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 My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The desire to have Jessie completely to myself again, was one reason why I gave up the job at the Bridge as soon as the month was up. I had over a hundred and fifty dollars clear in my pocket and I had noticed that though the pains in my ears soon ceased, I had become a little hard of hearing. The first morning I wanted to lie in bed and have one great lazy day, but I awoke at five as usual, and it suddenly occurred to me that I should go down and see Allison, the bootblack, again. I found him busier than ever and I had soon stripped off and set to work. About ten o’clock we had nothing to do, so I told him of my work under water; he boasted that his “stand” brought him in about four dollars a day: there wasn’t much to do in the afternoons, but from six to seven again he usually earned something more. I was welcome to come and work with him any morning on halves and I thought it well to accept his offer. That very afternoon I took Jessie for a walk in the Park, but when we had found a seat in the shade she confessed that her sister thought we ought to be engaged, and as soon as I got steady work we could be married: “A woman wants a home of her own”, she said, “and oh, Boy! I’d make it so pretty! and we’d go out to the theatres and have a gay old time.” I was horrified; married at my age, no, Sir! It seemed absurd to me and with Jessie. I saw she was pretty and bright, but she knew nothing, never had read anything: I couldn’t marry her. The idea made me snort. But she was dead in earnest, so I agreed to all she said, only insisting that first I must got regular work; I’d buy the engagement ring too: but first we must have another great evening. Jessie didn’t know whether her sister would go out, but she’d see. Meanwhile we kissed and kissed and her lips grew hot and my hand got busy, and then we walked again, on and on, and finally went into the great Museum. Here I got one of the shocks of my life. Suddenly Jessie stopped before a picture representing, I think, Paris choosing the Goddess of Beauty, Paris being an ideal figure of youthful manhood. “Oh, isn’t he splendid!” cried Jessie, “just like you”, she added with feminine wit, pouting out her lips as if to kiss me. If she hadn’t made the personal application, I might not have realized the absurdity of the comparison. But Paris had long, slim legs while mine were short and stout, and his face was oval and his nose straight, while my nose jutted out with broad, scenting nostrils.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Jean, his youngish wife (and first cousin), was a long-limbed girl in harlequin glasses with two boxer dogs, two pointed breasts and a big red mouth. She painted—landscapes and portraits—and vividly do I remember praising, over cocktails, the picture she had made of a niece of hers, little Rosaline Honeck, a rosy honey in a Girl Scout uniform, beret of green worsted, belt of green webbing, charming shoulder-long curls—and John removed his pipe and said it was a pity Dolly (my Dolita) and Rosaline were so critical of each other at school, but he hoped they would get on better when they returned from their respective camps. We talked of the school. It had its drawbacks, and it had its virtues. “Of course, too many of the tradespeople here are Italians,” said John, “but on the other hand we are still spared—” “I wish,” interrupted Jean with a laugh, “Dolly and Rosaline were spending the summer together.” Suddenly I imagined Lo returning from camp—brown, warm, drowsy, drugged—and was ready to weep with passion and impatience. 19 A few words more about Mrs. Humbert while the going is good (a bad accident is to happen quite soon). I had been always aware of the possessive streak in her, but I never thought she would be so crazily jealous of anything in my life that had not been she. She showed a fierce insatiable curiosity for my past. She desired me to resuscitate all my loves so that she might make me insult them, and trample upon them, and revoke them apostately and totally, thus destroying my past. She made me tell her about my marriage to Valeria, who was of course a scream; but I also had to invent, or to pad atrociously, a long series of mistresses for Charlotte’s morbid delectation. To keep her happy, I had to present her with an illustrated catalogue of them, all nicely differentiated, according to the rules of those American ads where schoolchildren are pictured in a subtle ratio of races, with one—only one, but as cute as they make them—chocolate-colored round- eyed little lad, almost in the very middle of the front row. So I presented my women, and had them smile and sway—the languorous blond, the fiery brunette, the sensual copperhead—as if on parade in a bordello. The more popular and platitudinous I made them, the more Mrs. Humbert was pleased with the show. Never in my life had I confessed so much or received so many confessions.