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 Art of Seduction (2001)

  himself unobserved and fop, a much more effeminate role than he normally played, and without his alone, strolled this way and usual hint of dangerousness. The film was a flop. Women did not respond that on the grassy sward, to Valentino as a swish. They were thrilled by the ambiguity of a man who and dipped his toes in the lapping water—t hen his shared many of their own feminine traits, yet remained a man. Valentino feet, up to the ankles. dressed and played with his physicality like a woman, but his image was Then, tempted by the masculine. He wooed as a woman would woo if she were a man—slowly, enticing coolness of the attentively, paying attention to details, setting a rhythm instead of hurrying waters, he quickly stripped his young body of its soft to a conclusion. Yet when the time came for boldness and conquest, his garments. At the sight, timing was impeccable, overwhelming his victim and giving her no chance Salmacis was spell-bound. to protest. In his movies, Valentino practiced the same gigolo's art of leading She was on fire with passion to possess his a woman on that he had mastered as a teenager on the dance floor— naked beauty, and her very chatting, flirting, pleasing, but always in control. eyes flamed with a Valentino remains an enigma to this day. His private life and his charac-brilliance like that of the dazzling sun, when his ter are wrapped in mystery; his image continues to seduce as it did during bright disc is reflected in a his lifetime. He served as the model for Elvis Presley, who was obsessed mirror. . . . She longed to with this star of the silents, and also for the modern male dandy who plays embrace him then, and with difficulty restrained with gender but retains an edge of danger and cruelty. her frenzy. Seduction was and will always remain the female form of power and Hermaphroditus, clapping warfare. It was originally the antidote to rape and violence. The man who his hollow palms against uses this form of power on a woman is in essence turning the game around, The Dandy • 45 employing feminine weapons against her; without losing his masculine his body, dived quickly into identity, the more subtly feminine he becomes the more effective the se- the stream. As he raised first one arm and then the duction. Do not be one of those who believe that what is most seductive is other, his body gleamed in being devastatingly masculine. The Feminine Dandy has a much more sin- the clear water, as if ister effect. He lures the woman in with exactly what she wants—a familiar, someone had encased pleasing, graceful presence. Mirroring feminine psychology, he displays at- anivory statue or white lilies in transparent glass. tention to his appearance, sensitivity to detail, a slight coquettishness—but "I have won! He is

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  438 • Appendix A: Seductive Environment/Seductive Time show. Keep everything light and playful, full of distractions, noise, color, and a bit of chaos. No weight, responsibilities, or judgments. A place to lose yourself in. 3. In 1746, a seventeen-year-old girl named Cristina had come to the city of Venice, Italy, with her uncle, a priest, in search of a husband. Cristina was from a small village but had a substantial dowry to offer. The Venetian men who were willing to marry her, however, did not please her. So after two weeks of futile searching, she and her uncle prepared to return to their village. They were seated in their gondola, about to leave the city, when Cristina saw an elegantly dressed young man walking toward them. "There's a handsome fellow!" she said to her uncle. "I wish he was in the boat with us." The gentleman could not have heard this, yet he approached, handed the gondolier some money, and sat down beside Cristina, much to her delight. He introduced himself as Jacques Casanova. When the priest complimented him on his friendly manners, Casanova replied, "Perhaps I should not have been so friendly, my reverend father, if I had not been attracted by the beauty of your niece." Cristina told him why they had come to Venice and why they were leaving. Casanova laughed and chided her—a man cannot decide to marry a girl after seeing her for a few days. He must know more about her character; it would take at least six months. He himself was looking for a wife, and he explained to her why he had been as disappointed by the girls he had met as she had been disappointed by the men. Casanova seemed to have no destination; he simply accompanied them, entertaining Cristina the whole way with witty conversation. When the gondola arrived at the edge of Venice, Casanova hired a carriage to the nearby city of Treviso and invited them to join him. From there they could catch a chaise to their village. The uncle accepted, and on the way to their carriage, Casanova offered his arm to Cristina. What would his mistress say if she saw them, she asked. "I have no mistress," he answered, "and I shall never have one again, for I shall never find such a pretty girl as you—no, not in Venice." His words went to her head, filling it with all kinds of strange thoughts, and she began to talk and act in a manner that was new to her, becoming almost brazen. What a pity she could not stay in Venice for the six months he needed to get to know a girl, she told Casanova. Without hesitation he offered to pay her expenses in Venice for that period while he courted her.