Hidden in the classics you can find the damnedest things.

Like explicit gay poetry in the middle of 1001 Nights, for example.

No, really.

This began with my reading Dreams of Trespass, which is an autobiography about growing up in a Moroccan Harem. It's a good read in itself, and recommended, but in the middle of it I found myself putting it down to look further into a character from Arabian Nights it had mentioned, a princess who had a bunch of interesting adventures. (Naturally, of course, the story is under her husband's name, and frankly he's the least interesting character in it, and I'm including the birds.) And I'm reading it, and--

Well, okay, hold on. We'll back up, and I'll tell the story properly. Or as properly as I can get with a rough summary of a story with very archaic language that I'm not sure I processed correctly.

I started reading with the two Jinn, which is a story I'd encountered somewhere before. They'd each fallen in love with a mortal of the opposite gender, and were arguing over which of their loves was more beautiful. Eventually it became obvious there was nothing to settle it but to get the two mortals, Princess Budur and Prince Kamar al-Zaman, and put them together for comparison. When even this didn't settle things, the first Jinni summoned a neutral party, an Ifrit, to judge between them. Even he couldn't decide, because not only were they equally attractive, the prince and princess were also practically twins in their beauty. So the Ifrit proposed a plan: wake each one individually while keeping the other one unconscious, and whichever one moved the other to a greater reaction would clearly be the winner.

So first they wake up Prince Kamar, who is overwhelmed by the beauty sleeping beside him, and gets a good ogle-on, but refrains from actually kissing or doing anything particularly touchy. Instead when he can't wake her, he takes her seal ring and promises to agree to marry her in the morning. Then they knock him out and wake up Princess Budur, who is overwhelmed by the beauty sleeping beside her and tries to wake him. She can't, spots her seal ring, decides that this means they're to be married, and takes his ring for herself. Then, because "the desire of women is fiercer than the desire of men", she gropes him a good one ("she thrust her hand unto his breast and, because of the smoothness of his body, it slipped down to his waist and thence to his navel and thence to his yard, whereupon her heart ached and her vitals quivered and lust was sore upon her") and also doesn't "leave any part of him unkissed". Already I was going, "Gosh. If I'd know there was sex in it I'd have read this years ago."

The Jinn pretty much consider this an clear declaration for victor. Obviously. Anyway, they return the prince and princess to their separate dwellings, and don't turn up again in this story during any of the bits I read.

Naturally, when the two mortals wake up again the next morning and are alone, they're more than a bit distressed by this. The prince promptly decides this is some kind of plot and demands to know what's going on of his eunuch, who hasn't got a clue and says so--girl? What girl? The prince, naturally, strangles and half-drowns him for this, whereupon the eunuch pretty much goes, 'Oh, that girl. Let me up and let me change out of these things and I'll tell you all about that girl.' Naturally, as soon as he's out of the prince's sight, he runs off and tells the king, "Verily, thy son's wits are fled and he hath gone mad, he hath dealt with me thus and thus, so that I am become as thou seest me, and he kept saying, 'A young lady lay with me this night and stole away secretly whilst I slept. Where is she?'" and so on about the impossibility of any such girl. So the King, deeply troubled, sends the Wazir off to see about this. Naturally, the prince decides there's a big conspiracy at work, and nearly beats the Wazir to death trying to get the truth out of him.

This is the point where I go, "Okay, maybe knowing there was sex wouldn't have been enough to get me to read it. What an asshole."

Eventually the King shows up to see if his son has truly gone 'round the bend, and swears to God that he doesn't know a damn thing about this girl, and the Prince convinces him that he's not mad, because look at this seal ring he's got! But while this brings an end to the beatings and the declarations of madness, there's only one possible solution left for our friend Kamar: he goes emo, and spends all his days laying about, barely eating and drinking and bewailing his missing beloved, while being tenderly cared for and watched over by his doting father, the King.

