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 My People (2022)

  I was bothered by her story for many reasons, the chief of which was that I didn’t have any respect for any slaveholder, dead or not, and to me his word meant nothing. But my grandmother seemed perfectly satisfied that her explanation would be acceptable to the authorities, so for the time being I let the matter rest. Driving through the center of Leverton, I was reminded of the pictures on church fans in which a devout young white Christian family is shown walking hand in hand up a pebbled path to a little white church on a hill. The town was laid out in a perfect circle around a square that featured the most revered of its long-dead heroes, General Lever, posed in an oratorical gesture atop a pedestal overlooking gray pigeons and white spittoons. My grandmother had an easy acquaintance with all the townspeople, including the sheriff and the local politicians, who had all been patrons of my grandfather’s barbershop. Though polite, and probably in most cases decent enough to their wives, these men had the annoying habit of addressing every Negro, regardless of age, by his or her first name, so, whenever possible, I tried to avoid them. Farther along, we passed the Methodist church—a modest white edifice with four Doric columns on its porch. No Negro had ever seen the inside of it, not even to clean it, and doubtless none ever would. We passed a dead-end street that I had never seen before, and my grandmother told me that this was where the new City Building was. First, however, she wanted to go by the cemetery. I drove there, but as we came to the road that wound around it I saw that a deep washed-out gutter would make it impossible to reach the hedge border in the car. I stopped just short of the gutter, and my grandmother and I started to cross it on foot. She was already ahead of me, but she could not get across alone. I took her by the arm and, balancing myself against a fallen branch, boosted her forward, and in a moment we had gone in through the narrow entrance. Nothing had changed since my last visit there. A cloud of red dust from the disturbed hedges enveloped us and settled in our noses and on our clothes, and the high, decumbent grass made our legs and arms itch and sting. Through the growth, we made our way to my grandfather’s grave and found hardly a grain of sand out of its proper place. In the left-hand corner was a budding little tree, surrounded by neatly blocked hedges and green grass that looked like a carpet. The simple headstone that marked the grave was clean and white, and the mound of earth beneath it was neat and solid.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  I save my fantasizing for when I’m alone. I wait till evening, take a couple of drinks, and curl up in bed with a sexy book. Then when the drinks take hold I can imagine my hands are those of my lover. Other fantasies are just daydreams, which I have constantly. My favorite daydream is of me cooking or washing dishes, my lover comes in, puts his arms around me, and as we kiss and press against one another and our passion builds, I just reach behind me and turn off the stove, the dishes are forgotten, everything left wonderfully unfinished in this very interrupted state, as we go off to the bedroom to make love. [Interview] MASTURBATIONNot all idle minds drift to sexual fantasy, as not all sexual fantasy (and idle hands) leads to masturbation. In fact, it’s the old chicken-and-the-egg routine. Fantasy and masturbation: which comes first? But one thing seems certain: that masturbation without fantasy is unlikely, unhappy, unreal. Masturbation doesn’t just require fantasy, it demands it. Without fantasy, masturbation would be too lonely. I don’t even want to think about it. In my researches I didn’t find one woman who said she had never masturbated. You could say that this has something to do with the nature of my subject, that the kind of people who talked to me were bound to be more sexually candid. Perhaps my surprise at finding that all the women I talked to masturbated is more a comment on me than my contributors. Possibly. But you see, it wasn’t that I didn’t expect women to masturbate—to have tried it or stumbled upon it at some point in their lives—I simply didn’t think my own experience was all that universal. It goes back again to how little women know about one another, how inclined we are to feel isolated, different, not like the other girls, because we don’t know about other girls. We all know about men; they masturbate. Little boys and masturbation are a normal, even charming part of the women’s magazine stories as to how little boys are. I suppose that’s it; we’ve all read so much about it, about little boys discovering it, and being discovered. It’s charming. But women? We’re as hidden as our clitorises. By the time we’ve found them, hidden away up there, we’re guilty at having located them. If it were meant to be found and enjoyed, wouldn’t it be in the open, hanging down and swinging free like a cock? (No wonder little girls suffer penis envy.)

