47 - Another Injury to a Boy's Ego

At the end of those exhausting sports afternoons, which became the bread and butter of my holidays, as soon as the sun’s halo touched start the ridges of Mount Olympus and start its swift descent behind them, and after a tentative washing off the dust and the sweat in the public restrooms, I usually stopped by the Akrivides’ tent. A group of adults had been already gathered in a crescent on folding chairs enjoying the fresh breeze of the dusk, drinking and joking, while Billy might have been playing, in an amateurish way, but with confidence and professional zeal, his guitar. I found the thing ostentatious. In the first days of our joint family holidays, before he expanded his circle of friends, we would go down together to the main square for food, drinks and entertainment: foosball and billiards, later at the disco. The paved square, with its secluded youth corner, was a field for socializing, striking frivolous friendships, but most importantly flirting. It was there where I introduced Billy to my basketball mate from Larissa, as well as ‘dumb’ Takis, the scion of one of Mother's distant cousins. Billy showed a particular interest in getting to know better that lad from Larissa. They became best friends in a flash, primarily on Billy’s initiative, and there was a simple reason for that: the lad was closely related with two girls, neighbours and family friends from his hometown, good-looking enough to flare up Billy’s already awaken sexual instincts. A few nights into our holiday season, Billy would be dancing the so called ‘blues’, to the sounds of ‘The Hotel of California’, in the repetitive finale of the DJ's program, with the most attractive of the two girls, a cute creature, with a slender petite figure and boyish dark hair.

Next morning after that intimate dance, which I witnessed and filled me with jealousy, the two new friends were discussing and organising a day walk along the coastline to the Castle of Platamon. The plan was the lad from Larissa to invite both girls -their parents permitting. They asked me tentatively if I would be interested to join. I answered in the affirmative, even though the actual objective of that walk was evident from what had been developing in front of my eyes in the disco night before, and from as long as I knew Billy, and the secret smiles and the whispers between the two friends I overheard. I had already begun to feel intrusive and marginalised, before anything definitive vis-à-vis the day walk was decided: the exactly when and if the two girls would finally accompany them... My opinion on these rather ambitious and exciting plans was never solicited, nor would it count, but the lure of a long walk along the coastline to the ominous castle on the cliff that could be seen from distance, seemed appealing enough to shy away from it -more as an adventure than an opportunity, for me too, to flirt with the girls, any girl. What the worst that could have happened?

Next morning, the day of the walk, I stopped by Billy’s tent on my way to the beach. There I learned from Mrs. Kiki that they had already left for their walk. They were four of them, two couples. It became obvious that I had been hard-heartedly left out, as the odd man out, or simply thoughtlessly ignored amidst the excitement of the expectant courtships. ‘What! Didn't they ask you to join them on their trip to the castle? Shame on him! I will tell him off when he’s back. Rest assured of that…’, Mrs. Kiki said with a genuine expression of embarrassment and disappointment. ‘It doesn't matter...’ I replied, I got on my bike and continued with the remnants of another routine day of my vacation: a lonely and unexciting water splashing by the beach with Mother, a Napolitan or Bolognese pasta and Coca-Cola for lunch, several hours of basketball in the afternoon.

Inadvertently and against my wishes, my omission from the walk was escalated into an inter-family affair, which increased the sense of humiliation and laid bare my inferiority as a human being with respect to Billy and his friends, even the adults, and exposed my loneliness and timidity. Billy was scolded by his mother, in my presence in fact, and was forced to apologize in front of me and others. But all this had not healed some already deep wounds in my ego incurred in the time I spent with Billy and his family; if anything, it threw salt into it. I came to realise that Billy and I had no place close to each other as equals, together or in a group. It was becoming asymmetric and fragmented that so called friendship of ours. Anyways, it was inherited by our parents and, therefore, not organically developed; and it was tested over the course of several holidays season and home parties, and now irreparably damaged.