The History of Sex: South of France -- The Ultimate STD -- (Chap. III, Pt. 4)

At the time, you see, the future saint was living in sin with a concubine who'd even given him a son.

Eventually, Augustine's mother convinced him to come back to the fold and get married, so he rather un-Christianly dumped his lover of fourteen years and got engaged to a more respectable prospect—a ten-year-old virgin.

Unlike the founder of Islam, though, the 'Father of Christian Psychology' (God help us) never deflowered his prepubescent fiancée: unable to wait the two years until she came of age, Augustine took another mistress.

And before he could get married at the age of thirty-three, he miraculously got religion.

The new convert embraced celibacy and spent the rest of his life telling Christians to do as he said, not as he'd done.

RE-ENACTING THE FALL

Tormented by fantasies and wet dreams (not to mention his early Manichean leanings), Augustine pinpointed lust as the manifestation of original sin—and its means of transmission. Sin became the ultimate sexually transmitted disease.

According to the newly chaste Augustine, copulation was necessary to produce more Christians, but it should be a passionless, lust-free affair: you could have sex; you just couldn't enjoy it. The truly Christian couple should 'descend with a certain sadness' into intercourse, as if re-enacting the Fall from grace.

Old-fashioned nightshirts:
note the strategically-placed slits

Not surprisingly, it took nearly a thousand years for the Church's take on chastity and celibacy to bed down.

In denying the flesh, though, the first Christian theologians inadvertently made it all the more desirable. By forbidding sensuality, they helped fetishize it, inspiring generations of monks, nuns and other ascetics to make the earth move by flagellating and mortifying themselves into ecstasy.

The first attempt to impose a sex ban on the clergy came around 306 AD at a church council in Spain near Granada.

The same meeting also instituted a female 'pact of virginity' that involved a bishop cloaking a woman's head and pronouncing her 'a chaste virgin to Christ.'

The veiled woman was then locked away—an odd parallel with the Islamic harem—to become what we now know as a nun.

St. Augustine and Monica (his mother)
by Ary Scheffer

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- The Hookers' Corral -- (Chap. II, Pt. 20)

For I'm bewitched by the spectacle onstage.

The disco square is a kind of hookers' corral, with the girls lining up on the sides to entice pay-for-play suitors.

At least two dozen women are on the dancefloor: blondes and brunettes, Asians and Caucasians, all tarted up in their sexiest clubgear, whether it's perms or ponytails, tube tops or bikini tops, miniskirts or maxiskirts, all with an eyecatching array of slits, straps, stripes and colors.

'Do the girls come to your table?'

'No, that's not the way it works here.'

If a man is interested, it's up to him to approach her; the hookers can't hassle the clientele. So even here, in a hotel de whore, the sexes are separated and the men very much in control.

THEY MAY NOT BE VIRGINS

Initially, this seems like a straight man's dream: a club where all the women want you, and if you want one (or more) of them, all you have to do is ask. No need to chat them up, buy them a drink, or pretend they're interesting. Just 'how much?' and you're in.

Or if you're not in the mood, you can just drink with your friends and ogle the girls for free.

Some are sexier than others, and some look downright bored, but most are smiling and making goo-goo eyes at you—yes, you!—blowing you kisses while grinding their hips and shaking their cleavage.

They may not be virgins, but they're a verisimilitude of paradise. It's like having your own harem.

And at first, I can't stop grinning—albeit nervously.

Soon enough, though, all the staring starts to get to me. The hookers have obviously clocked me as a foreigner (ka-ching!), so they gravitate over to my side of the floor, and having that many women pouting at you all at once is more than a little off-putting.

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- The Me-So-Horny Hotel -- (Chap. II, Pt. 19)

Worryingly, the three-star 'Otel' where we're headed reminds me of the sort of dive I might have booked unsuspectingly due to price, location or last-minute availability.

I'd like to think I would've been put off by its website, with its cascading stars and rendition of 'New York, New York' by somebody's Uncle Iqbal on his portable organ.

