Finding a Greek God at the Acropolis

In this exclusive series for Sans Pareil Online, Emily Makere Broadmore, editor/PR-stunt-woman/SMUT-editor-extraordinaire, is off to Europe. Here she's promoting the illustrious Folly Journal, creating magic at a writer's residency and probably a thousand other things we're deeply jealous of.

I'm walking up the slippery marble steps to the Acropolis in Athens, with my phone slung across my body as the sun sets over the city, the white roofs glistening so bright they are almost blue against the sky. My phone is buzzing consistently against my hip because last night the fellow artists-in-residence at Argo Arts told me to download the dating app Feeld. Shortly before leaving for the Acropolis, I had uploaded a profile. It read: I will go out for dinner with any man who promises to pose naked for me like Sydney Sweeney.

“What else will you do?” a man named Michaelis asks. “Will you bite me so I stay still while you take photos?”

“I will,” I said.

“Will you kiss me?”

“Possibly” I said.

“Anything more?” he asked.

“Depends”I said, “On whether you behave.”

I am in Athens to create art. Specifically, I am an artist-in-residence at Argo Arts, a privately run art residency run by two eclectic locals. I am one of three artists in residence, the others being an Iranian illustrator, a Bulgarian multi-media artist and a Canadian painter. I am here to polish off my sexy second novel ahead of my debut novel which is launching with Penguin Random House in early 2027. The other artists and I spend many evenings eating popcorn made by the Canadian while the Bulgarian films our nonsense on a retro camcorder for her Big Brother style documentary and the illustrator draws us as caricatures, a change from his usual war illustrations. Sometimes we swap prescription drugs, drink too much cheap wine and traipse around the graffitied anarchist neighbourhoods of Athens hanging out with the local hipsters. ‘It’s so great that we are all normal,’ I said last night as we shoved popcorn into our mouths. ‘It would be terrible if one of us was really weird.’

The Bulgarian looked at me. ‘Emily,’ she said. ‘We are all really weird.’
That morning on my way to the Acropolis I asked the driver if he knew the Sydney Sweeney ‘just sports’ ad. He had no idea what I was talking about, so I pulled my phone out, ignoring the influx of messages from potential Greek Gods, and open Sweeeny’s Instagram profile (followers 25.9 million). I didn’t want to cause a car accident so I show him the stills rather than the reel. His eyes widen and he grins.

‘She is very beautiful woman,’ he says of the photo where she holds a baseball bat butt naked. ‘She is an athlete?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘She’s an actress.’

He leaves me at the gates of the Acropolis and I pull a hat out of my bag.
surrounded by tourists who are staring transfixed at the massive yellowy stones of the Parthenon at the top of the hill, patiently waiting their turn to slowly traipse towards it. This is the most tourists I've seen in my time in Athens, because I am on an artistic residency in the suburb Kypseli, where fortunately I have been surrounded only by locals and expats. I had considered skipping the site altogether. ‘That’s arty and purist to not go,’ an arty friend back in New Zealand chided me when I voiced my ambivalence. The crowd finally starts moving and we make it to the top of the hill. I stand in a throng of tourists inching our way slowly forward towards the ruins, and begin screening the candidates. By the time I am done, I am finally near the large entrance to the site of the Parthenon. Before me a throng of tourists are taking selfies and a twenty-something year old girl in what appears to be a black ballgown with a plunging neckline posing in front of a tripod. I admire the architecture of the temple, the restoration work underway, then sit on a flat rock across the way while a Greek woman with a whistle chases a Chinese man who has pocketed a small rock.

I swipe my hand over my phone. So far, my bio has got over 100 likes from Greek men in this area. “Have you found your Greek god yet?” one message says.
“I’m still vetting candidates” I reply.

“Just based on that bio alone, you deserve to win an award” someone else
messages.

“I am an artist,” I tell him. “I am simply looking for a collaborator.”

This is mostly true.