Desire

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 The Pisces (2018)

  The swimmer leaned on the rock with his arms. They were thick and meaty—not cut like a bodybuilder’s, but you could see the muscles underneath what looked like a layer of baby chub. They reminded me of eating a piece of fish with thick skin and a small layer of fat, strong and also soft, very white. I wanted to bite them. His chest was hairless, and I noticed that the color of his nipples matched perfectly his lips, like pencil erasers. He looked like he was twenty-one, at most. If this was death then death was hot. “Doesn’t it scare you to be night-swimming? Isn’t the water freezing?” I asked. “I’ve got a wet suit on my lower half,” he said. “But no, it doesn’t scare me. I like the way the splashes look in the moonlight and I like having the ocean to myself. Well, almost to myself.” “Yeah, it’s nice out here,” I said. The wine was wearing off. I suddenly felt exhausted. His teeth were shiny white, but not like an actor’s. They didn’t look bleached or fake. They were practically iridescent, like the inside of a shell. There was something almost feminine about him, pretty, but his jaw was well defined. These surfer boys. I always forgot that they were real. I mean, I knew that they existed. I knew they were alive. But it really seemed to me that the surfing was a costume, like they were only pretending to be so enamored of it. How could anyone be that devoted to something so lacking a destination? Just wave after wave, over and over. I wished someone were that enamored of me. But their love for surfing was real. It was a fact. They really loved surfing as much as they appeared to love it. This one didn’t have a board, though. This wasn’t a surfer. This was a swimmer. “What’s your name?” he asked. “Lucy.” I felt old. “Nice to meet you, Lucy,” he said. “I’m Theo.” When he said his name, his hotness increased. He was real, there in the water, real in a way that I wasn’t. He was swimming and wet and I was—what was I doing? I thought of all my books, the ones waiting for me in piles back in my parching Phoenix apartment, collecting dust. I thought of the university library. I imagined the library growing and growing, the books piling up on the edge of this ocean. One wave could destroy them all. They were so dry, like they were actually made of dust. My skin, too, felt like an old book: powdery parchment etched with lines that supposedly contained knowledge, but when you looked closer they were only empty scribbles. Not the right kind of knowledge. If you put me in the water, I too would dissolve. I was sure of it. “Do you always swim at night?” “Yes,” he said. “The waves are more intense but it makes you stronger.”

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  That evening she showed her smart neckties to Puddle, whose manner was most unsatisfactory—she grunted. And now some one seemed to be always near Stephen, some one for whom these things were accomplished—the purchase of the three new suits, the brown shoes, the six carefully chosen, expensive neckties. Her long walks on the hills were a part of this person, as were also the hearts of the wild dog-roses, the delicate network of veins on the leaves and the queer June break in the cuckoo’s rhythm. The night with its large summer stars and its silence, was pregnant with a new and mysterious purpose, so that lying at the mercy of that age-old purpose, Stephen would feel little shivers of pleasure creeping out of the night and into her body. She would get up and stand by the open window, thinking always of Angela Crossby. 2 Sunday came and with it church in the morning; then two interminable hours after lunch, during which Stephen changed her necktie three times, and brushed back her thick chestnut hair with water, and examined her shoes for imaginary dust, and finally gave a hard rub to her nails with a nail pad snatched brusquely away from Puddle. When the moment for departure arrived at last, she said rather tentatively to Anna: ‘Aren’t you going to call on the Crossbys, Mother?’ Anna shook her head: ‘No, I can’t do that, Stephen—I go nowhere these days; you know that, my dear.’ But her voice was quite gentle, so Stephen said quickly: ‘Well then, may I invite Mrs. Crossby to Morton?’ Anna hesitated a moment, then she nodded: ‘I suppose so—that is if you really wish to.’ The drive only took about twenty minutes, for now Stephen was so nervous that she positively flew. She who had been puffed up with elation and self-satisfaction was crumbling completely—in spite of her careful new necktie she was crumbling at the mere thought of Angela Crossby. Arrived at The Grange she felt over life-size; her hands seemed enormous, all out of proportion, and she thought that the butler stared at her hands. ‘Miss Gordon?’ he inquired. ‘Yes,’ she mumbled, ‘Miss Gordon.’ Then he coughed as he did on the telephone, and quite suddenly Stephen felt foolish. She was shown into a small oak-panelled parlour whose long, open casements looked on to the herb-garden. A fire of apple wood burnt on the hearth, in spite of the fact that the weather was warm, for Angela was always inclined to feel chilly—the result, so she said, of the English climate. The fire gave off rather a sweet, pungent odour—the odour of slightly damp logs and dry ashes. By way of a really propitious beginning, Tony barked until he nearly burst his stitches, so that Angela, who was lying on the lounge, had perforce to get up in order to soothe him. An extremely round bullfinch in an ornate, brass cage, was piping a tune with his wings half extended.