However, the hotel's brochure looks decent enough. It even advertises itself as a venue for business conferences and wedding receptions. Okay, so the woman in the photo at reception doesn't look like she's got anything on under her fur coat.

But there's no mention in the literature of the metal detector on the front door—and there's certainly no indication of what happens in the 'American Bar' at night.

Mehmet and I pay the entrance fee (30 lira with a free drink), and we're escorted through the darkness to a table near the dancefloor.

Naturally, our chairs are black and the column next to us is mirrored, but the lights in the bar have an odd shape.

They're clam shells—the bulbs are pearls—and they're synchronized to flash red, green and blue, changing color with the lights on the dancefloor and the decorations on the wall: backlit images of naked women in me-so-horny poses—gloved, booted, bent over, spread-eagled and in one case even washed up on a beach.

Bizarrely, a couple of these adorn the ceiling—why up there?—but the one I'm staring at shows a glamour girl with her hands tied behind her back, a rope around her ankles and leather straps around her bare breasts.

And I suddenly imagine myself newly arrived in Istanbul, coming down here to breakfast the morning after a late flight, thinking, That would explain all the thumping next door last night.

And as these nudie images wink and blink around us in synch with the clamshell lights, illuminating the Turkish talisman on the far wall that protects against the evil eye, my mind free-associates to what I've read in Sexuality in Islam—'an unshaven vagina is readily compared with an evil eye'—and I can't help but wonder about the girls on the dancefloor.

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- Was the Father of Turks the Gay Son of a Prostitute? -- (Chap. II, Pt. 18)

'Are many imams gay?'

'It's not as common as gay priests. Imams have to marry and have children. If not, they set a bad example.'

Mehmet delivers all this with soft-spoken good grace. To use a crude term, he's straight-acting, and nothing in his appearance marks him out as being different from his countrymen. It's only when we move on to our final topic that he starts to dish the dirt.

So far, we've freely discussed sex, sodomy and honor killings in the open air at a public café, despite my misgivings.

THE BATTY BOYS OF DOLMABAHCE

But when he starts talking about the sex life of the Father of the Turks, Mehmet lowers his voice, as if the palm trees might have ears, and uses a codename: '"Osman" was the son of a prostitute.'

Now, most Kurds don't like Atatürk—he killed scores of them in forging the Republic—but to claim he's the son of a whore is, well, highly controversial.

It was Atatürk who defended the rump of the Ottoman Empire and saved the Turks from being well and truly buggered after World War One.

The Harem suite where he died in Dolmabahce Palace is a shrine, and you can be locked up for three years just for insulting his memory.

'But many of the sultans were sons of concubines,' I counter.

'Yes, but "Osman" did not have any royal blood. He was a commoner.'

Mehmet lowers his eyes and glances around furtively. '"Osman" was also homosexual. Many people say they made up the stories of him being a womanizer.'

But even I know 'Osman' was married. 'You mean he was bisexual?'

'No, he was only one way,' Mehmet whispers. 'He would make party all the time with boys in Dolmabahce.' 

Aside from the tempting alliteration of 'batty boys' and 'Dolmabahce,' I have to confess there's a mischievous appeal to the idea of the Father Turk being the gay son of a whore who chose to die in the pink-walled harem of a palace confected by the Frenchman who designed the Paris Opera.

And a private ability to swing both ways would go a long way toward explaining his uncanny knack for keeping the Soviets and Americans off his back, so to speak.

Then there was his advanced approach to women's liberation, which can't be entirely explained by economic motives: Turkey needed women to work, but there was nothing forcing him to give them the vote.

Throw in the dandified dress sense and matinee-idol poses, and well, I can see Mehmet's point.

For me, of course, it doesn't matter. But for many Turks, it would be reprehensible to paint their founding father as a political Liberace.

Out of respect for Turkishness, then, I suggest we move on.

