Author's Note: this is a look at the ancient Greek tale of how the wife of King Minos was struck by the gods with a lust for a magnificent mythical creature in the form of a white bull.
"What a creature," Minos said, rubbing his hands together. His eyes were alight like a child's, in a way I have come to know very well. "What a marvelous, magnificent creature! Do you not agree, my wife?"
"It is as you say, my king and husband," I replied, suddenly feeling myself to be on precarious ground.
That look in his eyes. That bright, merry look.
"The gods," I added, "will be greatly pleased."
At once, Minos' expression changed. His lower lip stuck out, and his nose crinkled, and his eyes went narrow. His was the anger of a petulant boy denied some treat, and it came to me that had he ever looked so in the presence of his rivals or advisors, he would have long since lost his throne.
"It is my bull," he said. "It came to me."
I nodded, knowing that I had gone too far, displeased him. It would not be for me, Pasiphae, to remind the king of Crete of the promise he had made. Minos needed no reminding. He knew. He remembered full well how he had raised his arms to the sea from which the white bull had arisen, and pledged that it would be sacrificed in Poseidon's honor.
"Mine," he repeated.
"Yes, my king and husband," I said, and bowed my head.
The other ladies often told me how fortunate I was. "Oh, Pasiphae," they would cry, "how fortunate you are that Minos keeps only to you, his wife! He never puts you aside in favor of concubines, catamites, mistresses!" And they would go on to bemoan the infidelities of their own husbands, each wringing her hands in the ever-present fear that she might be supplanted, replaced by a younger, more vital, lovelier woman.
If only they knew
, I thought, and stole a glance at Minos.
If only they knew what it is to be queen of Crete, married to this man. I should rather he kept a horde of concubines, if only he had the lusts to need them.
His faithfulness was due in part to his disinterest. Many a hunger, many an appetite throbbed in Minos. He craved treasure and power the way a starved man might crave bread and meat. He craved accolade, respect, adoration. He was ever surrounded with toadying underlings, and neighboring kings held for Minos a respectful fear.
For the pleasures of the bedroom, alas for me, my husband had only indifference. Not a dozen times in a year would he bother to rouse himself to seek my bed. When he did, the occasion was always over quite swiftly, if indeed it began at all. More often than not, whatever excitement had lured him hither would fade before he had managed to enter me.
I knew that I was not to fault for this. In my girlhood, I had been renowned for my beauty, and the passing years had only granted me a mature woman's glow. My breasts, unsuckled by any child – for neither had Minos ever quickened a babe within my womb – stood high and proud. My stomach was unlined, my thighs smooth, my skin honeyed cream.
I had been told by other suitors that my mouth was as inviting as the portal to Aphrodite's own chamber. My eyes, the light green-blue of the summer sea, were lavishly fringed in dark lashes. My hair was a source of pride, as yet untouched by grey. When unbound, it fell to my hips in a shimmer of gold.
No, it was through no deficit in his wife that Minos rarely felt a man's urge. He did not care for it, that was all. He was also, perhaps, loathe to let it be known by any other that for all his riches and stature, for all the armies at his command, King Minos was barely more than a boy below the waist.
It was a pitiable thing, his phallus, small and usually soft, shrunken as a fig, curled as a shrimp. Where there should have been a virile and hairy sac to contain his testes was a pallid little pouch that might have held a pair of olives. Though he was vain of his thick hair, full beard, and manly chest, the thatch at his groin was sparse and wispy.
Such had I first beheld on our wedding night. I had been left speechless, which was perhaps for the best because I could not imagine what words, in that moment of astonishment, might have come from my lips. The contrast of him – wide shoulders, deep chest, muscular legs, miniscule manhood – was not at all what I had expected when our wrists were bound by a cord at the altar of Hera.
Minos had thought his bride a virgin, entirely untutored in the ways of men, utterly ignorant of what a man's body should look like. He had believed my only prior education had been in the viewing of painted urns and marble statuary.
I suppose that I was, therefore, not what he expected either. But I never let on. I knew that if he ever suspected me of previous knowledge, he would turn me out at once. Or, perhaps, as I had seen his shame, he might feel compelled to be sure that I never spoke of it.
That would not do, not at all. It could not be known beyond the walls of the king's private bedroom that powerful Minos was in any way less than a man. He would not tolerate any such rumor, any such laughter. This, not any romantic ideal of husbandly fidelity, was the reason he kept no concubines.
He would not bathe in the company of others. Even his slaves, once they had attended to their duties, would be sent away that he might not be naked before them. If anyone else but myself in all of Crete knew his secret, it could only have been his
aesklepios
, his physician.
Wise beyond my years even on the night of my wedding, I had the sense to show neither mirth nor dismay at the sight I beheld. I felt both emotions commingled, for was this not the moment, the purpose for which fair Pasiphae had been groomed? To lie down with her husband, give pleasure to him and be pleasured by him, and bear for him fine sons and beautiful daughters?
There was no pleasure for either of us that night. Minos, flushed by wine, bade me recline before him and open my legs. I did so, and he knelt between them, and to his credit his pale earthworm did poke up in readiness. I had more length and girth in my smallest finger. I could not help but wonder that even if I had been a virgin, whether he would have been able to pierce Hymen's veil at all.
Not once did I worry that he would be able to know his was not the first organ to breach my femininity. He lacked the experience of any women, let alone sufficient comparisons to tell the difference.
I was determined to make the best of it. Was I not queen of Crete? That in itself was to be envied. And I recalled how I had heard my mother's maids giggling and gossiping about their lovers, how they claimed that it was not the size of the oar but the stroke of the oarsman that moved the vessel. As Minos lowered himself upon me, I hoped that this was true.
What I learned that night was that the stroke of the oarsman matters not at all if he cannot even dip the oar in the water. Minos spilled his seed in a dribble on my thigh before he had so much as touched my entrance. Moments later, he was collapsed on the pillows beside me, snoring vast breaths of sour wine.
