The Birth of Tiresias, Revisited

So the reasons why Cass and I have anointed ourselves hobos in space are, I think, quite clear. But why we chose such names proves our endeavor as a sort of meeting of the minds, even though we come from such different backgrounds and experiences.

As with everything, it all started with a love story of sorts. And perhaps a love of story. A tertiary member in the fabric of our hobo lives fell in love with our acquaintance, and we used this as an opportunity to flex our muscles as young novice soothsayers.

“Tell me, Cassandra, do you feel that this will be a fruitful union?” I asked one day.

She answered, “It is an ill wind that blows no good, Tiresias.”

We laughed. And through our snorting giggles, our identities were born. We had now appointed ourselves as two of the greatest soothsayers and voices of the gods and those who know the future this side of the River Styx. We are the modern-day tragic ancients who babbled wisdom and bemoaned the frailty and foolhardiness of man. We are better than Jean Dixon. We laugh in the face of Nostradamus’s most dire threats. And Revelations? The mark of the beast? The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Mere silly storytelling. We all know the real apocalypse will come when we propel ourselves into a major climate change from our wasteful consumerist ways.

Praise the lord, and pass the ammunition.

Sorry. I, Tiresias, have no idea of the origins of all that. All I can do is apologize. But see? As soothsayers, we are but mere vessels for the truth, and as you know, the truth will set you free. So thus, the birth of the wise, all-knowing hobos. We know everything, even though no one else knows this about us. And we’re particularly adept at pinpointing doomed relationships. The truth in such matters appears as clearly to us as the sight of someone walking by in a Balenciaga coat that some five-year-old went to town on with a Bedazzler, or as though The Truth were etched on a subway advertisement the length of an entire car: “Yes, he will use your crazy ass for sex and never talk to you again.”

As far as how well these classical figures mesh with our personae, this makes sense, of course, as Cassandra was the more well-known of ancient Western soothsayers, and Tiresias is the drag queen that time forgot. Not only was he famous for his necessary role in Oedipus Rex (famously: “Oedipus my boy! Hey! Hey, Eddy! If you go that way you’re gonna kill your father and screw your mother and have children with dubious genetic coding, you stupid git”), but he had also witnessed a private moment between two snakes (private: two snakes fucking, which is like two worms fucking after a thunderstorm but much, much worse) and he struck one of them because he couldn’t leave well enough alone and it turned him into a woman. It took him seven years before he found a pair of mating snakes and he could strike the one that changed him back into a man.

While he was a woman, though, I believe he eschewed his duties as wise prophet and like my very beloved aunt (and I write this with all due respect), whored himself across the Aegean Sea and back. My aunt, on the other hand, in this modern day and age of the great aeroplane, spread herself across the vast Pacific through two continents. She owns a convenience store in the middle of nowhere now.

And besides, don’t the names Cassandra and Tiresias hold a bit of the ancient powers? Doesn’t it inspire you to listen, to heed, to act with all haste in fear of the consequences? Don’t you, when Cass says the baby doll look is out, out, out (especially tie-dyed dresses and sweatshop-manufactured synthetic ruffled ones embellished with puff paints and plastic beads?), immediately look to your frocks in the closet with disgust, to then throw them into a box headed straight for Goodwill?

Don’t you, when Cass says Diane von Furstenberg is out, out, out, and that you must donate them to Goodwill because they’re so last season, they were never in in the first place, promptly get rid of them and then laugh at the poor unfortunate who buys the dresses and wears them proudly, as though she’s found the jackpot of the century?

Pity the fool, don’t you?

Okay. I didn’t think so. But I thought I’d try.

See? No one listens to us. They never have.

But if you do happen to take our sage advice and donate your old DVF dresses, please do the right thing and email us the exact size, design, color(s), and new location of your goods. We’ll be happy to hold on to it for you in the event it may come back in style again, but we really doubt it. And we really know what we’re talking about.