Beowulf Meets The Yuppie by Belsac. A politically incorrect, environmentally unsafe bedtime story My name is Belsac, the yuppie mercenary, and I've been present at many great events in history. No doubt you've heard bards tell tales of such events but there's one story you've all heard wrong. I'm referring to the story of Beowulf. I know because I was there and I'm going to tell you what really happened. I call my story Beowulf Meets the Yuppie. For those of you unfamiliar with Beowulf, it's about a Scandinavian hero who comes to the rescue of a Danish kingdom tormented by a monster named Grendel. My story begins with Beowulf arriving by ship intent on slaying the beast. At the time I was under the employ of King Hrothgar who had been hiring mercenaries to protect him from the monster. He had sent me to greet Beowulf on his arrival. Well, no sooner than Beowulf disembarked he started in with this big eloquent speech about who he was, what he had done, why he was here, blah blah blah, so on and so on. I'm like, save it for the King. Of course while he was rambling I'm looking at his boots. Now I realize this is a yuppie thing but try and follow me on this. Beowulf shows up on a ship, right? A ship has a deck, right? Where were his deck shoes? H-e-l-l-o? I was wearing the latest in Italian loafers, which was the fashion at the time, and he shows up in a pair of smelly old boots. How unfashionable! And his armor was accented with both silver and brass. You never mix those metals. Can you say fashionably disadvantaged? Now I now I shouldn't expect much from the guy, after all, he is a Norsemen. But I figure, hey, if he can't even accessorize, how's he suppose to be able to slay a monster? As if he wasn't bad enough, turns out there's an entire shipload of these long hared, amber overdosed low brows! What did I do to deserve this? I mean Norsemen are like the anti-yuppies. Despite my reservations, I took Beowulf and his loser buddies to the hall of King Hrothgar. Now this hall, I'd like to point out, was decorated in style I call Dark Age Gloom. I mean, I'd been at the King for years to put up some artwork and add some natural lighting, you know, do one of those open air atrium situations which was all the rage on the Med. But noooo, it's the dark ages the King says, everything's supposed to be dark and gloomy. WHATEVER . Anyway, no sooner than the babbling Beowulf got introduced to the King he started off again on his whole I did this and I slayed that speech. I'm like, O.K. We get the picture. The king, in turn starts to whine: There's a monster tormenting the kingdom, the roof is leaking, the economy sucks, Blah, Blah, Blah. So naturally, Beowulf, the big hero, promises to slay the beast, fix the roof and provide some low interest loans to help stimulate investment in the local economy. After the speeches everybody sat down for a feast where they stuffed their faces, drank a lot of mead and belched a lot. How ninth century. Get with the now people! Red meat means red wine! H-E-L-L-O? Was I the only one with culture there? I think maybe. I tried to bring a little culture and sophistication to that kingdom and what did I get? A bunch of drunken Norsemen. I got nothing to work with here! Well, anyway, back to my story. That night Beowulf waited in the hall for Grendel to come. When he did, Beowulf jumped up and beat the crap out of him. Of course that put all these Norsemen in the celebrating mood and they all started drinking again. Well, pretty soon Grendel's mother showed up looking for revenge. She stormed in and tore up one of Beowulf's buddies then ran off. I figured hey, no big loss, Noresmen are a dime a dozen in this kingdom but Beowulf got pretty angry and it wasn't long before he was headed down to her swamp lair looking for a little pay back. Now this is where the version you've all heard gets to be a bit of a fish tale. In the story Beowulf jumps into this pool where Grendel's mother lives, swims downward for about a day, finds a big sword and lops off her head. Like we're actually going to believe this? To begin with, Beowulf was drunk at the time (a fact not mentioned in the story) and it wasn't a pool, it was a puddle. And who in the world came up with the sword part? No sooner than we got to the swamp, Beowulf got jumped by her and he dropped his sword in the water. So he started screaming: "Get this thing off of me!" "Somebody hit it! I would've helped him but I didn't want to get my loafer's muddy, (muddy loafers not being in fashion that particular year) so I tossed him a stick. Now I realize you've all got this romantic image in your heads of a hero in shinning armor in glorious combat with an evil monster. But I'm sorry, it just didn't happen that way. No shit, there I was, watching a drunken Norsemen roll around in the mud beating a monster with a stick! It's just not the stuff legends are made off. So after Beowulf got done bludgeoning the old hag, we went back to the great hall see Beowulf get his big reward. So the king dumps on him a lot of rings and bracelets and trinkets which in reality was just a bunch of cheap costume jewelry. You see the king would've given him a decent reward if he could've, but just between you and me, he was broke. We're talking about a guy who had invested heavily in junk bonds and derivatives. Lets face it, the Dark Ages were just not a financially prudent time. After all, Europe was still recovering from the recession caused by the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, which had sent stock prices falling resulting in uncontrolled inflation. The only reason I was there was because I had a BMW chariot payment to make. But hey, that's another story. It turns out Beowulf wasn't too happy with his reward, (which surprised me because I thought all Norsemen like cheap costume jewelry) so he left without ever fixing the roof. Which I'd like to point out, fixing the roof is not mentioned in the story. Coincidence? I don't think so. All the more reason to believe my version of events. So the next time you hear the story of Beowulf, you just remember how it really happened according to Belsac, the yuppie mercenary. © 1997 Brian Grinell. All rights reserved.