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  There is something that makes a man look so vulnerable when he is handling himself and I think I should stay out of it altogether but maybe that’s considered rude or unfriendly? Our bodies glisten with sweat – even though the rain has cooled the air outside, it’s stuffy and close in here without air conditioning – and we slide against each other, which one could interpret as hot and sexy or just unseemly. I’m choosing to go with hot and sexy, that this is what lust looks like. He is inside me for only a few moments when we both come, but without skipping a beat, he peels off the condom, tosses it on the floor and we keep going, new condoms appearing every so often, seemingly out of thin air. He is at once aggressively manly and appealingly tender, touching me gently but insistently. There seems to be no beginning or ending to this sex, just a middle chapter that stretches on. He is six years younger than me and his virility is matched by my insatiable curiosity and thrill at being desired. Of the four men I’ve slept with since I’ve started this journey, this is the most physically satisfying sex I’ve had. He laughs with enthusiasm when I sigh deeply and tell him in a grave voice that I really love sex. He seems to know exactly how and where to touch me, and I can’t get enough of his hard, sleek body. It’s as if I’m being cracked open again and again; it’s not explosive so much as a feeling of being totally present in my body and with his. It feels good to be wanted, to want, to be appreciated, to know that I am quenching someone’s thirst, to know my body is capable of both giving and receiving, to match his vigor with my own. When we have finally expended our sexual energy, we lie wrapped around each other. As much as I am shocked to discover how much I love touching and being touched, I am surprised by how nourishing I find this part, this calm after the storm. I feel completely enveloped as our hearts return to their regular rhythms and we lie, exhausted but sated, in the aftermath of the intimacy we have shared. Why , I wonder, do I feel I could stay in this spot for hours but when I was married, instead of reveling in the physical connection, I ran from it? Within seconds of having sex, I was already rolling back to curl in a ball on my side of the bed, so relieved that this obligation could be checked off my list and I could go back in my corner to be left alone. I usually orgasmed and I enjoyed sex once I mustered up the energy, but I could take it or leave it – and the affection that came with it I recoiled from, believing myself to be a physically unaffectionate person.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Did mermaids menstruate? Perhaps this was part of Theo’s attraction to me, my feet in the dirt and the blood in my pussy. My feet on the desert sand, dirty feet, dirty legs, bloody legs, blood dripping down my legs and onto all the earth. Both of us dry on our chests, but me wet in the pussy like a red hearth: the only wetness for days, no other water. Did mermaids even get wet in their cunts? Was it hard fucking them in the water, as beautiful as they were? I remembered trying to fuck in a pool years ago at a motel in Phoenix. It wasn’t easy. You got dried up from the water and couldn’t slide around right. So what would happen in the ocean? What did they use for lubrication? I gasped when I saw his cock. It was harder than I’d ever seen it, thick and pink, aiming straight at me like a meaty arrow. I gasped again when I saw the pool of blood on my sister’s white sofa. I was not so blinded by passion that I didn’t care if I had ruined it. I couldn’t destroy Annika’s house just because my new boyfriend was a merman with a penchant for period sex. But Theo saw the stain as a memento and looked proud: as though we should both autograph it. Saltwater stained boats, but in a beautiful way—weathering them, rendering the wood a soft, gray color. So too was our stain to him an act of nature. Perhaps he saw it as a triumph, even, a miracle marking our existence together on land, rather than any cause for alarm. And so I pretended to own my bodily secretions, as though I was proud of what we had made, instead of feeling inwardly ashamed. I pretended to celebrate by kissing him. With his tongue in my mouth and little bits of dried blood flaking off of his cheek, he put his dick in me. I couldn’t believe how strong it was. “Fuck me,” I said. “Fuck me with your Triton spear.” We both laughed. We were looking in each other’s eyes and he was rubbing my organs from the inside. My flow was very heavy and he was sliding in and out, pumping inside me. I had never come from sex before, but maybe I would this time. Maybe I would. “Oh my God, I’m either going to come or piss,” I laughed. “I’m either going to come or piss, I don’t know which one.” “So come and piss,” he said. “Come and piss!” But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t let go, or maybe I wasn’t about to come—only piss. Whatever it was, I couldn’t reach it. But it felt so good to fuck him and I felt so connected to him and to all of the lovers throughout time. Missionary was so classical: simple, romantic, and ancient.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Perhaps I do not even need him, to feel like this? No, I needed him and maybe it was okay to need him. This is how love was spiritual, when it felt like this: unity with each other, the self, and all. And if this wasn’t love, then this was how lust could be a thing of value: a peak experience, something worth the pain of coming down. Was this true or was it a lie? So many things were both true and a lie, depending on how you felt in the moment. In this moment it felt like love. I was bold and ready to ask him. “I was wondering if you would ever possibly come to my house?” I asked. “I mean, it is my sister’s house but I live there alone.” “I would love to be in a house with you,” he said. “I would love to make love to you without having to look over our shoulders for anyone coming. To be totally alone.” “You would?” I giggled. “Yes,” he said. “Have you ever been in a home on land?” “Yes,” he said. “A few times, many years ago.” I didn’t press him. “But this was a home very close to the water,” he said. “It wasn’t really a home. It was a deserted boathouse right on the ocean. An old fishermen’s boathouse. I just don’t see how I could possibly come to your sister’s home. I think it is too far. First of all, I can’t be seen. How would I get across the sand?” “I’ve been thinking about this,” I said. He seemed so excited by the idea that I didn’t feel weird letting him know that this was something I had spent a lot of time thinking about. It was like I had let go now and decided to trust him. Something in me had suddenly decided that it didn’t really matter what would happen. Either I was going to scare him off or I wasn’t, but if it was going to happen, it would happen. I didn’t have to stifle my fears and desires. Just being around him, inside his supernatural aura, gave me the confidence to speak, like the way wine gives you confidence. I was languid and casual. Later I would likely replay everything and pick apart what I had said. Had I been too forward? And God forbid it ended that night when we said goodbye. If he disappeared and I never saw him again, I would blame myself for pushing him away with my omnivorous need. But for now I didn’t feel at risk of losing him, since he was very much here with me. “What if I took a shopping cart and brought it to the ocean?” I asked. “It’s Venice and there are so many people with shopping carts. We could hoist you into it and cover you up with a blanket.