Desire

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  sinfully soft leather jeans. Bent over, this goddess stretched long golden arms sparkling with a thin film of sweat reaching over bouquets of flowers to retrieve her target. Choosing a wild rose a certain shade of pink so luminous it was almost fuchsia, she raised the flower to her face, allowing the silky petals to caress her nose. Satisfied, she cupped the bulb within the palm of her left hand, her long dainty fingers tenderly stroking the external smooth petals. I wasn’t exactly prepared for what she did next. With her right hand, sinking her long finger into the corolla of the flagrantly pink rose, she pene trated the bulb while her left hand squeezed the silky petals. In a split second, every conceivable part of me capable of be coming aroused was demanding some serious attention. Severely chiseled cheekbones cradled dark and sultry bed room eyes that were opened only halfway as if in a perpetual state of arousal. Her short, naturally bushy spirals were streaked in brown and gold hues. Her skin color, glistening in the sunlight, reminded me of Grandma’s hot buttered biscuits. Tall and thin, centuries of African royalty seemed embedded in her dignified posture. Full breasts were giving her ultra- tight T-shirt a hard time. Seemingly content with her selection that included the pink rose, she thrust the bunch at the farmer. I couldn’t believe her nerve. First, she assaulted me, then she molested a defenseless flower, then she jumped in front of me while in line. Strangely, instead of feeling angry, her aggression was turning me on. The farmer handed the roses back to her, wrapped simply in a thin sheet of tissue paper tied with sisal. My gullibility ex pected eye contact with her when instead, she slammed her entire body against me: breasts, thighs, mounds of Venus, all crashing together creating this confused exchange of energy so fast and hard it rattled me, making my head spin. The wind

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  hard as I can and watch the red marks as they fade. That first time I fucked my sink, I realized how butch I get when I’m about to come: my face curls up almost into a snarl and I start groaning like some fuck track. I’ve been working out and I can watch my body developing. Balancing my hard-on against the sink, I study my new mus cles. How hard are the pecs? Are my biceps still bigger than my triceps? I stand up on the toilet so I can see my legs, bend over to look at my ass. Rubbing my hand down over my abs, feeling the hills and valleys as I move from one muscle to an other. All the while grinding my dick and getting hornier and hornier. For myself. It’s funny—now I start to get horny every time I’m standing in front of the sink. When I’m shaving, I press forward and I get hard. I’m moving to New York soon, though, and I’m worried that my new sink just won’t be the same. It couldn’t be this good. And what if I get a sink with sharp edges? TSAURAH LITZKY Greek Sex ■^1/ hen Dick Sargent asked me if I ever had Greek sex, 1 thought he meant did I ever do it with a Greek guy. George Patsakos and I came close to doing it, but George wouldn’t fuck me because he and Eddie were both Ravens and I was Eddie’s girl. Later, I wished George had fucked me because he was a sweetheart and a turtledove, while Eddie was a sadist and a wastrel under his James Dean mask. I was wilder than either of those guys but I didn’t know it then. I was only sixteen when Dick Sargent asked me the Greek sex question. When I told him I never had any Greek boyfriends, he laughed, then he said, “No, Greek sex is when I put it in your ass. I was shocked. “How can you get it in there?” I wanted to know. “It must really hurt.”

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  Chad remained in his chair. “Hey. What’s going on?” “Watch,” was all Evan said. He waited till she had stripped and lay on the bed, feeling exposed but also high from the way that Chad was staring at her. She knew that she looked good and that he couldn’t turn his eyes away. In the meantime, Evan quickly undressed and grabbed a condom. Then he lay down on top of her. He could tell she was excited already and simply pushed in and began to fuck her. She glanced over at Chad. He was staring at them but he hadn’t moved. She loved the feeling of him watching them, as if he were in their power and couldn’t break away. She came quickly. So did Evan. He stood up, not covering himself, and came to stand in front of Chad. He motioned for Elena to come over. Slowly, loose and wet after coming, she obeyed. She almost felt sorry for Chad. Instead of looking cool and in command the way he always did, he looked lost, almost scared, but he stood his ground. She had no idea what Evan was about to do, and in a way she was scared too, but she trusted him. It would be some thing wild. She thought Evan was enjoying the upper hand and the power to shock Chad. “Do you want us?” Chad was so startled he couldn’t reply for a moment. Then he repeated, “Us?” “We come as a set. We don’t separate. Or are you scared?” “I never did it with a guy.” She knew Evan hadn’t either, but he wasn’t going to say so, and she wouldn’t betray him. “Have you ever done it with a girl?” “Once,” Chad said reluctantly. “Almost.” His gaze returned to her body. His eyes excited her. Evan never looked at her that way. They were so used to each other’s bodies, they took nakedness as a matter of course. But in the year they had been fucking, her body had changed. She had real breasts now, and her behind was curvier. She liked Chad staring at her. Chad raised his gaze to look into her eyes. “Don’t you have a will of your own?” “We’re together,” Elena said indignantly. “He doesn’t make me do what I don’t want to. We’re honest with each other. Clear.” “Do you love him?” Chad asked. Elena took a step backward from Chad, shaking back her hair. “I don’t know what that means.” Chad grinned narrowly, as if she had given him back a mea sure of initiative. “But I do.” “If you don’t want to, nobody’s making you.” Elena made as if to reach for her T-shirt from a Hole concert. He caught her wrist. He gave her a push so she sat down hard on the edge of the bed. Then slowly and deliberately he undid his belt buckle and then his shirt and then his jeans. Evan watched him with his head cocked, smiling slightly.