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When Narcissus swam it got into his hair so he washed carefully with his mother’s expensive shampoo before he went to sleep. When he got home his mother was never there. He defrosted his dinner and went into the 24 bathroom paneled with mirrors. He took off his clothes and admired his abdominal muscles, his skin, his cock. Narcissus’s father had left before he could remember. His mother was not there. She said she was an actress but Narcissus suspected something else because there were never any roles he knew of but always enough money, heavy makeup, tight dresses, the stink of men.

Her lips were red bitten blood. The roots of her hair were black like the branches that scratched her arms. She wrote poetry and played her guitar so she wouldn’t have to cut herself with something sharper than wood, the fingers of trees. Her guitar spoke and lay in her arms but was not warm. She was only looking for someone to love her. 41 The maenad went to the big faraway city and formed a band. She threw herself around the stage, whipping her neck, flashing her breasts, bruising her hipbones, spinning until the world whirled away.

Rabbits, squirrels and doves gathered to listen to this new Orpheus, the magician, the mystic, realizing his truth, even in a time without muses, kings or sun gods. The strippers were like birch trees, he found—that silvery and wide-eyed, that susceptible to his charms. He slept with a lot of them. Alone in his cavern, with the insatiable dancing trees awaiting him, he wanted a wife. When Eurydice left him the maenad came. She wanted more than a husband. 36 B A fter Orpheus began to doubt he could not reclaim me If you are to love, never look back I should have told him But what do I know?