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.

Page 109 of 344 · 20 per page

• From Best Erotic Romance

  “I’m glad to hear that,” he replied, breaking eye contact to convey his lack of interest. Convincing the Mondego to carry his microbrews had been his first toehold in Vegas. The resort’s contract funded his biweekly trips to pitch his product to other establishments in the area, which in turn had allowed him to have Robin for a year. His weekends with her had been the most valuable and treasured blocks of time in his life. Until four months ago, when he’d fucked up and lost her. Tossing some bills on the bar, Paul vacated his barstool and carried his beer out to the elevators. He’d left flowers for Robin with the front desk, along with his room number in a note. Although he knew she must have checked in yesterday, she hadn’t contacted him. He’d tried to convince himself that she was busy getting ready for the jewelry trade show that opened today in the hotel, but that look she’d just shot him proved the lie. His only consolation was that she wasn’t indifferent to him. He could only hope that meant she wasn’t totally over him. He’d take whatever he could get from her right now—an argument, a slap to the face, anything at all. As long as it gave him the opportunity to say what needed to be said. He was stepping into the elevator when he smelled her. Inhaling deeply, Paul pulled the fragrance of vanilla and something flowery deep into his lungs. Awareness sizzled down his spine and fisted his balls, his dormant sexual needs stirring after months without her. He hit the button for his floor, then moved to the back of the car and turned around. As Robin took up a position beside him, anticipation thrummed through his veins. He briefly wondered what excuses she’d made to her companion, then he pushed the thought aside. He didn’t give a shit. The only thing that mattered was that she’d followed. An elderly couple and three suit-clad gentlemen entered the car and faced the doors. As the elevator began its ascent, Robin balanced on one stiletto, drawing Paul’s gaze. He watched as she pushed her underwear down, pulling one leg free and then the other. Jesus. His dick throbbed with eagerness and fantasies of stepping behind her, lifting her dress, and pushing into her right there filled his mind. A soft ding signaled the first stop. The businessmen got off and four teenagers in bathing suits got on. Training his gaze straight ahead, Paul reached over and slipped his hand inside the overlapping front of Robin’s dress. She sidestepped closer, putting him slightly in front of her, inviting his touch. He cupped her baby-soft hairless pussy, his fingers curling between her legs and finding her hot and damp. His dick swelled further, and he finished his beer to hide a telling groan.

• From Best Erotic Romance

  His eyes never left mine as he pulled out his wallet and handed the waiter a wad of cash. Eric guided me outside, his hand resting on the small of my back as we waited for the valet to bring the car. The music wafting over from the dance floor was just loud enough to provide an excuse not to converse. I wondered if that was for the best. I was getting really nervous. My palms weren’t the only parts of my body that were damp. We’d barely left the parking lot, though, when Eric pulled over to the curb. He turned, his arm moving to the back of the seat as he looked directly at me. “Are you sure about this?” he asked quietly. “I’ve waited for you for years. I can wait longer if you need me to.” For a moment, I wondered if he’d changed his mind. The hours we’d spent talking online just weren’t the same as being together in person. But his hand was shaking, ever so slightly, and his voice wasn’t completely steady. I wasn’t the only one nervous as hell here. I licked my lips and turned to lean against the door, letting my Wonderbra do its cleavage magic as I stretched my leg just enough to open my thighs beneath the clinging silk of my skirt. I was so wet I half-expected he could smell me. “Don’t you want me?” His pupils dilated, his nostrils flaring as his eyes flicked quickly to my breasts, lingered, then slid purposefully down and back up my body. He threw his head back against the seat and laughed. “Christ, woman! I want you so badly I’m about to come in my pants.” His voice came out hoarse in the quiet of the car. “Do you want me?” Yes. The answer was yes. I kept my eyes on his, knowing at that moment, I was going to let him see my lingerie. “I’m wearing crotchless panties. Just in case.” I couldn’t stop the flush heating my face. “Not that I expected you to ever know that.” He closed his eyes and groaned, his knuckles white as he took deep, bracing breaths. When he finally looked at me, his eyes smoldered. He smiled crookedly. “After all this time, it would be really embarrassing to come before we got our clothes off.” “Drive!” I laughed. He drove. My cell vibrated. Melissa. I turned it off. Eric’s cell vibrated. He pulled it out, grimacing as it slipped from his fingers and onto the seat beside me. “Would you please turn that fucking thing off!” I glanced at the Caller ID as I pressed the button. “J C Home?” “Janelle and Chris. And that would be Janelle. Chris would not be calling me now!” I giggled like a schoolgirl. “Does the whole world know we’re going out tonight?”