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  I swallowed hard. “Is the blindfold necessary?” There was a chorus of yesses and nods. They were all looking at me. Seth and Brad were amused, of course. Jennifer, the sturdy field hockey player with the firm jaw and blue eyes, looked triumphant, like she was about to win an argument. Amy, the skinny blonde who was the only one I had gone down on before, looked embarrassed. Mindy and Doris just looked curious. Amira was the only one who looked like she was turned on by the idea. When our eyes met, she dropped hers and smiled. “Let’s do it,” I said. “Good man!” said Seth with a chuckle. I went up to the second floor with Seth and Jennifer, who seemed to be the self-appointed referees for each gender. We found an empty bedroom and cleared the coats off the bed. Seth found a scarf and tied it around my head, almost burn ing me with his cigarette in the process. He left a generous gap at the bottom, and I could look down and see my shoes. “Can you see anything?” asked Jennifer. “Not really. You want to go first?” “No way. I’m going to go tell all the women it’s free head, no conversation needed. We’ll see if you get any customers.” They left, turning out the overhead light and leaving the room in semidarkness. I went over to the bed and lay down, moving awkwardly with the blindfold. Nothing happened for a while, and I started regretting the whole thing. Ever since I hit pu berty and the hormones started to rage, I’d been fascinated by the idea of eating pussy. It seemed like such a perverse, unnat ural thing to do, and yet it had such potential to give pleasure to women. Ah, women. Fascinating, ethereal creatures, superior to men, or at least to boys, in every way. Able to humble us with a sly look or a toss of the hair. They seemed to have some ancient knowledge passed down to them regarding relationships and men and sex, so that a girl of thirteen or fourteen somehow possessed the accumulated wisdom of generations, while we boys had to flounder and blush and stammer as we slowly fig ured things out for ourselves. But it seemed to me that these godlike creatures had an Achilles’ heel, and that it was the very thing that was also the source of their power. I sensed from a young age the uneasy relationship women had with their genitals. They were ashamed of the way they looked down there, and the way they smelled, and tasted. They couldn’t understand how men could be attracted to the oozing slot between their legs like bees to a ripe, pollen-heavy flower. To nuzzle between the legs of one of these creatures was to upset the balance of power. It was to worship at the altar of womanhood, and at the same time it was to strike a rebellious

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  । om B. is my stage name. It’s short for "Tomboy,” which is how everyone has referred to me since I was old enough to shock the housewives on my block by delivering their morn ing papers sporting only shorts, sneakers, and an assortment of Band-Aids. Standing backstage, I watched Ernie Tulips perform, studying how his hips rocked slightly as he belted out his sig nature swing dance tune. He was one of the. best drag kings in the Midwest, and as impatient as I was to perform, I was re lieved not to have to follow his act. There were two numbers left before mine, which meant I had about fifteen minutes to kill. I hated being ready early. I never knew what to do with myself while I waited. Ernie moved into the dance portion of his number and I imitated his smooth moves, trying to make them my own. It felt awkward. He was a crooner, k.d. lang meets Tony Ben nett. I was Melissa Etheridge and Bruce Springsteen’s love child, and Ernie’s moves didn’t match my jeans and white T-shirt. Still, there was nothing else to do. Step, cross, step step-step ... I was getting the hang of it... step, cross... I felt a hand on my ass. Probably another drunk fag confusing me with Rob, one of the bartenders. Rob and I are about the same height and build, and we both have short black hair. Unless they were coming at us from the front, in a well-lit room, people regularly confused us, although as far as I knew, none of my buddies ever acci dentally grabbed his ass. I couldn’t say the same for his friends, whose greeting of choice seemed to be a five-fingered inspec tion of the right buttock. I turned around. “Hey ...” “Keep your hands to yourself?” a fat butch woman sug gested playfully. I hate being goosed, but I like women with big grins. “Danny,” she said, extending her hand. She smelled like Ivory soap and leather. “Tam, but I go by ‘Tom B.’ for the show. It’s short for ‘Tomboy.’ What about you?” “Just Danny,” she replied, looking me up and down. I could feel her body heat. “Oh.” I’m so eloquent under pressure. I heard applause and turned to see Ernie leave the stage. The emcee announced Ricky Rick, and a Latin beat started up. Pretending to glance around, I snuck another look at Danny. Thirty-something, about 250 pounds, a little taller than me, probably five-foot-seven. Blond buzz-cut, sea green eyes, worn leather pants, and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. Leather pants and green eyes were two of my favorite things, though I typi cally liked the pants on myself and the eyes on a sultry femme with long, wavy hair.