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- How to 'Cure' a Homosexual (or Not) -- (Chap. II, Pt. 13)

Of course, if you're religious enough to care about purifying your penis, surely you shouldn't be sticking it in a prostitute in the first place.

By all accounts, there's a reason that prices start at around 30 lira, or just £10 ($15).

'To be honest, you're probably better off not going in the genelev,' he shrugs. 'You might never want to have sex again!'

Romanticizing the genelev

Unfortunately, his first time with a woman was in a genelev.

Mehmet knew from the age of eight that he was attracted to men, but as a young Kurd in tin-shack Anatolia—the Asian side of the country—he wasn't able to seek counseling until he was sixteen.

'The doctor was sick himself. He told me a lot of stupid things, like "stay out of the sun", "don't eat salty food" and "go have sex with a woman".'

After the first two failed, Mehmet tried a brothel, the only outlet for heterosexual singles in Islamic societies—apart from infidel divorcees at tourist resorts. 'The genelev definitely didn't help,' Mehmet recalls, shaking his head.

The prostitute took him to Room 41—he still remembers the number—and ordered him to undress.

'She laid down, closed her eyes and told me, "Do it." I told her, "Shouldn't you be moving or something?" But she just laid there. She didn't even open her eyes.'

'So that put you off women for good?'

'For sure!'

'THE ASS IS ALWAYS BIGGER'

Of course, you can't blame the women.

Forever stigmatized by society as registered prostitutes, many actually live on the same dead-end streets where they work; if they try to move out or quit the game, the local vice squad tracks them down.

So girls who enter the genelev as teenagers—with punters queuing out the door—may end up staying until they're in their sixties.

'The women stand in the windows in their bras and panties, like in Amsterdam, but you'd be amazed that anyone could ever have sex with them,' Mehmet says. 'Most of the women are very much used-looking and old and fat.'

Still, that doesn't put off Turkish men.

'People don't mind fat women here, especially in Kurdish culture. In Eastern Turkey, being fat is a big plus.'

A bit of heft implies wealth in a society where people aren't skinny by choice.

As Mehmet puts it: 'You know the English expression that "the grass is always greener"? Well, there's a Kurdish saying where I come from that "the neighbour lady's ass is always bigger."'

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- Starbucks, Drag Queens, and Sex Ghettos -- (Chap. II, Pt. 12)

Whereas any commoner can blunder through the sultans' inner sanctum nowadays, for foreigners there's still an equivalent of the harem: Turkey's municipal brothels.

According to legend, it was here in old Constantinople that the selfsame Roman Emperor made the first (failed) attempt by a Christian ruler to regulate prostitution, sanctioning one brothel for the entire city.

Modern Turkish genelevs—literally, 'general' or 'public houses'—are the successors to that institution, quarantined into dead-end zones that are more like prostitute ghettos than red-light districts.

The genelevs are also strictly off-limits to foreigners.

'They think that Western men could have AIDS and sexual diseases,' says my guide, a man I'll call Mehmet—a Turkish form of 'Mohammed' and an homage to the sultan who conquered Constantinople.

'Mehmet' normally runs secretive gay sex tours, but he's agreed to modify his usual itinerary to show me the 'straight' side of Istanbul.

I can tell he's not really looking forward to it, though.

As we set off from Taksim Square in the heart of the city, he mentions that the statue of Atatürk is a popular cruising spot—an irony that will become apparent later.

Strolling down the broad thoroughfare of Independence Avenue, far from the carpet shops and landmarks of the Old Town, the terrace cafes are as cosmopolitan as anything in Paris, serving far more sophisticated coffees than those at Starbucks—though there's room for one of those too on 'Liberty Way.'

The boulevard's mosques blare calls to prayer, undercut by street vendors' calls to purchase, while the Catholic church down the way keeps its doors open in tactful silence. A man in a fez is twirling unmeltable marash ice cream in the air as his compatriots queue for soft-serve at McDonald's—both doing good business—and women in headscarves lumber past teens flaunting naked midriffs.

