Contentment

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Between Us

  He “adjusted to the flow” of the water. Psychologist Jeanne Tsai has found that calm and connected emotions are valued in many East Asian contexts. Hong Kong Chinese, and even Chinese Americans, reported that they would “ideally” like to feel calm, at rest, relaxed, and serene rather than the excited kinds of happiness, and these preferred feelings were related to their actual feelings. How do we know that this calm happiness relates to “adjusting to the flow”? In the same experimental task where some participants became influencers, Tsai told other participants that they would become “matchers.” The leader decided on the order of twelve tangram cards (cards with different geometrical figures), and the matcher tried to put the cards in the same order as the leader. A matcher’s task was to closely follow the instructions of the leader while trying “to think about the Leader’s frame of mind.” Matchers across cultures preferred to be calm and connected over energetic emotions. Calm and connected emotions presumably helped them be oriented to the leader, and adjust to their flow. Everyday East Asian practices produce calm happiness. Much like the Cameroon mothers described in chapter 3, Japanese and Chinese mothers soothe and quiet their babies, by rocking them, lulling them, having constant body contact, and producing soothing vocalizations. Bestselling children’s books in Taiwan (for ages four to eight) show many more protagonists with calm smiles and fewer protagonists with excited smiles than bestselling children’s books in the United States (for a similar age range). Taiwanese children’s books also describe fewer arousing activities than American storybooks. Very early on, children in East Asian contexts prefer calm over excited emotions. When asked which smile was happier, a calm or an excited smile, preschool children in Taiwan pointed to the calm smile. “Calm happiness” remains favorite among adults too. I still remember having an excellent dinner with my friend Mayumi Karasawa when she closed her eyes and seemed to doze off, all the while saying, “It is so good!” I had to remind myself that being completely relaxed was good, and not the result of my failure to entertain her in spirited conversation. The goal was calm, yes even sleepy, happiness—not energized excitement. In the early days of Tsai’s research program, I remember her being challenged at professional conferences. “Should calm and being at peace be considered real emotions?” many a colleague wondered aloud. Remember, some of the most commonly used psychological scales of emotions focus exclusively on excited happiness.

• From Between Us

  But even if happiness is not cherished to the same extent, would it not be universally motivating? The answer is no. If happiness informs and facilitates action in WEIRD cultures, in the majority of the world’s cultures, people act according to their societal roles as well as the decisions and desires of others, rather than pursuing their own individual happiness. In psychological experiments, Japanese and Asian Americans appeared to be more motivated to work on a task when they had failed it than when they had done well on it. Very different from white Americans who liked to do puzzles, or play a sports game when they had found they were good at it, East Asian participants thought it important to improve their skills when they had found they were bad at it. The East Asian participants did not like to persist on these tasks—they did not expect working on these tasks would make them happy—and yet they chose to spend time on them. The pursuit of happiness is just not as central. Just like the Daoist Robin Wang, the East Asian college students participating in the experiments valued working hard and doing well, but not being happy. In fact, individuals in East Asian contexts may not believe that happiness helps their task performance, as white Americans do seem to believe. White American college students savored the happiness from an unrelated previous task when they knew they would face a cognitively challenging task next; East Asian college students (both in Asia and in the United States) did so to a much lower extent. To them, happiness was neither an end in itself, nor a means to successful task performance. It did not need to be cultivated. So, it turns out happiness American-style is not as universally desirable as some might believe it to be. There is far less value attached to it in many cultures remote (and not so remote) in place and time. But if the emotion is differently valued in some cultures, may it not still exist? Even if it occurs less, or co-occurs with unhappiness or concern, even if its expression may be regulated, would the “emotion itself” not be the same? Good feelings have existed across all times and places, but American happiness is a modern, local invention in the same way love or anger are. The unique way WEIRD cultures, and particularly middle-class white Americans, understand and experience happiness, is tied to this epoch. Feeling good comes in many different shapes, depending on its role in relationships. It is certainly not always an energetic, action-oriented kind of happiness, and neither does it have to be tied to success and self-esteem. Other Ways of Feeling Good: Calm