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  his giant wings cumbersome, more jagged than angel wings my cunt a gash between dimensions his tail hangs down in the crack of his ass as he humps forward, the marble slab is so cold so hard love is bruises love is bruises I only see him in quick cuts, occluded by the sizzling haze of hell but he is truly a marvel to behold, his bubbly luminescent green hide, his sulfurous breath hot as a blowtorch on my flimsy cheeks, his molten red cock, two feet long with a spear-shaped head, there are words inside it, molten words dreams unwind love’s a state of mind misty psychedelic colors undulate as he brays he loves me in Latin backwards. I am insatiable my name is Legion can’t get enough of his demon cock for many demons have dwelled within this body ripped open by this snorting cloven creature red face forked tongue sweating and heaving I come quickly, a fireball of sulfurous farts explodes from my bloody loins, my screeches break the sound barrier, rattling the tranquil vibes of Venus, booming back I cry out, YIKES! AIGGEUUUU!!!! DAN TAULAPAPA McMullin Sunday | here was a seminary student from Samoa. His parents es- corted him to Minnesota. He was the first Samoan Lutheran seminary student. There are Mormons, Catholics, Congrega tionalists, all over Samoa. But he was the first Lutheran. His parents stood on either side of him in the middle of Nicolett Mall on a summer day. In the same spot where Mary Tyler Moore threw her hat into the air. The Reverend Knarffssen came out of his cathedral at the north end of the mall. Approaching the three Polynesians, he suddenly smiled. Winter was so far away. Somewhere among the gargoyles. “Such warm, happy people,” was his first thought. “I shall treat Pali as I treat my own son, the assistant rev erend,” the Reverend Knarffssen told Mr. And Mrs. Saolefale- oteinemauga, taking Pali’s moist brown hand and touching it to his dry cheek. Mr. and Mrs. Saolefaleotcinemauga beamed smiles like tropic birds floating slowly across their high faces: Mr. Saolefa- leoteinemauga staunch as the sides of Savaii and Mrs. Saolefa- leoteinemauga a single column of devotion and prayer. “Take care of our boy.” Pali, six foot five, looked down at the five- foot-five Reverend. “I will,” said the Reverend, and lowered his head in a few words of thanksgiving while his eyes traced the ascending lines of Pali’s thighs. Summer in Minnesota was hot and green. Then, as happens annually in Minnesota during the third week of October, win ter descended swiftly with snow and ice. Christmas came and went. Pali was invited to spend part of winter break with the Reverend Knarffssen and his son Gregg, the assistant pastor. Pali wondered about the rumor that Gregg and the Reverend were not actually related by blood but by common interest, as he noted the difference in physical appearance during the first sauna the three of them took together.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  partition was drawn up into the wall. Behind thick glass— smudged and fingerprinted, always fogged with heavy breath—were the women. They danced as if they cared, mov ing to titillate the observer. The individual booths are more or less the same. It’s the windows that are different. Allen is shocked to find that the glass is gone. The women just sit on their chairs, vivid, looking back. The stage is circular and completely surrounded by the in ner wall of the booths. Many of the partitions are raised, and Allen can see men in their compartments at all angles. One middle-aged, broad-headed voyeur is clearly masturbating with vigor. Allen catches the eye of a Latino man off to the side, wearing the very same tie he is. Allen puts a hand to his chest and feels the tie pulsing along with his heart. The Latino man, such a good-looking man, turns away from Allen and makes eye contact with the woman in the bra. She stands up and walks over to the man and his hands come out through the window, penetrating the fantasy world. Allen has never seen it broached before—the world of dreams cracked open. © When the first girl looks at Allen he feels unworthy to watch. He can hardly bear having her acknowledge him. He wants to ask her what she is staring at. “Can I help you?” he would have said if they were anywhere else. The girl is perfection and Allen wants her desperately. It’s a feeling so pure that he wants to cry. How terribly unfair that his whole self aches because of the shape of a shoulder, the soft lines of a hip. Allen stares at the girl’s legs, a deep black against the whiteness of the chair,

