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 115 of 344 · 20 per page

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  I fell into a rhythm of apparently pointless questions, so as to stretch his vocabulary; and under cover of these I went stalking through that seaside idyll that there had never been the remotest question of my sharing. First, how had they got there? In his friend Patrick's car. Ah, and what was that? A Mini! Oh; and what was the house like? It was white, it had only one floor, and its roof was flat. A verandah with white pillars ran all along the front. To my surprise he called it a stoa. Below the house there was a garden with trees that leant over and a gate with two or three steps going down on to the dunes. The nearest house was a hundred metres off. And what of the inside? There were at least four bedrooms (so perfect chastity could conceivably have been preserved). We itemised the linen, the duvet-covers in red and green, the sheets made from an uncertain fabric. The furniture there was built out of pine and oak; there were many books on wildlife and ornithology. The theme of birds was continued on the cups and plates, and on various other items in the kitchen, which he considered a delightful room. I wanted to get on to the night hours, and ask him what he dreamed about when the noise of the waves had lulled him to sleep; but something held me back. I felt I could pry no further just now, though he rose to all these challenges with only brief hesitations and a certain chilly pride. What had they done? They had walked, read, studied indeed, discussed various matters. Such as? Such as . . . pollution, radio drama, the effect of wage agreements. They sounded like the dreariest people on earth. (They sounded like us.) Had they gone in the sea? Yes, although the water was quite cold. Then what had he worn to do so? A slip. Swimming-trunks, did he mean, or shorts? Trunks. And what colour were they? They were black. As it happened, he'd forgotten his own and had had to borrow Patrick's, and they were too large. So he couldn't keep them on? Oh he could, but it wasn't easy . . . What, um, what had he read?. He had read Great Expectations and something by Gramsci! (He seemed full of ideas on the latter but I kept bringing him back firmly to Pip, Magwitch and Herbert Pocket.)

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  I thought I heard music—a spacy androgyne popsong—but the breeze snatched it and dropped it like a waltz or shushed it under a long roar of leaves. I went towards it with clumsy determination, through the near-dark of the woodland, crackling over beech-mast and leaves, brushed by low undergrowth, lifting my feet up high but still tripping now and then on dead sticks. I must be making back towards the road. I ticked myself off in a muttering, good-humoured monologue for yet again taking so long, solitary and scenically roundabout a route to somewhere that was close by at the start: the luminous hands of my watch showed 11.20. I felt very far from home and stood still for a moment to test my sex-drive, like checking the oil in a car, decided there was enough for the time being and jogged on towards the music, and brief glares of light and boyish owl-calls on either side. Someone had a torch and was roaming about, turning it on and off and provoking shouts and groans, and the occasional laugh. Or maybe the laughs came from the torch-carrier himself, drunk and tediously mischievous. For a moment I found myself at the fading limit of his beam, uncertain if I was visible, or if I wanted to be, if I was an intruder or a stumbling new arrival at the darkened pleasure-dome, grateful for the usher's glowing wand. Then the beam jerked to my left, and picked out two men against a tree, jeans round their knees, an arm round a neck, a hand roughly grasping at a white bottom—before they twisted back into the darkness, too far on to care much or protest. The torch went out and I stood still while the floating image, a glimmering ectoplasmic bottom, wandered and faded. In a minute the light struck out again and I saw the whole garden revealed for several seconds. It was a wide circular clearing that would have been charming centuries ago, when the wood was no more than a nursery laid out in ranks and opening into tapering perspectives, but now was like something from a dream, with the huge impassive agitation of the trees above the circle of yew arbours, each with its gryphon-legged bench, and at the centre a brimming stone basin, mysteriously fed and clear.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  I leant against a mirrored pillar and kept my eye on a bunch of kids who hung around mocking and caressing each other, sipping quickly and shiftily at Cokes and beers and bopping about with a knowing coy beauty on the edge of the floor. They seemed more in their element than anyone in the dismal thin Euro-pop interspersed with tired, tired disco classics which to them perhaps still had point and exhilaration. Is it legal? I found myself wondering as I watched a muscly little lad in a string vest and baggy hitched-up jeans licking blond froth from the black down on his upper lip and holding forth hoarsely like a schoolyard gangster. He couldn't be more than sixteen, surely? But that was okay here, unlike at home; it was the classical, commonplace good sense of Europe. I thought I'd never wanted anyone so much. I upset myself by being obvious about him, so that his mates noticed me staring at him and he turned and made a gesture with his tongue behind his upper teeth. I couldn't quite tell if it was mocking or provocative, it might have been the sort of insult mentioned bafflingly