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 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 Between Us

  I think laughing is healthy. Keller tells us that German middle-class babies and their mothers spend about 80 to 90 percent of their interaction time with face-to-face contact. In many of these situations mothers made eye contact, smiled, and made positive vocalizations. Of course, as much as German mothers value and stimulate positive emotionality, their children sometimes cry too, and even then, the mothers give room to their babies’ emotions. They try to find the reason for the babies crying, and rather than telling them to be calm, they try to find out how the situation needs to be changed or influenced on behalf of the baby. “Don’t you want to lie down anymore? Do you need your pacifier?,” one mother asked her crying baby. The baby cannot yet influence their environment themselves at this point in development, but the mother can help them moving away from the undesirable and towards the desirable circumstances: for example, by picking them up, or giving them their pacifier. In the process, German babies get prepared to be influencers. Nso are not the only adjusters and Germans not the only movers, it seems. When white U.S. preschoolers were asked if they would rather be like a picture of a face with a “big smile,” or like a picture of a face with a “small smile,” almost all of them told Jeanne Tsai, psychologist from Stanford, that they’d prefer to have the big smile. Yet their Taiwanese peers did not have the same preference for big smiles: just as many of them would have preferred the small smile as the big one. Being calm, in other words, was a much more favorable feeling for three- to five-year-old children in Taiwan than in the United States. This greater preference for calm was consistent, regardless of how the question was asked. For instance, when the activity was swimming, the majority of Taiwanese preschool kids preferred sitting and floating on an inner tube over jumping and splashing, but this was not the case for same- aged European American children. Taiwanese children preferred calm over active; European American children did not. Finally, almost all of the European American children found the big smile “happier” than the calm smile, but only about half of the Taiwanese children did; the other half found the calm smile “happier.” In their observations of mother-child interactions in Taiwan, Fung and Chen observed that many toddlers were shamed when they cried. Didi’s mom shamed him the next day for crying when he slipped on the wet floor of the bathroom and fell. “Didi is most annoying, simply loves to cry!” Didi’s sister echoes the sentiment: “Crying devil,” and makes a gesture of shame. Another toddler, Wenwen (three and one-half years old) sits down and sobs when her younger brother destroys her artwork.

• From Between Us

  Gezellig too would require more than one word to translate into English. It combines aspects of the situation—the fireplace, a living room, some hot drinks, a couch—and feelings of closeness to others, security, and relaxation. Having been trained as a psychologist, I might not list it as an emotion, but my Dutch respondents many years ago did. Amae is a final example of a culture-specific emotion. It refers to one’s “inclination to depend on or accept another’s nurturant indulgence, including one’s dependency wish, typically applied to the mother-child relationship”: the mother represents authority but at the same time acts as a servant. In an amae relationship, the dependent partner fully submits to the nurturing partner, giving up control; the nurturing partner is focused on meeting the needs of the dependent partner, without ever judging these needs; they just empathize. Receiving amae (i.e., being the dependent partner) is a bit like letting yourself fall backwards trusting that others will catch you: the nurturing partner catches the trusting, dependent one. Amae is so ingrained as an emotion concept in Japan that when Japanese psychiatrist Takeo Doi told one of his colleagues that there was no translation for this word in English, the colleague responded in astonishment: “Why, even puppies do it!” Leaving out these central emotion words in other languages may have led to an underestimation of the cultural differences in emotion lexicons as well. As illustrated by Doi’s astonished colleague, these words are at the very basis of emotional experience in other cultures, but were not in the list included in the Science article as they did not make it to the WEIRD agendas of emotion researchers. Emotion words play an important role in the socialization of emotions. Although emotion concepts are not limited to a word, emotion lexicons are good starting places to look for cultural differences in emotions. All we know points to the conclusion that different languages conceptualize the emotion domain differently. The category of emotion itself is differently understood across cultures, but moreover, emotion lexicons from different languages do not neatly map. This is one of the reasons that children in different cultures do not come to understand emotions in similar ways. Cultural Episodes

• 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)

