Q: What is your favorite fairy tale and why?
A: Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub! What’s not to like about that? Okay, I suppose that’s cheating. It’s a nursery rhyme, not a fairy tale, technically speaking, but since this answer doesn’t have to go through peer review, I’m sticking with it. Though the lyrics have changed over the centuries, I can’t help but hear it as a quintessential queer image hiding in plain sight, and it always makes me wonder: Who are these gents? Why are they floating out to sea? Just how big is that tub? And importantly, is there room for one more?
Jason A. Bartles’s story “Leiprenese 101”
in Metaphorosis Friday, 21 May 2021.
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