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I wondered if other people felt comfortable within niceness, or whether they didn’t even notice that things were nice. Maybe they expected everything to be nice. Maybe nice was like air to them. I can’t say that I was enjoying it, exactly, or even relaxing, but I felt that I was absorbing the stupidity and slowness of the niceness. Like I was siphoning off its worst qualities. Actually, it did feel good. I just wanted to drool and be dumb. Two glasses of wine later and I was almost there. I ordered another one. Then I got nervous. What was I doing? I should be home actually working on my book. Where was my life going? I couldn’t think about it. I ate some olives and stared down the sun. I was wearing the same black dress that I had worn with Adam. I had liked it so much when I got it, but now that it was no longer new it didn’t feel good enough. Now that I had owned it for more than a minute it had gotten some of me on it. My mouth tasted acidic. I felt rumpled, like I was wearing dirty laundry. I kind of forgot that Garrett was coming until he tapped me on the shoulder. He was undeniably gorgeous in real life: six feet tall with a close-cut beard that looked like an evil shadow. Under the beard you could still see the outline of his jaw, which was strong and handsome. His jaw was in attendance. Also, he had the hair—the Tinder hair I called it, because a lot of the boys on there had that same look. It was like a not-so-secret code amongst the young and hip, this haircut where the sides were shaved all butch but the top was long, in what resembled a pompadour. His shirt was gingham and he smelled like the woods. He ordered a whiskey and ginger ale and asked what I wanted. I was afraid that if I drank any more I would fall off my chair, so I told him that I had just met a friend for cocktails prior and was okay for right now. Instead I ordered a sparkling water and avocado toast. Garrett told me that he would be flying to New York the following day to teach classes in design at different universities. I kept staring at his jawline. I had forgotten they made them like that. He was boring, never asking me about myself, but I was so engaged by his jaw that it made what he said more interesting. It was his jaw that was speaking, not his mouth. The jaw also made me a little sad. It made me forget he had a girlfriend and then remember again. Like, in spite of his boringness, I kind of wanted the jaw to be mine. He did a good job not talking about the girlfriend. It would be easy for someone else to forget he had one.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  He had me by the hips and kissed me hard, his tongue in my mouth. It made me feel good, like he wanted me. “Look me in the eyes,” I said. He looked into my eyes and unbuttoned Steve’s coat, lifting it off my shoulders and dropping it on the ground. Still looking me in the eyes, he hoisted me up by the waist and sat me on the big black marble sink. I was turned on by the action of what he was doing, but not turned on in my vagina yet. Or maybe my vagina was turned on, but I wasn’t there yet. Like, I was and I wasn’t. Part of me was acting and part of me was enjoying it. “Slower,” I said, to give myself time to get into it. He teased me over my underpants for a second. Then he put his fingers inside and started fingering me. My lips kept getting caught and rubbing against his fingers in an irritated way. I felt like they were puffing up like balloons. I kept trying to ask him questions. I wanted to hear that he wanted me. “What do you think of the lingerie?” “Hot, baby.” “The garters?” “So sexy.” I guess he could feel that I wasn’t super wet, because he got down on his knees in front of the sink where I was spread-eagle, pushed the undies to the side, and started to lick my clit. I moaned some more, not altogether fake, because I enjoyed hearing myself. But fake in the sense that I knew I was suddenly too self-conscious to be aroused. I slid down off the sink and got down on my knees. Then I unzipped his pants and started to suck his dick. His dick was long and skinny. I felt like it could stab me. Usually I very much enjoy dick sucking and I’m pretty intuitive at it. I like to lick it first and tease it—really prepare the dick before I suck. But he was impatient. He grabbed the back of my hair and pushed my head closer to his body, as I’ve seen people do in porn. I gagged a little on his dick, pulled back, then continued, my mouth super wet. He moaned and it was hot. Just hearing the moan come up from the depth of his belly, looking up and seeing that jaw I liked, made me feel wetter. My juices stung my irritated labia. He grabbed the back of my hair and pushed his dick into the back of my throat again, then palmed my forehead away. “Get up here,” he said. My bra and underwear were still on when he hoisted me by the waist back up onto the sink. Then he ripped open a condom wrapper with his teeth and fumbled to put it on.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The tune sounded something like ‘Pop goes the weasel.’ At all events it was an impudent tune, and Stephen felt that she hated that bullfinch. It took all of five minutes to calm down Tony, during which Stephen stood apologetic but tongue-tied. She hardly knew whether to laugh or to cry at this very ridiculous anti-climax. Then Angela decided the matter by laughing: ‘I’m so sorry, Miss Gordon, he’s feeling peevish. It’s quite natural, poor lamb, he had a bad night, he just hates being all sewn up like a bolster.’ Stephen went over and offered him her hand, which Tony now licked, so that trouble was ended; but in getting up Angela had torn her dress, and this seemed to distress her—she kept fingering the tear. ‘Can I help?’ inquired Stephen, hoping she’d say no—which she did, quite firmly, after one look at Stephen. At last Angela settled down again on the lounge. ‘Come and sit over here,’ she suggested, smiling. Then Stephen sat down on the edge of a chair as though she were sitting in the Prickly Cradle. She forgot to inquire about Angela’s dog-bite, though the bandaged hand was placed on a cushion; and she also forgot to adjust her new necktie, which in her emotion had slipped slightly crooked. A thousand times in the last few days had she carefully rehearsed this scene of their meeting, making up long and elaborate speeches; assuming, in her mind, many dignified poses; and yet there she sat on the edge of a chair as though it were the Prickly Cradle. And now Angela was speaking in her soft, Southern drawl: ‘So you’ve found your way here at last,’ she was saying. And then, after a pause: ‘I’m so glad, Miss Gordon, do you know that your coming has given me real pleasure?’ Stephen said: ‘Yes—oh, yes—’ Then fell silent again, apparently intent on the carpet. ‘Have I dropped my cigarette ash or something?’ inquired her hostess, whose mouth twitched a little . ‘I don’t think so,’ murmured Stephen, pretending to look, then glancing up sideways at the impudent bullfinch. The bullfinch was now being sentimental; he piped very low and with great expression. ‘O, Tannebaum, O, Tannebaum, wie grün sind Deine Blätter’ he piped, hopping rather heavily from perch to perch, with one beady black orb fixed on Stephen. Then Angela said: ‘It’s a curious thing, but I feel as though I’ve known you for ages. I don’t want to behave as though we were strangers—do you think that’s very American of me? Ought I to be formal and stand-offish and British? I will if you say so, but I don’t feel British.’ And her voice, although quite steady and grave, was somehow distinctly suggestive of laughter.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Did I look as sad and pathetic to Diana as the other women looked to me when I came in? But after group she came up to me in the parking lot. “You seem like you’re the only one there who isn’t totally insane,” she said. “I wouldn’t bet on that.” I laughed. “Can I call you? If I have questions about what to do?” “Sure,” I said. “I don’t know that I will have the answers. But I can listen.” I saw the sadness in her eyes and the mess of it all. I saw her delusions and the way that things started between her and the older tennis pro as just friends. It was like Theo: you wanted to believe they liked you as a friend. She pretended that’s what it was, because if she admitted to herself what it really was at first she would have never gotten in his car. And she had needed to get in his car. “I’m just afraid of getting worse,” she said. “My son has a friend. He is sixteen and gorgeous. And I see the way he looks at me. I used to think it wasn’t that, it couldn’t be that.” “You’re so beautiful,” I said. “How could it not be that?” “Thank you,” she said. “But I’m…you should see the young girls at their high school. I thought there could simply be no way. But now that I’ve been with Ryan, the younger tennis pro, well, I realize what it is with my son’s friend. I’m not going to go there. At least, I don’t think I would go there. But it scares me that I feel tempted.” “Wow,” I said. “That’s heavy.” “Yeah,” she said. “I didn’t want to admit that to the group. I didn’t want to say I’ve thought about, you know, having sex with my son’s friend…I didn’t say it, because…it would be very illegal. I don’t know what the group’s policy is on that. If someone is tempted to do something illegal, are they forced to report it?” “I don’t know,” I said. “But your secret is safe with me. Do you feel any better now even just telling me?” “Not really,” she said. 31. I decided to skip group. I was too deeply involved with Theo now. What would I even tell them? I’d met a merman who might disprove all of their theories about love? And why would I choose to recover unless everything was total and complete shit? If there was one sparkle, one possibility of getting as high as I could get off a person, why would I throw that potentiality away? You had to hold out for these moments until you knew for sure they were gone and never coming back. I didn’t want group to ruin the way I felt. I saw this in Diana, with whom I still spoke.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  “So cryptic,” I said. “Are you aware of death?” Asking that, I felt kind of creepy in a good way. He had a lot of power in not revealing too much of himself. Just that lack of willingness to disclose—that’s all it took for me to perceive rejection. So this gave me a little edge. Also, his observation about me and death could have been a bit scary if he wasn’t so matter-of-fact. I mean, he was a stranger, male, and likely stronger than me. He could easily pull me off a rock into the water and drown me. But I trusted him completely—at least in terms of my physical safety. And now that he had complimented me about my proximity to death and I had owned it, and thrown it right back at him, I felt cool. We had both decided now that death was my territory. I was the Professor of Death. Much more than a middle-aged woman who was beginning to get serious crushy feelings for a young stranger in the water. “I know about death,” he said. “Have you ever seen someone die?” I asked. “Like up close and one-on-one?” “Yes,” he said. “I have watched a number of people die.” “Scary, right? The dying process. I don’t feel scared about death but dying freaks me the fuck out.” “I’m not scared of dying,” he said. “You’re not?” Now he was the professor and I was the pussy. “I would say I’m less scared of dying than I am of life.” Actually, I maybe agreed with him. “I think I’m equally scared of both,” I said. This was the truth. It felt good to say it. “What is it about dying that scares you the most? Are you afraid of having regrets?” “No,” I said. “I think it’s literally the physical process. Like, the suffocation. I’m so scared to be suffocating and panicking. I get panicked even when I go to the dentist. I am not good with discomfort. So I think I’m more scared of the discomfort—my own fear around it—than anything else.” “It might be scary for a moment,” he said. “Maybe for a few minutes. But then, from what I’ve seen, you are very free.” “Maybe,” I said. “But it’s the fear before the freedom that I’m scared of. If I could just go to sleep—just like that, go to sleep and never wake up—I would do that anytime. I would do it tonight. But I’m scared to be conscious while it’s happening.” “I had that feeling about you. That you would be happy to just go to sleep.” “Why? Because I’m so boring?” “Not at all,” he said. “The opposite. But I can feel you’ve suffered.” He was so dramatic. “Yeah, well, life is the dumbest,” I said, standing up. “I’ve suffered too,” he said. “I’ve been sick.” This piqued my interest. “Yeah?”

