Chez Lapin was an open-air club on the curve above the tiny Tourkolimano Bay where beautiful old sailing boats were anchored. Lalakis was the boss and the second biggest pimp of Athens and Piraeus. A gent by the name of Christos Daichristos was a perennial number one as far as procuring was concerned. My best friend Zographos employed them both, always reminding me that competition keeps people on their toes. Zographos used Christos for “upper class” girls in Athens and the south of France, whereas Lalakis was mostly for local talent, meaning Kit Kat and Chez Lapin types.

Yanni Zographos died 15 years ago, but not a day goes by without my thinking of him. My father didn’t approve of him because of his unconventional lifestyle. He never once did something he didn’t feel like doing. I remember him during the fifties wearing a white linen double-breasted suit, correspondent shoes, a Panama hat, and driving a white convertible Bentley. He would pick me up at the tennis club, and we’d go cruising around. More often than not, he’d have Christos and Lalakis along for laughs. A whole district of western Athens was and still is named Zographos after his forefather. The two pimps hated each other for obvious reasons. This amused Yanni enormously.

Later on during summer holidays, we’d return from the islands to Tourkolimano and have a late Sunday dinner dockside. I occasionally find pictures of those days and marvel at how young and suntanned we all were. Christos and Lalakis were no longer with us—pimps grow old quickly, it’s the nature of the business—but Yanni and I would drive into Athens and look for trouble. All-important Greeks back then had mistresses. Marriage was sacrosanct, as was “la garconniere,” the place where assignations took place. I remember my mother once demanding I stop the car on the street where the Winter Palace was located, next to the Royal Gardens, where my old man kept an apartment on the side. She had spotted his Mercedes parked outside. I pretended not to hear and she nodded and said almost wistfully, “I see you’re complicit in this sordid business.” She then crossed herself.

It sounds pretty awful now, but those were great times. Life was sweet in Athens. I was carefree and young, we had the commies on the run, and there were girls galore. No longer. Athens is now a brutal place and Greeks are suffering. In a way I’m glad so many of my old buddies are no longer around. I see Athena Zographos regularly, and young Yanni is doing well as a polo player and banker. But the days of white linen suits and Panama hats and correspondent shoes are gone forever, replaced by dirty jeans and dirtier trainers, horrible apartment blocks in soulless surroundings with diesel fumes supplanting the smells of roasted peanuts and souvlaki. Poor old Athens.