13 - The Little Daydreams that Died Young

 With the restless energy and vigour of youth, teenagers, those daring divers into the depths of unexplored seas, nurture primitive ambitions. They daydream, with imagination as the main tool, despite and beyond the limited range of experiences and limited knowledge of a young life. They project an apparently limitless future into their minds from innumerable different perspectives and points of view, they extrapolate into a web of myriads of possibilities, contemplate their eventualities. A few of them they reject before replacing them with others, to some they give primacy, at least temporarily. In short, they create an imaginary journey into the open future horizons and draw the paths they intend to follow, with however scarce consideration on the necessary means to conquer that future. And this, while they collect along the way a diversity of mundane or sensuous and colourful experiences through their daily association with people and things: simply by moving and acting within their world and environments, by thinking, feeling and caring; as movement in the world and concerns, desires and feelings are the fundamental components of human existence.

This multitude of desires and dreams spinning in adolescent minds, and lie ahead for them to grasp in a seemingly endless future within a vast and inexhaustible world of opportunities in front of them, change with time, often daily. Priorities are upgraded or downgraded, cancelled or revised, depending on ever changing circumstances. The stream of life after the first crossroads enters a groove, before it flows into the river of life. And a present life, one we call a mature person eventually experiences, might be in partial or complete mismatch against the dreams and ambitions of his early life. That is the most likely outcome. Even a partial realization of the dreams of youth hardly depends on the vitality of imagination and associations of early years, those generally dormant spiritual powers, which rekindle fires in the soul and animates conversations between young people about their ambitions and future plans; nor does it hinge only on the reserves of will which each one possesses and directs towards the one or the other goal.  Myriads of other factors, which may stem directly from the individual within or be influenced by events occurring in our family circle or some other part of the world and we are not necessarily conscious of, mark and affect the course of life and existence. After all, our dreams and imagination are projections into the mind of the external material world, its forms and models that the intellect has created and processes and extends. And it reshapes them with knowledge and thinking and newly created ideas, the mind forms along the way and records and deposits in the registers of memory and makes up our conscience.

Then, there were times when, I, the ‘immature teenager’, was dreaming the day world and future would open up before me with their limitless spatiotemporal horizons: the world in its multitude of people, nature in its infinity and grandeur, death and the end of existence not yet conceived of. I was surrounded by many books, hundreds of books, scattered on shelves and cabinets of the three bookcases and shelves in our apartment of Deligiorgi Street, and my mind, despite the occasional pretence to the contrary (usually due to an innate selfishness and pride that inflicts most) was an open and hospitable space to nurture fleeting daily stimuli and influences from family, friends, school teachers, inevitably newspapers, images from films and television, but always the books, which ever since became an integral sine qua non of life. All these stimuli, even if and when I resisted them or they penetrated me subconsciously or imperceptibly, with thinking deliberately or unintentionally drawn to focus elsewhere, they always found their way into the subconscious and conscious banks of memory: images and readings along with the plentiful spare time afforded in the tired and silent, but sweet hot summer afternoons of childhood and adolescence when family and the neighbour were immersed in their Mediterranean siesta. I, in the solitude of my little room and stacks of books at arm’s length, with thoughts and an imagination venturing far away, outside the four walls, with the company of real and fictitious characters.

I was healthy, well-fed and -bred by Mother and grandma downstairs, physically capable to compete above a minimum level in the children's team play we set up in yards, fields, streets, at school, the sandlots -the few open spaces the city still offered at the time, although I was not athletic enough, as I realised later, to excel in sports in regional and national level. I had an above-average intelligence, as I was made to believe, whatever metrics could be used at the time to estimate what we call intelligence. It was the general consensus I overheard in family and friends’ conversation about me or discussions of Father with teachers. What I did not possess in abundance was quick wit and mental agility, gifts in children producing witticisms that raise eyebrows and smiles of praise and admiration amongst adults. But nimbleness and mental agility are not always compatible with the ability of deep and tenacious thinking and being analytical of complex problems and situations. Neither was I equipped with an obvious and exceptional inclinations in particular fields of knowledge or objects of human activity; if this inclination had been latent, it would not have been spotted and recognized in time by mentors, that is, parents as the Greek public school always exercises egalitarian and levelling-down tendencies; nor a specific aptitude and talent was detected, in arts or sports for instance, that could be cultivated and realised to its fullest and flourish. Genius, in a word, I not and I could not be possibly claimed to be. Comments from parents and friends in conversations about bringing up their children that caught my ears, one word, simple, dry, and rather meaningless characterized my intellectual potential: ‘positive.’ This characterisation, I understood then, placed me on a different, a somehow lower scale from the class of ‘bright minds’, those with extraordinary intelligence and talents, who, according to the opinion of my proud parents, seconded by family friends, characterized Brother. Yet, it was at least consoling and reassuring that I was standing just above the average intellectual abilities of my peers. In short, I was no more than what the British would describe as an all-rounder.

Therefore, on the basis of this knowledge and a limited degree of self-awareness, I nurtured several ambitions early in life, from daydreams and various associations and mental journeys and extrapolations, and I set a few short- and long-term goals, realizable and achievable at some stage of existence- from as far as I could understand life then. Many of those ambitions were enhanced or quashed, based on ever changing life circumstances, impediments, zeal and tenacity, personal successes and achievements along the way, or external interference -predominantly family, in those early stages. Then again, of course, there was no time pressure or strict timetables for their realization. The end of the road was still invisible; existence on the world and the success in life was widely talked about amongst adults, seemed to me a slow, apparently endless process.

During the early childhood years, when friendly or vicious rivalry was ingrained in our games with friends (in football, basketball, athletics, and elsewhere), the star players and athletes we watched playing or competing in stadia or the portraits of football starts on the cards we exchanged (where wrinkled stern faces stared deep into the camera with toughness and determination and arms folded and rested on muscular torsos), all those reflections of fame and success naturally inspired our first dreams and ambitions -as childish as they might have been: playing and winning under the watchful gaze of thousands of spectators focused on us and our every move, every display of skill, in the expectation of scoring a goal or a basket that would trigger an outbursts of applause and cheers. As children our view point was too narrow to observe what was happening in the wider spheres of social life. Discussions of adults about economy and politics, the arts and science, or, worse, their jobs, we found tedious and left us indifferent.

I did not possess exceptional physical attributes (I was a skinny teenager with distinct, protruding and countable pectoral vertebrae, and slightly below average stature) but the occasional praise and applause from schoolmates, when I scored a goal or basket, made me delusional of some skills, even an inherent talent in the sports I enjoyed playing. I had a good sense of the ball, some insight in my passing, I could use body feints to dribble past opponents; I could ‘read’ the space and movement of teammates around me; I had a good perception of team tactics. Solo long practicing session improved my technique and skills in shooting and scoring from a distance in basketball or my passing in football by kicking the ball against a wall. The body would sooner or later mature and I would become stronger and more athletic with an enviable physique, so I believed. And was measuring my height and stretching my muscles in front of a mirror. Soon, however, ambitions of a career in team sports were quashed by the brutal reality. On one hand, I soon came to realise that without dedicating a disproportionately large amount of spare time outside school in training in, even with such high levels of dedication, I would hardly exceed the performances expected from an average amateur. Playing the recreational match in the field or a park, in the schoolyard or the sole and usually crowded sports centre of our city on weekends or during school holidays, would not warrant much progress. On the other hand, my parents promptly and persistently discouraged, before eventually outright blocking any initiatives and attempts to dedicate myself with zeal on a sport, as that would distract me from loftier educational aims in science or engineering. Perhaps, they had a valid point, despite my disappointment.

Impossible to forget were the soliloquys and scoldings of Father and the acquiescent and condescending silence of Mother listening from a corner (which I saw as disingenuous and insidious, even hypocritical and contradictory against the proclamations of love and sympathy, and angered me as much as Father's yelling) after they learned of our intention, with my friend Kostakis, to join and train with the junior YMCA basketball team more than once a week -after we had officially registered with the club, without their knowledge. Our frequent visits to the Palais des Sports to watch the Aris Salonica team (which featured a pantheon of local and national stars, like Papageorgiou, Ioannidis and Alexandris at that time, and later Galis and Giannakis of international calibre) on Saturday nights, before watching football on Sunday afternoons at Harilaou stadium, urged us to try our luck and skills on the basketball court -at least. The doors of a career in football were clearly shut. A certain school boy, Papaoikonomou, by far the most talented player in our primary school, the one who unforgettably in one of our makeshift matches with a rubber ball in our praised my skills, was an object of admiration and envy, when we watched him playing on the Harilaou stadium pitch, in the matches of under-15’s that sometimes preceded the main game of the senior league team. In any case, football, despite the attraction it exerted as a spectacle to Father, as well as grandpa during his lifetime, was subconsciously seen by many in our social circle as a sport for the uneducated and vulgar lower classes devoid of intellect, that is, of people belonging to social strata considered inferior or alien to ours. Basketball, for its part, seemed to our dreamy and deluded minds to be somewhat more accessible and agreeable sport, and a rather nobler way out of the tedious school routine -perhaps, a crack in the door for a partial fulfilment of our naïve child ambitions. It was considered more ‘civilized’ and ‘unspoilt’ than football and the foul-mouthed and rough rascals of the majority who played it. The fat coach of the YMCA team admitted us rather reluctantly, as our physique and relatively short stature at a first glance at least would not take us far in this sport, even for the standards of the lowly amateur divisions in which the YMCA teams were competing. How and by whom those delusions were fed back then, even if it was for a low-profile career in basketball, is still questionable, but clearly childhood naivety and the omnipresent need for one’s acknowledgment by peer groups played their roles.

