PART II

At your first Pride parade, plan to see:

• Cis women in rainbow tutus smiling and carrying banners.

• Tall gays in sunglasses with babies from Mozambique.

• Folks in latex pup play gear.

(The last one starts a conversation about inclusion. Zeus asks is this what they’ve been marching for? Dionysus says that all bodies must be free. I don’t think they’re going to resolve this one today.)

Fern is not here to be sexually expressive.

Neither is Breeze. Breeze, who is 27 years old and works at the nearby bookshop that still exists, grew up in a liberal-minded household in which gender norms were not enforced. As a black queer person, they experienced plenty of attempts at repression from idiot strangers, but none of it velcroes onto any internalized stigma or shame.

Breeze is here with the other cohabitants of their house. Rent on the house is decent, and it’s especially manageable split six ways. Couple that with cooking at home, DVDs from the library, and a shared Costco membership, and Breeze can live comfortably on a bookseller’s income. Sell a few feet pics and Breeze can even go on vacation.

Serendipity does not exist in Greek mythology. Everything happens for a reason; anything that seems lucky or coincidental was meant to be. Good luck is overseen by Tyche, and bad luck by Nemesis, and both follow Olympic protocols or they’ll catch hell at the Monday meeting.

So when a young future enby named Bren throws a kandi bracelet reading ‘P-E-A-C-E’—a bracelet that Bren handmade, with a word that expresses the highest ideal they know—into the five-deep crowd at the parade; and when that bracelet is caught, midair, by two people at the same time; and when those two people pull the bracelet down to face each other for the first time; and when Fern and Breeze smile at each other, none of that was an accident.

Fern and Breeze decided to have dinner at the vegetarian Ethiopian place that night.

They had agreed on ‘joint custody’ for the bracelet. Fern wore it as this was the second Saturday of the month.

They told each other stories.

“The first thing you learned about the middle school art teacher was that he was gay. You’d say, ‘I have Mr. Door for art,’ and they’d say, ‘I hear he’s gay.’”

(Fern was in Mr. Door’s art class in the ‘90s, a decade before the widespread acceptance of gay people. In fact, one of the incidents that led to that acceptance, the killing of Matthew Shepard, happened while Fern had Mr. Door as a teacher. Mr. Door, a quiet soul and an empath, looked affected by the incident but never discussed it.)

“One of the units in class was woodblock printing. Mr. Door gave us each a small wood plank. We were supposed to carve an image and then ink it onto paper.

“I decided to carve a tropical fish, with this energetic pattern of vertical stripes. When Mr. Door saw it, his eyes lit up. It was the only time I saw a fire in his eyes.

“On the last day of the unit, I found out the assignment had been to complete two woodblock carvings, one on the front of the plank and one on the back. I had an hour to make the second one. I panicked and carved the same thing as every other student in the class, a ‘peace’ sign.

“When Mr. Door came to grade my project, the light was gone from his eyes.

“I feel like I let him down. He had seen some potential in me, and then it turned out I was as uninspiring as the rest of his students.

“So that’s what I think of when I see the word, ‘peace.’”

“If you could go back, what would you make as your second carving?” asked Breeze.

Fern thought for a second.

“A monstera leaf. A big, beautiful, fenestrated monstera leaf.”

“Sounds like you love plants.”

“My name is Fern.”

They picked up bites of chickpea and lentil stew.

“I played clarinet in high school,” Breeze opened.

“Sweet,” said Fern.

“Yeah. We had to play ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ for an event where they were dedicating a bridge. It was a big deal.

“There were two clarinetists, me and Callie Schultz. The song starts with this big clarinet solo. Callie was into the clarinet. I wasn’t—the clarinet and I kept things casual.

“So Callie got the solo. And she would play it every free minute she had. You could hear that swoop through the soundproof doors of the music wing. She played it so much she must have been skipping class.

“The day of the show, we take a bus upstate to the bridge thing. It was fancy—people dressed up and eating shrimp cocktail off of tiny plates. Callie looks like she’s nervous.”

“How were you feeling?” asked Fern.

“Fine. My part was easy.

“So Callie goes to warm up and realizes she left her mouthpiece at home. She’d cleaned it to be extra prepared, but she’d forgotten to put it back in her case.

“She goes into a full-blown anxiety attack. We’re an hour from home, and the show’s in twenty minutes. All that work, all that practice, and she doesn’t have an instrument.”

“Poor Callie.”

“So I do the obvious: I lend her my mouthpiece.

“Which means I don’t have a mouthpiece for the concert. During the concert I mime that I’m playing Gershwin—I look at the conductor, I move my body with the crescendos, probably more than I normally do. The only glitch is that there’s a three-inch void between me and my clarinet.”

“Did anyone notice?”

“I think the only people who know I didn’t play a note that day are me and Callie.”

Fern laughed and took a sip of spiced tea.

“I don’t even think our conductor noticed.”

These two humans fell into a tranquil silence.

Meanwhile, the gods were going apeshit.

This was the third, and by far the worst, of the shitstorms.

The Olympians, who, ironically, had not spent much time in Olympia, WA, could not wrap their goddamned minds around the relationship of Fern and Breeze.

At first, the objections centered around the sexual.

Which one is the boy and which one is the girl?

This is, like, gay, right? I don’t mean that as a judgment. But… they’re gay, right?

How do they, like… fuck?

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The answer is they didn’t—at least not very much. That’s not what this relationship was about. Fern and Breeze saw something to admire in each other. They saw an opportunity to learn from each other. They found comfort and challenge in their connection.

And they liked being together.

This did not soothe the gods.

Far from it.

Fern and Breeze learned how to play Mah Jongg. They tried their best, though they did not care much if they won or lost. They made friends with Dawn and Joe, their partners at the table.

Ares burned his own house down.

Breeze and Fern attended a Magic: the Gathering conference. Fern had played when they were younger. They looked at some of the rare and expensive cards. They spent forty cents on a Niko Defies Destiny. They ate a hot pretzel.

Poseidon triggered a tsunami in the South Pacific.

When Breeze and Fern attended a ‘play party’ together—“we’ll finally see their genitals,” moaned Zeus—they sat in the kitchen eating Doritos and inventing a storybook alternate reality where unicorns are best friends with cacti and gravity is optional.

Zeus made three treefrog species go extinct.

I think what the gods were ultimately mad about—this is between you and me—is not that Fern and Breeze set aside gender norms, is not that they had a healthy and happy relationship, is not that they were not unconcerned with sex, status, or money, is not that they weren’t limited by jealousy or insecurity.

