Yes. "I'm a hero!" I indicated with a sweep of my relieved glories, whose first extension she had revealed to me that day. "Virtuoso performance is my line of work!"
She removed my dexter hand, it being an article of her creed, even with deities, to allow no sheepish, merely dutiful clitorizing. "The more you think of sex as a performance," she advised me, "the more you'll suffer stage fright on your opening nights. Just hug up close, now, and fill me in on what I showed you today."
Sigh, I did, curled up behind my wise cute tutor as the temple's great second whorl, to which she'd noonly introduced me, enconched the first. As I'd come to hope and fancy, the Perseid reliefs and my altared view were not coterminous there where I sat regnant with Andromeda; a second series — correspondent to the first in relative proportions, but of grander breadth to fit the scale of their enormous revolution — commenced just after, at the pillar on that farther wall aligned quite with my left-foot bedpost and Calyxa's navel-point.
"You saw how it was," I said: "The kids were grown and restless; Andromeda and I had become different people; our marriage was on the rocks. The kingdom took care of itself; my fame was sure enough — but I'd lost my shine with my golden locks: twenty years it was since I'd headed Medusa; I was twenty kilos overweight and bored stiff. With half a life to go, I felt fettered and coffered as ever by Danaë's womb, the brassbound chest, Polydectes's tasks. In fact — please keep your face straight — I became convinced I was petrifying, and asked my doctor if it mightn't be the late effects of radiation from Medusa. 'Just aging of the old joints,' the fool declared, correctly, told me to forget about the Gorgon, give up ouzo, get more exercise. But hare-hunts can't hold a candle to monstermachy: I stayed up too late, drank too many, traded shameless on my authority to bore each night a captive audience with the story of my life. 'Change of scene, then,' the doctor ordered: 'bit of a sea-trip, do you oodles.' He even winked: 'Take the Missus along: second honeymoon, et cetera.' "
"Sometimes," Calyxa said, "I really wonder about doctors."
"Me too. But I proposed it, and Andromeda said sure right off: park the kids in Argos, sail down to Joppa for a visit with her folks; twenty years since she'd seen Cepheus and Cassiopeia. 'Not quite what I had in mind,' I told her; 'We'll stop off there when the time comes, but let's go the route: drop in on King Dictys in Seriphos, say hello to Samian Athene, run over to Mount Atlas, where I short-circuited the Graeae — you've never seen Mount Atlas — then a quick stop at Chemmis on the Nile, where I landed for a drink before I saved your life.' By the way, Calyxa, — " I had unwound to follow with my eye those furled episodes along the wall.
"Please don't stop," she pled, and taking her to mean, despite her policy, the idle handiwork that went with my recital, I resumed.
"So, it was a battle from the outset, even though I'd dropped Styxnymphsville, Hyperborea, and Hesperia from my itinerary to give us an extra week in Joppa and time for a quick look-see at Thessalian Larissa. 'Joppa period,' Andromeda said."
"I think she was being unreasonable," said Calyxa.
I cleared my throat. "Well, now, perhaps it was a bit vain of me to want to retrace my good young days; but it wasn't just vanity; no more were my nightly narratives: somewhere along the way I'd lost something, took a wrong turn, forgot some knack, I don't know; it seemed to me that if I kept going over it carefully enough I might see the pattern, find the key."
"A little up and to your left," Calyxa whispered. But I was lost now in my story. "Ever since that run-in with your pal Sabazius," I said, "things hadn't been the same between Andromeda and me." I told her how the bellied beer-god, using his Dionysian alias, had come bingeing from Naxos into Argos with his new wife Ariadne —
"He told me about her, last time I saw him," Calyxa confessed. "At first I was mad with jealousy, but he was so happy, and she was sweet. ."
"Everybody was mad," I said: "the older women especially, drink drink drink, and when I tried to close the bars he talked them into eating their babies till I gave in. Honestly. I'd've held out awhile — you've got to draw the line somewhere — but Andromeda claimed it was his fame I couldn't abide. ." Truth was, I declared, I did envy the upstart god his enthusiasts, the more as my own glory had not increased since I'd given up heroism for the orderly administration of Argolis; on the other hand, though not a prude, mind, I quite believed in order, measure, self-discipline, and was opposed on principle to indiscriminate housewife orgy, not to mention pedophage. I was no less than Sabazius a son of Zeus, and if no god (owing to Mother's mere mortality), I had the vita of a gold-haired hard-tasked hero, whereas Sabazius so far as I could see did nothing but booze and ball all day. .
"Better say 'guzzle and go down,' " Calyxa said comfortably. She too, she added, had no taste for orgies unless among especially valued friends — such as, say, (the notion made her stretch), Ammon, Sabazius, and me — her general policy being to offer herself to others, corporeally and otherwise, to the extent of her esteem for them. Nevertheless she'd gone along with group-grope, gang-bang, daisy-chain, and other perversions for her plump pal's sake, deferring her preferences to his — just as, with Ammon, she smoked hemp and humped hind-to, although left to herself, so to speak, she'd choose light palm-wine and Position One more often than not. In both instances, her pleasure in theirs not only gratified her beyond her own preferences (a mere martyr's reward, in her view) but made distinctly pleasurable, just in those circumstances, the acts themselves. In short, she was by no means blind to Sabazius's shortcomings, but they were without effect on her worship of him. "We really used to talk, he and I."
It occurred to me to ask why, in view of the foregoing, she had removed my hand in one previous paragraph and limped me with her laughter in another when I'd asked permission to kiss her navel. Her reply was a quiet, short, and serious kiss that messaged clearly even subtless me. I stirred against her nether cheeks very near to Ammonite erection, shrank from the adjective, re-cupped her, resumed my tale:
"I liked Sabazius okay too," I admitted, "despite the trouble he'd caused me; once I'd agreed to build him a temple to keep the housewives happy, we drained many a goblet together Before he moved on. But there was no peace after that with Andromeda: now she claimed I'd given in out of weakness, or to curry favor on Olympus: was I pandering to public opinion, yielding to the pedophagic protest groups, or kicking over my traces like a foolish forty-year-old? Fame and kingship had changed me, changed me, she declared, and not for the better, et cetera."
"Excuse me for saying so," Calyxa said, "but I don't think I care for Mrs. Perseus. Now watch you back up and defend her."
Well, I did: none of these unpleasant accusations but had its truth, as I saw when I wasn't defending myself against them, and its contrary side, as I saw when I was. But one fact was inescapable, however read or rationalized: Perseus the Hero prevailed or perished; Perseus the King had swallowed self-respect and not even compromised with, but yielded to, his adversary.
"It was all downward after that," I concluded: "squalls and squabbles; flirtations, accusations; relovings and relapses, let's not relive it, you know the story, it's all in that pillar between the last panel yonder," where Andromeda and I shared our loveseat throne ringed by little princelets, "and the one today," in which my scold-faced queen sat throned far right and sullen I far left, our grownlings wondering between and a ship making ready in the marble foreground.