Dinner With The Pantheon

Aphrodite was late, as usual.

It’s not that she was deliberately careless; in fact, had she ever arrived on time, she would have enjoyed the only pleasant part of her family’s weekly dinners – the polite catching-up, the reciting of the week’s pleasures, before the wine caught up with them and the conversation turned to old grudges and new disappointments. But she could never seem to tear herself away from her work, and so tended to enter the Great Hall at the worst possible moment, much to her mother’s chagrin.

‘It’s your work’, she would say. ‘What a waste it is! Why you continue to meddle in the affairs of mortals I will never understand. You and your father…I gave all that up years ago, and am much happier for it. Now please would you sit down, smile, and enjoy the meal I spent all day preparing?’

Aphrodite knew that at least three of those statements were entirely untrue; but unlike her siblings, she never saw the point in arguing with her mother. She had suffered great disappointments over the years, Aphrodite knew, and she saw so reason to add to her mother’s suffering by reminding her of them. She had reason enough to be bitter, her mother, and although Aphrodite rarely did anything to directly please her, she never went out of her way to hurt her.

Though, she wasn’t sure that her mother ever recognized the difference.

Today, Aphrodite was late because of a project she had begun several years ago. She began it without much hope – it was an experiment, really, spurred on by a conversation with her brother Dionysus, a conversation that soon became a challenge. He denied that modern mortals could ever experience – as he said – ‘the rippling, cascading ecstasy of pure desire, as embodied by the divine Maenads, those sisters of wild desire who threw their heads back in wild abandon, and offered up their throats to the darkest and purest of lust.’

Even sober, her brother spoke in that embarrassingly baroque language that Aphrodite had long left behind. She much preferred the language of the 21st-century Americas; simple, plain-spoken, and direct. In fact, she had been an early patron of the poet William Carlos William, although he never knew it. She would sit beside him and whisper in his ear as he wrote, and was quite proud of the results. She was responsible for such varied masterpieces as The Divine Comedy and Don Quixote, but there is nothing, in literature, and in love, so perfect to her as these lines:

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Certain that her brother was wrong – that modern humans, and in particular modern women (her proudest accomplishment) could still experience lust at its wildest, without ever sacrificing their dignity, or their flesh, to the degradations of the Maenads, she chose, with great deliberation, an ordinary man and an ordinary woman from her files, and arranged for them to be brought together, again and again. She had intended, simply, to give them the kind of furious sex that only strangers, with needs perfectly matched, can have together. Over the years, she has watched the pair make love and fall in love, without ever learning each other’s real names, or causing the other any pain. It’s been quite the delightful surprise, and she had spent all day cataloging the pair’s various meetings for her files. Aphrodite has been doing her job for thousands of years now, and she has learned to appreciate that the business of love is what matters – without her fastidious bookkeeping, no one would ever remember the shock of first love, the whispered late-night secrets of lost lovers, or the parting words of a ex-wife on her way out the door.

When she finally lifted her head and looked at the clock she was shocked to see that it was well after 6:00 – she was already half an hour late. She put her cigarette out in the heart-shaped ashtray (a gift from a particularly uninspired admirer, though she could not bring herself to throw it out), and left her office.

When she entered the Great Hall she heard voices, already raised to an unhealthy pitch. Her mother’s voice in particular was teetering on the edge of shrill, always a bad sign. Aphrodite threw her shoulders back, took a deep breath, and plastered a Barbie-like smile on her face. She strode in, smiled for her mother (who promptly glanced up, pursed her lips, and reached for her wine glass, all in one fluid motion), and sat at her customary seat next to her brother. Her father was speaking.

‘All I’m trying to say is, the more I read these modern fellows, the more convinced I am that you’re all just a figment of my imagination. This Campbell, for instance, he thinks that you’re all just facets of the whole, which is me. So what this means is…’

He was interrupted by his oldest son, Apollo.