The princess goes through pretty much the same scene in the morning, only when she is told nobody knows about the guy who was in her bed, she goes insane, shreds her clothes, and kills an attendant. (Somehow I missed this in the first run-through.) I get the impression from the text this is as much because she had a sword handy as anything else, and briefly pause to wonder why. Anyway, since her madness wasn't that attractive, there was only one thing for her: "he bade the women lay hands on her; so they seized her and manacled her, then putting a chain of iron about her neck, made her fast to one of the palace-windows and there left her." He also declares anybody who can cure her can marry her, and anyone who tries and fails he'll behead, which leads to a massive shortage of doctors and astrologers in the area, but not a lot else.

Yeah, let me repeat that. Guy: a new life of goth poetry and acquiring just the right shade of indoors pallor. Girl: chained up with an iron collar in a tower. Damn Jinn.

Eventually her foster-brother comes home from abroad, and is smuggled into see her, where she pours out her tale. Quite astoundingly for this story, he actually believes her, and starts traveling abroad trying to find this guy she's fallen for. Eventually he hears rumors of The Emo Prince, and makes his way to the country, shipwrecking his way into the harbor just in time to be fished out by the Wazir, because one of the great joys of being a classic fairy-tale writer is that no coincidence is too improbable. Foster-brother lets the Emo Prince know that he knows of the girl, and can take her to him, whereupon Emo Prince loses his emo, to the rejoicing of all. His father throws many celebrations, and foster brother eventually foists a daft plan onto The Prince Formerly Known as Emo: because there's no way his father will let him go, they have to come up with an excuse to slip away and go find the princess. In doing so, foster-brother also makes it look like they've been murdered by bandits. I'm not entirely sure whose column to mark the jerkness of this in; on one hand, the Prince wasn't too happy, but on the other, the foster-brother did have some very good reasons: namely, his foster sister is currently living in chains. I'd try to hurry home too.

Anyway, Prince Kamar pretends to be an astrologer and goes into see Princess Budur, sending a letter into her room containing her seal-ring, which so overjoys her she snaps her own collar, breaks her own chains, and comes out to see him.

At this point, I am already going, "Oh honey. If you can do that, you don't need him. I'm sure there's an opening for Arabian Wonder Woman."

So they're happily married and live contently for a number of weeks, until the Prince has a dream that reminds him that oh yeah, he's been a bit shitty to daddy, and possibly he should go back and let his father know he's not dead and stuff. He and the princess get permission and aid to travel from her father, and set out, doing one of those classic "fared on without stopping through the first day and the second and the third and the fourth, nor did they cease faring for a whole month" that's also one of the narrative joys of fairy tales. Naturally, when they finally did camp, everyone was quite beat and passed out, except for the prince, who sat admiring the princess and eventually started undressing her a bit when she slept, only to find a red jewel tucked in her clothing. He was so surprised by how carefully but closely she'd hidden this that he went outside to look at it, whereupon it was plucked from his fingers by a bird.

Yeah, a bird. This prince isn't good for much of anything, when you think about it.

So he takes off after the bird, who keeps always being just out of reach, until at last he comes to the tree its perched in when it's dark and he has no idea where he is, and he's too exhausted to do anything but lay down and go to sleep. When he wakes in the morning, the bird wakes and starts flying again, and he follows it once more, making this stunning little observation: "By Allah, a strange thing! Yesterday, this bird flew before me as fast as I could run, and to-day, knowing that I have awoke tired and cannot run, he flieth after the measure of my faring. By Allah, this is wonderful! But I must needs follow this bird whether it lead me to death or to life."

Eventually he comes to a strange, distant city and gets a job as an apprentice gardener. Really.