Men leer at the ladies while walking arm in arm—'That's very common here, even in my village,' Mehmet says—and there's even a couple of drag queens sashaying down the main drag in the sunshine. Which is not common where Mehmet comes from.

Passing the Dutch and Swedish consulates, we take a left into the 'hood of the Galatasaray football club, descending past music shops and the home of the Mehlevi Dervishes (whose founder was certainly no prude) into what was historically the foreign part of town.

Genelevs are not meant to be seen or heard from the outside, and the only vague indicator that you're near Turkey's largest sex ghetto is a hamam on the corner.

'Muslims believe that you have to take a bath after sex,' Mehmet explains.

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- 'Disobedient Women Should be Punished' -- (Chap. II, Pt. 11)

Despite Turkey's paper protection of women's rights, so-called 'honor killings' still haunt the country—and Muslim communities throughout Europe.

A parliamentary investigation in 2006 documented 1,091 of these murders in Turkey over a five-year period, though the true number may be much higher, even after recent legal reforms to lengthen prison terms.

'Honor killings' are still legal in neighboring Iran:
women are buried, then stoned

'Now that the penal code has been changed, the families try to force the women to commit suicide instead,' says Canan Arin, a lawyer who opened Istanbul's first women's shelter back in 1995.

Speaking to me in her study on the European side of Istanbul, with books lining the shelves and jazz burbling in the background, she tells me that one of the main barriers to securing convictions for 'honor killings' is that many judges come from traditional backgrounds.

'Deep down, they think that disobedient women should be punished and the penalty should be death.'

DON'T CALL IT A CRUSADE

To overcome the honor problem, some reformers have tried to rename murders 'traditional killings.'

But Ms. Arin argues that this change is more for male politicos than female victims; the root problem is that women's honor is treated as a commodity. If a girl has sex outside marriage—even if she's raped—'her uncleanliness is a stain on the family honor:' 'Honor is represented by women, so politicians can't openly say they're against honor.'

Like many of her allies, however, she's reluctant to make a link between Islam and the oppression of women—after all, the reports that call her a 'crusader' for women's rights are just an awkward reminder that modern feminism is a Western import (like the Crusades, derived from the Latin for 'Cross').

Instead, Ms. Arin takes refuge in a relativistic stance. 'It is difficult for all patriarchal systems and patriarchal men to accept the need for women's rights. We are living in a man's world, and Turkish men are no different from that.'

'But isn't the problem that Western-style reforms inevitably increase secularization?' I ask.

'Turkey should increase secularization,' she counters adamantly, echoing the outspoken atheist I met at Topkapi Palace. 'We need more secularization, and religion should be entirely personal.'

* * *

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- Islam and the Medieval Mindset -- (Chap. II, Pt. 10)

More generally—and controversially—it strikes me that Muslim women's prospects are limited simply because Islamic culture is locked in a medieval mindset, forever harking back to the good ol' days of Mohammed (while Christians were told to look forward to the return of Christ).

That may sound overly blunt, but hear me out: Christianity began as a high-concept religion that was more about spirituality than precise rules dictating what you ate or how you washed.

Jesus and his Jewish disciples broke with the legalism of their ancestors, whereas Islam actually revived many Semitic traditions, even going so far as to reinstitute circumcision (the early Christians also considered penis checks at the pearly gates, but Paul argued that faith was more important than foreskins—not for nothing did they make him a saint).

Turkish boy about to be circumcised
(photo by Dick Osseman)

Furthermore, Judaism and Christianity had the advantage of antiquity: they're so old, they effectively built the civilizations that practice them.

Islam, on the other hand, was late to the game and superimposed on ancient cultures that already had their own patriarchal traditions.

As a result, it tends to be even more male-oriented than Christianity or Judaism.

And as for holy role models, the asexual nature of Jesus allows both men and women to identify with him and become Christians—'little Christs'—whereas the most a Muslim woman can aspire to is being a godly sidekick: marrying or giving birth to a Chosen One who follows Mohammed.