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Craving the fake light was a completely real feeling, even if those around you could see that you were just another junkie. I think this is what was most frightening: me and my Theo haze and Claire and her druglike need were the same thing. I didn’t want to look at it; I didn’t want to look at her. To look at her would be to see the danger that I was facing on the other side of Theo’s visit, the darkness that inevitably fell when you spent too much time basking in the sun of a man. To look at her was to know that I was inevitably the cause of my own darkness, my own nothingness. The more you went for the ephemeral light, the more the void opened on the other side. It was waiting for me right there. I set my alarm for five. I wanted time to try to look beautiful, even though the wind and salt air always washed away anything I did to my hair or face. Dominic, never an early riser, was still asleep—sprawled in the bed where I had been, one ear above the sheets. I picked him up, carried him to the little white loveseat in the bedroom, and covered him with a blanket. He didn’t stir. Then I changed the sheets on the bed so they would smell clean and not like wet dog. I got in the deep tub and soaked. It was cold out and the hot water felt good to my bones. I brushed my teeth, then drenched myself in one of my sister’s expensive body oils: something called Exotic Seduction made with jasmine, ylang-ylang, vanilla, and lavender oils. I dabbed two extra drops on my nipples and one in my belly button. I applied spearmint lip gloss and rubbed some honey wax in my hair. Then I put on a knee-length gray cotton sundress and a wool sweater. I brought two large blankets outside and placed them in the wagon, unlocked the gate, and started dragging it across the sand. It was quiet. No one was out. If anyone saw me they would have thought I was using the wagon to carry my beach stuff out for the day. I was simply having a beach day.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But a close examination of her knees in the bath, revealed them to be flawless except for old scars and a crisp, brown scab from a recent tumble—this, of course, was very disappointing. She picked off the scab, and that hurt her a little, but not, she felt sure, like a real housemaid’s knee. However, she decided to continue in prayer, and not to be too easily downhearted. For more than three weeks she sweated and prayed, and pestered poor Collins with endless daily questions: ‘Is your knee better yet?’ ‘Don’t you think my knee’s swollen?’ ‘Have you faith? ’Cause I have—’ ‘Does it hurt you less, Collins?’ But Collins would always reply in the same way: ‘It’s no better, thank you, Miss Stephen.’ At the end of the fourth week Stephen suddenly stopped praying, and she said to Our Lord: ‘You don’t love Collins, Jesus, but I do, and I’m going to get housemaid’s knee. You see if I don’t!’ Then she felt rather frightened, and added more humbly: ‘I mean, I do want to—You don’t mind, do You, Lord Jesus?’ The nursery floor was covered with carpet, which was obviously rather unfortunate for Stephen; had it only been parquet like the drawing- room and study, she felt it would better have served her purpose. All the same it was hard if she knelt long enough—it was so hard, indeed, that she had to grit her teeth if she stayed on her knees for more than twenty minutes. This was much worse than barking one’s shins in the garden; it was much worse even than picking off a scab! Nelson helped her a little. She would think: ‘Now I’m Nelson. I’m in the middle of the Battle of Trafalgar—I’ve got shots in my knees!’ But then she would remember that Nelson had been spared such torment. However, it was really rather fine to be suffering—it certainly seemed to bring Collins much nearer; it seemed to make Stephen feel that she owned her by right of this diligent pain. There were endless spots on the old nursery carpet, and these spots Stephen could pretend to be cleaning; always careful to copy Collins’ movements, rubbing backwards and forwards while groaning a little. When she got up at last, she must hold her left leg and limp, still groaning a little. Enormous new holes appeared in her stockings, through which she could examine her aching knees, and this led to rebuke: ‘Stop your nonsense, Miss Stephen! It’s scandalous the way you’re tearing your stockings!’ But Stephen smiled grimly and went on with the nonsense, spurred by love to an open defiance. On the eighth day, however, it dawned upon Stephen that Collins should be shown the proof of her devotion. Her knees were particularly scarified that morning, so she limped off in search of the unsuspecting housemaid. Collins stared: ‘Good gracious, whatever’s the matter?

