"The Secret History"

She knew she looked like a nerd behind her

heavy glasses and her

curtained hair, her arms full of

Ancient Greek lexicons, dressed in

clothes that made her look like a

tuber, but when she was as

bare as her bedsit with

Procopius before her, she could

imagine herself as Theodora-- child prostitute,

nymphomaniac, Empress of the Roman Empire,

“short and pallid” like her, preferring her

men in multiples and bemoaning her

lack of orifices--and with

fingers for phalluses she

writhed on the floor wishing the

men of Oxford would see her for what she was--

Theodora, Empress of the Night,

open and available but

unasked.