Princess Budur, meanwhile, wakes up and goes, 'That's odd. When I went to bed I had a husband.' Of course, he's nowhere to be found now, and neither is her jewel, but she convinces herself it must have been something important that took him away, which just proves that love really is blind. Anyway, she's got a problem: if she admits that her husband is missing, the hired attendants and such around her are going to realize she's not properly protected, and she's fucked. Probably literally. So she decides she's got to be clever, and since her husband also obligingly left behind his clothes, she dresses in them and puts a slave-girl in her litter, then proceeds to pretend to be the Prince, resuming travel.

Eventually they come to the City of Ebony, where she meets the local King and is made his guest. The King is very much taken by this prince who is his guest, and ends up making an offer to Budur, for her to marry his daughter and become King in his place. Budur, to say the least, is a bit freaked by this, but more or less has to consent; there's no way she can tell this King she's not a man, and if she refuses as a man, he'd probably kill her for it. Besides, Ebony City controls the trade route to her husband's homeland, so if she's ever to find him again, being King of this particular city would be a really good thing.

So he makes Budur King, and everyone is impressed by how attractive this new ruler is, and then hitches her to his daughter, Hayat al-Nufus, who is also very attractive, so everyone is really impressed by how attractive they are. And then they get shut in the bridal chamber, and Budur, thinking fast, kisses Hayat, then proceeds to pray until Hayat falls asleep. She did this again the next night, too, after a successful day of Kinging, but the day after that, King Armanus, Hayat's father, decided that was enough of that. He tells his daughter, "O my daughter, have patience with him yet this third night, and if he go not in unto thee and do away thy maidenhead, we shall know how to proceed with him and oust him from the throne and banish him the country." I can't read this as anything other than, 'Well, we're not going to stand for one of those on our throne. And besides, I want grandkids. Attractive ones.'

So Hayat informs Budur of this--while pretty much bitching her out for being such a disdainful and proud pretty-boy, that's fun--and Budur is forced to tell her the whole story and beg for her assistance. Hayat is really impressed, and also moved, and promises to help Budur and keep her secret, and then "they toyed and embraced and kissed and slept".

"Goodness," I say. "Femslash. What next? And this would be a very different story if there were strap-ons, but with that 'toyed' bit, I'm not entirely sure there aren't."

Anyway, Hayat kills a young dove and "besmeared herself with its blood" in that traditional old trick, and everyone is happy and sure the marriage has been properly consummated. (I guess there weren't strap-ons.) Budur goes back to work as a King and everything passes quite well there for a while.

Meanwhile, Kamar continues as a gardener, and gets the ruby back literally through wildlife warfare, when a couple other birds kill the bird who took the jewel. He also stumbles upon a massive hidden cache of gold. He's not doing anything interesting, he's just sort of bopping around, having good fortune land on his lap. He and the gardener split the gold fifty-fifty, and when a ship headed towards the land he knows puts into port, Kamar conceals the gold under olives in casks and tucks the ruby in one as well, then loads them onto this ship after arranging passage. Then, because he's a bit of an idiot, he nips off to see the gardener one last time, who is dying; it's not that the sentiment isn't nice, but it never seems to occur to him that a ship loaded with some not-particularly-influential person's goods and no sign of the person might just decide to nip off and take the goods, which is exactly what the ship does.

Anyway, the ship pulls into, naturally, Ebony City, and Budur, being rich, decides to buy the olives off of them, because they're of a not terribly common type around there. As soon as it becomes obvious that they're full of gold underneath the olives, she has them all examined and turns up her missing ruby, and once again showing herself to be much more interesting than her idiot prince of a husband, fetches the merchants off the ship and tells them the owner of those goods owes her money, and they'd better go and fetch the guy promptly. The merchants, not wanting to offend this strange king, do so.

Anyway, Kamar has no idea what's going on, since he doesn't remember owing a king money, and he's really confused when this King starts lavishing all sorts of gifts, wealth, and positions on him. Amusingly, he doesn't recognize Budur at all. He becomes very popular with the people of the city, and increasingly confused as to why this is being done to him, and finally concludes it must be to some nasty purpose on the King's part, so he goes and thanks Budur for all her kindness, and begs leave to depart.

