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 Fear of Flying (1973)

  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. Bennett was smiling with the redheaded candidate from Argentina on his arm. I had another champagne and made the rounds with Adrian. He was introducing me to all the London analysts and babbling about my unwritten article. Would they consent to be interviewed? Could he interest them in my journalistic effort? The whole time he had his arm around my waist and sometimes his hand on my ass. We were nothing if not indiscreet. Everybody saw. His analyst. My ex-analysts. His son’s analyst. His daughter’s analyst. My husband’s ex-analyst. My husband. “Is this Mrs. Goodlove?” one of the older London analysts asked. “No,” Adrian said, “but I wish it were. If I’m very, very lucky, it may be.” I was floating. My head was full of champagne and talk of marriage. My head was full of leaving dull old New York for glamorous trendy London. I was out of my mind. “She just ran off with some Englishman,” I could hear my friends in New York saying, not without envy. They were all sandbagged down with children and babysitters, with graduate courses and teaching jobs and analysts and patients. And here I was flying through the purple skies of Vienna on my borrowed broomstick. I was the one they counted on to write out their fantasies. I was the one they counted on to tell funny stories about her former lovers.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Each leaf is crisply outlined and shaded; each breast points its literal nipple at you like an idiot’s eye; each feather in Cupid’s wing is quiveringly palpable. No imagination—that’s what makes a beast. After Munich and its environs, we drove north as far as Heidelberg (stopping, looping and zigzagging along the way), took the Autobahn to Basle (Swiss chocolate, Schwitzer-deutsch and a dour sandstone cathedral overlooking the Rhine), then on to Strasbourg (home of stuffed goose livers and great beer), a wild zigzagging tour of back roads leading more or less toward Paris, then down through the South of France, into Italy (via the Riviera), south as far as Florence, then north again to Verona and Venice, across the Alps, through the Ticino and into Austria again, then north up through Germany once more, then into France, and finally to Paris, for the last time, where the truth (or one of them) was revealed to me but did not (not yet) make me free. Incredible as this inefficient itinerary may sound, it is still more incredible when you realize that the whole thing took only two and a half weeks. We saw almost nothing. We were driving most of the time and talking. And fucking. Adrian was impotent when I wanted him in private, but he became voraciously virile in the most public places: in beach cabanas, in parking lots, in airports, in ruins, monasteries and churches. Unless he could break at least two taboos with one act, he wasn’t interested at all. What really would have turned him on would have been the opportunity to bugger his mother in church. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, et cetera. — We talked. We talked. We talked. Psychoanalysis on wheels. Remembrance of things past. We made lists to pass the time: my former boyfriends, his former girlfriends, the various kinds of fucks (group-fucks, love-fucks, guilt-fucks, etc.), the various places where we had fucked (in the bathroom of a 707, in the deserted Jewish chapel of the old Queen Elizabeth, in a ruined abbey in Yorkshire, in rowboats, in graveyards).... I must admit that I made some of these up, but the main thing was entertainment, not literal truth. Surely you don’t suppose that I’m telling the literal truth here either? Adrian, like every other shrink I’ve ever known or fucked, wanted to find patterns in my past. Repetitive, self-destructive patterns preferably—but any sort of pattern would do. And, of course, I tried to oblige. It wasn’t hard either. Where men are concerned I have always lacked a simple quality known as caution, or perhaps you might call it common sense. I meet a guy any other self-respecting women would automatically run miles from, and I manage to find something endearing about all his questionable characteristics, something rivetingly attractive about his manias.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  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. She was too perfect set against this white backdrop. Looking at her made him feel open to ideas, possibilities, allowances, arguments that two minutes earlier he would have rejected. Just now would be a very good moment, for example, for Levi to ask for twenty dollars or for Jack French to ask him to chair a panel on the future of the University. But then – thank the sweet Lord – she turned her head away. ‘I’ll catch up with you,’ said Victoria to two young men who were walking backwards in front of her, grinning and packing snowballs in raw, pink hands. Victoria fell into step with Howard.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Reader! Bruder! What a foolish Hamburg that Hamburg was! Since his supersensitive system was loath to face the actual scene, he thought he could at least enjoy a secret part of it—which reminds one of the tenth or twentieth soldier in the raping queue who throws the girl’s black shawl over her white face so as not to see those impossible eyes while taking his military pleasure in the sad, sacked village. What I lusted to get was the printed picture that had chanced to absorb my trespassing image while the Gazette’s photographer was concentrating on Dr. Braddock and his group. Passionately I hoped to find preserved the portrait of the artist as a younger brute. An innocent camera catching me on my dark way to Lolita’s bed—what a magnet for Mnemosyne! I cannot well explain the true nature of that urge of mine. It was allied, I suppose, to that swooning curiosity which impels one to examine with a magnifying glass bleak little figures—still life practically, and everybody about to throw up—at an early morning execution, and the patient’s expression impossible to make out in the print. Anyway, I was literally gasping for breath, and one corner of the