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  I called Trevor again. “It’s me,” is all he let me say before he started talking. It was the same speech he’d given me a dozen times: he’s involved now and can’t see me anymore. “Not even as just friends,” he said. “Claudia doesn’t believe in platonic relationships between the sexes, and I’m starting to see that she’s right. And she’s going through a divorce, so it’s a sensitive time. And I really like this woman. She’s incredible. Her son is autistic.” “I was just calling to ask if I could borrow some money,” I told him. “My VCR just broke. And I’m horny.” I knew I sounded crazy. I could picture Trevor leaning back in his chair, loosening his tie, cock twitching in his lap despite his better judgment. I heard him sigh. “You need money? That’s why you’re calling?” “I’m sick and can’t leave my apartment. Can you buy me a new VCR and bring it over? I really need it. I’m on all this medication. I can barely make it to the corner. I can hardly get out of bed.” I knew Trevor. He couldn’t resist me when I was weak. That was the fascinating irony about him. Most men were turned off by neediness, but in Trevor, lust and pity went hand in hand. “Look, I can’t deal with you now. I’ve got to go,” he said and hung up. That was fair. He could keep his flabby old vagina lady and her retarded kid. I knew how this new affair would play out for him. He’d win her over with a few months of honorable declarations—“I want to be there for you. Please, lean on me. I love you!”—but when something actually difficult happened—her ex-husband sued her for custody, for example—Trevor would start to have doubts. “You’re asking me to sacrifice my own needs for yours—don’t you see how selfish that is?” They’d argue. He’d bolt. He might even call me to apologize for “being cold on the phone the last time we talked. I was under a lot of pressure at the time. I hope we can move past it. Your friendship means a lot to me. I’d hate to lose you.” If he didn’t come over now, I thought, it was just a matter of days. I got up and took a few trazodones and lay back down. I called Trevor again. This time when he answered, I didn’t let him say a word. “If you’re not over here fucking me in the next forty-five minutes then you can call an ambulance because I’ll be here bleeding to death and I’m not gonna slit my wrists in the tub like a normal person. If you’re not here in forty-five minutes, I’m gonna slit my throat right here on the sofa. And in the meantime, I’m going to call my lawyer and tell him I’m leaving everything in the apartment to you, especially the sofa.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  And then Prince Alexi removed her ornate mantle of white silk to show the Queen's black hair hanging loose in ripples over her shoulders. He took the garments away. Then he came back to remove with his teeth the Queen's slippers. He kissed her naked feet before he took the shoes out of sight, and then he brought back to the Queen a sheer nightgown trimmed in white lace, the fabric a lustrous cream color. It was very full and pressed into a thousand pleats. And as the Queen rose, Prince Alexi pulled down the chemise that she wore, and rising to his full height put the nightgown over the Queen's shoulders. She slipped her arms into the deep pleated bag sleeves, and the garment fell about her like a bell. And then with his back to Beauty, Prince Alexi on his knees again tied a dozen little bows of white ribbon to close the front of the gown to its hem above the Queen's naked insteps. As he bent over for the last of these, the Queen's hands played idly with his auburn hair, and Beauty found herself staring at his reddened buttocks where he had obviously been recently punished. His thighs, his tight, hard calves, all of this enflamed her. "Pull back the curtains of the bed," the Queen said. "And bring her to me." Beauty's pulse deafened her. It seemed there was a pressure in her ears, in her throat. Yet she heard the tapestries being drawn back. She saw the Queen recline on the coverlet amid a nest of silk pillows. The Queen looked younger now that her hair was free, and her face was without a trace of age as she stared at Beauty. Those eyes were as placid as if they had been painted in her face with enamel. Then with a shock of unwelcome pleasure, Beauty saw Prince Alexi before her. He obliterated the vision of the menacing Queen. He bent to untie her ankles and she felt his fingers deliberately caress her. When he rose in front of her again, his hands up to free her wrists, she smelled the perfume of his hair and skin, and there seemed something utterly lush about him. For all his hardness, the squareness of his build, he seemed some great spicy delicacy to her, and she found herself staring right into his eyes. He smiled and let his lips touch her forehead. And they stayed secretly pressed to her forehead until her wrists were entirely free and he was holding them. Then he pushed her gently down on her knees and gestured to the bed. "No, simply bring her," said the Queen. And Prince Alexi lifted Beauty and threw her over his shoulder as easily as a Page might have done, or the Prince himself when he took her from her father's castle.