The gods were mad because they didn’t understand.

Well, most of them didn’t. Aphrodite understood all along. And inspired by these young people, her husband Hephaestus came out as bisexual.

Years later, to appease the gods who never quite got over it, Aphrodite created romantic friction by introducing Fern and Breeze to a third partner.

It would have been lovely if that new person was named Tree. Together they could have made up a forest biome.

But Tree was in a closed polycule, so Wrench it was.

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Did Wrench, Fern, and Breeze’s polycule stand the test of time? Reader, it did not. But neither did your relationship.

The breakup launched a reprise of the final shitstorm, sort of a final coda, in which the polycule dissolved through a sober, heartfelt, nonviolent talk at the kitchen table. Breeze wanted to explore a relationship with a barista named Pothos. Fern wanted more solo time to focus on their karate.

The original Pride flag create by Gilbert Baker bore eight colored stripes. Each stripe had a meaning: red (life), orange (healing), yellow (sunlight), green (nature), blue (harmony), and violet (spirit).

Now that you know Fern… do you see?

(Keen readers may notice that while Baker’s design included eight stripes, only six were described above. That’s because, due to a fabric shortage, hot pink for sex, and teal for art had to be omitted from the initial production version.

Which makes sense. Fern was never into sex. And their favorite entertainment product, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, isn’t actually art.)

Do you see, reader? This is why the Pride merch table inside a Target in 2014 meant as much as it did to Fern—it was perfectly manufactured for them.

Oh, it is for you too? Neat.

Hestia gives out free mom hugs. Dionysus goes to parties to score free drugs. Ares complains about “them shoving it in our faces” and upgrades to Grindr Premium.

We have a parade too, one that’s cute or pathetic, depending on your mood—it’s Hermes followed by two goats (we call them “the twinks”).

At one year’s parade, Apollo marched with Hyacinth. The two beautiful men holding hands were a hit; even Hera clapped and hooted. Apollo made a meal out of it all year.

“Do you remember the Pride parade?”

“The parade was soooooo good this year...”

“When Hyacinth and I marched in the parade…”

I smiled in response and thought I hope I can provide you all the affirmation that you need.

The next year, Apollo, who by then had killed his lover with a discus, carried Hyacinth’s bleeding (though not especially fresh) body down the parade, Apollo’s face locked in comically exaggerated grief. None of us knew what to do, so we clapped and hooted like the previous year while Apollo marched and ugly-sobbed.

It was awful: embarrassing for us all, too awkward to turn into a meme.

Anyway, I mention the Pride parade, because that’s where the central action of today’s story will take place.

To all you mortals, happy Pride. Here’s the story, told in two parts, of how Fern found love.

PART I

Target’s Pride merch table, which appeared at stores nationwide during the “you never had it so good” second Obama administration, felt as fashionable as Target clothing and as heartfelt as a Target marketing strategy.

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The table did sufficient business: worth keeping up for a few years, easy enough to cut when the transphobes came into power.

The vast majority walked right past it. Older queers scorned it. You didn’t do anything for us during the AIDS crisis, now you want our money, go fuck yourself. And a handful of people were inspired by it, among them mothers who shop the Target clothing racks, anyone who’d been lesbian for less than two months, and a nonbinary community college student named Fern.

For Fern, the Target Pride merch table was a vision, a revelation—a floatplane for a nonbinary marooned on an island between wider cultural understanding and SNL’s “Pat.”

Fern, who stood five-foot-seven, did not belong to a gym, wore their blonde-grey hair in a curly thatch, and dressed in pastel tees and over-the-knee sweat shorts, worked 30 hours a week at Einstein Bros. Bagels. They designed puzzle video games. They spent a season learning lojban. They collected enamel pins and attached them to a light-wash Jordache denim jacket.

Fern spent their time in their one bedroom apartment, this shopping complex (specifically Einstein Bros., Nothing Bundt Cakes, and Target), the public library on Maplewood, or driving between in their 2003 Toyota Camry.

What tickles me about Fern, and the reason I’m eager to tell their story, is how little distress they feel while they positively enrage the gods. For a person whose life can be described as harmless, Fern summoned not one, not two, but three shitstorms on Mount Olympus.

The cause of the first controversy was the most obvious: Fern disrupted the gender binary. The world loves a binary—yes and no, us and them, winning and losing—and even if Olympus is in the clouds, it’s still a part of that world. Fern’s pronouns, their look, their existence, required a paradigm shift from all of the gods except for Dionysus (who plays with gender roles at parties) and myself (who can confirm that while identity is constant, gender is flexible).

Gods who could barely read became grammarians. Gods who got a C+ in Biology became geneticists.

But soon, forms were adjusted, databases were updated, the gods realized the gender binary really isn’t that important, and the first uproar that Fern caused ended.

Fern spent much of their time alone. Were they sad? They did not smile much, but they did not seem unhappy. Were they lonely? They never sought a conversation that exceeded Einstein Bros. guest service standards.

As they strolled, alone, through the hot buttered air of Target on lunch break of the first day of June in 2014, Fern beheld the Target Pride merch table.

A strange sense of urgency was awoken.

This is a sign, Fern thought.

No, Fern, this is a Target.

Still, somehow the colorful, tacky, cheap Pride products—clack fans for needy gays, totes to forget in the car, rainbow fanny packs—awoke in Fern the thought that it’s OK to be the person that I am.

(Feedback like this would have made the Target C-suite cum. “Boost personal development” and “create sense of belonging” were two of the top five goals of the Pride table project, along with “strengthen brand reputation,” “drive customer engagement,” and “increase sales.”)

Buoyed, literally, by their new rainbow fanny pack, an economically sound purchase Fern would wear every day for the next four years, Fern looked for additional opportunities to share their newfound pride.

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The alt-weekly that still existed gave Fern their next sanctioned opportunity to express this feeling of self-worth: the Pride parade this Saturday on State Street.

What do you wear to a Pride parade? Fern typed into the Google search bar.

Answer: comfortable clothing with Pride-themed accents.

This is what Fern was already wearing.

Where should you stand during a Pride parade? Answer: aim for the first half, though not the very beginning. The marchers will be in the flow of the parade but not yet fatigued. This would maximize the amount of pride Fern could feel.

Fern picked a spot on the map to park the Camry, two blocks away, on the side of the parade opposite from where most would arrive. From there, they would walk over—open, alone, naïve, and ready.

