In high school many of us were perhaps overly influenced by our English class. Jason had a video camera, and he had an idea that he would film an updated version of Oedipus Rex-- the working title was 'Oeddie!' --and all of his friends would be in it. I started writing fragments of a script, and I took the part of Tiresias, the blind prophet who advises Oedipus against prying too deeply into his past. It was a role where I'd get to make cryptic statements, and it obliged my feeling that I had something important to say but that nobody ever listened until it was too late. Poor me.

Tiresias' main claim to fame, however, was unknown to me until much later. Owing to an accident involving a plank and a pair of snakes, Tiresias changed into a woman for part of his life, and therefore knew what it was like to live as either man or woman. When asked to answer the question of who enjoyed sex more, he answered honestly, and was rewarded with being struck blind by Hera. Zeus gave him powers of prophecy as compensation. I suppose the moral is that people in power don't want to hear the truth even if they ask you to tell it, or that nobody really wants to know about your weird sex life.