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  across Sweet Creations’ window—damn!!!—I wasn’t ready to break free of Steven’s body, wanted to curl myself around him even tighter, like a serpent in Eden. We entered the tiny health-food bakery, ordered at the counter and took a window seat, the thick sweet scent of honey infusing our hair, our clothes, our words. Steven reached across the table and cov ered my hand with his large clumsy claw. His electric warmth zapped along my arm and into my cunt ooohh I gnawed my leaden sesame cookie and smiled and basked. His dark eyes seemed to glow with new light intoxicating eyes a world map spread across the wall behind him, the tip of South America pointing down like a fat finger to the top of his head. “Look, Steven, South America’s pointing straight at your crown chakra!” We had a good chuckle over that one. “Barbara Her shey was amazing,” I said. “She must have really been mo lested by demons.” Steven sipped his ginseng tea and nodded in agreement. “If any Hollywood star was, it was Barbara Hershey!” He recalled her 1971 rebirth as Barbara Seagull. For one low-budget production she had to kill a seagull on film. It was so freaked out when it died, its spirit flew into her body. “So she took the name Seagull—Barbara Seagull. Like Anya, she’s a walk-in! It ruined her career for years. And this movie The Entity is her comeback.” I squeezed Steven’s cal- lused thumb. Maybe tonight was my night for a comeback too. Steven lived in the Casa Mia, a tidy residence hotel on Columbus near Union. Dorm fridge beneath the sink in the corner, ten-speed leaning against the window, the snores of an old Italian filling the lightwell. As I sat on the edge of the bed taking my shoes off, Steven said, “You told didn’t you, you told your therapist about me and you, you told her about the holes in your aura, the demons didn’t you.” I nodded guiltily how did he know Steven’s high brow collapsed into wrinkles. “I

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  When the first girl looks at Allen he feels unworthy to watch. He can hardly bear having her acknowledge him. He wants to ask her what she is staring at. “Can I help you?” he would have said if they were anywhere else. The girl is perfection and Allen wants her desperately. It’s a feeling so pure that he wants to cry. How terribly unfair that his whole self aches because of the shape of a shoulder, the soft lines of a hip. Allen stares at the girl’s legs, a deep black against the whiteness of the chair, and then up at the trained beckoning in her face. There is the glow of real personality behind the staged. “Touch,” she says. And Allen wants to touch her—to see if she is real. But he hasn’t yet responded, and the girl is moving toward him, long and graceful, the woman of his dreams. Allen is shaking again, as he did when he was a boy. And why shouldn’t he? A loyal husband, who, reaching out, touch ing, had always honored his vows. He does not move his hands or his fingers, just holds them against her wonderful skin, so warm, almost hot. The girl takes Allen’s hands in her own, presses them to her chest, and massages. It calms him. She does this like an expert, a masseuse, someone trained in an art. Allen hasn’t been so aroused in years. He wants to climb through the small window to be with this woman. But the partition starts to come down. His time has run out. In the split second that he has to make his choice, Allen takes back his hands. Leaning up against the wall in a panic, Allen tells himself that the fondling of this woman was an aberration, just like his coming up those stairs. He had only wanted a peep. He’d gone up the stairs a loyal husband and lover, a working man on his way home to the ’burbs. And now, minutes later, a different man emerges: a violator of girls and wives and matrimonial bonds. Allen con siders leaving the booth, though his legs feel hollow and un steady. And there is also his erection, diabolically hard, bringing to mind all the basest descriptions in pornographic magazines. Allen is so close to climax that he is afraid to move. He wants to get away without having to face the enormity of his pleasure. He remains still, his hand clutched tightly around the tokens, and thinks of Claire waiting at the bus stop, the

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  I still had no idea of Patrick's role or influence; he might have been the jester, the outsider, or he might have been their leader, if they admitted one. A silence extended and I soaked up how healthy and sexy he was, in a heavy jersey over a blue shirt that hung out over frayed old jeans. I thought, if the queens in here knew what he had between his legs . . . I was basking for a second or two in the simple randy thrill of being with a truly huge-cocked kid. "So you like Luc, do you?" he said. I couldn't tell if he was needling me or hoping to get a good price for him. A moment came when Sibylle refused a further drink, slid from her bar-stool and quietly stated that it was time to go. "Some of us have got school in the morning," she said. Patrick seemed happy for me to buy him drinks all night, but let himself be persuaded. So it was over already—it hadn't lasted an hour. I saw my futile excitements, as though through glass or as the sceptical barman must have seen them, setting up round after round for me, the boys getting noisy, heartbreak waiting —and what else could I have expected? I began to think wistfully of Cherif. Then Luc said, "I'll stay for a bit longer." Sibylle peered around, assessing the imprudence of this decision. "Okay," she said, with an upward flick of the eyebrows. Patrick had sauntered hunkily to the lit console of the juke-box, and we all watched as he thumbed in a coin and deliberated over the corny menu of titles. I couldn't think of anything to say, I didn't dare look at Luc. Then a button was pressed and after several seconds a distantly famular intro came at us from all sides. It was one of those rhetorical songs you heard in a late-night minicab, "I want to be where love is", drunk yourself, and the requests read out—Darren, don't keep breaking my heart . . . I need you but I need time—as you accelerate through the glittering streets. Luc kissed Sibylle on both cheeks. "Be good," she said, "sois sage." And Patrick rolled up with a grin and barged him and kissed him on the mouth. I thought, Ah, you do that, do you? —or was it just young sportsmen's faggoty closeness, their high butch pained regard for each other and themselves?

