The Tour

When I graduated, with honors, from Swarthmore College, my parents gave me, as a graduation present, a line of credit in the form of a credit letter account, which they would replenish whenever it ran low. They said I could draw funds from this credit line at any international bank outside the United States for up to two years. They wanted me to tour Europe and then go on from there wherever I chose. They said they wanted me to broaden my education and enjoy myself for a couple of years before settling down to the grind involved in finishing my studies leading to an MD, and eventually, accreditation as a psychiatrist.

I was stunned. I didn’t want to leave my friends. I had been looking forward to just bumming around for the summer, just hanging with my best buddies, before going off to Harvard medical school, where I had already been accepted, in the fall. I knew medical school would be very challenging and I wanted to be well rested before tackling it. I thought a lazy summer at the beach house in Maine with friends would be the best way to spend the time until I had to begin the grind at med school.

My parents persisted. They said I would have plenty of time to get back together with my friends and that if I didn’t take this chance to travel it would be a long time before I got the chance again if I ever did. I had to agree that once I got into med school I’d be on a treadmill for years and when I got out I’d be struggling to establish myself as a psychiatrist. After thinking about it for a week or so, I agreed that it was now or never and I began to like the idea of being on my own and discovering the wonders of travel.

My parents assured me that I was mature and level headed enough to handle traveling alone, and insisted they wanted me to have the experience. They had both traveled independently after college and had traveled together for six months at a time several times while I was at Swarthmore. They told me that they wouldn’t exchange their travel experiences for anything they could imagine. It didn’t take them long to convince me this was the chance of a lifetime.

I traveled around Europe for well over a year hitting pretty much all the tourist destinations, and a great many of the off the beaten track places of interest. I ended my European tour in Greece which was absolutely fascinating. The ancient ruins were awe inspiring and the food was great. I toured the Greek Isles in the Aegean as I traveled east. The water there is such a beautiful shade of blue and is so clear that you can see far down into the depths.

The tour of the isles, led me to Crete and from there I was off to Turkey. In Istanbul which sits astride the Bosporus, the narrow straight which joins the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, I visited the Hagia Sophia, built on the site where Constantine the Great built a church in the fourth century. The present day Hagia Sophia was built between 532 and 537 under the personal supervision of Emperor Justinian the first. It was the largest church in the world until 1520.

I also visited the Blue Masque which is incredibly beautiful and is in almost pristine condition despite its age. Its dome was intentionally made larger than the dome of the Hagia Sophia because Sultan Ahmet I wished to build an Islamic place of worship that would be greater than the Hagia Sophia. I also toured the Sultan Ahmet palace, which is now a museum housing many fascinating artifacts from the Ottoman Empire era—especially those relating to the Sultan and his household.

I spent two days in the unbelievably vast bazaar, where you can find everything under the sun, but I didn’t see nearly all of it. I wandered through the aisles, constantly harangued by the stall keepers urging me to buy their wares. They offered me countless small glasses of tea, a custom in Turkey. I’d have bought a lot more but I was traveling light. I only bought things I could ship home.

There are people who make a business of supplying the tea to the merchants. My favorite was apple tea which is a tart-sweet concoction served hot. The tea men are constantly running through the aisles delivering trays of tea to browsers in the stalls. I bought many gifts and souvenirs and sent them back to my parents and friends. The bazaar is a fascinating place you can easily get lost in—both literally and in the bewildering array of merchandize available be haggled over.

When I decided I had to leave Istanbul, even though I could have spent months there and still only scratched the surface, I went east and south into the heart of the country and spent a week in the capital city, Ankara. There I visited museums where there were very interesting exhibits of the ancient Hittite culture. There were also exhibits of the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman cultures which overlay the Hittite strata.

I was able to tour the compound where Mustafa Ataturk lived after he established modern Turkey. It is now a museum which houses many of Ataturk’s possessions. I also saw the changing of the guard at his grand tomb which is guarded around the clock. It is built on a colossal scale and is very impressive. The stone paved plaza in front of the tomb must be several acres.

Then I traveled west and south into Anatolia to Cappadocia where I spent over a week touring the Ancient Christian sites scattered throughout the region. Long before the Christians arrived in the area, people carved dwellings and temples into the fantastic formations of soft volcanic rock. There are amazing churches, some of them dating to New Testament times—some of which were pagan temples before the Christian era.

I saw dwellings which had been carved out of the soft rock centuries ago. I toured one of the several underground cities with level after level going down many meters into the earth carved into the rock. In the underground city I toured there were many tunnels which went on and on interconnecting room after room seemingly endlessly.

From Cappadocia I continued west and south to Bodrum, which is a beautiful little resort town perched on the cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean. I spent a few restful days there with the family of one of my friends at Swarthmore. They took me fishing and we caught many fish which the men cooked aboard the boat. It was a wonderful feast. I ate so much that I couldn’t eat for two days.