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  O how well doth a faire colour and a shining face agree with glittering hair! Behold, it encountreth with the beams of the Sunne, and pleaseth the eye marvellously. Sometimes the beauty of the haire resembleth the colour of gold and honey, sometimes the blew plumes and azured feathers about the neckes of Doves, especially when it is either anointed with the gumme of Arabia, or trimmely tuft out with the teeth of a fine combe, which if it be tyed up in the pole of the necke, it seemeth to the lover that beholdeth the same, as a glasse that yeeldeth forth a more pleasant and gracious comelinesse than if it should be sparsed abroad on the shoulders of the woman, or hang down scattering behind. Finally there is such a dignity in the haire, that whatsoever shee be, though she be never to bravely attyred with gold, silks, pretious stones, and other rich and gorgeous ornaments, yet if her hair be not curiously set forth shee cannot seeme faire. But in my Fotis, her garments unbrast and unlaste increased her beauty, her haire hanged about her shoulders, and was dispersed abroad upon her partlet, and in every part of her necke, howbeit the greater part was trussed upon her pole with a lace. Then I unable to sustain the broiling heat that I was in, ran upon her and kissed the place where she had thus laid her haire. Whereat she turned her face, and cast her rolling eyes upon me, saying, O Scholler, thou hast tasted now both hony and gall, take heed that thy pleasure do not turn unto repentance. Tush (quoth I) my sweet heart, I am contented for such another kiss to be broiled here upon this fire, wherwithall I embraced and kissed her more often, and shee embraced and kissed me likewise, and moreover her breath smelled like Cinnamon, and the liquor of her tongue was like unto sweet Nectar, wherewith when my mind was greatly delighted I sayd, Behold Fotis I am yours, and shall presently dye unlesse you take pitty upon me. Which when I had said she eftsoone kissed me, and bid me be of good courage, and I will (quoth shee) satisfie your whole desire, and it shall be no longer delayed than until night, when as assure your selfe I will come and lie with you; wherfore go your wayes and prepare your selfe, for I intend valiantly and couragiously to encounter with you this night. Thus when we had lovingly talked and reasoned together, we departed for that time. THE TENTH CHAPTER How Byrrhena sent victuals unto Apuleius, and how hee talked with Milo of Diophanes, and how he lay with Fotis.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  These things when I saw I was halfe amazed, and stood musing with my selfe, and my courage came then upon mee, which before was scant. And I spake unto Fotis merrily and sayd, O Fotis how trimmely you can stirre the pot, and how finely, with shaking your buttockes, you can make pottage. O happy and twice happy is hee to whom you give leave and licence but to touch you there. Then shee beeing likewise merrily disposed, made answer, Depart I say, Miser from me, depart from my fire, for if the flame thereof doe never so little blaze forth, it will burne thee extreamely and none can extinguish the heat thereof but I alone, who in stirring the pot and making the bed can so finely shake my selfe. When she had sayd these words shee cast her eyes upon me and laughed, but I did not depart from thence until such time as I had viewed her in every point. But what should I speak of others, when as I doe accustome abroad to marke the face and haire of every dame, and afterwards delight my selfe therewith privately at home, and thereby judge the residue of their shape, because the face is the principall part of all the body, and is first open to our eyes. And whatsoever flourishing and gorgeous apparell doth work and set forth in the corporal parts of a woman, the same doth the naturall and comely beauty set out in the face. Moreover there be divers, that to the intent to shew their grace and feature, wil cast off their partlets, collars, habiliments, fronts, cornets and krippins, and doe more delight to shew the fairnesse of their skinne, than to deck themselves up in gold and pretious stones. But because it is a crime unto me to say so, and to give no example thereof, know ye, that if you spoyle and cut the haire of any woman or deprive her of the colour of her face, though shee were never so excellent in beauty, though shee were throwne downe from heaven, sprung of the Seas, nourished of the flouds, though shee were Venus her selfe, though shee were waited upon by all the Court of Cupid, though were girded with her beautifull skarfe of Love, and though shee smelled of perfumes and musks, yet if shee appeared bald, shee could in no wise please, no not her owne Vulcanus.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  When noone was come, Byrrhena sent to me a fat Pigge, five hennes, and a flagon of old wine. Then I called Fotis and sayd, Behold how Bacchus the egger and stirrer of Venery, doth offer him self of his owne accord, let us therefore drink up this wine, that we may prepare our selves and get us courage against soone, for Venus wanteth no other provision than this, that the Lamp may be all the night replenished with oyle, and the cups with wine. The residue of the day I passed away at the Bains and in banquetting, and towards evening I went to supper, for I was bid by Milo, and so I sate downe at the table, out of Pamphiles sight as much as I could, being mindfull of the commandement of Byrrhena, and sometimes I would cast myne eyes upon her as upon the furies of hell, but I eftsoones turning my face behinde me, and beholding my Fotis ministring at the table, was again refreshed and made merry. And behold when Pamphiles did see the candle standing on the table, she said, Verily wee shall have much raine to morrow. Which when her husband did heare, he demanded of her by what reason she knew it? Mary (quoth shee) the light on the table sheweth the same. Then Milo laughed and said, Verily we nourish a Sybel prophesier, which