For as long as I can remember, I was the guy left in the corner, still holding a poorly wrapped gift that somebody else picked out for me to give to the birthday boy or girl. An idiotic gift, of course, most likely one of those desk organizers that my mother used to buy me. A cheap plastic thing that separates paper clips from staples and almost always comes with a flimsy ruler and pair of scissors with rounded edges. An item that pretends to be useful but is barely efficient. Later in life, my parents picked an equally useful career for me in the public sector. I was never particularly useful in anything, let alone deciding anything, so I went along with it. Now that I think about it, I went along with most things without caring much.

It wasn’t my profession of choice. But I had no more choice in the matter than any other broke musician in Greece. I started part-time announcing to my friends that I was going to quit in a month or two after setting my debts. Inwardly I knew I was doomed to stay longer. After six months I was still as much in the red as before. But I got myself a brand new bass that I never had time to use since taking some extra hours. My credit card debt remained steady over the years but I managed to pay back my few remaining friends. They did not approve of my job so I kindly let them go. There wasn’t much to be done about fast vanishing kinship. Years later, my salary was sliced in half. Horror-stricken, I started living with my parents spending most of my time in my old room. I adopted a solitary existence which I had no problem with. But when a woman, any woman, shows the least amount of interest in me and asks what I do for a living, I envy my cousin Aris to death.

He’s an “artist”. I’ve never seen him painting, drawing, singing or playing any instrument but when he walks into a room his white teeth flash in a wolf like manner and his eyes sparkle enigmatically. He vaguely resembles the actor that portrayed Jesus in Franco Zeffirelli’s epic film. He is long like a stick and has an eccentric way of expressing his various moods. In short, he is an in-and-out mental patient who shows up to every family gathering with a different chick. When asked about his state of employment, he always replies with an elusive, “I do life for a living.” And when they ask him if it pays well, he hastily adds, “You know, it’s a badly paid job, but it has its perks.” Bouncing from one “project” to another he keeps a rotating group of admirers in his midst. A suburban girl that will soon abandon him for another tormented soul looks dazzled, for now. Later in the evening she’ll ask him to pose for one of her paintings, videos, or god knows what else and invite him to her place. A typical Athenian night of pointless drinking and smoking, but everywhere we go, Aris is treated like a king and I fade quietly into the background.

These days Aris is showing up with the same girl for longer than usual. She spends most of her time filming him with slavish adoration. Now he’s trying to cross a bridge balancing dangerously on its thin metal ledge. He takes one small steady step after the other with his perfectly shaped bare feet, high over Kifissias avenue. We’re below him, watching intently. The girl whispers in my ear, “Look at him. He’s unique.” “He’s mental,” I mutter between my teeth. The hissing of the wind and the roaring of cars drown out my voice. She does not notice me as she is busy admiring Aris’ lean silhouette dancing over the highway. In the tiny monitor of her camera I catch a glimpse of a black and white figure defying gravity. A week later, gravity caught up with him. He’s falling apart, all curled up on the floor, his face covered by a mass of wet tangled hair. His knuckles are torn and bruised from beating the wall and she is nowhere to be found. She flew to an art camp in some forest in Germany. No one to film him now. He’s lucky he has me to pick up the pieces. I give him 6 milligrams of our grandmother’s meds and put him to bed. The girl is still out of reach.

When she returns, she has eyes only for herself and her end exam piece and surprisingly, me. One night after visiting Aris, whom she now finds dull and depressing, we had an awkward encounter on the stairwell. But my morals, the spoiled fruit of my mother’s religion, coaxed me once again into going to bed alone. So I’m now watching porn on a tiny netbook, hoping no one can hear. The house is dead quiet. The older my parents get, the earlier they turn in. Since I can’t sleep I climb to the terrace where there is a tiny apartment with a dinky moldy bathroom. Aris lives there. He can’t sleep either, so share a beer. I want to ask him about the girl, but his phone rings, and damn, it’s yet another artsy chick wanting to paint him in her mother’s nightgown. A statement on cross-gender politics or something like that. He shrugs but ultimately accepts her offer, and I sigh with relief.

Everything is back to normal. Whatever normal was. Aris ‘does life’ again, and I have to wake up early to work in a stinky office before I get assigned to a post. Piled up on my desk is a depressing amount of paperwork. It feels like this every day this month. I’m getting old; I have a bit of gray hair, all the warning signs of a forthcoming beer belly, I make minimum wage and I’m lonely and terribly bored. Today is Monday, tomorrow will be Tuesday, and the day after will be the day I was born thirty-seven years ago. I think of my youngest nephew who is now twelve. A few summers ago, I used to be his superhero for getting a seasonal job at McDonald’s. He would brag to all his classmates that his uncle works at McDonald’s and could get him all the Happy Meal toys. We have the same name, so when I quit I gave him my name tag. He wore it religiously for a year until he lost it playing at the beach.

We all live in a ‘family’ building. Most of the tenants are old men and women whose life had ended thirty years ago. Sometimes when the elevator is out of order, walking till the fourth floor feels more like visiting a retirement home crossed with a mausoleum. The formerly white walls are now a sick yellow. Worn brown mats lay outside the doors, the names on the doorbells are scrawled with faded purplish ink, and a rotting odor mixed with the smell of bleach penetrates the air . Death is never too far from here. She tiptoes around the building in her black slippers just like its soft-paced tenants.