  In the mean time, if I may judge from my own experience, none are better paid, or better treated, during their reign, than the mistress of those who, enervate by nature, debaucheries, or age, have the least employment for the sex: sensible that a woman must be satisfied some way, they ply her with a thousand little tender attentions, presents, caresses, confidences, and exhaust their inventions in means and devices to make up for the capital deficiency; and even towards lessening that, what arts, what modes, what refinements of pleasure have they not recourse to, to raise their languid powers, and press nature into the service of their sensuality? But here is their misfortune, that when by a course of teasing, worrying, handling, wanton postures, lascivious motions, they have at length accomplished a flashy enervate enjoyment, they at the same time light up a flame in the object of their passion, that, not having the means themselves to quench, drives her for relief into the next person’s arms, who can finish their work; and thus they become bawds to some favourite, tried and approved of, for a more vigorous and satisfactory execution; for with women, of our turn especially, however well our hearts may be disposed, there is a controlling part, or queen-seat in us, that governs itself by its own maxims of state, amongst which not one is stronger, in practice with it, than, in the matter of is dues, never to accept the will for the deed. Mr. Norbert, who was much in this ungracious case, though he professed to like me extremely, could but seldom consummate the main-joy itself with me, without such a length and variety of preparations, as were at once wearisome and inflammatory.

• 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

  A centuries-old story in Daoism is about the way the legendary Daygu managed a flood. Daygu did not try to stop the water; he did not build dikes as my Dutch ancestors did. Rather, he yielded to the natural force of the water, redirecting the flow by dredging new channels. 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.

• 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)

  "Loath? Ask the virgin if she regrets having given up her maidenhood to the lover she dotes on, and who fully returns her love? She has lost a treasure that all the wealth of Golconda cannot buy again; she is no longer what the world calls a pure, spotless, immaculate lily, and not having had the serpent's guile in her, society—the lilies—will brand her with an infamous name; profligates will leer at her, the pure will turn away in scorn. Still, does the girl regret having yielded her body for love—the only thing worth living for? No. Well, no more did I. Let 'clay-cold heads and lukewarm hearts' scourge me with their wrath if they will. "On the morrow, when we met again, all traces of fatigue had passed away. We rushed into each other's arms and smothered ourselves with kisses, for nothing is more an incentive to love than a short separation. What is it that renders married ties unbearable? The too-great intimacy, the sordid cares, the triviality of every-day life. The young bride must love indeed if she feels no disappointment when she sees her mate just awakened from a fit of tough snoring, seedy, unshaven, with braces and slippers, and hears him clear his throat and spit—for men actually spit, even if they do not indulge in other rumbling noises. "The husband, likewise, must love indeed, not to feel an inward sinking when a few days after the wedding he finds his bride's middle parts tightly tied up in foul and bloody rags. Why did not nature create us like birds—or rather, like midges—to live but one summer day—a long day of love? "On the night of this next day Teleny surpassed himself at the piano; and when the ladies had finished waving their tiny handkerchiefs, and throwing flowers at him, he stole away from a host of congratulating admirers, and came to meet me in my carriage, waiting for him at the door of the theatre; then we drove away to his house. I passed that night with him, a night not of unbroken slumbers, but of inebriating bliss. "As true notaries of the Grecian god, we poured out seven copious libations to Priapus—for seven is a mystic, cabalistic, propitious number—and in the morning we tore ourselves from each other's arms, vowing everlasting love and fidelity; but, alas! what is there immutable in the ever-changing world, except, perhaps, the sleep eternal in the eternal night." "And your mother?" "She perceived that a great change had been wrought in me. Now, far from being crabbed and waspish, like an old maid that cannot find rest anywhere, I was even-tempered and good-humoured.

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

  We did not kiss each other any further; our languid, half-open, lifeless lips only aspired each other's breath. Our sightless eyes saw each other no more, for we fell into that divine prostration which follows shattering ecstacy. "Oblivion, however, did not follow, but we remained in a benumbed state of torpor, speechless, forgetting everything except the love we bore each other, unconscious of everything save the pleasure of feeling each other's bodies, which, however, seemed to have lost their own individuality, mingled and confounded as they were together. Apparently we had but one head and one heart, for they beat in such unison, and the same vague thoughts flitted through both our brains. "Why did not Jehovah strike us dead that moment? Had we not provoked Him enough? How was it that the jealous God was not envious of our bliss? Why did He not hurl one of His avenging thunderbolts at us, and annihilate us?" "What! and have pitched you both headlong into hell?" "Well, what then? Hell, of course, is no excelsior—no place of false aspirations after an unreachable ideal of fallacious hopes and bitter disappointments. Never pretending to be what we are not, we shall find there true contentedness of mind, and our bodies will be able to develop those faculties with which nature has endowed them. Not being either hypocrites or dissemblers, the dread of being seen such as we really are can never torment us. "If we are grossly bad, we shall at least be truthfully so. There will be amongst us that honesty which here on earth exists only amongst thieves; and moreover, we shall have that genial companionship of fellow-beings after our own heart. "Is hell, then, such a place to be dreaded? Thus, even admitting of an after-life in the bottomless pit, which I do not, hell would only be the paradise of those whom nature has created fit for it. Do animals repine for not having been created men? No, I think not. Why should we, then, make ourselves unhappy for not having been born angels? "At that moment it seemed as if we were floating somewhere between heaven and earth, not thinking that everything that has a beginning has likewise an end. "The senses were blunted, so that the downy couch upon which we were resting was like a bed of clouds. A death-like silence was reigning around us. The very noise and hum of the great city seemed to have stopped—or, at least, we did not hear it.