In our first session with the club, the fat coach made us train with the second or, perhaps, third-tier group and, after some brief instructions and semi-sarcastic remarks, he left us to focus his attention on the first team. Kostakis woke up soon to a harsh to our ambitions reality and did not come back to the club for a second time. I had another warm-up session in that indoor court, with the pleasant echoes from the bounces of the ball on the parquet floor, the whirr from the net of the hoop when a basket of was scored, the whoops and hollers of the players to each other, the yelling of instructions by the coach. I scored a single basket in the friendly game after the warm-up routines, and then I abandoned my venture altogether disillusioned. Father’s scolding had already put me off, but no more than Kostakis’ dropping-out, but both made valid points.

Middle-class parents and the unyielding and sometimes compulsive determination into nurturing their children to preconceived models and notions of success in life, became the main contributors into forcing me to curtail joyful activities, suppress pertinent ambitions, and quash my dreams of success in the arenas of sports. Such pursuits and outlets, like football and basketball games with schoolmates, were gradually restricted into the margins; to a few hours a week in low-profile activities in the popular team sports I cherished as a child. With the encouragement and urging of my parents, I began substituting intellectual activities -so to speak, complementary to the demands of school and the merciless succession of exams, for the far more enjoyable football and basketball playtime. The necessary preparations for exams and schoolwork, non-creative and sterile and unexciting as they were, would be for few years in the core of my adolescent life. To this end, the family environment, Father primarily with a more open-minded approach, and Mother, with her miserably and often irritating pedantic attitude, would furnish anything that would potentially maximise performance and grades in those exams, which, for my unfortunate generation, occurred on an annual basis. Of course, I had my little room for privacy and undisturbed peace, whenever I needed it, whilst little Brother was generally prohibited from entering it, and that was regardless of whether I ended up using this private time for the sake of studying for my exams and grades or doing in secrecy some more gratifying things. They even entrusted me with a key to the door of the room, which I used regularly, on one hand to prevent annoying intrusions from Brother, on the pretext always that they would divert my dedication and distract my concentration, but also discourage indiscreet and unwanted inspections (‘What this boy might be doing for hours in there?’) and random inspections behind closed doors and shutter. As I grew older, I became more and more furtive and secretive about what I was actually doing in that little room and even more about was going in my mind: I developed and accustomed to prominent caginess as far as personal matters and thoughts were concerned, mainly based on a growing fear of parents' (Father’s in particular) reactions to unapproved actions and initiatives.

The oak desk the small room of our old street apartment was replaced by an imposing and of managerial specifications walnut desk, with a thick glass slab for desktop, as soon as we moved to our new apartment in the Harilaou district. The tall old bookcase, built by that clumsy carpenter Traitsis, covered one of my new room walls. It was soon overflowed with books, which were numbered now in the thousands. Row of shelves up to the ceiling of the opposite wall were fitted by personal labour in the opposite, as well one wall in Brother’s small bedroom, and along with the bookcase in my parents' bedroom, accommodated the excessive volume of books. All sorts of books were featuring on these shelves: literary, political, philosophical, historical, which Father used to bring from his bookseller-cousin’s bookstore on a weekly basis to Mother's dismay and frustration. Those were amended by university and scientific textbooks I was allowed to buy freely from Thessaloniki’s bookshops.

Education and admission to the University was an über alles imperative, the holy grail of my existence; a non-negotiable precondition for future life, and that would henceforth shape my ambitions and ultimately the future. The rest of the teenage dreams were shelved before fading into obscurity. My landing to the reality of the small part of world I inhabited was taking place.

12 - The Great Earthquake

The great earthquake of 1978 which startled and awoke Thessalonians from their summer indolence, and the impressions from that evening and the days of unrest that followed remained indelible in the memory of all those who lived through the event and its aftermath. A fear, which for many exceeded hitherto limits and caused panic, from the unprecedented in their lifetimes event and the not insignificant probability of dying under the rubble of aging and untested building structures, can be classified as a natural human reaction regardless of the reserves of innate fearlessness and bravery each individual possessed. The instinct of self-preservation and survival is patently stronger than the sexual instinct, because the latter presupposes life and existence. And that is a trivial truism.

It was late in the warm evening of June 20, 1978. The clock was about to strike 11pm. The formality of the easy, as much as unnecessary, exams for graduation from 3-years of mandatory education in the Greek Gymnasium and admittance to the second tier of the high school system, were over. There were no concerns whatsoever about grades and the result of those interim exams. Schools had already closed for summer and soon my family would head to the regular holiday destination of the last years: the camping of Skotina. It would be my last holidays in that place, before the marathon of the arduous preparation for the national university entry exams began. A last period of carefreeness and respite that summer would be then! The much-discussed at school World Cup, despite Greece’s national team elimination from the tournament, as always have been the case in the past, was taking place in distant Argentina and was in full swing. Father and I were sitting at either end of our old green, art-deco sofa, and watching a match from the previous day on the main channel of our national broadcast corporation. Although pre-recorded, it attracted the undiminished interest of the ardent football fan in me. There was nothing much better to do in that warm late evening, anyway.

The first jolt was startling and intense -one of those shocks that double the heartbeat within seconds· as much as terrifying as the shaking of our surroundings and the roar from the foundations of the building and the bowels of the earth below. It lasted several seconds, about ten seconds as it was reported, but during such a phenomenon anxiety and fear skew the linear perception of time in proportion to their intensity and the impact on our emotional state: time is generally expanded.

Father's first reflexive move was to turn off the television set, stand before the bookcase shelf it was placed and put his arms around it front of the library shelf to prevent it from crashing to the floor. I admired his equanimity and courage. Did he not experience fear? Did he consider the TV set such a valuable commodity worth protecting it ahead of himself and his family?  As far as I was concerned, my instantaneous reaction might have been naïve, but as instinctive: I sprang from the sofa and went to stand the header of the living-room door frame, with my arms extended and hands against the jambs. I had read somewhere in the popular literature about protective measures in the event of an earthquake that door-frames offer minimal cover. Crouching under a table could offer a better defence against falling debris or indeed the ceiling, but the nearest one was in the kitchen. The shelfing unit with books and bric-a-brac used to divide the reception hall area from our ‘drawing room’ was shaking behind me violently back and forth just in tandem with the floor under our feet, the walls, the earth. A couple of vases fell and smashed despite Mother's commendable attempts to hold on to them. And then, there was that universal eerie silence, as much terrifying as the quake.

The shock from the tremor was succeeded by the not baseless fear that at any instant our apartment building and the tons of concrete above our heads would collapse before we could manage a swift escape through the staircase. But, after the initial shock, traces of rational thinking emerged, albeit still guided by human instincts: of self-preservation and survival. A dark fear of similar magnitude I was seized by, when with heart-to-mouth, along with other block occupants, I cautiously descended the stairs from the top floors, was illuminated by glimmers of hope. In seconds we would be standing somewhere on solid ground, far from the menace of tall buildings around us, those plastered beasts of concrete that sprang out in the neighbourhood. As it happened, the nearest safe ground was the sand plot on the other side of the stream, where as children we used to play football. Other families from our and neighbouring streets had already assembled there. Most were acquainted with each other and talking in serious tones and pseudoscientific terms about the unprecedented natural phenomenon. A few neighbours headed to more distant open spaces and the few remaining vacant lands of the city. The more privileged or cautious ones headed to the parks by the city’s seafront.

Father brought the car from Deligiorgi Street where it was likely stationed perilously under someone’s balcony, and parked it under the crooked willow by stream so that I and Mother can sleep. Himself, he took Brother and returned back to the flat, fearless and brave, with the arrogant demeanour of a scientist, someone aware of the risks and consequences of such natural phenomena and one who had faith in the practices and conduct of Greece’s civil-engineers and contractors who designed and built those apartments blocks. Physics, Statics, Mechanics, Strength of Materials, etc… he knew better than the ordinary folk chattering about the earthquake and its impact on the concrete structures around us. His courage and bravery impressed me, again. On the other hand, his sleep, in nights and afternoons, would never have been negotiable and no event, even an earthquake of a magnitude never experienced in our lifetimes, would deter him from missing it. Mother and I tried to squeeze in the uncomfortable interior of the small FIAT to get some sleep on its seats. In the wee hours before dawn, with our cramped bodies tossed and turned uncomfortably in search for some vital sleep, we picked the one sheet we brought from upstairs as a cover, and ascended to the warmth and comfort of our beds. There had been no signs that ‘Enceladus’ would strike again. An aftershock in the morning woke me up in terror, but sleep was irresistibly sweet to relinquish the comfort of the bed. In the fascinating limbo of a half-asleep state, my mind was still alert in anticipation of another tremor.