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  I don’t pretend to know what makes people work, but I’d be willing to bet that if more people were more open and let themselves go during sex, their brains as well as their bodies, the world would be a better place. I doubt that so many people would be so aggressive and power-crazy if they found a suitable sex partner who would accept all of them. If people could free themselves of deep-rooted sex guilts they’d spend more time becoming good lovers and wouldn’t have so much time for revenge and wars. Good sex makes my husband and me very mellow. Who would think of hating and fighting and plotting to get someone else if they’d just been very sexually satisfied… no matter what means they employed to reach that happy goal? Not many, I’ll bet. So I’m ending up defending my “dirty” thoughts! Believing in them, I guess is what I mean. [Letter] LilI only fantasize when I masturbate, and I suppose what I think about is typical. I imagine it is a man making love to me, that he kisses me passionately all over my body, concentrating most of his ardor on my cunt, teasing the outer lips, loving me totally and expertly. I simply lie there in ecstasy, which makes me feel a little guilty later at having such a selfish fantasy, since I never even imagine touching him. [Letter] AlisonWhen I was fourteen, I had the usual relationship with a close girlfriend (I think most girls have them). In my bedroom she would pretend to be the madam of a house and I would be a virgin girl. She would dress me in a sort of sexy bikini made of chiffon scarves. She would then be the customer, a rowdy seaman who would take me against my will. She would lie on me and rub her vagina against mine. I experienced very intense orgasms (more intense than from any man). After she moved away I never had the chance of another relationship like ours. Now when I masturbate I usually think that I am being seduced by a pretty female. However, if it ever should occur again in reality, I would need to be seduced by the woman in order to control my embarrassment.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  Speaking our fantasies out naturally decreases the novelty of the particular situation to some extent. But we have discarded few, if any, of our fantasies. Actually, we have experienced many of our best fantasies, but even so, they remain effective sex stimulators. The most effective, the favorite, and the one which has withstood the test, is the one concerned with bestiality. It began about twenty years ago, and became a reality about three years ago. Our present dog is the third one, and he should be good for five or six years. The first two were German Shepherds, and we have trained all of them. Until the kids went away to college, dog-screwing was mostly reserved for special occasions, although I had cunnilingus often. I kept the dogs satisfied with masturbation and, when Bill was there to help guard against being surprised, I would fellatiate them. I know this may sound terrible, but it is really very pleasant, especially as I always thoroughly bathe that area with a nonirritating alcohol antiseptic which can be had in any drugstore. Precautions are unnecessary now, but I still enjoy giving him a suck sometimes. I hope that none of what I have written has been offensive. Please use it in any way you wish, if it has any value. [Letter] PosieI am forty-seven years old and have only been married to my present husband for two and a half years. I was previously married for twenty-four years; he was a violent man and sex with him was something hateful. But my new husband is a very good and kind lover who has taught me that sex is a wonderful thing to be enjoyed. I find with him that talking about our fantasies makes them even more exciting when they happen again. What I always like to imagine during sex with my husband is that I’m doing it with someone who doesn’t belong to me. This “someone else” is no one in particular, and not always a man. Far from being jealous or angry, my lover tells me to talk to him and explain in detail things that go on in my mind, and it makes our lovemaking fantastic. One of the favorite devices in my fantasy is to think that someone is watching me, and it becomes so real that it is this that heightens my climax. I do have lesbian fantasies, which really aren’t great, as I’m a man’s woman, but sometimes I do wonder how I would react to seeing another woman feeling her breasts and cunt, actually manipulating herself. I don’t want to be doing it, I just want to watch her. We often indulge in fantasies together, acting out little plays as though we had just met and he has never had a woman before. I seduce him, teach him what to do. Or we switch the roles around and he becomes the instructor. Either way it’s enjoyable. [Letter]

• From The Art of Memoir

  automatically? You’ll have to read the book to find out, for Conroy manages to make even the most quotidian event mean. Nobody’s rendered a teen’s cynical morning haste any better. And the rhythm of the paragraph: the long sentence—three lines—followed by a short sentence—two—leads up to three perfunctory words “End of breakfast.” This is an outlaw boy scrabbling for small sustenance, and the authority of the fat fridge door and his seminal voice—in the context of the rest of the book—lines up with Conroy’s cool, I-can- take-being-neglected persona. So powerful is Conroy’s voice that—at the zenith of his powers—he’s able to sexualize the throwing of a yoyo: That it was vaguely masturbatory seems inescapable. I doubt that half the pubescent boys in America could have been captured by any other means. . . . A single Loop-the-Loop might represent, in some mysterious way, the act of masturbation, but to break down the entire repertoire into the three stages of throw, trick, and return representing erection, climax, and detumescence seems immoderate. Conroy puts himself into a trance practicing the yoyo, thus disassociating from his family’s profound lack of care. Finding that “cool” spot—in the old hep-cat jazz sense of finding a groove— means finding order, silence, a place where time can stop. In such instants of cool, the boy-in-pain Conroy can vanish. He’ll later find sex and music and liquor and driving too fast as other modes of escape into selfless silence. Having taught Conroy’s Stop-Time for some thirty years, I can testify that students seem to trust this voice. They believe it—that it won’t lie or mislead, fabricate events or pander, confess the lesser sin to hide the greater, bore or beg for pity. Ergo, in literary terms, it sounds true. Again: voice grows from the nature of a writer’s talent, which stems from innate character. Just as a memoirist’s nature bestows her magic powers on the page, we also wind up seeing how selfish or mean-spirited or divisive she is or was. We don’t see events objectively; we perceive them through ourselves. And we remember through a filter of both who we are now and who we once were.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  EXPLORATIONThe next three fantasies are from women who are sexually happy in their beds. At least they say they are, and I’m prepared to accept what a woman tells me about her sex life. The alternative is to say that because each of these women fantasizes beyond what is actually happening, it follows that the real sex is inadequate and she dissatisfied. But that would be playing more than amateur psychiatrist, it would be playing God. No thank you. For many women, fantasy is a way of exploring, safely, all the ideas and actions which might frighten them in reality. In fantasy they can expand their reality, play out certain sexual variables and images in much the same way that children enter into fantasy as a form of play, of trying out desires, releasing energies for which they have no outlet in reality. Thinking about it, even getting excited over the image, doesn’t mean you want it as your reality… or else we all, night dreamers that we are, would be suppressed robbers, bisexuals, murderers, or even inanimate objects. KarenI have this fantasy quite often while Ben is fucking me. In fact, I’d say I have it during our best sessions, when my body is most relaxed and inventive. Ben gets so excited when I’m into this fantasy it’s as though he were having it too. Yet I know if it were to really happen it would scare the hell out of him—and out of me. I don’t think we have any room in our lives for any kind of group scene; it simply wouldn’t fit in; we wouldn’t know how to handle it. But in fantasy, it’s fantastic.