‘Father, do you ever know what a facet is? If you read the texts closely, and if you had at any time paid attention to the numerous papers I’ve written, you will see that – and remember, you have to start with the Sumerian cuneiforms and study the Nordic runes, not to mention the Vedic texts which are notoriously dense…’

Aphrodite stopped listening, and glanced over at her brother, who, from the slightly glassy look of his eyes, was already quite drunk. She smiled and rolled her eyes as their older brother spoke – intoned, really - in that I-know-more-than-you-and-will-continue-speaking-even-if-the-room-clears-out voice; Dionysus smiled back, and found her hand under the table. He squeezed it, and she squeezed back. He filled her glass with purple wine from a bottle close by, and raised one eyebrow. In the unspoken language of siblings, she knew that she had walked into a Big Family Mess, and he was inviting her to drink quickly and copiously.

She sipped the sweet wine and surveyed the table. It was piled high with the usual – plates of fish, a whole pig, a side of beef big enough to feed twelve families and a mountainside full of hungry dryads. Bowls of grapes overflowed, purple and green fruits spilling onto the tablecloth. Carafes of nectar and ambrosia were arranged liberally around the perimeter of the table – say what you would about Hera, but she always ensured that her family was well-fed.

No one had spoken directly to Aphrodite yet. She kicked off her pumps and they clattered onto the marble floor. She sighed, stretched her legs, and took another sip of her brother’s wine. Her mother glanced at her sharply and shook her head.

‘What?’ Aphrodite said. ‘They’re not even wearing anything,’ she said, gesturing towards the Furies. The one-as-three were seated across the table and several seats down from Aphrodite, and were, at the moment, completely naked. It was hard to say if there were three of them, or just one – they changed appearance every minute or so. Right now they were in the form of an elderly woman, her shriveled dugs hanging loose on her chest, short grey hair sprouting from her shoulders and back. She stuck her tongue out at Aphrodite. Aphrodite stuck out her tongue and wrinkled her nose.

‘Really, Aphrodite, is that any way to behave?’ said her mother, sighing.

‘Aphrodite!’ came a call from across the room. ‘You’re here! Oh, thank gods, you’re here!’ A young man with extravagant blonde curls came out of kitchen, smiling wide and holding out his hands. He bent down to kiss Aphrodite on the check, and she smelled cigarette smoke. ‘You were supposed to quit,’ she whispered. ‘Well hon, so were you,’ he whispered back. As the consort of Zeus, Ganymede had full access to all of her father’s oracles and seers, but Aphrodite was always surprised when he made use of them. Her father had never cared much for prophecies – or indeed Truth of any kind - but his young lover certainly recognized the value in keeping watch over the Family.

Ganymede set a pitcher of dark honey mead onto the table, and took his customary seat next to Zeus. On his way, he patted her younger brother’s head, and his hand lingered a bit longer than was strictly necessary in Dionysus’ hair; Aphrodite caught this (as did her mother, who looked at first shocked, then delighted) and shook her head.

At the other end of the table, Zeus and Apollo argued the merits of Freud and Jung, in increasingly agitated tones; there was likely to be a storm later, complete with thunderbolts and piercing rays of light. The Furies were three cats now, kitten, bobcat, and lion, and the lion eyed Ganymede hungrily. Dionysus slowly sunk in his chair, his head bobbing against the table; he was laughing softly to himself. Hera’s neck muscles were taut as she watched her husband argue with his oldest son, but Aphrodite did not see anger in her narrowed eyes; only sadness.

Aphrodite’s family was her world, and despite all their faults, she loved them. They are a family of story-tellers, always have been, and she had a story to tell them.

She took a deep breath and cleared her throat.

‘Everyone, listen up!’ she said. Eight ancient heads turned toward her. She smiled for them. ‘I have a story to tell.’

Her evening starts with three short, firm raps on the apartment door. The lingering smell of cigarette smoke is on his jacket. She takes a moment to breathe him in. He smiles hungrily. Neither say a word…