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Penelope Shrugged

(A work in progress)

Once upon a time in Ancient Greece there was a party that lasted more thantwenty years. It was a very good party to all accounts, with spirits andvictuals nearly boundless, friendly competitions and games of all sorts,and stirring readings of poems about legendarily strong and lusty heroes of old told by frail blind men who had never actually left their own hometowns. Normally a life such as that would have been a handicap to someone making a living telling stories, but Ancient Greece is not only the birthplace of epic poetry but is also the cradle of the greatest lie ever told by storytellersabout themselves; namely that truth is stranger than fiction.
If that indeed had been true, then no one would have bothered to sit aroundand listen to strange tales told by old homebodies and mama's boys like Homer; but indeed a great many did so and counted themselves fortunate to have witnessed Great Art in the making. In fact, it has been a good thing for the development of modern Western culture that many people led lives significantly less strange than fiction and were easily conned into listening to odd tales told by idiots because all such stories were passed on by oral tradition, the neat idea of writing things like that down not having had occurred to anyone yet.

However, there were two other reasons it was such a successful party, bothof which are more important.

First, anyone who was just strange enough (or who indeed had a back stronger than a wet piece of that not-yet-invented thing to be called paper) had been convinced it would be a Pretty Neat Idea to go to war just then. Thiswas party because someone across the sea had stolen the favorite wife ofa man named Paris and decided he liked her so much he would keep her; but mostly because there was little else to do but play NudeCoed Ultimate Discus or lie around and have some Thessalonian tart drop grapes into your mouth. Although those two activities might seem strange enough to modern audiences to qualify as fictional, to the Ancient Greeks they were quite thoroughly old hat.

The second reason was that, apparently without really thinking through what had just happened, all those strong and noble Greek warriors left their own favorite wives (as well as some of the less-favored ones) all alone at home. This might seem like an extremely foolish thing to do, given thatthere were still a good many of weak-backed, bored, and unmarried Ancient Greeks hanging around with nothing better to do but twiddle their thumbsuntil the war was over or the next game of Ultimate Discus started. As it turns out, it was not only foolish, but led directly to significant developments in modern Western civilization.

These Greeks suddenly looked up from their thumbs to find literally dozens of noble, wealthy, and beautiful Greek wives batting their eyelashes and twiddling their thumbs. Given that the initial impetus for the war in the first place was a quest to rescuse one man's wife, it seems rather ironicthat these men would leave their own wives behind without so much as a chastity belt (which, unfortunately, had not yet been invented). However, so greatwas the commitment of the Ancient Greek warrior class to becoming the foundationof standard narrative practice in epic poetry that not one of them was aboutto let a silly thing like the sanctity of marriage get in the way of a goodstory.

And so while the Greek warriors took to their longboats to retrieve the face that had launched a thousand ships (although historians argue not only about the actual number of ships launched and whether her face was or was not the portion of her anatomy most responsible for the launching) all the rest of the Greeks converged on the palatial residences of those warriors' now-forlorn wives, confident in the knowledge that any day now a considerable number of them might well become widows, and they might as well get their feet in the door now instead of waiting around.

Great parties sprung up across the face of Ancient Greece, with food and wine provided by the bank accounts of Greek noblemen who, conviently offat war, had no practical use for their money just at the moment. The parties were also spurred by the fact that these men, unlike the warriors, were cowards and consummate carousers. Warriors are serious men who rarely smile, never dance, and have trouble lightening up at parties, where they usually skulk up against a wall somewhere and scowl while their wives or girlfriends get goosed out on the dance floor by greasy little thugs in black leather togas. It is hardly surprising that the men who really knew how to finda good time knew perfectly well that a war was not the place to find one.In fact, it was their line of reasoning that eventually lead to the axiomaticquestion, "why rape the cow when you can have the milk for eighty-nine cents," although in modern times the phrasing has changed slightly.

Meanwhile, off at war the soldiers were really so inept in their post-battle celebrations that commanders were constantly telling their charges that things would work out much better for everyone if they could only remember to rape and pillage before burning opponents' cities to the ground.

Most of the parties back home were wild, but relatively short-lived, at least in geological time. Within a few months either the wine ran out, orsomebody ruined the mood by playing Prussian Roulette with a loaded crossbow, or worse yet, one of the partygoers managed to marry the now not-so-forlorn hostess, at which point the other men threw the new husband one last really drunken party and left quietly to give him a good head start on all the years of being nagged and henpecked he had to get in.

Parties at some of the richer houses lasted quite a bit longer, and couldbe sustained for years on end if someone was still sober enough to function as a business manager. A few keg money collections, deposited into a bank account at the start of a party, could earn enough in compound interest to supply years of food and wine, ensuring that no one would have to do anything as drastic as going back to work for a good number of years.

The other unfortunate thing that could happen to one of these parties was the sudden and unexpected return of the husband, which, if it occurred at all, was nearly always both sudden and unexpected. If they were lucky, the warrior would simply crack a few skulls, let some of the more lecherous off with being slightly killed, and settle back into pretending to be in charge of things while being thoroughly dominated by their wives. If they were unlucky, he might simply skulk up to a convenient wall and scowl, which completely spoiled the mood of the whole thing.

One party in particular managed to avoid all of these pitfalls and was just upshifting into third gear on its tenth anniversary, by which time the war was over and the victorious Greeks still living had returned home, bringing with them plunder and mistresses enough to stock the country side up untilthe next round of parties-- that is, until the next war.

That party was at the house of a woman called Penelope, who was the wife of Odysseus. Odysseus was the bravest, strongest, and most serious of the Greek warriors sent to rescue the Tart of Troy. He had also left behind the richest, most beautiful wife, which is partly responsible for the extreme longevity of this particular party. However, most of the credit for that must be given to the fact that Odysseus, being dead set against asking for directions, took an extra ten years to remember how to get home.

And so we find this party in about to start its third decade, with the lady of the house poised to make yet another grand entrance into the throng of orgy-makers.

END PART ONE