She propositions him.

She propositions him as a man.

She propositions him as a man with gay poetry.

At this point, I love this woman. She's inventive, she's playful, she's interesting, apparently she's not bad with a sword, she seems to be a good ruler--can I marry her?

Kamar is deeply freaked and tries to politely refuse, babbling about what a sin it is, and the poetry marches on. Some of it's quite bawdy, though translation is of course a problem. I read the Burton version, which has the following verses:

'My prickle is big and the little one said,
'Thrust boldly in vitals with lion-like stroke!
Then I, ''Tis a sin!; and he, 'No sin to me!
So I had him at once with a counterfeit poke.'

But in Payne apparently they're translated as:

My pintle is big and the little one said unto me,
"Tilt boldly therewith at my inwards and quit thee thy need."
Quoth I, "'Tis unlawful;" but he, "It is lawful with me;"
So to it I fell, supporting myself by his rede.'

Other Payne translations also seem to be pervier:

O pearl of loveliness, to love thee is my faith;
Yea, and my choice of all the faiths that have been aye.
Women I have forsworn, indeed, for thy sweet sake,
So that the folk avouch I'm grown a monk to-day

Or:

Compare not a wench with a boy and to the spy,
Who says to thee, "This is wrong," pay thou no heed.
'Twixt a woman whose feet one's lips kiss and a smooth-faced fawn,
Who kisses the earth, the diff'rence is great indeed.

And the totally fabulous:

Men crave forgiveness with uplifted hands;
But women pray with lifted legs, I trow.
Out on it for a pious piece of work!
God shall exalt it to the deeps below.

Though some of the Burton's are better:

My soul thy sacrifice! I chose thee out
Who art not menstruous nor oviparous:
Did I with woman mell, I should beget
Brats till the wide wide world grew strait for us.

And:

She saith (sore hurt in sense the most acute
For she had proffered what did not besuit),
'Unless thou stroke as man should swive his wife
Blame not when horns thy brow shall incornùte!
Thy wand seems waxen, to a limpo grown,
And more I palm it, softer grows the brute!

And Payne leaves out completely:

The penis smooth and round was made with anus best to match it,
Had it been made for cunnus' sake it had been formed like a hatchet!

Yeah, I gaped. And then I resolved to some day rewrite this story. With strap-ons.

Kamar eventually agrees to go through it and satiate this dreadful king's lust once, but only once, for the sake of his soul. Which brings in another lovely bit of poetry--I feel the urge to yell "early slashers!"--from Budur:

Of evil thing the folk suspect us twain;
And to this thought their hearts and souls are bent:
Come, dear! let's justify and free their souls
That wrong us; one good bout and then—repent!

In short: Everybody thinks we're fucking, so we much as well do it once just to justify them. And then repent of it.

So, anyway, Kamar gets this agreement and goes with her into her rooms. There's a great line about "he doffed his bag-trousers, shamefull and abashed, with the tears running from his eyes for stress of affright" that made Cat yell, "He's a weepy uke!" And Budur, who is clearly having the time of her life, kisses him and twines with him and generally enjoys herself before telling him, "Put thy hand between my thighs to the accustomed place; so haply it may stand up to prayer after prostration." Kamar cries some more, but eventually does it, and is very confused by what he finds there: soft, smooth skin, and none of what he was expecting, and wonders to himself if the King is a hermaphrodite, and then asks, "I cannot find that thou hast a tool like the tools of men; what then moved thee to do this deed?"

Budur literally falls over laughing.

Of course, she reveals herself to him as his wife (mocking him a bit for that) and the story goes on from there, though I stopped reading not long after, because there was weird pseudo-incest and Budur once again getting the shaft in favor of Kamar. (Dammit, just because he's the man.) But I'm still really glad I took the time to look this thing up.

And dammit, someday I'm going to write a version where there are strap-ons.