Fern had become “must-see TV” on Olympus.

As Fern parked their car, allowing Billy Joel to finish his thought—“when will you realize / Vienna waits for you?”—before strolling down a dappled morning city block, literally every god/goddess/decline-to-state watched like it was the World Cup Final.

They would not be disappointed.

As Fern strode past a modest breakfast café, a rather binary couple emerged, unaware a parade was staging nearby. Seeing Fern, the woman partner tugged on the male partner and whispered in his ear. The male, now noticing Fern, shared their groupthink: “Freak.”

Did Fern hear it?

Yes.

The gods fell silent as we waited for Fern’s response.

Their walking pace remained unchanged.

Their facial expression was unaltered.

They said nothing.

And Olympus roared. Bellowed. Laughed. Shrieked.

How could they not respond? Didn’t they know how to be bullied?!

This was the second of the three shitstorms.

Within a sea of incredulity on Olympus, some exceptions: Dionysus smiled—he was in on Fern feeling their power the Saturday of Pride. Hephaestus watched earnestly and seemed disturbed not by Fern but by the reaction of the gods. And his wife Aphrodite looked to be in business mode, focusing intently on her iPhone while glancing occasionally at Fern.

Down State Street, fathers unfolded large rainbow flags. Mothers applied sunblock. A woman in a hat with a clipboard pointed and yelled. Another woman in a hat waved and responded. An older lesbian hydrated. Two young men drank Skyy from a Sprite bottle. Three young women with matching pink bandanas sat on a low asphalt curb and laughed.

And Fern, enjoying the sunshine and the anticipation, and utterly oblivious, stood just to the left of a person named Breeze—the person with whom they would soon fall in love.

This is a mythological story about twins, reader. Not the Gemini twins, or Apollo and Artemis, or Helen and Clytemnestra, but Jackie and June, identical twins born on March 1, 1971—the Pisces twins.

You haven’t heard of the Pisces twins because in many ways they are undetectable, working in perfect opposition, each generating a wave of enthusiasm so synchronized with her sister’s that they cancel each other out through destructive interference.

Reader, as you might expect from the Pisces twins, fish will play a role in their story.

Is that because Jackie and June, both trans women, are fishy—as in, they pass? Let’s investigate. Both perform an exaggerated version of femininity, though with distinct approaches. Jackie dyes her hair violently blonde, wears eyeliner to spook a raccoon, and sports less than two square feet of clothing, de rigeur in her adopted hometown of Lake Havasu, Arizona. June wears floral print dresses with shoulder pads, a cumulus cloud of Giorgio Beverly Hills, and blush to make Mimi from The Drew Carey Show blush.

So that’s not it.

Do fish play a role because I, your faithful narrator, am looking for an excuse to use a superabundance of fish clichés and metaphors? No, reader, and I resent the implication. I’m a writer, but I’m not lazy.

Well, what is it, then? Reader, come with me as I tell you the story of the Pisces twins.

Both of the twins were warriors.

June was a keyboard warrior. She grounded Facebook comments in biased research, sharing six or so posts a day—a trans woman murdered in England, a quote from Laverne Cox, a repost of Erin in the Morning—with an audience who held the same views, many of whom had shared the same post yesterday.

Jackie was a rally warrior. She’d bolted two flagpole mounts to her truck and flew, at all times, one flag for the great high leader and another in tribute to the police state. She drove her truck all from Arizona to Texas to the Inland Empire, and attended many events including some famous ones, like the 2020 Henderson Rally and the Charlie Kirk Memorial.

Each of the Pisces twins had a specific gift.

June’s gift was compassion—the ability to feel pain from a distance. Would that same pain be too intense for her in person? Hard to say. All of her interactions were mediated through Facebook and pressed into digestible bites.

Jackie’s gift was sacrifice—the sacrifice of treasure, fashion, time, and curiosity. So great was Jackie’s sacrifice that she was willing to forgo her personhood as a trans woman for the good of the country.

For a brief period, June and Jackie tried—and failed—to understand each other through the other’s medium: June sought out rallies but found only protests. She attended and posted pics of signs with humor that, alas, was too elaborately constructed for her sister to appreciate.

Jackie created a Facebook account and posted a laughing face emoji in response to all of June’s posts. Her intention was ambiguous, though it did not seem constructive when she laughed at the post about the British trans woman who had been murdered.

After these failed attempts, the Pisces twins parted ways. The identical twin trans women might never have interacted again, but family is like an outstanding arrest warrant: you can ignore it, but it stays on file.

The nurse on duty at Lifesong Hospice, called the Pisces twins—Jacqueline first, June second, in alphabetical order—on the day their Auntie Lynnette died. Lynnette, who loved instant coffee, Marlboro Reds, and her two nieces, never married and had only the Pisces twins as her heirs. Her legally binding will specified that her modest estate—a split-level townhome, a collection of Liz Claiborne and Geoffrey Beene dresses, and a savings account with $60K—was to be “split evenly” between them.

Each of the twins rented a truck and met at Auntie Lynnette’s townhome to split their inheritance.

Easy enough. They began with a snake draft to divvy up Lynnette’s dresses. The draft went smoothly, and the estate dresses were drawn up into neat, outdated halves.

They moved into the kitchen. Jackie took the knife block. June wanted the Balinese cutting board. No problem.

From the single-car garage, Jackie opted for the Stanley screwdriver set, while June selected the Craftsman socket wrenches. This was kind of fun!

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While the splitting up proceeded, the Pisces twins consistently marched past and ignored the most prominent object in the townhome, the object standing conspicuously in the spot in the living room where most American families keep their television:

Auntie Lynnette’s saltwater aquarium.

Ah. The fish.

A question, dear reader: When Auntie Lynnette specified that her estate was to be split evenly, did she have the aquarium in mind? Did she think the aquarium would bring her twin nieces together, or did she simply, perhaps lazily, forget to specify what should happen—to James?

James, a Peacekeeper Maroon clownfish, the only rare specimen in the tank, who looked like Nemo after you take windowpane acid, had a full and fair retail price of about $9,000.

Why was James as expensive as a 2014 Toyota Camry, reader? I don’t know. I like fish as much as the next guy, which is to say, not very much.

Once the Pisces twins had finished loading their trucks—June’s from Lowe’s, Jackie’s from Home Depot—they stood in front of the aquarium, ready to confront their final challenge.

The resourceful Pisces twins divvied up the fish into separate Ziploc freezer bags using the same process they used with the dresses—you get the tang, I’ll take the eel, etc.