I live in a small shabby apartment with my parents and grandmother. Everything inside our home is plain ugly; from its depressing dark brown furniture, enamel bronze handles and hideous crystal vases supposedly manufactured in Venice, to my mother’s porcelain dog figurines in the display case. On the floor above us in a copy-paste living quarters lives the family of my cousin Aris- his sister Maria, a forty-year-old divorcee, and her son, my nephew. Sadly, Maria and I never had much to say to each other.There is an extra room for Aris and Maria’s parents when they come to escape the unbearable wind and isolation of the island in winter. During those months they fight so much that the elderly couple is once more willing to embrace its isolation. Soon enough they’re on the next ferry for Salamina where they’ll stay until next year. Aris, that lucky bastard, lives above all of us, alone. He defends himself by saying that his little ‘shack’ has no heating and almost nothing works. But still, even an iota of privacy in the family home is a blessing that anyone in modern Greek society would fiercely envy.

Today I’m more jealous than usual. It’s the worst day of the year, my birthday. My mother will get me another ugly sweater that she’ll later complain I never wear. My father will hardly say anything. Then he’ll drink too much beer and pass out snoring in his favorite chair next to the dog. Aris will try to set me up with some weird girl that he will later sleep with. Maria will make another inedible ‘healthy’ cake while her son runs wildly all around the apartment, breaking a thing or two. At least my grandmother will give me twenty precious euros from her pension. She’ll wink and tell me to have a good time. I love that woman; never in her life has she advised me to do anything ‘useful’. I already know who will call or text. Or which Facebook friend will post a silly video of a cat or other poor animal in a birthday hat doing something ‘adorable’. At work they will try to take me out for drinks. The twenty euro will be spent on cigarettes and beer, and I will end up drunk, alone in my bed streaming weird porn. The next morning I will wake up late for work with the laptop still upside down under the covers. Years ago, my parents had unprotected sex and obtained me in return. Bad deal, I guess.

It’s the day after my birthday and my mouth feels like a thousand deserts. Every muscle in my body is sore, my head feels like a volcano ready to erupt, and I’m barely going to make it on time for work. I keep avoiding telling you what I do for a living because I get carried away talking about Aris or my nephew, but now I must come to terms with it. It’s a crappy day anyway, and it won’t improve. You see, I’m the annoying guy that checks your bus tickets. Yup, that guy, the one who also gives you a terribly overpriced fine for not having one. And now you know why I never stood a chance with women. Most of them don’t buy a ticket hoping to get away with it. And they usually do. Frankly, I hate my job as much as you do — at least those of you who won’t bother paying for a ticket today. But mostly I despise the fact that people see me as my job and not as a man that gets paid to do what I have to do. Think of me as a twenty-first century executioner unlucky enough to not be given a black hood to hide under. Especially nowadays. I’ve developed a weird phobia that next time I cut a fine, people from the “DO NOT PAY” movement are going to stone me to death.

So here I am on bus 550 with yesterday’s alcohol reaching my esophagus. I’m sweating like a pig as it is nearly forty-two degrees in here and the air conditioning is broken. The bus makes a stop near the Acropolis, so a lot of tourists hop on and off regularly. On such an outrageously hot day, I’m hoping to only see the regular, everyday miserable people. I hate seeing the sunburned faces of people that actually have a life. I manage to cut a fine or two, and I let Babis, my colleague, deal with the complaints. He has a knack for that. Thankfully, he is quite compassionate for my venomous hangover since he’s a drinker himself, so I try to focus and continue inspecting the rest of the bus. Unfortunately, it’s a double-decker. I am getting more and more nauseous with every little vibration the horrid vehicle makes when Babis yells “Let’s get out,” too close to my ear. “I got a tourist without a ticket,” he informs me as we exit from the double doors. “Don’t let that one go too,” he practically screams inside my ear as he heads towards the nearest kiosk for some Marlboros. He’s well aware of my habit of letting tourists off the hook and is dead set against it.

I look at her. She is glaring at me quite angrily, focusing on the sweat stains on my shirt, but I do my best to ignore it. She has no papers to show, so she just asks me in broken English “How much” and almost orders me to follow her to the nearest ATM, cursing audibly in her language. She is much taller than me in her high heels. As we walk, I see other people’s admiring stares. It’s not that she’s that gorgeous- she is in her mid-forties, after all- but still, there is something about her proud, angular face that hypnotizes me. We stop at an ATM. I wait behind her, she is not in a hurry. She takes the money out of the machine and counts it twice before handing it to me. My stomach is still a mess. When the woman turns to leave, I try hard to hold in the vomit, but it’s hopeless. Ten beers and a couple of whiskey shots aren’t about to postpone their triumphant exit for a hot redhead. She looks at me even more furious than before, but she is not shocked either. I feel terrible, so I mumble that yesterday was my birthday. She gives me a tissue stretching her arm all the way to my face to avoid looking down. I don’t blame her. I’m trying to apologize again, but every time I feel weirder and weirder. I mean, I had just taken a crisp hundred euro note from her. I take a deep breath, and before I manage to say anything more embarrassing, she asks me to join her for coffee. “You need one,” she orders, and I gladly follow her. Happy birthday to me.

Babis returns from the kiosk to find no one. He yells and curses, but he can’t do a thing as his phone is dead. Meanwhile, I am walking triumphantly behind a beautiful woman along the narrow alleys that lead to the Acropolis. We sit in a crowded cafe with fans that spray water. Tiny droplets landing gently onto your skin on a warm day like this is a blessing of some sort. A waiter approaches us, and before she can react, I place the money from the fine into her purse. She tries to protest, our fingers touch, and I sweat. We don’t speak. There is really nothing to say. I am trying to think of ways to explain myself, but nothing comes out. She drinks her coffee avoiding my gaze. She frowns before saying in half-broken Greek, “I’m not a tourist, I’m a prostitute.” I do not react, and she repeats herself a dozen different ways to make sure I understand her. “You know what I do for a living?” she insists. “A badly paid job,” I reply. We stare at the Acropolis. People come and go, the sun is shining and I have a funny feeling in my stomach that has nothing to do with the beer. I wonder what Aris would do in my shoes and I sigh.