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  I must weep if I must weep, but I must do all she commanded, even if to think of it sent my heart to thudding in my wrists and temples. "Finally everyone was ready. A handful of exquisite little Princesses had served the wine, swinging their pretty little hips and showing me some delightful sights as they bent over to fill the cups. And they too were to see me punished. "All the Court, for the first time, was to see it. "Then with a clap of her hands, the Queen ordered that her pet, Prince Alexi be brought in and that Princess Lynette 'tame' me and 'train' me before their very eyes. "Lord Gregory gave me the usual quick smacks with the paddle. "At once I was in the circle of light, my eyes hurt by it for the moment, and then I saw my trainer's high-heeled boots coming nearer. In a moment of impetuousness, I rushed to her and kissed both her shoes at once. The Court gave a loud murmur of approval. "I continued to shower her with kisses, and I thought, 'My evil Lynette, my strong, cruel Lynette, you are my Queen now.' It was as if my passion were a fluid that coursed through all my limbs, not only my swollen cock. I arched my back and spread my legs every so slightly without even being told to do so. "At once the spanks commenced. But clever little demon that she was, she said, 'Prince Alexi, you will show your Queen that you are a very quick-witted pet, and you shall answer all my commands with your compliance. And you shall answer all my questions, too, with perfect courtesy.' "So I would have to speak. I felt the blood rush to my face. But she gave no time for my terror, and I said with a quick nod of the head, 'Yes, my Princess,' to a murmur of the audience's approval. "She was strong as I have told you. She could spank much harder than the Queen, and as hard as ever the kitchen boys of the stable boys had spanked me. I knew she meant to leave me sore if nothing else, because immediately she gave me several loud cracks, and she had that knack which some of our punishers have of lifting the buttocks with the paddle as she spanked them. "'To that stool, there,' she commanded at once, 'at a squat with your knees wide apart and your hands behind your neck, now!' And she drove me at once to obey as I hopped up on the stool and with a great but quick effort managed to secure my balance.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Beauty stared at the captive Princes and Princesses, who though they could no longer beg with groans and cries, still bowed before the Prince who seemed indifferent to them. "It is perhaps the loveliest village of the realm," the Prince went on, "with a stern Lord Mayor and many Inns and taverns that are the favorites of the soldiers. But it is allowed one special privilege that no other village enjoys, and that is to purchase at auction for the warm months those Princes and Princesses in need of dire punishment. Anyone in the village may purchase a slave if he or she has the gold for it." It seemed at this some of the captives could not prevent themselves from imploring the Prince, and with a snap of his fingers he ordered the guards to go to work with their belts and long paddles, causing an immediate uproar. The miserable, desperate slaves huddled together, turning their vulnerable breasts and organs towards their tormentors, as if at all costs they must protect their sore backsides. But the tall, yellow-haired Prince Tristan made no move to protect himself, merely allowing himself to be jostled by the others. His eyes had never left his Lord, but now slowly they turned and fixed upon Beauty. Beauty's heart contracted. She felt a slight dizziness. She stared straight into those unreadable blue eyes while at the same time she thought, "Ah, this is the village." "It is wretched service," Lady Juliana went on, obviously imploring the Prince. "The auction itself takes place as soon as the slaves arrive and you can well suppose that even the beggars and common louts about town are there to witness it. Why, the whole village declares a holiday. And each poor slave is carried off by his or her master not only to degradation and punishment, but miserable labor. Mind you, the crude practical people of the village do not keep even the loveliest Prince or Princess for mere pleasure." Beauty was remembering Alexi's description of his exposure in the villages, the high wooden platform in the marketplace, the crude crowd, and their celebration of his humiliation. She felt her sex secretly ache with desire, and yet she was horrified. "Ah, but for all its roughness and cruelty," said the Prince, now glancing at the inconsolable Lord Stefan who stood still with his back to the unfortunates," it is a sublime punishment. Few slaves can learn from a year in the castle what they can learn from the warm months in the village. And of course, they cannot be really hurt, any more than slaves here. The same strict rules apply: no cutting, no burning, no real wounding. And each week, they are herded to a slaves' hall for bathing and oiling. But when they return to the castle they are more than sweet or meek; they have been reborn with incomparable strength and beauty."