in Shakespeare. I was absorbed in my own excitement and unaware of the routine spectacle it presented to others: I followed him when he went to the lavatory, but he peed in the lock-up stall and I heard him hawking expressively as he did so. I hung back and looked in the mirror at Edward Manners, the pudging, bespectacled English teacher twice his age. Back in the bar and with another beer I had a man of flawless, dead good looks shift up to me and start talking with the banal singsong that in the outside world would indicate a long and comfortable acquaintance and here was used as a short cut to a short one. There was something fascinating about his blond blandness, skin stretched over wide high cheekbones, long hair starting forward and then swept back in a layered and possibly lacquered wave. It was hard to guess how old he was: his skin was perfect, but when he smiled it crinkled into a hundred lines around his grey eyes. Otherwise he was oddly classless and unmarked by normal wear and tear. His clothing was casual and yet dressy: over the V of a T-shirt a pink chemise with buttons, pockets and epaulettes, and pleated bumhugging slacks that appeared to shelter, down front, something of remarkable, even tedious length. When he told me he was a model, it all made sense.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  Cut that out, she says, too distracted. Look at my breasts. This is really strange. By now they are more than filling the available space, descending into her lap, the table’s edge mak ing a deep dent as they push against and over it. Good thing you’re not wearing a bra, I say. Come into the living room, you’d better take that top off while you can. But—but—I need to get to a hospital, she stammers. This is crazy. What’s going on? Relax, I say. I’m sure they’ll go back to normal soon. I tug on her hand—she stands up and follows, dazed. In the living room, I pull and cajole her T-shirt over breasts it was never designed to contain. She cradles her breasts in her hands and tries to lift them. They spill out over her fingertips. They’re still growing, she says. Now that I’m holding them, I can feel it. Sit down, I say. She sits. I sit next to her. I lean into her lap and put my mouth on the nearer nipple, rolling my tongue over it. She shrieks. Are they sensitive? I say, trying to be inno cent. How can you think about that right now? she asks. Why not? I reply, and lick her nipple again. She squirms and pushes me away. I’m not kidding, she says. This is serious. She stands, with some effort. While she sat, her breasts had filled her entire lap. Bending forward from the weight, she makes her way over to her room and the table with the tele phone. Who are you calling? I ask. The doctor, who do you think? she replies. I watch as she stands impatiently, obviously having more and more trouble standing as her breasts continue to swell. If she continues leaning forward at that rate, and they continue growing at the same rate, soon they will reach her knees. The doctor’s office has placed her on hold. She doesn’t look happy. I put a CD in the player, turned low to not interfere with her call. The hole in the CD would fit over her nipple, just snug enough to stay on, like a piece of jewelry. The CD itself would cover her areola, but only barely. I could get one of the two-CD sets out; then they’d match. The White Album might look nice. She thuds behind me and I spin around. She has dropped the phone, gone to her hands and knees, breasts spreading out where they meet the floor like beanbags. Help me, she says. Get them back on the phone. I can’t stand up anymore. I move to the phone, stand in front of it so she can’t see me. With my finger I hang up silently. I speak one-half of an imag inary conversation. The doctor is out. I make it plausible. There is no immediate danger. They will send an ambulance as soon as they can, since the condition is obviously not urgent.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  He raised his head and looked at her. His face was as big as God’s. Then his great mass rose up, until he was over her, in conceivably huge, like Mother Earth herself. He will crush me, she thought, and didn’t care. He spread her legs and pulled her, ah, it could be done! onto his prick, his little pizzi cato, his feather-finger. She came as he entered her. He began to rock. He stretched her wide, as far as she could open, to accommodate his mighty circumference. His stom ach, that huge and hairy globe, rubbed and pounded every inch of her from her center to her knees, while his prick danced in and out like a tongue. When she grew too wet and wide to hold him inside he fell out of her, and it didn’t matter, nothing mattered, because he kept rubbing her until they both peaked again, when, exhausted and spent, they fell asleep within each other’s arms. Weeks later, when she knew even more about his body than before, when he’d probed her in ways that would have been cruelly painful with any of her former lovers, when she trusted him, she awoke to find them both covered in her menstrual blood. The long dry season had ended. He opened his eyes and told her she was beautiful, and she knew that it was true. They stayed together for a long time, until he gave her crabs. He denied nothing. “She needed me, too,” he told her. Her fury at his honesty made him repulsive again. Once more she could see the sagging breasts, the vast and sweaty geogra phy of skin and hair and fat that was his body. He disgusted her. She threw him out. Then bought gallons, oceans, of Kwell. She disinfected herself and her house for many weeks. Afterward, she wore white. Years passed. The woman lost track of the man. But she would wonder about him sometimes. What was he to her, then? An ugly man. A former lover. A cheat. A freak. All of those things. Or none of them. In truth she had difficulty re membering. Usually when she thought of him she could think of nothing but the crabs, and her lips would recite a prayer of vengeance: May he tone up, thin down, become average and unremarkable, because then he will have lost everything. But sometimes, more often lately than before, she will find herself rising above her anger, to a place where she can think about the man himself instead of just his sins. At those times, she finds a prayer of thanks forming on her lips. Thank you, wherever you are, she whispers. Thank you for showing me the beauty of imperfect things. Like you. Like me. JAMES WILLIAMS Jason's Cock