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Nature, in short, had done so much for him in those parts, that she perhaps held herself acquitted in doing so little for his head. For my part, who had sincerely no intention to push the joke further than simply satisfying my curiosity with the sight of it alone, I was content, in spite of the temptation that stared me in the face, with having raised a May-pole for another to hang a garland on: for, by this time, easily reading Louisa’s desires in her wishful eyes, I acted the commodious part, and made her, who sought no better sport, significant terms of encouragement to go through stitch with her adventure; intimating too that I would stay and see fair play: in which, indeed, I had in view to humour a new born curiosity, to observe what appearances active nature would put on in a natural, in the course of this her darling operation. Louisa, whose appetite was up, and who, like the industrious bee, was, it seems, not above gathering the sweet of so rare a flower, though she found it planted on a dunghill, was but too readily disposed to take the benefit of my cession. Urged then strongly by her own desires, and emboldened by me, she presently determined to risk a trial of parts with the idiot, who was by this time nobly inflamed for her purpose, by all the irritation we had used to put the principles of pleasure effectually into motion, and to wind up the springs of its organ to their supreme pitch; and it stood accordingly stiff and straining, ready to burst with the blood and spirits that swelled it... to a bulk! No! I shall never forget it. Louisa then, taking and holding the fine handle that so invitingly offered itself, led the ductile youth, by that mastertool of his, as she stept backward towards the bed; which he joyfully gave way to, under the incitations of instinct, and palpably delivered up to the goad of desire. Stopped then by the bed, she took the fall she loved, and leaned to the most, gently backward upon it, still holding fast what she held, and taking care to give her clothes a convenient toss up, so that her thighs duly disclosed, and elevated, laid open all the outward prospect of the treasury of love: the rose-lipt overture presenting the cockpit so fair, that it was not in nature even for a natural to miss it.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  Although I am basically optimistic about remaining well, I know my illness from enough different vantage points to remain rather fatalistic about the future. As a result, I know that I listen to lectures about new treatments for manic-depressive illness with far more than just a professional interest. I also know that when I am doing Grand Rounds at other hospitals, I often visit their psychiatric wards, look at their seclusion rooms and ECT suites, wander their hospital grounds, and do my own internal ratings of where I would choose to go if I had to be hospitalized. There is always a part of my mind that is preparing for the worst, and another part of my mind that believes if I prepare enough for it, the worst won’t happen. Many years of living with the cyclic upheavals of manic-depressive illness has made me more philosophical, better armed, and more able to handle the inevitable swings of mood and energy that I have opted for by taking a lower level of lithium. I agree absolutely with Eliot’s Ecclesiastian belief that there is a season for everything, a time for building, and “a time for the wind to break the loosened pane.” Therefore, I now move more easily with the fluctuating tides of energy, ideas, and enthusiasms that I remain so subject to. My mind still, now and again, becomes a carnival of lights, laughter, and sounds and possibilities. The laughter and exuberance and ease will, filling me, spill out and over and into others. These glinting, glorious moments will last for a while, a short season, and then move on. My high moods and hopes, having ridden briefly in the top car of the Ferris wheel will, as suddenly as they came, plummet into a black and gray and tired heap. Time will pass; these moods will pass; and I will, eventually, be myself again. But then, at some unknown time, the electrifying carnival will come back into my mind.

• From Between Us

  As individuals from these two Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) countries, the United States and the Netherlands, we experienced emotions that were different enough that each party judged the other’s emotions negatively, as either “rude” or “fake.” People from the same national cultures arguably would not have condemned them. The emotional differences at first seemed random to me, but over time they gained meaning. I came to understand these emotional differences as serving divergent relationship goals. Pleasant emotions that would be appropriate in the Dutch context prioritize the connection between equals. At the end of a dinner party (or throughout, actually), you would emphasize the connectedness between people, referring to the get-together as gezellig, a Dutch word that has become a collector’s item of culture-specific emotion words. Derived from the word for “friend” (gezel), gezellig describes both the physical circumstances—being snug in a warm and homely place surrounded by good friends (it is impossible to be gezellig alone)—and an emotional state of feeling “held” and “comfortable.” Stressing the connection is prioritized over acknowledging the host’s efforts. In U.S. contexts, by contrast, appropriate positive emotions often prioritize the articulation of the unique efforts, talents, and contributions of another person. Friends and acquaintances contribute to each other’s sense of value or self-esteem. When my son’s teacher told my mom she was being appreciated as a grandmother, she emphasized that my mom was special to her grandchildren—a domain over which she could claim to have some authority, being the teacher of my son. This is not fake at all: it is just a feeling that comes from a focus on those features or accomplishments that would give the other person reason to feel good about themselves. You are a wonderful grandmother, or in the case of my colleague, your talk had some really novel ideas (“is brilliant”). In America, you praise and acknowledge each other whenever you can. This too could not be more different from the Dutch context, where no one should feel or act any better than another person. No worse, but certainly no better either, than another person. My mom used to tell me “that acting normal would be crazy enough,” usually in response to me doing something that—in her eyes—caught too much attention. Nobody should stand out. When I asked my mom, growing up, if she considered me pretty (hoping she would say yes, I guess), she answered: “I think you are about average.” She was telling me the truth, both grounding me and providing “real connection” between her and me.