by the view of a candle doth divine of Celestiall things, and of the Sunne it selfe. Then I mused in my minde and said unto Milo, Of truth it is a good experience and proof of divination. Neither is it any marvell, for although this light is but a small light, and made by the hands of men, yet hath it a remembrance of that great and heavenly light, as of his parent, and doth shew unto us what will happen in the Skies above. For I knew at Corinth a certain man of Assyria, who would give answers in every part of the City, and for the gaine of money would tell every man his fortune, to some he would tel the dayes of their marriages, to others he would tell when they should build, that their edifices should continue. To others, when they should best goe about their affaires. To others, when they should goe by sea or land: to me, purposing to take my journey hither, he declared many things strange and variable. For sometimes hee sayd that I should win glory enough: sometimes he sayd I should write a great Historie: sometimes againe hee sayd that I should devise an incredible tale: and sometimes that I should make Bookes. Whereat Milo laughed againe, and enquired of me, of what stature this man of Assyria was, and what he was named. In faith (quoth I) he is a tall man and somewhat blacke, and hee is called Diophanes. Then sayd Milo, the same is he and no other, who semblably hath declared many things here unto us, whereby hee got and obtained great substance and Treasure.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Hubert & Eddie were particularly abandoned, cramming ham & gherkins into their mouths, slopping drink about, & behaving in a thoroughly aristocratic fashion. When Tim got up, Hubert spread mayonnaise on the bench, hoping he’d sit down in it, but Sandy, of course, who rather grandly partook only of a bread-roll & a glass of champagne, shouted out to him just in time, & earned some sullen gratitude. I ate, I think I can say, in a perfectly decorous fashion, with a slight sprawling over the table in deference to the occasion. But Chancey was a paragon of etiquette, wielding cutlery like a born lady in his rugger-player’s hands. He never relaxes, & seems constantly aware of his inferior station, though everyone else would gladly forget it. ‘Of course, we never had champagne at home,’ he confessed to me—so I made him drink from the bottle till the foam ran down his chin. All the while Tom & his boys sat by the door eating in silence, Tom taking frequent top-ups from a bottle he seemed to have established as his own, & saying ‘None for the boy’ whenever Eddie proffered a glass in his direction. Poor Tom’s boy! I soon felt revived by the drink & looked at him with more interest. His clothes were all too small, which made him look wretched and absurd at the same time as showing how large he was. Only his tweed cap was big enough, & threatened to come down altogether over his wide, if incurious, gaze. I had quite a vivid idea of him wrestling with me & throwing me about. After a while people wandered outside, Tom was reluctantly pulled back into action, holding on to his bottle & advising against any further sport in the afternoon. S. retired to the car & Chancey & I strolled into the little back room, with glasses in our hands, as though we had been at a party at a house in town, & were going to look at the pictures. And there were pictures. The room had a bowed church window, which looked as if it had been ripped out of a much older building, with rather lurid stained glass & in the middle two medallions with portraits of sweet, curly-headed little boys in ruffs, haloed in urine-coloured light. There must have been some curious family tale behind it. ‘A fine pair of fairies,’ quoth Chancey, with ill-judged humour.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  His eyes ran down my front and he looked at my long, gappy toes as he said, ‘You were the chappy that, er, puff-puff, bang-bang … I say, goodness me. My dear fellow!’ He did not know what to do. ‘Anyway,’ I said, disappointed of a show of gratitude, ‘I’m glad to see you’ve recovered’—and I moved away feeling foolish and a little cross. It was the year of Trouble for Men, a talc and aftershave lotion of peculiar suggestiveness that, without any noticeable advertising, had permeated the gay world in a matter of weeks. Every bar and locker-room hummed with it, you picked it up on the Tube or waiting to cross the road. It was in the air and, had it been advertised, it could have been called decadent and irresistible. Re-entering the changing room I passed through a cloud of it, registering at first its quite bracing, outdoor quality before discovering the paler bluey-green femininity within. I found my locker that evening was next to Maurice—a lean black boxer, straight, and one of the most attractive men in the Corry, with a high forehead and a mischievous, sentimental expression. I asked him about a match that was coming up next week, and he made a few feint swipes at me as he talked. I involuntarily flinched a centimetre or two, and my stomach muscles clenched. ‘Don’t worry, mate,’ he said, ‘I won’t hit you—hard,’ and he grinned and cuffed me round the ear. If only life were always so simple, I thought, as he tugged off his singlet and his Lordship, looking perturbedly about, came back into view at the end of the alley of lockers. ‘I really am most frightfully obliged,’ he said loudly when he saw me, and I readied myself, half-dressed, to conduct this conversation under the casual scrutiny of all the other men who were sitting and standing around us. ‘Don’t mention it,’ I said brightly, embarrassed by the crass double entendre that might publicly arise. He came up closer, and Maurice stepped aside with a droll raised eyebrow. ‘See you, then,’ he said as he went off to the shower. ‘What is your name?’ his Lordship enquired, and then, with the forced Christian candour of one who has learnt the ways of teams and charities, ‘I am Charles.’ ‘William,’ I replied (though I am not often called that). ‘William, I want to show you my gratitude.