Hyacinth and
Apollo
Hyakinthos,
a prince of Sparta, was more beautiful than mythography is able
to describe. His body was perfect, his eyes were filled with
laughter and light, his torso was smooth as the bark of a willow,
his balls hung like two golden apples of the Hesperides, and his
little round buttocks looked like two recently discovered planets
waiting to be landed upon and explored. He loved sports and games,
and could be seen at play in the sports field every afternoon until
sunset.
Look, it's not
exactly like I asked somebody if I could become the world's first
gay male sex object, you know what I mean? The trouble with Greek
myths is that once you find yourself inside one, there's no way
out. Like your nuts are in a vise and there's no way you can escape.
It's what the Stoics call Fate. You can just forget mythology and
give me a good football game anytime: the race down centerfield,
the storm on the goal posts, the sweaty camraderie of the locker
room, and tomorrow it's all forgotten and a new game begins.
And Thamyris, the school poetry instructor,
could also be seen, lurking outside the colonnaded walls of the
gymnasium, watching Hyacinth with a hard-on and thinking up some
fairly filthy dithyrambs.
It is said of Thamyris that he was the first person in all Greece
to fall in love with a person of the same sex.
OK, so I used to flash some intentional ass
when I saw Thamyris hanging around the school yard. I figured it
wouldn't do the old Grade Point Average any harm, and hey, it's
not like there were any women around this place, ok? IMHO
if somebody had to invent being gay, it might
as well have been him as anybody. Actually Thamyris wasn't so bad,
overlooking the bad guitar playing. I always think of him when I
see one of those Greek vases, where you're standing there bare-ass
in front of your teacher as he explains the nature of Truth, Beauty
& Goodness or whatever, and at the same time he's fondling your
balls and jerking himself off.
And it is said of Apollo, orbiting the sports
field on a periodic fly-by, that he was the first of the gods to
enjoy gay sex, which shows you how hot this young stud was: just
one look at Hyacinth and men forgot their wives, gods forgot their
goddesses, and basically everybody turned homo.
People, do you have any idea what it's like
to get fucked in the ass by a Greek god? It's like 12 million megavolts,
followed by a hot blast of radioactive sperm. Especially by some
media hound like Apollo, who's majorly arrogant and always behaves
like he's on camera.
Apollo decided to neutralize the competition
by removing Thamyris from the scene. He does so by advising the
nine Muses that Thamyris had boasted he could write better songs
than they, to which the pissed-off Nine respond by blinding Thamyris,
ripping out his vocal cords, and smashing his fingers so he can't
play guitar any more.
Great. Really fabulous. Nice work, girls.
A truly humanitarian gesture, and a real inspiration for all of
us. Imagine the effect of two centuries of education in the Greek
classics in the secondary schools of America and Europe. Is it really
any wonder that half the schoolkids in Los Angeles carry guns with
them into the classroom?
The next and last lover was Zephyrus, the
West Wind. One day Apollo was out in a field playing frisbee with
Hyacinth. Insane with jealousy, Zephyrus caught the frisbee as it
flew through the air and aimed it at the Apollo' skull. It struck
Hyacinth instead and killed him.
Jesus Christ,
I don't believe this. Being fallen in love with by the fucking wind.
Will somebody please give me a break. You'd have to stay inside
your house 24 hours a day and keep all the windows shut, like it's
fatwa and you are Salman Rushdie or somebody. Hey, why don't
we just sign over the film rights to the Disney Corporation and
see if we can make some serious bucks? Maybe we could get Robin
Williams to do the voice-over for Zephyrus: it'd make the kids laugh
a lot. I can still remember how Apollo, with his usual shitty grin,
tossed the frisbee gently upwards, light as a feather, and all of
a sudden it started to accelerate to about 1010 miles
per second and then hit my skull like my brain was in the inside
of a particle collider.
From his blood Apollo causes the hyacinth
flower to grow. It bears the letters AI AI, a Greek cry of sorrow.
Another major
problem with these dumb-ass myths is that if you fool around with
the gods, you're going to wind up getting transformed into a bird
or a tree or some crazy thing. Especially with an incredibly shifty
bastard like Apollo. Executed by a frisbee and then abracadabra:
you're a goddam plant. Will somebody please give me a break. Funny
thing is, now it's 2,500 years later and nobody has the slightest
idea what this flower is supposed to look like. It's definitely
not the one they call a hyacinth which is very fragrant and sells
for $2.89 in the Safeway every March so that you're supposed to
think that Spring is coming. Anyway, in my opinion it all just proves
that if you're a teen-ager and good-looking, you're probably an
endangered species to begin with, in that some people are going
to try to kill you when they finally realize that they can't fuck
you. Well folks, I guess that about winds it up, so AI AI to all
of you out there in cyberspace, and if you're into gay sex, don't
forget to wear a condom, or you're probably going to die a lot slower
than I did.
Painting
by Charles Gleyre: "Evening: Lost Illusions" (1843) showing Thamyris
deserted by the Muses
Greek
vase representation of Zephyrus and Hyakinthos
making love aerially
Jean Broc: Death of Hyacinth
(1801). Musée Saint-Croix, Poitiers
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