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The bedrock message of the Quran was not a new abstruse doctrine, such as had riven Byzantium, but simply a “reminder” of what constituted a just society that challenged the structural violence emerging in Mecca: that it was wrong to build a private fortune but good to share your wealth with the poor and vulnerable, who must be treated with equity and respect. The Muslims formed an ummah, a “community” that provided an alternative to the greed and systemic injustice of Meccan capitalism. Eventually the religion of Muhammad’s followers would be called islam, because it demanded that individuals “surrender” their whole being to Allah; a muslim was simply a man or woman who had made that surrender. At first, though, the new faith was called tazakka, which can be roughly translated as “refinement.”9 Instead of hoarding their wealth and ignoring the plight of the poor, Muslims were exhorted to take responsibility for one another and feed the destitute, even when they were hungry themselves.10 They traded the irascibility of jahiliyyah for the traditional Arab virtue of hilm—forbearance, patience, and mercy.11 By caring for the vulnerable, freeing slaves, and performing small acts of kindness on a daily, even hourly basis, they believed that they would gradually acquire a responsible, compassionate spirit and purge themselves of selfishness. Unlike the tribesmen, who retaliated violently at the slightest provocation, Muslims must not strike back but leave revenge to Allah,12 consistently treating all others with gentleness and courtesy.13 Socially, the surrender of islam would be realized by learning to live in a community: believers would discover their deep bond with other human beings, whom they would strive to treat as they would wish to be treated themselves. “Not one of you can be a believer,” Muhammad is reported to have said, “unless he desires for his neighbor what he desires for himself.” At first the Meccan establishment took little notice of the ummah, but when Muhammad began to emphasize the monotheism of his message, they became alarmed, for commercial rather than theological reasons. An outright rejection of the local deities would be bad for business and alienate the tribes who kept their totems around the Kabah and came specifically to visit them during the hajj. A serious rift now developed: Muslims were attacked; the ummah, still only a small segment of the Quraysh, was economically and socially ostracized; and Muhammad’s life was in jeopardy. When Arabs from Yathrib, an agrarian colony some 250 miles to the north, invited the ummah to settle with them, it seemed the only solution. In 622, therefore, some seventy Muslim families left their homes for the oasis that would become known as al-Madinat, or Medina, the City of the Prophet.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I say. We both stopped messing with the keypad the day I spilled all that nonsense about Adam and Eve. “Maybe we should get back to breaking out of here,” I say. Then I run back to the bathroom and throw up. Later as I lie in my bed, still green-faced and queasy, I decide not to try to help anymore. It’s not my forte. I want to be left alone, I should therefore leave others alone. We pick up our code breaking again, for lack of anything else to do. To stave off boredom I try my hand at reading again. It doesn’t work; I have kidnapped ADD. I like the feel of paper beneath my fingertips. The sound a page makes when it turns over. So I don’t see the words, but I touch the pages and turn them until I’ve finished the book. Isaac sees me doing it one day, and laughs at me. “Why don’t you just read the book?” he asks. “I can’t focus. I want to, but I can’t.” He comes over and takes it from my hands. The sofa yields as he sits down next to me and opens it to the first page. He’s sitting so close our legs are touching. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. I close my eyes and listen to his voice. When he reads the words, “I was destined to be unlucky in life…” my eyes shoot open. I want to say Jinx. Maybe I’ll like David Copperfield after all. This isn’t the first time Isaac’s read to me. The last time was under very different circumstances. Very different and very much the same. He reads until his voice becomes hoarse. Then I take the book from him and read until mine gives, too. We mark the spot and set it down until tomorrow. [image file=image10.jpg] Nothing happens for weeks. We develop a routine, if you can call it that. It’s more of a day-to-day stay sane and survive kind of thing. I call it Sanity Circulation. When you’re caged up you need somewhere to send your hours, or you start getting prickly, like when you sit in the same position for too long and your legs get pins and needles. Except when you get them in your brain, you’re pretty much on your way to the nuthouse. So we try to circulate. Or, I do at least. Isaac looks like he’s two blinks away from needing Haloperidol and a padded room. He makes coffee in the morning, that’s consistent. There is a huge sack of coffee beans in the pantry and several industrial sized cans of instant. He uses the beans, saying that when we run out of juice in the generator we can heat water for the instant over the fire. When … not if.