book of doom kept stabbing me in the stomach while I scanned and skimmed … Brute Force and Possessed were coming on Sunday, the 24th, to both theatres. Mr. Purdom, independent tobacco auctioneer, said that ever since 1925 he had been an Omen Faustum smoker. Husky Hank and his petite bride were to be the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Reginald G. Gore, 58 Inchkeith Ave. The size of certain parasites is one sixth of the host. Dunkerque was fortified in the tenth century. Misses’ socks, 39 c. Saddle Oxfords 3.98. Wine, wine, wine, quipped the author of Dark Age who refused to be photographed, may suit a Persian bubble bird, but I say give me rain, rain, rain on the shingle roof for roses and inspiration every time. Dimples are caused by the adherence of the skin to the deeper tissues. Greeks repulse a heavy guerilla assault—and, ah, at last, a little figure in white, and Dr. Braddock in black, but whatever spectral shoulder was brushing against his ample form—nothing of myself could I make out. I went to find Rita who introduced me with her vin triste smile to a pocket-sized wizened truculently tight old man saying this was—what was the name again, son?—a former schoolmate of hers. He tried to retain her, and in the slight scuffle that followed I hurt my thumb against his hard head. In the silent painted park where I walked her and aired her a little, she sobbed and said I would soon, soon leave her as everybody had, and I sang her a wistful French ballad, and strung together some fugitive rhymes to amuse her: The place was called Enchanted Hunters. Query: What Indian dyes, Diana, did thy dell endorse to make of Picture Lake a very

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Suspended on the brink of that voluptuous abyss (a nicety of physiological equipoise comparable to certain techniques in the arts) I kept repeating chance words after her—barmen, alarmin’, my charmin’, my carmen, ahmen, ahahamen—as one talking and laughing in his sleep while my happy hand crept up her sunny leg as far as the shadow of decency allowed. The day before she had collided with the heavy chest in the hall and—“Look, look!”—I gasped—“look what you’ve done, what you’ve done to yourself, ah, look”; for there was, I swear, a yellowish-violet bruise on her lovely nymphet thigh which my huge hairy hand massaged and slowly enveloped—and because of her very perfunctory underthings, there seemed to be nothing to prevent my muscular thumb from reaching the hot hollow of her groin—just as you might tickle and caress a giggling child—just that—and: “Oh it’s nothing at all,” she cried with a sudden shrill note in her voice, and she wiggled, and squirmed, and threw her head back, and her teeth rested on her glistening underlip as she half-turned away, and my moaning mouth, gentlemen of the jury, almost reached her bare neck, while I crushed out against her left buttock the last throb of the longest ecstasy man or monster had ever known. Immediately afterward (as if we had been struggling and now my grip had eased) she rolled off the sofa and jumped to her feet—to her foot, rather—in order to attend to the formidably loud telephone that may have been ringing for ages as far as I was concerned. There she stood and blinked, cheeks aflame, hair awry, her eyes passing over me as lightly as they did over the furniture, and as she listened or spoke (to her mother who was telling her to come to lunch with her at the Chatfields—neither Lo nor Hum knew yet what busybody Haze was plotting), she kept tapping the edge of the table with the slipper she held in her hand. Blessed be the Lord, she had noticed nothing! With a handkerchief of multicolored silk, on which her listening eyes rested in passing, I wiped the sweat off my forehead, and, immersed in a euphoria of release, rearranged my royal robes. She was still at the telephone, haggling with her mother (wanted to be fetched by car, my little Carmen) when, singing louder and louder, I swept up the stairs and set a deluge of steaming water roaring into the tub. At this point I may as well give the words of that song hit in full—to the best of my recollection at least—I don’t think I ever had it right.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  This fivesome bounces along for a while, the widow and the fat woman keeping silent, the mother and grandmother talking to the child and each other about the food. And then the train screeches to a halt in a town called (perhaps) corleone. A tall languid-looking soldier, unshaven, but with a beautiful mop of hair, a cleft chin, and somewhat devilish, lazy eyes, enters the compartment, looks insolently around, sees the empty half-seat between the fat woman and the widow, and, with many flirtatious apologies, sits down. He is sweaty and disheveled but basically a gorgeous hunk of flesh, only slightly rancid from the heat. The train screeches out of the station. Then we become aware only of the bouncing of the train and the rhythmic way the soldier’s thighs are rubbing against the thighs of the widow. Of course, he is also rubbing against the haunches of the fat lady—and she is trying to move away from him—which is quite unnecessary because he is unaware of her haunches. He is watching the large gold cross between the widow’s breasts swing back and forth in her deep cleavage. Bump. Pause. Bump. It hits one moist breast and then the other. It seems to hesitate in between as if paralyzed between two repelling magnets. The pit and the pendulum. He is hypnotized. She stares out the window, looking at each olive tree as if she had never seen olive trees before. He rises awkwardly, half-bows to the ladies, and struggles to open the window. When he sits down again his arm accidentally grazes the widow’s belly. She appears not to notice. He rests his left hand on the seat between his thigh and hers and begins to wind rubber fingers around and under the soft flesh of her thigh. She continues staring at each olive tree as if she were God and had just made them and were wondering what to call them. Meanwhile the enormously fat lady is packing away her pulp romance in an iridescent green plastic string bag fall of smelly cheeses and blackening bananas. And the grandmother is rolling ends of salami in greasy newspaper. The mother is putting on the little girl’s sweater and wiping her face with a handkerchief, lovingly moistened with maternal spittle. The train screeches to a stop in a town called (perhaps) prizzi, and the fat lady, the mother, the grandmother, and the little girl leave the compartment. Then the train begins to move again. The gold cross begins to bump, pause, bump between the widow’s moist breasts, the fingers begin to curl under the widow’s thighs, the widow continues to stare at the olive trees. Then the fingers are sliding between her thighs and they are parting her thighs, and they are moving upward into the fleshy gap between her heavy black stockings and her garters, and they are sliding up under her garters into the damp unpantied place between her legs.