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

  Every thing being settled, and it being a fine summer day, but rather of the warmest, we set out after dinner, and got to our rendezvous about four in the afternoon; where, landing at the foot of a neat, joyous pavilion, Emily and I were handed into it by our esquires, and there drank tea with a cheerfulness and gaiety, that the beauty of the prospect, the serenity of the weather, and the tender politeness of our sprightly gallants, naturally led us into. After tea, and taking a turn in the garden, my particular, who was the master of the house, and had in no sense schemed this party of pleasure for a dry one, proposed to us, with that frankness which his familiarity at Mrs. Cole’s entitled him to, as the weather was excessively hot, to bathe together, under a commodious shelter that he had prepared expressly for that purpose, in a creek of the river, with which a side-door of the pavilion immediately communicated, and where we might be sure of having our diversion out, safe from interruption, and with the utmost privacy. Emily, who never refused anything, and I, who ever delighted in bathing, and had no exception to the person who proposed it, or to those pleasure it was easy to guess it implied, took care, on this occasion, not to wrong our training at Mrs. Cole’s, and agreed to it with as good a grace as we could. Upon which, without loss of time, we returned instantly to the pavilion, one door of which opened into a tent, pitched before it, that with its marquise, formed a pleasing defense again the sun, or the weather, and was besides as private as we could wish. The lining of it, embossed cloth, represented a wild forest foliage, from the top, down to the sides, which, in the same stuff, were figured with fluted pilasters, with their spaces between filled with flower vases, the whole having a pay effect croon the eye, wherever you turned it. Then it reached sufficiently into the water, yet contained convenient benches round it, on the dry ground, either to keep our clothes, or..., or..., in short for more uses than resting upon. There was a side-table too, loaded with sweetmeats, jellies, and other eatables, and bottles of wine and cordials, by way of occasional relief from any rawness, or chill of the water, or from any faintness from whatever cause; and in fact, my gallant, who understood chère entiêre perfectly, and who, for taste (even if you would not approve this specimen of it) might have been comptroller of pleasures to a Roman emperor, had left no requisite towards convenience or luxury unprovided.

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

  25. The love of God is itself a gift of God. To these chapters the synod added a Creed of anthropology and soteriology, which, in opposition to Semi-Pelagianism, contains the following five propositions:1891 1. Through the fall free will has been so weakened, that without prevenient grace no one can love God, believe on Him, or do good for God’s sake, as he ought (sicut oportuit, implying that he may in a certain measure). 2. Through the grace of God all may, by the co-operation of God, perform what is necessary for their soul’s salvation. 3. It is by no means our faith, that any have been predestinated by God to sin (ad malum), but rather: if there are people who believe so vile a thing, we condemn them with utter abhorrence (cum omni detestatione).1892 4. In every good work the beginning proceeds not, from us, but God inspires in us faith and love to Him without merit precedent on our part, so that we desire baptism, and after baptism can, with His help, fulfil His will. 5. Because this doctrine of the fathers and the synod is also salutary for the laity, the distinguished men of the laity also, who have been present at this solemn assembly, shall subscribe these acts. In pursuance of this requisition, besides the bishops, the Praefectus praetorio Liberius, and seven other viri illustres, signed the Acts. This recognition of the lay element, in view of the hierarchical bent of the age, is significant, and indicates an inward connection of evangelical doctrine with the idea of the universal priesthood. And they were two laymen, we must remember, Prosper and Hilarius, who first came forward in Gaul in energetic opposition to Semi-Pelagianism and in advocacy of the sovereignty of divine grace. The decisions of the council were sent by Caesarius to Rome, and were confirmed by pope Boniface II. in 530. Boniface, in giving his approval, emphasized the declaration, that even the beginning of a good will and of faith is a gift of prevenient grace, while Semi-Pelagianism left open a way to Christ without grace from God. And beyond question, the church was fully warranted in affirming the pre-eminence of grace over freedom, and the necessity and importance of the gratia praeveniens. Notwithstanding this rejection of the Semi-Pelagian teachings (not teachers), they made their way into the church again, and while Augustine was universally honored as a canonized saint and standard teacher, Cassian and Faustus of Rhegium remained in grateful remembrance as saints in France.1893