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  A poet à mes beures, I composed a madrigal to the soot-black lashes of her pale-gray vacant eyes, to the five asymmetrical freckles of her bobbed nose, to the blond down of her brown limbs; but I tore it up and cannot recall it today. Only in the tritest of terms (diary resumed) can I describe Lo’s features: I might say her hair is auburn, and her lips as red as licked red candy, the lower one prettily plump—oh, that I were a lady writer who could have her pose naked in a naked light! But instead I am lanky, big-boned, wooly-chested Humbert Humbert, with thick black eyebrows and a queer accent, and a cesspoolful of rotting monsters behind his slow boyish smile. And neither is she the fragile child of a feminine novel. What drives me insane is the twofold nature of this nymphet—of every nymphet, perhaps; this mixture in my Lolita of tender dreamy childishness and a kind of eerie vulgarity, stemming from the snub-nosed cuteness of ads and magazine pictures, from the blurry pinkness of adolescent maidservants in the Old Country (smelling of crushed daisies and sweat); and from very young harlots disguised as children in provincial brothels; and then again, all this gets mixed up with the exquisite stainless tenderness seeping through the musk and the mud, through the dirt and the death, oh God, oh God. And what is most singular is that she, this Lolita, my Lolita, has individualized the writer’s ancient lust, so that above and over everything there is—Lolita. Wednesday. “Look, make Mother take you and me to Our Glass Lake tomorrow.” These were the textual words said to me by my twelve- year-old flame in a voluptuous whisper, as we happened to bump into one another on the front porch, I out, she in. The reflection of the afternoon sun, a dazzling white diamond with innumerable iridescent spikes quivered on the round back of a parked car. The leafage of a voluminous elm played its mellow shadows upon the clapboard wall of the house. Two poplars shivered and shook. You could make out the formless sounds of remote traffic; a child calling “Nancy, Nan-cy!” In the house, Lolita had put on her favorite “Little Carmen” record which I used to call “Dwarf Conductors,” making her snort with mock derision at my mock wit. Thursday. Last night we sat on the piazza, the Haze woman, Lolita and I. Warm dusk had deepened into amorous darkness.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  4When, through decorations of light and shade, we drove up to 14 Thayer Street, a grave little lad met us with the keys and a note from Gaston who had rented the house for us. My Lo, without granting her new surroundings one glance, unseeingly turned on the radio to which instinct led her and lay down on the living room sofa with a batch of old magazines which in the same precise and blind manner she landed by dipping her hand into the nether anatomy of a lamp table. I really did not mind where to dwell provided I could lock my Lolita up somewhere; but I had, I suppose, in the course of my correspondence with vague Gaston, vaguely visualized a house of ivied brick. Actually the place bore a dejected resemblance to the Haze home (a mere 400 miles distant): it was the same sort of dull gray frame affair with a shingled roof and dull green drill awnings; and the rooms, though smaller and furnished in a more consistent plush-and-plate style, were arranged in much the same order. My study turned out to be, however, a much larger room, lined from floor to ceiling with some two thousand books on chemistry which my landlord (on sabbatical leave for the time being) taught at Beardsley College. I had hoped Beardsley School for girls, an expensive day school, with lunch thrown in and a glamorous gymnasium, would, while cultivating all those young bodies, provide some formal education for their minds as well. Gaston Godin, who was seldom right in his judgment of American habitus, had warned me that the institution might turn out to be one of those where girls are taught, as he put it with a foreigner’s love for such things: “not to spell very well, but to smell very well.” I don’t think they achieved even that. At my first interview with headmistress Pratt, she approved of my child’s “nice blue eyes” (blue! Lolita!) and of my own friendship with that “French genius” (a genius! Gaston!)—and then, having turned Dolly over to a Miss Cormorant, she wrinkled her brow in a kind of recueillement and said:

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  She had been spiteful, if you please, at the age of one, when she used to throw her toys out of her crib so that her poor mother should keep picking them up, the villainous infant! Now, at twelve, she was a regular pest, said Haze. All she wanted from life was to be one day a strutting and prancing baton twirler or a jitterbug. Her grades were poor, but she was better adjusted in her new school than in Pisky (Pisky was the Haze home town in the Middle West. The Ramsdale house was her late mother-in-law’s. They had moved to Ramsdale less than two years ago). “Why was she unhappy there?” “Oh,” said Haze, “poor me should know, I went through that when I was a kid: boys twisting one’s arm, banging into one with loads of books, pulling one’s hair, hurting one’s breasts, flipping one’s skirt. Of course, moodiness is a common concomitant of growing up, but Lo exaggerates. Sullen and evasive. Rude and defiant. Stuck Viola, an Italian schoolmate, in the seat with a fountain pen. Know what I would like? If you, monsieur, happened to be still here in the fall, I’d ask you to help her with her homework—you seem to know everything, geography, mathematics, French.” “Oh, everything,” answered monsieur. “That means,” said Haze quickly, “you’ll be here!” I wanted to shout that I would stay on eternally if only I could hope to caress now and then my incipient pupil. But I was wary of Haze. So I just grunted and stretched my limbs nonconcomitantly (le mot juste) and presently went up to my room. The woman, however, was evidently not prepared to call it a day. I was already