Earlier this week, the king took up a new practice. As if to add to my confusion, the king disguised himself as me. When I changed into his clothes, he changed into mine. I was required to command him to moan at the chart. When he followed the commands I was required to give, I was then required to watch him with interest, to mime a sensation of tremendous release. This development no doubt made sense to the king, who wished me to assume the full burden of his desire.
Tonight, as I stood dressed in the king’s clothing, a guard escorted a young woman into the room. The guard led the girl to the bed and then turned to me, bowing in mock difference. The king, dressed as me, bowed as well. Then the guard led him away, presumably back to the harem.
When I enter the king’s chamber, I know I am entering the fever dream of his desire. If upon entering he were to ask me to recite a poem that he had written in the walls in excrement, I would do it without surprise. But standing over that beautiful woman, who wore a half vest that I recognized immediately as like my own, her bare stomach rising and falling, I was amazed. It was one thing for the king to share his clothing with me, his charts—but it was quite another for him to ask me to join myself to one of the women of the harem.
I lay next to the young woman on the bed and felt only a trace of my former shame. In addition to a vest she wore those same billowy pants, the same tasseled fez. Seeing her dressed in this way reminded me of the empathy I had felt toward the women of the harem, the unease I had felt at being—as I had then believed myself to be—an object of the king’s desire.
Whatever the case, I ignored my scant sense of shame. After all, I had been ordered to impose myself on the woman, had I not? Refusing to go through with the performance would only put the woman in danger by angering the king, would it not? These were the quesitions I distracted myself with while my mind gave itself over to the notion of enjoying a woman’s body.
—from “Life in the Harem,” by Seth Fried
