When I called my mother from London to tell her I was moving to Athens, her voice came through across the Atlantic: Just don't marry a Greek man. That's all I ask. Don't come back with one.

Did I need my mother's warning? Greek myths tell you that sex can make you forget your name, can maroon you on an island, can spawn wars and disaster. Today modern Greeks still fight against what the sun lifts out of their blood. Some men use their reputation as lovers to ply the tourist trade on the islands; they even have a name, kamakis, after the spear used to catch fish. Women are considered so dangerous that in church they are told to cover their arms and legs, lest they tempt the eyes of men away from God. Virginity might make men feel safe, but it gives a false sense of security; there are doctors in Greece who earn their living sewing up hymens before marriage. What you fight hardest against, what you need to gather most forces to resist, is always going to be more powerful than you expect.

Isabella has invited me to go with her to Glyphada, to an American bar. She is dating a basketball player, and that is where he likes to go.

Glyphada has changed since it was an exclusive Athenian suburb by the sea, the spot where Daphne had her first house. Its name comes from the swamp that was cleared to make way for the first apartments and resorts, the brackish bad water that still comes back when the weather turns and stinks up the bays and beaches.

Eventually, Greece became a member of NATO, and to prove its new status the government invited the Americans to build a base there. The sleepy town filled with soldiers. Entrepreneurs came to open bars and discos and pizza houses, all the things they imagined soldiers would enjoy. After the bars came the expatriates, to drink themselves into mindlessness listening to music they remembered from hazy sessions at home. The basketball players, part soldier, part expatriate, part drunken reveler, have staked Glyphada as their own.

The bars are staffed by seemingly identical petite British women, most of whom came over on holiday and decided to stay. Escaping a depressed English economy and rainy, bleak towns, they find jobs under the table with lovers turned boss. The bar owners keep them on slave wages, with the threat of deportation if they complain. Few Greeks come to Glyphada, only a few prowlers looking for a fast drachma or an inebriated bedmate.

Every once in a while, there are bombs.

Isabella has dressed in her most casual attire, jeans, sweatshirt, little makeup. The basketball player favors cotton and sneakers, and she has decided to look sporty and American. We take a taxi and arrive after ten. Isabella says we are going to Bobby's. On the way she tells me the bar was bombed by a left-wing fringe group a few months ago, blasting away half the bar and breaking all the bottles. Bobby repaired and reopened in a month. Although a few anonymous threats have recently circulated, she says it is like lightning striking twice. Bobby's now enjoys a reputation as Glyphada's safest bar.

When I enter I feel at home and displaced at the same time. The neon-draped walls, heavy rock music, and sawdust on the floor take me back to a part of my country I have never experienced. Budweiser posters show well-muscled crew-cut men playing volleyball with frosted air-brushed girls. A cacophony of voices rises over the bar; no one speaks Greek.