One day, I was strolling through Fiesole, a mountaintop village in Italy, trying to find relief from the violet waves of heat undulating over the Florentine basin. Fiesole, an ancient town dating back to the Iron Age, used to be an important military center; but, it was also the target of invasions by just about everyone able to plunder and pillage that far above sea level, including the Gauls in 225 BC, then the Romans, whose official invasion was preceded in 90 BC by the arrival of the great Stoic, Cato the Younger. At the time, the town was bejeweled with Etruscan relics and a splendid amphitheater that had boasted audiences of 3000 in its heyday.
As it turned out, my walk brought me to that very amphitheater, and I was completely surprised to find Dionysus (aka Bacchus), the ancient god of theater and other bacchanalian delights, sitting in one of the lower rows, his head in his hands, his shoulders heaving up and down in rhythm with his mournful cries, which filled the theater with a glorious display of histrionics that is rare nowadays, except in Spanish-language soap operas. His lungs were still hearty, and, as evidenced by the empty jug of wine that lay at his feet, he still enjoyed his beverages. A fresh crown of laurel framed his dark tousled curls that glistened in the late afternoon sun.
"Hey, what's wrong, Dionysus?" I asked quietly, not wanting to frighten him from his misery. He looked so small and out of his element.
My voice echoed and bounced throughout the abandoned amphitheater, so it took him a minute to find its source.
He looked up at me and gestured toward the stage with its overgrown weeds and shards of broken marble jutting from the ground like rows of crooked teeth. It was difficult to imagine that it was once state of the art.
"Doesn't anyone go to the theater anymore?" he asked, sniffling between sobs.
I offered him a cloth handkerchief and told him to keep it.
The thick black lashes framing his sparkling brown eyes were heavy with tears. I couldn't believe that after all this time, he had remained young and really rather attractive in an ancient Greek god sort of way.
"Of course people still go to the theater," I reassured him.
"But the theater is very expensive now. Only rich people can afford to go on a regular basis."
"Has everyone forgotten me?
" His square jaw quivered under his day-old growth of beard and he pulled his toga up over his the smooth muscular hills of his tanned shoulder.
I felt an almost maternal desire to touch his ample lips, which formed two sensuous peaks under his fine aquiline nose. He reminded me of Victor Mature in that cinematic extravaganza from the 1950s, The Red Robe.
"Wow," I thought, trying to hide my admiration, "He's one splendid looking young man."
I didn't want to tell him the complete truth about his comedown in the world, nor did I want to insult his integrity with an outright lie, so I reached for something between the two extremes. "Well, my brother and his friends once had a theater group called The Dionysians.
It had a great one-summer run in our hometown, which is very close to a bustling metropolis called New York."
He tried to smile. My positive attitude seemed to be working, but I wanted to tread lightly because his lovely eyes were still bathed in tears.
"I mean, there's still theater, don't get me wrong," I added, afraid he would start sobbing again. "It's just a lot more expensive than it was in the good old days before the Common Era." Heavens, I couldn't believe how inadequate I felt confronted by Dionysus' tears and my own inability to explain the economic history of theater and other art forms.
"Well, what do people do for entertainment if they can't afford to go to the theater?" He was really curious, and, much to my relief, his sobs had subsided into little hiccups. I began to explain the phenomenon of television.
"What's television?" he asked, showing renewed interest in life.
"Well, it's a box that's shaped like a big square or sometimes a rectangle.
And it has a screen made out of glass. Actors appear in the box behind the glass." I didn't want to get into the technicalities of wavelengths, sound waves, and other subjects beyond my grasp, so I explained it as simply as I could.
"Actors get paid a lot of money when they appear in a box, and they don't need any special acting talent."
He was smart enough to grasp the concept of actors getting into a box, which was quite impressive considering the fact that he was more than two millennia out of his time; but he pounced on the talent aspect. "How do they get to be in the box if they have no special acting talent?
"
I was impressed. All these years out of the theatrical fold, and he still had a nose for good theater. "Well," I said enthusiastically, as it was clear that our conversation was lifting his spirits, "all they have to do is look a certain way, and they're hired!
"
"What way do they have to look?"
This was more difficult than I had anticipated, but I remained patient because he showed a genuine interest in recent theatrical developments. So I answered again in the simplest of terms, thankful I hadn't mentioned motion pictures.
"The women must be very young and have thick lips and breasts the size of watermelons; the men can be any age, but they must dye their hair if it turns gray. If they lose their hair, they've got to wear a wig or shave it all off and wear an earring. That's all there is to it.
