After nearly two years of one rejection after another, someone I don’t know finally decided they liked my writing enough to want to publish it. Kind of. This is publishing in the ultra modern sense. As second place winner in the Litopia Writing Contest: It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time, my story Athena Rants will be featured, along with the first and third place winners, in Litopia’s inaugrual Podcast. What does this mean exactly? I don’t know. But I’m thrilled nevertheless. Thanks to all of you who’ve encouraged and put up with me. And thanks to contest judge and author Joe Donnelly for liking my story.
Anyway–check it out at Litopia Look on the contests page so you can see my name officially listed. Or if you’d like to download the Podcast here’s how:
Open itunes, Go to Advanced Menu, click on “Subscribe to Podcast”, enter the Litopia URL: http://podcast.litopia.com/litopia.xml
Click on download. It does take a little while to download.
I’d also recommend reading the winning entry; IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME. We enjoyed it quite a bit.
For anyone who’d like to read Athena Rants here you go:
*****
“Do you have a light?” It was a feminine voice. I turned toward an attractive woman in her late twenties, with short dark hair, wearing a well tailored wool suit. She looked like a lawyer. Her eyes caught mine. Gray eyes, cold and beautiful.
“A light.”
This time it sounded more like an order. I fumbled a lighter our of my bag and lit her cigarette.
“You’re waiting for Telémakhos too, I see,” she checked her watch, “It’ll be a few minutes.”
“Who?”
“Telémakhos. Odysseus’ son. You know, The Odyssey.” She smiled and inhaled deeply on the cigarette, “Let’s get this clear right from the start – it’s the same old story, the one about Ulysses or Odysseus or whatever you want to call him, traipsing all over the place so he didn’t have to go home.”
She paused for a moment, scanning my face.
“You won’t mind if I vent,” she concluded with evident satisfaction. “First, you need to appreciate how clever Odysseus is; smarter than the average ancient Greek by far. Honestly, it’s not even a fair comparison. And he’s a very sexy guy – thick chest covered in golden hair, broad shoulders, strong arms, not too tall. He has a striking face, sad smile, and distant eyes. The kind of man that sucks women right in. Oh, and the fact that he can be quite charming doesn’t hurt.”
“It’s also important to mention that he had real problems with his mother. She was one of those women who had much better things to do than pay attention to her son, at least when she was alive. When he found her in the underworld it was an entirely different matter, but that’s another story. Even so, she expected him to be perfect in every way. Naturally he developed quite a complex toward women. A typical seek their approval then use-em-and-lose-em cycle. Come to think of it, he isn’t very good at keeping male friends either. Consider his crew – speared like fish, eaten alive, fried by a thunderbolt – it was gruesome.”
“Ultimately, you just have to come to terms with the fact that Odysseus is an ass. A discouraging realization, I understand, him being an archetypal hero and all. But believe me, I know,” she tossed the butt into the grass and ground it viciously with the bottom of her black pump.
“In fact, I probably know him better than anyone. And I admit being a bit smitten myself. But I was feeling vulnerable after that whole Paris and the Three Golden Apples fiasco. Even sensible goddesses are entitled to crushes every now and then. Anyway, given my personal interests, I took it upon myself to help Odysseus along. Maybe I actually started out thinking I could help him do the right thing. Or maybe I was just bored and horny. Either way, pretty soon me and Odysseus had become regular participants in each other’s lives. Not that we see each other often. I tend to show up when he’s in over his head. God only knows why.”
“I’m not, nor have I ever been, the primary focus of his life. Odysseus is the primary focus of Odysseus’ life, and not a wife, a son, friends, wars, lovers, or deities can change that. Really, he always gets much better than he deserves – but I guess I’m partially to blame for that. Probably I should have done western culture a favor and let him drown. But saving him seemed like a good idea at the time. And that’s the thing about Odysseus, he gets under your skin. His ultimate power lies in his hurt eyes and the way, in a moment of truth, he bares his sorry soul and lets you see that nothing can ever fill it up. Funny isn’t it, his greatest strength is being so damn pathetic.”
She pulled a new cigarette out of the pack, off-handedly offering me one. I lit hers first; she smiled a thank you. It was a very unsettling smile.
“Even though I understood it was bound to happen, I’m not particularly good at dealing with rejection. You know he’s never made a pass at me. He doesn’t even flirt. Not once. Can you believe it? I’m sure he’d say it’s some form of respect. ‘Cause you certainly couldn’t be attracted to someone you admire or revere. It’s enough to make you feel sorry for the women he’s been involved with. He’s had some great ones. And he didn’t deserve a damn one of them. The fact that he managed to, uh…” she seemed to be considering her next words carefully, “…fuck Circe into giving up her favorite sport, never ceases to amaze me. She turned men into animals you know; sometimes wolves or lions but mostly pigs. A propos isn’t it. She was thousands of years ahead of her time.”
“And Penelope. The crap she’s put up with while Odysseus had his manly adventures with monsters and witches. Just once I’d like to change the story so that Penelope got to choose her revenge. Have you ever wondered what it would be? I mean, what would you do to him?”
She crossed her arms and waited expectantly, gray eyes boring deep into my subconscious. Clearly, this was not a rhetorical question. Killing him while he ate was too Clytemnestra. Murdering his children too Medea. Killing myself too cliché. Then it struck me.
“Odysseus might have made a good eunuch.”
For the first time the stranger’s face broke into a broad grin. “Wouldn’t that be hilarious. Mr. Heroic reduced to singing soprano forever.”
She chuckled to herself for a few moments while finishing the cigarette. Then she shook her head. “But that’s not the way it works. Odysseus rescues Penelope and the kid. With more than a little help from me,” she tossed the second butt and nodded in the direction of a beautiful young man walking up the path. “Here he comes.”
And suddenly we were sitting on a large rock along the edge of a stormy green sea. Telémakhos rinsed his hands in the foam. The woman beside me rose and as she moved, her smooth pale skin wrinkled and stained, coarse robes now clothed her bent and withering frame and a thinning white beard sprouted from her chin. Only the startling gray eyes remained, glancing at me from a distance as she spoke consolingly to Telémakhos. “The son is rare who measures with his father, and one in a thousand is a better man….”
