THE GRAND ODALISQUE

ODALISQUE: 

It is almost time. Stripped, scrubbed, powdered, plucked, perfumed, bejeweled, bangled, anointed between the thighs (It will hurt less, they explain), you are arranged on the divan, all supple, womanish repose. In fact, the back aches—it wasn’t meant to twist so—and the elbow seems sure to buckle beneath its voluptuous burden. You are sure that you look fat, with your backside turned to the door that way; that your thighs are positively dimpling. They reassure you that the lighting is dim. In the flicker of the oil lamps, everything is softer, golder: the pads of you feet, the crushed opium (For after, you are told), the sheets of Egyptian cotton, on which your virginity will be shed. Stop straying, they hiss, Keep your eyes on the door. You do as you are told, finding faces in the patterns that are carved upon it, the golden arabesques. At the last moment, a peacock fan is slipped into your left hand.
 

EUNUCH: 

The girl is young, soft, golden-skinned, with high, plump breasts and a long, curved back: all the features required to excite a hot-blooded male. At the base of her spine, hidden amid her rich, honey-shadowed flesh, there is a pair of even dimples, nature’s stamp of perfection. Still, she does nothing for you. Like all women, she reminds you too much of an animal—a beautiful animal, perhaps, an Arabian mare, strong and well bred, with a shiny coat. Yet an animal. Smelly. Always in need of tending. Not a thought in her head that doesn’t have to do with her body. You have seen them, by the hundred, at the baths, and far from being aroused, have been overpowered by the barnyard stench of them: by their wet skin and pendulous breasts and noise, noise, noise, too loud for you to think through. She sees you looking and returns your gaze with the keen, cold eyes of an animal, swishing her fan imperceptibly.  
 

SULTAN: 

You stumble in from the feast with a belly full of red meat and redder wine: meat that you tore from the bone with your fingers, your teeth; wine that spilled on your royal robes and sent you to the latrines, your bladder full to bursting. You remember how you stood at the latrines, not ten minutes ago, clutching the soggy thing that now throbs, hardens into something red. You cannot tell, through the haze of wine and incense, whether the girl is attractive, though you can make out the warm, golden half-moon of one buttock. Is she intact? you ask the nearest eunuch, belching. They close the doors behind you, and all is lost in a dream of flesh and perfume, a peacock’s flashed feathers.

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