Debase the Currency - Whether Coin or Clout - Show Who Rules Them - And Set Yourself Free - Go East Old Man - To Learn Something New - Make Peace With Darkness - And Shine Your Light - Witness Inaction In Action - Before the Great Game - Of Two Competing Conceits - Leaving a Strange Legacy
10
356 B.C.
A macho and manly voice - randy and savage as you like - roared across the open-air stadium. “Oh yeah, Greece! Are you ready?”
Thousands of screaming Greeks had journeyed from their city-states to the shadow of Mt. Olympus. Their wives left at home and not allowed to attend. This explains the rest of this chapter, though it can't excuse it. You'll see.
The men honored Zeus today, though a party need no excuse. What happened in Olympia stayed in Olympia. Sort of. But this is what men do absent proper supervision.
“Hera’s cauldron is lit! Oh, yeah! Before we begin, the 106th Olympics are brought to you by Dr. Ozymandias’ Men's Marble Suppository Kegels! Available at all accredited pharmacies! Oh yeah! Bust that ass and snap off a Slim Jim!”
The stadium howled in ecstatic response as Olympic flames roared. They were familiar with the product, and they approved.
They filled benches laid against hills sloped down making a valley one stadion long. Don’t ask how long that is. It’s one stadium long, okay? This is how they measured stuff. Pure chaos. The point here is there was standing room only, even without wives.
“We got discuses, we got boxing, we got it all! Oh yeah!” The announcer machismo’d from a stage set directly in the center, ringed by an oval track. “But don’t forget the nerds! Oh no! Not the nerds! We got poets! We got lawyers! Orators!”
Thousands sighed in disappointed dejection, but tradition demanded an oration prior to Olympic celebration.
“To kick it off, a newcomer from Athens! Oh yeah! Fresh fish! This lawyer will read us some filthy-dope history from Herodotus! Here he is! Demosthenes!” This introduction met scant applause, punctuated by an eagle's sullen scraw overhead.
Amid the suddenly dour mood a small man resembling a coat rack solemnly marched to the main stage. He cleared his throat and spoke with the voice of the most successful orator in Greek history. But you know, not yet. “Mrblhphmf,” he began.
“Oi! Newb! Don’t talk with your mouth full!” A helpful and anonymous voice suffering a Macedonian accent shouted, conjuring laughter from the crowd.
Demosthenes promptly spit out a dozen marbles. “Thank you, friends,” he boomed in a clear, stammer-less voice. The kind that makes women melt and men angry. If they don't melt too. “The walls in the Olympic malls are totally, truly, and utterly tall today!”
Nonsensical statement was met with thunderous applause, as would become the custom wherever Demosthenes spoke. Eventually. But Dio hated him already.
“Today we celebrate the 106th Olympics! Oiled up, naked men compete to honor the gods! A tradition passed down by our ancestors and Egyptians and Persians and who knows who else!”
“Herodotus does!” The stadium screamed. They were familiar with the pop-historian.
“Indubitably!” Demo agreed prior to hacking up yet another marble. “I mean, oh yeah!”
“Now, a selection from the great Father of History to begin our games! I dedicate this reading to King Phillip of Macedon,” he said. “In the hope he’ll piss off to India or somewhere else far away. After, if you'll indulge me, I'd like to speak of current events.”
One side of the stadium cheered, while the other screamed, “Just say the lines, fool!”
He took both as permission and began to recite from the first history in history.
“Their genital seed too is not white like other men's but like the Ethiopians' black. These Indians dwell far away from the Persians southwards and were no subjects of King Darius.” Gasps and laughter radiated through the credulous crowd like a wave.
Dio rolled his eyes. All these dudes ever cared about was semen, competition, and the illusion of fraternity.
You’d think it was a precious commodity, their baby-batter. But you couldn’t walk through the Academy without slipping. If you tapped their towels with a hammer - or their psyches with mild criticism - they'd shatter like cloudy glass.
With no wives allowed at the Olympics, Dio would have to see to his own sexual needs. Prostitutes were available, of course. But he had no money and they lacked passion. Unlike married women.
Dio looked over at Philip II, King of Macedon. The proud new father looked resplendent in a gold threaded tracksuit, smiling and laughing with a thick cigar poking through a bad beard. He loved the attention this fool lawyer heaped on him.
The murderous usurper had reason to be happy aside from a newborn son. He'd been preparing for war his whole life and he finally got it. Athens and Macedon were at war. Both observed the traditional truce called for the games. Observed, but little more.
Demosthenes had moved into original material and seemed to be trying to transform the audience into a mob. He turned to the Theban delegation, “What of you, Thebes! I know you know Phillip sucks the kegel out of marbles!”
“Sure does,” A nodding Theban agreed. “But we're here to box! Not fight! Piss off!”
Dio realized, finally, what he'd meant way back in the fourth chapter. One should prepare to enter politics. Never actually do it. Good gods. All that effort improving oneself, just to piss it away on some uncaring mob or to promote murder. Tragic.
Dio felt a tiny hand tug at his wrist. He'd brought four of the Cynosarges orphans with him to see the games. The youngest looked up at him with the big, stupid cow eyes of a child and asked, “Mr. Dio, what is a Herodofus and tangenital seed?”