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  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. Why did it have to be either-or like that? I simply wanted them both. It was the choosing that was impossible. Adrian drove us back to our hotel. As we were coming down the winding hill from Grinzing, he talked about his children, poetically named Anaïs and Nikolai, who lived with him. They were ten and twelve. The other two, twin girls he didn’t name, lived with their mother in Liverpool. “It’s hard on my kids not having a mother,” he said, “but I’m a pretty good Mum to them myself. I even like cooking. I make a damned good curry.” His pride in being a housewife both charmed and amused me. I was sitting in the front of the Triumph next to Adrian. Bennett was sitting in the small seat in the back. If only he’d just disappear—float out of the open car and vanish into the woods. And of course I was also hating myself for wishing that. Why was it all so complicated? Why couldn’t we just be friendly and open about it. “Excuse me, darling, while I go off and fuck this beautiful stranger.” Why couldn’t it be simple and honest and unserious? Why did you have to risk your whole life for one measly zipless fuck? We drove to the hotel and said goodbye. How hypocritical to go upstairs with a man you don’t want to fuck, leave the one you do sitting there alone, and then, in a state of great excitement, fuck the one you don’t want to fuck while pretending he’s the one you do. That’s called fidelity. That’s called civilization and its discontents. — The next night was the formal opening of the Congress, ushered in by a twilight cocktail buffet in the courtyard of the Hofburg—one of Vienna’s eighteenth-century palaces. The inside of the building had been renovated so that the public rooms exuded all the institutional charm of American motel dining rooms, but the courtyard was still back in the mists of the eighteenth century. We arrived at that purple hour—eight o’clock on a late July evening. Long tables stood framing the edges of the courtyard. Waiters moved through the crowd holding aloft champagne glasses (sweet German Sekt, it turned out to be, alas). Even the analysts were glittering in the mauve dusk. Rose Schwamm-Lipkin wore a pink beaded Hong Kong sweater, a red satin skirt, and her dressiest orthopedic sandals. Judy Rose slithered by in a braless body suit of silver lamé. Even Dr. Schrift was wearing a plum velvet dinner jacket and a large azalea-pink satin bow tie. And Dr. Frommer was in tails and a top hat.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  on beauty and being wrong Zora stood up. He smacked her playfully on her big butt. ‘You always got my back. Knows everything ’bout everything .’ Zora took her chair to the window and demonstrated the technique. ‘ That’s better,’ said Carl. ‘Little peace for a brother when he’s working.’ You never know what the hotels are like in your hometown because you never have to stay in them. Howard had been recommend-ing the riverside Barrington to visiting professors for ten years, but, aside from a slight familiarity with the lobby, he really knew nothing about the place. He was about to find out. He was sitting on one of their reproduction Georgian sofas, waiting for her. From a window he could see the river and the ice on the river and the white sky reflected in the ice. He was feeling absolutely nothing. Not even guilt, not even lust. He had been compelled to come here by a series of e-mails she’d sent in the past week, liberally illustrated with the kind of home-made digital camera pornography that every teenage girl now seems so expert at. Her motivations were obscure to him. The day after the dinner she had sent him a livid e-mail, in reply to which he had sent a feeble apology, with no expectation of hearing from her again. But this was not like being married, as it turned out: Victoria forgave him at once. His disappearing act at the dinner seemed only to have intensified her determination to repeat what had happened in London. Howard felt himself too weak to fight anyone who had resolved to have him. He opened all her attachments and passed a lusty week of intense hard-ons at his desk – lurid visions of letting her do what she had asked to do. Crawl under your desk. Open my mouth. Suck it. Suck it. Suck it. How sexy the words are! Howard, who had almost no personal experience of pornography (he had contributed to a book denouncing it, edited by Steinem), was riveted by this modern sex, hard and shiny and fluid-free and violent. It suited his mood. Twenty years ago, maybe, he would have been repelled. Not now. Victoria sent  On Beauty him images of orifices and apertures that were simply awaiting him – with no conversation and no debate and no conflicting personalities and no sense of future trouble. Howard was fifty-seven years old. He had been married for thirty years to a difficult woman.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Howard pulled harshly on the tight end of his fag. ‘She wouldn’t thank you for that description, I’m afraid.’ ‘Beautiful?’ Howard blew out his smoke. ‘No, African queen.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘I think she finds it patronizing, not to mention factually inaccurate – look, Victoria.’ ‘ Vee . How many times!’  