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  The next year a new student transferred in from Kansas. They both had History with him. He wasn’t a jock, a club kid, one of the super-students who ran the school, or a burnout who would be tossed out, but like them, one of the weird kids. He was between them in height and had pale sleek blond hair he wore to his shoulders. His eyes were a dark haunting blue. He had a scar through one light brown eyebrow. His cheek bones were high and sharp and his profile looked to her as if it should be carved on the prow of a sailing vessel. He always had shadows of stubble on his cheeks that made him seem older, more experienced. Half the guys had just started shav ing. Evan had a darkish beard but not much of it. He only had to shave every other day and it took him about a minute, al though she did like to watch, ’cause it was such a male thing to do. She was almost hairless on her body and never shaved her legs. To each other, they called the new kid the Decadent Viking. “I want him,” Evan said. “So do I,” she said. “We’ll share him.” They made up stories of capturing him, tying him up and doing things to him. His name was Chad, a silly name for such a fascinating-looking guy. He was broody. He sat at the back, and even when he knew the answers, he sounded as if he re sented being right. She sat down next to him in Assembly one day. His wrists stuck out below his shirt. There was a scar on each of them. He caught her looking at his wrists. He didn’t hide them. She stared at him. He stared back. Then he smiled. For two months they didn’t do anything more than make up stories about Chad the Decadent Viking. Then Evan asked him one day, “Want to study for History finals with Elena and me?” “Is she your girl?” “I don’t even know what that means.” They went over to Evan’s house. Ele didn’t have a pesky kid sister, only an older brother who was at William and Mary. For the first hour they studied together up in Evan’s room, smoking cigarettes and dope and studying really hard, but Elena knew Evan was planning something. It made her feel tense and excited. She trusted Evan and she didn’t care what he did, as long as Chad didn’t laugh at them. She got worked up just sitting there knowing that Evan was about to make his move. He stood up suddenly and came over to her, drawing her to her feet. He began unbuttoning her blouse. “Get undressed, Elena, and lie on the bed.”

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  394 Lecture 60: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe precisely, human activity, comprised of a desire that can be satisfi ed only by more desire. Some have called such desire the essence of Romanticism. The quest itself, the desiring for, now becomes the subject of art itself. Faust’s idea of desire is also related to Blake’s notion that activity is good, the root of evil being a rationality that preempts desire. Others have called such immodest or excessive desire the necessary condition of capitalism. Two economic transactions condition all the other action in the play: a wager and a contract. At the beginning of the play, Mephistopheles extracts a wager from God that he can “induce” the soul of Faust “to defect from its true source.” The Lord, in turn, agrees not to interfere. Mephistopheles takes all this to mean— mistakenly, it turns out—that he will have access to Faust’s immortal soul in the end. Mephistopheles and Faust also make a contract: Mephistopheles will serve Faust’s desires until the moment when Faust wishes an earthly bliss to become permanent and not to perish, at which time Faust will forfeit his life. Mephistopheles also takes this contract to mean that Faust, if he breaks the contract, will forfeit his soul to the devil. In the end, Faust does voice a vision of imperishable freedom, and he dies. Faust’s “immortal part” is snatched away, however. For many readers, the fi nal solution to the problem of Faust’s fate has seemed a kind of shaggy-dog story. God was in control all along. The play is not about either the wager or the contract. It is about the process of making desire processive, not terminal. This is a particular problem for Faust when his desire turns to libidinal desire. Faust seduces Gretchen, impregnates her, and in addition to killing her brother in a duel, allows her to be condemned for infanticide. At the end of the play, he tries to get the nearly insane Gretchen to break out of prison and follow him. She, however, feels that the legal judgment against her is just. In an earlier scene in a garden, when Faust is trying to woo Gretchen, she asks him whether he believes in God, an important question for the audience as well, if Goethe means salvation to be a serious theme of the play. “Feeling is everything,” says Faust, declaring Goethe’s lifetime artistic project, Faust, is like a Frankensteinian creature (but a beautiful and productive one).