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

  Mrs. Cole still continued her friendship, and offered me her assistance and advice towards another choice; but I was now in ease and affluence enough to look about me at leisure; and as to any constitutional calls of pleasure, their pressure, or sensibility, was greatly lessened by a consciousness of the ease with which they were to be satisfied at Mrs. Cole’s house, where Louisa and Emily still continued in the old way; and my great favourite Harriet used often to come and see me, and entertain me, with her head and heart full of the happiness she enjoyed with her dear baronet, whom she loved with a tenderness and constancy, even though he was her keeper, and what is yet more, had made her independent, by a handsome provision for her and hers. I was then in this vacancy from any regular employ of my person in my way of business, when one day, Mrs. Cole, in the course of the constant confidence we lived in, acquainted me that there was one Mr. Barville, who used her house, just come to town, whom she was not a little perplexed about providing a suitable companion for; which was indeed a point of difficulty, as he was under the tyranny of a cruel taste: that of an ardent desire, not only of being unmercifully whipped himself, but of whipping others, in such sort, that though he paid extravagantly those who had the courage and complaisance to submit to his humour, there were few, delicate as he was in the choice of his subjects, who would exchange turns with him so terribly at the expense of their skin. But, what yet increased the oddity of this strange fancy was the gentleman being young; whereas it generally attacks, it seems, such as are, through age, obliged to have recourse to this experiment, for quickening the circulation of their sluggish juices, and determining a conflux of the spirits of pleasure towards those flagging shrivelly parts, that rise to life only by virtue of those titillating ardours created by the discipline of their opposites, with which they have so surprising a consent.

• From The Fixed Stars: A Memoir (2020)

  [image file=image_rsrc2FJ.jpg] 1The jury summons came in late spring. There’s an optimism to bringing in the mail—a small, dinky optimism, but I like it. It’s reliable. Leaning against the kitchen counter, I spread out my loot. Wedged between the electric bill and a glossy sheaf of coupons is the jury summons. It’s a white trifold, stapled, with block letters announcing its contents. I split the staple from the paper with my thumb. There’s a rhythmic thump behind me, probably June trying to liberate the bin of toys we keep wedged under the sideboard. The afternoons are stretching toward summer now, but the countertop is still cold under my elbows, the way cotton bedsheets are when you first climb in. The summons reads, TUESDAY, 8:30 A.M. We have a babysitter every Tuesday until five, and Brandon will be at the new restaurant site all day, supervising the buildout. If I’ve got to have jury duty, I guess a Tuesday’s not bad. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] The courthouse peers down a sloping grid of streets toward Puget Sound. I ride the elevator up and give my name to a woman in shoulder pads at the reception desk. There are already a few dozen people seated in the assembly room, recipients of the same summons. We wait. I don’t mind; I’ve brought my laptop and a magazine. I don’t want to wind up on a jury, but being stuck in this room presents the pleasant constraints of an airplane in mid-flight: there’s nowhere to go and nothing else to do, so I might as well work. The receptionist begins to read names, and mine comes halfway down the page-long list. I stand and join the crowd that’s collecting in the entryway, where another woman appears, announcing herself as the bailiff. She hands us each a numbered sheet of paper in a plastic sleeve. We’ll be going into the courtroom shortly, and we’re to follow her to the seats in back. We follow her like ducklings, around a wall behind the judge’s bench and into a fluorescent-lit courtroom. I’m pleased that it looks like all the ones on TV, though it’s missing Sam Waterston. The judge has short feathered hair and wears black robes and a pair of drugstore reading glasses, over which she watches us enter. She gives off the aura of a successful real estate agent from the 1980s, a childhood friend’s mom who served Lean Cuisine every weeknight without apology. There’s a female prosecutor and two attorneys on the defense’s side. The bailiff leads us past them, through a wooden gate, to our seats.