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  ging me for something. After wiggling the long stem of the rose from between the divide of her ass, I lightly brushed its petals along the pretty tiny red imprints left by the thorns, tak ing broad strokes that gradually developed into a brief round of light spanking. Her sighs provoked me to guide the stem forward between her thighs, massaging the silky petals against the delicate flesh of her smooth shaven lips. We soon discov ered we couldn’t exploit the moment any further—someone entered the bathroom, going into the stall next to ours. Gently removing the rose from between her legs, I got my self together, sticking the rose in with my orchids. Repressing the urge to take a playful bite of her ass, I allowed myself one final nibble of her luscious neck before picking up my shoul der bag, unlocking the door, and disappearing, leaving her surrendered over the toilet. In hindsight, I think she learned a valuable lesson about dis turbing flowers. CHARLES FLOWERS In This Corner 1 he first time I saw him was in the inaugural issue of Si, a glossy magazine aimed at Latino readers. Fashion, language, food, music, bilingual education—all the concerns of middle- to upper-middle-class urbanites of Nueva York, Miami, Hous ton, Los Angeles. In the midst of all this culture was an eight page spread of somebody called Oscar de la Hoya, a young boxer on the cusp of fame. Oscar looked at me with his deep brown eyes and I felt my heart shudder: trouble. His face was pretty, with small fea tures, lashes curling up toward his thick eyebrows. He wasn’t a Tyson, some massive body of violence; he had a lean torso and a scattering of hair across his pecs, which were small but firm, human. The first photo featured him in a deep purple satin robe,

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  “We fuck all the time,” Evan said. “We study and we fuck. But it’s the first time we’ve taken anybody else with us. You should consider it an honor.” He was grinning widely. “Oh, I do.” “Did you like being with us?” Elena asked almost shyly. He was so beautiful, Chad with the blue blue eyes and the carved face. “I’ve spent worse afternoons.” He reached out and pulled her down on the bed with him. He was staring into her eyes. “I don’t understand you.” “Sometimes I don’t understand myself.” With a light caress now his hand moved over her breast. “You’re like something I made up lying in bed at night.” Evan said, “You know, we could all have a lot of fun.” Chad looked at him, his hand coming to rest on Elena’s bare thigh. “I think you’re right.” CARA BRUCE You Know What? I work in a place “nice girls” don’t usually visit. Starting about four in the afternoon I enter a black covered doorway under neath a flashing marquee that reads “live girls — all nude.” I am a performer, a dancer, an exhibitionist. And I like it. Sometimes I strip onstage but mostly I work the booths. The booths in my joint have a tiny bit of glass at the bottom but besides that they are open so I can see everything the John is doing, and he can see me. If a girl wants to make some extra money she can let the guys touch, there is also a security button if they get out of control. I like it this way. I like to watch the men jerking off. I like to look right in their eyes as I shake my tits and move my shaved pussy up and down in front of their faces. Some girls hate to know what the customers are doing, but not me. I’m causing it, therefore I own the reaction. I want to know what I own. This is why I make the most money. I don’t usually let anyone touch, I just like the watching. Just the two of us, making each other hot as hell, with me using no hands, only motions, in a space as big as my bathroom closet.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  But today, as he lights a joint and places it in Jennie’s mouth, he is not focused on his future, the bright golden-boy future that unfurls before him like an heirloom rug. He has no doubts, no fears. His medical school degree is at the framers, his internship in the city will begin in just a few weeks, and Lisa Wallach is finally a thing of the past. And here is Jennie, the beautiful neighborhood kid with the crush on him, Jennie, twelve years younger than he—sixteen, for chrissake—three years ago he had attended her Bat Mitzvah! His eyes travel over her shoulders, down her breasts, lower to the blond depths of her. A virgin? He doubted it. She had written him letters all through medical school, letters so steamy he and Lisa had read them to each other late at night. He stubs out the joint on a tree trunk, next to a carved heart with no names, no initials inside it. Gently, he lays her down on a bed of leaves, her head resting against the root of a tree. She crosses her legs, her arms, trying to cover herself. She has no idea how sexy she is. He quickly pulls his polo shirt over his head, undoes