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  The knuckles of my other hand rubbed his stomach, I felt the little dip of his navel through his shirt. He apologised with a giggle that showed it was not a heaven and hell of love and lust for him, and peered down again with a beery breath across my mouth as I concentrated with tongue on lip. But I had coaxed the zip down, one notch, two, three, then it ran like a ladder. "So which way are you going?" I said. He pulled the zip up to the top with a shiver and a grin of new confidence. "Oh, I don't know"—looking to left and right. "I don't want to go home too much." "It is quite late, and you've got a lesson in the morning." He put his head on one side, with what I realised was a rather drunk bit of foolery. "But it's only with you," he cooed. I didn't know whether to feel slighted or favoured. "Your mother will want us both there at ten." I found myself obscurely reassured by her presence and requirements. I felt the seconds thudding past. There was only the remote noise of the bar across the street, and the occasional taxi speeding perfect strangers from place to place. "For some considerable time I have wanted to see your place of residence." He didn't know what he was doing to me. I said, "My dear Luc, you really mustn't model your speech on that of our new prime minister." And he went into a wince-making spiel of what-whats and tally-hos and jolly good shows. When we came to a wide bridge he jumped on to the wall, and walked hastily along its coping, arms stretched for balance. I'd seen younger kids doing it before, here and there, and wondered if I would jump into the icy water to save them if they slipped. The wall was broad enough, but I heard the scrape of his jeans as he set one foot directly in front of the other. How strong and beautiful his white legs were in the glare of an old rococo lamp with wrought-iron shells and other reminders of the not-so-distant sea. I didn't know, but I thought he'd probably never "taken someone home", the walk wasn't crowded for him with curious precedents, it wasn't the mock pick-up it was for me. I leant at the bridge's apex; there was a hint of mist on the still canal. Then he came trotting back and steadied himself for an instant with a hand on the top of my head. I was mentally searching my room, noticing things as a newcomer might.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  "That used to be my classroom. That big window on the second floor." But I stayed where I was, in the middle of the room, my hand in my pocket holding my cock, looking at his backside and his broad hunched shoulders. I was haunted by potential moves tonight—it was like trustless stoned nights at Cambridge, when I never knew if I'd just said something or was still planning to say it. I saw a phantom me, in the jerky, melting moves of a time-lapse film, going over to him, slipping an arm round his shoulder, hugging him and kissing him. I saw him turning with a raised hand, it could have been to hit or to . . . caress. "You know, I'm trying to work this out. I've looked at this house, well, quite often. I never saw anything, and I used to wonder to myself what it was. You must imagine, in a very boring lesson. Of course, not like nowadays!" He turned with a grin. "It's all so long ago." "Now, do you want some coffee?" I said. It was the thing you were always asked back for at university, if not for a smoke. I'd spent a hundred long nights on the edge of sleep, worried and exhausted by coffee. "Or a drink?" I thought he probably shouldn't have any more. "Oh, drink, drink, drink," he said, swinging back towards me, knowingly reckless. He picked up Cherif’s cap from the table and perched it on his blond stack, a bit at a loss without a mirror. "Not exactly one," he tooted. "Nor one." I went for the secret brandy, and was quite relieved to see most of it had gone. I was full of troubling punctilio, I thought I might be struck off for getting a pupil drunk. I remembered why Luc was here and not in the darkened school across the canal: the night on the ship, whisky and cards and who knew what else—we'd never talked about it. It came up in my dreams, a low scene lit like a Caravaggio by a single bolt of life-changing light. And did they fuck you? I needed the brandy. I was queasy from the sea-heave of lust. I busied myself self-consciously with the tumblers, switched on the blow-heater—not that I felt cold. Luc dropped into the big armchair and sprawled, pulling the printed cotton throw off the bursting plush of the back and tipping Cherif’s cap forward over his eyes. For the first time since St Ernest I had a sense of his balls, held and slumped astride the seam of his jeans. I saw my phantom self kneeling and licking at the stretched cloth till it was soaked. "Who was that very boring and awful old guy at the bar?" he said, taking an eager drink, his eyes rounding at the burn of it. "Which particular boring and awful . . . as we left, you mean?"