lying upon my cold bed both hands pressing to my face Lolita’s fragrant ghost when I heard my indefatigable landlady creeping stealthily up to my door to whisper through it—just to make sure, she said, I was through with the Glance and Gulp magazine I had borrowed the other day. From her room Lo yelled she had it. We are quite a lending library in this house, thunder of God. Friday. I wonder what my academic publishers would say if I were to quote in my textbook Ronsard’s “la vermeillette fente” or Remy Belleau’s “un petit mont feutré de mousse délicate, tracé sur le milieu d’un fillet escarlatte” and so forth. I shall probably have another breakdown if I stay any longer in this house, under the strain of this intolerable temptation, by the side of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride. Has she already been initiated by mother nature to the Mystery of the Menarche? Bloated feeling. The Curse of the Irish. Falling from the roof. Grandma is visiting. “Mr. Uterus [I quote from a girls’ magazine] starts to build a thick soft wall on the chance a possible baby may have to be bedded down there.” The tiny madman in his padded cell.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  We make our way out of the palace and into another courtyard which is now chiefly used as a parking lot. Amid the ghosts of Opels and Volkswagens and Peugeots we embrace. Mouth to mouth and belly to belly. Adrian must have the wettest kiss in history. His tongue is everywhere, like the ocean. We are sailing away. His penis (bulging under his corduroy pants) is the tall red smokestack of an ocean liner. And I am moaning around it like the ocean wind. And I am saying all the silly things you say while necking in parking lots, trying somehow to express a longing which is inexpressible—except maybe in poetry. And it all comes out so lame. I love your mouth. I love your hair. I love your ears. I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you. Because this is almost too good to be love. Too yummy and delicious to be anything as serious and sober as love. Your whole mouth has turned liquid. His tongue tastes better than a nipple to an infant. (And don’t throw me any psychiatric interpretations, Bennett, because I’ll throw them right back. Infantile. Regressed. Basically Incestuous. No doubt. But I’d give my life just to go on kissing him like this and how are you going to analyze that?) Meanwhile, he’s got my ass and is cupping it with both hands. He’s put my book on the fender of a Volkswagen and he’s grabbed my ass instead. Isn’t that why I write? To be loved? I don’t know anymore. I don’t even know my own name. “I’ve never met an ass to rival yours,” he says. And that remark makes me feel better than if I’d just won the National Book Award. The National Ass Award—that’s what I want. The Transatlantic Ass Award of 1971. “I feel like Mrs. America at the Congress of Dreams,” I say. “You are Mrs. America at the Congress of Dreams,” he says, “and I want to love you as hard as I possibly can and then leave you.” Forewarned is forearmed, supposedly. But who was listening? All I could hear was the pounding of my own heart. — The rest of the evening was a dream of reflections and champagne glasses and drunken psychiatric jargon. We wended our way back through the hallway of mirrors. We were so excited that we scarcely bothered to make any plans about when we’d meet again.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Almost alike for sunset and for sunrise the site of Bougiah and of the place I spring from, which with its blood once made the harbour warm.13 Folco14 they called me to whom my name was known, and this heaven is stamped by me, as I was stamped by its for Belus’ daughter,15 wronging alike Sichæus and Creüsa, did not more burn than I, so long as it consorted with my locks; nor yet the Rhodopeian maid who was deluded by Demophoön,16 neither Alcides when he had shut Iole in his heart.17 Yet here we not repent, but smile; not at the sin, which cometh not again to mind, but at the Worth that ordered and provided. Here gaze we on the Art that beautifieth its so great effect, and here discern the Good which bringeth back the world below unto the world above. But that thou mayst bear away full satisfied all the desires born within this sphere, needs must I yet proceed. Thou wouldst know who is within that light which here by me so sparkleth as the sun’s ray in pure water. Now know that there within hath Rahab peace; and when she joined our order, it stamped itself with her in the highest grade. By this heaven,—touched by the shadow’s point which your world casteth,—ere other soul was she uptaken from Christ’s triumph. And soothly it beseemed to leave her as a trophy, in some heaven, of the lofty victory which was achieved with the one and the other palm; because she favoured Joshua’s first glory in the Holy Land, which little toucheth the Papal memory.18 Thy city,—of his planting who first turned his shoulders on his Maker, and from whose envy hath such wailing sprung,— maketh and spreadeth that accursed flower which hath set sheep and lambs astray, for it hath turned the shepherd to a wolf. Therefore it is the Gospel and great Doctors are deserted, and only the Decretals are so studied, as may be seen upon their margins.19 Thereon the Pope and Cardinals are intent: ne’er wend their thoughts to Nazareth, where Gabriel spread his wings. But Vatican, and the other parts elect of Rome, the cemetery of the soldiery that followed Peter, shall soon be freed from the adultery.”