his own shorts and steps out of them. Then, in his sneakers and tight white briefs, he lowers himself on top of her, careful to prop himself on his elbows. Later, after it is all over, a friend will ask him why, after all, he did it. “She was so beautiful,” Eddie will say. “So fucking beautiful.” © Eddie’s head is between her legs. His mouth is moist, chin dripping, and he looks up at her as he twirls his tongue around and around. With his fingers, he spreads her apart. “Are you using anything?” he asks. “Yes,” she says. She wants him to think she’s a woman of the world. A woman whose motto, like a Boy Scout’s, is “Be pre pared.” Her heart pounds as he slides a finger into her. Can he tell that she’s lying? He kisses her on the lips and she tastes herself. She is antici pating something awful, vomitous, some reason why her mother lines up bottles of sweet-smelling potions on the bath room sill. She is surprised. The taste is not unpleasant: oceanic, vaguely like seaweed. Something dredged from the depths. She wonders what he tastes like, if she will ever know. Eddie wriggles out of his underwear and moves up her body so that his thing, this thing that she has been waiting for, is swinging above her mouth like a heavy, hypnotic pendulum. The last one she saw was Steven McCarthy’s, back in third grade, when she accidentally on purpose opened the bathroom door while he was standing over the toilet.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  and she squeaks. What’s that for? she asks. You were doing fine on your own. I rest her legs against her built-in beachball again and roll her back so she’s resting atop. How’s that feel? I ask. Wow, she says. Um, my breasts are pressing against it, hold ing it in. That’s what I thought, I say. I reach for her butt, squeezing one cheek in each hand gen tly, and begin to rock her back and forth over the rug. Head al most to the ground, then rock backward until the feet touch the ground on the far side. Back and forth. Her breasts rub bing and brushing against the deep pile rug, and her full pussy caught between the rolling pressure of her own swollen breasts and my hands firmly against her ass. Back and forth. She begins to gasp every time I push, every time her face rocks forward. I can stop if you like, you know, I say. Don’t you dare, she pants. Back and forth. Face forward—exhale loudly—feet back— inhale sharply. She sounds like she’s doing Lamaze breathing. What did you say? I stop suddenly to ask. Faster, she says faintly. I put one hand on her ass and another on her spine between the shoulders and begin to rock her as quickly as her size per mits. She pants like a locomotive, fast and loud. Chug chug chug. Wetness from her cunt is dripping down shinily over the round surface she rests on; I can see it between her slightly spread legs. She is moaning now. Then, from her mouth, comes the sound a balloon makes when you hold the neck taut as you let the air out. A loud squeak, very high at first but dropping in pitch very fast. And as she makes this noise, as the air rushes out of her, her breasts deflate and she tumbles down to the floor, cushioned in her fall as they rapidly shrink away to normal. And she is lying facedown, spread on the rug, dripping into it, sweating, exhaling. Her whole body in contact with the car pet again. She says that big breasts are a real problem. She says I don’t want them. Well, goodness, I know that. I never said I wanted them for myself.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  "He was quite a handsome dentist," said Echevin with a teasing shake of the head. There was a moment of mutual adjustment, of taking the ethical temperature. I was feeling terrifically queer tonight, but none the less anxious not to alienate the strait-laced Maurice or lead him to suspect that under the benign curiosity I would show about Luc I was aching for the boy's arse and touch and lips and tongue and tits and legs and salty toes and involuntarily spurting cock. The talk ambled and clumped through dessert, prompted and set askew by drink. There was that common dinnerparty sense that no one truly knew what they were talking about, Helene, who played the piano, keen but clueless about music, Maurice with his fudged quotations and half-forgotten stories from the evening news, and me pretending to have half-forgotten books I had never read. Echevin, of course, truly knew about Edgard Orst, but when the talk turned to football and boxing, on which Inge had vigorous views, he was soon feinting and conceding. For a minute or two I played a game of introducing the name covertly into the chatter, as I remembered doing with long-ago infatuations, asking or rather telling Helene about Gluck, or swapping Cavalier quotes with Maurice, jealously watching him shape and just exactly mispronounce the word Lucasta, the darting buss with which it began, the upward and downward flicker of the tongue against the teeth. Then he said, firmly and uncorrectably, "If I have freedom in my love And in my soul am free, Angels alone, that soar above, Enjoy such liberty." It was only when we returned to the other room and stood around with our coffee-cups, filling the contented pauses with long looks at the paintings, that I at last brought out my question: "I wonder if you taught my other pupil, the Altidore lad." Even to my ears it sounded deranged, bumblingly casual for the first few words and then, as the sacred name approached, slipping the gears with a reckless snarl. I tried to pass it off as a smothered belch, cough and sneeze. "What's that? Um . . . No." He took a sip of coffee, and looked around. "Don't be ridiculous," I felt like saying; but waited and then prompted: "He seems a very clever fellow." "Yes, I believe he always did pretty well. I only take them for the last year, as a rule." What a miracle, I thought, that Luc was not even now writing an essay on Lovelace or Suckling for this busy, musty-smelling man, who was turning and raising a hand to signal to his wife and so perhaps about to leave. "It must have thrown him a good deal to be chucked out," I hazarded. "I'm sure you'll keep him up to the mark," he said, with the sudden warmth of someone who is going and wishes to leave a friendly impression on a person whose company he has not enjoyed.