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Besides. The believer assents to things proposed to him by another, but not seen by himself: so that the knowledge of faith resembles hearing rather than seeing. Now a man does not believe in what is unseen by him, and proposed to him by another, unless he thinks this other to have a more perfect knowledge of the things proposed, than he himself has who sees not. Either therefore the believer thinks wrong: or the proposer must have more perfect knowledge of the things proposed. And if the latter also knows these things only through hearing them from another, we cannot proceed thus indefinitely: for then the assent of faith would be without foundation or certitude; since we should not come to some first principle certain in itself, to give certitude to the faith of believers. But it is not possible that the assent of faith be false and without foundation, as is clear from what we have said at the beginning of this work: and yet if it were false and baseless, happiness could not consist in suchlike knowledge. There is therefore some knowledge of God that is higher than the knowledge of faith: whether he who proposes faith sees the truth immediately, as when we believe Christ: or receive the truth from him who sees it immediately, as when we believe the Apostles and prophets. Since then man’s happiness consists in the highest knowledge of God, it cannot consist in the knowledge of faith. Moreover. Since happiness is the last end, the natural desire is set at rest thereby. But the knowledge of faith does not set the desire at rest, but inflames it: because everyone desires to see what he believes. Therefore man’s ultimate happiness does not consist in the knowledge of faith. Further. Knowledge of God has been declared to be the end, inasmuch as it unites us to the last end of all, namely God. Now the knowledge of faith does not make the thing believed to be perfectly present to the mind: since faith is of distant, and not present things. Wherefore the Apostle says (2 Cor. 5:6, 7) that so long as we walk by faith, we are pilgrims from the Lord. Yet faith makes God to be present to the heart, since the believer assents to God voluntarily, according to the saying of Ephes. 3:17: That Christ may dwell by faith in our hearts. Therefore the knowledge of faith cannot be man’s ultimate happiness. CHAPTER XLI

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  One new entrant tottered to the deserted front row, which in this tiny space was only a few feet from the screen. There was a rustle of papers, and I could see him in silhouette remove his coat, fold it neatly and place it on the seat next to that in which he then sat down. The rustling recurred intermittently, and I guessed he must be a man I’d seen at the Brutus the very first time I went there, a spry little chap of sixty-five or so who, like a schoolgirl taken to a romantic U picture, sat entranced by the movies and worked his way through a bag of boiled sweets as the action unfolded. A fiver from his pension, perhaps, and 30p for the humbugs, might be set aside weekly for this little outing. How he must look forward to it! His was a complete and innocent absorption in the fantasy world on screen. Could he look back to a time when he had behaved like these glowing, thoughtless teenagers, who were now locked together sucking on each other’s cocks in the hay? Or was this the image of a new society we had made, where every desire could find its gratification? The old man was happy with his cough-drops, but I wanted some other oral pleasure (the Winchester slang ‘suction’, meaning sweets, I realised was the comprehensive term). Not, however, from the person who came scouting up to the rear rows now, one of the plump, bespectacled Chinese youths who, with day-return businessmen and quite distinguished Oxbridge dons, made a haunt of places like this, hopping hopefully from row to row, so persistent that they were inevitably, from time to time, successful. The man on the end of the row had to shift, and I realised I was to be the next recipient of Eastern approaches. The boy sat down next to me, and though I carried on looking at the screen and laid my hand across my cock, I was aware that he was staring at me intently to try and make out my face in the darkness, and I felt his breath on my cheek. Then there was the pressure of his shoulder against mine. I gathered myself emphatically, and leant across into the empty place on the other side. He sprawled rather, with his legs wide apart, one of them straying into my space and pressing against my thigh.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  He stands well back from the wall and the gutter as he eases his bladder, his penis is preternaturally visible and his attitude encourages me to look at it. Sometimes he seems to drop his trousers round his knees or to undo a wide fly with buttons up both sides, like a sailor’s. In the light of day I can discern elements of many people in him, some of whom he may for a few seconds become, so that I whisper in welcome ‘O Timmy’ or ‘O Robert’ or ‘Stanley!’ At each moment he embodies a conviction of happiness, of a danger overcome. His penis is not quite that of any of the ghosts of whom he is compounded: it is not either large or small, thick or thin, pale or dark, but has an ideal quality, startling me like some work of art which, seen for the first time, outwits thought and senses and strikes in an instant at the heart. He puts his arms around my neck, and I lick his face and push back his hat, squashing it down urchin-like on his springy black curls. His features are serious and beautiful with lust. We two-step backwards into what is no longer simply the cottage but a light-filled space whose walls alter or roll away like ingenious stage machinery in a transformation scene. We make love in the drying-room at Winchester, or in a white-tiled institutional bathroom, or the white house at Talodi, bare of my scraps of furniture and revealed in all its harmonious vacancy: simple places whose very