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  Even then, the tail looped over the edge and burnt. It was the meatiest fish we ate that night, with the greatest proportion of white flesh to spiky bones. Lecia and I ate it while he worked up a skillet full of thin-sliced red potatoes along with Vidalia onions he’d quartered. I can still see Daddy scraping at those potatoes, which would keep the smoky fish taste from the lard. He was singing “Goodnight Irene” under his breath, staring into the skillet with that faraway look. Watching the sky arch above us through pines, I thought about a passage I’d read in the encyclopedias Grandma bought us, how the Rockies were formed by glaciers sliding across the continent to rake up zillions of tons of rock. I pictured one moving slow as white silk across where we sat. Maybe God dropped that boulder off right there , I wrote in my diary the next day, for us to cook on. (Comfort makes fools of us that way, and a kid gets faith back quick.) At one point Daddy said to hush, and through the far pines, lit by a three-quarter moon, we made out the blunted antlers of a moose, which struck me as noble in its bigjawed ugliness. It chewed in profile slow as a ballplayer. Sometime later, a bobcat even yowled, close enough to make me scoot up under Daddy’s arm, which fear made him laugh and say nothing was going to bother me. And I believed him. After we ate, Daddy stoked the fire again. He lay back on a jeans jacket he’d balled up and sipped at a silver whiskey flask. Lecia and I undid a couple of wire coat hangers for marshmallows. I roasted three at a time, dipping them right in the fire. They blazed and cooked black outside, but inside were nothing but goo. Lecia was more even in approach: she toasted them singly to a pale gold color. She even bent one end of the hanger, so it had a rotary handle she could turn like an honest-to-God spit. For once that difference struck me okay without sinking me into a swamp of worry about how it might augur about my character, or lack of character. She even told me while she sat twisting her spit that mine was one helluva fish, and Daddy agreed. We fell asleep beside him on that unlikely cold stone, both full as ticks on fish and potatoes, each snuggled under an armpit, our heads on his chest. He still smelled of horse. A few times some coal crumbling in on itself caused me to jerk awake; then I saw sparks surge up in a tower and felt Daddy draw our football jackets up over our shoulders. Otherwise, he lay still, the flask balanced on his breast bone at the perfect angle so he could sip steady without lifting his head or spilling down his chin.

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

  The plea of love then over-ruling all objections, for him, which he could not but read the sincerity of in a heart ever open to him, obliged me to receive his hand, by which means I was in pass, among other innumerable blessings, to bestow a legal parentage on those fine children you have seen by this happiest of matches. Thus, at length, I got snug into port, where, in the bosom of virtue, I gathered the only uncorrupt sweets: where, looking back on the course of vice I had run, and comparing its infamous blandishments with the infinitely superior joys of innocence, I could not help pitying, even in point of taste, those who, immersed in gross sensuality, are insensible to the so delicate charms of VIRTUE, than which even PLEASURE has not a greater friend, nor VICE a greater enemy. Thus temperance makes men lords over those pleasures that intemperance enslaves them to: the one, parent of health, vigour fertility cheerfulness, and every other desirable good of life; the other, of diseases, debility, barrenness, self-loathing, with only every evil incident to human nature. You laugh, perhaps, at this tail-piece of morality, extracted from me by the force of truth, resulting from compared experiences: you think it, no doubt, out of character; possibly too you may look on it as the paultry finesse of one who seeks to mask a devotee to vice under a rag of a veil, impudently smuggled from the shrine of Virtue: just as if one was to fancy one’s self completely disguised at a masquerade, with no other change of dress than turning one’s shoes into slippers; or, as if a writer should think to shield a treasonable libel, by concluding it with a formal prayer for the King. But, independent of my flattering myself that you have a juster opinion of my sense and sincerity, give me leave to represent to you, that such a supposition is even more injurious to Virtue than to me: since, consistently with candour and good nature, it san have no foundation but in the falsest of fears, that its pleasures cannot stand in comparison with those of Vice; but let truth dare to hold it up in its most alluring light: then mark, how spurious, how low of taste, how comparatively inferior its joys are to those which Virtue gives sanction to, and whose sentiments are not above making even a sauce for the senses, but a sauce of the highest relish; whilst Vices are the harpies that infect and foul the feast. The paths of Vice are sometimes strewed with roses, but then they are for ever infamous for many a thorn, for many a cankerworm: those of Virtue are strewed with roses purely, and those eternally unfading ones.

