32 - Our Family Friends: In the Shadow of Extroverts

Several insignificant at face value events occurred in hours and days I spent in Billy’s company, which however left an impression and affected me. By and large, they pointed to marked and irreconcilable differences between our personalities. There were of course the ‘elephants in the room’, as they say: his superior stature and physique, unmatched intellectual maturity and ostentatiously superior intelligence, an unbridled self-confidence along with his leadership skills (whether innate or nurtured was irrelevant), elements of a personality and traits of a character which feed each other, as is well known. These facts justifiably intensified a sense of inferiority in his presence. My timidity and dither were revealed in full-scale when asked to offer opinions or contribute to decisions, let alone take a lead, my insecurity in expressing thoughts and desires clearly manifested, in the presence of Billy and adults. (What would ‘others’ think and answer or what if I said something naïve or stupid, where often questions I asked to myself before opening my mouth.)

The older we grew and as our personalities and interests in life were diverging, the more I tried to avoid invitations to Billy’s home to play with him and friends amongst hid broad circle and the gatherings and parties his family organized, until, in adolescence, those invitations became scarcer before they eventually vanished, and I disappeared from Billy’s life. It was a winter day in my last year at primary school, at the threshold of adolescence, when Mother received via Kiki an invitation to the birthday party of Akis, a close friend of Billy’s by virtue of another family friendship. Warped by a shyness founded on introversion and inferiority complexes, my first reaction was to decline: I did not want to go to Akis’ party, amongst those ostensibly superior kids. It was the natural reaction of an extremely introvert and socially awkward, when confronted with people in a social happening, that triggers my ‘shrinking’ when amongst others, as Mother used to say. In a sense, I was overwhelmed by the invitation to a party where girls were likely to also have been invited, and where the only person I could associate with was the leader and very soul of that and every party - Billy. If I went, who else would be attending, whom would I talk with, what would I say? How would I, an outsider, stand among children I had not met before, apart from Billy and, to a lesser extent, Akis? Even more worrying: would girls be present, a species towards whom my shyness would multiply? Would I be dragged to do things like, for example, dancing awkwardly in the rhythms of pop-music I had never heard before, let alone danced? My presence at the party would be a leap over a huge gap, a fall into the void of the unknown, which I did not want and had to steer clear from. In the days before the party, I was trying to sweating with vigorous exercises in my small room, and then go out half-naked and barefoot in the balconies to ‘catch a cold’, to become ill, a credible excuse to avoid the party and have some days off school as a bonus. (I had not learned yet that one does not catch a ‘cold’ merely by exposing his warm and sweaty to low temperatures, yet such old wives’ tales were still persuasive enough for someone to cling on per instance). It was one of the first signs of a severe introversion at the edges of its wide spectrum, a first extreme manifestation of a lack of sociability, a social awkwardness and generally finding cumbersome communicating with people. A marked personal deficiency that I had to live with for the rest of my life.

Then again, I had to invent and try to implement and unorthodox and ultimately hapless method to avoid that social event. In later life, I present more plausible excuses, having developed the ability to fabricate more elaborate and better-thought-out lies in to turn away from similar social gatherings. And in the occasions that had proved impossible, drinking alcohol, before and during such events, became an effective elixir that would quash most of my inhibitions. But the attempt to fall ill, with a kind of fever or something, ahead of Akis' party did not bear fruit. I stayed healthy and found myself with no excuses and under the pressure of Mother and to carry along my shame until the Saturday afternoon of the party. There, however miraculously, I managed to relax quickly and damp my inhibitions, after a brief period of familiarizing with an environment that eventually proved less alien to my idiosyncrasy than I had expected. The party turned out to be rather ‘flat’, despite the wild, as well as meticulous, planning of Billy and Akis. Only a couple of girls were present, cousins of Akis, and not particularly attractive as it happened, against Billy’s hopes and expectations. I would not have been forced to dance to sounds of unfamiliar pop music hits, even though the atmosphere of the room was enhanced by some rudimentary disc light effects – of Billy’s inspiration, of course.

Most of my relief could be attributed to that we did not play the game of ‘bottle’ I was hearing about during the planning of the party and I knew that Billy, a lady’s man from pre-adolescence, was eagerly anticipating: a game which involved girls and boys sitting around in a circle and after the spin of a bottle at its centre, the persons the top and bottom of the bottle pointed they had, often against their will and under peer pressure, to kiss. I had been apprehensive that such games would have taken place, as they were in the original plans of Billy and Akis, both of whom, as said, excelled as the hearts and souls of children's parties. In the end, I courageously survived the party, as it somehow fizzed out down to a sufferable level, at the expense of that success its two organizers expected. After listening a few times to the hit Popcorn by Hot Butter, we resigned to quietly playing Snakes & Ladders and other broad games, until the party broke up. The electronic song Popcorn, a hit of the period that, unlike Billy and Akis, I was not aware until then, whenever I hear it takes me back to the faint memories of Akis' dull party, the first and penultimate party of childhood and adolescence, and the days of mental turmoil that preceded it.