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  In short, every thing that is generally unamiable in his season of life, was, in him, repaired by so many advantages, that he existed a proof, manifest at least to me, that it is not out of the power of age to please, if it lays out to please, and if, making just allowance, those in that class do not forget, that if must cost them more pains and attention, than what youth, the natural spring-time of joy, stands in need of: as fruits out of season require proportionally more skill and cultivation, to force them. With this gentleman, who took me home soon after our acquaintance commenced, I lived near eight months in which time, my constant complaisance and docility, my attention to deserve his confidence and love, and a conduct, in general, devoid of the least art and founded on my sincere regard and esteem for him, won and attached him so firmly to me, that, after having generously trusted me with a genteel, independent settlement, proceeding to heap marks of affection on me, he appointed me, by an authentic will, his sole heiress and executrix: a disposition which he did not outlive two months, being taken from me by a violent cold that he contracted, as he unadvisedly ran to the window, on an alarm of fire at some streets distant, and stood there naked-breasted, and exposed to the fatal impressions of a damp night air. After acquitting myself of the duty towards my deceased benefactor, and paying him a tribute of un-feigned sorrow, which a little time changed into a most tender, graceful memory of him, which I shall ever retain, I grew somewhat comforted by the prospect that now opened to me, if not of happiness, at least of affluence and independence. I saw myself then in the full bloom and pride of youth (for I was not yet nineteen), actually at the head of so large a fortune, as it would have been even the height of impudence in me to have raised my wishes, much more my hopes to; and that this unexpected elevation did not turn my head, I owed to the pains my benefactor had taken to form and prepare me for it, as I owed his opinion of my management of the vast possessions he left me, to what he had observed of the prudential economy I had learned under Mrs.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  We drink our coffee at the table. Usually in silence, but sometimes Isaac talks to fill the space. I like those days. He tells me about cases that he’s had … difficult surgeries, the patients who lived and ones who didn’t. We eat breakfast after that: oatmeal or powdered eggs. Sometimes crackers with jam spread on them. Then we part ways for a few hours. I go up, he stays down. Usually I use that time to shower and sit in the carousel room. I don’t know why I sit in there except to focus on the bizarre. We switch after that. He comes up to take his shower and I go down to sit for a while in the living room. That’s when I pretend to read the books. We meet up in the kitchen for lunch. We know it’s lunch by our hunger, not by the position of the sun, or by a clock. Tick-tock, tick- tock. Lunch is canned soup or baked beans cooked with hot dogs. Sometimes he defrosts a loaf of bread and we eat that with butter. I clean the dishes. He watches the snow. We drink more coffee, then I go to the attic room to sleep. I don’t know what he does during that time, but when I come downstairs again he’s restless. He wants to talk. I climb up and down the stairs for exercise. Every other day I jog around the house and do sit-ups and push-ups until I feel as if I can’t move. There are a lot of hours between lunch and dinner. Mostly we just wander around from room to room. Dinner is the big event. Isaac makes three things: meat, vegetable and starch. I look forward to his dinners, not just because of the food, but the entertainment as well. I come downstairs early and perch myself on the tablet to watch him cook. Once I asked him to verbalize everything he was doing so I could pretend I was watching a cooking show. He did, only he changed his voice and his accent and spoke in the third person. Isseeec veel sautee zees undetermined meat over ze stove veeth butter and…. Every few days when the mood is lighter I request a different Isaac cook me dinner. My favorite being Rocky Balboa, in which Isaac calls me Adrian and mimics Sylvester Stallone’s awful attempt at a Philly accent. Those are the better nights—little slivers in between the very bad ones. On the bad ones we don’t speak at all. On those days the snow is louder than the kidnapped houseguests.