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  Even so I wasn't very keen on him; among my sighs and mutters I let out a great yawn over his shoulder, converting its final paroxysm into a shuddering, half-biting kiss of his manacled ear. I tried to imagine he was someone else, as he pulled out my dick—which was a bit sullen, a bit killjoy, wanted to be asleep—and as I duly prised out his own rather pushy, anonymous, straight-up little number. Suppose he was Matt, or even Gerard . . . but I was growing used to the night, began to make out the dark oval of his face against the deeper darkness beyond, and when he rubbed against me, felt the chopped whiskers of a mustache. He knew I was holding back and out of friendliness or pure insensitivity he went at it the harder: there was a quick little ritual of groans, "Oh yeah . . . oh yeah . . . oh yeah . . . " and he shot off heavily up the front of my shirt. I closed my eyes. He hung on me for a while in hot-breathed recovery, and then returned to work on me. It was with a sense of conscious sacrilege that at last I admitted the idea of Luc. It was Luc standing behind me, his spent dick stiffening already between my legs, Luc's strong young hand firmly, almost over-fiercely, jerking me off, set on giving me pleasure, thrilled to do so: Luc who cupped his other hand to catch the warm splodge when it came. I twisted slowly in his arms, the night wind carried a phrase or two of angelic tenorino Stevie Wonder on the crest of the forest's darker blind roar, the long grass ran and whispered, it was a rhythm of a runner's waterproofed legs whistling against each other, and the ambush of a flashlight a foot or two away. There we were—two men, drunk, ungainly, our spunk on each other's hands and clothes, and him looking at me with amusement while I winced and turned away. Chapter 4 "I saw you in the street." "When was that?" "Saturday, at the market." Luc's manner was warily reasonable and left him room to retreat if his first signal of friendship was rejected. I stared at the long, transparent miracle of his face, the slithering stack of hair, eyelashes still stuck with sleep, that brutally vulnerable lip. He was a slightly kitsch piece of work from an artist who carved in alabaster like flushed hard honey. The sleep-creases, a wisp of towel-fluff on a not yet daily razored jaw. "I love you." He looked down at his exercise book and aligned his red, black and blue felt-tip pens with its upper edge. I pumped off a few more rounds of silent "I love you"s—it took two or three seconds only. "You should have said hello."

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  "Yes, it does at the moment—it may just be the rush of the rentree that's got so many of the perves on edge. There are older people too who have their following—some of them soil professionally; the cynical foul, I suppose you might call it." "It's all a revelation to me." "Isn't it? It's a kind of alchemy really. You take something of only slight practical value, but give it a magically arousing association, even if of a kind most people would consider revolting, and you're minting gold." And I had a hard-on myself at the grip of Luc's tight little knickers and feeling the hard-ons he must have had pushing against the very cotton that now constrained mine and his balls thoughtlessly snuggled there all day long. "I suppose you haven't met any of your customers." "It's all done by registered mail. They write of course, these great fantasies about porn-stars—some are illiterate, some are obviously the work of leading academics, they're rather like Henry James, they put all the rude words in inverted commas; some are always bragging about the size of their own equipment, which I don't believe. And then there's the phone. It's all new to me but I find I make quite a good phone-fraud: I work them up in a slightly grudging way, as though I might not let them have what they want so badly. As an opportunity for speaking stilted English to foreigners it beats conversation-classes any day, and the pay is far better." I glanced to my left and saw Frits, heavily alone with his book. "Don't look now," I said, "but I'm quite keen to avoid that person standing reading." Edie looked at once, and just happened to catch his eye as he was turning the page. "Well, I hope you're a Somerset Maugham fan," I said, as he came gratefully over and offered us another drink. Much later, in bed, an almost pre-adolescent clean cosiness except we must still have smelt of beer and smoke, Edie like one of the von Trapp children in pyjamas that looked to have been made out of old curtains, and me in brand new boxer-shorts, still with a lot of dress in them. The lamp was out and only a ghost of light showed her form between me and the window. The Spanish girls were at rest, only sometimes the loose purr of a car over the cobbles rose across the intervening houses; and at one o'clock Edie said she would be disturbed by the hours sounding from St Narcissus, which I no longer noticed. "I rather like Frits," she said drowsily. "It ought to be the Flemish for chips."