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

  Mr. H...., so experienced, so learned in the ways of women, numbers of whom had passed through his hands, doubtless, soon perceived this uneasiness, and, without approving, or liking me the better for it, had the complaisance to indulge me. He made suppers at my lodging, where he brought several companions of his pleasures, with their mistresses; and by this means I got into a circle of acquaintance, that soon stripped me of all the remains of bashfulness and modesty which might be yet left of my country education, and were, to a just taste, perhaps, the greatest of my charms. We visited one another in form, and mimicked, as near as we could, all the miseries, the follies, and impertinencies of the women in quality, in the round of which they trifle away their time, without it ever entering their little heads, that on earth there cannot subsist any thing more silly, more flat, more insipid and worthless, than, generally considered, their system of life is: they ought to treat the men as their tyrants, indeed! were they to condemn them to it. But though, amongst the kept mistresses (and I was now acquainted with a good many, besides some useful matrons, who live by their connexions with them), I hardly knew one that did not perfectly detest their keepers, and, of course, made little or no scruple of any infidelity they could safely accomplish, I had still no notion of wronging mine: for, besides that no mark of jealousy on his side started me the hint, or gave me the provocation to play him a trick of that sort, and that his constant generosity, politeness, and tender attention to please me, forced a regard to him, that, without affecting my heart, insured him my fidelity, no object had yet presented that could overcome the habitual liking I had contracted for him and I was on the eve of obtaining, from the movements of his own voluntary generosity, a modest provision for life, when an accident happened which broke all the measures he had resolved upon in my favour.

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

  "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. Her eyes were large and of an invariable and impassable calmness that nothing ever seemed to ruffle; her eyebrows, which almost met, were level and thick; her hair, dark, naturally wavy, and in massy clusters; her forehead, low and broad; her nose, straight and small. All this combined to give something classically grave and statuesque to her whole countenance.

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

  The noblest type of an apostolic deaconess, which has come down to us from this period, is Olympias, the friend of Chrysostom, and the recipient of seventeen beautiful epistles from him.470 She sprang from a respectable heathen family, but received a Christian education; was beautiful and wealthy; married in her seventeenth year (A.D. 384) the prefect of Constantinople, Nebridius; but in twenty months after was left a widow, and remained so in spite of the efforts of the emperor Theodosius to unite her with one of his own kindred. She became a deaconess; lived in rigid asceticism; devoted her goods to the poor; and found her greatest pleasure in doing good. When Chrysostom came to Constantinople, he became her pastor, and guided her lavish benefaction by wise counsel. She continued faithful to him in his misfortune; survived him by several years, and died in 420, lamented by all the poor and needy in the city and in the country around. In the West, on the contrary, the office of deaconess was first shorn of its clerical character by a prohibition of ordination passed by the Gallic councils in the fifth and sixth centuries;471 and at last it was wholly abolished. The second synod of Orleans, in 533, ordained in its eighteenth canon: "No woman shall henceforth receive the benedictio diaconalis [which had been substituted for ordinatio], on account of the weakness of this sex." The reason betrays the want of good deaconesses, and suggests the connection of this abolition of an apostolic institution with the introduction of the celibacy of the priesthood, which seemed to be endangered by every sort of female society. The adoption of the care of the poor and sick by the state, and the cessation of adult baptisms and of the custom of immersion, also made female assistance less needful. In modern times, the Catholic church, it is true, has special societies or orders of women, like the Sisters of Mercy, for the care of the sick and poor, the training of children, and other objects of practical charity; and in the bosom of Protestantism also similar benevolent associations have arisen, under the name of Deaconess Institutes, or Sisters’ Houses, though in the more free evangelical spirit, and without the bond of a vow.472 But, though quite kindred in their object, these associations are not to be identified with the office of deaconess in the apostolic age and in the ancient church. That was a regular, standing office in every Christian congregation, corresponding to the office of deacon; and has never since the twelfth century been revived, though the local work of charity has never ceased. To the ordinary clergy there were added in this period sundry extraordinary church offices, rendered necessary by the multiplication of religious functions in large cities and dioceses:

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

  However much we may decline to believe that monasticism is a higher form of Christian life, we must give due credit to these men, or deny to a series of centuries all progress and good whatsoever. The times were favorable for the development of monastic communities. If our own is the age of the laic, the mediaeval period was the age of the monk. Society was unsettled and turbulent. The convent offered an asylum of rest and of meditation. Bernard calls his monks "the order of the Peaceful." Feud and war ruled without. Every baronial residence was a fortress. The convent was the scene of brotherhood and co-operation. It furnished to the age the ideal of a religious household on earth. The epitaphs of monks betray the feeling of the time, pacificus, "the peaceful"; tranquilla pace serenus, "in quiet and undisturbed repose"; fraternae pacis amicus, "friend of brotherly peace." The circumstances are presented by Caesar of Heisterbach under which a number of monks abandoned the world, and were "converted"—that is, determined to enter a convent. Now the decision was made at a burial.538 Now it was due to the impression made by the relation of the wonderful things which occurred in convents. This was the case with a young knight, Gerlach,539 who listened to an abbot who was then visiting a castle, as he told his experiences within cloistral walls. Gerlach went to Paris to study, but could not get rid of the seed which had been sown in his heart, and entered upon the monastic novitiate. Sometimes the decision was made in consequence of a sermon.540 Caesar of Heisterbach himself was "converted" by a description given by Gerard of Walberberg, abbot of Heisterbach, while they were on the way to Cologne during the troublous times of Philip of Swabia and Otto IV. Gerard described the appearance of the Virgin, her mother Anna, and St. Mary Magdalene, who descended from the mountain and revealed themselves to the monks of Clairvaux while they were engaged in the harvest, dried the perspiration from their foreheads, and cooled them by fanning. Within three months Caesar entered the convent of Heisterbach.541 There were in reality only two careers in the Middle Ages, the career of the knight and the career of the monk. It would be difficult to say which held out the most attractions and rewards, even for the present life. The monk himself was a soldier. The well-ordered convent offered a daily drill, exercise following exercise with the regularity of clockwork; and though the enemy was not drawn up in visible array on open field, he was a constant reality.542 Barons, counts, princes joined the colonies of the spiritual militia, hoping thereby to work out more efficiently the problem of their salvation and fight their conflict with the devil. The Third Lateran, 1179, bears witness to the popularity of the conventual life among the higher classes, and the tendency to restrict