Next day we heard in the news that an old apartment building by Hippodrome Square, close to the city centre, collapsed and many of its occupants tragically died, crumbled under the rubble of its eight-floors. Professor Papazachos, of the city’s university, became an instant celebrity, but he divided the public opinion of Thessalonians. A large percentage of them, who mainly comprised mainly the broader uneducated or semi-educated strata of the city, pointed a figure at him, at the ‘fool’ or ‘idiot’, who, despite the warnings of pre-earthquake activity, he appeared on the media reassuring people that an imminent major earthquake was highly unlikely. But did he say ‘probably’ or ‘unlikely’ or ‘with certainty’? I don't remember, and it doesn’t matter. How could a scientist be blamed, the child’s mind wondered, when any statement regarding the probability of such an event happening lacks practical significance? It would be even incomprehensible by the common folk, whilst a supposedly seismological authority even alluding to the possibility of a major earthquake would have serious consequences in the life of the city -psychological and political, and it might have caused unrest and even panic. The few faithful to science, like patients who expect a cure or, at least, a substantiated opinion from doctors, hung daily on the lips of Professor Papazachos and the other seismologists who were paraded in TV studios: as to what may or may not follow, as to what we should expect in the post-earthquake period.

An expert among them, with the assurance of an authority in the field stated that within the next thirty years an earthquake of the same or greater magnitude would occur in the Thessaloniki region. I was impressed by his weighty statement at that time, although on what grounds he could make such a remarkable statistical estimation not too many questioned. Life only for a few city inhabitants did change materially in the months and years that followed· for most it carried on as before. The seismologist’s ominous prediction was forgotten, and so did the traumatic night of the great earthquake. In the summer months of 1978, however, the city was deserted to an unprecedented degree by many of its inhabitants, who fled to the countryside and villages and towns of their ancestors and origin· the wealthiest to seaside resorts for a long summer holiday.

Seismology in the years that followed would raise its hands, as far as reliable predictions of earthquakes was concerned· it surrendered, to speak, to the randomness of the frequency and intensity of the potentially devastating natural phenomenon, and devoted itself to observe and collect and analyse the data from its observations. Somehow, in Greece, professors and experts were seemingly under some form of pressure to demonstrate the scientificity of their judgement and shine in front of an expectant public every time Nature trips us up -and, perhaps, in chasing national stardom. Temporary hopes from patents for supposedly reliable earthquake prediction, such as the much-heralded BAN, at the forefront of scientific news and national media for years in Greece, did not convince the broader scientific community and were quashed· the technique was abandoned as unworkable or inapplicable or unreliable. Thessaloniki, nearly half a century on, has been spared by another major earthquake that its likely occurrence was predicted within thirty years from the first one -in that unforgettable statement by one of the experts of the time.

I would spend the first year of Lyceum in the more modern building of the ‘Euclidean Technical College’, in three-shift crowded classes due to limited room space, but this made me and many others happy: the facilities were better and it was closer to home. The building of our old, historic High School, sustained structural damage and deemed unsuitable to house our classes until its reconstruction, which in Greece’s paces would take many years. Our apartment building, more than decade old when earthquake struck, withstood the impact apparently unscathed. The builder proved conscientious and Father was vindicated for the faith he inexplicably harboured for builders, in general. He was duly praised by family and the rest of the occupants of our block. A few days after the earthquake, a civil-engineer carried out an inspection and stuck a yellow sticker on our front door, signifying minor damage, capillary cracks in the plasters, nothing to worry about. The concrete structure survived the impact of the horrendous tremor.

Two years later after the earthquake we left our apartment on the second floor for a more modern block, built by a most trustworthy contractor and family friend. The old one, more than sixty years after its construction, and nearly fifty years after the great earthquake, still stands; a sorrow, ugly and fading block overlooking the small alley. Its gloomy sunless floors are still occupied by human souls, most of whom did not experience the great earthquake that shook the city. The fatal building of the Hippodrome Square, the only block of apartments in Thessaloniki that was raised to the ground not by a demolition bulldozer but by an earthquake, was replaced by another on the same plot of land, along with a monument to commemorate the perished occupants. The longevity of the tall concrete structures, architectural trademarks of Thessaloniki and major Greek cities, after relentless post-war construction, does not cease to amaze. The old city's skyline will never change.   

11 - The Sudden Death of God

 God, along with my faith to the dogmas of the Greek Orthodox Church, the official body of the Christian religion for proselytising and catechising on the gospels in the country I grew up, I rejected without much deliberation and well before I acquainted myself with the works of Marx, Camus, Sartre, Nietzsche, et al.  The renunciation of God and religion was a relatively simple logical step taken easily and spontaneously in the first phase of adolescence.

Venial sins of childhood, adult vices, atrocities by one people or state to another, seemed to be occurring unnoticeably and unpunished by that invisible god we were indoctrinated in his existence from birth. He was clearly a weak and impotent observer, whether we prayed and asked for forgiveness for ourselves or intercession for others or not. I was hearing about wars and disasters, deaths of as innocent as a young child can be, of the ‘virtuous’ and ‘sinners’ alike regardless of faith, in the same cauldrons of history and life. Injustice, misery, poverty, death existed and appeared in each direction we turned our heads and senses. Grim spectacles of peoples struggle for dear life that moved me as a child and sometimes made me cry. God’s hand and intervention to correct the wrongs and fix this world were nowhere to be seen. Was it, perhaps, because God Himself created ex nihilis this crooked world ‘in His image and likeness’, as we were told? That much was obvious; real and indisputable for a child who was sensing and feeling the world and begun to think rationally.

After all, despite my spiritual immaturity, it need not much thinking before reaching the conclusion that even if there was a being which created our world, surely this being is not equipped with the qualities my church at least had attributed to it: of the omnipotent, the all-good and merciful, the omniscient being. The grandeur of nature and the universe, its phenomena puzzling and often beyond our powers to explain, the complexity and reach of the human brain and its functions perplexing, the inconceivability of human consciousness and how it mysteriously emerges from within, all of those were there to awe and inspire and motivate us to search deeper for better understanding. Decades later, I would stand with the same awe and bewilderment in the face of phenomena that far exceeded my grasp, the hitherto knowledge still insufficient. In spite of the limited understanding of much of the world surrounding us, contradictions and logical fallacies surrounding theology, the philology about the existence of God and the creation of nature and man, the frivolous bypassing and disregard by the agents of religion of attempts for rational and scientific explanation of the seemingly inexplicable, the discarding and excommunication of scientific approaches that contradicted the religious dogmas, seemed incompatible with the human being, its conscience and existence, my existence, and would have nullified its purpose on this earth. Religion was becoming a burden that had to be bypassed, at least for the sake of progress and consummation of a unique life.

I ceased expecting punishment from the hand of God for those who blasphemed, those who wronged, or even those who committed blatant evil acts (no matter what the moral thresholds of our society were, regardless of the period and geography we live). Against evil by all accounts acts nothing more than resistance, rebellion and retribution from the people themselves and their societies should be expected, in this very world and this very life.

One night, I stopped praying and crossing myself, as I used to do before going to sleep until the last grades of elementary school. The fears of God and divine punishment and from the loss of eternal life in heaven disappeared overnight. God’s spirit that (we were told) would be revealed from his saints’ icons and vulgar adornment of the modern Orthodox churches, through incomprehensible Byzantinisms, nonsensical parables and vacuous hymns, and the sermons of theologians at school, were lost behind the noise of too many words, too many incoherent phrases in ungainly ceremonies, and the myths of incredulous miracles. In short, religion turned into a great fairy tale and made no more sense to me. On the other hand, the high moral ground, the ‘Good’ from an ambiguous love and the humility of Christianity as proclaimed by the Church, was not only in blatant contradiction with the practice of many of its agents (relatively insignificant in a broader context, since priests are endowed by the same ‘human nature’,  Heidegger's Dasein, as any layman mortal), but also in daily confrontation with reality and every attempt to rationally justify it –at least that part of reality that concerned me and which I was experiencing as I was growing up. I came to believe that Christian love and humility were of no practical use and not applicable to our daily lives.

Fear of death is perhaps the main reason that historically brought (and still does) us mortals under the wings of a religion and its promises of future life. The spectre of death came and went fleetingly and superficially in my teenage thoughts; it still stood far away in a distant future. The afterlife, the paradise a sinless soul would conquer and enjoy in an eternal, as my religion promised based on an arbitrarily drafted protocol for as long as I kept faith and remained devout, the preparation for the ominous and imminent Second Coming (where each one of us would take a stand and judged by God), in short, the main attractions and baits of my religion (and most religions for that matter), although they troubled me for a short period as a child, in the end, despite scanty concerns about the void that would follow a finite and short life, they looked to me like a foolish bet on the present and given life and at its expense, an irksome obstruction to joy and freedom. At best, they are hypotheses de facto unprovable and which one either blindly accepts or bravely rejects.

And the mind was wondering how the particular religion into which I was baptized, grew up and was nurtured with, one of several in our world, how this religion is concerned with those ‘innocent and ignorant’, who lived and died before the Christian God was revealed to humanity in one of its historical junctions, with people of other geographies and faiths on the planet. There was no clear answer, nor, of course, any proof of after life and heaven and the like. Could then be that promise, one granted under arbitrarily predetermined ad hoc conditions, was at the end an old ruse serving the ruling classes and cliques of interests and, after all, we are in this world on our own?

The medieval dogmas recited incessantly by theologians and priests until the very end of high school, I did reject outright by the end of year one. Fairy tales and stories of the Old and New Testaments, tirelessly analysed by our teacher of ‘Religious Affairs’ for the uncanny hidden symbolisms, so that they could be assimilated by ‘common sense’ and a mind that insists on rationalising, the constant repetition in classes, liturgies, religious celebrations, occupied a place in memory that could otherwise be employed in a more useful and productive manner. I consider my early scepticism towards everything theological, and the eventual rejection of my religion and its dogmas, as a first personal revolt of the spirit and mind against the mainstream. Abandoning God and adopting atheism was a credence hidden from teachers and family until the end of school. Both grandmas retained their faith unshakably; the church comforting to them as they neared the end of their lives. I did not criticize them, neither did I want to tarnish a faith that kept a hope that there might be something somewhere where their souls would rest after death.

