Hey, Jeanie, Leave My Lamp Alone!

We djinns don’t have it easy, I tell you.

You think it’s fun being a djinn? Guess again.

I’m up to here with being told that we djinns should be so happy at being released from our imprisonment in lamps and rings that we should fall over ourselves helping the people who release us, and fulfilling their requests. And I’m up to here with hearing that the fact that we so often don’t fulfil their requests the way they meant it proves that we’re all evil or mean or something.

Just try and look at it from our point of view for once, why don’t you?

 First things first. We aren’t bloody “imprisoned” in those lamps, you fool. Those are our homes, where we live in peace and quiet and sleep most of the time, and do...interesting things...the rest of the time. Why not? You think we want to be up and about in this polluted mess you’ve made of the planet? Do you think we’d rather take part in the rat race when we could just do something we love instead?  How crazy do you think we are?

So here we are, in the midst of sleeping or making love to beautiful female djinns – and let me tell you, the ugliest female djinn’s a quintillion times more pulchritudinous than the prettiest of your human women – when some twit comes and starts rubbing and scraping at our homes. How would you like it if you were in deep sleep, or having sex with your significant other, and some moron came and started shaking your house around like a bloomin’ earthquake? Huh?

So, we’re more than a little pissed off when we wake up and have to emerge. We have to emerge, of course, because the imbeciles doing the rubbing and scraping won’t let up until we do, and we don’t want all our precious furniture smashed, and our beautiful female djinns to come to any harm. They don’t come out because they’re three things: naked, modest, and considerate. Why, of course they’re considerate. If one of them came out, in her dazzling and unclad beauty, do you think your human males would ever again look at your human females? We djinns don’t really want you to become extinct, you see.

Where was I? Oh yes. So we have to come out, and then the moron doing the rubbing and scraping always wants something incredibly imbecilic as a “reward” for shaking us awake or inflicting an agonising coitus interruptus. How would you like it if you, shaken awake or off her as described, just dragged on your pants and stumbled outside, ready to rip up the moron shaking your house, and he demanded a reward? Not very much, I’ll wager.

Most of the demands are so stupidly worded, in any case, that I don’t blame a djinn losing his cool once in a while and getting things wrong. You’d think these people would at least think a moment before opening their stupid mouths.

Not that things are much better when the demands are a little less obtusely worded.

Look at that twit Ala-ud-Din, the one you call Aladdin, for instance. That prize idiot had nothing better to do than ask my uncle, the Djinn of the Lamp, and his friend the Djinn of the Ring, to bring him food. Food! And then he had to show off by having my uncle and his friend build a palace and decorate it with gems, all in one night; all but for one window. All so he could show off to the damned Sultan how rich he was. What a berk.

Do you think we can just create all that stuff out of the air, huh? Where do you think my uncle and his mate got all the building materials from, not to speak of the carpets and furniture, and of course all those diamonds and pearls and emeralds for Ala-ud-Din’s vulgar and tasteless display of wealth? Yeah, you have that right – they had to break into gourmet kitchens, and then construction sites and treasury vaults all over the earth, including Fort Knox, and steal everything without being caught; not to speak of the labour of putting it all together. All in one night too.

And do you think they got any thanks for it, huh?

No, I didn’t think so.

So, you ask, why do we djinns actually offer wish-fulfilment? Actually, we don’t; that’s a legend you humans made up about us. But it’s easier to fulfil wishes and go back to sleep or screw, rather than take the trouble of smacking those puny human heads in. We could do it, of course, but that would merely make humans hostile enough to try to melt down our home-lamps and -rings instead of treasuring them, and we don’t want trouble. Humans are trouble enough already.

Besides, humans are so stupid that they sabotage themselves most satisfactorily.

Take the idiot who found my cousin’s lamp, for example. My cousin and his lady-friend were being, uh, intimate, when the aforesaid idiot started rubbing. My cousin threw on his pants (he was wearing a turban because his lady likes him wearing it during sex, she’s kinky that way, and not because we djinns wear them all the time; we don’t) and came out boiling with anger; they’d been within moments of orgasm, you see, which made it worse. But he’s a nice chap, my cousin, so he bit down on his fury and asked what the idiot wanted.

Well, he might have saved his breath there because the human twit wanted, quite predictably, three wishes. The first was a roomful of gold and the second a luxury car, so my cousin rushed off and (at great personal risk) stole a Bentley (customised for a famous movie star, but I won’t tell you who) and some Nazi-era gold bars from a Swiss bank vault for him. Then he waited for the third wish, wanting to get it over and done with. And all the while his libido was ebbing and he could just imagine what his lady friend must be going through. You’re with me so far, are you? My cousin was getting desperate.

So what does the twit ask as his third wish? Knowledge? Health? A smidgen of intelligence? World peace? A worldwide ban on landmines or at least vuvuzelas?

No. He wants to be between the legs of a luscious woman.

Can you, in all conscience, really blame my cousin when he turned the man into a tampon?