emptiness prompts desire. In one version we are in a beach shelter of poles and canvas—the sides, luminous as screens of shadow-plays, thrum in the wind, while overhead tiny white clouds are blown across the radiant blue. In another version, of course, it is not like this. I enter the lavatory and within a few seconds hear the click of metal-tipped shoes approaching the doorway, and look casually across at the young man who takes his place next to me. He is so gorgeously beautiful, in American jeans and a flying-jacket, that I can hardly believe, as he vigorously shakes his prick and with his other hand pushes back his lustrous hair, that his act is aimed at me, a man of twice his age, an old gent in an old Gents. In a cottage one takes what one is given, and is thankful; but nonetheless I am fifty-four—I hesitate before such golden opportunities. I am looking down intently, paying no attention, though my heart is racing, and then I hear other footsteps outside. I have missed my chance.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Besides. As there is a connexion between knowing the adequate cause (propter quid) of a thing being so and so, and knowing that it is so (quia est), so is there a connexion between knowing about a thing what it is (quid est), and knowing that it exists (an est). Because if we know the adequate cause of a thing being so and so, we can prove that it is so, e.g. that the moon undergoes eclipse: even so, if we know of a thing, what it is, we can prove that it exists. Such is the teaching in 2 Poster i. Now we observe that those who know that a thing is so and so, naturally seek to know the adequate cause of its being so. Therefore those who know that a thing exists, naturally seek to know what it is; and this is to know its essence. Therefore the natural desire for knowledge is not set at rest by the knowledge of God whereby it is known that He exists. Further. Nothing finite can set the intellect’s desire at rest. This is proved from the fact that the intellect, given any finite object, strives to go beyond it: so that given a finite line of any length, it strives to apprehend a longer; and it is the same in numbers: and this is the reason why we can add indefinitely to numbers and mathematical lines. Now the excellence and power of any created substance is finite. Therefore the intellect of a separate substance is not satisfied with knowing separate substances, however excellent they be, but still tends by its natural desire to understand the substance which is of infinite excellence, as we proved in the First Book concerning the divine substance. Moreover. Just as there is a natural desire for knowledge in all intellectual natures, so is there in them a natural desire to rid themselves of ignorance or nescience. Now separate substances, as stated, know in the manner already mentioned, that God’s substance is above them, and above everything that they understand: wherefore they know that the divine substance is unknown to them. Therefore their natural desire tends to understand the divine substance. Besides. The nearer a thing is to its end, the greater the desire with which it tends to that end: wherefore we may notice that the natural movement of bodies is increased towards the end. Now the intellect of separate substances is nearer to the knowledge of God than ours: and consequently they desire to know God more intensely than we do. And however much we know that God is, and other things mentioned above, we still go on desiring, and seek to know Him in His essence. Much more therefore do separate substances desire this naturally: and consequently their natural desire is not satisfied with the above-mentioned knowledge of God.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘Graham, yes, yes. Do clear away. And William, I must give you just before you go something else to read.’ I hopped up, alert to these covert stage directions in Charles’s talk, and helped him up too. He shuffled round his chair, and looked about for whatever it was. I was convinced he knew where to find it, and had politely and theatrically introduced this air of uncertainty. He handed me a document of several pages, the size of a pamphlet of poems, bound in black shot silk boards and tied legalistically with pink ribbon. ‘Don’t read it now,’ he cautioned. ‘Read it when you get home.’ Graham had gone out with the tray, and we followed a few moments afterwards, Charles’s hand on my shoulder. ‘Thanks so much,’ I said. ‘Thank you, my dear.’ He leant on me and—which he had never done before—kissed me on the cheek. I clumsily patted him on the back. On my way home I stopped at the Corry for a swim. It was that transitional half-hour before six o’clock, and the last of the afternoon customers—oldsters, college boys, the unemployed—were combing their hair and wringing out their trunks as the evening crowd, the workers, began to pour in and down the stairs. In twenty minutes every locker would be taken, and those who had been held up in traffic, late for their fitness classes or for a squash booking fast elapsing, would come cantering through the swing doors flushed and swearing. Like restaurants and Underground stations the Corry had its times of day, and to come in on a weekday afternoon or a Sunday evening was to find it in the unhindered possession of a small number of people—like a school at half-term, when only the masters and those boys who live abroad are left. The pool, the gym, the handball court had the grateful calm of places only briefly reprieved from habitual clamour. As I arrived the calm was yielding fast. I took advantage of the crowd, and of the need I always felt on leaving Charles to be childish and naughty. In the showers were a gaggle of Italian kids, in London on a language course. The Club often played host to these groups, and though their bored ragging was a nuisance in the pool the members by some unspoken agreement forgave them everything for their sleek brown bodies, the tiny wet leaves of their swimwear and all their posturing and tossing back of curls. I halted under a fizzing nozzle before going down to the pool and looked them over frankly. It was impossible, with my opera-goer’s Italian, to understand what they were saying, but as they took notice of me I heard their chatter sprinkled with cazzo … cazzo, slurred, whispered and then called aloud, almost chanted, so that they fell about in coarse, lazy giggles at their audacity.