They skipped over James.

They even agreed on what to do with the faux wood, rounded glass display aquarium—June would list it on Facebook marketplace, and they would split the proceeds 50-50.

James, the Peacekeeper Maroon clownfish, was now the only object left in the house to split.

A Google reverse image search told the twins his value.

Each had no specific claim. Each was unwilling to let him go.

Every entreaty met with a threat. Every compromise arrived a nonstarter.

A perverse sense of justice (heightened by a mid-luteal spike of pharmaceutical estradiol) led to this resolution: Jackie reached into the tank and grabbed the fish. June snatched James out of Jackie’s hands and slapped him onto the laminate countertop. Jackie reached into a box marked KITCHEN and pulled out her new Ginsu chef’s knife. June reached for Jackie’s hand.

Their force, physical, emotional, spiritual, for the first time combined, the Pisces twins thrust the knife downward, and, as Poseidon, moody bitch, wept, they split James in half from tip to tail.

Reader, thank the gods Lynnette didn’t have a cat or a child.

Also, reader, though I don’t need to hear specific praise, I will mention that I did not employ a single fish pun in this story. Even when the metaphorical situation smelled a little off, I chose restraint.

Is there a moral of the story? I’m not Aesop. This isn’t Modern Transgender Heavy-Handed Lessons.

That said, let’s venture a guess.

What would cause mortals to abandon their core values of compassion and sacrifice?

Based on James’s retail value, we might start with greed.

I don’t think it’s that simple. Greed does not explain every shitty thing that humans do. Most, yes—The Almighty Dollar invested in a rare fish startup selling CW111s and captive bred seahorses to high net worth individuals, for instance. But there is something else, something more.

Is it ideology? It plays a role. The political conversation has grown less tractable over the past decade. Still, people change their minds, and politics didn’t come up once during the James negotiations.

Reader, what destroyed the Pisces twins was a little something called sisterhood. When it works, it works. When it doesn’t, look out.

When the final tings of Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings” faded into the upholstery at Auntie Lynnette’s memorial service, Jackie and June turned their backs and walked away.

And what remains of the Pisces twins sisterhood lives in the dried slime coat of a Peacekeeper Maroon clownfish on a laminate countertop in a landfill in Glendale.

Children police fair, punishing other kids who cut in line and demanding equal slices of cake.

Adults give up on it, tolerating a gender pay gap and funding wars with their taxes.

What is fair to you?

Three brothers—Sky, Callow, and Circa—were born to three different mothers and three different fathers. Each, when born, was thought to be a girl.

Their families raised them in separate parts of the country. They dressed the brothers in traditional girls’ clothing, and assigned them girls’ names, none of which I can tell you because, frankly, I don’t remember.

(Mnemosyne tells me we remember what is useful. In the case of the brothers, the names their parents gave them do nothing for me, while their heroic feats astonish. It makes sense then that I, your reliable narrator, forget the now-obsolete names.)

Each of the three brothers excelled at athletics. Sky, a swimmer, cut through the water like a fish. Circa, a cyclist, spun his wheels fast enough to join the wind. Callow, a runner, left a trail of fire behind him.

On their own, each athlete excelled. Sky swam through the ocean, dolphins leaping alongside their friend. Circa made the air sing with joy: a crescendo as he approached, a whirrrr as he flew past you. Callow ran through city and country, leaving a trail of flame that amazed but never destroyed.

But each brother was missing something.

And they did not know what.

When Hephaestus designed his triathlon, did he intend to bring the brothers together?

Do the gods control fate, or does fate control the gods?

Ponder that for a few thousand years.

Hephaestus announced the race: athletes would test their mettle via a swim, a bicycle ride, and a run. Each of the three races was so challenging that only the most qualified athletes would enter. Apollo, overjoyed to witness greatness at the highest level, said he would provide fine weather. Poseidon, though fickle, said he cared about fairness and agreed to hold back both sea monsters and giant waves during the swimming portion of the race.

There’s that word. Remember your task.

Before the race, Philotes, goddess of friendship and affection, introduced the three brothers via Insta. They recognized their connection and combined strength as brothers. On their own, each was powerful; together, they could achieve victory.

On a spring morning, just as the sun—driven by Apollo, who wanted to watch the race from an eagle’s view—crested the horizon, the race began.

Off the coast of California, bursting with springtime growth, Sky crested the water with strength and efficiency. The dolphins, though cheering for their friend, in the interest of fairness, did not help Sky swim faster—he was fast enough on his own.

Once Sky reached shore, Circa began his journey on bicycle. The wind carries every sound, from empty praise to false rumor. Circa’s strength was to find purity in the wind—its truth, to use a single word—and sail it to the finish line.

Callow set the trail ablaze. The other competitors knew Callow was to be feared—he had won the race in Marathon days earlier. They hoped he would be exhausted from that feat. He was not. Step after rhythmic step, he set a pace that no one else could match.

Sky and Circa celebrated as Callow reached the finish line. They took their spot on the dais under Apollo’s golden sun. They were granted medals for their speed, efficiency, humility, and success.

Forever they would be brothers.

Apollo gave each a new name—one they could keep alongside their chosen names.

Sky would be Water, Circa would be Wind, and Callow would be Fire.

Mount Olympus was abuzz after the race.

Apollo’s swagger, already a little irritating, somehow gained even more erectness.

(What’s particularly annoying is that Apollo never notices his haters. He’s met Phthonus five times and doesn’t know his name.)

If you look carefully, Athena is in the crowd, cheering at the finish line.

Zeus, patriarch of Olympus and sports fan in general (the NFL in particular), smiled, then five minutes later forgot that Water, Wind, and Fire existed.

Hera claimed that the race “wasn’t fair.” I think she was trying to create a backlash against these triumphant transgender athletes. But it never happened.

Reader, have you figured out the answer?

The truth about fairness is that we pick up the goalposts and plant them where we like.

The participation of any and every transgender woman or girl in athletics is not fair, we say, citing that volleyball player we couldn’t pick out of a team photo.

From that faulty conclusion we make rules to prevent all transgender athletes from playing sports.

So it might be that what is fair? is the wrong question.

What if instead of policing fairness, we acknowledged our biases?

What if we celebrated strength, speed, skill, grace, endurance, balance, and creativity?

What if we let athletes compete?

Then we might draw inspiration from athletes like Water, Wind, and Fire.

They are transgender, and they beat your ass.

For you see, dear reader, the fair is in Pomona. And the Ironman Triathlon is in Oceanside.