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  mox inducta, mutuis amplexibus alternae salutationis expletis, percontanti causas adventus sui sic incipit : * Meministi consilium vestrum, scilicet quo mihi sua- sistis ut bestiam, quae mariti mentito nomine mecum quiescebat, prius quam ingluvie voraci me misellam hauriret, ancipiti novacula peremerem ? Sed cum primum, ut aeque placuerat, conscio lumine vultus eius aspexi, video mirum divinumque prorsus specta- culum ; ipsum illum deae Veneris filium, ipsum in- quam Cupidinem leni quiete sopitum. Ac dum tanti boni spectaculo percita et nimia voluptatis copia tur- bata fruendi laborarem inopia, casu scilicet pessimo lucerna fervens oleum rebullivit in eius humerum. Quo dolore statim somno recussus, ubi me ferro et igni conspexit armatam, “Tu quidem" inquit “ Ob istud tam dirum facinus confestim toro meo divorte tibique res tuas habeto, ego vero sororem tuam "— et nomen quo tu censeris aiebat—« Iam mihi con- festim farreatis nuptiis coniugabo," et statim Zephyro praecipit ultra terminos me domus eius efflaret.' 27 * Necdum sermonem Psyche finierat ; illa vesanae libidinis et invidiae noxiae stimulis agitata, e re con- cinnato mendacio fallens maritum, quasi de morte parentum aliquid comperisset, statim navem ascendit et ad illum scopulum protinus pergit, et quamvis alio flante vento, caeca spe tamen inhians, * Accipe me’ dicens * Cupido, dignam te coniugem et tu, Zephyre, 238 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK V

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  “You’re damned right I do. Look—you’re sitting here with me right now because your life is dishonest and your marriage either dead or dying or riddled with lies. The lies are of your own making. You have to bloody well save yourself. It’s your life you’re fucking up, not mine.” “I thought you said I wanted you to save me.” “You do. But I’m not going to be trapped like that. I’ll fail you in some major way and you’ll start to hate me worse than you hate your husband….” “I don’t hate my husband.” “Right. But he bores you—and that’s worse, isn’t it?” I didn’t answer. Now I was really depressed. The champagne was wearing off. “Why do you have to start converting me before you’ve even fucked me?” “Because it’s what you really want.” “Bullshit, Adrian. What I really want is to get laid. And leave my bloody mind alone.” But I knew I was lying. “Madam, if you want to get laid, then you’ll get laid.” He started the car. “I rather like calling you madam, you know.” But I had no diaphragm and he had no erection and by the time we finally made it to the pension, we were all wrung out from having gotten lost so many times. We lay on his bed and held each other. We examined each other’s nakedness with tenderness and amusement. The best thing about making love with a new man after all those years of marriage was rediscovering a man’s body. One’s husband’s body was practically like one’s own. Everything about it was known. All the smells and tastes of it, the lines, the hairs, the birthmarks. But Adrian was like a new country. My tongue made an unguided tour of it. I started at his mouth and went downward. His broad neck, which was sunburned. His chest, covered with curly reddish hair. His belly, a bit paunchy—unlike Bennett’s brown leanness. His curled pink penis which tasted faintly of urine and refused to stand up in my mouth. His very pink and hairy balls which I took in my mouth one at a time. His muscular thighs. His sunburned knees. His feet. (Which I did not kiss.) His dirty toenails. (Ditto.) Then I started all over again. At his lovely wet mouth. “Where did you get those little pointed teeth?” “From the stoat who was my mother.” “The what?” “Stoat.” “Oh.” I didn’t know what it meant and I didn’t care. We were tasting each other. We were upside down and his tongue was playing music in my cunt. “You’ve a lovely cunt,” he said, “and the greatest ass I’ve ever seen. Too bad you’ve got no tits.” “Thanks.” I kept sucking away but as soon as he got hard, he’d get soft again. “I don’t really want to fuck you anyway.” “Why?” “Dunno why—I just don’t feel like it.”

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Surrealism, you might say, is my life. Adrian tapped me on the shoulder just as I was spouting something about Borges and his Labyrinths. Talk about the minotaur. He was right there behind me—all horns. My heart catapulted up into my nose. Did I want to dance? Of course I wanted to dance and that wasn’t all. “I’ve been looking for you all afternoon,” he said. “Where were you?” “With my husband.” “He looks a bit wet, doesn’t he? What have you been making him miserable with?” “You, I guess.” “Better watch that,” he said. “Don’t let jealousy rear its ugly head.” “It already has.” We talked as if we were already lovers, and, in a sense, we were. If intent is all, we were as doomed as Paolo and Francesca. But we had no place to go, no way to sneak out of there and away from the people who were watching us, so we danced. “I can’t dance very well,” he said. And it was true, he couldn’t. But he made up for it by smiling like Pan. He shuffled his little cloven hooves. I was laughing a bit too hysterically. “Dancing is like fucking,” I said, “it doesn’t matter how you look —just concentrate on how you feel.” Wasn’t I the brazen one? What was this woman-of-the-world act anyway? I was half-crazed with fear. I closed my eyes and gyrated inside the music. I bumped and ground and undulated. Somewhere back in the ancient days of the Twist, it had suddenly occurred to me that nobody knew how to do these dances—so why feel self-conscious? In social dancing, as in social life, chutzpah is all. From then on I became a “good dancer,” or at least I enjoyed it. It was like fucking—all rhythm and sweat. Adrian and I danced the next five or six sets—until we were exhausted, soaked, and ready to go home together. Then I danced with one of the Austrian candidates for the sake of appearances—which were getting harder and harder to keep up. And then I danced with Bennett who is a marvelous dancer. I was enjoying the fact that Adrian was watching me dance with my husband. Bennett danced so much better than Adrian anyway, and he had just the kind of grace that Adrian lacked. Adrian sort of bumped along like a horse and buggy. Bennett was all sleek and smooth: a Jaguar XKE. And he was so damned nice. Ever since Adrian had appeared on the scene, Bennett had become so gallant and solicitous. He was wooing me all over again. It made things so much harder. If only he would be a bastard! If only he would be like those husbands in novels—nasty, tyrannical, deserving of cuckoldry. Instead he was sweet. And the hell of it was that his sweetness didn’t diminish my hunger for Adrian one bit. My hunger probably had no connection with Bennett.