• From The Pisces (2018)

  That made me pause for a moment. Was it a sign that being with Theo was deeply misguided? My knee hurt and there was sand in the cut. But all I wanted was for him to take care of my knee. I wanted to show it to him and be babied. When I got back to the house I didn’t wash or bandage the cut. I wanted him to see what happened—to know that I hurt myself and needed to be taken care of. Even though he was entering my world, it wasn’t all easy for me. I was making sacrifices and taking risks too. He wasn’t the only one for whom this was difficult. I’ve always felt that injuries are a bit romantic, in the sense that you’re forced to be vulnerable and have someone else take care of you. I wanted to stay vulnerable. I wondered if he would suck the blood out of the wound like a vampire, the same way he wanted to lick my menstrual blood. Of course, he wasn’t a vampire, he was some other kind of mythic creature, but it didn’t matter. Even if he had legs, no tail, and was a real vampire, I wouldn’t care. I would put my knee to his mouth and say, “Drink, please. I hope you enjoy it.” I wanted him to help heal and soothe me, even if it meant consuming me away. I realized I was tired. I couldn’t be more tired. Dominic was already whimpering. I guess he could smell Theo on me. “It’s time to take a nap now,” I said, and got the tranquilizers from the cupboard. I didn’t know how I would explain to my sister where all of the tranquilizers had gone. Maybe she wouldn’t notice or maybe she would think that I had taken them. Perhaps I could score some more tranquilizers to give to him, or go to the vet and get more. Maybe a different vet so that no one would know what was happening. I gave him the tranquilizers in a pill pocket and put his head on my lap. “Nothing is beautiful and everything is nothing,” I said to him. “Everything is nothing and everything is beautiful.” I had no idea what I was talking about but I felt hypnotized with joy and potentiality. When his sighs deepened, I closed the pantry door and tiptoed away. Walking back across the beach with the wagon, I was limping. This is how we get injured for love, I thought. This is how love can hurt us. I felt great and noble, like a woman coming to claim her man in battle, or perhaps a man who was coming to rescue his woman. I had to be the rescuer, because he was more handicapped than I was. His legs were in worse shape than mine. At least mine could move on earth.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I rubbed my hands in a circular motion over the front of the sash and felt his penis under there, strong, semi-hard, like a thick trunk. His balls felt weighty like peaches. “Oh,” I said. “I wondered what you had.” “Yes,” he said. “And an ass too. The tail starts below all that, not like human myths where the tail starts at the stomach.” “Where did you get the sash? Do all of you wear sashes?” “Shipwreck, obviously,” he said. “Oh, yes, obviously.” I laughed. “And a loincloth does make it easier. Sand, jellyfish, it can all be very abrasive.” “Do you know a lot about Greek myths?” I asked. “Some,” he said. “Is that how you know about Sappho? Did you, like, date her or something?” “I’m not that old.” He laughed. What did dating even mean for a merman? Tinder under the fucking sea? Swiping right on a starfish? “Have you…been with any other women who live on land?” I asked. “Some,” he said. “Recently?” I asked. “Not in a while. I’m trying to change that,” he said, and touched my arm. I liked that it had been some time, because I wanted to be the only one. I didn’t care what the reason was, even if he simply hadn’t been near land. Of course, the inability to be with someone else on land did not mean he loved me in a special way. And his having been with other women who had feet did not necessarily equal lack of love. But it still made me feel safe to be the only one in a long time. These thoughts, themselves, were madness. He lived in the ocean and I lived in the desert. This wasn’t going to last. Maybe there could be some magic bend in our time together, the way I felt when he was going down on me. That had felt so eternal—as though if it were happening in one moment it was happening forever. But no one could live inside a moment. It was already over. And yet, here he was, still with me. We were sitting beside each other and he had his hand on my thigh, my hand tracing his knuckles. He is still here, I kept repeating to myself. “I have to go,” he said, as if he could read my mind. “It’s not a great idea for me to be out of the water like this with the light coming up.” I hadn’t realized that it was dawn. The sun was rising over the Santa Monica Mountains, turning the water silver. I could see that a few surfers had made their way to the Venice pier, laughing with one another. “Are you like a vampire?” I asked. “Are we in one of those teen vampire movies, only you’re a mermaid?” “Ha, no, nothing like that,” he said. “It’s just not a great idea for anyone to see me out here. I’ve gotten harassed before. I’ve gotten hurt.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I washed my face and realized that I hadn’t eaten either, but was too tired to make anything. I thought of that song, I didn’t know the music, just the words, something like “When you’re in love you’re never hungry.” Was I in love with this swimmer boy? Or was I just completely crazy? It didn’t make sense that something could feel so good, holy, and spiritual—like the gods themselves had put it there—and still not be right. It must be right, a gift for all of my suffering. But what if Theo just wanted sex? I thought about whether he was an “unavailable” man, and it seemed unlikely. I mean, I had never spent time with him out of the water. But even if he was available, I was not available—not for long anyway. What would happen when I went back to Phoenix? I fell asleep spooning Dominic and felt the kind of love I felt the first night I’d arrived in Venice. Only this was deeper, more tinged with dependency, like a heroin vibe, and I knew it wasn’t Dominic but Theo I was feeling. 29.The next morning I awoke to find a long string of texts from Jamie. He must have been drunk and stayed up all night, because the texts were in varying stages of “I want you.” He could probably smell Theo from thousands of miles away, how absorbed I was becoming. Men could smell an opening and they could smell a closing. He said he wanted to see me when I got back to Phoenix. He asked what I thought about giving things another try. I figured you got a restraining order, I wrote. I miss you Lucy. I didn’t ask him about the scientist. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I didn’t want to burst the double bubble of dopamine I now had coursing through me, first from Theo and now from Jamie. I lay around in bed for an hour, high on the potentiality of both of them, texting languidly. Jamie’s texts seemed more urgent than they had ever been, asking me questions about my return date, if I needed anything financially, if I wanted him to come pick me up and we could drive back to the desert together. I enjoyed being coy now, the elusive one for once. The independent one. That’s ok, I wrote, really, but thank you. I will see you when I get back. Then I got another text. This one from Claire. how shall I kill myself?