Unfortunately, it's this sexism that may be Islamic culture's main contribution to sexuality in the West (apart from the enduring titillation of the harem, belly dancers and the likes of The Perfumed Garden).

For centuries, Northern Europeans attributed the jealousy of Mediterraneans to their Muslim heritage—the 'hotheaded Spaniard' couldn't help being jealous, they thought; he was half-Arab.

'THE HONOR-SHAME SYNDROME'

In recent decades, academics have begun to restyle these chauvinistic attitudes, dressing them up in more sophisticated terms.

According to the theory of 'the honor-shame syndrome,' for instance, a woman's honor is a material good with an actual value (her dowry) that also reflects on the honor of her family.

Academics argue that this phenomenon is particularly strong in those parts of Europe with an Islamic past—notably, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Sicily.

(For the record, I doubt that Islam was entirely to blame, though it probably did reinforce existing tendencies.)

The reason it's stigmatized as a 'syndrome'—rather than a quaint custom—is that if a woman's virtue is compromised, her male kinfolk feel compelled to defend their honor by either avenging her or killing her outright.

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- Ataturk and the Keepers of the Harem -- (Chap. II, Pt. 8)

Eunuchs being in short supply these days—you just can't get the help—the current Keeper of the Harem is actually a woman.

Canan Cimilli works alongside two other women in an office where every expense has been spared: there's only one computer between the three of them.

Despite her imposing title, Canan speaks in a shy, girlish voice that's easily overruled by the trio's alpha female, a raucous, middle-aged mamacha who's probably never had an opinion she didn't like.

As Canan starts showing me photos of the many rooms in the Harem that are falling apart, her dark-haired elder pulls up a chair and hijacks the conversation, informing me that there are no restorers or curators in residence at Topkapi.

WOMEN IN CHARGE

'The Turkish Ministry for Culture not give money for Topkapi. The Turkish government keeps the reality secret.'

'What do you do as curator of the Harem?' I ask Canan.

The other woman flaps her hand dismissively. 'Curators of Turkish museum do everything: they guardsman, housewife, archeologist. Only women could work for such a small amount of money.'

'Why's that?'

Canan stops laughing long enough to reply. 'Because in Turkey the men have to make money for the family.' 

And before I know it, I'm immersed in a moanfest about the male domination of Topkapi and Turkey in general.

Topkapi's top managers are both men, it seems: one a secular academic, the other an imam who lives on site, along with the Prophet's relics.

'MACHIAVELLIEST'

As for Turkey's prime minister, well, my informer doesn't think much of Recep Erdogan, either.

'He's machiavelliest. You know what that means? He go to Europe and say one thing, then he comes home and does another. He's fundamentalist—he supports women wearing the headscarf.'

'You don't?'

'I'm atheist,' she volunteers proudly.

'But her mother was a Muslim!' Canan laughs.

'I hate religion. Do you know who is Mustafa Kemal Atatürk? Atatürk is big man in Turkey—he is very handsome. He has blue eyes—like you—and light hair. All the Turkish women love him.'

Ataturk (with remarkably blue eyes)

Not least because Turkey's autocratic founder made sure the new Republic implemented female-friendly reforms that were not only revolutionary for the Mideast but advanced by Western standards: first he banned polygamy and the veil and then, in 1934, he granted Turkish women the right to vote and run for election—a full decade before French women had the same privilege.

Canan's colleague bustles over to her desk to retrieve a small, black-and-white portrait of Atatürk at his matinee-idol best.

It's a billfold-sized photo, the kind that a woman might keep in her pocketbook to remind her of a lover, only here it's propped up on a lone gilded shelf above the telephone (in addition to the standard, government-issue portrait of Atatürk in uniform, naturally).

THE PROPHET FOR ATHEISTS?

And I can't help but wonder if Atatürk is to Turkish atheists what Mohammed is to their Muslim sisters.

'In my life, my husband is first man'—the woman taps her wedding band. 'My father is second man'—she touches her heart. 'And Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is the third man.' She beams and shows me the photo again. 'I love him.'