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  I hadn't a clue what he was talking about—it must be something like the dogs, or the wall. But he stood up and looked about and I understood and told him. I watched him wandering to the far end of the room, pushing his hair back, sweetly self-conscious under twenty pairs of eyes. I was blasted with lust. I thought why don't you just go on me, hose me down, unbutton my fly, slip your dick in and piss my pants. . . why don't You? I saw a voracious dark kid I had come across before" get up and follow him in. I wondered what Luc would think when he heard the clink of his foreskin-rings against the urinal's china cup. I caught the barman's eye and ordered another drink. I seemed to be virtually sober, I was drinking without noticing at least, it was rather like those trick-glasses where you tilt them to your lips and the liquid disappears. Did the boy want one too, he asked, perhaps impressed after all that I'd fought off the minders and rescued the star. I said yes, they were only light little beers, it would keep him a few moments longer before he shook hands and left for home. Matt came up and said quickly, "I don't know what you've done to Cherif. He's over at my place. I found him standing at the bus-stop crying like a baby." "Oh fuck, thank you, it's just . . . as you can see . . ." "No thanks required. I think he's hot, as you may remember." "Yeah, he's not so delectable when he's all snotty-nosed. But have him, do what you want with him!" "He's in a serious way about you, you know." I grimaced impatiently. "Anyway, we'll compare notes tomorrow night." And he gave his casual stare, with its usual assurance that the world of fantasy need not stay fantasy for long. I watched Luc's return, he was utterly beautiful, but I didn't feel annihilated by his beauty: he was coming to me, smiling from a distance like a friend who seeks you out where traders gather, on the Caspian shore—I had segued into a forgotten line of Violet Riviere's, from Poets of our Time. He hopped on to the stool with a clear sense of reaching home in a risky game of touch. At the same moment a startling black object obtruded between us and was clonked on to the bar. "Hello, dear," said Gerard in his weary, what-a-fascinating-life-I-lead way. "I haven't seen you for ages." "No, actually I'm just . . ." "Do you want a drink?" It was rare for him to offer—I assumed he'd seen my full glass. Where Matt's haunting scent had been there was the smell of someone busy all day in baggy woollies and a hopeless sort of anorak. I was bewildered to think how I'd wanted to sleep with him. "The animals are going very well," he said.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  comes up. Even then sometimes it isn’t, for you are loath to ad mit the coming of a new day until you’ve determined that you are ready to be a part of it. I have known you to spend entire mornings, even into the afternoon, lying in bed with your lap top computer, working on some part of your dissertation for hours with the curtains still drawn. Eventually you emerge, as bleary as if you’d been sleeping all the while. “Beautiful morn ing, isn’t it, Lilja?” you call cheerfully into my study as you stumble toward the shower, sometimes as late as two o’clock, finally condescending to formally enter the day. And so for your sake I will say it was the middle of the night, despite the clock on the bedside table that gleamed a red and resolute 5:45 A.M., when I awoke to find you waiting, silently wanting, your back slightly arched, your areole crin kled, still fast asleep. Thank God you don’t dream of sex every night, you tell me, since it always frustrates you when you do. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride, you say, you never do get what you want in those dreams, and you wake frustrated, slippery between the legs, softly grumbling. I can always tell when you’ve dreamt of sex. In my study I hear you through the wall when you shower, leaning against the tile with the water pummeling the lush breasts I like so much to tease, your hand between your thighs, unaware that the shower actually does precious little to cover your noises. I listen to you, some thing deep between my hips quivering at the high, piercing whimper that I know means you’re hovering, aching and des perate, at the edge of orgasm. I wish I weren’t such a morning person, wish my body didn’t always insist on my being awake so long before you. This morning—morning for me comes when my body says it does, circadian jackboots kicking me rudely awake even if it’s December in New England and still dark as the hem of a cas sock—I began to wake, yearning to just roll you over and slide between your legs but not daring to rouse you just for that. You slept deeply, though, and in the depths of your slumber you seemed to welcome the caress of my hands, letting me spoon you cozily, my palm sleeking the fine full curve of your hip and drifting over the pillowsoft of your belly. Stirring slightly but not waking up, you seemed to know I was there, and for a while that was enough. And so I pressed myself against your spine, my nipples perking slightly at the contact with your skin, slid my arm under the graceful arch of your neck. Unconscious kitten-murmurs came from your throat as my fingers traced the seam where my thigh pressed the back of yours, and as I let my hand meander to the top of your thigh