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Then we started kissing and I felt his cock get hard against me. “I want you so much,” he whispered in my ear. “You are my earth girl.” “I want you too,” I said. “We shouldn’t do it here,” he said. “Not on the beach at daylight.” “What do you want to do?” “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.” But he began to finger me, first tickling my clit just a little, then teasing my hole. I was already soaking wet. “Come on,” I said into his mouth. “Okay,” he said, fingering me harder. “You’re finger fucking me on the beach and you’re a very young man. This is your first time fingering a girl. What do you have to say about that?” Of course it was not his first time. But I wanted it to be. “I’m finger fucking your beautiful vagina and it’s my first time. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I get to finger you.” He intuitively knew exactly what to say to have me writhing. Or perhaps I planted the words in him, as so much of what our lovers do and say is imagined. We turn them into who we want them to be. We fill in their bodies and words for them. He pulled out his finger and sucked it, then put it in my mouth. “Taste yourself,” he said. “You are delicious.” “I am?” I asked. I nibbled his finger a little. “You are,” he said. “But it’s not safe here like this.” “What should we do? Do you want to go back in the ocean?” “Not particularly.” “So then let’s try again.” I rolled over, out from under the blanket, and stood up. Then I brought the wagon over to him. “Okay, hold it very still,” he said, and hoisted himself on backward. I covered him up in the blanket. This time he stayed on. As I pulled him across the beach, there were just a few stray joggers and assorted weirdos nearby. His blanketed tail jutted off the wagon, but it wasn’t the strangest thing to happen in Venice. No one seemed to notice or care. It wasn’t like I was smuggling a dead body. 37. I read somewhere that it takes women one and a half fucks to get attached—that it happens in the middle of the second fuck.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I kissed him on the lips. His breath tasted less fresh than usual, a bit like wet leather. “I like how you taste,” I said. “I like tasting you in this state, no saltwater to cleanse your mouth. It’s so primal. I feel like I’m getting another part of you.” “You really do?” he asked. We kissed deeper, our tongues in each other’s mouths. I could feel his cock hard now against me. I pressed my body against his with pure want. I felt that I had a hole, not just my pussy itself but an existential hole, and that for the first time it was on the verge of being filled: the inertia of our mingled desire caulked it up. It was stuffed with anticipation. My anticipation of his cock was solid, its own entity, as though my desire were a second cock. He too seemed to exude complete want and devotion, which made me feel confident in my own wanting—as though, in his mirror, my lust was good and pure. He made me feel innocent and part of something bigger, like nothing had ever been my fault. I did not say “I love you,” or even whisper it, but somehow I felt that I was praying it into his mouth without speaking. I was saying it with my breath, my chest, the magnetism between our pelvises. It was a swimming into each other. I also felt that he had a hole, or holes, and in some strange way my cock—an existential one, really—was filling him. I felt that we were moving in and out of one another’s holes, nursing each other, symbiotic and magnetic. I felt the Earth rotating around us, or that we were the planet—spinning on its axis. In my head came a deep buzz of the Earth again and I didn’t know if I was actually humming out loud or if it was all inside me. This is how you exist in the world, I thought. This is how you are alive. “I want you so much,” he said. Under the blanket, so we would stay warm, he lifted my dress up over my head. I was naked except for my undies. He put his face between my small breasts, cradling and then sucking on them. He kissed and licked my stomach, then down the front of my underwear over my clit. He teased around my underwear, the crevices of my thighs, the crease where my lips met. Then, caressing my ass, he slid my underwear down and put his face between my thighs. He inhaled deeply like there was oxygen in there. “God, you smell so good,” he said.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Adam and I decided we would meet two nights later and try our street make-out. It was now 1:57 a.m. I realized I had been swiping on profiles and checking messages all night. I forgot to take Dominic out and it had been eight hours. I rubbed his belly and apologized, then walked him all the way to the Venice canals. Adam, Adam, I thought, and imagined wanting him. More so, I imagined him wanting me. Him lusting for me. I fell asleep masturbating to the thought of this person, as of yet still basically imaginary. I woke up with my hand inside my underwear. My pubic hair felt bristly and bushy, like a steel-wool sponge. Sometimes I used to put conditioner on it but I hadn’t in a while. I wondered what Adam was used to, if any of the girls his age had pubic hair at all. Then I felt my real hair on my head. It was like a bad cloud. I could feel all the gray seeping out, making me nauseated, probably Adam too. I wanted to be perfect for Adam. I walked Dominic and gave him his breakfast, then went over to Abbot Kinney. There was a salon there called Trim and it looked pretty empty. I spoke with a cute brunette woman with caramel highlights named Allison. “I have a date,” I blurted. “Nice,” she said. “So