'She's got three men in her life!' Canan cracks.

Funnily enough, the Father of Modern Turkey died in the Ottomans' Imperial Harem (no, not from that; he had cirrhosis).

One of the last sultans, the grandson of a French Queen Mother, had decided that he needed new digs to replace Topkapi, so he splashed out on a great big, frilly confection of stone in High French Style.

When the Dolmabahce Palace was finished, he transferred his Harem there in 1853.

Decades later, Atatürk used Dolmabahce's defunct Harem—complete with its pastel-pink hall—as his base in Istanbul.

By the time he died there in 1938, some eighteen women had been elected to Turkey's parliament.

* * *

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- The Emasculation of the Ottomans -- (Chap.II, Pt.7)

The Head Eunuch was a kind of Pimp-Master General in charge of spying on the girls for the sultan and scouting for new talent.

As the third most important official in the empire—after the Grand Vizier and the leader of the Ottoman Muslims—the Head Eunuch could talk to the sultan whenever he wanted.

The theory was that eunuchs were more trustworthy because their dynastic ambitions had literally been nipped in the bud.

Unfortunately, this argument failed to take into account the bitterness of men who'd been mutilated at the behest of a regime they were meant to serve.

EMASCULATED SULTANS

As with the Queen Mothers, who were packed off to the Palace of Tears when their sultan sons died, the selfish incentive for eunuchs was obvious: to grab as much as they could for as long as they could; let Allah take care of the greater good.

And as the sultans spent more time in the Harem, leaving their concubine mothers and corrupt eunuchs to govern, ironically it was the Ottomans themselves who wound up being emasculated.

A particularly nasty Queen Mother was Kösem, a Greek slave girl who effectively ruled the empire for much of the seventeenth century after having engineered the first regicide in Ottoman history (among countless crimes).

Kösem conspired to have her teenaged stepson, Osman II, murdered in jail by a combination of strangulation and 'compression of the testicles.'

Osman II -- executed at 17
after having his testicles 'compressed'

It was her husband who built Istanbul's famous Blue Mosque and temporarily stopped the tradition of murdering one's brothers upon assuming the throne.

Instead, he had his brother confined to a wing of the Harem known as the Cage—referred to delicately as the Twin Pavilions on the tour—keeping him doped up on alcohol and opium with a dozen concubines for company.

The 'Golden Cage'

When one of Kösem's sons emerged from the Cage to become sultan, he was so deranged he became known as 'Ibrahim the Mad.'

Besides regularly hosting one-man orgies around the pool—the one you see while visiting the Favorite Concubines' Courtyard—Ibrahim once had 280 of his odalisques tied up in bags and drowned in the Bosphorus.

One of the few to survive his jealousy was his beloved 'Sugar Cube'—an Armenian who weighed over 300 pounds—but his mother later had her throttled over dinner.

The Queen Mother finally got her comeuppance in her early sixties, when she tried to murder yet another young sultan.

The boy's mother found out about the plot and had the eunuchs hunt Kösem down, dragging her out of the Harem, stripping her naked, and strangling her outside at the Gate of the Aviary.

And that's where this tour ends.

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- How to Make a Eunuch -- (Chap. II, Pt. 6)

Obviously, part of the problem is that the seraglio has seen better centuries.

A labyrinth of more than four hundred rooms, less than a tenth of the chambers have been restored and opened to the public.

And as undeniably beautiful as they are, even these are faded and often shabby, with a musty smell that makes you wonder if the Harem was actually seedy rather than sexy.

To be fair, no one knows exactly what it was like to live behind the closed doors of the Harem: by definition, the word means 'private' or 'forbidden.'

However, key events are known—you're just not going to find out about them on the tour.

THE DEMISE OF SELIM THE SOT

For example, although the sultan's bath is impressive, it would be even more interesting to hear about Selim II (aka 'The Sot'), who died after slipping while chasing girls around his hamam.

