26b - The Old Neighborhood: Fast Changing Streets (Forbidden Games)

In those early evenings, when we were rushing outdoors thirsty for play, the risk-takers amongst jumped from the balcony of the first floor of that skeleton of a building onto the thick pile of thin sand below that the constructor laid conveniently for us: experimenting with the free fall of our bodies from four or five meters above ground, and the sensations of freedom and the adrenaline rush, which physics at school cannot describe. Occasionally, we paddled on the sand-covered white lime: its soft consistency furnished another interesting sensation.

Those cheap thrills inevitably attracted unwelcome gangs from nearby neighbourhoods. Mums and grandmas were alarmed and worried in the face of the dangers (grandma's balcony was a just breath away from our jumping-off platform), although Fanis’ smile next door showed that he enjoyed the spectacle. The builder who found his sand dispersed and the lime trampled on in the alley the mornings after such extravaganzas and was understandably alarmed and angry: his building site, his property, was violated. He upgraded and secured the fence by adding extra barriers at possible entries to the building; he paid unsolicited visits in out-of-work hours; he expressed his anger grandma and Mrs. Marika and others from the mess we were causing. We were told-off, our spirits were curtailed. We were pushed away to different and less exciting spots for more mundane games.

Tsiotas' apartment block was eventually completed. Christakis and his family returned to the neighborhood from their temporary rental accommodation, when the months Kostakis and I had left in our primary school, which, beside our street and the close neighborhood, were the other place we spent in each other’s company, were coming to an end. Christakis broke away from the gang of three; he was the youngest and the two- or three-years age gap between proved a burden.

In the same, second-floor apartment of the new building with an adjacent balcony a family, with a beautiful daughter –the same age as me, moved in. It was a time when the first signs of the hormonal and physiological upheavals of adolescence began showing, when a fire inside me, instinctively and unconsciously, started burning whenever in the vicinity of pretty girls of similar age; it clouded the mind and impaired reason. An imaginary boat of love would sail to unknown places, without port and purpose, myself on board alone with my vividly dreaming mind. In the boys only High School I started attending, this restless mind and the fantasies it would generate could not find channels for escape. The timidity and shyness that distinguished my personality from early life, an incessant struggle, which only a few times did find me a winner with my inner self and through his psychological sufferings, became an invisible inviolable barrier between our balconies. I was waiting behind the cracks of the shutters for that girl to appear in her balcony, so that I too would come out discreetly, in the hope to exchange a glance or two, maybe even a smile, a few words at best -if possible. But nothing of that sort happened. She persisted with her aloofness and cold indifference, whilst my shyness was unconquerable.

I tried to draw her attention in clumsy and silly ways. I would kick my ball, seemingly by accident, into the neighbouring balcony, but I had it only thrown back from the hand of an adult when I was indoors or at school. I reached a low point when, in a couple of evenings, I threw grapes from out balcony into her kitchen through their open window that faced into in the same light-void as ours; until her family complained about my misdeeds to a sceptical Mother, whose mind was unable to acknowledge such unreasonable behaviour from her patently disciplined and well-behaved boy. How could she have understood anyway? The episode brought an abrupt end to my clumsy overtures to the beautiful girl of the adjacent balcony. I humbly collected myself indoors, without having ever exchanged a single word, a smile, or ever getting to know her name. It was but one unremarkable of several distinct episodes that followed, whilst my sexuality was being awkwardly shaped during the forthcoming adolescence. It was a first lesson, perhaps, for me to channel and express my natural instincts in more orthodox ways.