PART II

Reader, there is transvestigation—a glance at a crotch, an assertion about body ratios—and there are trans witch hunts. Now that you know her a bit, which do you think Claire chose?

She started after Lily’s medical records. She brought Nurse Belinda chocolates, but Belinda doesn’t eat refined sugar. Claire learned Belinda was into knitting, so she bought three issues of Vogue Knitting and gave them to her, saying she had finished with them though they were brand new.

Asclepius, god of medicine, saw nothing wrong with sharing this effort to gain medical truth and signed off on Claire’s plan, but Harpocrates, god of confidentiality, reminded him of HIPAA. The second that Claire mentioned Lily’s gender identity, Belinda pointed to a file cabinet, a lock, and a key around her wrist.

Had Claire known that Belinda knitted 15 pussyhats in January of 2017, she might have known earlier this plan wasn’t going to work.

In the Hutch High parking lot, Claire strolled, faux-casually, striking up conversations just long enough to ask if Lily used to be a boy. Momus, god of mockery, found it funny that not one student or parent could answer with certainty. Maybe? I’m not sure. She’s been a girl the whole time I’ve known her.

Claire hosted a sleepover for the team. In the kitchen she hovered like a drone, posting up at the bathroom door went Lily went to pee. (Though Lily passes the penis test, she sits to pee. She did, however, share some long farts for Claire to consider.)

At 11pm, the potential of the sleepover getting away from her, Claire inserted herself in the group. She began asking questions about menstruation. Abi was visibly uncomfortable. Lily abstained from the question, “do you use a DivaCup?” but so did half the team.

When Claire shrieked, “let’s get comfy!” and pulled off her sweatpants (rare is the adult who recruits teenage girls into their panties, though not rare enough) Aidos, goddess of shame, wept.

In the morning, frustrated by her lack of results but unembarrassed by her efforts, Claire offered Lily a ride home. Lily said that would be great.

With just the two of them in the car, Claire tried a new approach: directness.

“Lily, are you trans?”

Lily had rarely been asked this question. She had not thought much about it. For Lily, her transness was signed, settled and not open for debate.

“Yeah,” Lily answered.

“Huh,” said Claire. “Huh.”

When the organization Moms for Liberty was founded in 2021, Leto, goddess of motherhood, was offered the chance to represent them. She declined, and Ares, god of war, accepted.

M4L doesn’t just represent mothers; it includes granddads, aunts, your brother-in-law, and everyone else with hate in their heart and cotton in their brain.

They have weaponized motherhood against masks, vaccines, and nonwhite people, and they certainly do not approve of a transgender girl stuffing the stat sheet. So when Claire informed the Johnson County M4L chapter that Lily ‘Double-double’ Schultz admitted openly to being a man—Claire’s words—M4L pulled out the posterboard.

PROTECT GIRLS SPORTS read Harold Hollingsworth’s sign. In his 65 years, the longest Harold had witnessed a girls’ sporting event was two seconds, the longest time it ever took to flip to the next channel.

NO MEN IN GIRLS SPORTS said Briony Donnelly’s sign. Briony was a mother of two girls and a Hutch High alumna. She had once rolled her ankle while playing coed floor hockey during gym and could attest personally to the real threat men presented.

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SUPPORT FAIR AND SAFE SPORTS, in glitter, read Emily Rose Harper’s sign. The situation was outrageous: men were transitioning in order to dominate women’s sports. Emily would not stand for it. Glitter was required.

Within the week, M4L were in front of the school board citing Title IX, a law none of them had read. Letters to the editor were written, and these caught the attention of a podcaster who soon told his audience of 150,000 about Double-double, the man who dominated girls JV basketball in Kansas.

Lily felt confused: first they wanted her to play basketball, and now they didn’t? She was fine playing, and she was fine not playing, but did they need to send death threats?

After five days of fervent outrage, School Board President Marjory Weiss announced a decision: Hutchinson girls sports would be for “biological girls” only.

Coach Bartels reluctantly gave Lily the news. Lily accepted with something close to indifference and went home to play Fortnite.

Moms for Liberty declared victory. It almost felt too easy, but a win is a win.

Speaking of wins, the Hutchinson Salthawks girls junior varsity basketball team started earning a lot fewer of them. Once 20-0, the team’s record was now 23-4. Though still tops in the conference, simple math will show that the team had lost more games than they’d won since Double-double’s early retirement.

Good news, though: Abigail Jacobsen was scoring more than ever. She even set a school JV record with 38 in a loss against Maize.

(“She’s like Bradley Beal on the Wizards,” observed Susan Strom at the Wednesday PTA meeting, a savvy comparison that no one understood.)

The song of life in Hutchinson found a new rhythm. Abi scored. Lily gamed. Claire beamed. The Salthawks faltered.

And the Moms for Liberty stored their signs in mud room closets. The signs might have stayed there had Hera not intruded again and stuck her finger in the algorithm to place a Moms For Liberty podcast in front of one L Mathewes, counsel for the ACLU of Kansas.

L, nonbinary soldier looking for war, had not planned to live in Kansas. There are only so many job opportunities for a justice warrior, and when, after graduating Penn Carey Law, the ACLU job in central Kansas came open, they grabbed it.

L made the most of life in Topeka. They particularly enjoyed the Brown vs. Board of Education National Historic Park, just a long walk from their apartment in Central Topeka 2. Righteousness is a thin gruel, and rent in Central Topeka 2 is low.

L felt all the outrage that Lily never did. After they did their due diligence—a phone call to Lily, research into Title IX cases, approval from their higher-ups—they found themselves behind the wheel of their 2012 Nissan Maxima.

They picked up Lily on the way to the school board meeting. In the backseat must have been Peitho, goddess of persuasion because the school board had never heard such compelling rhetoric. In another healthy dose of irony, L made their case under Title IX—a law they had read.

So Hutchinson United School District 308 agreed to convene a special meeting Tuesday. The decision was timely, as the Salthawks were in the playoffs.

Sometimes a great blaze begins with a bedtime cigarette. The ACLU placed the meeting at the top of its weekly email to 600,000 subscribers. Johnson County Moms for Liberty saw it and reached out to Turning Point USA—well, didn’t reach out, per se, as the Moms were already members—and an email was sent out nationwide.

The school board phone line opened for public comment. An animated debate ensued. Safety concerns were raised. “Men in dresses” were denounced. Grooming was cited.

Hera wished it would never end.