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

  After a sufficient length of dialogue, my bedfellow left me to my rest, and I fell asleep, through pure weariness, from the violent emotions I had been led into, when nature which had been too warmly stirred and fermented to subside without allaying by some means or other relieved me by one of those luscious dreams, the transports of which are scarce inferior to those of waking real action. In the morning I awoke about ten, perfectly gay and refreshed. Phœbe was up before me, and asked me in the kindest manner how I did, how I had rested, and if I was ready for breakfast? carefully, at the same time, avoiding to increase the confusion she saw I was in, at looking her in the face, by any hint of the night’s bed scene. I told her if she pleased I would get up, and begin any work she would be pleased to set me about. She smiled; presently the maid brought in the tea equipage, and I just huddled my clothes on, when in waddled my mistress. I expected no less than to be told of, if not chid for, my late rising, when I was most agreeably disappointed by her compliments on my pure and fresh looks. I was “a bud of beauty” (this was her style), “and how vastly all the fine men would admire me!” to all which my answers did not, I can assure you, wrong my breeding; they were as simple and silly as they could wish, and, no doubt, flattered them infinitely more than had they proved me enlightened by education and a knowledge of the world. We breakfasted, and the tea things were scarce removed, when in were brought two bundles of linen and wearing apparel: in short, all the necessaries for rigging me out, as they termed it, completely. Imagine to yourself, Madam, how my little coquet heart fluttered with joy at the sight of a white lutestring, flowered with silver, scoured indeed, but passed on me for spick and span new, a Brussels lace cap, braited shoes, and the rest in proportion, all second-hand finery, and procured instantly for the occasion, by the diligence and industry of the good Mrs. Brown, who had already a chapman for me in the house, before whom my charms were to pass in review; for he had not only, in course, insisted on a previous sight of the premises, but also on immediate surrendering to him, in case of his agreeing for me; concluding very wisely, that such a place as I was in, was of the hottest to trust the keeping of such a perishable commodity in, as a maidenhead.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  BabsMy fantasies are so personal, and the pleasure I get from them derives so much, I think, from the fact that they are private and locked away in my imagination, that I wouldn’t dream of trying to make them come true. I’ve thought a lot about this, especially after writing this letter. I almost didn’t write it for fear of diminishing this pleasure; I was afraid that putting them on paper would lessen their effectiveness. Luckily it hasn’t, perhaps because I don’t know you. I mean, if someone, even a close friend, asked me to speak them aloud so that the words actually made sound for someone to hear, I don’t think I could do it. And if I could, it certainly would spoil them for me, especially the ones involving love. But act my fantasies out? Make them come true? No, absolutely not. My real life’s not what they’re about; I don’t want those things to really happen to me, I simply want to imagine what it would be like. So that’s where they’ll stay. [Letter] ElizabethI am twenty-five years of age and have spent most of my life in Kansas City. My husband and I have been married nearly five years and we have a son four years old. I am a college graduate, interested in painting and music, and after graduation I spent a short time working as an actress in summer stock. My present job is that of a telephone solicitor. Good luck in your research. Here goes. Usually during sex I concentrate on what I’m doing and who I’m with. However, I sometimes fantasize that I am with an old boyfriend or a complete stranger, that another man in addition to my husband is making love to me. There is a friend of my husband’s with whom I once had a sexual encounter (at my husband’s urging) and I often imagine him as the extra man. This fantasy happens when my husband and I are having anal intercourse. While I am stimulating my clitoris or my husband stimulates it for me, I pretend that the other man and I are enjoying vaginal intercourse while I’m having anal intercourse with my husband at the same time. I sometimes think about the other women I know my husband has been with and wonder if he did the same things to them and how they reacted. I imagine that I am he, making love to one of these women. Also, when I am blowing my husband I try to imagine how it feels to have a penis with someone sucking it or tickling it with her tongue. I can almost feel the semen being sucked out when I would (when he does) obtain orgasm. I thoroughly enjoy my fantasies and find talking about them increases the excitement.