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  I was now so bruised, so battered, so spent with this overmatch, that I could hardly stir, or raise myself, but lay palpitating, till the ferment of my senses subsiding by degrees, and the hour striking at which I was obliged to dispatch my young man, I tenderly advised him of the necessity there was for parting; at which I felt so much displeasure as he could do, who seemed eagerly disposed to keep the field, and to enter on a fresh action. But the danger was too great, and after some hearty kisses of leave, and recommendations of secrecy and discretion, I forced myself to send him away, not without assurances of seeing him again, to the same purpose, as soon as possible, and thrust a guinea into his hands: not more, less, being too flush of money, a suspicion or discovery might arise from thence; having everything to fear from the dangerous indiscretion of that age in which young fellows would be too irresistible, too charming, if we had not that terrible fault to guard against. Giddy and intoxicated as I was with such satiating draughts of pleasure, I still lay on the couch, supinely stretched out, in a delicious languor diffused over all my limbs, hugging myself for being thus revenged to my heart’s content, and that in a manner so precisely alike, and on the identical spot in which I had received the supposed injury. No reflections on the consequences ever once perplexed me, nor did I make myself one single reproach for having, by this step, completely entered myself into a profession more decried than disused. I should have held it ingratitude to the pleasure I had received, to have repented of it; and since I was now over the bar, I thought, by plunging head and ears into the stream I was hurried away by, to drown all sense of shame or reflection. Whilst I was thus making these laudable dispositions, and whispering to myself a kind of tacit vow of incontinency, enters Mr. H... The consciousness of what I had been doing deepened yet the glowing of my cheeks, flushed with the warmth of the late action, which, joined to the piquant air of my dishabile, drew from Mr.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  But Mrs. Cole, in opposition to this, assured me, “that the gentlemen I should be presented to were, by their rank and taste of things, infinitely superior to the being touched with any glare of dress or ornaments, such slick women rather confound and overlay than set off their beauty with; that these veteran voluptuaries knew better than not to hold them in the highest contempt: they with whom the pure native charms alone could pass current, and who would at any time leave a sallow, washy, painted duchess on her own hands, for a ruddy, healthy firm fleshed country maid; and as for my part, that nature had done enough for me, to set me above owing the least favour to art;” concluding withal, that for the instant occasion, there was no dress like an undress. I thought my governess too good a judge of these matters, not to be easily overruled by her: after which she went on preaching very pathetically the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance to all those arbitrary tastes of pleasure, which are by some styled the refinements, and by others the depravations of it; between whom it was not the business of a simple girl, who was to profit by pleasing, to decide, but to conform to. Whilst I was edifying by these wholesome lessons, tea was brought in, and the young ladies, returning, joined company with us. After a great deal of mixed chat, frolic and humour, one of them, observing that there would be a good deal of time on and before the assembly hour, proposed that each girl should entertain the company with that critical period of her personal history, in which she first exchanged the maiden state for womanhood. The proposal was approved, with only one restriction of Mrs. Cole, that she, on account of her age, and I, on account of my titular maidenhead, should be excused, at least till I had undergone the forms of the house. This obtained me a dispensation, and the promotress of this amusement was desired to begin.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Ramon said that it was better to buy flowers from him: ‘I cut fresh from the garden when you want,’ he coaxed gently. He spoke even his broken English with the soft, rather sing-song drawl of the local peasants. ‘But aren’t they our flowers?’ inquired Mary, surprised. Ramon shook his head: ‘Yours to see, yours to touch, but not yours to take, only mine to take—I sell them as part of my little payment. But to you I sell very cheap, Señorita, because you resemble the santa noche that makes our gardens smell sweet at night. I will show you our beautiful santa noche.’ He was thin as a lath and as brown as a chestnut, and his shirt was quite incredibly dirty; but when he walked he moved like a king on his rough bare feet with their broken toe-nails. ‘This evening I make you a present of my flowers; I bring you a very big bunch of tabachero,’ he remarked. ‘Oh, you mustn’t do that,’ protested Mary, getting out her purse. But Ramon looked offended: ‘I have said it. I give you the tabachero.’ 3Their dinner consisted of a local fish fried in oil—the fish had a very strange figure, and the oil, Stephen thought, tasted slightly rancid; there was also a small though muscular chicken. But Concha had provided large baskets of fruit; loquats still warm from the tree that bred them, the full flavoured little indigenous bananas, oranges sweet as though dripping honey, custard apples and guavas had Concha provided, together with a bottle of the soft yellow wine so dearly beloved of the island Spaniards. Outside in the garden there was luminous darkness. The night had a quality of glory about it, the blue glory peculiar to Africa and seen seldom or never in our more placid climate. A warm breeze stirred the eucalyptus trees and their crude, harsh smell was persistently mingled with the thick scents of heliotrope and datura, with the sweet but melancholy scent of jasmine, with the faint, unmistakable odour of cypress. Stephen lit a cigarette: ‘Shall we go out, Mary?’ They stood for a minute looking up at the stars, so much larger and brighter than stars seen in England. From a pond on the farther side of the villa, came the queer, hoarse chirping of innumerable frogs singing their prehistoric love songs. A star fell, shooting swiftly earthward through the darkness.