On Beauty ‘Vee. I’m going to go now,’ he said, but made no move to stand. ‘I don’t think I can help you tonight. I think you’ve drunk a little too much and you’re under a great emotional – ’ ‘Give us some of that.’ She pointed to his wine and pushed herself forward. Something she had done with her elbows had squeezed her breasts together, and the peaks of both, shiny with some kind of body cream, now began to communicate with Howard independently of their owner. ‘Give us some, go on,’ she said. In order for her to drink his wine, Howard would have to bring the glass to her lips. ‘One sip,’ she said looking over the rim into his eyes. So he tipped it towards her and she drank it tidily. When she drew away from the glass, her mobile, unreasonably large mouth was wet. The ridges in the thick dark lips were like his wife’s – plum-coloured in the creases and almost black elsewhere. What was left of her lipstick had retreated back to the corners, as if this were simply too much lip for it to scale. ‘She must be remarkable.’ ‘Who?’ ‘Bloody hell, keep up. Your wife. She must be remarkable.’ ‘Must she?’ ‘Yeah. Because my mum doesn’t – didn’t – make friends with just anybody,’ said Victoria, her voice catching at this change of tense. ‘She was particular about people. She was hard to get to know. I’ve been thinking that maybe I didn’t get to know her very well . . .’ ‘I’m sure that’s not – ’ ‘No, shush,’ said Victoria drunkenly and let some tears slip down her face untended, ‘that’s not the point – what I was saying is, she didn’t suffer fools, you know? They had to be special in some way. They had to be real people . Not like you and me. Real, special. So Kiki must be special. Would you say,’ said Victoria, ‘that she was special?’ Howard dropped his fag in Victoria’s empty glass. Breasts or no breasts, it was time to leave.  on beauty and being wrong ‘I’d say . . . that she has enabled my existence in the form that it has taken. And that form is special to us, yes.’ Victoria shook her head ruefully and reached out a hand, which she now placed on his knee. ‘There you are, see? You can never just say . . . I like the tomato .’ ‘I thought we were talking about my wife, not a vegetable.’ Victoria tapped a correcting finger against his trousers. ‘Fruit, actually.’ Howard nodded. ‘Fruit.’ ‘Come on, Dr, give me some more.’

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Initially, he was quite certain he was about to be sick. He walked purposefully into the hallway towards the bathroom. Then he remembered Kiki’s errand and perversely determined to complete it. He paused in the doorway of the empty second living room. There was only one person in there, kneeling by the stereo, surrounded by CDs. That narrow, expressive back he had seen once before was exposed to the night: a clever top, tied up at the neck. One expected her to unfurl and dance the dying swan. ‘Oh, all right,’ she said, turning her head. Howard had the queer sense that this was a reply to his silent thought. ‘Having a good one?’  On Beauty ‘Not really.’ ‘Bummer.’ ‘It’s Victoria, isn’t it.’ ‘ Vee .’ ‘Yes.’ She was right back on her heels, with only her top half turned to him. They smiled at each other. Howard’s heart spontaneously went out in sympathy to his eldest son. Mysteries of the past year resolved themselves. ‘So you’re the DJ,’ said Howard. Was there a new word for that now? ‘Looks like it – you don’t mind?’ ‘No, no . . . although a few of our senior guests were finding the selection . . . maybe a little bit hectic.’ ‘Right. You’ve been sent to sort me out.’ It was strange to hear this English phrase said in such an English way. ‘To confer, I think. Whose music is this, anyway?’ ‘ ‘‘Levi’s Mix’’,’ she read from a sticker on the CD case. She shook her head at him sadly. ‘Looks like the enemy’s within,’ she said. Of course she was bright. Jerome wouldn’t be able to stand a stupid girl, not even one this gorgeous. This was a problem Howard had never had in his own youth. It was only later that brains began to mean something to him. ‘What was wrong with what was on before?’ She stared at him. ‘Were you listening?’ ‘Kraftwerk . . . nothing wrong with Kraftwerk.’ ‘Two hours of Kraftwerk?’ ‘There’s other stuff, surely.’ ‘Have you seen this collection?’ ‘Well, yes – it’s mine.’ She laughed and shook her hair out. It was new hair, pulled back into a pony-tail and then falling down her back in a cascade of synthetic curls. She shifted her position to face him and then sat down on her heels again. The shiny purple material pulled tight  kipps and belsey across her chest. She seemed to have large nipples, like the old tenpence coins. Howard looked to the floor, feigning shame. ‘Like, how did you come by this one, exactly?’ She held up a CD of lyric-less electronica. ‘I bought it.’ ‘You bought it under duress. Gunman leading you to the counter.’ She mimed this. She had a dirty, cackling laugh, pitched low like her voice. Howard shrugged. He was annoyed by the lack of deference. ‘So we’re sticking with hectic?’ ‘ ’Fraid so, Professor.’ She winked. The eyelid came down in slow motion.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  might easily conject the whole, seeing one burning without any bodily fire. So after that she had been - long time tormented in her overmastering affection, and was no more able to keep silence, she caused her son to be called for (which word “son” she would fain put away, that she might not be rebuked of shame). Then he, nothing disobedient to the com- mandment of his ailing mother, with a sad and modest countenance, wrinkled like some old grand- sire, came with due obedience into the chamber of his stepdame, the mother of his brother; but she, being utterly wearied with the silence that she had kept so long to her torment, was in great doubt what she. might do; for she rejected within herself every word which she had before thought most apt for this meeting, and could not tell what to say first, by reason of her shame which still trembled before its fall. This young man even then suspecting no ill, with humble courtesy and downcast countenance demanded the cause of her present disease. Then she, having found the occasion to utter her wicked intent, put on boldness, and with weeping eyes