43 - Eddie

At least, during the first of our holidays in the Skotina resort there was footie. Plenty of footie, for that matter: from early afternoon till dusk and it was played on the large green patches the camping had to offered, as I dreamed of it when we first visited with Father, in contrast to the injurious hard and dusty surfaces I was used to in school, the parks and the streets. To these footie games, which attracted girl spectators too, Billy did not participate. Football in the Skotina camping became keys to gain some self-assurance and a domain of minor distinction. It was where for a few hours I was becoming integral part of an often-winning team, and for the moments the ball was at my feet, I felt at the centre of attention of teammates and opponents, and maybe the target of a few glances from girls and boys and adults nearby.

In one of those football games, on a green plot by the camping amenities square, during that first summer holiday in the Skotina camping I met Eddie. A Yugoslav boy of my age from Belgrade, it turned out, from the number plate of the darks Mercedes his dad was driving, he was the son of a Serb diplomat and lived in Thessaloniki, possibly -I thought -close to the Yugoslav consulate in Vasilisis Olgas Avenue, not far from my neighbourhood.  He had lively blonde hair falling to his shoulders and smiling brown eyes. He was like a mirror-image or the twin brother of the beautiful Yugoslav girl, whom we were staring at with Billy in the youth corner of the square. Eddie was staying in a nearby bungalow, but his Serbian family followed a different daily routine of sleeping, earing, sea-bathing, etc. than ours. Our brief holiday friendship was built on our joint passion for playing football. It meant to be, as one would have expected, one of those fleeting friendships that are born in the short period of vacations and die an instantaneous death at their last day, without sadness and tears.

Every single afternoon, a few hours before sunset, I searched for him, for his blonde hair and slim figure, in the area around the paved square of our holiday village. As soon as I spotted him and he noticed me approaching, with a happy smile and a meaningful node he joined me in trying to set up teams for a game of football. The number of participants was irrelevant. It was football, and only football, that connected us during the few weeks of our friendship, usually as opponents in our ‘international’ football clashes. He was a skilful player himself, but he frequently praised my game -after a brave tackle, a glorious pass, or scoring a goal. His praises and taps on my shoulders caused my cheeks to flush from a tinge of pride, whilst familiar and invigorating feeling of elation was running through my soul. We did not and could not exchange many words and the few were in English and more about football, less about our families, our holidays and homes and schools in Thessaloniki. But he aroused in me an inexplicable and extraordinary attraction for a boy of my age. His smiling looks, his golden blond hair, the beautiful face, the slim but fit body, the Slavic exoticism. It was the sort of attraction, in the process of the chaotic development of sexuality in adolescence, which, should it be analysed in retrospect, it would hint at some latent homosexual instincts.

One day Eddie left the resort with his family unexpectedly, without saying anything during our footie the evening, and without a farewell. The sight of the empty terrace of their bungalow filled me with sadness. But the fire of the captivating charm he exerted upon me, because of his compliments for my football skills as well his looks, and his memory I found hard to extinguish for weeks after our last game. As soon as we returned to our home town, and before the start of the school year, I used to walk down to Vasilisis Olgas Avenue, in the area where the consulate of Yugoslavia was located, in search of Eddie’s residence. I scanned lists of names in the intercom list outside the apartment buildings around the Consulate for surnames with the typical Serbian suffix to no avail. After a few fruitless attempts to find him, the bright star of my summer football afternoon at the camping eventually started to fade. Whether there was a primitive and subconscious homosexual element in my attraction to Eddie, as I suspected in retrospect, in the tumultuous process of defining and settling on one’s sexuality, I still question, dozens of years later. Possibly, there was such element, as Eddie had been the only boy that exerted a kind of physical attraction, most likely however unrequited. But the boat of life and live quickly took and settled onto its normal course.