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  I perched there in the swirl of his swearword and his Old Spice, looking into a new life of almost frightening pleasure. I glanced at him shyly; his shirt was half-unbuttoned and I could see a brown nipple as he leant forward. Sometimes our hands touched as we rolled the cleared thread on to the plastic reel. "That Dave Dobbs is a fucking cunt," he said. "He is a fucking cunt," I agreed, and Mark Lyle gave a big bright laugh. He had a wide sun-tanned face and a large mouth with one or two spots by it that he should have left alone. When we'd more or less finished, he patted his thigh and asked me if I wanted a cigarette. I blushed and said no. "Mind if I do?" he said, with surely unnecessary courtesy. Actually I was terribly worried about him meeting an early death from lung-cancer; but I was overcome by the glamour and intimacy of the occasion. I watched him raptly as he smoked an Embassy to the filter. Each frown, each wincing inhalation, the way he balanced the smoke between his open lips and then as it escaped drew it back up his nose, the two or three different fingerings he essayed, all were written on my mind like a first exercise in sexual attraction. I thought Mark Lyle was the most handsome man I'd ever seen. Later that summer I saw him again. The friendship I had envisaged had not blossomed. Indeed he'd vanished altogether for about three weeks, leaving me full of forlorn agitation. Then one evening I was rambling homewards from the Blewits side of the common through the long dry grass when I saw his unmistakable mane of fair hair. He was sitting on a bench with his back to me, and I dithered for several minutes just a few yards behind him. He wasn't aware there was anyone there. Occasionally he lifted what looked like a beer-can to his lips. I looped round and came back in front, pretending to notice him at the last moment. Following our convention I said nothing, but sat down beside him and waited. He can only have been fourteen, but he was managing to grow real sideburns, a more gingery colour than the rest of his hair. He was wearing a Cream on Tour T-shirt, and tight high-waisted shiny brown trousers with generous flares. You could see the stub of his cock very clearly. "I wondered if you'd been flying that kite again?" I said at length. "I should think it's a jolly good one." Mark Lyle tilted the last of the beer into his mouth, swirled it round and swallowed it, then belched so that I could smell it. He seemed to have forgotten about the Old Spice. "I'm fucking pissed, man," he said, and dropping the can on the ground stamped on it violently two or three times. Again the conflict of excitement and distress.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  only tolerated but welcomed with a short soft cry. Reaching up as I settled on my belly between your sloppily splayed, sleep limp legs, I plucked your nipple again. She loves me. You hovered somewhere just this side of sleep as I straight ened my fingers again to reach farther into you. You’ve always liked me to stroke the scalloplike slickness of your cervix with my fingertips, the sensation so deep, so intense and primal, that hidden bit of you found out and gently burnished as if such polishing could make it shine like gold. My fingers swim ming through the honeyed heat that had begun to seep out of you and trickle down along my wrist, you moaned, beginning to arch toward me in a slow agonized rhythm. I looked up at you, your hands on your breasts, fingers splayed, mauling your own soft flesh with the same insensible heartlessness with which your cat, in similar states of bliss, will knead her pin sharp claws into my thigh while I cringe and keep on petting her. It was time to finish your dream the way I’d often wanted to, to be the one to take the place of whoever had begun to se duce you as you slept. I parted your labia with my lips and nose, tongue extended to stroke its way to your clit. At the taste of you my own cunt clenched, and I think I moaned against you as I found your hard sweet clit and fastened my lips around it, fingers still swirl-kneading the very bottom of your muscular cunt. Your hands abandoned your breasts and made a basket around the back of my head, holding me as I licked you, up and up and up against your clit, the motion I know will get you to come and come again if I keep at it, if I fight you after the first time when you try to push me away. Starving for the taste, the feel, the sound, the clinging grasping arch of you at orgasm, I battered your clit with my tongue, making no pretense at subtlety. Mashing my face against your

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  His cock remained as inert as it always had in the showers: circumcised, wrinkled, self-contained as the rest of him; it seemed equally to await discovery. I held it in the palm of my hand and ran my thumb backwards and forwards over it as if it had been a pet mouse. Nothing happened—or if anything, it shrank a little. I was taking things too fast. I stepped back, tugged off my shoes (shabby old suede laceups which were never unlaced, a lazy affectation which I believed to be overtly sexy), unbuttoned and flung off my white cotton shirt, and with a hint of suspense, undid my fly and yanked off my trousers. Phil’s eyes were mesmerised by mine, and seemed reluctant to go down on my nodding dick. Then he too suddenly got undressed, and stood away from the window, his head bowed under the sloping ceiling. His body looked fantastic, highly developed, everywhere convex, hard and innocent. His whiteness was broken only by the red blotch of an insect bite in the tender, creased skin at his waistband. I was much more gentle with him now, stroking, kissing and nibbling—smiling, too, and making small pleasurable noises. And he began to respond, imitating me at first, but then making it up himself. Several times, though, it simply came to a stop, we stood back for a moment, seeing each other as we most often had before, in the showers or the changing room, naked and restrained. Perhaps the fact that the restraints of the public space had been taken away made us feel unnatural, inept at using our freedom. The small bed was like being at school or university. It wouldn’t encourage changes of position, but was all right for any simple sex act. When Phil and I rolled about our legs or our shoulders were hanging over the edge, increasing the precariousness of the situation: there was a strangely constricting need to cling together. Then he was on the point of falling on to the floor, his stomach muscles ridged to hold himself horizontal as I hauled him back by the waist, his head lurched upwards and our skulls cracked together quite painfully. The next day I had a perceptible bruise. Things were not working out with the instinctive ease I’d imagined. But I felt it was important to get on with it, and after a while and some laughter to relax him (though it also brought back an inhibiting normality) I turned him over and started to nose around his bum.