and covered face began with trembling voice to speak unto him in this manner: “Thou, thou art the original cause of my present dolour; but thou too art my medicine and only health, for those thy comely eyes have so pierced through these eyes of mine and are so fastened within my breast, that they have kindled therein a raging and a roaring fire. Have pity therefore upon me that die by thy fault, neither let thy conscience reclaim to offend thy father, when as thou mayest save his wife for him from death. More- over, since as thou dost resemble thy father's shape in every point, I do justly fancy thee, seeing his image in thy face. Now is ministered unto thee i ATT LUCIUS APULEIUS fiduciam, habes capax necessarii facinoris otium: nam quod nemo novit, paene non fit.” 4 Repentino malo perturbatus adulescens quam- quam tale facinus protinus exhorruisset, non tamen negationis intempestiva severitate putavit exasper- andum, sed cautae promissionis dilatione leniendum. Ergo prolixe pollicetur, et bonum caperet animum refectionique se ac saluti redderet impendio suadet, donec patris aliqua profectione liberum voluptati concederetur spatium, statimque se refert a noxio conspectu novercae, et tam magnam domus cladem ratus indigere consilio pleniore ad quendam comper- tae gravitatis educatorem senem protinus refert : nec quiequam diutina deliberatione tam salubre visum quam fuga celeri procellam fortunae saevientis eva- dere. Sed impatiens vel exiguae dilationis mulier ficta qualibet causa confestim marito miris persuadet artibus ad longissime dissitas festinare villulas. Quo facto maturatae spei vesania praeceps promissae libi- dinis flagitat vadimonium : sed iuvenis modo istud modo aliud causae faciens execrabilem frustratur eius conspectum, quoad illa nuntiorum varietate pollici- tationem sibi denegatam manifesto perspiciens, mobi- litate lubrica nefarium amorem ad longe deterius transtulisset odium, et assumpto statim nequissimo 478 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK X

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Fuit in illo conventiculo matrona quaedam pollens et opulens, quae more ceterorum visum meum mer- cata ac dehinc multiformibus ludicris delectata per admirationem assiduam paulatim in admirabilem mei cupidinem incidit, nec ullam vesanae libidini medelam 506 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK X favour to pass, he came into Thessaly to buy excel- lent beasts and valiant fighters for the purpose, and now when he had bought such things as were neces- sary, and was about returning home, he would not journey into his country in his fine chariots or splen- did wagons, which travelled behind him in the rear, some covered and some open, neither would he ride. upon Thessalian horses, or gennets of France, which be most excellent (by reason of their long descent) that can be found; but caused me to be garnished and trimmed with trappings of gold, with brave harness, with purple coverings, with a bridle of silver, with pictured clothes, and with shrilling bells, and in this manner he rode upon me lovingly, speaking and entreating me with gentle words, but above all things he did greatly rejoice, in that I was at once his servant to bear him upon my back, and his companion to feed with him at the table. After a long time when we had travelled as well by sea as land, and fortuned to arrive at Corinth, the people of the town came about us on every side, not so much to do honour unto Thiasus as to see me : for my fame was so greatly spread there, that I gained my master much money: for when the people was desirous to see me play pranks, he caused the gates to be shut, and such as entered in should pay money ; by means whereof I was a profitable companion to him every day. There fortuned to be amengst the assembly a noble and rich matron, that after that she had paid her due to behold me was greatly delighted with all my tricks and qualities, in so much that she fell marvel- lously in love with me, and could find no remedy to her passions and disordinate appetite, but continually desired to have her pleasure with me, like a new 507 20 21 LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Choo closed his eyes and shook his head, slightly but perceptibly. Levi laughed nervously. ‘Now, Choo . . . don’t look too excited, you know, all at once, now.’ Choo looked Levi straight in his eyes, hoping for fellow feeling. ‘I really fucking hate to sell things, you know?’ he said, pretty sorrowfully, Levi thought. ‘Choo – you ain’t selling , man,’ said Levi keenly in reply. Now that he understood the problem he was happy – it was so easily solved! It was just a matter of attitude. He said, ‘This ain’t like working the counter at CVS! You hustling , man. And that’s a different thing. That’s street . To hustle is to be alive – you dead if you don’t know how to hustle. And you ain’t a brother if you can’t hustle. That’s what joins us all together – whether we be on Wall Street or on MTV or sitting on a corner with a dime-bag. It’s a beautiful thing, man. We hustling!’ This, the most complete version of Levi’s personal philosophy that he himself had ever articulated, hung in the air awaiting its appropriate Amen! ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ said Choo, sighing. ‘Let’s get going.’ This disappointed Levi. Even if the other guys didn’t fully understand Levi’s enthusiasm for what they did, they always smiled and played along, and they had learned a few of the artificial words that Levi liked to apply to their real-life situation. Hustler , Playa , Gangsta , Pimp . The reflection of themselves in Levi’s eyes was, after all, a more than welcome replacement for their own realities. Who wouldn’t rather be a gangsta than a street-hawker? Who wouldn’t rather hustle than sell? Who would choose their own lonely, dank rooms over this Technicolor video, this outdoor community that Levi insisted they were all a part of ? The Street, the global Street, lined with hustling brothers working  On Beauty corners from Roxbury to Casablanca, from South Central to Cape Town. Levi tried again: ‘I’m talking about hustlin’ , man! It’s like – ’ ‘Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Gucci, Fendi, Fendi, Prada, Prada,’ called Choo, as he had been instructed. Two middle-aged white women paused by his display, and started to boldly haggle him down. Levi noticed that his colleague’s English transformed at once into something simpler, monosyllabic. He noted also how much more comfortable the women were dealing with Choo than they were with Levi. When Levi tried to interject a little speech about the quality of the merchandise, they looked at him strangely, almost affronted. Of course, they never want conversation – Felix had explained that. They’re ashamed to be buying from you. It was a hard thing to remember, after the mega-store, where people had taken such pride in their capacity as purchasers.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  There is nothing louder than an American hotel; and, mind you, this was supposed to be a quiet, cozy, old-fashioned, homey place —“gracious living” and all that stuff. The clatter of the elevator’s gate—some twenty yards northeast of my head but as clearly perceived as if it were inside my left temple—alternated with the banging and booming of the machine’s various evolutions and lasted well beyond midnight. Every now and then, immediately east of my left ear (always assuming I lay on my back, not daring to direct my viler side toward the nebulous haunch of my bed-mate), the corridor would brim with cheerful, resonant and inept exclamations ending in a volley of good- nights. When that stopped, a toilet immediately north of my cerebellum took over. It was a manly, energetic, deep-throated toilet, and it was used many times. Its gurgle and gush and long afterflow shook the wall behind me. Then someone in a southern direction was extravagantly sick, almost coughing out his life with his liquor, and his toilet descended like a veritable Niagara, immediately beyond our bathroom. And when finally all the waterfalls had stopped, and the enchanted hunters were sound asleep, the avenue under the window of my insomnia, to the west of my wake—a staid, eminently residential, dignified alley of huge trees—degenerated into the despicable haunt of gigantic trucks roaring through the wet and windy night. And less than six inches from me and my burning life, was nebulous Lolita! After a long stirless vigil, my tentacles moved towards her again, and this time the creak of the mattress did not awake her. I managed to bring my ravenous bulk so close to her that I felt the aura of her bare shoulder like a warm breath upon my cheek. And then, she sat up, gasped, muttered with insane rapidity something about boats, tugged at the sheets and lapsed back into her rich, dark, young unconsciousness. As she tossed, within that abundant flow of sleep, recently auburn, at present lunar, her arm struck me across the face. For a second I held her. She freed herself from the shadow of my embrace— doing this not consciously, not violently, not with any personal distaste, but with the neutral plaintive murmur of a child demanding its natural rest. And again the situation remained the same: Lolita with her curved spine to Humbert, Humbert resting his head on his hand and burning with desire and dyspepsia.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  blood bath of trees before the blue hotel? She said: “Why blue when it is white, why blue for heaven’s sake?” and started to cry again, and I marched her to the car, and we drove on to New York, and soon she was reasonably happy again high up in the haze on the little terrace of our flat. I notice I have somehow mixed up two events, my visit with Rita to Briceland on our way to Cantrip, and our passing through Briceland again on our way back to New York, but such suffusions of swimming colors are not to be disdained by the artist in recollection. 27My letterbox in the entrance hall belonged to the type that allows one to glimpse something of its contents through a glassed slit. Several times already, a trick of harlequin light that fell through the glass upon an alien handwriting had twisted it into a semblance of Lolita’s script causing me almost to collapse as I leant against an adjacent urn, almost my own. Whenever that happened—whenever her lovely, loopy, childish scrawl was horribly transformed into the dull hand of one of my few correspondents—I used to recollect, with anguished amusement, the times in my trustful, pre-dolorian past when I would be misled by a jewel-bright window opposite wherein my lurking eye, the ever alert periscope of my shameful vice, would make out from afar a half-naked nymphet stilled in the act of combing her Alice-in-Wonderland hair. There was in the fiery phantasm a perfection which made my wild delight also perfect, just because the vision was out of reach, with no possibility of attainment to spoil it by the awareness of an appended taboo; indeed, it may well be that the very attraction immaturity has for me lies not so much in the limpidity of pure young forbidden fairy child beauty as in the security of a situation where infinite perfections fill the gap between the little given and the great promised—the great rosegray never-to-be-had. Mes fenětres! Hanging above blotched sunset and welling night, grinding my teeth, I would crowd all the demons of my desire against the railing of a throbbing balcony: it would be ready to take off in the apricot and black humid evening; did take off—whereupon the lighted image would move and Eve would revert to a rib, and there would be nothing in the window but an obese partly clad man reading the paper.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I have reserved for the conclusion of my “Annabel” phase the account of our unsuccessful first tryst. One night, she managed to deceive the vicious vigilance of her family. In a nervous and slender-leaved mimosa grove at the back of their villa we found a perch on the ruins of a low stone wall. Through the darkness and the tender trees we could see the arabesques of lighted windows which, touched up by the colored inks of sensitive memory, appear to me now like playing cards—presumably because a bridge game was keeping the enemy busy. She trembled and twitched as I kissed the corner of her parted lips and the hot lobe of her ear. A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own. Her legs, her lovely live legs, were not too close together, and when my hand located what it sought, a dreamy and eerie expression, half-pleasure, half-pain, came over those childish features. She sat a little higher than I, and whenever in her solitary ecstasy she was led to kiss me, her head would bend with a sleepy, soft, drooping movement that was almost woeful, and her bare knees caught and compressed my wrist, and slackened again; and her quivering mouth, distorted by the acridity of some mysterious potion, with a sibilant intake of breath came near to my face. She would try to relieve the pain of love by first roughly rubbing her dry lips against mine; then my darling would draw away with a nervous toss of her hair, and then again come darkly near and let me feed on her open mouth, while with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails, I gave her to hold in her awkward fist the scepter of my passion. I recall the scent of some kind of toilet powder—I believe she stole it from her mother’s Spanish maid—a sweetish, lowly, musky perfume. It mingled with her own biscuity odor, and my senses were suddenly filled to the brim; a sudden commotion in a nearby bush prevented them from overflowing—and as we drew away from each other, and with aching veins attended to what was probably a prowling cat, there came from the house her mother’s voice calling her, with a rising frantic note—and Dr. Cooper ponderously limped out into the garden. But that mimosa grove—the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honeydew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since—until at last, twenty-four years later, I broke her spell by incarnating her in another.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  similis celero vestigium, * Age" inquam “ Luci, evigila et tecum esto: habes exoptatam occasionem et voto diutino potiris. Fabulis miris! explere pectus, aufer formidines pueriles, comminus cum re ipsa naviter congredere, et a nexu quidem venerio hospitis tuae tempera et probi Milonis genialem torum religiosus suspice; verum enimvero Fotis famula petatur enixe. Nam et forma scitula et moribus ludicra et prorsus argutula est. Vesperi quoque cum somno concederes, et in cubiculum te deduxit comiter, et blande lectulo collocavit, et satis amanter cooperuit, et osculato tuo capite quam invita discederet vuitu prodidit, denique saepe retrorsa respiciens substitit. Quod bonum felix et faustum itaque, licet salutare non erit, Fotis illa temptetur.” 7 Haec mecum ipse disputans fores Milonis accedo et, quod aiunt, pedibus in sententiam meam vado. Nec tamen domi Milonem vel uxorem eius offendo, sed tantum caram meam Fotidem: suis parabat viseum fartim concisum et. pulpam frustatim con- sectam et abacum? pascuae iurulentae et quod naribus iam inde ariolabar, tuccetum perquam sapidissimum. Ipsa linea tunica mundule amicta et russea fasceola praenitente altiuscule sub ipsas papillas succinctula, illud eibarium vasculum floridis palmulis rotabat in circulum et in orbis flexibus crebra succutiens et simul membra sua leniter illubricans, lumbis sensim vibrantibus, spinam mobilem quatiens placide de- center undabat. Isto aspectu defixus obstupui et !MSS miseris. Milesiis and mysticis have both been pro- posed. 2 The best MS seems to read ambacu pascuae vurulenta, from which no meaning can be extracted. The suggestion given in the text is tolerably near and makes fair sense. 58 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK II myself: “O Lucius, now take heed, be vigilant, have a good care, for now thou hast time and place to satisfy thy longing, and mayest gain the desire thou hast so long nourished and fill thy heart with marvels. Now shake off thy childishness and come close to this matter like a man, but specially temper thyself from the love of thine hostess, and abstain from violation of the bed of worthy Milo; but strongly attempt to win the maiden Fotis, for she is beautiful, wanton and pleasant in talk. Nay yester- eve when thou wentest to sleep, she brought thee gently into thy chamber, and tenderly laid thee down in thy bed, and lovingly covered thee, and kissed thy head sweetly, and shewed in her counte- nance how unwillingly she departed, and cast her eyes oftentimes back and stood still ; then good speed to thee; then hast thou a good occasion ministered unto thee, even if it betide thee ill, to prove and try the mind of Fotis.”

• From On Beauty (2005)

  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. But the sun and water rippled and distorted its outline, and, before Zora could figure it out, he was right beside her, his arm resting on the dividing rope, gulping for air. ‘Umm, excuse me?’ ‘Huh?’ ‘I said excuse me – I think you’ll find those are my goggles.’ ‘I can’t hear you, man – hold up a minute.’  On Beauty He heaved himself up out of the water and rested his elbows on the side. This brought his groin to meet Zora at eye level. For a full ten seconds, as if there were no material there at all, she was presented with the broad line of it running along his thigh to the left, making three-dimensional waves of his bumble-bee stripes. Beneath this arresting sight, his balls pulled at the fabric of his shorts, low and heavy and not quite lifted out of the warm water. His tattoo was of the sun – the sun with a face. She felt she had seen it before. Its rays were thick and fanned out like the mane of a lion. The boy took out two earplugs, removed the goggles, left them on the side and returned to Zora’s bobbing height. ‘Got plugs in, man – couldn’t hear a thing.’ ‘I said I think you’ve got my goggles. I put them down for like a second and they went – maybe you picked them up by mistake . . . my goggles?’ The boy was frowning at her. He shook the water from his face. ‘I know you?’ ‘What? No – look, can I see those goggles please?’ The boy, still frowning, threw his long arm up and over the side and came back with the goggles. ‘OK, so those are mine. The red strap is mine – the other one broke and I put that red one on myself, so – ’ The boy grinned. ‘Well . . . If they yours, I guess you better take ’em.’

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Mom . . . I really don’t want to come home at Christmas and find Victoria drinking eggnog in my kitchen . . . Could we just . . . like, could we cool it on the ‘‘being neighbourly’’ vibe? They’re pretty private people.’ ‘Who’s bothering them!’ cried Kiki. ‘OK, then!’ echoed Jerome, imitating her. ‘Nobody’s bothering anybody,’ muttered Kiki irritably. She stepped aside to allow a woman with a double stroller to get by. ‘I just like her. The woman lives near by, and she’s obviously not well, and I’d like to see how she’s doing. Is that allowed?’ It was the first time she had articulated these motives, even to herself. Hearing them now, she recognized how approximate and shoddy they were when placed alongside the strong, irrational desire she had to be in that woman’s presence again. ‘OK . . . I just – I guess I don’t see why we have to be friends with them.’ ‘You have friends, Jerome. And Zora has friends, and Levi practically lives with his friends – and’ – Kiki followed the thought to the edge of the cliff and beyond – ‘well, we sure as hell know now how close your father is to his friends – and what? I can’t make friends? Y’all have your life and I have no life?’ ‘No, Mom . . . come on, that’s not fair . . . I just . . . I mean, I wouldn’t have thought she was your type of person . . . Makes it a little awkward for me, that’s all. Anyway, whatever. You know . . . you do what you want.’ A mutual bad temper stretched its black wings over the conversation. ‘Mom . . .’ mumbled Jerome contritely, ‘look, I’m glad you rang. How are you? Are you OK?’ ‘Me? I’m fine. I’m fine .’ ‘OK . . .’ ‘Really,’ said Kiki. ‘You don’t sound great.’ ‘I’m fine .’  On Beauty ‘So . . . what’s going to happen? With you . . . you know . . . and Dad.’ He sounded almost tearful, anxious not to be told the truth. It was wrong, Kiki knew, to be antagonized by this, but she was. These children spend so much time demanding the status of adulthood from you – even when it isn’t in your power to bestow it – and then when the real shit hits the fan , when you need them to be adults, suddenly they’re children again. ‘God, I don’t know, Jay. That’s the truth. I’m getting through the days here. That’s about it.’ ‘I love you, Mom,’ said Jerome ardently. ‘You’re gonna get through this. You’re a strong black woman.’ People had been telling Kiki this her whole life.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] THE NATURAL thirst which never is sated,1 save with the water whereof the poor Samaritan woman asked the grace,2 was burning within me, and haste was goading me along the encumbered way behind my Leader, and I was grieving at the just penance; and lo, even as Luke writes to us that Christ appeared to the two who were on the way,3 already risen from the mouth of the tomb, a shade4 appeared to us, and came on behind us, gazing at its feet on the prostrate crowd, nor did we perceive it until it first spake, saying: “My brothers, God give you peace.” Quickly we turned us, and Virgil gave back to him the sign that is fitting thereto.5 Then began: “May the true court, which binds me in eternal exile, bring thee in peace to the council of the blest.” “How,” said he, and meantime we went sturdily, “if ye are shades that God deigns not above, who hath escorted you so far by his stairs?” And my Teacher: “If thou lookest at the marks which this man bears, and which the angel outlines, clearly wilt thou see ’tis meet he reign with the good. But since she who spins day and night, had not yet drawn for him the fibre which Clotho charges and packs on the distaff for each one,6 his spirit, which is thy sister and mine, coming up, could not come along, because it sees not after our fashion:7 wherefore I was brought forth from Hell’s wide jaws to guide him, and I will guide him onward, so far as my school can lead him.8 But tell us, if thou knowest, why the mount gave before such shakings, and wherefore all seemed to shout with one voice down to its soft base.” Thus, by asking, did he thread the very needle’s eye of my desire, and with the hope alone my thirst was made less fasting. That spirit began: “The holy rule of the mount suffereth naught that is arbitrary, or that is outside custom. Here it is free from all terrestrial change; that which Heaven receives into itself from itself9 may here operate as cause, and naught else: since neither rain, nor hail, nor snow, nor dew, nor hoarfrost, falls any higher than the short little stairway of the three steps. Clouds, dense or thin, appear not, nor lightning flash, for Thaumas’ daughter,10 who yonder oft changes her region. Dry vapour rises not higher than the top of the three steps which I spake of, where Peter’s vicar hath his feet. It quakes perchance lower down little or much, but by reason of wind which is hidden in the earth, I know not how, it has never quaked up here. It quakes here when some soul feeleth herself cleansed, so that she may rise up, or set forth, to mount on high, and such a shout follows her.