• From Between Us

  At the end of a dinner party (or throughout, actually), you would emphasize the connectedness between people, referring to the get-together as gezellig , a Dutch word that has become a collector’s item of culture-specific emotion words. Derived from the word for “friend” ( gezel ), gezellig describes both the physical circumstances—being snug in a warm and homely place surrounded by good friends (it is impossible to be gezellig alone)—and an emotional state of feeling “held” and “comfortable.” Stressing the connection is prioritized over acknowledging the host’s efforts. In U.S. contexts, by contrast, appropriate positive emotions often prioritize the articulation of the unique efforts, talents, and contributions of another person. Friends and acquaintances contribute to each other’s sense of value or self-esteem. When my son’s teacher told my mom she was being appreciated as a grandmother, she emphasized that my mom was special to her grandchildren—a domain over which she could claim to have some authority, being the teacher of my son. This is not fake at all: it is just a feeling that comes from a focus on those features or accomplishments that would give the other person reason to feel good about themselves. You are a wonderful grandmother, or in the case of my colleague, your talk had some really novel ideas (“is brilliant”). In America, you praise and acknowledge each other whenever you can. This too could not be more different from the Dutch context, where no one should feel or act any better than another person. No worse, but certainly no better either, than another person. My mom used to tell me “that acting normal would be crazy enough,” usually in response to me doing something that—in her eyes—caught too much attention. Nobody should stand out. When I asked my mom, growing up, if she considered me pretty (hoping she would say yes, I guess), she answered: “I think you are about average.” She was telling me the truth, both grounding me and providing “real connection” between her and me. Differences also show in unpleasant emotions. In the Netherlands, one way of making connection is to speak your mind. It is no coincidence, then, that Dutch people are known to be direct. To be able to identify and express your true feelings (and opinions) is considered both a virtue and a sign of maturity. Rather than making you feel special, a true friend tells you what they feel (about you), whether positive or negative. They say, “You are wrong about that” or “This does not look good on you.” You confront each other with the truth, even if the truth might not always be easy to hear. Being told the truth is always better than not, because it underlines that you have a relationship, as opposed to not. White lies are less acceptable in the Dutch context: They are not taken to mean that you protect your friend or relative, as they clearly are to some of my American friends.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  She even asked me how it was that I had learnt to like the man I had snubbed and treated with such disdain; and then she added,— "'You see you must never be prejudiced, and judge people without knowing them.' "A circumstance, however, which happened at that time forcibly diverted my mother's attention away from Teleny. "A young ballet-girl, whose attention I had apparently attracted at a masked ball, either feeling a certain liking for me, or else thinking me an easy prey, wrote a most loving epistle to me, and invited me to call upon her. "Not knowing how to refuse the honour she was conferring upon me, and at the same time never liking to treat any woman scornfully, I sent her a huge basket of flowers and a book explaining their meaning. "She understood that my love was bestowed elsewhere; still, in return for my present, I received a fine large photograph of her. I then called on her to thank her, and thus we soon got to be very good friends, but only friends and nothing more. "As I had left the letter and the portrait in my room, my mother, who certainly saw the one, must likewise have seen the other, too. That is why she never gave my liaison with the musician a single thought. "In her conversation there were, every now and then, either slight innuendoes or broad hints about the folly of men who ruin themselves for the corps de ballet , or about the bad taste of those who marry their own and other people's mistresses, but that was all. "She knew that I was my own master, therefore she did not meddle with my own private life, but left me to do exactly what I liked. If I had a faux menage somewhere or other, so much the better or so much the worse for me. She was glad that I had the good taste to respect les convenances , and not to make a public affair of it. Only a man of forty-five who has made up his mind not to marry can brave public opinion, and keep a mistress ostentatiously. "Moreover, it has occurred to me that, as she did not wish me to look too closely into the aim of her frequent little journeys, she left me full liberty to act at my own discretion." "She was still a young woman at that time, was she not?" "That entirely depends upon what you call a young woman. She was about thirty-seven or thirty-eight, and was exceedingly young-looking for her age. She has always been spoken of as a most beautiful and desirable woman. "She was very handsome. Tall, with splendid arms and shoulders, a well-poised and erect head, you could not have helped remarking her whithersoever she went.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  From the broad ankle my hand went up to the knee, then higher, and always higher, to her evident satisfaction. When at last it had reached the top of her legs,—"There, there, doctor! you have hit it," she said, in a soft, purring voice; "how clever you are to find the right spot. Rub gently all round there. Yes, like that; neither higher up nor lower down—a little more broadwise, perhaps—just a leetle more in the middle, doctor! Oh, what good it does me to be rubbed like that! I feel quite another person; ever so much younger—quite frisky, in fact. Rub, doctor, rub!" And she rolled in the bed rapturously, after the fashion of an old tabby. "'Then, all at once,—"But I think you are mesmerizing me, doctor! Oh, what fine blue eyes you have! I can see myself in your luminous pupils as in a mirror." Thereupon, putting an arm round my neck, she began to pull me down on her, and to kiss me eagerly—or I ought rather to say, to suck me with two thick lips that felt