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  “What do you do to keep yourself busy when he’s away?” “Watch a lot of old movies.” I answered before realizing that was exactly what I was do ing now that Paul was traveling and working late so often. “Do you cry at the end?” he asked. “Always.” “If I was with you and you started to cry, I would brush away your tears with my lips,” he whispered into the phone. I was strangely moved by the image. “No one has ever done that before,” I said, again telling the truth. “Are there other things no one has ever done to you that you’d like me to do?” Bill was taking shape in my mind. Not as a face, but as sen sations, colors. He was dark blue velvet. Heavy cream. A large bird flying through a moonless sky. “Yes. Are there things no one has done to you?” I asked. “No, I want to know about you,” he answered quickly. I must have taken a wrong step. “What do you want that your boyfriend doesn’t give you?” He put the focus back on me. A moment passed. I couldn’t think of what to say. “Alice?” he prompted, and she responded for me. “He never makes love to me long enough,” I answered fi nally. “I will,” he said. “Where should I start?” If only he’d talk about his fantasy. This was so difficult for me to do. And then I realized this was his fantasy: to please a woman, to please me. After that, it was easier. “We’d both be completely dressed, sitting on my couch. There’d be just one light on. And you’d kiss me. Keep on kiss ing me—” “So that you could almost come from the kiss?” he asked.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  Cherif had picked a rather New Look full-skirted brown coat with wide shoulders and a tie-belt. It was going to cost me a lot but I was determined to go through with it, without quite understanding why. I supposed it was a substitute for the love I couldn't return, or what's called throwing money at a problem and is always held not to work. He turned up the collar and stepped back to the mirror, to catch the surprise of his metamorphosis. And it was a different Cherif, bourgeois, self-conscious. It seemed to imply that further changes would have to be made: those old jeans, those dusty boots, that cap. Alejo's ideas were even more radical. "What about some new undies, to go with it?" "I can't afford anything else, I'm afraid." Cherif came and hugged me and I sniffed in the expensive and assuaging wool smell. "Thank you, my friend," he said. It struck me that it wasn't a practical coat for going to the docks. I supposed he'd carry on wearing his old what was it?, bolero?, to work and the coat would at once be elevated to luxury evening wear. The whole exercise was a useless indulgence. Alejo bobbed back with some slithery packets of underpants. "You can have one of these with the compliments of the house," he said quickly—obviously an offer to be kept from the management and the one or two other customers moodily riffling the shirt-shelves. "Which would you like, darling?" "He'd better try them on," said Alejo demurely. Cherif was helped from his coat and sent into a curtained cubicle, wondering if he was being made a fool of. Alejo drew me aside. "Whatever did you do to my poor cousin from Bilbao?" he said. "Oh dear . . . " I laughed guiltily. "Agustin. Well, I think I . . . " I didn't quite know what I'd done, of course. "What did he say?" "He was too shocked to say anything," said Alejo solemnly. "I certainly didn't do what I wanted to," I said. "I guess I just fell madly in love with him for two or three hours." "He breaks everyone's heart," Alejo confirmed. "And you know he is still a virgen —his parents are very strict and religious. All my queer friends are crazy about him, they keep sending him flowers and asking him to imaginary parties." "I haven't seen him around lately, you know he sometimes stays next door to me." "Oh, he's moved from there! He couldn't stay next to you!" I was aghast. "Only joking"—he laid a hand on mine—"he has a room of his own, I'll tell you where." "There's not much point, is there?" "None at all," he said complacently. "You're clearly a very attractive family," I pressed on.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  fists coming at me, and I want to break that smile that’s haunted me. His hands are on my ass, spreading my cheeks apart as he plunges all the way into me. His strokes are hard and quick, and he leans into the spray to kiss me. He pumps harder, never taking his mouth from mine. We breathe like swimmers, gasping whenever our tongues break the surface of the water pouring over us. As he fucks me harder, my cock swells. Pinned to the tile, I’m up against the ropes, and he continues to pump me harder and harder. I hold my arms up to defend myself, against his chest crushing me, and I am stroking faster and his look is fierce, his brown legs spread wide as he squats and rises, drilling me into the corner. His right hook against my thigh, his left jab pounding my pec, I’m twisting against his blows and the sweat blinds me, his face a blur, water and salt and hair against my lips. His voice comes from the water, St, ahora, si, ahora, and he bites his lower lip, his perfect shining white teeth like a tourniquet he loosens, releasing his jism into me. When I shoot, the cum hits his chin, but before he can lick it away, the water rinses him clean. He opens his mouth like he’s about to sing, and what comes out is the lan guage of men fucking men: syllables wet with heat, a cry opening into water. © Upstairs, there were new faces as I moved toward the door. Pulling my sweatshirt over my head, I almost ran into a young Oscar, maybe eighteen. He was warming up, stretching, throwing a few punches at a bag, and he looked at me from the corner of his eye. If we had been in a gay bar, I’d have con sidered it a cruise, but in this place of sweat and leather and muscle, it was more a leer of competition, checking me out. Am I tough enough? Am I tougher than he is? I wondered what would happen if we stepped into the ring together: who would throw the first punch, who would be left standing, who, perhaps, knocked cold. HANNE BLANK And Early to Rise | o your way of thinking, it isn’t morning until the sun

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  It all started one night after a trick. He wanted me to fuck him hard, harder, and after a few thrusts it actually started turning me on. I was pounding him as hard as I could and he was grabbing my ass to pull my dick in farther. That got me to relax. I mean, I don’t like fucking someone really hard unless I know he’s enjoying it. So I put my hands on his back and got into a good rhythm, sliding my dick almost all the way out then shoving it back in as far as it would go. It got to the point where his moans and my grunts were synchronized, which kind of put me in a trance. I think I even heard my balls slap ping against his ass like in some porn video. I could feel myself getting close to coming, so I stopped and held my dick all the way in his ass, but I started spasming any way. Usually, I don’t like to come with guys who are paying me, and there’s nothing worse than coming when I’m trying not to. It’s like doing