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  The smell was smoke and sweat, a stale, male odour tartishly overlaid with a cheap lemon-scented air-freshener like a taxi and dusted from time to time with a trace of Trouble for Men. The sound was the laid-back aphrodisiac pop music which, as the films had no sound-track, played continuously and repetitively to enhance the mood and cover the quieter noises made by the customers. The look of the place changed in the first minute or so, as I waited just inside the door for my eyes to accustom themselves to the near dark. The only light came from the small screen, and from a dim yellow ‘Fire Exit’ sign. I had once taken this exit, which led to a fetid back staircase with a locked door at the top. Smoke thickened the air and hung in the projector’s beam. It was important to sit near the back, where it was darker and more went on, but also essential to avoid the attentions of truly gruesome people. Slightly encumbered with my bag I moved into a row empty except for a heavy businessman at the far end. It was not a very good house, so I settled down to watch and wait. Occasionally cigarettes were lit and the men shifted in their seats and looked around; the mood faltered between tension and lethargy. The college boys were followed by a brief, gloomy fragment of film involving older, moustachioed types, one of them virtually bald. This broke off suddenly, and without preamble another film, very cheery and outdoors, was under way. As always with these films, though I relished the gross abundance of their later episodes, it was the introductory scenes, buoyant with expectation, the men on the street or the beach, killing time, pumping iron, still awaiting the transformation our fantasy would demand of them, that I found the most touching. Now, for instance, we were in a farmyard. A golden-haired boy in old blue jeans and a white vest was leaning in the sun against a barn door, one foot raised behind him. A close-up admired him frowning against the sun, a straw jerking between his lips. Slowly we travelled down, lingering where his hand brushed across his nipples which showed hard through his vest, lingering again at his loose but promising crotch. On the other side of the yard, a second boy, also blond, was shifting bags of fertiliser. We watched his shirtless muscular torso straining as he lifted the bags on to his shoulder, traced the sweat running down his neck and back, got a load of his chunky denim-clad ass as he bent over. The eyes of the two boys met; one close-up and then another suggested curiosity and lust.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Thus when I was pleasantly mocked and taunted by Fotis, I sayd unto her, verily now may I for this atcheived enterprise be numbered as Hercules, who by his valiant prowesse performed the twelve notable Labors, as Gerion with three bodies, and as Cerberus with three heads, for I have slaine three blown goat skinnes. But to the end that I may pardon thee of that thing which thou hast committed, perform, the thing which I most earnestly desire of thee, that is, bring me that I may see and behold when thy mistresse goeth about any Sorcery or enchantment, and when she prayeth unto the gods: for I am very desirous to learne that art, and as it seemeth unto mee, thou thy selfe hath some experience in the same. For this I know and plainly feele, That whereas I have always yrked and loathed the embrace of Matrones, I am so stricken and subdued with thy shining eyes, ruddy cheekes, glittering haire, sweet cosses, and lilly white paps, that I have neither minde to goe home, nor to depart hence, but esteeme the pleasure which I shall have with thee this night, above all the joyes of the world. Then (quoth she) O my Lucius, how willing would I be to fulfil your desire, but by reason shee is so hated, she getteth her selfe into solitary places, and out of the presence of every person, when she mindeth to work her enchantments. Howbeit I regarde more to gratify your request, than I doe esteeme the danger of my life: and when I see opportunitie and time I will assuredly bring you word, so that you shal see all her enchantments, but always upon this condition, that you secretly keepe close such things as are done. Thus as we reasoned together the courage of Venus assailed, as well our desires as our members, and so she unrayed herself and came to bed, and we passed the night in pastime and dalliance, till as by drowsie and unlusty sleep I was constrained to lie still. THE SIXTEENTH CHAPTER How Fotis brought Apuleius to see her Mistresse enchant.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Do I know that one?’ I nodded at him to signal that this was the boy I had told him about, the thing that mattered to me; but he was quite inscrutable, full of diplomatic ignorance. Half an hour later, when we shook hands and parted, he wouldn’t meet my eye. ‘Well, that was a mixed success,’ I said to James, as he climbed down into his car, and I leant over the open door. ‘Don’t worry about the Colin thing,’ he said. I drummed on the roof. ‘I want to get him! I don’t seem to have anything else to do.’ ‘Do you want a lift?’ ‘No, I’m going home. Then I’m going to have a swim: one must keep the body if not the soul together.’ ‘See you soon.’ ‘See you my darling.’ It was very quiet at the Corry, when I arrived mid-afternoon. The few people there looked at each other with considerate curiosity rather than rivalry. There was a sense of various different routines equably overlapping. There were several old boys, one or two perhaps even of Charles’s age, and doubtless all with their own story, strange and yet oddly comparable, to tell. And going into the showers I saw a suntanned young lad in pale blue trunks that I rather liked the look of.