Yielding under the pressure of future post-school ambitions, I had to demonstrate, even in sterile subjects such as religion, a rudimentary conscientiousness, even if I feigned, even if I was coerced – for the sake of ‘showing some interest’ and the grades, as Mother urged, at the expense of a temporary, although always desirable and welcome personal freedom from the shackles of a tedium. The grades in those courses, as well as several inconsequential others taught at school, were a small perhaps factors, but ‘it would count’, as Mother, constantly stressed out about my future, repeatedly reminded me. It would be a stone, no matter how little, for building a ‘better’ future, albeit still vague and foggy. The prayer to Holy Father God in morning school assemblies, which I often picked by the headteacher to recite, the mandatory attendance of masses in church on Sundays in school years and the great feasts of Orthodoxy, the arduous memorising of nonsensical and incomprehensible religious texts, continued throughout my teenage years. I had to compromise, temporarily. My rebellion against the divine and the ultimate rejection of God manifested itself conspicuously after the end of school, in the small revolutions of our student days, in the denial of everything divine and supernatural through a stubborn life-long atheism. God will never gain me back.

10 - Scant Outlets in the Age of Frustration

The sexual instinct exists and manifests itself, in some way or another, in everyone’s life. Sexual urges, hidden deep within until the end of childhood, spring up unconsciously and come to the fore and flare up in adolescence, catching us unawares. It is said that libido and physical drive peaks around the end of the teen years. These instincts are founded in primordial biological processes and the vital necessity of reproduction and the ‘survival of the species,’ but the evolution of the human kind they aim, sometimes exclusively, at pleasure derived from the gratification of the senses via sexual intercourse, one of the driving forces behind the pull to the opposite sex. This drive is universal and timeless. What electrochemical processes and reactions occur in the brain from the sight of a woman's body, a beautiful face and figure, a seductive smile, a persistent and penetrating gaze, that stimulate us and sometimes set our hearts on fire, so to speak, it is irrelevant for the non-expert. It is rarely needed to be dissected by the layman. It just happens; it fascinates and captivates the soul.

Whether and how such urges, the erotic desire, find outlets and are fulfilled, that is, to the extent the senses are gratified via sexual activity or constrained by the lack or sparsity of that activity leads to frustration, and, consequently, to low self-esteem and anxiety. It determines the degree of an individual’s sexual freedom or oppression. In turn, the magnitude of this oppression in adolescence, will eventually determine not just the sexual but also largely and by association the emotional maturity and social behaviour of the individual. It can be considered, therefore, a major step towards the realisation of a man, the culmination of a boy into a man. It goes without saying that, during adolescence, due to the often-suffocating dependence on family and the subjection to norms and social prejudices, the broader cultural context and geography one grows up within, and the de facto limited contact interaction with members of the opposite sex and the volatility of teenage personalities, as those are forming and solidifying, some degree of sexual oppression is exerted on everyone. In my case and of others in school, this obtained relatively large proportions.

It was the six long years in the boys' only high school, six years of ardent dedication to study under often-unbearable pressure from family, because ‘it was for me; for my own well-being and a prosperous future!’), six years of a few numbered outings for circumscribed entertainment, all of which, along with the introverted and timid character I was, reduced any associations with girls of my age to almost zero. Regardless of that, what naturally occupied my thoughts and consumed mind and soul during the endless hours of isolation within the four walls of my room, between studying and attending my schools (school proper and tutoring) and the few ineffectual and fruitless outings with Yiannis D in search of female company, was not as much the lack of interaction with friends as dreams and fantasies of relationships with girls. Some amongst them were the real ones, whom I came across in our neighborhood and streets of the city, and often watched with chimerical hopes of acquaintance and intimacy; other were imaginaries, projections of a vivid imagination originating from pictures on posters, magazines, television and cinema.

Yet the fire from the burning desires had to be extinguished. Arousal from sexual stimuli had to be channelled through at all costs and suppressed at least temporarily. As did every male of my age-group, I naturally started masturbating (or ‘playing with him’ or ‘wank’ or ‘pumping spunk’) as it was frequently pointed out loud and mockingly by school bullies who had already introduced themselves into it, as means of hands-on self-gratification. I had indulged in that habit since before the nominal age one enters puberty, somewhere between the eleventh and twelfth year of my life. At first with a makeshift vagina, comprising a cardboard funnel lined with rubber gloves; later with my right-hand hand, as soon as I realized that a hand can do an effective job for an equivalently pleasing outcome. The joy from the first climax in was; it was an unforgettable moment of overwhelming pleasure, as I believe any teenager would testify. The subsequent ones ranged from simply satisfying to ecstatic, with fluctuations in pleasure, depending on the stimuli and the circumstance. All in all, it was a ritual with a pleasant ending that provided more than a mere relief: if nothing else it dampened the urges, ‘extinguished the fire’ within.

Stimulation from images the mind forms, either ex nihilo, or stitched together from scattered scraps here and there, remnants in memory of various pretty girls I had seen in the streets or of the one or two beautiful teachers, images the imagination extrapolated into more complete and animated forms, began to weaken with time and repetition. Then, I resorted to glossy magazines: like, for starters, the legendary Penthouse or Playboy magazines, which initially Yiannis D and I shamelessly stole from kiosks, until we were almost caught. Later, when the intensity of the urges forced me to overcome certain inhibitions, I bought them furtively, that is meticulously trying to avoid inquisitive looks from the kiosk owner or glances from customers and passers-by.

Sensually pleasing myself via those practices was invariably accompanied after the act per se, even in adulthood, by a vague guilt, which only a Freudian psychoanalysis could address and explain, and that inadequately. The prevailing feeling at the core of this guilt, was that masturbation was stupefying and, if practiced regularly, in the long term can be stultifying, blunt the function of the brain and impair cognitive ability. In short, it could potentially turn me into an idiot and hamper my intellectual and career ambitions. In a way, I validated that notion by observing a reduced performance in solving puzzles, mathematical problems and in playing chess, at least temporarily after the act. With such worries swirling in the mind and the anxiety from potentially impairing my brain functions, I found difficult to fall asleep. However, the temptation of the pleasure I would derive, in fact, the need to satisfy that overwhelming biological urge, drove me to practice those tactics that consistently brought pleasure. The urge was irresistible and masturbation became a regular habit and a secret hermetically sealed from family, in a locked room or under the sheets or the bathroom. I am sure the family knew and, perhaps, they understood. But knowing their personality and idiosyncrasy, it was something that they would have never discussed in my presence. It thus remained, for me and many others, the universal open secret of adolescent onanism that ‘is the talk of the town...’, in schools, cafés and playgrounds, wherever youngsters gather and chat.

Hormonal acne pimples started appearing on my face. It became a sign which the tyrannical bullies at school exploited, putting it down to a period ‘prolonged involuntary celibacy’, the inability to date girls, masturbation being the antidote to lack of sexual opportunities and intercourse. I could hardly question and counter-argue against such conjectures. I could see similar pimples in Yiannis D’s face and others who suffered from a similar deprivation. I thus became an object of regular teasing from the ‘partying and clubbing animals’ of the class, which exacerbated the repression and emotional turmoil of the era. It might have contributed to a further development of complexes that can burden the rest of one's life. I assumed those theories linking sexual abstinence in adolescence and ugly pimples on the face had a scientific basis and, for years thereafter, I put a lot of effort in the mornings in front of a mirror: to identify them, to squeeze and break them to release the disgusting sebum they contained so they are less conspicuous. For a long periods, this daily practice, which resulted in the formation of scabs and tarnished my face with a couple of scars. Squeezing and breaking pimples in adolescence, a practice affected by the teasing I endured, became a sort of compulsion when dealing with even minute pimples whenever and as soon as they appeared on my face; a compulsion I carried through into my thirties. ‘Take your hands off your face!’, Mother used to say often, whenever she saw me trying to detect and squeeze unwanted pimples with my fingers, until after I completed my military service and eventually left home in my late twenties, when the vices of adolescence were well behind me had and the scars disappeared from my face.

At the age of thirteen there was a small change into the patterns of stimulation and self-gratification. During a school break, I overheard stories told by a certain Kouroglou, a slacker par excellence, a habitual truant and a thug who was a matter of time before he would drop out of school, which indeed happened after the second year in high school. He was talking, with a mien of bravado and contemptuous superiority towards those around him about his experiences from sex-films he used to watch on Saturday nights, in the early glory days of porn cinemas of Thessaloniki.  The possibility of watching live animated on-screen sex, in lieu of recycling imaginary scenes in the mind or browsing static images of naked women in magazines intrigued me. The idea was too titillating to resist and I had to try the shows that Kouroglou was vividly describing to his mates. But the temptation of watching proper animated sex in a cinema was as big as my cowardice and the obstacles I might have to overcome before entering such a venue: the films were (supposedly strictly) prohibited to the under 18s, there was the fear of police showing up to check adherence to the law, the possibility of passer-by who knew me to see me entering or exiting such places of ill-repute.

