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“Did you have a good flight?”

The Maenad’s voice is malice and steel. This is a new thing. When she came over to pretend we never met her voice was awkward and girly bubblegum. When she sang it was warm and deep mahogany. Her poems were well-hewn mood workouts of what I took to be relationship boredom and/or resentment at a father figure. 

I blew it. The call of my other was far too strong. Now this: her lush blonde mane done up in a bun that means business, a strip of dark face-paint across her temples and eyes, a high priestess who also spends time horseback herding cattle. The bull-man’s chain-links dig deep into my wrists.

“Suppose so. I took a pill. Hades was exhausting. Wanna tell you all about it. Sorry I flaked out.”

She game-faces it: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Homer. I’m talking about Homer. Greatest poet who never lived. Left nothing unsaid about the human condition until the Hebrews came along. He had Hermes warn Odysseus not to reject Circe’s advances. Odysseus was the shit but Circe was an immortal witch who had already turned his horny sailors into pigs. Restored them I should say. Do you see? These dramas are played out. Let me take you to an island with ten thousand miles of curvaceous beaches. That didn’t come out right.”

The chains yank sharp and twist my elbows. 

“Orpheus. Look at me. Look how tall my legs are. Look how much yoga has gone into this butt. I live in dread the scene doesn’t take me seriously. The women are all in their unmarried-by-choice years. They shield me and I make them feel younger. The guys all sing my praises but there’s a glint in their eye. They give me spots in journals and writing workshops and let me partake in whatever power they have left. I deserve it but I don’t know that I deserve it. Don’t you get it? I’m not going to fall for some double-back and tell people come fuck with me because I’ll take it. I’m an American and I was raised on nice guys finish last and winners laugh last and I have a pop cultural moment telling me any time I step on a man the world inches forward. Do I care if it does? Is the world nothing but ghosters and stalkers and flakes? I’m not gonna take another jerk who thinks he loves me and then leaves me munching on pad thai at three in the morning in a loser bid to answer these questions. My scene girlfriends peer at me over wine glasses when I flutter from table to table smiling an ocean-breadth of positivity as if I don’t have work in the morning. I’m putting myself out there, do you see? I too could have been stuck-up lucking into mysterious. Fuck no. I’m gonna make an example of you. A sacrifice to the sisterhood. Your buddies won’t be returning your texts and I won’t be returning theirs.”

The van rounds out a long turn then slows into what feels like a traffic stop. I say:

“Isn’t this sort of dark waters politically speaking–“

Slapped in the face. The bull-man growls and yanks me upright so she gets a better shot. It swishes across like strikethrough. No more cleverness.

“Just who do you think you are?“