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Bobby said; he already sounded a little drunk. ‘No, he’s gone to look for something.’ Bobby let a weary smile onto his lips. ‘I should come with me, if I were you.’ I took this as a bald proposition, but when he had crossed the room to the door, and turned and said, ‘Oh, come on,’ I felt that it wasn’t, and that some kind of trick had been played on me. We went through the hall and into the studio, Bobby for a moment halting and blocking my view before letting me too see what was going on. Staines, stooping over the tripod, his right eye jammed into the viewfinder, was aware of us, and flapped his left arm behind him to keep us back and have us observe professional etiquette while he was concentrating. ‘Try not to smile,’ he said. Leaning against a tall white plinth, shirtless, his skin lubricated, almost glittering in the studio lights, the top button of my trousers undone, Phil grew suddenly guilty and selfconscious. That deep and telling blush of his that I loved pumped up into his cheeks and forehead and into his short back and sides, and soaked downwards, over the strong shaft of his neck, fading into his glossy chest. On the way home we stopped off at the Volunteer, and had a beer outside on the pavement, caught up in that sad, erotic mood of an early evening in summer—working people going home, the first queens coming into the pub, dusty tiredness mixing with anticipation. I gazed up and down the street, said little, and from time to time looked ironically at Phil, I think shocked to find how easily he could be manipulated, slightly sick with a feeling that perhaps I wouldn’t be able to keep him. That afternoon I had turned him into pornography, and I was shaken to find Staines following my own instinct so literally, so instantaneously; proud, too, but with the unease of a sexual braggart. Phil himself had an air of compromised but defiant success about him. As we turned into my road he was hobbling and said, ‘Will, I’m busting for a piss.’ The tight waistband of my trousers squeezed cruelly on his bladder, swollen with a couple of pints of lager. By the time we had entered the house and climbed the stairs he hardly dared move, and clutched at himself with a babyish moan of need. I unlocked the door and as he slipped in caught him by the arm and made him stand where he was. Then I knelt down and undid his shoes and pulled his socks off: he was jiggling on the spot, gasping ‘Man, hurry up! ’ But instead of letting him go I led him onto the lino of the kitchen, and he stood there, obedient and desperate.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  The old woman had scant finished her tale when the Bakers wife gan say: Verily she is blessed and most blessed, that hath the fruition of so worthy a lover, but as for me poore miser, I am fallen into the hands of a coward, who is not onely afraid of my husband but also of every clap of the mill, and dares not doe nothing, before the blind face of yonder scabbed Asse. Then the old woman answered, I promise you certainly if you will, you shall have this young man at your pleasure, and therewithall when night came, she departed out of her chamber. In the meane season, the Bakers wife made ready a supper with abundance of wine and exquisite fare: so that there lacked nothing, but the comming of the young man, for her husband supped at one of her neighbours houses. When time came that my harnesse should be taken off and that I should rest my selfe, I was not so joyfull of my liberty, as when the vaile was taken from mine eyes, I should see all the abhomination of this mischievous queane. When night was come and the Sunne gone downe, behold the old bawd and the young man, who seemed to be but a child, by reason he had no beard, came to the doore. Then the Bakers wife kissed him a thousand times and received him courteously, placed him downe at the table: but he had scarce eaten the first morsell, when the good man (contrary to his wives expectation) returned home, for she thought he would not have come so soone: but Lord how she cursed him, praying God that he might breake his necke at the first entry in. In the meane season, she caught her lover and thrust him into the bin where she bolted her flower, and dissembling the matter, finely came to her husband demanding why he came home so soone. I could not abide (quoth he) to see so great a mischiefe and wicked fact, which my neighbours wife committed, but I must run away: O harlot as she is, how hath she dishonoured her husband, I sweare by the goddesse Ceres, that if I had [not] seene it with mine eyes, I would never I have beleeved it. His wife desirous to know the matter, desired him to tell what she had done: then hee accorded to the request of his wife, and ignorant of the estate of his own house, declared the mischance of another. You shall understand (quoth he) that the wife of the Fuller my companion, who seemed to me a wise and chast woman, regarding her own honesty and profit of her house, was found this night with her knave.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  It was perhaps only of that very stretch of the Central Line which I always travelled that its fastidious rectilinearity gave a true picture: from Shepherd’s Bush to Liverpool Street the line had that Roman straightness which I so admired above ground and which below contributed to the great speed the trains sometimes got up. In rush-hour congestion though, the trains collected behind each other, and there would be long, numbing waits in the tunnels. Then I hated the Underground. My fondness for it was anyway somewhat forced, and my concern with the smaller details of its history and performance had been worked up artificially to give it some faint aesthetic interest after I had been banned from driving. (Unhappily, I had had a few too many glasses of Pimm’s when I was caught by my blind spot, twitching out to overtake and smacking into a little old car that was trundling