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  This has been a difficult letter to write. My recollections have been so arousing that I have had to stop twice to masturbate with a “phallocrypt” made by my houseboy. This is rather like a dildo and is used by some native women when their men are away to satisfy themselves. My particular one is made exactly to the size of my husband in erection. My thoughts when I use it are that the native boy who made it is standing in for my husband. But this does not matter when I close my eyes and cannot see the boy, just feel the delightful weapon working exactly as my husband does. If only it could spurt semen or cream into me… right now. [From a correspondent in the Pacific] “OF COURSE I FANTASIZE, DOESN’T EVERYONE?”A guiltless minority never seem to have any hesitations at all about the subject. They contribute as readily as if I’d invited them to a party where they know they’ll have a good time because they already know the guests. “Fantasies? Of course I have fantasies, doesn’t everyone?” In fact, Gloria (below) was convinced that no fantasy anthology could be complete without hers, which she uses daily in her work as a model. For women like her, there’s no wall between fantasy and reality; what you think and what you do needn’t be the same, but they don’t have to be separated as though they were at war with one another. A woman who lives this close to her fantasy isn’t dragging out the dirty laundry from the bottom of the pit when she talks to you; the material is easily available to her. What’s significant isn’t whether her real and fantasy lives coexist, or even whether she acts out her fantasies, but that each does exist and is accepted. Her fantasies are part of her self-awareness; there is no threat, no anxiety. That’s how she is. For women like Hannah, there are no secrets or shame in fantasy: she keeps a photo of her fantasy lover in her mirror as she would that of a real lover, and enjoys slipping into her fantasy routine any night she happens to be alone and in the mood. To Sophie, her fantasy is barely a fantasy at all—just a desirable way to live, and she proceeds with no hesitation at all to put her desire to live with two different, equally exciting men immediately into practice. As I said, some people live so close to their fantasies that they live inside them. I don’t know how significant it is that the four women in the fantasies that follow are young, but I suspect it is. I’ve included my youngest contributor here—fifteen years old and technically still a virgin—because of her simple candor and self-acceptance. Maybe it says something for fantasy’s future. GloriaI really don’t think any anthology of sex fantasies would be complete without mine. It’s got to be the greatest one there is.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  On the other hand, deepest contentment occurs at those moments when we are fully accepting of ourselves. At such times we respect our actions, feelings, bodies, thoughts. Failure to accept any of these aspects of ourselves is synonymous with self-alienation. One of the highest states of consciousness attainable is that of the nonjudgmental observer. In such a state, freed from the distortions of needs and value judgments (“If a pickpocket sees a Holy Man he will see only his pockets”),1 he will begin to see WHAT IS, both in the world about him and within himself. Gurdjieff, the Russian philosopher-mystic, tried to teach people to develop “the Witness” within themselves. “The Witness” could detach itself and nonjudgmentally witness and thereby accept both inner and outer events. Zen Masters and Yogis try to teach a similar acceptance to their students. All of these thinkers appreciate the fact that you don’t think your thoughts, but rather that your thoughts think through you. They recognize that you are no more responsible for thinking than you are for digestion, breathing, for life itself. You may bear a certain degree of responsibility for what you do with your thoughts, but you certainly bear none for having them. My Secret Garden is a compilation of uncensored data on women’s most secret sexual thoughts. This is something that has not been done in our time. As a psychiatrist who has listened to such fantasies before, I consider it an honest accounting. It is also a useful book, for it can help other women witness and accept their fantasies and themselves. And yet I am certain that many people in our society will attack this work. They will do so by attempting to ignore it, condemn it, ban it, laugh at it, intellectually dismiss it, or psychoanalyze it. In doing so such critics will only reinforce their own and others’ self-alienation. The attacks on My Secret Garden will come from three directions. The most primitive charge will be that the women Ms. Friday interviewed are tortured or abnormal in some way and don’t represent the average woman. The second and more sophisticated attack will be the intellectual/psychoanalytic approach, which will attempt to demonstrate why certain fantasies are not “healthy.” Lastly there is the attack to be waged by the anti-Eros forces—those who regard such a frank sexual discussion as this work as either pornography or perversity. Both the nature of these lines of attack and the bankruptcy of such charges are themes I would like to explore more fully. 1. The Women Interviewed Are Not Representative2It might be argued that Ms. Friday’s respondees were not representative of the average woman; that those who would talk about their fantasies are by nature exhibitionists or sexually preoccupied; that only the most “sensationalistic” fantasies found their way into print; that the sampling leaves out women who don’t fantasize and therefore gives a misleading picture of female reveries.