Bathroom Monologue: The P.P.G.

The Pantheon Poker Group meets every third Thursday. They wanted to do it on Wednesdays, but Odin claimed some sort of holiday, and he gets his way since he provides the hall. Sometimes they put off poker altogether and get drunk on the rainbow bridge, but mostly they play. Apollo is in because he's the god of poker (according to him, anyway). Obatala always sits in to complain – a would-be creator god never gets over those cosmic blue balls.

Complaining is as much a part of the deal as the dealer, because poker is a crutch for the Pantheon Poker Group. It's a means to converse without their respective worshipers going to war. In the case of poker only little chips need to be sacrificed, and if those mattered at all the game would be canceled on account of Raven’s perpetual cheating. Yet Odin is fond of Raven – he likes that type of bird and that type of deity, even if Raven refuses to fly himself and demanded first class airfare to the game. Apollo always springs for the airfare since he was the first to claim being god of cheaptickets.com. Apollo's newest divine franchises make up most of his chatter.

Odin likes to talk about what’s on TV, or how there should be more positive one-eyed characters in modern media. It’s humble, fraternal chat laced with the vernacular swears of three continents, becoming more voluminous as the night goes, on and Apollo and Odin argue whether the Norselands were on a separate continent from Europe. The drunker you are, the more confusing continental shelves become. When the discussion gets violent, Raven calls a random Celt for an unbiased opinion. The resulting opinion is always disqualified on value of it coming from yet another European aisle. Raven calls anyway. Two lords of the sky arguing technicalities always cracks the group up. Then Obatala opines how he would have made the islands part of the continent if only he’d gotten the job of creating the world. And while Odin and Apollo try to shut him up and console his highly intelligent design of the human body, Raven comes up with a royal straight flush.

Why, it must have been a miracle.

They’d pluck and cook him if it mattered, but the game is about the chatter, and the company.