past me, invisible in either of my mirrors … My mother was now using my Lancia for her forays into Fordingbridge and for her occasional journeys up to London from the ranch in Hants.) So I made the best of the Tube, and found it often sexy and strange, like a gigantic game of chance, in which one got jammed up against many queer kinds of person. Or it was a sort of Edward Burra scene, all hats and buttocks and seaside postcard lewdery. Whatever, one always had to try and see the potential in it. Before going to the Corry I cut down through Soho Square to a cinema in Frith Street. It wasn’t so much to see a film as to sit in a dark, anonymous place and do dark, anonymous things. Arthur and I had got wrecked on tequila the night before, the bottled romance of Mexico, as it described itself. The evenings had been getting longer lately, in two senses, and we both needed a little help with our own bottled romance. As it was he had become brash and giggly and fallen into an open-mouthed, stertorous sleep during the first five minutes of the Royal Command Performance.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  And indeed it was the general state of the room, in which a fight had clearly taken place, that had shocked me when I first entered it. The composition on the bed had been in bizarre, attentive contrast to the slewed pictures, toppled knick-knacks and pillaged drawers of the rest of the room. ‘I can’t take another of these melodramas,’ Charles said. Though I was deeply curious, I felt a strong reluctance to ask Charles what had taken place, or to probe the humiliation he had undergone. I helped him to take off his jacket and shoes, and laid him down on the pillow that had recently imitated his head. As if entranced, he was asleep within seconds. 5 The first instalment of Charles’s papers was crammed into an old briefcase. Carrying it on the Underground, I felt like a young schoolmaster, taking home a bag bulging with books and essays. It was heavy, as I lolled in the crowded train, holding it by its charred leather handle, which had been strengthened with black insulating tape and was slightly sticky to the touch. At Tottenham Court Road a young man got on whom I recognised and placed within a second or two as the wiry person that James had fancied a while ago in the showers. He was even more deeply tanned than before, and there was something unsettling about this, as there was about his big, protuberant cock, very emphatic in his light cotton trousers, and the contrast of its fatness with his thin, taut body. He had a sports bag over his shoulder, and the clean gleam of his forehead confirmed that he had come from the Corry and a shower. He stood opposite me in the doorway, and we held each other’s gaze for a long moment before each modestly looked away, though with the evident intention of looking back again after a few seconds. And so the sudden precipitation of sex had begun. At Oxford Circus many people got off, and I dropped into the seat next to the door. Many people also got on, so my view of the boy was blocked. He remained standing where he had been; when I looked across through the glass screen that shelters the seats from the door I saw only the bums and palms of standing passengers flattened witlessly against its other side.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I clumsily patted him on the back. On my way home I stopped at the Corry for a swim. It was that transitional half-hour before six o’clock, and the last of the afternoon customers—oldsters, college boys, the unemployed—were combing their hair and wringing out their trunks as the evening crowd, the workers, began to pour in and down the stairs. In twenty minutes every locker would be taken, and those who had been held up in traffic, late for their fitness classes or for a squash booking fast elapsing, would come cantering through the swing doors flushed and swearing. Like restaurants and Underground stations the Corry had its times of day, and to come in on a weekday afternoon or a Sunday evening was to find it in the unhindered possession of a small number of people—like a school at half-term, when only the masters and those boys who live abroad are left. The pool, the gym, the handball court had the grateful calm of places only briefly reprieved from habitual clamour. As I arrived the calm was yielding fast. I took advantage of the crowd, and of the need I always felt on leaving Charles to be childish and naughty. In the showers were a gaggle of Italian kids, in London on a language course. The Club often played host to these groups, and though their bored ragging was a nuisance in the pool the members by some unspoken agreement forgave them everything for their sleek brown bodies, the tiny wet leaves of their swimwear and all their posturing and tossing back of curls. I halted under a fizzing nozzle before going down to the pool and looked them over frankly. It was impossible, with my opera-goer’s Italian, to understand what they were saying, but as they took notice of me I heard their chatter sprinkled with cazzo … cazzo , slurred, whispered and then called aloud, almost chanted, so that they fell about in coarse, lazy giggles at their audacity. When I got back to the flat I was half expecting Phil to be there, and remembered as I slouched sulkily and randily around the kitchen taking a glass of Scotch in great hot nips that he had arranged a couple of nights ‘off’ to see some South African friends, and, tomorrow, to go to a leaving party at the ‘Embassy’. In the sitting-room, remote control in hand, I tripped from channel to channel on the TV, trying to find something attractive in the personnel of various sitcoms and panel games. Abandoning that forlorn pursuit, I put on the beginning of Act Three of Siegfried and conducted it wildly, with great tuggings at the cellos and stabbings at the horns, but without, after five minutes or so, having made myself feel the faintest interest in it. It was in a reluctant mood that I finally settled down at my writing-desk to read Charles’s precious document.