It was a cloudy winter Saturday afternoon when, with my heart in the mouth, full of nerves and butterflies in my stomach, almost breathless, I walked towards ‘Cine Aria’ on Papanastasiou Street behind Hippocrates Hospital, a quarter of an hour away from home. I had already checked the cinema listing in Sunday’s ‘Macedonia’ paper. There were two categories of cinemas in the newspaper: the top-listed cinemas showing ‘premieres’ of mainstream films for the city’s genuinely cinephiles; the cinemas of the second category offered cheap screenings of older films. The first part of the show in the latter usually featured a ‘B-Movie’ from one of the popular genres of the era for the uncultured masses (martial arts films, horror films, etc.) The second part of the program featured the mostly anticipated by their punters sex movie. But there were a growing number of cinemas where both films screened had sexual content: the first normally being some kind of soft-porn -to set the scene, the second a hard-core porn film. Being an rookie punter of such venues, I opted for ‘Cine Aria’, which featured a Bruce Lee karate film in the first part of its program.

I crossed Papanastasiou street to the alley next to the entrance of the cinema, and spent a few minutes at the corner across from the side street, with my back turned to the passing cars ruminating on the possible implications of crossing the cinema door, the likely reactions of an uncouth cashier when seeing twelve years old kid, and the dark and unknown bowels of the cinema environment. After dwelling on such thoughts, I momentarily lost heart and crossed the street on the way back home, before an inner urged pulled me back again, towards the entrance of the cinema, when I gathered every drop of my limited courage, decisively crossed the threshold and entered the dark reception area inside. A grim, unshaven man, the likely patron of that seedy establishment was sitting behind a counter. He looked at me intensely and gauged me for a few seconds, from my face down to where he could see behind the elevated windowsill. Then in a stern and condescending voice he asked: ‘How old is you, huh?’ It would sound ridiculous to say I was ‘18’, the ratings of both films on show. The age limit was explicitly noted on a board outside and in its entrance hall along with some flimsy posters, as well as in the cinema listings of the local newspapers. I mumbled ’13…’ with a trembling voice, as ‘13’ was next lowest age rating in film classifications. I had not yet turned 13, but I thought that would be more believable. After giving me a suspicious look he said: ‘Fifty drachmas!’ Who would shun easy money, money generally? I paid. He did not issue a ticket, but with a wave of his hand he pointed me to some steps to the right.

From the bottom of a broad marble staircase (that cinema must have had some glorious days in a bygone era) that led to a hall leading to the stalls of the auditorium and further up to a gallery, I was greeted by a scruffy guy, with dishevelled tangled gray hair, and a furrowed brow with deep horizontal wrinkles -clearly, not the result of deep thinking, and dump vacant looks. He was wearing a worn-out jacket that hung like a sack, with one of its pockets apparently full of coins. His style was crude; he knew I was a novice in such a place, a fish out of water. We bypassed the main entrance to the auditorium and he guided me with a flashlight to the top of the stairs, to a gallery, where beam he illuminated a row of empty seats where I could sit. Seating a youngster well below the legal age in a balcony above the mains stalls, an area that could be locked in short notice, was a simple way to evade police patrols. He stretched out his hand without saying anything. I understood that he was expecting a tip. I emptied my pocket of the few coins I had and gave them to him. It was an embarrassingly small amount. He lit his palm with the flashlight, counted them by his eyes; it seemed short change to him; he said something like ‘Is that all you’ve got?’, I replied ‘Sorry, I gave you everything there is in my pocket’. He muttered some gibberish, but I was left unscathed to enjoy the action on the screen. The martial arts movie was still being played. A soft-porn film that followed, with silly and shallow plot, to my disappointment and against my expectations, but it marked the beginning of an incessant search for more stimulating cinematic experiences on Saturday afternoons.

The spectacle of filmed sex offered that extra visual-acoustic dimension in my solitary sexual experiences and enhanced the final climaxes. That much was certain. It didn't take long, therefore, for visits to seedy cinemas in search of that kind of stimulation to become an addictive temptation. My maiden visit to ‘Cine Aria’ was followed by other, regular almost weekly visits: to the same cinema, alternating it with another one further down along the same street, the slightly more agreeable ‘Cine Oscar’. I was self-conscious of what opinions the proprietors and the ushers of each venue might form, what they might go through their minds and say, if they saw me every week. In later years, I ventured further away from my neighbourhood: I explored ‘Dion’ in Lower Toumba, the small ‘Cineep’ in basement on busy street of the city centre, ‘Theano’ in Constantinople Street, ‘Ilion’ and ‘Aleka’ in the shady Vardaris district. It was an endeavour in search of audiovisual stimuli of increasing intensity: from the soft-porn of the early days the impressions from which faded quickly, to soft-porn with clips of hard-core interjected at random intervals in the main feature film, thus answering the demands of the porn-loving clientele and, later, at the dawn of the VHS and the in-house entertainment era full length hard-core films. The otherwise weak obstacles posed by the Greek legislature were easily bypassed by both suppliers and punters. And I was no more fearful of police invasions, as I used to be in the beginning.

Porn cinemas were squalid places, their atmosphere stale from poor or no ventilation. The floors were sticky, either from bodily fluids or spilled soft drinks, the seats greasy, often wet from fresh semen, the toilets repulsive, if not in disuse. The punters were almost exclusively men, middle-aged or old-perverts (at least, by the moral societal standards of the era) otherwise common mortals; lone heads sparsely scattered in the dark room with eyes fixed to the screen; minds stupefied by the screen action and the ensuing onanism, souls of sexually deprived lonely worlds in search of cheap thrills. At least, I had the mitigating circumstances of a young age, until I was given the desperately sought-after opportunity of crossing the threshold of sexual passion! Rarely, one could see the odd couple cowering in the darkness at some remote corner of the auditorium, motionless, seemingly amazed by the conspicuous sexual acts on the screen. More often than the odd female presence, one could recognize real ‘perverts’, who amongst rows of empty seats would come and sit on close to anyone recognizable as a boy. After a few sideways glances, they would move to a seat next and tried to establish physical contact. A male presence next to me in those places was always disturbing, the feel of a hairy lower arm revolting: I did know what he was seeking and expecting. I found it repulsive and quickly changed seats a few rows away, and in the extreme case he followed me, I left the cinema and spoilt the afternoon. But those incidents were a small price to pay and were unable to hinder future temptations.

With the lame and crooked and in a sense ‘perverted’ habit of watching porn in adolescence, in the absence of natural and orthodox ones, my existence in this domain for a few hours a week was downgraded to seeking vulgar entertainment, sitting amongst audiences in its majority drawn from lumpen or marginalised class, barring the few exceptions among them—like, for instance, the Lyceum physicist seen by classmates in one of those venues. It was a habit, an abnormal addiction as many would have described it, that was carried through into adulthood, despite, in the meantime, the normalization of love and sex life, despite the availability of more conventional and mainstream experiences, despite the existence of sexual partnerships. It continued into maturity, into the era of VHS, DVD, and internet streaming. Whether or not it became an addiction and had a detrimental effect in love and sex life, whether or not it enhanced sensual pleasure, whether it dampened or accentuated the passion, and what sex would be like without an adolescence saturated by porn are unanswerable questions. For the dull teenage years, it seemed an optimal and, perhaps, the only way, given my personality and circumstances, for some joy and pleasure in that life department.

9 - Introvert for Life

Something I exhibited in abundance since my toddler years, something that everyone who knew me iterated at every opportunity, was a shyness, which enveloped behaviour and manners always and everywhere. It was plainly apparent from the bowing of the head when I was asked my name as a toddler; in the turning away of the head, at first, then the hesitation and awkwardness, and that only after a nudge from Mother, in greeting people or simply saying goodbye; in the reticence to raise my hand in class to respond to teachers' questions, even when I was amongst the very few who knew the answer; in the turning of eyes away from the attention of the teacher or the inviting glance of a pretty girl; in my glossophobia resulting in feelings of insecurity and nervousness, and occasionally panic, at time I had to confront a group of people and express myself, stemming from the innate fear of saying something wrong and making a mistake; the difficulty of opening up to people I had not met before or familiarized myself with, and the inability in building bridges of communication and new friendships; in the awkwardness and even muted paralysis in my rare direct encounters with girls during adolescence; the shrinking and recoiling silent in a room corner at social events, even amongst peers and acquaintances; in the general lack of composure and inundation by fright when I was inadvertently becoming centre of unwanted attention amongst people, having their eyes fixed in expectation of a response and, as I believer, to gauge and judge me. All these were the general feelings I was occupied with, along their reflexes and subconscious effects, in many situations with people I was confronted with in adolescence, and further down in life.

The brooding and worrying, nerves and fears in the face of situations like the above caused discomfort, even harshness and personal embarrassment. Many a time those feelings could be elevated to a torment of the soul. To be fought against and defeated with will power and reason alone was not an easy feat. Pants of anxiety shot through my inner self when exposed bare in front of an audience, especially if not afforded the time and opportunity for reflection beforehand or, at least, a tentative collection of thoughts and summoning the necessary courage and composure for a rational approach to the situation. When I was afforded the time, preparing my talk word by word, where and how I would stand, how I would deal with the one or the other possible eventuality, was arduous and mentally torturous, so much so that at the end body language became robotic, my speech stilted, and, worse, myself conscious of being perceived as unnatural and nervous. It could become problematic, if it were an interview in front of a panel for a job application or a presentation in front of a group of people. Although gradually blunted with age by virtue of experience gained and the repetitiveness of such situations, yet, I was compelled to live a big part of life with such feelings and worries girding me. In short, my psychology and demeanour were enveloped by shyness and reserve and diffidence, effecting nervousness and anxiety when faced with and simply being and talking with and to a group of people. Rarely and with significant mental effort and resolve were I able to manage to suppress those impediments, along with the anxiety they caused.

