“Tiresias Disrobes”
by Mark Blickley
“A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.”
~ Tennessee Williams

One day in ancient Greece, Tiresias was walking down a path when he was interrupted by two snakes copulating on the road, blocking his way. Tiresias got so angry that he took his staff and killed one of the snakes. It turned out to be the female s/erpent. What Tiresias didn’t know was that these snakes were guarding Hera’s sacred tree with golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides. Hera’s rage, upon learning of the death of her beloved female guardian snake, was to turn Tiresias into a woman.

For ten years Tiresias lived as a woman. And not just as any woman, but the town whore. One day the female Tiresias was walking down a path and once again came upon two snakes copulating. She killed one and this time it turned out the slain serpent was male, so Hera changed him back to a male. These gender transformations made Tiresias the only man in the history of the world to have been both a man and a woman.

Years later, Zeus and Hera were having a terrible fight on Mount Olympus about who enjoys sex more, the man or the woman. Hera had caught her insatiable husband once again cheating on her. Zeus roared females enjoy sex more than men. Hera called him a liar and claimed females accommodate the male out of duty, not pleasure.

Zeus called her a liar. Hera screamed back that her husband was a Trickster and a vicious rapist. Their battle over which gender derives the greatest satisfaction from carnal knowledge went on for days. A frustrated Hera finally decided to summon Tiresias to Mount Olympus to settle their heated dispute. Tiresias’ unique experience of indulging in sexual intercourse as both a man and a woman could supply the definitive answer.

Poor Tiresias was summoned to the foot of their thrones where Hera ordered him to respond to the question of whom achieves more satisfaction from sexual intercourse—the man or the
woman. Tiresias drew a breath, fearful of the consequences of any opinion he would admit. But he decided to tell the truth and answered, “It is nine parts female, one part male.”

An enraged Hera did not allow Tiresias to explain which nine parts favored women and what
single part favored men because she immediately blinded him for exposing her feminine truth to Zeus, thus losing their argument.

One god cannot undo the spell of another god, not even the King of the Gods, Zeus. Yet taking pity on Tiresias, Zeus decided to give the poor man the gift of inner version, the prophetic insights of a seer, to compensate for his wife physically blinding Tiresias due to his honesty.

This is how Tiresias became the blind seer who foretold Oedipus that he would kill his father and copulate with his mother.
I’ve spent years wondering which nine parts of human sexuality Tiresias claims favor women
and what was the only part that favored men because I’ve wanted to write a one-man (sic) play about Tiresias that finally exposes his responses to his ten-point comparison of which gender receives the greatest pleasure. Here’s my list:

Nine Parts to the Women:
#1. Women have orgasms not men. Men have ejaculations. Women can achieve an orgasmic altered state whereas men most often just feel a profound sense of relief. The patriarchy calls ejaculations orgasms because they never want women to consider themselves superior in any way, so they pretend the sexual experience is equal for both genders.
#2. Men most often strain to finish with a grunt of relief, whereas women shriek in ecstasy.
#3. Women are sexually superior to men because they have the courage to join the dual
nature of pain with pleasure.
#4. A woman can tell if a man is sexually aroused by looking at his erection. A woman’s
response isn’t obvious, so she can make the male work harder to prove his manhood by feigning a lack of desire so he puts more effort into pleasing her. His testosterone will poison his ego if he thinks he’s not as desirable or can’t please. Viewing his erection is a visual power she can withhold from him.

As opposed to male performance anxiety, a woman can enjoy sexual pleasure when she turns her brain off and is calm, which shows that a woman also has a brain she can control below her waist.
#6. Women can have multiple orgasms so she can accept many more sexual partners in a day while men are busy recovering from their ejaculations. Thus, if one male partner doesn’t satisfy her, she can immediately move on to another lover.
#7. The clitoris alone has over 8,000 nerve endings to enhance pleasure. The penis has less than half that number of nerve endings.
#8 “When you scratch the inside of your ear using your finger, which one feels better? The finger or the ear?”
#9 While men’s sex organs serve more than one function, a woman’s clitoris has no other
purpose but to give her pleasure during sex.

One Part to Men:
A male having sex with a female does not have to suffer the fear of pregnancy or childbirth.

Mark Blickley grew up within walking distance of New York’s Bronx Zoo. He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. His latest book is the flash fiction collection, ‘Hunger Pains’ (Buttonhook Press).