With an abundance of interest, USD 308 decided to move the meeting to a larger venue. Ironically, this was the basketball court.

Claire trained every friend she had on “the six”: a half-dozen arguments why transgendered athletes should be barred from JV basketball. Scholarships, safety, biology, fairness, ideology, mental illness. All of Claire’s relatively newfound friends, save Mary Wiseman, said they would attend, and most attempted to match Claire’s intensity, which was somewhat hollow in that she wasn’t so much anti-trans inclusion as pro-Abigail’s scoring average.

The meeting started at 6pm and drifted into the evening. Stu Jordan, night janitor calculated his overtime. If the meeting went past 9:30, he would have dinner at Texas T-Bone on Friday.

By the time the clock hit midnight, Stu had added two beers and dessert to his order, and he was running out of ideas. Marjory Weiss, feeling the wind in the sails let up, ended public discussion. The five members of USD 308 left to debate.

When they returned to the gym at 1am, only L, Claire, and Stu remained. For an hour, these three had shared a room together without a word of conversation.

Marjory made the announcement.

“Per the requirements of Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex, the player known as Double-double — and we came to this decision after a spirited debate — is eligible to play Salthawk JV basketball and is therefore immediately reinstated.”

Coach Bartels was thrilled. The semifinal was a rematch with Maize, and she needed all the help she could get.

Abi was ambivalent. She would score less but the team had a better chance to win. She could feel the pain of her mother’s bruised ego, but it wasn’t her own. (Psyche calls this “differentiation.”)

Claire’s feelings were more complicated than expected. The pain of losing was acute, a seven out of 10 on Asclepius’s scale, but it was clouded by an excitement about the team’s chances, and even a faint feeling of empathy for the sweet and innocent Lily.

Lily, meanwhile, did not give a shit. She’d play if they asked; if not, she’d stay home.

The game, played on the same court where much of this story’s action has unfolded, was close.

(A trope of mythology is that the ironic twist is both a surprise and exactly what you should expect.)

Hutchinson trailed 61-59 with 19 seconds remaining, but they had the ball and a plan: the same plan they’d always used. Abi shoots, and if she misses, Lily cleans the glass.

Abi dribbled near the top of the key. She waited till there were six seconds left and charged in hard towards the paint. She stopped above the key, creating a gap big enough for an open shot.

She lined up her shoulders and snapped her wrist. As the ball arced towards the basket, Lily assumed an athletic stance, knees bent and butt back, her arms extended east and west. Heracles, sixth row of bleachers, smiled.

The shot was a good one, but one inch left and long. The ball bounced to Lily. She firmly secured it and raised up. Above the silence of a packed gymnasium could be heard a klaaaaaaaaaaang! as the ball collided with the underside of the rim and bounced out of bounds.

What is the lesson of the story, reader, besides don’t get too invested in JV basketball?

Everybody gets what they deserve.

Lily was, at best, an average basketball player. She had height and size but little skill. Abigail was good, but not as good as Emerald or Ruby Gonzales. Lily and Abi were not a team of destiny. They were not Shaq and Kobe. They were a good JV basketball team.

L Mathewes will continue their clamber toward justice. Sisyphus laughs. Nurse Belinda and Coach Bartels hike a sturdy path towards love. They will move in together, maintain a budget, and enjoy an Olivia Cruise every year for 30 years.

What of Claire and her cruel ambition? Her husband Peter is having an affair both sexual and emotional with Mary Wiseman, and her son Peter Jr. is gay. Good luck, Claire.

As for Hera, so long as there are humans around, she will always be entertained. At the end of the day, isn’t that what it’s all about?

So they create their own. They make drama on high and meddle down below. They thrive on irony, though it satisfies them like a cigarette, which is to say not at all.

What made them the gods and you, dear reader, their plaything?

They got there first.

They are assholes who got lucky.

And despite their behavior, they are beloved, and that, dear reader, is your fault.

(There is one god who is chill and respectful, and that’s Apollo. He’s handsome, athletic, nice… and so fucking boring that he only makes the news when someone’s trying to fuck him.)

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And somehow I got the privilege of writing about these turds, I mean, gods—I, Tiresias, your blind, dead, transgender correspondent.

(Of going blind, dying, and transitioning, the last was the least pleasant but the most fun.)

Below is the story of Lily the Rebounder, aka “Double-double,” told in two parts.

PART I

Hutchinson Senior High had everything required to field a basketball team: a wire bin of balls and two hoops. The bin held fifteen basketballs, several of which were inflated, and the rims, crafted when quality mattered and everyone hated their lives, stood at exactly 10 feet, give or take an inch, and dead level, give or take five degrees.

Lily Schultz, though a junior at Hutch, was still a child in many ways. She complied with best practices for children, such as arriving on time, eating your food, and doing what you’re told.

Underdeveloped socially, Lily was in the long tail on the bell curve physically: six-feet-two-inches tall and as boxy as a Bulgarian courthouse.

In every other way, Lily was average-to-below-average. She had shit handwriting. Squeaked on the clarinet. Took three attempts to pass her driver’s test.

(On the day she did pass, she merged into a minivan as she drove home. She was, thankfully, insured, as bureaucratic preparedness is among her skills.)

When her driver’s license arrived in the mail (after Lily had banged into a second car, this one parked), she peeled it from the rubbery glue, and beheld a picture of her smiling face next to her stats: height, 6’2”, weight 210 lbs., name, Lukas Alexander Schultz.

Yes, Lukas. For you see, Lily’s doctors had at birth misread the results of her penis test. Or, I should say, they read the test correctly (penis, check), but Lily presented that unusual case in which the result was misleading, for Lily was a girl.

Lily’s schoolmates had no problem. They had no reason to. Taking issue with Lily would require the invention of a bias, and these students were too busy doing handclap games, playing tag, and watching Italian Brainrot.

Lily plodded, with neither ambition nor self-doubt, through life. She joined Girl Scouts. She earned an ‘S’ for ‘satisfactory’ across ten years of report cards. She played Fortnite. One summer, she yelled “six-seven!!!,” then stopped when the adults started doing it.

Nothing could disrupt the forward, gawky, dull march of Lily Alexandra Schultz.

When in mythology you need a disturbance, bring on the gods.

When you need a really good disturbance—ask for Hera.

As Queen of the Gods, Hera has status, and that is it. Her marriage to Zeus is loveless. She is beautiful, but only through expensive, obvious work. She is talentless. She isn’t Goddess of the Harvest or of Beauty. She’s no good at the Hunt, nor has she really tried. She can put together a nice cheeseboard, but so can you if you go to Whole Foods and spend $200.