Like virtually all the Ottoman rulers, Selim was the son of a concubine himself.

His mother was a redheaded Slav who'd out-schemed the competition to convince Suleiman the Magnificent—the longest-ruling sultan—to break with tradition and marry her around 1520, at the peak of Ottoman power.

Roxelana clawed her way up from being a common concubine

Up until then, the Ottomans had considered the sultan to be so exalted that no woman was worthy of being his wife.

However, Hürrem—known in the West as Roxelana—established the so-called 'Reign of Women' with its powerbase here in the Harem of the newly completed Topkapi Palace.

Her power grab also marked the slow beginning of the end for the Ottoman Empire.

Now, if you're a man, you may be thinking: typical—put a woman in charge, and all hell breaks loose.

But that wouldn't be fair: plenty of other factors brought down the sultans. As a hothouse of lust, greed, murder and corruption, though, the Harem was the empire's epicenter of dysfunction.

Consider who ran the place: castrated slaves who came in two colors—black and white—and three mutilated varieties. As nouveau-riche nomads, the Ottomans had picked up a lot of bad habits from the Christian Byzantines, including a fondness for eunuchs, who were outsourced from a Coptic monastery in Egypt.

MOLTEN CHEESE

For full-frontal castration, a slave boy would be bound to a chair, his penis and testicles tied with a cord and then razored off.

The wound was subsequently cauterized with a hot iron, boiling oil or melted wax (The Arabian Nights also mentions molten cheese), and the castrator would stick a nail in the boy's urethra to make sure it didn't get clogged up.

In some cases, the boys were buried standing up in sand and deprived of water until they stopped bleeding.

Not surprisingly, only a third survived this ordeal, and most of them suffered from incontinence for the rest of their lives: inside their fine robes, Ottoman eunuchs carried silver quills that served as catheters.

Wotchyou lookin' at?
The Guard of the Harem by Jean-Leon Gerome

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- Entering the Harem (Privates Intact) -- (Chap. II, Pt. 5)

Last time I was in Istanbul, when I read that the Ottoman Harem was still standing—and that it was open to the likes of me—I responded the same way as in Pompeii: I beat a path to the Old City, even though I was only passing through.

Now, obviously, my fascination with this sort of thing raises some potentially disturbing questions about my own psyche.

All I can say is that the Harem of Topkapi Palace is one of those truly unique places that allow you to peer into history and glimpse how people before us lived and died (often in manners most horrible).

What's more, past generations of foreigners could only dream of setting foot in the sultans' very own garden of earthly delights.

Your guide looking far too pleased with himself
about being allowed into the Harem

The few men who entered did so at the cost of their manhoods—there were three degrees of castration—and most of the women had either been captured as literal war booty or pimped by their parents for consumption by a hairy doughball of an emperor.

So it's a real privilege to be able to saunter through the Palace of Felicity unmolested.

BY MOHAMMED'S BEARD

Throw in the fact that the building next door supposedly houses relics of Mohammed himself—including whiskers from his beard, a cast of his footprint, and his sword and mantle—and it's obviously a must-see. 

Hairs from Mohammed's beard?

Not that you'd know it.

The Harem sits in an unassuming building marked with a small museum sign—and dozens of tourists unwittingly lining up to be bored out of their minds.

For what should be one of the most fascinating experiences on the planet ranks right up there with the most frustrating.

And I should know—I've been through the Harem three times, on different days, with different guides, each time hoping that it would live up to the seraglio's past. Instead, the mandatory tour is a wasted opportunity, seemingly devised by someone who hates the Ottomans or has an autistic taste for names and dates but can't cope with the messy stuff that puts the 'story' into 'history.'

Even with an audioguide—and a flesh-and-blood guide—the knowledge imparted is of the historical anorak variety, telling you everything you don't need to know and very little that you might actually want to know: 'Here we can see the bath,' says the guide, in a chirpy voice that pings off the tiles. 'Which is where the sultan bathed.'

The sultan's toilet,
which is where the sultan...