1.
Cupid was on the roof of the Cooper Union building in New York, threatening to jump. A group of college students had gathered in the street below, staring up at the devilishly handsome young man with the curly blond locks and porcelain skin, realizing he wasn't wearing any clothes.
"I'm calling 9-1-1," a girl said to her boyfriend.
"Good idea," the man answered.
Cupid inched closer to the edge of the roof, his muscled calves and bare feet extremely white in the February sun. His penis, which was already small to begin with, shriveled in the biting cold. This only served to increase his agitation.
"I'm going to jump!" he shouted to the crowd. "I swear to fucking god!"
The crowd in the street grew larger as people gawked and pointed. The man on the roof had obviously suffered some kind of mental breakdown -- the voices in his head apparently telling him to take off all his clothes.
"Love is dead!" he ranted. "So is Valentine's Day! I'm so sick of all you assholes with your chocolate candies and stuffed animals! Your romantic greeting cards with pictures of winged toddlers shooting arrows! I'm not a little baby with a one-inch dick, I'm a grown-ass man!" He tossed his quiver of arrows on the roof, disgusted. It was true. Cupid's true roots went back to the Greeks who called him Eros, an adult male heartthrob who made women swoon. It was the Romans, fearful of his sexual power and control, who reinvented him as a magical baby.
A fire engine came down the street, it's siren loud and blaring. Several police officers were already taping off the area.
"I'm done with Valentine's Day, understand! Done with it!"
"Holy shit," a professor from Cooper Union said. "That's Cupid."
"Who is it?"
"Cupid. I never thought I'd see the day. I've been teaching Greek and Roman mythology for over 30 years, but I never thought I'd see him here, in New York City. Christ, he's handsome. Even more gorgeous than described in the literature. His penis is just as small, too."
It was Cupid, alright. In the flesh. Standing naked on the roof of the Cooper Union building seven stories up, clearly out of his mind and looking like he was going to jump. He hugged himself in the wind, eyes welling with tears. None of these pathetic mortals knew his pain. Knew all the bullshit he had to go through, year after year. All the arrow-shooting and flying around, it was quite exhausting. He was over 2,000 years old, depending on whether you asked the Greeks or the Romans, and despite his heavenly physique, his fingers were calloused and he'd come down with a double case of tennis elbow.
But his suffering went much deeper than that. His biggest gripe was with his mother, Venus, the self-absorbed cunt who couldn't leave shit well enough alone. She'd finally done it at last -- banished Cupid's beautiful wife Psyche to the underworld for all eternity. Venus never liked Psyche from the start, never really cared about Cupid's happiness. It was always about her and her beauty, the vain bitch. So what if Psyche was more attractive and alluring than her? Why couldn't she be satisfied with the contentment of her own son?
Fuck Venus, Cupid thought. And fuck Valentine's Day, too. Did anyone actually think he was going to show up next week on February 14th, quiver full of arrows, and help anyone in this awful, rotten world find love?
Not a chance. Not a fucking chance.
It suddenly dawned on the crowd gathered in the street below that the crazy man standing on the roof was indeed Cupid, the god of love and desire. It was him, absolutely. You could see his tiny dick, plain as day.
"Oh my god!" someone shouted. "That's Cupid! I see him! Look!"
It was like a celebrity had just been spotted, and a frenzy came over the crowd. They pulled out their cellphones and took pictures.
"His dick is so tiny," a girl said.
"I can't see it," another said, squinting.
"I'm done with Valentine's Day, understand! Done with it!"
A police helicopter had been dispatched and was flying in the air, an officer shouting at Cupid through a bullhorn.
"Cupid! Back away from the ledge and go back inside! That's an order!"
"Fuck you!" Cupid said. He grabbed his quiver of arrows, shaking them angerly in his hand. Then he turned and dove off the roof, head first, letting his body free fall through the air.
"No!" a woman shouted, throwing her hands over her mouth. The police scrambled to get an inflatable mattress in place to break his fall, but they were too late; Cupid was speeding through the air, about to crash through the windshield of an SUV. Faces contorted in horror as everyone braced themselves for impact.
But he didn't crash, of course. The feathered wings on his muscled back kicked into motion and he stopped in mid-air. He floated for a moment, flipping everyone the middle finger, and like lightening, shot back up into the clouds, disappearing from view, a tiny fading dot on the golden horizon.
2.
The next day he went to a bar in Los Angeles, where he took a booth in the back with his favorite lady escorts. His bodyguards, Roland and Royce, were there with him, too. It was a funny thing, an immortal god like Cupid needing human bodyguards, but that was the life he led -- ever since he lost Psyche, that is.
Word had gotten out through social media and cable news that Cupid was in L.A. He'd been spotted at the Trees Lounge on Fairfax Avenue, where the owners had to close down early to keep people out.
Cupid was drinking a double bourbon and rocks, professing his love for Psyche as Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" played on the jukebox. It was his third drink since he'd gotten there two hours before. He was naked, of course. Clothing made him itch and break out in a rash. Two women -- a sultry redhead named Trinity and a blond tramp named Chelsea -- were sitting on either side of him, rubbing him down. There were two other scantily clad ladies sitting at his table, ready to service him. Roland and Royce were standing several feet away, arms crossed, surveying the situation.
"You think you know what love is?" Cupid was saying to the women at the table. "That's a laugh. You have no clue what it's like to be madly in love with somebody, to be with them for thousands of years, only to have that person stolen from you by a conniving, cold-hearted, total bitch of a mother. And for what? Because she was too beautiful to be allowed to stay here on earth? Because she might get all the attention?"
Cupid drained the rest of his bourbon, crunched an ice cube.
"Shhh, baby," the redhead said to him, kissing his neck.
Just then Roland and Royce turned toward each other and nodded.
"Can I have a word with you, Mr. Cupid?" Royce asked.
"What? What is it?"
"There's a woman here to see you about Valentine's Day. She says it's urgent. She says she traveled all the way from San Diego to see you. She even mailed you a letter."
Cupid rubbed his temples. "A letter? What the fuck? Does she think I'm fucking Santa Clause?"
"I don't know, sir."