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  I I er first lover was big, roughly the size of her forearm. During their sex she lay still, slack-jawed and panting, focused solely on relaxing each muscle while he plowed her. If she didn’t succeed in relaxing enough, he left her bleeding and barely able to sit. Every time you’re naked I see something new to turn me off, he would tell her. She thought it was fun. What did she know? Long after this lover was gone from her life, she continued to fall in love with whatever man could fill her up most. And yet it seemed to her suddenly that all men were big dicks, that by having them they became them. So she gave them up, men and dicks both, to save herself. In this period of her life she wore black. Men and women both left her alone. She became invisible to all. She could walk into a room and not a single head would turn, male or female, and she considered this indifference a sign of great accom plishment. Her body cooperated with her inclination. It stopped menstruating. The waist thickened. No one could trespass. She was impenetrable. Only one man could have broken the long dry season of her days. Here is how he defeated her. He was fat. Not just plump, but enormously, abundantly fat, beyond all reasonable bound aries for the word, beyond the point where she recognized him as a man at all until it was too late. And he was short, at least five inches shorter than she. And bald on top of his head, but covered with hair the consistency and thickness of steel wool elsewhere. His face and neck were spackled with raised, brown moles, making him look as if he’d just been splashed with mud by a car driving through a puddle. His hygiene was poor. And he was old. All these facts conspired to keep her un aware of her own intentions until they were naked together and careening toward the abyss. They met in a bookstore, in the health section, where she was looking for something that would explain her lack of menses, which worried her, although not too much, since she had always felt it had been her idea to stop menstruating rather than some organic problem. “You don’t need that,” he said, pointing to the book in her hand. “You, honey, are in the peak of health.” She stepped back, already knocked off balance by this man. He wore trousers the size of small sails and a T-shirt that read Texas is for lovers, even though they were in California. The shirt left a line of flesh exposed along the midsection. When he looked straight ahead he was looking directly at her nipples, which, to her shock, were yearning toward this un likely target. Why did she invite him home, then? She has an explana

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  When you are awake, you won’t often let me tease you like that for long. You become too impatient, begin to urge your hips backward against my fingers, start grabbing at your own breasts, greedy baby, needing the pinch of thumb and forefin ger on those hardened tips to sear through your body and spike the need building behind that anxious clit of yours. Not now, though. Did my touches become the touches of the lover in your dream? I hope they did. I wanted to do you that way, the dream way, slow and deliberate, the kind of teasing that leaves you so wet and frustrated that you have to exorcise yourself under an entire water heater’s worth of hot water, not stopping until the goose bumps are too severe for you to bring yourself off again. Would it embarrass you to know that I know how you fuck yourself with the hair conditioner bottle when it’s worse than usual, when the dreams have made you need it deep and relentless but you still can’t bear to admit to wanting to be fucked quite so hard? You never ask me to come back to bed when you wake up like that. It makes me jealous, usually. But not this time. Did you notice, in your fevered sleep, that I had begun to push inside you, or that you were slick as egg whites? I won der at what point it began to register somewhere in your hind brain that someone else’s hand really was forcing its meaty way inside your clinging, slippery folds. There was no resistance as I entered you, sweet rippling girlflesh opening around my fin gers. A momentary ripple of worry seized me—would you take it as a form of rape if you woke suddenly to find me coax ing three fingers inside of you without your knowledge or say- so? It troubled me, but the more I thought, the more the thought curled in on itself and became redolent with even deeper, redder lust. Would I violate you? Yes, in a manner of speaking, I would, I would take the blame for having wanted this so much that I would do it to you without asking, because I knew it was the only way I would get to do it at all.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  see the black-and-yellow butterfly I’d chloroformed and pinned to a white board under glass. He was not the kind of boy who pulled the wings off flies but I was. I showed him the butterfly but made him beg to see it first, and when he’d begged me hard enough I told him he could only see it if he took off his shirt, and then his pants, and then all his clothes. He was obviously scared and just as obviously excited, his pants when I told him about the shirt were standing out and dark with his wet precum. Then he was naked in my bedroom with just a few tan public hairs and a cock very much like Ja son’s only younger, curved and graceful as a sonatina, so I showed him the butterfly and stood behind him pressing up against his ass while he examined every minute vein and curl on the butterfly’s wing as if he were a fascinated lepidopterist who did not even notice he was naked in my gaze. I put my arms around him to show him what the butterfly looked like upside down and sideways, and worked my way up his belly to his tits with one hand while I worked my own pants down and off rubbing my dick against his butt as hard and round as a twelve-year-old baking bowl. That was the day I learned I didn’t have to come if I didn’t want to because I made myself stop so what we were doing could go on into the afternoon. He turned to face me when I was naked too and I kissed him, took the butterfly away and set it on my dresser where it wouldn’t get hurt, then took his arms in my two hands and pushed them behind him and held them there while I hugged him to me and kissed him the way I wanted to kiss the boy on the beach beside the lake at night, only this one was alive and kissed me back. I pushed him backward toward the bed and pushed him down on his back and stood over him astonished at what God had suddenly given me, as I am astonished now rubbing Jason’s sweet cock up and down with my hungry