Sleeping In The Stoa
A Zeno the Stoic Adventure. Part 3.
Hail Lambpoonies!
Every Friday over the next couple weeks will deliver a fresh installment of this Zeno story. Hopefully to your inboxes as free subscribers. It is a sequel to The Dog, which can be purchased at that red link for a couple obols if you’re feeling flush. You won’t get some of the jokes (assuming you’ve detected any jokes at all) without reading it. But you don’t have to have read it to enjoy this thing, either. Cheers!
3
304 B.C.
The Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios rested upon a hill in the agora where Athenians went about selling bread, buying bread, trading bread for bread, but never eating bread. One could teach, cheat, haggle, harass, or otherwise loiter as long as they liked. It was the cultural center of the city and all were welcomed. So long as they never ate a single bite or otherwise tried to sustain themselves.
There wasn't a law against eating in the marketplace, but it wasn't looked upon with favor. That kind of tomfoolery - eating that is - needed to happen behind closed doors and if one didn’t have a door to duck behind, one didn’t need to eat that badly. Or so the thought seemed to say.
Zeno approved of this taboo, though he couldn't say why. It was the same in Citium and it just seemed right. No one should have to watch someone masticate in public. That’s just gross. A slope beyond slippery. What was next?
“Masturbating in public,” Crates asked. “What's your stance on it?”
“I am definitely not for it,” Zeno replied, aghast.
“Oh,” Hippa said. “Well, you might not enjoy what we're about to do to each other in public then. He took his pill, you know?”
“I still don't know what that means.”
“You're going to find out if you don't find somewhere else to hang out for… how long do you think, Cratey?”
“Feels like a half-hour, honestly,” Crates mused. “Maybe twenty minutes if you do that thing. You're welcome to hang out, little guy.” Zeno beamed. It was nice to be wanted. To be seen and welcomed.
“Such a performer,” Hippa accused her man. “But everyone is welcome under Anaideia’s gaze. She can't care less.”
“Anaideia?” Zeno asked. “Never heard of her.”
“She is Shameless,” Crates explained with pride, as he looked his wife up and down. “But we're about to sleep with each other. In case it wasn't clear.”
“You people sleep here?” Zeno asked.
“What do you mean,” Crates queried, leaning back against the base of a filthy, twenty-foot-tall pillar holding the ceiling atop the Stoa of Zeus aloft. “By you people?”
"Filthy hobos, apparently,” Zeno admitted.
Hippa laughed while Crates opened his cloak, exposing his nudity to the open air as she crawled inside its worn and tatter-edged flap. Wrapping themselves and matching cloaks around each other, she said, “Your ignorance is hanging out your sack, Zeno. Hobos travel. We haven't been hobos for a while, have we, love?”
“Nope,” Crates replied. “We're just vagrants. Local beggars and wisemen. You can't go anywhere without seeing a damned Macedonian in those gods awful track suits these days, anyway. So may as well stick to the comfort and luxury of home.”
Zeno didn't see any luxuries. Just cold, hard stone and two vagrants, apparently, speaking in riddles.
“They're there,” Hippa said, stroking Crates’ chest with a finger. “If you have the eyes to see and a mind to measure.”
Nodding in response, Zeno took a clue and walked about the austere stone columns. He brushed his fingertips against the cool stone, dragging them with arm outstretched as he circled the stoa. The book clerk had said Crates would teach him philosophy. He wondered what these two really had to teach him. Did they have anything to teach him? A man of letters wouldn't lie, would he?
“Yeah,” Crates whispered. “Do the thing, love. That thing.”
“Doggy first. Obviously,” Hippa admonished Crates behind Zeno with a light giggle. Her voice was quiet and barely registered as he looked out over the dim, world famous agora of Athens. In the nighttime, it didn't seem so grand. During the day, anything seemed possible, but alongside darkness came a doubt.
What was he doing here? Crates hadn't taught him anything but what pump-dumpster meant. And Zeno wasn't sure he hadn't just made that up. He should be collecting the insurance payout for his wrecked ship and dead slaves, not sleeping in the open air with vagrants. No matter how happy they seemed. Again, he wondered what they had to teach him.
“The thing. Oh gods,” Crates breathed. “That thing! How do you even do that? Physics exist, and you don’t even care! Oh gods!”
“You two, okay?” Zeno asked over his shoulder.
“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”
They seemed really okay, so Zeno dropped it in favor of considering his recent fortunes. He still had a home, with columns like these in fact. With the roof, too. But it also had walls. And food. His stomach growled, reminding him he hadn't eaten anything at all since before washing ashore, and long before that even. He never ate at sea if he could help it. He preferred hunger to vomit and sailing always wrecked his guts. If only he could rub his belly to satisfy it. He’d heard that somewhere. He didn't quite understand it, but it sounded clever.
He looked down at himself and brushed his hands over his filthy sack. It had covered him fine during the day, but in the morning, he'd buy a new cloak after a stop at the bank. He’d grab just enough cash to cover breakfast, too. He couldn't find any luxuries if he didn't have the basics. Breakfast was the most important meal of the day according to people who sell breakfast, after all.
His mind made up, he turned back to rejoin his friends. But when his eyes landed square on their tangle of arms, flailing legs, and shameless sex, a quite involuntary scream escaped his lips. The kind so automatic it doesn't even register until noticing birds fleeing the scene in panic.
“Oh gods, oh gods,” Crates growled like a rabid dog, arching his hunched back into a semblance of straight. He howled, “Quod erat demonstrandum!”
He collapsed on top of Hippa. Now, if you've never seen a hunchback collapse, just know they collapse with the weight of a hundred dying stars and actually manage to make you feel bad about witnessing it. Hippa giggled on her back in response, a contented smile on her face, her arms and legs wrapped around the man Zeno thought had something to teach him.
For the first time, Zeno began to suspect, perhaps, Zeno was a complete gods damned idiot. He hugged himself and rocked back and forth, uttering a prayer, trying and failing to scrub the memory of their wild unwashed bodies grinding against each other from his memory. He failed as Crates turned onto his back against his column and Hippa twirled herself around him again.
After several silent moments, Zeno finally asked in a whimper, unsure why he would and not really holding out any hope for an answer he would enjoy. “Can we start my training tomorrow?”
“It started today,” Crates said, watching him with steady, inscrutable eyes. Hippa was already asleep with her head on his chest and toes peeking out from the cloaks they seemed to use as sleeping bags. “And you're failing so far. I don’t know how they do it in Citium. But here, we worship Anaideia. And we scream a lot less. You're not going to do that every time you learn something, are you? At least do it in Latin. Gods.”
“But,” Zeno dribbled. “I don't speak Latin.”
“No one does.”