The last good thing that happened to me that day was Dimitri giving me a new shirt. Because from that moment onwards, it devolved into one of the worst days I'd had in a long time.
With each passing moment, I came to understand just how futile the search for my father was. I came to realize that despite the fact I consider myself an intelligent human being, I had just embarked on the stupidest crusade ever. I had not thought this through. At all.
I also started to wonder if perhaps he wasn't a tour guide on Santorini at all. Perhaps he was on another island? Perhaps he was no longer a tour guide?
The final nail in the coffin of my plan and my hopes of finding my father was hammered in after I had taken the 600 steps all the way down to the port.
The port was lined with a wide variety of boats, from smaller fishing boats, to yachts that looked like they were owned by Jay Z, there were even two huge cruise liners docked there.
The port was also lined with what can only be described as washing lines of dead octopuses drying in the sun. I discovered that when I walked into one, screaming as my face was covered in slimy, slippery tentacles. Did you know that a very recently killed octopus is still capable of using its suckers? It's a muscular reflex. I discovered this the hard way when the thing attached itself to my face and head.
The scene I'd caused seemed to amuse all the local fisherman there. They all seemed even more amused when I asked about Dimitri and one of them had said, "Everyone named Dimitri, raise your hands." Seven hands had gone up and one man asked if his dog counted. Dimitri the dog. I was forced to climb back up the 600 steps in the blazing sun, by this stage my legs were aching, my head was throbbing and my back was killing me.
In sheer misery, I walked through the streets in a kind of daze. Past the shops and happy tourists, past the quaint taverns and bars until something caught my eye. I glanced up, "Santorini Travel Centre." There was a huge map plastered across the window. I approached it and then there I stood. My body stopped functioning and wouldn't allow me to move. What the...?
Greece had more islands than I thought it did. The mainland looked like it had once exploded and sent shards of itself floating across the sea... Ionian Islands, Saronic, Cyclades Sporades...
I rushed inside the shop and ran up to the first travel agent I saw. She was busy with someone but I didn't care.
"How many islands are there? I yelled at the top of my lungs. The whole shop turned and looked at me. I repeated myself when I didn't get an answer straight away.
"Six thousands." The woman said looking at me as if she wasn't sure if she should press the secret panic button under the desk.
"What?" I shrieked. I was frightening them now. I could see the terror in their eyes.
"But only 227 are inhabited." She quickly added with a smile. "Are you interested in a tour?" She held up a pamphlet and I stared at it in utter horror.
"Sorry, I clearly misheard you. You didn't say 227, did you?"
"227." She repeated slowly and nodded gently, as if she was trying not to make any sudden movements, like I was a wild animal.
Everything went a bit blurry and whirly. I felt faint and strange. My head started to throb and a buzzing noise was building in my ears.
I stumbled out of the shop feeling like my head was about to explode. My heart was throbbing in my ears and my hands were trembling uncontrollably. I caught a glimpse of a chemist across the road, thank God, and stumbled into it.
For a glorious, brief moment I felt so much better. There was a sense of familiarity about the place. Neat, ordered, sterile, categorized and clear. I breathed in; the slight scent of disinfectant filled my nose. It was terribly soothing. I liked it here...until...
I looked up and caught sight of it in the men's cosmetics section. A poster of Dimitri hung on the wall above a fancy looking fragrance display.
"Ambition for men. What's your next move?"
This time he was wearing a full black suit and standing on one of those oversized chessboards. He looked like he was provocatively contemplating his next move, while a woman draped in a transparent swathe of fabric straddled the castle.
I burst out laughing. I couldn't help it! It was completely cheesy and just all too much. Even when I wasn't bumping into him, literally and figuratively, I was still "bumping" into him, in paper form I might ad. Why was he everywhere I went? Why could I not get rid of him?
My laughter began small and then it seemed to gain momentum like a snowball rolling down a hill. It grew bigger and bigger and bigger while I backed away from the display. I bumped into something behind me and it wobbled. I turned to grab it and the thing fell into my arms. It was a large cardboard thingy. I wrestled with it a bit until I managed to turn it around. And that's when I found Dimitri's suited crotch in my face.
His head was somewhere down there. I quickly flipped the thing over so it didn't look like I was engaging in some strange sexual act in the shop. Was this really necessary? A life-sized cardboard cut out of him too?
"Why are you everywhere I go?" I moaned into his cardboard chest.
"Hello." A voice caught me off guard. I turned and the pharmacist stared at me angrily. A security guard was flanking him- looking equally angry.
"Please just get out." He said in a thick Greek accent, "I can't believe how many of you young ladies come in here and steal this thing."
"Sorry what?" I asked, still clutching onto the life-sized cardboard cut out.
"I'm sick and tired of having to phone the company and ask for more." I was being ushered to the door now.
"In fact," he said looking at it, "Since you've already damaged the thing," he pointed at the arm which I had in fact bent backwards, "Why don't you just take it. Take it and go do whatever you girls are all doing with it."
"But I don't want it-" I tried to object!
But before I could object any further, I was being ushered out the door and back onto the street. He slammed the door behind me with a loud thud that made a few people turn. Great! Now I was standing in the street holding a life-sized cardboard cut out of Dimitri.
"How can this day getting any worse." I cried out loudly.
A few people turned and looked at me and a couple of passing women winked at me. God I felt dirty. I could only imagine what everyone was thinking, that I was going to take this home with me and show it a good time.