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  Who will ever know if any of those Eton boys ever longed for one another as they lay sleepless in their separate cells, each strumming the guitar of sex and humming who knows what tune or if they felt desire as I did during wrestling practice for the wiry, crew-cut boy with the sand in his eyes and the bluish false teeth that had replaced those lost in a bloody match last year, a boy who seemed to be everywhere at once and who, in spite of the sleepiness of his expression, crackled like a field of static electricity above me, a shower of sparks in gym shorts as he darted all over, found the exact point of leverage and effortlessly pulled me down. The Russians practice a kind of photography, called Kirlian, that reveals the subject’s aura, the varying patterns of radiant heat projected by his limbs as a kind of oriflamme, if that means the golden banner a knight wraps himself in. For me every male body inhabited just such a rippling flag, just such a field of force invisible to all eyes but mine—but to mine resplendent and dangerous, a smooth sheath though upon close inspection engraved with fine lines of tension. How else can I explain the way I’d swallow hard and begin to lose my sense of balance whenever one of these enigma machines came toward me? At that time I had a book on Rodin. Every afternoon I’d sit on my cot and look at a black-and-white photograph of an early sculpture, “The Age of Bronze,” a nude study of a Belgian soldier so realistic that the artist had been accused of casting it from life. I didn’t masturbate over that picture, nor did I imagine coupling with the statue or the soldier. No, I loved him and I told him so, again and again, in whispers that never sounded right because I could never figure out who I was—his son? wife? brother? enemy? husband? friend? And there was the other problem of the century that separated me from the long-dead model and of the continent from the distant replica. I told myself that if I ever found him I’d know how to love him, but I had mistaken yearning for talent and I’d neglected to sort out the most essential thing, my own identity. Perhaps that’s why I’d become so enamored of a statue, for with it the only amorous activity could be the circle of my steps around that still form. No encounter, no vying for position, no chance of perfect understanding or total confusion.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  His hands and feet were cold. I kept my lower arm scrunched under me, but with the upper one I nervously patted his back. His back and chest and legs were silky and hairless, though I could see a tuft of eiderdown under his arm, which he’d lifted to pat my back in reciprocation. A thin layer of baby fat still formed a pad under his skin. Beneath the fat I could feel the hard, rounded muscles. He reached down under the sheet to touch my penis, and I touched his. “Ever put them together in your hand?” he asked. “No,” I said. “Show me.” “You spit on your hand first, get it real wet. See? Then you—scoot closer, up a bit—you put them together like this. It feels neat.” “Yes,” I said. “Neat.” Since I knew he wouldn’t let me kiss him, I put my head beside his and pressed my lips silently to his neck. His neck was smooth and long and thin, too thin for the size of his head; in this way, too, he still resembled a child. In the rising heat of our bodies I caught a slight whiff of his odor, not pungent like a grown-up’s but faintly acrid, the smell of scallions in the rain. “Who’s first?” he asked. “Cornholing?” “I think we need some stuff. It won’t work without stuff.” “I’ll go first,” I said. Although I put lots of spit on him and me, he still said it hurt. I’d get about half an inch in and he’d say, “Take it out! Quick!” He was lying on his side with his back to me, but I could still look over and see him wince in profile. “Jesus,” he said. “It’s like a knife all through me.” The pain subsided and with the bravery of an Eagle Scout he said, “Okay. Try it again. But take it easy and promise you’ll pull out when I say so.” This time I went in a millimeter at a time, waiting between each advance. I could feel his muscles relaxing. “Is it in?” he asked. “Yep.” “All the way in?” “Almost. There. It’s all in.” “Really?” He reached back for my crotch to make sure. “Yeah, it is,” he said. “Feel good?” “Terrific.” “Okay,” he instructed, “go in and out, but slow, okay?” “Sure.” I tried a few short thrusts and asked if I was hurting him. He shook his head. He bent his knees up toward his chest and I flowed around him.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  satchel. As Christian continued speaking at him, Howard kept an eye out for Victoria. But Christian went on too long; Howard watched with dismay her long-legged coltish stumble out of the door, pressed in on both sides by male friends. Each leg was perfectly wrapped, separated and fetishized in its tube of denim. Her ankles clicked together in those tan leather boots. The last thing he saw was the perfection of her ass – so high, so round – turning a corner; leaving. In twenty years of teaching he had never set eyes on anything like her. The other possibility, of course, was that in fact he had seen many such girls over the years, but it was only this year that he noticed. Either way, he was resigned to it. Two classes ago he had stopped trying not to look at Victoria Kipps. There’s no point in trying to do impossible things. Now young Mike came up to Howard, confidently, like a colleague, to ask about an article Howard had mentioned in passing. Freed from the strange bondage of looking at Victoria, Howard gladly directed him to the journal and the year. More people left the room. Howard bent down under his desk to avoid conversation with any other students and pushed his papers back into his satchel. He got the nasty sensation that someone or another was lingering. Lingering always signalled a cry for pastoral care. I was wondering if we could just maybe meet for a coffee some time . . . there’s some issues I’m having that I’d like to discuss . . . Howard grew more intensely involved with the clasps of his bag. Still he sensed lingering. He looked up. That strange ghost girl who never said a word was making a performance of packing away her one notebook and pen. Finally she made it to the doorway and began lingering there, leaving Howard no choice but to squeeze by her. ‘Kathy – everything good?’ asked Howard, very loudly. ‘Oh! Yes . . . I mean, but I was just . . . Dr Belsey, is it the – the – same room . . . next week?’ ‘The very same,’ said Howard, and strode through the hallway, down the wheelchair ramp and out of the building. ‘Dr Belsey?’ Outside, in the small octagonal courtyard, it had begun to snow.  On Beauty Great drifting sheets of it divided the day, and with none of the mystique snow has in England: Will it settle? Will it melt? Is it sleet? Is it hail? This was just snow, period, and by tomorrow morning would be knee-deep. ‘Dr Belsey? Could I have a word – just for a sec?’ ‘Victoria, yes,’ he said, and blinked the flakes from his eyelashes.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Howard let the silence stretch a little. He turned to the board and slowly unpeeled the photocopy, letting tongueless questions pelt his back. His own questions kept him mentally occupied as he rolled Rembrandt into a tight white stick. How much longer on the divan? Why does the sex have to mean everything? OK, it can mean something , but why everything? Why do thirty years have to  On Beauty go down the toilet because I wanted to touch somebody else? Am I missing something? Is this what it comes down to? Why does the sex have to mean everything ? ‘I have a question.’ The voice, an English voice like his own, came from his left. He turned – she had been hidden by a taller boy sitting right in front of her. The first thing to note were two spots of radiant highlights on her face – maybe the result of the same cocoa butter Kiki used in the winter. A pool of moonlight on her smooth forehead, and another on the tip of her nose; the kind of highlights, it occurred to Howard, that would be impossible to paint without distorting, without misrepresenting, the solid darkness of her true complexion. And her hair had changed again: now it was wormy dreadlocks going every which way, although none was longer than two inches. The tips of each were coloured a sensational orange, as if she had dipped her head into a bucket of sunshine. Because he was not drunk this time he knew now for certain that her breasts were indeed a phenomenon of nature and not of his imagination, for here were the spirited nipples again, working their way through a thick green ribbed woollen jumper. It had a stiff polo neck, several inches from her own skin, through which her neck and head emerged like a plant from its pot. ‘Victoria, yes. I mean – is it Vee? Victoria? Go on.’ ‘It’s Vee.’ Howard could feel the class thrill to this new piece of information – a freshman who was already known to the professor! Of course, the more committed Googlers in this class probably already knew the deal between Howard and the celebrity Kipps, and maybe had gone further and knew that this girl was Kipps’s daughter, and that girl over there, Howard’s. Maybe they even knew something of the culture war shaping up on the campus. Two days ago Kipps had argued strongly against Howard’s Affirmative Action committee in the Wellington Herald . He had criticized not only its aims but challenged its very right to existence. He accused Howard and ‘his supporters’ of privileging liberal perspectives over conservative ones; of suppressing right-wing discussion and debate on campus.  the anatomy lesson The article had been a sensation, as such things are in college towns.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  The quad behind him looked like an arctic tundra. Another five minutes. Howard wandered across to Emerson Hall itself, and stationed himself just inside the doors, where he would not miss her. With everybody already seated, he was left with the waiting staff, so black in their white shirts, holding high those trays of Wellington shrimp that always looked much better than they tasted. They were informal back here, laughing and whistling, speaking their boisterous Creole, touching each other. Nothing like the silent docile servers they became in hall. Now a queue of them lined up just near Howard with their platters, jiggling impatiently like footballers in a tunnel, ready to run on to the pitch. A loud clatter of a side door made everyone turn to look at the same time, Howard included. Fifteen white young men in matching black suits and gold waistcoats walked into the hallway. They quickly arranged themselves in a staggered formation on the main stairs. The fattest of them now sang a clear, steady note with which the rest harmonized, until there was an almost unbearably pleasant chord in the air. It vibrated so brutally that Howard felt it in his body, like standing beside a loud sound system. The front door opened. ‘Shit! Sorry I’m late – sorry. Clothes crisis.’ Victoria, dressed in a very long overcoat, brushed the snow from her shoulders. The young men, apparently satisfied with their sound check, stopped singing and trooped back into the room from which  on beauty and being wrong they had come. A spatter of applause – which sounded distinctly ironic – came from the waiters. ‘You’re very late,’ said Howard, frowning after the retreating singers, but Victoria did not answer. She was busy taking off her coat. Howard turned back round. ‘What do you think?’ she asked, although there could be no question of the answer. She wore a shimmering white trouser suit, cut low. Apparently there was nothing underneath it. The waist was as neat as neat could be; her backside was impertinent. Her hair had changed again. This time it was parted on the side and slicked down with pomade like in those old photos of Josephine Baker. Her lashes appeared longer than usual. Every man and woman in the line of waiters fixed their eyes upon her. ‘You look – ’ attempted Howard. ‘Yeah, well . . . I thought one of us should wear a nice suit.’ They walked into the hall at the same time as the servers and were thankfully obscured by them. Howard feared all activity and conversation in this room would cease if these diners were squarely confronted with this impossible beauty walking beside him. They took their seats at a long table that ran along the east wall. There were four professors at this table with their Emerson student dates, the rest of the places being taken by freshmen from other halls who had paid for their tickets.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  And she was mine, she was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, she was mine. In the course of the evocations and schemes to which I had dedicated so many insomnias, I had gradually eliminated all the superfluous blur, and by stacking level upon level of translucent vision, had evolved a final picture. Naked, except for one sock and her charm bracelet, spread-eagled on the bed where my philter had felled her—so I foreglimpsed her; a velvet hair ribbon was still clutched in her hand; her honey-brown body, with the white negative image of a rudimentary swimsuit patterned against her tan, presented to me its pale breastbuds; in the rosy lamplight, a little pubic floss glistened on its plump hillock. The cold key with its warm wooden addendum was in my pocket. I wandered through various public rooms, glory below, gloom above: for the look of lust always is gloomy; lust is never quite sure—even when the velvety victim is locked up in one’s dungeon—that some rival devil or influential god may still not abolish one’s prepared triumph. In common parlance, I needed a drink; but there was no barroom in that venerable place full of perspiring philistines and period objects. I drifted to the Men’s Room. There, a person in clerical black—a “hearty party” comme on dit—checking with the assistance of Vienna, if it was still there, inquired of me how I had liked Dr. Boyd’s talk, and looked puzzled when I (King Sigmund the Second) said Boyd was quite a boy. Upon which, I neatly chucked the tissue paper I had been wiping my sensitive finger tips with into the receptacle provided for it, and sallied lobby-ward. Comfortably resting my elbows on the counter, I asked Mr. Potts was he quite sure my wife had not telephoned, and what about that cot? He answered she had not (she was dead, of course) and the cot would be installed tomorrow if we decided to stay on. From a big crowded place called The Hunters’ Hall came a sound of many voices discussing horticulture or eternity. Another room, called The Raspberry Room, all bathed in light, with bright little tables and a large one with “refreshments,” was still empty except for a hostess (that type of worn woman with a glassy smile and Charlotte’s manner of speaking); she floated up to me to ask if I was Mr. Braddock, because if so, Miss Beard had been looking for me. “What a name for a woman,” I said and strolled away.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  In about ten minutes I was wandering through the still more purple mist seeing champagne bubbles in the corners of my eyes. I was supposedly in search of the ladies’ room (but really, of course, in search of Adrian). I found thousands of him stretching back into infinity in a long mirrored baroque hallway outside the ladies’ room. He shimmered in the mirrors. An infinite number of Adrians in beige corduroy trousers and plum-colored turtlenecks and brown suede jackets. An infinite number of dirty toenails in an infinite number of Indian sandals. An infinite number of meerschaum pipes between his beautiful curling lips. My zipless fuck? My man under the bed! Multiplied like the lovers in Last Year at Marienbad. Multiplied like Andy Warhol’s self-portraits. Multiplied like the Thousand and One Buddhas in the Temple at Kyoto. (Each Buddha has six arms, each arm has an extra eye…how many pricks did these millions of Adrians have? And each prick symbolizing the infinite wisdom and infinite compassion of God?) “Hello, ducks,” he says, turning to me. “I have something for you,” I say, handing him the inscribed book I’ve been carrying around all day. The edges of the pages are beginning to fray from my sweaty palms. “You sweetheart!” He takes the book. We link arms and start walking down the mirrored hall. “Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse,” as my old buddy Dante would say. The poems pimped for love, and their author too. The book of my body was open and the second circle of hell wasn’t far off. “You know,” I say, “we’ll probably never see each other again.” “Maybe that’s why we’re doing this,” he says. We make our way out of the palace and into another courtyard which is now chiefly used as a parking lot. Amid the ghosts of Opels and Volkswagens and Peugeots we embrace. Mouth to mouth and belly to belly. Adrian must have the wettest kiss in history. His tongue is everywhere, like the ocean. We are sailing away. His penis (bulging under his corduroy pants) is the tall red smokestack of an ocean liner. And I am moaning around it like the ocean wind. And I am saying all the silly things you say while necking in parking lots, trying somehow to express a longing which is inexpressible—except maybe in poetry. And it all comes out so lame. I love your mouth. I love your hair. I love your ears. I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you. Because this is almost too good to be love. Too yummy and delicious to be anything as serious and sober as love. Your whole mouth has turned liquid. His tongue tastes better than a nipple to an infant. (And don’t throw me any psychiatric interpretations, Bennett, because I’ll throw them right back. Infantile. Regressed. Basically Incestuous.