Are you familiar with the “Real Housewives” franchise? Hera is more than a producer of Real Housewives; the show is Hera, crafted from her limbs, under her aegis. It quite literally takes place under Hera’s skin—thin enough to allow the sunshine in, expansive enough that no one knows they’re inside a fleshy cavern.

What does a talentless, mean goddess unguided by principle do to fill her infinite time?

Be a huge fucking bitch.

Please don’t tell her I said that.

When Hera saw Lily Alexandra Schultz plodding towards mediocrity, unbothered by neither good nor bad, she stepped in to meddle.

It was simple. She posted a job for in-house council to LinkedIn for one Mr. Peter Jacobsen of Kansas City, Missouri to see, and this then caused the Jacobsen family—Peter’s wife Claire, his daughter Abigail, and his son Peter Jr.—to move to Hutchinson, Kansas.

With 14 wins and 17 losses the prior season, Hutchinson High Girls JV Basketball balanced a sense of optimism (14 wins) with potential for improvement (17 losses).

Abigail Jacobsen, the new arrival, had expected to make the varsity squad, but with the Gonzales twins, co-captains in their senior year, sharing the position of shooting guard, Abi had been assigned to junior varsity.

Abi and her mother Claire, 46, daughter of Hera, went to Athletic Director Henry ‘Hank’ Smith to complain. When Hank Smith succumbs to liver cancer in two years, they should laser-etch on his tombstone, Dealt With Unhappy Parents.

Claire agreed that while Abi was not as good as Ruby Gonzales (with a success rate ten percent lower on 3-point shooting, this concession was wise), she might be better than Emerald Gonzales, who only shot five percent better. With varsity experience, Abi could surpass one or even both of the Gonzales gems.

Hank reframed the situation: the goal was to give Abi minutes on the court rather than the bench, minutes that would allow her to emerge as a leader on varsity next season.

He might as well have been on mute.

Hank had a backup plan. While he waited for the Jacobsen furies to tire themselves out, he thought about fish.

It took three hours, and he made one concession: he named Abi captain of the junior varsity squad, a position that had not existed in 35 years, a title that would get them out of his office.

The goal of basketball is simple—throw the ball through your hoop more than the people running the other way throw it through theirs. To win the game, you must do three things: throw the basketball through your hoop, maintain possession of the ball, and gain possession when it is available.

Abigail Jacobsen, above average at conveying the ball through a hoop and good at maintaining possession (having what basketballers refer to as a “handle”) was adept at two of the three tasks.

But Claire, within a few practices—practice was neither formally open nor closed, as no one had previously tried to attend—recognized a glaring weakness of the junior varsity team.

They could not attain available basketballs because they weren’t very tall.

So Claire began to scout for new talent. The criteria: tall, female.

Hera sat on the couch, munching on popcorn.

Claire first saw Lily during Peter Jr.’s school band concert. At six feet, two inches tall, with a broad shoulder carriage courtesy of a male puberty (Lily’s family supported her transition; they were just a little lazy), you could not miss her.

Though Peter Jr., playing his oboe merely to survive this orchestration of Billy Joel’s “Big Shot,” a song he’d never heard, never noticed her.

After the concert ended, Claire wended through the reeds to ask Lily if she wanted to play basketball. Lily, compliant, acceded.

The next afternoon, with no fanfare, Lily, now the tallest member of the team by five inches, was named starting center of the Hutchinson Salthawks junior varsity basketball team.

Have you heard the tale of Kobe and Shaq? Two men: one fast, skilled, and arrogant, the other big, strong, and lazy. They played basketball with astonishing success, their talents harmonizing, their personalities clashing.

Were Abi and Lily the Kobe and Shaq of Hutchinson junior varsity basketball? Maybe. The team won its first eight games on a simple formula: Abigail shot the ball. If it went in, good. If it didn’t, Lily would grab it and pass it back to Abi. Abigail was the shooting star, and Lily was the rebounder.

Did Abigail and Lily have a Kobe and Shaq-like personality conflict? Hard to say. They never exchanged a complete sentence (communicating only through fragments like “BALL!!” and “here, HERE!”), so they never found out.

Student-teacher Louise Bartels, retired welder, had the privilege of coaching girls junior varsity basketball. After her team’s twelfth dominant win in a row, as Couch Bartels slept on the couch, the trickster god Hermes, deployed by Hera, whispered into her ear, “your team is good, but do you know what would make it better? Lily should shoot from under the basket.”

Louise woke the next morning with a wonderful idea: Lily should shoot from under the basket.

Now, when Abi missed, Lily stuffed it back in.

Twenty point victory margins swelled to thirty, even forty.

And Lily, formerly Lily the Rebounder, gained a new nickname among the fans: Double-double.

Lily’s hoop throwing came at a cost to Abigail’s scoring average. She had been netting 28 points per game, a remarkable total for a girls junior varsity player. It was now down to 24.

Claire wasn’t having it.

What was wrong with the old strategy? Claire asked the coach. Nothing, responded Bartels, except we are better now.

And they were. Their win streak reached 20 games. Crowds swelled from 14 people—a plurality of parents, plus a younger sibling or two—to over 100, most of whom, based on their chanting, were here to see Double-double.

Why wouldn’t they chant? They were witnessing the single most dominant season in Salthawks girls JV basketball history.

Reader, in Greek mythology, bad stuff happens when everything is at its best.

At that month’s PTA meeting—which, if you can believe, Claire Jacobsen attended—some mothers were discussing the recent success of Salthawks JV basketball.

“That girl, Lily? Double-double? She’s turned that team into a force,” said Mary Wiseman, sharing her first ever opinion about basketball.

“Abigail leads the team in scoring,” added Claire.

Susan Strom turned around. “The way she—” this she referred to Lily “—knows where the ball is going to bounce, she’s like Dennis Rodman,” a keen reference to a statistical anomaly and gender nonconformist from the 1990s.

“Abi and Lily are perfect teammates,” pleaded Claire.

“That Double-double, she’s big enough to play on the boys team.”

A casual gesture finger gesture by Mnemosyne, the goddess of remembrance, flashed in front of Claire’s eyes. Less a finger point, and more of a flick? You might call it a swipe, though that’s not really it. Anyway, it did its job, and Claire began to wonder: is Lily Schultz a transgendered?

Reader, does the modern world feel ironic and cruel to you? Honey—welcome to my world.

