Oh, I know what everyone thinks of me: wanton, femme fatale, promiscuous, fickle, with strange evil powers and not to forget--never to forget--narcissistic.

Why can't I be narcissistic? I'm gorgeous, I have a heavenly voice, I weave cloth of unearthly splendour on my loom, I concoct great potions turning man into beast and woman into gorgon, I brew storms from stillness. I also separate sex from love. I'm very proud of my ability to separate sex from love--whatever love may be. Most women can't. They get tied up with love, like trussed fowls awaiting slaughter.

I have never felt guilty about bedding a stranger--or two--just because I like how he looks. Men are cowards. Pursue them and they flee. Ignore them and they pursue you. I do not play games with men. It does not take them long to know how I feel about them. I never wear a mask. Perhaps that's why they either adore me or despise me.

I'm afraid of ugliness. At least I don't worry about old age. There's always my daily goblet of ambrosia. Do I ever wonder about a time when we could lose the ambrosia? Yes, I do. However, I am actually more terrified of growing ugly than growing old.

Babies don't interest me. I'm more interested in the children of the mind, so much more difficult to create, but I do have a child, although not the sort you'd expect. That bully, Zeus, took me against my will twenty years ago.

He came down on me as a shower of rain. I would have preferred rubies...after all, he came down on Danae as a shower of gold. I hate his pot belly and his tight-curled beard which would fill your mouth like his forked tongue--if he did make love as his own self. They say he has a forked phallus too, and his spermatozoa have forked tails. Something to do with those thunderbolts.

Most women don't like his looks either, or why must he come down on them in the ludicrous shape of a swan, a bull, a shower of gold coins and suchlike? On Mount Olympus they still snicker about the time when Zeus--as himself--made love to a nymph. She laughed hysterically during the act at the occasional flashes of purple lightning that shot out from his arse when he climaxed, turning a piece of rock into tar, then bouncing off to hit a snail whose shell turned fluorescent purple. Zeus, deeply insulted by the nymph's laughter, decided to forevermore disguise himself.