• 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)

  "One you have most likely read about, for it was in all the papers at the time it occurred. An elderly gentleman, whose name I have quite forgotten, was silly enough to be caught in the very act of sodomizing a soldier—a lusty young recruit lately arrived from the country. The case made a great ado, for the gentleman occupied a foremost position in society, and was, moreover, not only a person of unblemished reputation, but a most religious man besides." "What! do you think it possible for a truly religious man to be addicted to such a vice?" "Of course it is. Vice renders us superstitious; and what is superstition save an obsolete and discarded form of worship. It is the sinner and not the saint that needs a Saviour, an intercessor, and a priest; if you have nothing to atone for, what is the use of religion to you? Religion is no bridle to a passion, which—though termed against nature—is so deeply engrafted in our nature that reason can neither cool nor mask it. The Jesuits are, therefore, the only real priests. Far from damning you, like ranting Dissenters do, they have at least a thousand palliations for all the diseases which they cannot cure—a balm for every heavy-laden conscience. "But to return to our story. When the young soldier was asked by the judge how he could thus degrade himself, and sully the uniform he wore,—'M. le Juge,' quoth he, ingenuously, 'the gentleman was very kind to me. Moreover, being a very influential person, he promised me un avancement dans le corps ' (an advancement in the body)! "Time passed, and I lived happily with Teleny—for who would not have been happy with him, handsome, good, and clever as he was? His playing now was so genial, so exuberant with lusty life, so beaming with sensual happiness, that he was daily becoming a greater favourite, and all the ladies were more than ever in love with him; but what did I care, was he not wholly mine?" "What! you were not jealous?" "How could I be jealous, when he never gave me the slightest cause. I had the key of his house, and could go there at any moment of the day or of the night. If he ever left town I invariably accompanied him. No, I was sure of his love, and therefore of his fidelity, as he likewise had also perfect faith in me.