For its part, introversion is not a transient feeling or emotion arising as a reaction to situations and events like the aforementioned. It is, for better or worse, a concrete personality trait that is an integral and relatively inflexible part of one’s character. During my school years I was not aware of that trait, which would burden me in one way or another for the rest of my life, let alone, of my position at the extreme end of the wide range spectrum of introverts. I did only have a vague conception, perhaps not even that. I was first ‘diagnosed’, so to speak, as an introvert by Kostas S, a doctorate candidate and then future eminent professor in psychology, our neighbour and for a blue moon a friend in the American city where we were both studying. It happened at one of the gatherings for meatballs and wine, he and his wife Tasoula used to organize in their apartment, whilst listening to plaintive songs by our national bard Kazantzides and the like. In distant foreign lands, strong centripetal forces of affinity are exerted attracting members of the same national heritage to each other, regardless of personality, and interests and aims in life. We had not met in person before that first gathering, he and Tasoula organized ad hoc to get to know us, however it did not take long for Kostas to reach a diagnosis, as he was watching me perched in the corner of the sofa in his living room, silent or at best taciturn, with measured words, timid in manners, with a glass of wine permanently in his hand or mouth trying to overcome with alcohol my shyness and social inhibitions. Kostas was categorical in his assessment: ‘You clearly have an introverted personality, L!’ The brand of introvert I was rather brutally assigned did not bother me (as it had the gravity of an expert in the field of behavioural sciences) manner, at least as the unforgettable ‘cold person’ by which my friend Billy characterized me with his ironic style in our early teenage years, or the labels of ‘shy’ that I often heard whispered in adult conversations about me. On the contrary, it exposed a more accurate depiction of myself, and it was a beginning of a long road that eventually led to acceptance of the proverbial ‘I am who I am’, and adapt to the demands of life with this given personality trait, with this ‘weakness’ -being unable to do much to radically reform in that respect. Unfortunately, a person’s character, at the core of his personality and outward behaviour, hardly changes from the moment someone one settles in adulthood, its malleability is in a way inversely proportional to the self-awareness he attains.

It was several years after George S’s initial diagnosis whilst in America, before I got my hands on Susan Cain's book: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. I read it, as a mature thirty-year-old, on a bus in the town Reading, commuting to work. Reading the book was like seeing myself into a mirror. The self who avoided and found it awkward to have a small talk with strangers or people he was unfamiliar with; the self who at every social event at home organized by my partner despite my resistance and on occasions against my will, became a high mountain to climb and came up with every excuse to avoid. The one who in evenings before a presentation in front of people could lose his sleep, while in the hours and minutes leading to the event his nervousness could become unbearable with no remedy at hand to address it. The one whose difficulty in communicating with people in informal social events was mitigated and overcome, only with enough, beforehand and during, alcohol consumption, sometimes with regrettable consequences. The one who, when his eye caught an acquaintance on the bus, the train or the sidewalk, tried to hide from sight, turned his head, changed direction or sidewalk, so that any kind of spontaneous small talk is averted. (Spontaneity hardly coexists with introversion; introverts, I learned, avoid impromptu small talk as the devil avoids incense.) The one who was overwhelmed by a slight panic when the phone rang unexpectedly ("Who might it be now at the other end of the lines? What does one want to ask or say? What should I say in response?") The one who, every time was forced to interact with people and cope with social situations, in the end became mentally and physically exhausted. I found that this relatively excessive hypersensitivity to external stimuli, at the core of the extreme introvert personality, was scientifically explicable by the structure of the brain and size of part of it. I resigned myself to the fact that I could not much about it!

I soon discovered peace and tranquillity in the company of myself, in the endless conversations with him people and impressions, in thoughts and reflections; in solitary wanders in cities and, later in life, in the countryside, in lonely drinks in English pubs, or secluded in my room next to a lamp with a book to read or the laptop to browse. Unsurprisingly, misty melancholy weather brought light and joy in my soul, even more so when walking in the drizzle or listening to the rain. At the end of my reading of Susan Cain's book, I felt a kind of relief, almost the joy from revealing and naming a big part of myself, about whom I was and I am, and, significantly, that there was not much that could be done to change radically. In the eyes of most colleagues and acquaintances, I was who is labelled rather sympathetically in England ‘socially awkward’ or rather contemptuously in Greece as ‘a recluse who breaths on his own’ –a lone wolf.  For me, I was simply a withdrawn person preferred and for that matter enjoyed his solitude. I have now been familiarized with and consolidated this notion about myself: I heard it so many times by so many. Characterisations and labels which I once found derogatory and sometimes insulting are no longer bothersome, but rather I occasionally refer to them as self-introductions, in preludes to attempts at communicating and interacting with people.

Therefore, I was an introvert and in fact ‘burdened’ by a rather extreme form of introversion. The symptoms of the behavioural conditions that took Kostas a few minutes after our introduction to diagnose in the dinner party evening were there from very early age, and prominently demonstrated throughout childhood and adolescence: like Akis' party that I strived to avoid trying to catch a cold from by sweating and then exposing myself to the cold of the winter in our balcony; or like refraining myself, either by choice or by design from being part of groups of friends and schoolmates in social activities; a lone-wolf playing basketball in the deserted by the summer afternoon hear basketball courts in our holiday resort and elsewhere or cycling in its streets; a solitary walker of the streets of Thessaloniki or unaccompanied spectator in its cinemas. Alone amongst the four walls of my small room, reading, playing chess against myself, fantasizing and masturbating, whilst others were having fun in cafes, discotheques or in house-parties with friends.

All in all, the life of an introvert entails a lot of misery during adolescence; it is aggravated by unwarranted anxieties in adulthood and maturity, as one has to immerse oneself in different social and work environments, and struggles to survive and be recognized as an individual within. The struggles can become strenuous and the mental exertions exhausting when this innate introversion is compounded by shyness, timidity and even cowardice. Without those inhibiting traits or, at least, not conspicuously manifested, life could follow different paths – professionally, socially and emotionally. Because it is social relationships and human interaction that largely determine existence and a way of life, given established notions and public opinion that characterize a life and career as successful in our milieu and the Western world we are destined to live in. I imagine that just a handful of introverts ever found themselves at the top of corporate pyramids or became leaders in one of our ‘liberal’ political systems, in positions where the prevailing wisdom in the West associates with ‘success’ –beyond material wealth and prosperity. In short, introversion affects precisely those social relationships that, to a not insignificant degree, direct, place and classify individuals in the established social order and ladders.

At the end, there were positive and comforting: the amount of knowledge I accumulated by immersing myself in books from individual solitary study; the plethora of ideas and thoughts that were generated in the countless hours of conversing with myself, and even in the depth of that thinking and the quality of some of these ideas; in the incessant and exhaustive processing and fermentation of knowledge, sensations, memories and experiences in the mind; the discipline and method and patience in action at study and work, when left alone; in the analyticity and gravity, the precision and density of those thoughts and ideas, in the few times I was required to express them orally and more often (and welcoming) in writing; in contemptuous and swift dismissal of superficial reasoning some and vacuous, pointless chatter. (Naturally, I found chatter and verbosity tedious and dull, although I rarely plucked the courage to cut off chatty people. I listen to them, whilst I my mind was taking a journey into a different direction or down into myself.) Still the main advantage introversion allowed me the high levels of self-awareness and self-consciousness I conquered.

There was something else I found comforting... From the minimal extent to which science was able thus far to map and describe the functions of the human brain, it seems that introversion as a character trait springs from mainly genetic origins. Books and publications on the subject talk about differences in the structure of the brain between introverts and extroverts; they describe different reactions of the brain to biochemical substances secreted within or the electrochemical reactions from sensory experience of the world and the interaction with the social environment - differences in the proportions and relative measures of these substances in each individual. Establishing a scientific explanation of human behaviour with respect to the environment, from the point of view of human biology is complex to a non-expert like me, and knowledge not worth or too late pursuing. A superficial diagnosis is enough, even superfluous. After all, for the individual, the consequences and effects of one’s behaviour are what count, in so far as this social behaviour affects life’s course. Given this elementary knowledge of biology, I stopped placing the blame to my parents, the immediate family and the school environment for the problems and obstacles my introversion threw into my path. At the end, a different upbringing, a different mental development with an alternative education and set of skills, only slightly would have affected my social behaviour and interactions.

In my teenage years, I was not aware of my introversion. I knew broadly that I was shy. Parents and relatives, directly or behind my back, flippantly or seriously, brandished me as ‘unsociable’ and ‘shy’, pointing out that ‘I found awkward to communicate with people’. Beyond a certain age, such comments and judgments stopped bothering me and I disregarded them silently or with a smile of resignation, whilst keeping mental notes. It did not cease, especially in those teenage years and years of early youth, to cause torments in social situations. My shyness and reserve, compounded by my inherent introversion, posing formidable and in many cases insurmountable obstacle in efforts to satisfy desires and fulfil ambitions. Now, in the autumn of my life, in a stage where whatever major had to be done in life, more or less has been concluded, whatever noteworthy to be achieved has been achieved, I reconcile with myself and his personality flaws and shortcomings, some of them prominent. But there is being at least a closure. I am getting to know myself better.