what are you looking to do?” “I need to color it. Nothing too crazy. Like an auburn is what I usually do.” I showed her some pictures of myself on my phone, what I looked like prior to falling apart. “So where are you going on this date?” she said. “Anywhere cool?” I didn’t want to say I would be slobbering on someone like dogs in the street. Or that it was with someone I had never met and that he was over ten years younger than me. I mean, the age difference in itself was kind of cool, but I still felt weird. So I lied and said that it was an older tech executive who I had been seeing. I said we were going away for a few days to a bed-and-breakfast in Santa Barbara. “Oh, that should be great,” said Allison enthusiastically. It felt fun to be having girl talk like this. I never had girl talk—not since Rochelle turned from ally to rat. This felt hopeful, like there was something to be excited about—both for Allison and me. She was probably just pretending to care. But even if it was all a lie, I preferred the lie to real life.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  “I like how you taste,” I said. “I like tasting you in this state, no saltwater to cleanse your mouth. It’s so primal. I feel like I’m getting another part of you.” “You really do?” he asked. We kissed deeper, our tongues in each other’s mouths. I could feel his cock hard now against me. I pressed my body against his with pure want. I felt that I had a hole, not just my pussy itself but an existential hole, and that for the first time it was on the verge of being filled: the inertia of our mingled desire caulked it up. It was stuffed with anticipation. My anticipation of his cock was solid, its own entity, as though my desire were a second cock. He too seemed to exude complete want and devotion, which made me feel confident in my own wanting—as though, in his mirror, my lust was good and pure. He made me feel innocent and part of something bigger, like nothing had ever been my fault. I did not say “I love you,” or even whisper it, but somehow I felt that I was praying it into his mouth without speaking. I was saying it with my breath, my chest, the magnetism between our pelvises. It was a swimming into each other. I also felt that he had a hole, or holes, and in some strange way my cock—an existential one, really—was filling him. I felt that we were moving in and out of one another’s holes, nursing each other, symbiotic and magnetic. I felt the Earth rotating around us, or that we were the planet—spinning on its axis. In my head came a deep buzz of the Earth again and I didn’t know if I was actually humming out loud or if it was all inside me. This is how you exist in the world, I thought. This is how you are alive. “I want you so much,” he said. Under the blanket, so we would stay warm, he lifted my dress up over my head. I was naked except for my undies. He put his face between my small breasts, cradling and then sucking on them. He kissed and licked my stomach, then down the front of my underwear over my clit. He teased around my underwear, the crevices of my thighs, the crease where my lips met. Then, caressing my ass, he slid my underwear down and put his face between my thighs. He inhaled deeply like there was oxygen in there. “God, you smell so good,” he said. He peeled my underpants down my legs. “And your vagina is so gorgeous. I just want to put my face in it all the time and live there.” “You should,” I said nervously, and giggled.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  When I am with them, I call #6 at night, telling him he’s been replaced by Georgia in my bed, venting about an argument I had with one of the kids, missing him. I have a full private life now, separate from my fulfilling and busy life as a mother. It’s a delicate balancing act to keep myself aloft, but it’s not terribly complicated. My kids are my priority; when they’re doing their own thing, I am free to spend time with #6 or my beautiful gaggle of girlfriends or to write or occasionally, still, to wander. #6 is gracious about relinquishing me to my children, saying he is attracted to me in part because I am such a committed mother. He has yet to meet them beyond a quick hello and that’s my choice now. When I’m with them, I want to be wholly with them. I suggested to him recently that he would be better served by a girlfriend who has more time to spend with him, but he waved the suggestion away: quality over quantity. We know we have a good thing. We make each other laugh, we care about each other and we have great sex – this seems like enough. As for my wanderlust, that’s a part of me that I steadfastly refuse to let go. #6 gives me everything I want from a man except for one significant thing that is impossible for him to provide: newness. I still want to be noticed, desired, flirted with, seen in all my naked glory; I want to peel clothes off men and run my hands along their warm skin. I won’t demean myself by not being forthright with #6, and I have to safeguard this side of myself I only recently discovered. When I have the chance, which isn’t often anymore as there are only so many hours in a day, I have sex with other men and I tell #6 when I do. He is apprehensive, but I tell him I love him, and I do. I struggled with sharing my feelings for him, terrified to reveal myself so nakedly. Too timid to say the words out loud, I drew him a cartoon of a teddy bear holding a heart, in the style of the notes I make every morning for Georgia’s lunchbox that he admires, and tucked it into an envelope that I told him not to open until I had walked away, further instructing him not to feel obligated to return the stated feelings.