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

  "Teleny opened his eyes, stretched his arms towards me, took hold of my hand, kissed, and then bit me on the nape of my neck; then he showered a number of kisses all along my back, which, following one another in quick succession, seemed like a rain of rose-leaves falling from some full-blown flower. "Then he reached the two fleshy lobes which he pressed open with his hands, and darted his tongue in that hole where a little while before he had thrust his finger. This likewise was for me a new and thrilling sensation. "This done, he rose and stretched forth his hand to lift me up. "'Now,' said he, 'let us go in the next room, and see if we can find something to eat; for I think we really require some food, though, perhaps, a bath would not be amiss before we sit down to supper. Should you like to have one?' "'It might put you to inconvenience.' "For all answer he ushered me into a kind of cell, all filled with ferns and feathery palms, that—as he shewed me—received during the day the rays of the sun from a skylight overhead. "'This is a kind of make-shift for a hot-house and a bath-room, which every habitable dwelling ought to have. I am too poor to have either, still this hole is big enough for my ablutions, and my plants seem to thrive pretty well in this warm and damp atmosphere.' "'But it's a princely bath-room!' "'No, no!' said he, smiling; 'it's an artist's bath-room.' "We at once plunged into the warm water, scented with essence of heliotrope; and it was so pleasant to rest there locked in each other's arms after our last excesses. "'I could stay here all night,' he mused; 'it is so delightful to handle you in this warm water. But you must be famished, so we had better go and get something to satisfy the inward cravings.' "We got out, and wrapped ourselves up for a moment with hot peignoirs of Turkish towelling. "'Come,' said he, 'let me lead you to the dining-room.' "I stood hesitating, looking first at my nakedness, then upon his. He smiled, and kissed me. "'You don't feel cold, do you?' "'No, but —— ' "'Well, then, don't be afraid; there is no one in the house. Everyone is asleep on the other flats, and, besides, every window is tightly shut, and all the curtains are down.' "He dragged me with him into a neighbouring room all covered with thick, soft, and silky carpets, the prevailing tone of which was dull Turkish red. "In the centre of this apartment hung a curiously-wrought, star-shaped lamp, which the faithful—even now-a-days—light on Friday eve.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  His skin was warm like it had been sitting in the sun all day. I watched in mild fascination as he used both of our hands to turn the key. When the door swung open, I stood frozen on the spot, with my back toward him. “I’m gonna go home tonight,” he said. He was so close I could feel his breath moving tendrils of my hair. “Will you be all right?” I nodded. “Call me if you need me.” I nodded again. I climbed the stairs to my bedroom and crawled into bed fully clothed. I was so tired. I wanted to sleep while I could still feel him on my hand. Maybe, I wouldn’t dream. The next morning it was snowing. A freak February snow that coated the trees and rooftops in my neighborhood with a butter cream frosting. I wandered from room to room, standing at the windows and staring out at the different views. Around noon, when I was tired of looking, and felt the slow thrumming of a headache starting behind my temples, I talked myself into going outside. It’ll be good for you. You need the fresh air. Daylight doesn’t have teeth. I wanted to touch the snow, hold it in my hand until it burned. Maybe it could clean me of the last few months. I walked past where my jacket hung on the coat rack and swung open the front door. The cold air hit my legs and crawled under my t-shirt. The t-shirt was all I was wearing. No layers of sweaters, no tights underneath sweatpants. The thin beige t-shirt hung around me like a shedding second skin. I was barefoot as I stepped into the snow. It gave under my feet with a soft sigh as I took a few steps forward. My father would have freaked out if he saw me. My father who yelled at me to put my slippers on if I walked on the kitchen floor barefoot in the winter. I could see tire marks that led up one side of my horseshoe driveway to where Isaac parked. It could have been the mailman. I looked back over my shoulder to see if there was a package on my doorstep. There was none. It was Isaac. He was here. Why? I walked to the middle of the driveway and scooped up some of the snow, cupping it in my palm, looking around. It was then that I saw it. A patch of snow had been cleared from my car’s windshield. The car that I never park in the garage, though now I wish I had. There was something underneath my wiper blade.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  He had the Finding Neverland soundtrack. I pressed play, and we drove without words, from our lips or from our music. The restaurant was called Olive and smelled like onions and lamb. We sat by the window, just as Isaac promised, and ordered gyros. Neither of us spoke. It was enough to be out among the living. We watched people amble on the sidewalk across the street. Gym goers and doughnut shop goers, and just as he promised, sometimes they were one and the same. The shop was called The Doughnut Hole. It had a large picture of a pink frosted doughnut on the storefront with an arrow pointing to the hole in the center. There was a large flashing blue sign that said, Open 24/7 . People in the city didn’t sleep. I should live there. Some people had a stronger will than others, they only looked lovingly into The Doughnut Hole’s window before racing to their cars. Their cars were mostly hybrids. Generally, hybrid drivers had a nose in the air to things that weren’t good for them. But most couldn’t resist the temptation. It seemed like a cruel joke, really. I counted twelve people who resisted the call to be healthy and followed the smell of white flour and sticky glaze. I liked those people better—the hypocrites. I could relate. When the meal was over, Isaac slipped his credit card out of his wallet. “No,” I said. “Let me…” He looked ready to kick up a fuss. Some men don’t like female gendered credit cards. I gave him a fierce look, and after about five seconds he tucked his wallet back into his back pant pocket. I handed over my card. It was a power move and I’d won—or he’d let me. It’s good to have a little power either way. When he saw me staring across the street at the doughnut shop, he asked if I wanted one. I nodded. He led me to the store and bought a half dozen. When he handed me the bag it was hot … greasy. My mouth started to water. I ate one as he drove me home and we listened to the rest of the Finding Neverland soundtrack. I didn’t even like doughnuts; I just wanted to see what turned all of those people into hypocrites. When we pulled into my driveway I wasn’t sure if he was going to come in or leave me at the door. The rules changed tonight. I willingly went somewhere with him. It felt datish or, at the very least, friendish. But when I opened the front door he followed me inside and turned the deadbolt. I was headed up the stairs when I heard his voice. “I lost a patient today.” I stopped on the fourth stair, but I didn’t turn around. I should have. Something like that was worth turning around for. His voice was clotted. “She was only sixteen.