against mine like huge horse-leeches. "'Seeing that I could not go on with my massage, and getting to understand at last what kind of friction she required, I pushed aside the tufts of coarse, crisp, and thick hair, I introduced the tip of my finger between the bulgy lips, and tickled, rubbed, and chafed the full-sized and frisky clitoris in such a way that I soon made it piss copiously: that, however—far from soothing and satisfying her—only titillated and excited her; so that after this there was no escaping from her clutches. She was, moreover, holding me by the right sort of handle, and I could not afford—like Joseph—to run away and leave it in her hand. "'To calm her, therefore, nothing else was left to me but to get on top of her and administer another kind of massage, which I did with as good a grace as I could, although, as you are all aware, I never cared for women, and above all, for stale ones. Still—for a woman and an old one—she was not so bad, after all. Her lips were thick, fleshy, and bulgy; the sphincter had not got relaxed with age, the erectile tissue had lost none of its muscular strength, her grip was powerful, and the pleasure she gave was not to be despised. I therefore poured two libations into her before I got from over her, during which time she from purring began to mew, and then actually to shriek like a screech-owl, so great was the pleasure she was deriving. "'Whether true or not, she said that she had never felt such pleasure all her life. Anyhow, the cure I effected was a wonderful one, for she shortly afterwards quite recovered the use of her legs.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  My soul which had been storm-tossed only a little while earlier, suddenly was perfectly calm, and I now felt no element of cruelty in Wanda. She slowly descended the stairs, and I could watch her with a calmness in which not a single atom of torment or desire was intermingled. I could see her plunge into and rise out of the crystalline water, and the wavelets which she herself raised played about her like tender lovers. Our nihilistic aesthetician is right when he says: a real apple is more beautiful than a painted one, and a living woman is more beautiful than a Venus of stone. And when she left the bath, and the silvery drops and the roseate light rippled down her body, I was seized with silent rapture. I wrapped the linen sheets about her, drying her glorious body. The calm bliss remained with me, even now when one foot upon me as upon a footstool, she rested on the cushions in her large velvet cloak. The lithe sables nestled desirously against her cold marble-like body. Her left arm on which she supported herself lay like a sleeping swan in the dark fur of the sleeve, while her left hand played carelessly with the whip. By chance my look fell on the massive mirror on the wall opposite, and I cried out, for I saw the two of us in its golden frame as in a picture. The picture was so marvellously beautiful, so strange, so imaginative, that I was filled with deep sorrow at the thought that its lines and colors would have to dissolve like mist. “What is the matter?” asked Wanda. I pointed to the mirror. “Ah, that is really beautiful,” she exclaimed, “too bad one can’t capture the moment and make it permanent.” “And why not?” I asked. “Would not any artist, even the most famous, be proud if you gave him leave to paint you and make you immortal by means of his brush. “The very thought that this extra-ordinary beauty is to be lost to the world,” I continued still watching her enthusiastically, “is horrible—all this glorious facial expression, this mysterious eye with its green fires, this demonic hair, this magnificence of body. The idea fills me with a horror of death, of annihilation. But the hand of an artist shall snatch you from this. You shall not like the rest of us disappear absolutely and forever, without leaving a trace of your having been.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  He was maddening in that way, completely accepting but disengaged, as if it really didn’t matter one way or the other. To signify her newfound identity, Alissa got a tattoo of her favorite Latin poem, the opening line of “Carmen 5” by Catullus: “Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus” (Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love). It snaked all the way down her left arm. EVER SINCE the Time exposé, the church had been frantically trying to recover Tom Cruise. Both Cruise and Nicole Kidman were attaining ever greater success; Cruise became the first actor to star in five consecutive films to gross more than $100 million in the United States, including Jerry Maguire and the first Mission: Impossible; Kidman was also gaining international renown with her roles in Batman Forever and To Die For. They gave the impression that they were putting Scientology behind them. In 1996, Marty Rathbun had gone to Los Angeles to audit Cruise, but that one session went nowhere. According to Rathbun, Miscavige blamed Nicole Kidman and viewed her as a gold digger who was faking Scientology. He says that Miscavige was hopeful that if they portrayed Nicole Kidman as a Suppressive Person, Cruise could be peeled away from her. It was two years before Cruise agreed to go through another bout of auditing. This time, strict secrecy was imposed. Worried about scaring off the tentative star, Rathbun arranged the sessions so that even top officials in the church were unaware that Cruise was receiving services. For five days in October 1998, Cruise drove into a private parking lot in the back of the historic Guaranty Building on Hollywood Boulevard, with the yellow Scientology sign atop it that looms over the fabled district. Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino used to have their offices here. Now the lobby is a shrine to the life and works of L. Ron Hubbard. A giant bust of the founder greets the occasional visitor. Embedded in the sidewalk in front of the building are the stars of bygone celebrities on the Hollywood Walk of Fame—Otto Kruger, Tony Martin, Ann Rutherford, Richard Carlson, Jetta Goudal, Paul Winchell— who had their own moments of great renown and are now largely forgotten. Cruise went in a back door that led to a basement hallway. There was an elevator at the end of the hallway that went directly to the “secret” eleventh floor, where both Miscavige and Rathbun maintained offices. The World Series was under way—New York versus San Diego—and Cruise wore his Yankees hat. “He was not in good shape, spiritually or mentally,” Rathbun observed. “He was personally very enturbulated.” After that episode of auditing, Cruise went quiet again. He and Kidman were in England filming Eyes Wide Shut for Stanley Kubrick. In any case, Rathbun and Miscavige had their hands full, fending off the lawsuits and reporters swirling around the McPherson case.