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The French libertines of the eighteenth century called this "the moment." The seducer leads the victim to a point where he or she reveals involuntary signs of physical excitation that can be read in various symptoms. Once those signs are detected, the seducer must work quickly, applying pressure on the target to get lost in the moment—the past, the future, all moral scruples vanishing in air. Once your victims lose themselves in the moment, it is all over—their mind, their conscience, no longer holds them back. The body gives in to pleasure. Madame de Lursay lures Meilcour into the moment by creating a generalized disorder of the senses, rendering him incapable of thinking straight. In leading your victims into the moment, remember a few things. First, Use Physical Lures • 403 a disordered look (Madame de Lursay's tousled hair, her ruffled dress) has more effect on the senses than a neat appearance. It suggests the bedroom. Second, be alert to the signs of physical excitation. Blushing, trembling of the voice, tears, unusually forceful laughter, relaxing movements of the body (any kind of involuntary mirroring, their gestures imitating yours), a revealing slip of the tongue—these are signs that the victim is slipping into the moment and pressure is to be applied. In 1934, a Chinese football player named Li met a young actress named Lan Ping in Shanghai. He began to see her often at his matches, cheering him on. They would meet at public affairs, and he would notice her glancing at him with her "strange, yearning eyes," then looking away. One evening he found her seated next to him at a reception. Her leg brushed up against his. They chatted, and she asked him to see a movie with her at a nearby cinema. Once they were there, her head found its way onto his shoulder; she whispered into his ear, something about the film. Later they strolled the streets, and she put her arm around his waist. She brought him to a restaurant where they drank some wine. Li took her to his hotel room, and there he found himself overwhelmed by caresses and sweet words. She gave him no room to retreat, no time to cool down. Three years later Lan Ping—soon to be renamed Jiang Qing—played a similar game on Mao Zedong. She was to become Mao's wife—the infamous Madame Mao, leader of the Gang of Four.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Most of this came naturally to Villiers, but you will probably have to use some calculation. Fortunately, all of us have strong childish tendencies within us that are easy to access and exaggerate. Make your gestures seem spontaneous and unplanned. Any sexual element of your behavior should seem innocent, unconscious. Like Villiers, don't push for favors. Parents prefer to spoil children who don't ask for things but invite them in their manner. Seeming nonjudgmental and uncritical of those around you will make everything you do seem more natural and naive. Have a happy, cheerful demeanor, but with a playful edge. Emphasize any weaknesses you might have, things you cannot control. Remember: most of us remember our early years fondly, but often, paradoxically, the people with the strongest attachment to those times are the ones who had the most difficult childhoods. Actually, circumstances kept them from getting to be children, so they never really grew up, and they long for the paradise they never got to experience. James I falls into this category. These types are ripe targets for a reverse regression. Symbol: The Bed. Lying alone in bed, the child feels unprotected, afraid, and needy. In a nearby room, there is the parent's bed. It is large and forbidding, site of things you are not supposed to know about. Give the seduced both feelings—h elplessness and transgression— as you lay them into bed and put them to sleep. Reversal To reverse the strategies of regression, the parties to a seduction would have to remain adults during the process. This is not only rare, it is not very pleasurable. Seduction means realizing certain fantasies. Being a mature and responsible adult is not a fantasy, it is a duty. Furthermore, a person who remains an adult in relation to you is harder to seduce. In all kinds of seduction—political, media, personal—the target must regress. The only danger is that the child, wearying of dependence, turns against the parent and rebels. You must be prepared for this, and unlike a parent, never take it personally. Stir Up the Transgressive and Taboo There are always social limits on what one can do. Some of these, the most elemental taboos, go back centuries; others are more superficial, simply defining polite and acceptable behavior. Making your targets feel that you are leading them past either kind of limit is immensely seductive. People yearn to explore their dark side. Not everything in romantic love is supposed to be tender and soft; hint that you have a cruel, even sadistic streak. You do not respect age differences, marriage vows, family ties. Once the desire to transgress draws your targets to you, it will be hard for them to stop. Take them further than they imagined— the shared feeling of guilt and complicity will create a powerful bond. The Lost Self

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  whether it was she did put the seduction as long as possible. So, while boldness can work wonders, un-it down to an overchilliness controllable boldness is not seductive but frightening; you need to be able in love, or a lack of courage, to turn it on and off at will, know when to use it. As in Tantrism, you can or a defect of bodily vigor. create more pleasure by delaying the inevitable. — S E I G N E U R DE BRANTÔME, In the 1720s, the Duc de Richelieu developed an infatuation with a LIVES OF FAIR & GALLANT L A D I E S , TRANSLATED B Y A . R . certain duchess. The woman was exceptionally beautiful, and was desired ALLINSON by one and all, but she was far too virtuous to take a lover, although she Master the Art of the Bold Move • 411 could be quite coquettish. Richelieu bided his time. He befriended her, A man should proceed to charming her with the wit that had made him the favorite of the ladies. enjoy any woman when she gives him an One night a group of such women, including the duchess, decided to play opportunity and makes her a practical joke on him, in which he was to be forced naked out of his own love manifest to him room at the palace of Versailles. The joke worked to perfection, the ladies by the following signs: she all got to see him in his native glory, and had a good chuckle watching him calls out to a man without first being addressed by run away. There were many places Richelieu could have hidden; the place him; she shows herself to he chose was the duchess's bedroom. Minutes later he watched her enter him in secret places; she and undress, and once the candles were extinguished, he crept into bed speaks to him tremblingly and inarticulately; her face with her. She protested, tried to scream. He covered her mouth with kisses, blooms with delight and and she eventually and happily relented. Richelieu had decided to make his her fingers or toes perspire; bold move then for several reasons. First, the duchess had come to like him, and sometimes she remains with both hands placed on and even to harbor a secret desire for him. She would never act upon it or his body as if she had been admit it, but he was certain it existed. Second, she had seen him naked, and surprised by something, or could not help but be impressed. Third, she would feel a touch of pity for as if overcome with fatigue. • After a woman has his predicament, and for the joke played on him. Richelieu, a consummate manifested her love to him seducer, would find no more perfect moment. by outward signs, and by

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  as the incarnation of the Egyptian exotic. His life with her was a constant Sirens became aware that a game, as challenging as warfare, for the moment he felt secure with her she ship was swiftly bearing 7 8 • The Art of Seduction down upon them, and would suddenly turn cold or angry and he would have to find a way to re-broke into their liquid song. gain her favor. • " Draw near," they sang, The weeks went by. Caesar got rid of all Cleopatra's rivals and found "illustrious Odysseus, flower of Achaean chivalry, excuses to stay in Egypt. At one point she led him on a lavish historical exand bring your ship to rest pedition down the Nile. In a boat of unimaginable splendor—towering so that you may hear our fifty-four feet out of the water, including several terraced levels and a pil-voices. No seaman ever sailed his black ship past lared temple to the god Dionysus—Caesar became one of the few Romans this spot without listening to gaze on the pyramids. And while he stayed long in Egypt, away from to the sweet tones that flow his throne in Rome, all kinds of turmoil erupted throughout the Roman from our lips . . ." • The Empire. lovely voices came to me across the water, and my When Caesar was murdered, in 44 B.C., he was succeeded by a triumvi-heart was filled with such a rate of rulers including Mark Antony, a brave soldier who loved pleasure longing to listen that with and spectacle and fancied himself a kind of Roman Dionysus. A few years nod and frown I signed to my men to set me free. later, while Antony was in Syria, Cleopatra invited him to come meet her — H O M E R , THE ODYSSEY, BOOK in the Egyptian town of Tarsus. There—once she had made him wait for X I I , T R A N S L A T E D B Y E . V . R I E U her—her appearance was as startling in its way as her first before Caesar. A magnificent gold barge with purple sails appeared on the river Cydnus. The oarsmen rowed to the accompaniment of ethereal music; all around the The charm of [ Cleopatra's] boat were beautiful young girls dressed as nymphs and mythological figures. presence was irresistible, and there was an attraction Cleopatra sat on deck, surrounded and fanned by cupids and posed as the in her person and talk, goddess Aphrodite, whose name the crowd chanted enthusiastically. together with a peculiar Like all of Cleopatra's victims, Antony felt mixed emotions. The exotic force of character, which

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  mally get in the real world, where we are all rushed, ruthless, out for ourselves. You need to deliberately slow things down, and return them to the simpler times of their youth. The details that you orchestrate—colors, gifts, little ceremonies—are aimed at their senses, at the childish delight we take in the immediate charms of the natural world. Their senses filled with delightful things, they grow less capable of reason and rationality. Pay attention to detail and you will find yourself assuming a slower pace; your targets will not focus on what you might be after (sexual favors, power, etc.) because you seem so considerate, so attentive. In the childish realm of the senses in which you envelop them, they get a clear sense that you are involving them in something distinct from the real world—an essential ingredient of seduction. Remember: the more you get people to focus on the little things, the less they will notice your larger direction. The seduction will assume the slow, hypnotic pace of a ritual, in which the details have a heightened importance and the moments are full of ceremony. In eighth-century China, Emperor Ming Huang caught a glimpse of a beautiful young woman, combing her hair beside an imperial pool. Her name was Yang Kuei-fei, and even though she was the concubine of the emperor's son, he had to have her for himself. Since he was emperor, nobody could stop him. The emperor was a practical man—he had many concubines, and they all had their charms, but he had never lost his head over a woman. Yang Kuei-fei, though, was different. Her body exuded the most wonderful fragrance. She wore gowns made of the sheerest silk gauze, each embroidered with different flowers, depending on the season. In walking she seemed to float, her tiny steps invisible beneath her gown. She Pay Attention to Detail • 273 danced to perfection, wrote songs in his honor that she sang magnificently, had a way of looking at him that made his blood boil with desire. She quickly became his favorite. Yang Kuei-fei drove the emperor to distraction. He built palaces for her, spent all his time with her, satisfied her every whim. Before long his kingdom was bankrupt and ruined. Yang Kuei-fei was an artful seductress who had a devastating effect on all of the men who crossed her path. There were so many ways her presence charmed—the scents, the voice, the movements, the witty conversation, the artful glances, the embroidered gowns. These pleasurable details turned a mighty king into a distracted baby.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  “You’re the only person I’ve ever met who thought I looked Jewish,” I said, trying to get the conversation back to more neutral territory. (Enough of sex. Let’s get back to bigotry.) His thinking I looked Jewish actually excited me. God only knows why. “Look—I’m not an anti-Semite, but you are. Why do you think you don’t look Jewish?” “Because people always think I’m German—and I’ve spent half my life listening to anti-Semitic stories told by people who assumed I wasn’t—” “That’s what I hate about Jews,” he said. “They’re the only ones allowed to tell anti-Semitic jokes. It’s bloody unfair. Why should I be deprived of the pleasure of masochistic Jewish humor just because I’m a goy?” He sounded so goyish saying goy. “You don’t pronounce it right.” “What? Goy?” “Oh, that’s OK, but masochistic.” (He pronounced the first syllable mace, just like an Englishman.) “You’ve got to watch how you pronounce Yiddish words like masochistic,” I said. “We Jews are very touchy.” We ordered another round of drinks. He kept making a pretense of looking around for Rodney Lehmann and I came on with a very professional spiel about the article I was going to write. I nearly convinced myself all over again. That’s one of my biggest problems. When I start out to convince other people, I don’t always convince them but I invariably convince myself. I’m a complete bust as a con woman. “You really have an American accent,” he said, smiling his just-got-laid smile. “I haven’t got an accent—you have—” “Ac-sent,” he said mocking me. “Fuck you.” “That’s not at all a bad idea.” “What did you say your name was?” (Which, as you may recall, is the climactic line from Strindberg’s Miss Julie.) “Adrian Goodlove,” he said. And with that he turned suddenly and upset his beer all over me. “Terribly sorry,” he kept saying, wiping at the table with his dirty handkerchief, his hand, and eventually his Indian shirt—which he took off, rolled up and gave me to wipe my dress with. Such chivalry! But I was just sitting there looking at the curly blond hair on his chest and feeling the beer trickle between my legs. “I really don’t mind at all,” I said. It wasn’t true that I didn’t mind. I loved it. Goodlove, Goodall, Goodbar, Goodbody, Goodchild, Goodeve, Goodfellow, Goodford, Goodfleisch, Goodfriend, Goodgame, Goodhart, Goodhue, Gooding, Goodlet, Goodson, Goodridge, Goodspeed, Goodtree, Goodwine. You can’t be named Isadora White Wing (née Weiss—my father had bleached it to “White” shortly after my birth) without spending a rather large portion of your life thinking about names. Adrian Goodlove. His mother had named him Hadrian and then his father had forced her to change it to Adrian because that sounded “more English.” His father was big on sounding English.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  “We, we, we—the smug editorial ‘we.’ My—it must be awfully cozy to be boringly married and use the editorial we. But is it conducive to art? Isn’t all that coziness stultifying? Isn’t it high time you changed your life?” “Iago—that’s what you are. Or the serpent in the Garden of Eden.” “If what you have is Paradise—I thank God I’ve never had the experience.” “I’ve got to get back.” “Back where?” “To Paradise, to my cozy little marital boredom, to my editorial we, to my stultification. I need it like a fix.” “Just as you need me like a fix when you get bored with Bennett.” “Look—you said it—it’s over.” “So it is.” “Well, then drive me back to the hotel. Bennett will be back soon. I don’t want to be late again. He’s just heard a paper on ‘Aggression in Large Groups.’ It might give him ideas.” “We’re a small group.” “True, but you never can tell.” “You’d really like him to beat the shit out of you—wouldn’t you? Then you’d feel properly martyred.” “Perhaps.” I was aping Adrian’s cool. It was infuriating him. “Look—we might just do a communal thing—you and me and Bennett. We could drive across the Continent à trois.” “Fine with me, but you’ll have to convince him. It won’t be easy. He’s just a bourgeois doctor married to a little housewife who writes in her spare time. He doesn’t swing—like you do. Now please take me home.” He started the car in earnest this time and pulled out. We began our familiar meandering way through the back streets of Vienna, getting lost at every turn. After about ten minutes of this we were laughing and in high spirits again. Our mutual ineptitude never failed to make us delighted with each other. It couldn’t last, of course, but it was intoxicating for the moment. Adrian stopped the car and leaned over to kiss me. “Let’s not go back—let’s spend the night together,” Adrian said. I debated with myself. What was I—some scared housewife? “OK,” I said (and instantly regretted it). But after all, what difference could one night make? I was going back to New York with Bennett. — The evening which followed was another one of those dreamy blurs. We started drinking at a workingman’s café off the Ringstrasse, kissed and kissed between beers, passed beer from his mouth to mine, from mine to his, listened avidly to an elderly female lush criticize the expenditures of the American space program, and how they should spend that money on earth (to build crematoria?) instead of wasting it on the moon, then ate (kissing throughout dinner) at an outdoor garden restaurant, fed each other Leberknödel and Bauernschnitzel in passionate bites, and very drunkenly made our way back to Adrian’s pension where we made love adequately for the first time. “I think I’d love you,” he said while he was fucking me, “if I believed in love.”

