‘After a long moment, he shrugs and bites into an $8 acai-berry cupcake.’
It takes a minotaur to show us the truth
I’m working on a monologue for my radio show about a minotaur with issues.
“With a head the size of mine, forget about wearing T-shirts,” says the Minotaur. “Not even V-necks!”
But all told, he recognizes that a big head isn’t so bad, that when one of your parents falls for a bull it can go a lot worse.
“I’ve heard stories of baby bulls with human heads,” he’d say. “I’d need a special bathroom. It’d be a whole thing.”
But, at a certain point, life all by himself in his labyrinth begins to feel lonely and so he decides to seek out the company of others. As there’s no society of minotaurs per se, he knows he must make a choice: to live among bulls or men. “No more half-assing it,” he’d say. Without knowing very much about either, he examines the pros and cons of each.
“Grazing all day and chasing Spaniards in toreador pants by night?” he’d ask. “Not for me.”
And so he chooses to live among men, renting an apartment in Brooklyn and working as a community softball mascot — for a team called the Manhattan Minotaurs.
On the subway platform after work he is sometimes tempted to bullhead his way on board, keeping the crowd at bay with snorts and menacing looks. But he never allows his animal half to win.
And then one Sunday afternoon, while hanging out dress shirts on the clothesline he sees across the courtyard, on a parallel clothesline, a red brassiere, red garters and a pair of red French cut underpants. They wave tauntingly in the summer breeze. The bull in him surges! The Minotaur draws the blinds and tries to shield his gaze, but he cannot help returning every few minutes to steal a peek. Instinct is instinct and he fears that, against all reason, he might charge through the glass and fall three floors down. And so the Minotaur visits this neighbour about taking down her underthings.
The neighbour is, of course, miffed and resistant; yet somewhere during the course of their conversation, she admits to herself that he is “not unhandsome for a bison-headed man.”
Soon they begin dating and, like any Brooklyn couple with a disposable income, they spend their evenings eating out at new and exciting restaurants and watching popular TV programs on Netflix. Bliss. Until one morning, while preparing a breakfast of artisanal corn muffins, gluten-free brownies and organic non-fat Greek yogurt, the minotaur catches a glimpse of himself in his hallway mirror, arranging a bouquet of lilacs and — God help him — wearing an apron.
“I used to be feared!” he tells his girlfriend as they sit down to eat. “What has become of me?”
“Ah, Minotaur!” his girlfriend retorts with a grin. “You think you gave up your power to dwell among men. But don’t you know we all do that?”
After a long moment, he shrugs and bites into an $8 acai berry cupcake. The Minotaur has finally become a man in full which, as we all know, means almost always feeling like half a man at best.