Arcadian Regret

I once asked Pan why he had such an aversion to Hercules. We were relaxing after a night of debauchery and he was in a foul mood.
"Hercules was a fag." was all he would say. I had my doubts but he wasn't in the mood to talk about it so I had to go elsewhere for the story.

That Pan could even get a hangover had me confused for some time until I asked him about it and he claimed to have invented it.
"The hangover. You invented it? For God's sake why?"
"For Zeus' sake, you idiot. My foster brother was pretty taken with the wine the first time I got him drunk. You should have seen the mess he made. He sacked Olympus, ran amok in the temple and defecated in the Acropolis. He was an animal. The next night he wanted to do it all over again so I had to take steps to make sure he regretted everything and boy did he. Ha ha."
"So it's an all or nothing kind of venture?"
"Sure, what good is life without regret. Stop talking now or I'll make you dead."
"Kill me?"
"Whatever."

The Hercules thing was a bit of an embarrassment for Pan, so I can understand that he doesn't like to talk about it. I didn't want him to make me dead so I had to tread lightly. Apparently Pan had developed a bit of a thing for Omphale, the queen of Lydia. Now, as vibrant and as manly as Pan is, she wasn't in the mood so when it looked like she wasn't going to be able to stall his advances anymore she asked Hercules to help her out. Hercules, being the namby-pamby that he was, put on a dress and crawled into Omphale's bed where he waited until the horny horned god appeared and began to make sweet rut. Needless to say, Hercules kicked Pan's ass across the room and that was the end of it. Hercules was always hiding behind his father's skirts so Pan let it go but not before he skewed things so that for awhile rumors circulated detailing Hercules' attempt to sodomize poor Pan. When Hercules went to his father crying about the injustice of it all he found Zeus croaking over the Acropolis with a headache that would have killed anyone else and the matter ended there.

Still, I have a lot of respect for Pan. Everyone else has retired and disappeared from public life but Pan knows a good thing when he sees it and to his eye this modern world has a few luxuries he could have afforded in the old days. In his words there is no better cure for a hangover than to spend the day on the couch watching re-runs of Bonanza. Not quite a harem of Arcadian nymphs, mind you, but in a pinch you have to make do.