bad drugs, makes me tense instead of eu phoric. But somehow this time I managed to hold it in, even though I thought for a second that I could feel my cum spilling into the condom. Either the trick thought I was coming too or our bodies were really in tandem, which would be kind of scary. But anyway he started gasping and then he moved for ward quickly and my dick slid out. And then he came. I was covered in sweat, so I took a shower while he called a taxi. Got home and I was exhausted. Then of course I got horny. I always get horny when I think I’m too tired to move. I couldn’t stop thinking about fucking some sweaty guy with a shaved head and a firm body, pounding his asshole and dig ging my fingers into the groove between his chest muscles un til we came at the same time. He’d reach back and grab my ass to keep my dick in his asshole longer, my arms around him, tongue reaching for the back of his throat. I got hard just thinking about it, the kind of hard that makes me think my dick might explode. Not like when I’m about to come, but like Isn’t this thing too red? I went into the bathroom to watch myself jerk off in the mirror. My dick was so hard it was vibrating. I pulled off my shirt and grabbed my armpits, licked the mirror in circles like I was making out with someone, or maybe just to see what it would taste like. The mirror got all foggy. I spit on my hand and started pumping my dick into both my fists, trying to watch myself while licking one of my armpits, which was tastier than the mirror.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  It was stuffed with pornography—videos and magazines, many of them still in their rip-off cellophane wrappers. The buying had been prodigal and indiscriminate. ‘You like it?’ I was asked, as if it were a triumph of his own. ‘Well up to a point—but I thought—’ ‘In my country these things, these dirty pictures, do not exist.’ ‘I should be highly surprised if that were the case. What is your country anyway?’ ‘Argentina,’ he said, with a neutrality of tone which showed that this news was likely to have some effect. It made me want to apologise to him; at the same time I could have castigated him for buying up all this trash. Surely if any British self-esteem could have been thought to have survived the recent war it must be something to do with our … cultural values? The top magazine in the suitcase was a tawdry old thing I could remember from schooldays, called Latin Lovers. ‘But what about the war?’ I said dismally, seeing a TV news map of the Southern Atlantic and imagining too the customs-check at Buenos Aires. ‘That’s all right,’ he said, putting his arms around my neck. ‘You can suck my big cock.’ He stood patiently while I unbuttoned his trousers and slid them down over brown hairy thighs. The black briefs I had glimpsed before turned out to be leather. ‘I suppose you bought these today as well,’ I said; and he nodded and grinned as I prised them down and saw the studded leather cock-ring he was also wearing. He had clearly wasted a small fortune in some Soho dump. His assessment of his cock had not, however, been wrong. It was a sumptuously heavy thing, purpling up with blood as the cock-ring bit into the thickening flesh. ‘I’m not a size queen, but …’ would have been my classic formulation of the affair. I hadn’t had anything like it all summer, and gorged on it happily. But Gabriel’s own performance was becoming off-putting. Every few seconds he would make some coarse exhortation, some dumbly repeated catchphrase, and I came to realise with dismay that this trick too he had picked up from crudely dubbed American porn films. ‘Yeah,’ he would croon, ‘suck that dick. Yeah, take it all. Suck it, suck that big dick.’ I took a pause to say, ‘Um—Gabriel. Do you think you could leave out the annunciations?’

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  again and call me Sir and Sir and Sir please Sir please ow otv otv Sir please Sir please Sir please may I come and I say word by word as I bring him all the way out of my mouth, On the count of three you may come, yes, you may come, yes, one, two, three, and he shouts and cries and screams and my face and throat are wet-hot and spunky and poor Jason shivers and shakes like a dying old jalopy and comes some more and finally starts calming down and bends himself into a little ball and com mences sobbing in my arms. When he’s fully quiet and start ing to doze I turn him softly on his belly and use his own gism and my own spit as lube, settle myself deep in his ass and pull up gently on his hair. He raises his ass to meet me as I move and starts to move himself up and down for me while I ride on his hipbones and watch his hole darken as he takes me in, then pink up as he lets me out, darken and pink, darken and pink. I remember the first time that I fucked Jason and how I will fuck him again and again just as long as forever, knowing I will never stop until I have done the impossible and satisfied myself with the grace of his cock in every sense. I ride and I ride and I ride, holding myself in check until he’s rasping and shoving himself back on me, clawing at the sheets and I can feel his asshole twitch, and then at last at last I let myself go. From Lip Service bat do you want your name to be?’’ Candy asked. We were sitting in her office. She was sipping espresso, and I was holding my hands together so she wouldn’t see them shaking. “Does every phone therapist have a pseudonym?” I asked. Candy said they did. “First for protection, but also because for some of us it’s easier to separate and become someone else on the phone.” “Alice,” I responded, surprised at how easily I had chosen the name. Alice. I could see her. Alice was my graduate stu dent. Able to see the wonder in this new world. Alice, who was bright, brave, and just bad enough to enjoy all this. For the next twenty minutes, Candy briefed me on my first caller. “Bill and his wife were patients here for several years,” she explained. “He’s an extremely large man and his wife found it painful to have intercourse with him. After many years of rejection, he developed performance problems and they turned to us. In addition to other therapies, we used phone therapy with Bill to help rebuild his confidence. He’s no longer a patient, but he’s become a client.”