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  I have to read to her, and she discusses with me all sorts of interesting problems and subjects. She seems entirely transformed; it is as if she were ashamed of the savagery which she betrayed to me and of the cruelty with which she treated me. A touching gentleness transfigures her entire being, and when at the good-night she gives me her hand, a superhuman power of goodness and love lies in her eyes, of the kind which calls forth tears in us and causes us to forget all the miseries of existence and all the terrors of death. * * * * * I am reading Manon l’Escault to her. She feels the association, she doesn’t say a word, but she smiles from time to time, and finally she shuts up the little book. “Don’t you want to go on reading?” “Not to-day. We will ourselves act Manon l’Escault to-day. I have a rendezvous in the Cascine, and you, my dear Chevalier, will accompany me; I know, you will do it, won’t you?” “You command it.” “I do not command it, I beg it of you,” she says with irresistible charm. She then rises, puts her hands on my shoulders, and looks at me. “Your eyes!” she exclaims. “I love you, Severin, you have no idea how I love you!” “Yes, I have!” I replied bitterly, “so much so that you have arranged for a rendezvous with some one else.” “I do this only to allure you the more,” she replied vivaciously. “I must have admirers, so as not to lose you. I don’t ever want to lose you, never, do you hear, for I love only you, you alone.” She clung passionately to my lips. “Oh, if I only could, as I would, give you all of my soul in a kiss—thus—but now come.” She slipped into a simple black velvet coat, and put a dark bashlyk 5 on her head. Then she rapidly went through the gallery, and entered the carriage. [Footnote 5: A kind of Russian cap.] “Gregor will drive,” she called out to the coachman who withdrew in surprise. I ascended the driver’s seat, and angrily whipped up the horses. In the Cascine where the main roadway turns into a leafy path, Wanda got out. It was night, only occasional stars shone through the gray clouds that fled across the sky. By the bank of the Arno stood a man in a dark cloak, with a brigand’s hat, and looked at the yellow waves. Wanda rapidly walked through the shrubbery, and tapped him on the shoulder. I saw him turn and seize her hand, and then they disappeared behind the green wall. An hour full of torments. Finally there was a rustling in the bushes to one side, and they returned.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (5:20, 21). Reckon yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus (6:11). There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus (8:1). To them that love God all things work together for good (8:28). Whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son ... and whom he foreordained them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified (8:29, 30). If God is for us, who is against us (8:31)? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ (8:35)? Hardening in part hath befallen Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; and so all Israel shall be saved (11:25). God hath shut up all unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all (11:32). Of Him, and through Him, and unto Him are all things (11:36). Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service (12:1). § 93. The Epistles of the Captivity. During his confinement in Rome, from A.D. 61 to 63, while waiting the issue of his trial on the charge of being "a mover of insurrections among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes" (Acts 24:5), the aged apostle composed four Epistles, to the Colossians, Ephesians, Philemon, and Philippians. He thus turned the prison into a pulpit, sent inspiration and comfort to his distant congregations, and rendered a greater service to future ages than he could have done by active labor. He gloried in being a "prisoner of Christ." He experienced the blessedness of persecution for righteousness’ sake (Matt. 5:10), and "the peace of God which passeth all understanding" (Phil. 4:7). He often refers to his bonds, and the coupling chain or hand-cuff (a{lusi") by which, according to Roman custom, he was with his right wrist fettered day and night to a soldier; one relieving the other and being in turn chained to the apostle, so that his imprisonment became a means for the spread of the gospel "throughout the whole praetorian guard."1143 He had the privilege of living in his own hired lodging (probably in the neighborhood of the praetorian camp, outside of the walls, to the northeast of Rome), and of free intercourse with his companions and distant congregations. Paul does not mention the place of his captivity, which extended through four years and a half (two at Caesarea, two at Rome, and six months spent on the stormy voyage and at Malta). The traditional view dates the four Epistles from the Roman captivity, and there is no good reason to depart from it.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  But that strength is illusory, for it is fashioned within the context of male models of power. As women, we have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge. We have been warned against it all our lives by the male world, which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the service of men, but which fears this same depth too much to examine the possibilities of it within themselves. So women are maintained at a distant/inferior position to be psychically milked, much the same way ants maintain colonies of aphids to provide a life-giving substance for their masters. But the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough. The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling. The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves. It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies. This internal requirement toward excellence which we learn from the erotic must not be misconstrued as demanding the impossible from ourselves nor from others. Such a demand incapacitates everyone in the process. For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness .