A Queer Interpretation of the Greek Myth, ‘Theseus and the Minotaur’

How I recast the story to transmute a childhood nightmare, reclaim lost parts of myself and find new power

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For countless nights, as a boy between the ages of about six and twelve, I had a recurring nightmare. It was the same panic-ridden story of being trapped in a labyrinth.

I grew up in a pre-YouTube world, listening to stories on small vinyl records. Of them all, I was most transfixed by the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur — a story I returned to over and again.

I don’t recall whether I first heard this story before the nightmares began, or if I repeatedly returned to it in the hope of finding some clue as to what my dream meant.

Nonetheless, I found no such answers at the time. It would be three decades before I could finally glimpse its meaning and significance.

A short retelling of the original story

King Minos of Crete failed to sacrifice a bull to the God Poseidon. In the fallout, his wife, Queen Pasiphae, has an affair with the bull and produces a son with the body of a boy and the head and tail of a bull: the Minotaur. King Minos casts the Minotaur into an underworld labyrinth.