“The answer to both is the same,” he flippantly replied. Normally, he'd summon a creative lie to tell the child, but between Demosthenes and Phillip and a mounting sexual frustration, his mood soured. He was agitated and his belly rumbled, to boot.
“Oh,” the boy said before asking. “What is a hysteria?”
“History,” Dio corrected. “Mostly hysteria, though.”
“Oh. What is a history?”
“Some nerd’s version of the past,” Dio’s gut roared. “Quit corrupting me.”
“Oh. What is the past?” The boy would not be stopped, nor could Dio simply eat him. Not with so many witnesses about. “And why is that coat rack yelling at people? And why is that man's private parts on his face and on fire?”
Dio didn't know the answer to that last one, so he flipped several obols at the urchin to piss off. He kept them for sentimental value. They were worthless otherwise. “Go play with the carnies and don't spend it all in one place. That's how they get you.”
“Okay!” The natural extortionist ran off to join his friends, clutching a handful of obols, which transformed them into a drachma. The magic of ancient measurement again. “Bros! Bros! Mr. Dio gave me money for rides!”
A chorus of groans rose from the elder and therefore more informed orphans, “We'll have to launder it! Everyone knows his obols are no good! He debased the currency, dumbass!” Dio grinned as he watched street rats hellbent on rascalism.
His mood dipped again as he returned to Phillip yelling at Demosthenes. With his bad beard and smoking cigar, he did resemble some rather haggard private parts after all. Phillip was screaming, “Taxation is theft!”
People were angry now. Rich people fighting over taxes was boring. Dio turned away to find a gyro and maybe some nice shade for a wank when a palm the size of a fat Etruscan hog seized his shoulder. It spun him around like a top to face its owner.
From a head three sizes too large and banded with gaudy sunglasses came that savagely randy voice, “You're Diogenes the Cynic, aren't you? The Dog?” It sounded like an accusation.
When Dio didn't deny it, the colossus declared, “Oh yeah! I'd recognize that beautiful, manly beard anywhere. You gotta save that turd on stage, brother. He's bombing.”
“Why? And so what? I’m hungry and horny. He can’t help me with either. Spare some change for some cotton candy and a handjob?”
“He’s ruining the Olympics,” The giant rubbed his paws together hard enough to produce sparks. “Can't have that! If he keeps this up it'll be a gods damned bloodbath, brother. Oh no! Can’t have it!”
“Fine,” Dio said. Why not? It was for the gods, silent as they were. “I don't have anything prepared, though. What do you want?”
“Oh yeah! Whatever you like! But no politics. At least not any someone would notice. You don't gotta have talent, either. Just get up there and be a punk! Oh yeah! A wise man will say that someday. Folks are here for fun, not lectures!”
“Your funeral,” Dio warned.
“Oh yeah! Better than all our funerals!” An eagle scrawed agreement overhead.
Dio marched across the track to the center of the stadium and tapped out the dumb ass lawyer, “Get out of here before they start throwing spears instead of slogans.”
“Thank you,” a red-faced Demosthenes gushed. “Good luck! These people are like weaponized ignorance. This is everything that’s wrong with public education.”
“You just suck,” Dio nodded. “Work on it. Be more prepared. Don't expect them to like you. They’re not your mom.”
Demosthenes frowned but gave way. “Who are you?” He questioned Dio's indifferent back.
“Friends! Hellenes! Cuntymen!” Dio roared. “Lend me an elephant ear! Seriously! I’m hungry!” When this failed to produce any food at all, he continued, “I am Diogenes the Cosmopolitan! The Cynic! The Dog! I owe allegiance to no king or council!”
"I diespise your stupid human games! I came here for only two reasons! To eat gyros and get myself off! And I didn’t know your wives weren’t allowed before I got here! So, suffer the consequences!”
With this declaration, he promptly pulled out his penis, thought about Xeni's wife in Corinth, and masturbated in front of thousands of shocked viewers. He heard a muted oh no from behind him, like a bear having a nightmare, it was so quiet.
Five agonizing minutes of flailing at himself passed in near silence. The only sounds were an eagle's shocked scraw overhead and marble balls dropping onto bleachers like the pitter-patter of hail on a tin roof.
Finally, a brave viewer asked for the thousands, “Why are you doing this to us?!”
“If only I could banish my hunger by rubbing my belly! Quod erat demonstrandum!”
And the crowd went wild. They didn't speak Latin. No one did. But they didn't have to. The thing was demonstrated. The games were saved. And Diogenes the Dog found himself world famous.
He'd have to create an OnlyFans. Whatever that was. Maybe he’d ask Xeni’s wife. Too bad she wasn't allowed at the games. The Greeks may have invented the orgy, but someone was going to invite women one day.
Debase the Currency - Whether Coin or Clout - Show Who Rules Them - And Set Yourself Free - Go East Old Man - To Learn Something New - Make Peace With Darkness - And Shine Your Light - Witness Inaction In Action - Before the Great Game - Of Two Competing Conceits - Leaving a Strange Legacy
QED--Quick Erectile Dysfunction!