By Jove

Among mythological tales about the prophet Tiresias, one holds that he was a female seven years. The sex change resulted when he encountered two snakes entwined in the raptures of lovemaking, and thrashed them with his cudgel. In the curse’s seventh year, he again found the snakes procreating, and thought … if blows mutated me, maybe blows will un-mutate me. Sure enough, his preferred male state was restored.

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From then on, he who was once she always arbitrated arguments about love, as was the case when a dispute arose between the chief god Jove, inebriated at the time, and his wife Juno. “My dear,” Jove slurred, between swills of wine, “Your pleasure in love is greater than that enjoyed by men.” Juno denied his assertion, and summoned Tiresias. Unwisely, the wise prophet sided with Juno, whose royal status was below Jove’s in the Olympian pecking order. Infuriated, his omnipotence condemned the prophet to perpetual blindness, but mitigated the seer’s inability to see present events by granting him the power to foresee future ones. Even so, Juno had won the argument, and down through the ages, as all men will attest, engaging in quarrels with women is futile: They always win. I mentioned this to my literature students, and the young men in the class took umbrage, which was understandable, since unmarried males have yet to learn that wives always have the last word. Their umbrage was not un-umbraged when I said, “Live on … you’ll see.” A male student asked to put forth an argument refuting my reasoning. His thesis held that women are impossible to please and therefore impossible to out-argue, whereas men recognize a good thing and seize it in order to avoid losing it while fretting over other options. In support of his opinion, he related a scenario that went something like this: An entrepreneur opened a six-floor store that sold husbands, and provided these instructions: only one visit per prospective wife; the value of husbands increases per floor in ascending order; consumers cannot return to floors previously visited. Floor one offered men with jobs; floor two featured employed men who love children; floor three, working men who love kids and are handsome; floor four, employed, handsome men who love kids and doing housework; floor five, handsome, employed men who love kids and housework, and are romantic Romeos. A sign shocked indecisive women who ascended to floor six: This level offers no husbands. It exists solely to prove that women are impossible to please. Exit promptly, sans husband. Despite his female counterparts’ discomfiture, the male student continued: Across the street, another entrepreneur who also embraced the world’s best economic engine, capitalism, opened a store that sold wives. Floor one offered ladies who love lovemaking; floor two, gorgeous, passionate, wealthy women who love beer; floors three, four, five and six offered nothing, since they are never visited. Outraged, but unable to respond, the females in the class conceded that, finally, a man had won an argument, by Jove.