"
Dionysus was actually laughing now. "Why don't actors just wear masks they way they used to when the Greeks ruled the world?"
"They do," I responded, smiling.
"But nowadays, we have special doctors who create permanent masks right on the face. We call them facelifts."
For all his wine drinking, Dionysus revealed a canny business sense when he asked, "Who pays all these untalented actors?
" He stood up, his gaze meeting mine. It was hard to believe he was old enough to be my ancestor 100 times removed; he looked about twenty years old. I took a step back almost tripping on a protruding rock.
"People who own big companies pay the actors," I answered without getting into the intricacies of corporate support for commercial programming, all the while hoping he didn't notice I was blushing. Anticipating his next question, I added, "They also pay hundreds, maybe thousands, of people to write television plays for the actors."
"But you can't have that many talented program writers.
It's not possible," he declared astutely.
He would have been a movie mogul like Walt Disney or Oppie. For a moment, I was speechless. "That's the beauty of the system," I responded, finding my voice.
"They're supposed to write bad plays. Think about it the bigger the audience, the higher the financial payback. You're not going to get much of an audience if you have nothing to offer but quality.
"
Without missing a beat, he waved his arms toward the stage, which lifted his toga just high enough to reveal his strong shapely legs with their forest of black curly hairs. "Why isn't there an acting box here in the amphitheater?" he wanted to know.
I loved that expression, acting box. Smiling at his charming naiveté and chiseled good looks, I tried not to fall in love with him, for I had sworn off impossibly handsome men some twenty years earlier. They always turned out to be married or subscribers to The Reader's Digest; and, besides, I was getting too old for such frivolity.
Very slowly and with gentle candor, I explained that people had acting boxes in their homes, usually one in every room, and everyone sat alone in the dark and flipped from one program to another using a special device called a remote, or zapper. That s the way things are now.
"And so what about all those amphitheaters we used to have?
Are they all falling apart like this one?"
"No," I answered a little too loudly, afraid he'd cry again. "They're great for tourists, you know, to remind people about the way things used to be and also to remind them of you.
Listen, you come back in a few years, and I'll bet this place will be all fixed up and there'll be rock concerts here and maybe even fundraising events."
Thank goodness he didn't ask me to explain rock concerts and fundraisers. Instead, he expressed a wish to see one of these acting boxes.
"It's your lucky day, Dionysus. I happen to have one in my camper, which isn't very far from here. Come on, I'll show you.
"
As we entered the camper, I grabbed the universal remote from the kitchenette table and invited Dionysus to make himself at home. "So, that's the acting box!" he exclaimed, recognizing it from my description.
I showed him how to use the remote, and he settled into the Lay-Z Boy as he pressed the ON button. Wow, he didn't even need a review lesson. The instant the screen lit up, his mouth dropped open and his eyes glazed over.
At first, I thought he was dead, but he was just entranced by the magic of Italian television. To make sure he hadn't fallen ill or suffered a seizure, I passed my hand in front of his eyes. He was still breathing, but he continued to stare at the screen as though nothing else in the world existed.
He never left. I drove all over Europe that summer with Dionysus transfixed by the little TV set in my camper. Oh, he ate and took care of other personal needs, but, since he was a god, those needs were minimal.
Never again did he express an interest in theater, and his conversational skills became limited to Uh-huh and Huh? When it was time for me to return to the States, I sold the camper to a nice German couple in a little village called Buttenhausen, which is known for its dark beer and breathtaking landscapes. Of course, I didn t tell them that Dionysus went with the camper, because I was afraid of losing the sale.
When I went to say good-bye to Dionysus, he was engrossed in a German-language reenactment of a triple homicide attempt at the Dr. Phil Healing House. It seems an obese man who hated thin people had shot at the anorexic woman who hated fat people, but he had missed and shot the redneck by mistake.
Not realizing it had been a mistake, the redneck shot back at the obese man and told him he couldn't wait to have an affair with the fat man's thin mother who had rejected him when he was an out-of-control five-year-old with an eating disorder. However, his bullet bounced off the obese man's suspenders and wounded the heterosexual binge drinker who hated lesbians because her lesbian mother had walked out on her when she was an out-of-control nineteen-year-old with a coke habit. Then, the black woman who hated white people stabbed the white cattle rancher who hated vegetarians.
Blood gushed from every nook and cranny of the stage set. Producers had hired the perpetrators and victims to re-enact the scene so the action could be captured from different camera angles and it would be possible to show more blood. However, there was actual footage of Dr.
Phil calling for everyone to come up with a plan they could all be excited about. I left quietly, wondering if Dionysus would even remember my name.
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