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.