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  For her birthday I bought her a bicycle, the doe-like and altogether charming machine already mentioned—and added to this a History of Modern American Fainting : her bicycle manner, I mean her approach to it, the hip movement in mounting, the grace and so on, afforded me supreme pleasure; but my attempt to refine her pictorial taste was a failure; she wanted to know if the guy noon-napping on Doris Lee’s hay was the father of the pseudo-voluptuous hoyden in the foreground, and could not understand why I said Grant Wood or Peter Hurd was good, and Reginald Marsh or Frederick Waugh awful. 1 3 By the time spring had touched up Thayer Street with yellow and green and pink, Lolita was irrevocably stage-struck. Pratt, whom I chanced to notice one Sunday lunching with some people at Walton Inn, caught my eye from afar and went through the motion of sympathetically and discreetly clapping her hands while Lo was not looking. I detest the theatre as being a primitive and putrid form, historically speaking; a form that smacks of stone-age rites and communal nonsense despite those individual injections of genius, such as, say, Elizabethan poetry which a closeted reader automatically pumps out of the stuff. Being much occupied at the time with my own literary labors, I did not bother to read the complete text of The Enchanted Hunters , the playlet in which Dolores Haze was assigned the part of a farmer’s daughter who imagines herself to be a woodland witch, or Diana, or something, and who, having got hold of a book on hypnotism, plunges a number of lost hunters into various entertaining trances before falling in her turn under the spell of a vagabond poet (Mona Dahl). That much I gleaned from bits of crumpled and poorly typed script that Lo sowed all over the house. The coincidence of the title with the name of an unforgettable inn was pleasant in a sad little way: I wearily thought I had better not bring it to my own enchantress’s notice, lest a brazen accusation of mawkishness hurt me even more than her failure to notice it for herself had done. I assumed the playlet was just another, practically anonymous, version of some banal legend.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  “Look—she says you have to wait and talk to Rodney Lehmann. He’s a friend of mine from London and he ought to be here any minute so why don’t we walk across to the café, have a beer, and look for him?” “Let me just tell my husband,” I said. It was going to become something of a refrain in the next few days. He seemed glad to hear that I had a husband. At least he didn’t seem sorry. I asked Bennett if he’d come across the street to the café and meet us (hoping, of course, that he wouldn’t come too soon) and he waved me off. He was busy talking about countertransference. I followed the smoke from the Englishman’s pipe down the steps and across the street. He puffed along like a train, the pipe seeming to propel him. I was happy to be his caboose. We set ourselves up in the café, with a quarter liter of white wine for me and a beer for him. He was wearing Indian sandals and dirty toenails. He didn’t look like a shrink at all. “Where are you from?” “New York.” “I mean your ancestors.” “Why do you want to know?” “Why are you dodging my question?” “I don’t have to answer your question.” “I know.” He puffed his pipe and looked off into the distance. The corners of his eyes crinkled into about a hundred tiny lines and his mouth curled up in a sort of smile even when he wasn’t smiling. I knew I’d say yes to anything he asked. My only worry was: maybe he wouldn’t ask soon enough. “Polish Jews on one side, Russian on the other—” “I thought so. You look Jewish.” “And you look like an English anti-Semite.” “Oh come on—I like Jews….” “Some of your best friends…” “It’s just that Jewish girls are so bloody good in bed.” I couldn’t think of a single witty thing to say. Sweet Jesus, I thought, here he was. The real z.f. The zipless fuck par excellence. What in God’s name were we waiting for? Certainly not Rodney Lehmann. “I also like the Chinese,” he said, “and you’ve got a nice-looking husband.” “Maybe I ought to fix you up with him. After all, you’re both analysts. You’d have a lot in common. You could bugger each other under a picture of Freud.” “Cunt,” he said. “Actually, it’s more Chinese girls, I fancy—but Jewish girls from New York who like a good fight also strike me as dead sexy. Any woman who can raise hell the way you did up at registration seems pretty promising.” “Thanks.” At least I can recognize a compliment when I get one. My underpants were wet enough to mop the streets of Vienna.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  She wondered where he was now, and was he being punished more for his clumsiness? "Very well, your Highness," said the Lord, "but I think you realize that firmness in the beginning is a mercy to the slave, especially when the slave is such a proud and spoilt Princess." Beauty blushed to hear this. The Prince gave a low, gentle laugh. "My Beauty is very like an unstamped coin," said the Prince, "and I wish to draw in the full character. I shall take delight in training her. I wonder if you yourself are attentive to her faults as I am." "Your Highness?" the Lord seemed to stiffen slightly. "You were not yourself so very strict with her in the Great Hall that you prevented her from feasting her eyes on young Prince Alexi. I rather think she enjoyed his punishment as much as her masters and mistresses." Beauty flushed hotly. She had never dreamed that the Prince had observed her in this. "Your Highness, she was only learning what will be expected of her, or so I thought..." the Lord answered very humbly. "It