I put "Dimitri" under my arm and tried to walk as casually as possible. But the streets were brimming with tourists and I kept thrusting Dimitri's head into someone's crotch, and then nearly decapitated a small child. I need to get rid of it! I shot up a deserted alleyway, found a dustbin and began shoving him into it. Easier said than done. The thick cardboard was hard to bend and at one stage I found myself pushing him down with my foot.
"Get in." I said loudly while ripping off an arm. Oh wow, that felt kind of good. I ripped off his other arm and then ripped one of his legs into a thousand tiny pieces. I was getting so caught up and had just torn off his head when I realized that a door had just opened behind me. A man wearing what looked like a chefs hat with the word Zorba's across it stuck his head out and started screaming at me. I ran from the alley and back into the street.
That's when I realized I was still clutching Dimitri's head. "Fuck it!" I shoved it into my bag without thinking.
I hated this day and the weight of it seemed to push down on me. The image of Atlas, the Greek God holding the entire world upon his shoulders penetrated my very bruised and hazy brain.
I chastised myself for my utter stupidity, this was the last time I was ever going to let my emotions take over and govern another decision. I wished that I was a character in a book right now so that I could flip to the end – which I often do as I hate not knowing – and find out what happens to me.
Does Jane find her father and they live happily ever after?
Does she not find him, but in a poignant twist, find herself instead? (Barf)
Does Jane have a complete melt down and start eating carbs with reckless abandon until someone has to send for the firemen to bash a hole through the wall and drag her out of the hotel room she's been living in for the last ten years?
The sun was setting and I was thirsty. Without much thought I walked into a tavern and deposited myself at the bar. It was a white -washed wooden thing – surprise, surprise. What was with all this white -washing anyway? These people would probably white- wash night if they could.
I glanced up at old fishing nets hanging from the ceiling. A very large taxidermy fish took center stage on the back of the wall and beneath it was a name.
Dimitri Christopolulos. 27 March 1987.
Great! I'm sure this Dimitri was very proud to have pulled his worthy opponent out from the sea. Good for him. Good for Dimitri. My brain had taken on a very cynical view of life today. The glass-half-full attitude that I'd woken up with this morning was gone. Now the glass was just shattered on the floor...
"What will it be?" the man behind the bar asked.
I shrugged. I wasn't a frequenter of bars; I had no idea what to order. "What do people usually drink?"
The man smiled at me. "Well, that depends."
"On what?"
"On whether their day has been good, or bad."
"Bad. Very bad."
The man nodded and smiled knowingly. I wondered how many sob stories he'd been privy to over the years.
He slid the drink over to me but there was no fizzy pink stuff and no umbrella and bobbing cherry. Instead, I was met by a glass of ice and whiskey. I hated whiskey. Nonetheless, I was determined to suck it down.
I sipped. It was revolting and burnt the inside of my mouth like fire. I gagged and the man smiled at me once more.
"Medicine never tastes good."
It took me about thirty minutes to consume the 2 oz of liquid, but with each sip it seemed to lighten the load, and by the end of the glass, I was definitely more relaxed. The tension in my shoulders had dissipated and my thoughts began to drift to other ...
"Look at me. I'm going to have sex with them. All of them. Sex. Now."
I could see him so clearly now, striding around with the bevy of drooling women hanging on his every word. They all had a faint air of psychotic hysteria to them; like a pack of hyenas about to pounce and devour. Why the hell did it bother me so much? He was a tour guide after all; it was his job to show people around.
Urg! I hated the fact that all I'd done since landing on this island, other than traipsing around aimlessly, was to obsess wildly about this guy. I got up and walked over to the bathroom. The cubicle looked like a wall of graffiti. Clearly a hundred drunken girls had poured their hearts out on these very walls. I started reading some of it...
There were a few 'so-and-so's were here,' a one 'Tristan is a dickhead' and one rather amusing, 'Loss of virginity proudly brought to you by Jack Daniels.'
But there was one...
"Party like it's your birthday, every day."
It suddenly dawned on me that tomorrow was actually my birthday. The irony made me roll my eyes. Twenty-five years ago, tomorrow, I'd been given up and so had begun the chain of events that had lead me to this very moment in time. In a way, I was right at the very beginning, where it had all started.
When I got back to my miserable little seat at the bar, I noted that the one next to it was now very much occupied. A man - probably early thirties, not hideous looking, a little too sunburnt, a lot overdressed for this kind of bar and sporting a hairstyle that looked like it had taken a lot of time, and gel – was languidly sitting there.
"You looked like you could do with another." He slid the drink over to me with the kind of expertise that suggested he'd done this before.
"That obvious?" I asked.
"Pretty much."
I accepted the whiskey from this stranger and wondered why the hell he even cared.
"So, what's your sad story?" he asked.
"What makes you think I have a sad story?"
"Pretty girls sitting alone in bars usually do."
"Trust me, you don't want to hear mine."
"Why not?"
"It's very sad and sobby."
"Why don't you let me be the judge of that?" he leaned in looking genuinely interested. But I wasn't going to divulge my innermost secrets to this man.
OK, so maybe it was the green drink with the swirly pink stuff floating on top that did the trick, or that shot of creamy stuff...because minutes later, I was telling him everything.
Every tiny detail. And he listened to me. He nodded at the appropriate parts, tutted loudly a few times and shook his head when I'd wanted him to. He seemed interested.
But I was also very ill-equipped and had absolutely no training for the situation I was about to find myself in.