My last stop in Turkey was in Tarsus, which I had decided to visit because of its New Testament connections, but it didn’t live up to my expectations. I saw a few biblical sites there, including St. Paul’s Well in a courtyard believed to be the site of St. Paul’s house. I also took in the Tarsus Museum which contains artworks of the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman periods, Roman and Byzantine coins, baked soil pots, and some metallic materials.

I was beginning to wind down my grand tour, when I met a young couple in the Mumbai India airport terminal. I won’t use their names. The names they gave me most likely were not their real names anyway, I have no way of knowing and it isn’t important, still I’m not going to risk using them. I’ll call the man, Joe and the girl who was traveling with him, I’ll call Jane.

Joe came up to me soon after I came out of the customs area. He was around thirty, maybe a year or two less, I think, and very good looking. He was tall—about six feet—had wonderful deep blue eyes, thick, blond hair and a terrific build. Jane, the girl with him, was about five seven or eight and younger, twenty-three or twenty-four—a year or two older than I was—very pretty with a killer hard body, blue eyes and long blond hair—down to below her shoulders.

Her clothes were perfect. The short skirt she wore showed off her great legs to stunning effect—every man who saw her slowed down and stared at her legs before taking a lingering look at her breasts which were displayed almost scandalously by her cap-sleeved top which was cut very low exposing a generous portion of her very nicely proportioned breasts. She was the complete package.

At first, I thought she might be his younger sister. Her coloring was the same as his and I thought that I saw some family resemblance in their facial features, but her body language told me that there was a sexual connection. I decided she must be his wife or girlfriend—unless they were into incest! That thought strangely began to turn me on, but as I thought about it and realized the implications, I became uneasy. The thought began to repulse me and I quickly put it out of my mind.

I soon learned they’d been to India before. They said they knew the currency, the travel network, and what was worth seeing and what tourist traps to avoid. I tagged along with them and right away learned they really did know a lot about how to get around and what was worth seeing. Before I realized it, I was completely under their spell. They went out of their way to make me feel at ease and I felt very comfortable with them. Somehow, I was sure I could trust them even though I didn’t know anything at all about them. I think it was my sexual attraction to Joe that made me feel so comfortable and trusting. I’d never felt comfortable with a man that I knew wanted to fuck me before.

They both simply radiated self-confidence. They were very sure of themselves, so worldly, so cultured, so sophisticated, and Joe, especially, seemed to know absolutely everything about everything. He’d been hitting on me ever since the moment we met, and I was very strongly attracted to him. I expected Jane would be jealous of his attention to me, but strangely, she didn’t even seem to notice his obvious sexual interest in me.

His attention excited me in ways I hadn’t ever felt before. I usually discouraged, in no uncertain terms, any man who showed that he was attracted to me sexually, but this man seemed different. I felt drawn to him and was excited and flattered by his interest in me rather than repelled. I wanted his attention even though I knew he wanted to fuck me. That made me nervous. I wasn’t really sure I wanted to let him take my virginity, but before long I began to think he was the one I’d been waiting for. I decided I’d like to let him take my virginity if he kept pursuing me.

Looking back, I can see that I was quite naive. I’d had a full social life growing up, dating in high school and college, but never letting any boy really get to know me, and never encouraging any sexual advances, in fact I strongly discouraged any boy who tried to touch me in a sexual way. I was carefully guarded by my parents and their friends so that I never saw the seamier side of life so when I graduated from college, I didn’t have any idea how to handle sophisticated men. I was totally out of my depth with this man of the world, but I didn’t know it at the time.

Sometime during the second day I was with them, Jane—his wife or companion, I never found out whether they were married or not—said she had helped him select me at the airport. She told me he’d looked at all the young women as they came out of customs and asked her what she thought of the ones he liked. She, said, when he’d asked her about the stunning young brunet across the way, she’d said, “I think she’s definitely a winner. Let’s follow her. Unless someone is here to meet her, let’s pick her up. Go ahead, turn on the charm, and see if you can hook her.”

The Seduction Joe rather easily seduced me during the second week I was in India. The three of us went to dinner at a club. After we finished a nice meal, we had a couple of drinks while watching the show. Then Jane suddenly said she wasn’t feeling well. She said she wanted to go back to the hotel and try to get some sleep, but that she didn’t want to spoil our fun.

She insisted she would be alright alone. She’d take a taxi back to the hotel, she said. We should stay and enjoy the rest of the show, she insisted. She told us again she’d be OK alone. Eventually, Joe put her in a taxi and she went back to the hotel.

Soon after Jane left the club, Joe began coming-on to me really strong. He took my hand and kissed it saying I was the most beautiful woman in the club. I was very flattered since the girls in the show were really stunning. I knew he was feeding me a line, but it made me feel really special.

He’d been hitting on me steadily ever since we met, and by now I was really infatuated with him, so I wasn’t inclined to resist his advances—actually I was encouraging him. He hadn’t touched me in a sexual way, but he’d made it very clear that he found me sexually attractive. I really don’t know what it was about him that appealed to me so strongly, but after being close to him, almost all the time, for a week I realized that I desperately wanted him to want me. I wanted him to try to seduce me, and I wanted him to succeed. I wanted him to take me. I wanted him to take my virginity.