incredible, giant, luxurious bathroom… endless breakfast… just a beautiful 10-minute walk outside of Fira…
They hand us the brochure. It looks every bit as intriguing and decadent as they say. What luck!
However, maybe it’s all the on-foot sightseeing we’d done back in Athens (read: getting lost in the grungier parts). Maybe it’s dragging heavy luggage along cobblestones every few days or only eating twice a day. Or it could be because the gods disapprove of how we refer to the Acropolis, the Agora, and other Athenian sites as “the ancient $hit”.
But, while it may seem fortuitous that we bump into the couple again and learn of this palatial abode, once we actually get there, it’s clear: whatever kolofarthia we had on our side has well and truly cracked.