8 - Classmates

Confronting the troupe of our teachers, the protagonists and the extras amongst them, there was the audience of students looking up at the dais and scrutinising them, but rarely being attentive and receptive to their teachings. Our sitting arrangement in the classrooms were distinct and layered. There was the aristocracy of the front rows, the crème de la crème of the class favoured and in some cases pampered by teachers, a generally diligent and disciplined crop, with fundamental intelligence and a working ethos; then, there was a usually indifferent mass of the middle rows comprise the  mediocre,  but also the ‘fairly good’, ‘good’ and some ‘very good’ amongst them, as well as a thin layer of simply dump and spiritless scattered amongst them; and, finally, the gallery of lumpen elements, of delinquents and troublemakers at the very back of the classroom.

Solid friendships, especially between the members of the second category, the middle stratum, were established: at parties, in discos and café , in sports groups, in furtive dates outside the girls only schools, or, for the most daring, in joint wanders in seedier parts of the city. The first category, of the ‘excellent’ ones, with the potential to occupy higher echelons of society, were usually the offspring and were guided by ‘enlightened’ middle class parents. That group, as the university entry exams were approaching, became rigid and insular and detached itself from the rest and most vibrant members of the class. I belonged to this dull category of ‘excellent’ students: from the first to the last day of high school.

My closest childhood friend, Kostakis, ended up to a different school, a modern but remote establishment in the eastern side of the city and disappeared from our street and pretty much from my life. Upon entering the Gymnasium, our neighbourhood games that absorbed many carefree days were finally and irrevocably over. There remained some sporadic visits to the Aris football ground to watch the odd game and, later, when Aris’ basketball team, featuring legends like Papageorgiou and Nick Galis, after his arrival from the States, dominated the national league, we would meet at the ‘Palais de Sport’, the then only enclosed arena of the city. But even those rendezvous with Kostakis became rarer, as those crucial for our future exams were approaching, until that most intimate friendship of my childhood faded away and died. With a few other children from my former primary school, like the ones whom I shared a desk with, Zois and Dimitropoulos, and who occasionally invited me to their homes and, presumably, enjoyed my company, we found ourselves in the same high school; with Zois in the same class, by virtue of being separated in classes in alphabetical order. Even those casual friendships gradually faded as time passed. Admittedly, the ever-growing distancing might have been because of being branded, along with a couple of others, ‘nerd’ par excellence. That, in turn, was the result of the excessive, almost compulsive, dedication -under intense peer competition for grades and parental pressure: to study hard, to focus on the academic ideals my family nurtured and the promise of a prosperous future. Therefore, I distanced myself from people, who were either less focused on the future beyond school and university, or they had it secured through some family business and inheritance, or, most likely, they merely managed to balance study with extracurricular activities and a semblance of social life with friends.

Eliopoulos, with who in the later years I shared the same front-row desk, never became a real friend and he could never have been. In a perverse way he respected me as studious and intelligent student and I helped him with tests, even covered up in his truancies. Sometimes we played basketball at the end of school day or in weekend in the newly founded Poseidoneion open swimming pool and sports centre that featured several basketball courts. Less often, he would invite me to participate in football matches the non-league team he was playing for: in the seafront park initially and football grounds around the city later, which featured proper goalpost, like that in the Papafeion orphanage complex, or the ground of the low-league team ‘Alexander the Great’ in the eastern gates of the city. He might have appreciated some talent in me or, more likely, because his teams had to make up the numbers ahead of a game. But Eliopoulos belonged to a different caste of students. He had a broader circle of interests: he joined in team sports activities with the fittest and most skilled of the school, himself with an athletic, muscular body and physique and skills; he was regular in parties and weekend outings to discos in the company of girls... of many girls. On the other hand, he associated himself with the two or three bullies of the class, whose relatively early and rather predictable successes (with girls!) allowed them at every opportunity to make fun of the ‘nerd’. As they had never seen me in the company of girls, I was incessantly teased in morning assemblies and breaks for my pimples and light acne: as a sign of hormonal changes, it was suggestive of sexual frustration, and as a result, of habitual masturbation. There was an element of truth in those claims, but they nonetheless infuriated me when expressed publicly.  

An anachronistic segregated secondary education system placed the objects of early desires and the female protagonist in my first fantasies during the last year of primary school, Kiki, in a girls’ only school. My lame efforts to find her address and keep in touch proved fruitless. The beautiful girl of the same age from my neighbourhood, in an apartment building across in Gambetta Street, whom I often bumped into on my way back from my school, but never summoned the courage to chat, became the temporary passion of my imagination, my new teenage longing after Kiki. She had a lovely name: Vicky. Without the courage and the grace to charm with words, I resorted to foolish acts, which were unlikely to result into getting to know each other, let along hang out together. I found her family on the intercom of her apartment building and her phone number from the white pages. And I was calling her. Cowardly, anonymously, silently, holding my breath, I was playing pieces of music from my cassette player: songs by the Beatles, but also by the Rolling Stones and Deep Purple (which I thought, ignorant as I was about contemporary music matters, were the Rolling Stones, until Eliopoulos with arrogance and mocking style of the relevant connoisseur corrected me). Vicky used to listen to them for a few seconds, before, after a few ‘hello!’ and ‘who is it?’, hanging up. Only once did she bother to speak to me, saying: ‘You choose nice songs to play for me... Why don't you talk to me? Why don’t you tell me your name?’ Yet, even at this opportunity for a firs chat, I found impossible to overcome my shyness! I could not mutter a single word, let alone reply coherently, and even if I did, I thought that would betray an utter lack of self-confidence, a virtue in I knew girls found attractive in men. I comforted myself with the thought there would be another time, another opportunity. Or, perhaps, she might recognize the quiet boy who played songs over the phone, in my stare, when we came across each other on Gambetta Street. Sadly, there had been no more opportunities and Vicky remained one of several unfulfilled teenage desire, which ended into a mortifying frustration.

Weekends became thus lonely; for hours I was locked in my room with myself as a company. Adult chats and parties were dull, the presence of adults undesirable and unwanted. At the family meals my uncle and aunt organized next door on Sunday afternoons I sat silent and sultry. Other classmates gathered in hangouts, cafés, even in their family apartments when their parents were absent, many went to trendy discos, such as The Figaro or The Palladium, both big night-life names of the city in the ‘70s, as could overhear in envy from conversations of weekend adventures during breaks or sports games. And as the years passed, as the want for friends, female and male, and outlets grew and I gained a few inches in height, so did the burdens from school and the forthcoming major exams grow in proportion, so was time constrained outside school and constrained by tutoring classes. It was only in the last couple of years of school, when the coarse features of adolescence softened, whilst indifference to my appearance gave way to my growing interest in my looks and grooming, my ‘coquette’ as grandma used to say. It was when the boy with the ugly and immaterial fluff of a moustache over the lip was shaved, with the pimples subsiding, the hoarse voice stabilising into a deep proper man’s voice, when he was turning into a rather good-looking young man, that I eventually invited to the first and only party over the six years of high-school. It was the birthday party of the Karavassilis twins. The chubby of the two, Vassilis, always smiling, kind towards me and well-intentioned, used to call me ‘the handsome dude’. My old friend from primary school, Zois, might have intervened to solicit an invitation for me or it could be on the recommendation from another chubby schoolmate, Karoulis, who, on several occasions, invited me to his poor family's apartment to help with homework and exam preparations; his mother was a primary school and an acquaintance of Mother’s.

On that unforgettable party occasion, a maiden milestone in my adolescence, I danced for the first time in life, as a seventeen-year-old ‘handsome dude’ to the sounds of some slow-temp, romantic music with a girl. The little available white wine which Zois had taken care of to bring, mixed with Coca-Cola, had calmed my nerves and I overcame my natural inhibitions. At the end of the dance and the party, I felt an uncommon relief, a peak in happiness from what was an insignificant and, sadly, a short-lasting conquest; yet, for me, it was a small triumph, a satisfaction from one step into adulthood and of achieving a milestone. There was another world in a teenager's life, beyond tedious exam studies and ‘building’ an abstract future, that I was only aware of from hearsay and could only conjure up -until that night.  At that party I also discovered in alcohol a remedy for my shyness and extreme introversion.

The party was a glimpse of a world of fun and joy without precedent or follow up during the years in school. To moderate the air of melancholy around me in lonely Saturday evenings, for a respite from studying and in-search for some pretty girl to chat and flirt with, to touch and kiss, in my rare outings to the parks and cafes of the city, I had to rely on the company of a colourless and wearisome classmate, who became a quasi-friend. I knew him from primary school. It was the guy I shared a desk with and was bullied by in the 4th grade, the rival for Kiki's heart, the one I once punched as a response to his bullying at the end of a school day and, indeed for that reason, I was applauded by eyewitness classmates.

Yiannis D was a generally disliked kid in primary school and he had no more than a single identifiable close friend in high school. Perhaps, he was attracted to me in those latter years for being the better looking and smarter of the two, his own back up and clutch in years devoid of heartbeats and rare opportunities in vain search for female company. We had nothing in common with Yiannis D, apart from the not-so-hidden burning desires of adolescence. He was taller and bulkier than me, but with an untrained body, with a narrow torso and shoulders. A spare tyre around his waist was becoming visible. He had messy hair and small, agile brown eyes testifying more to cunning and clumsiness than intelligence. To both sides of a large and hooked nose there were two furrows, more like those formed by expressions of disapproval and disgust, or as the facial reaction to something tasting sour. He was not interested in sports involving physical activity. His passion was cars and motorbikes, sports car racing, their engines specification and performance. Motorsports hardly interested me, but Yiannis D, along with his single best mate Panayiotis, could talk about cars in our joint outings for hours on end. Of course, that was partly because there were no girls in close association to divulge. Upon reaching the legal age, both Yiannis D and Panayiotis rushed to get their driver's license, and then indulge in taking their family cars for a spin: in the empty streets of the city in early morning hours whilst imagining driving a Ferrari, a Porsche and the like.

