My early childhood pre going to school was idyllic. I had three really close friends, two boys who lived next door Matthew and Justin and then a friend of my parents daughter Antigone. Matthew and Justin were athletic kids and I would play sports with them and they didn't even make fun of me. They were typical boys boys, and that would be the last time in my life I would ever be comfortable in that crowd. We would play for hours on end until the sun came down. Antigone did not live next door but wed visit her so much she might as well have. As kids the two of us were joined at the hip. Her mother used to joke that one day we would get married. I clung to that joke as fact because at four/five playing with Antigone my whole life sounded really appealing. We used to harass our younger siblings together and when we weren't doing that I would make her take on roles and create little dramas with me. When I entered school I didnt see Matthew and Justin as much, soon afterwards, they moved out of the neighbourhood.
School was different the idyllic view of people that I had had was starting to wear down. For whatever reason I was immediately targeted and within weeks of starting elementary school my role at the bottom of the social chain had been cemented. I still don't know why I was targeted at that point, i don't know if I was seen as faggy or what I mean I was six so I don't see how I could have been. Regardless I was informed that I spread Kosta germs and was avoided because they make people sick.
Just about every evening though after school I would see Antigone my future wife, she went to a different school so hadn't been warned about Kosta germs, I hope I never made her sick. I never told her they didn't like me at school, we just played.
When I got the news it hit me like a pound of bricks. I was being abandoned. Antigone's father had gotten a job in Greece and their whole family would be moving to the other end of the world. My comprehension of Greece was at that point this magical fantastical land where a lot of my family lived and where people who loved me lived but that was too expensive for us to go to. Seeing Antigone in Greece at the time seemed at the time as fantastical as the idea of one day seeing my Grandfather in heaven.
Matthew, Justin and Antigone had all left my life, in their place was six hours a day of being run away from. From that point on it would be about ten years before I would receive a sense of being wanted by someone my own age again.