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Despite all affectations to the contrary, she was actually racing various  the anatomy lesson women in this pool (she always made sure to pick women near enough her own age and size; she had a strong sense of fairness), and her will to carry on swimming rose and fell depending on how well she was keeping up with her unwitting competitors. Her goggles began to seep water in from their sides. She yanked them off, left them at one end and tried four lengths without, but it is much harder swimming above the surface than beneath it. You have to carry yourself more. Zora made her way back to the side. She felt around blindly for her goggles and, when this yielded nothing, thrust herself up out of the water to look – they were gone. She lost her temper at once; an unlucky freshman lifeguard was made to kneel down by the lip of the pool and be rudely spoken to as if he himself were the thief. After a while Zora gave up her interrogation and paddled away across the pool, scanning the surface of the water. To her right a boy sped by, kicking water into her eyes. She struggled for the side, swallowing water as she went. She looked at the back of the boy’s head – the red band of her own goggles. She clung on to the nearest ladder and waited for him. At the other end he performed a fluid somersault in the water as Zora had often dreamed of doing. He was a black boy in a pair of striking bumblebee shorts, yellow-and-black striped and moulded around him with the same elasticity and definition as his own skin. The curved line of his backside turned like a brand new beach-ball cresting the water. When he straightened out again, he swam the length of the pool without once lifting his head to breathe. He was faster than everybody. He was some kind of a swim-team asshole. Between the dip of his lower back – like a scoop taken out of an ice-cream tub – and the curve of his high, spherical ass, a tattoo was inked. Probably a fraternity thing.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  The train enters a galleria, or tunnel, and in the semi-darkness the symbolism is consummated. There is the soldier’s boot in the air and the dark walls of the tunnel and the hypnotic rocking of the train and the long high whistle as it finally emerges. Wordlessly, she gets off at a town called, perhaps, bivona. She crosses the tracks, stepping carefully over them in her narrow black shoes and heavy black stockings. He stares after her as if he were Adam wondering what to name her. Then he jumps up and dashes out of the train in pursuit of her. At that very moment a long freight train pulls through the parallel track obscuring his view and blocking his way. Twenty-five freight cars later, she has vanished forever. One scenario of the zipless fuck. Zipless, you see, not because European men have button-flies rather than zipper-flies, and not because the participants are so devastatingly attractive, but because the incident has all the swift compression of a dream and is seemingly free of all remorse and guilt; because there is no talk of her late husband or of his fiancée; because there is no rationalizing; because there is no talk at all. The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game. The man is not “taking” and the woman is not “giving.” No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one. Whenever it seemed I was close, I discovered a horse with a papier-mâché horn, or two clowns in a unicorn suit. Alessandro, my Florentine friend, came close. But he was, after all, one clown in a unicorn suit. Consider this tapestry, my life. TWO“Every Woman Adores a Fascist” Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. —Sylvia Plath At 6 a.m. we landed at Frankfurt Flughafen and shuffled out into a rubber-floored lounge which, for all its gleaming newness, made me think of death camps and deportations. We waited an hour there while the 747 refueled. All the analysts sat stiffly on molded fiberglass chairs arranged in inflexible rows: gray, yellow, gray, yellow, gray, yellow…. The joylessness of the color scheme was matched only by the joylessness of their faces.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  She went in and disappeared from sight. The sound of running water could be heard and a cat’s paw of steam stretched out into the bedroom to bat at a ball of cold air. A cricket chanted in the radiator. (Teal, moth, cat, cricket—the chorus of animals chirps and twitters, ready for its entrance into the enfeebled, cicatrized world.) Chuck put his hands on his knees like a retired farmer and levered himself up out of the chair. “I don’t know about you boys, but ol’ Chuck’s not taking no sloppy seconds.” I’d never heard before the expression sloppy seconds . Cursed as I was with an overly literal imagination—so that such stock phrases as motherfucker, pussywhipped and shitfaced took on horribly vivid pictorial detail for me—I couldn’t help seeing now a bruised and drooling indentation. For the first time my inchworm twitched, in response not to this damaged cloaca but to the idea of the five penises beside me, each a masquerader behind a domino of buttoned or zipped cloth, all mysterious and of an unknown girth, slant, heft, scent and hardness. I hotly envied the white whore what so obviously left her cold; I would have been content just to watch from her closet. Chuck returned to us surprisingly quickly but with a smile on his face and a huge transverse rod (that seemed worthy of its campus-wide reputation) in his trousers pointing up to the right of his belt buckle—one o’clock until it ticked down to two. As the second boy went in, Chuck wandered out into the other room, asked for a beer and got it and sat down to watch TV. He called me in to see something. I found myself sitting on the overstuffed arm of a chair covered with a fabric that felt like unshaved beard and suddenly there was a dimpled black hand on my knee belonging to the huge little girl who’d been dozing but was now contentedly half-awake and sipping a rum and Coke. “Want some?” “No,” I said. She breathed out a faint snort. “Don’ know why all you fellas go for that ofay bitch.” “Okay?” “Yeah, she a ofay cunt.” “ Ofay means ‘white,’” Chuck muttered between mouthfuls of potato chips, his eyes drinking in a shootout on the screen. He cocked his thumb up out of his fist, sighted his way down his forefinger and fired at the television; his body was jolted to one side and he buried his head in his armpit for a second, played dead, sniffed, said, “Yuck, time for my monthly shower.” “Hey, honey,” the woman beside me was saying, “I got me a crazy little crib downstairs. Why don’ you and me party? Wanna party? That ofay cunt take ten bucks. I give it to you for eight. Eight for straight, ten for round-the-world.” “What’s that?” She hissed a goose giggle into her pink palm.