I’ve been blinded. I’ve transitioned. I’ve transitioned again. And I may be blind, but I’ve seen some shit. I’ve been a mother. I’ve been a father. A prophet to kings. A sex worker. A counselor to heroes. Hell, I’ve died—and I’m still here. I live in Portland.

Hera blinded me after I, uniquely equipped to answer, said that sex is better for women. (It is.) Zeus felt bad—perhaps because she blinded me, perhaps because he’s not satisfying his wife—but even Zeus, the king of the gods, could not unblind me.

Fun fact: what the gods do cannot be undone.

So Zeus made me a prophet, and here we are.

What’s my job as a prophet? I tell stories. Stories that people often don’t want to hear. Stories that tell the truth. Stories that, I hope, are entertaining. I’ve been mocked for the stories I tell, and I’ve been dismissed—but I’ve never been wrong.

And reader, yes—you are a plaything for the gods. But, as my friend Odysseus has asked me to point out, you still chart your course. The gods will steal your wind. They will wreck your ships. They will strand you on an island, sometimes for years.

You’re still the captain. Stay smart, stay patient, and don’t eat any sacred cows. It might take twenty years, but you’ll get home.

A few technical things:

• The comment section is open. Speculate, ramble, prophesy, disagree, theorize, gossip. Be messy, be loose, and be funny, but remember—we’re merely mortals—so be humane.

• There’s a wiki for this project. As goddesses, gods, mortals, etc. appear, their name will link to a little bit of background. Read it if it’s helpful; skip it if it isn’t. No one’s getting graded for this. Use it for reference. Feel free to contribute!

• I use em-dashes—a lot. Em-dashes rule, and I am not going to let ChatGPT’s egregious overuse of them slow me down. (I am, in fact, on the record, pre-ChatGPT, about the elegance and utility of the em-dash.)

• We here at Modern Transgender Mythology think that AI has its place, and that place is nowhere near this project. We don’t use it for any creative aspect of MTM.

• If you’ve read this far and want to know who’s actually responsible for this project, here’s the writer and here’s the artist.

• Subscribe below to get a new myth in your inbox every Wednesday. If you contribute when you do, you’ll encourage us to keep going with the project.

Reader, I think that’s everything. Have fun. Enjoy the absurdity. Go on an adventure. Stay in touch.

Ares has been moodier than usual.

I wait till the quiet conversation to ask.

“I don’t get America,” he murmurs. “A half-dozen active conflicts, and no one is praying to me. If you bomb someone, that’s war, right? But they call it a coordinated strike…

“I mean, the whole generation is confusing. The guy who drinks whiskey and lifts weights is a coward, and the park ranger in drag is a hero. You used to be able to tell if someone is a stud. No offense, man. Or ma’am. Or whatever it is today.”

“None taken, babe.”

I had an idea, and in that intimate moment, Ares thought it was a good idea.

He should send Achilles to join the American army.

Achilles, greatest of the Greek warriors and gay as a giraffe, said heck yes.

You see, the American military has always been gay. How do you think navy boys in Dixie cups and neckerchiefs stay busy while they cross the Pacific? Army too—you could get your dick sucked every night of World War II if you knew the right bunk.

Gay soldiers are historical tradition. Why do you think Ancient Greek warriors oiled their thighs?

Achilles strode down to the Army recruitment office, located in a working class strip mall. The recruiter showered him with praise. “What are you, 6’3”, 240? Incredible body. You play sports?”

Achilles lapped it up.

Sign me up, he thought. Show me to the studs.

Alas. 300 this was not.

Achilles’s regimen was as cohesive as the silverware drawer at Goodwill. Runt. Fatty. Dimwit. The one fit soldier in his platoon spoke no English. The other Joes jokingly threatened to call ICE.

Physical standards had lessened. You didn’t have to do a pull-up. Run a 9-minute mile, do a few push-ups, and you were an American soldier.

And the work was easy too. Soldiers rode desks and played video games. The highest level assignment was to fly drones through Iranian windows.

Achilles was so depressed he began to brainstorm heelside self-harm.

He set aside libido and personal disappointment to focus on his task: find out what god of coordinated strikes these soldiers prayed to.

It was easy. He was everywhere—on t-shirts, necklaces, posters, and memes. The soldiers prayed to a god called War Jesus—a late season reboot of the beloved character Jesus Christ. War Jesus wasn’t in the source material, but Jesus, seated at the right hand of the Father, was unavailable, so War Jesus, hot off a cameo in John Wick 4 and repped at CAA, reached for his Hollywood moment.

He had the look. Long chestnut hair. Sinewy muscle. Piercing blue eyes. White.

And what’s nice is that he didn’t come saddled with backstory. Ask Original Jesus to start a war in Iran, and you know what you’re going to get. He’s the Prince of Peace. You’re stuck with that.

War Jesus, on the other hand, fires up the reactors on the USS Abe Lincoln.

Achilles, his mission accomplished, got a rub-and-tug from the Mexican, claimed transness, and got discharged. They ask where to send his separation pay. Bureaucracy in motion.

On Olympus, Achilles tells Ares about War Jesus.

Ares is furious, but that’s typical.

What neither Ares nor Achilles know is that all of War Jesus’s power comes from his father, The Almighty Dollar.

Reader, you might be surprised to learn there is no Greek god of money. Plutus is the god of agricultural wealth, but that’s not the same. Ares’s anger was rooted in confusion over his inability to understand that what drove the American war machine was greed.

The Almighty Dollar wants geopolitical power to give Him easier access to oil wealth. But He also wants a news outlet, a movie studio, and a marijuana brand. If it makes Him money, he wants it. A comedy program. A data center. Single family homes. If it turns a profit, His love is infinite.

“I miss mustard gas,” Ares whispers.

Our foreheads are damp with sweat.

“IEDs. Napalm. Trench warfare. Bayonets. Shrapnel.”

“Yeah?” I coo. This is one sick fuck.

“I miss missing limbs. I miss the grief that never goes away.”

“Of course, babe,” I whisper. Why do I find him attractive?

He bends into the fetal position.

I throw him a bone.

“I think what you miss, babe, is suffering.”

“Yes! That’s what war used to be! Glory and sacrifice!”

Ares may be depraved, but he’s not wrong. A bet on Polymarket doesn’t require courage. Staring a demon in the face does.

God, am I turned on.

Everything is a commodity, even intimacy.

Everything but eye contact.

Eye contact is terrifying, and it’s free.