His idol was a strict and austere father, a fabrics importer and merchant. Yiannis was saying about his dad that he had graduated from the so-called ‘university of life’. He set up shop, with shelves for rolls of fabric and large tables for measuring and cutting, in a loft in a high-rise building on Valaoritou Street, in the heart of the commercial centre of Thessaloniki. He ran his business with the part-time (while in school) help of his two sons and managed it shrewdly, weathering frequent storms from the periodic market fluctuations and local competition. The family enjoyed a relatively modest lifestyle with their income from the trade of fabrics, augmented by the teacher salary of the wife. Mr D senior wanted Yiannis, his eldest son, to obtain some sort of university education, despite that he was intended as the main heir and successor in his business. He always asserted during my visits to his shop that it would be great if Yiannis got a degree, any degree, because, as the saying goes- and Yiannis frequently recited it: ‘Learn a trade and set it aside, and if you go hungry, take it up again’, or ‘you can never have too many strings to your bow.’ In out penultimate year at school, Yiannis, of the customary sour face and a countenance generally betraying limited intellectual capacity, followed me to the same tutoring centre, which Father had selected (by virtue of knowing the director). I could listen to him huffing and puffing during the lectures, stemming from his inability to keep up with much of the teaching material, but he pointed out the fingers solely to the quality of the tutoring school and its teachers. In his view, only a couple of the tutors were competent enough to implant the necessary knowledge and understanding in his brain that would guarantee limited success in the exams. Unable to comprehend much of what was being taught, he naturally ascribed his failure in the first year of the exams to the tutoring centre, where he followed me hoping for miracles. In the second year he attended a different centre, however without any tangible results or marked improvement in his exams performance. Having thus failed the university entry exams, he was conscripted into the army, as it was legally mandated, before he finally pursued the predetermined merchant’s career in his father’s family business.

If I was more handsome and brainy, relatively speaking, he was equipped with bravado and audacity and fluency in making witty remarks, because of an above-average sense of humour, a useful attribute during our expeditions in search of female company. In a strange way, one might have argued, that we complemented each other on this ad-hoc basis. As far as I was concerned, in the absence of better alternatives, I joined him on many Saturday evening outings: at the seafront, for aimless walks along the old and new promenades, in the youth cafés of Queen Olga’s Avenue, even in the dark streets and hidden alleys of Vardaris, the city’s red-light district. The unfulfilled longing for girls and love, this subconscious pull to the opposite sex driven by biological forces, exerted from childhood to old age, brought us together in those years of irresistible urges; an invisible hand that guided us to places, and led us to actions, many which the recollections I still find hair-raising.

In the early years, in the winter afternoons after school, on the way home we would stop by outside a kiosk on Queen Olga’s Avenue, in front of the Radio City arcade, to ogle at the covers, and, as discretely as possible to daringly flip through the sex magazines hanging with pegs on railings outside the kiosk, all the while trying hard to evade the attention of the shopkeeper and passers-by. We went unnoticed most of the time or so we thought; the owner was out of our sight, inside his kiosk and behind its windows, with only small gaps through stacks of merchandise to have a wide view of what was going outside or he was busy with customers. It did not take us long to summon the courage and dare to pull magazines from its pegs and steal them, with one of us keeping an eye for movements within the kiosk and the traffic of passers-by, the other with the skills one recognizes in pickpockets. Twice our endeavours were successful and we managed indeed to get hold of a porn magazine and enjoy raunchy photos of attractive nude female modes in its glossy pages in the privacy of our rooms -sort of views of we were deprived of in real life. The third time, however, while I managed to release the magazine from its peg, and both begun to walk away inconspicuously with the magazine folded under my arm, we saw not the familiar old kiosk owner, but a young and fit man running out of the kiosk towards us menacingly. I instinctively threw the magazine away and ran as fast as I could in a panic mode, along the pavement I towards the dark arcade and the quieter streets at its other end. Thanks to the dusk of the mid-winter afternoon and fast legs were spared the wrath of the owner and possible police involvement. That botched attempt to steal a sex magazine would be the last. But the terrifying shock I experienced, like some others of that period was enduring and chastising. Such episodes teach useful lessons in life.

In another excursion, on our way to the Salamis Fun Park for a fun evening out with Yiannis D, Nikos Z, and two or three classmates, I overcame inhibitions and moral barriers from the same uncontrollable sexual urge. Perhaps, I wanted also to demonstrate to the male gang, behind the secure anonymity numbers provide, as with being part of any mob, that I do not ‘chicken out’ and ‘lose my bottle’ when I encounter girls; that I had grown up to a real man. Of a girl who was approaching us alone from the opposite direction, I groped one of her boobs. It was a vulgar and obscene act, amounting to a sexual assault proper by today’s standards. Beyond initial exclamations of surprise and some giggles from members of party, it must have astounded and maybe disgusted them. Surely, I did not get the approval, let alone praise I was counting on, for the act. I had exceeded the limits and scruples of behaviour, even norms of contact that are knowingly relaxed amongst teenagers. Who would expect such a thing from a model student, the ‘nerd’ of the class? Was I and did I appear to the gang as sexually starved and desperate? The girl shrieked and blasted at me, hit me with her purse, and walked away. I laughed her and the shameful incident away. Inside, the sense that ‘I achieved something’ or ‘I showed something’ to my mates and that even I reached a milestone on course to sexual maturity, in par and even beyond the first, beside the crudeness and vulgarity, was short-lived ad was quickly succeeded by the unbearable weight of shame: that of a sexually deprived boy who showed himself up as a cowardly brute. Not to mention that the incident provided further ammunition to the couple of bullies that tormented me at school. I still carry in me fragments of that shameful event in memory, while the others present, as I hope the girl herself, whom I arguably harassed, have forgotten it, and any trauma it caused healed.  

There were more pleasant instances during the term of that quasi-friendship we established with Yiannis D, in the absence of better options to entertainment. Like one late evening in one of aimless walks along the ‘New Promenade’, his eagle-eye spotted two girls, seemingly unattached and available, sitting on a bench under some eucalyptus trees. With his admirable daringness and pluck he approached them and spontaneously started to chat them up. His boldness almost bore fruit. Whilst I was sitting at the edge of the bench, facing the sea and listening silently and nonchalantly to Yiannis’ full of hot-air overtures, one of the girls, the prettiest of the two, turned towards me with a light-hearted compliment: ‘You, the quiet man! You have such beautiful eyes. It’s a shame that they are a bit small...’ Before the two girls departed, Yiannis managed to agree on a date: tomorrow evening, at the same spot. Next day, we walked back and forth, past the spot, but rather predictably the girls did not show up. Bewitched by the flattering comment, the first ever passed to me by a pretty girl, I passed a few more times alone by the same spot in the days and weeks that followed in the hope of finding the girls. It was in vain.

In the summer at the end of our last year at school, I spent a few days -the only summer vacation days in the company of Yiannis D. He was guest to his close friend Panayiotis’ family holiday home, in the seaside village of Leptokarya -under the Pieria mountains, an hour’s drive south of Thessaloniki. I was tagged along reluctantly, after the few miserable days the two of us spent sharing a tent in the camping of Skotina. In Leptokarya, Yiannis’ incessant courting and flirting with girls, which often veered to uncouthness, in the presence of me and an equally reserved Panayiotis, was proving again ineffective and fruitless, albeit entertaining. We were sitting at the edge of the train station of the village, where he introduced me to a group of girls as an ‘English’ tourist, who was requesting help to find somewhere to stay for the night and some directions to this end from a local. His introduction allowed me to open a rare conversation (in my average but adequate for the occasion English speaking skills from sever years of tutoring a small local school equipped me with, along with a 'Lower’ level certificate in English) with a gullible but pretty the girls in a group of friends. It was, as a poorly designed as much as audacious joke, predestined from the beginning to lead to a dead end. We had a laugh afterwards, truth to be told, whilst I was satisfied with myself that I overcame, in a dignified and courageous way this time, the hurdles my shyness and reserve always place in social interaction.

After several teenage years of sexual deprivation, Yiannis was eventually drawn by the red lights of the seedy and ill-reputed districts of Vardaris and Ladadika, possibly prompted by his father. He, unlike mine, was allegedly forthcoming and discussing openly sex matters with him. Yiannis on a couple of occasions dragged me along to those areas, outside shabby houses with a red-light lantern at the door indicating the sale of sex, frequented by drunken soldiers and uncouth farmers. Just passing in front of their open doors and peeping indoors made the heart beating fast because of some undefined expectations. Yiannis was perfectly capable of brushing aside without hesitation any qualms and entering these houses, and it was my sober presence or lack of money that prevented him. Over time, after several visits to city brothels, he obtained the necessary expertise, whereas I, for my part, always hesitated at the doorstep, where the enticing thoughts of pleasure and sensations on offer was counterweighed by the moral conundrums, such the considered brutal exploitation of the women in those places, and the odious nature of the people that frequented them. I never summoned the courage to cross those doorsteps and my adolescence remained ingloriously celibate, with devoid of joys from the sought-after fundamentals of existence: love and sex, eros.