The Naked Minotaur is my erotic alter ego who helped me fo-cus my feelings-to cry, then laugh, to love, and to prevail in my passage through the perilous waters of mid-life. Being middle-aged was hard-the realization that my youthful virility and apparent immortality had abandoned me, leaving behind the traumatic sym-bols of man's frailty: unachievable goals, graying baldness, prostate problems, perceived impotency...well you get the picture. This is Book 3: Birth of the Minotaur, of the Naked Minotaur Trilogy. The scrub nurse administered a violent spanking on his bot-tom-what crime had this innocent committed so early in his tiny life? My Ph.D. experiment would not work without it, so Grace and I decided to buy the vacuum pump ourselves...damn Bruce. I was one of them-a Member of the Technical Staff of the Hughes Research Laboratories, a prestigious research laboratory, but I had to move on. "Grace, I'm going to leave Hughes and start a laser company." "I've had enough of Britt-at least you've finally got a real job again, with a real corporation." Singer Librascope hired me when I left Britt. Argos of a hundred eyes stared up at Grace, out of the jar in the refrigerator. It was a miracle-tears streamed down his cheeks when the old man saw his wife's face for the first time in ten years. All the careful work in preparing the offering went awry at the last moment, and the stock sales never materialized-our grand hopes for the CO2 laser eye company were smashed upon the shoals of failed ventures. "Shit, the entire shuttle crew's been incin-erated!" I stared at the TV set, and the tears rolled down my cheeks-"I could have saved them with my tile-inspection micro-scope!" For want of a membrane-switch, my kingdom was lost-one more failed venture! Grace kicked me out of our house...damn, that fuckin' membrane switch! Maybe the Minotaur is just a misunderstood victim of the judgment of mythology-what if his mask were removed, and his true desires and loves were laid naked? This is my story.