was I who drew her attention to the other slaves so she might profit from their obedient example." "Ah, well," said the Prince wearily and agreeably, "perhaps I am only to enamored of her. After all, she wasn't sent to me as a Tribute, I won her and claimed her myself, and I am too jealous, it seems. Perhaps I seek for some reason to punish her. You're dismissed. Come for her in the morning, if you will, and we shall see." The Lord, obviously worried that he had failed, left the room quickly. Beauty was now alone with the Prince, and the Prince was sitting quietly by the fire looking at her. She was in a great state of agitation; she knew she was blushing as always, and that her breasts were heaving slightly. She rushed forward quite suddenly and pressed her lips to the Prince's boot, and it seemed to move as if it welcomed her kiss, rising slightly as over and over again she kissed it. She was moaning. O, if only he'd give her permission to speak, and when she thought of her fascination with the punished Prince, she blushed all the more. But her Prince had risen. He took her wrist and lifted her and drawing her hands behind her back so that he held them firmly, he spanked both her breasts hard until she cried out, feeling the heavy flesh sway and the sting of his hands on her nipples. "Am I angry with you? Or am I not?" he asked softly. She groaned, imploring him. And he placed her over his knee as she had seen the young Prince over the Page's knee, and with her bare hand he gave her a smart torrent of blows that had her crying aloud in an instant. "To whom do you belong?" he demanded in a low, but angry voice.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  And, by God, they did : not just fat, not just rolling bellies, and flabby arms, and double chins, and shimmering thighs—but all of it bright pink. Crackling. Burnt. Redder than Chinese pork. They looked like suckling pigs. Or like the fetal pig I had to dissect in Zoology II—nearly the Waterloo of my college career. We swam and kissed in the water among all the other damned souls. I was wearing a black tank suit with a V-neck cut down to my navel, and everyone kept staring at me: the women in disapproval and the men in lechery. I could feel Adrian’s semen slimy between my legs and leaking out into the chlorinated pool. An American donating English semen to the Germans. A sort of cockeyed Marshall Plan. Let his semen bless their water and baptize them. Let it cleanse them of their sins. Adrian the Baptist. And me as Mary Magdalene. But I also wondered if swimming right after screwing would get me pregnant. Maybe the water would push the semen up behind my diaphragm. I was suddenly terrified of getting pregnant. I suddenly wanted to get pregnant. I kept imagining the beautiful baby we’d make together. I was really hooked. We sat on the lawn under a tree and drank beer. We discussed our future—whatever that was. Adrian seemed to think I ought to leave my husband and settle in Paris (where he could fly over and visit me periodically). I could rent a garret and write books. I could come to London and write books with him. We could be like Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre: together yet apart. We’d learn to do away with silly things like jealousy. We’d fuck each other and all our friends. We’d live without worrying about possessions or possessiveness. Eventually someday, we’d establish a commune for schizophrenics, poets, and radical shrinks. We’d live like real existentialists instead of just talking about it. We’d all live together in a geodesic dome. “Sort of like a Yellow Submarine,” I said. “Well, why not?” “You’re an incurable romantic, Adrian…. Walden Pond and all that.” “Look—I don’t see what’s so super about the sort of hypocrisy you live with. Pretending to all that crap about fidelity and monogamy, living in a million contradictions, being kept by your husband as a sort of spoilt talented baby and never standing on your own two feet. At least we’d be honest. We’d live together and fuck everyone openly. Nobody would exploit anyone and nobody would have to feel guilty for being dependent….” “Poets and schizophrenics and shrinks?” “Well there’s not much difference is there?” “None whatsoever.” Adrian had been taught existentialism in the course of one week in Paris by Martine, the French actress who’d been in a bin. “That’s fast,” I said. “Existentialism made simple. Sort of like the souped-up Berlitz course.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  (Was there something wrong, I wondered, with those great gray eyes of hers, or were we both plunged in the same enchanted mist?) She stepped up to it, lifting her rather high-heeled feet rather high, and bending her beautiful boy-knees while she walked through dilating space with the lentor of one walking under water or in a flight dream. Then she raised by the armlets a copper-colored, charming and quite expensive vest, very slowly stretching it between her silent hands as if she were a bemused bird-hunter holding his breath over the incredible bird he spreads out by the tips of its flaming wings. Then (while I stood waiting for her) she pulled out the slow snake of a brilliant belt and tried it on. Then she crept into my waiting arms, radiant, relaxed, caressing me with her tender, mysterious, impure, indifferent, twilight eyes—for all the world, like the cheapest of cheap cuties. For that is what nymphets imitate—while we moan and die. “What’s the katter with misses?” I muttered (word-control gone) into her hair. “If you must know,” she said, “you do it the wrong way.” “Show, wight ray.” “All in good time,” responded the spoonerette. Seva ascendes, pulsata, brulans, kitzelans, dementissima. Elevator clatterans, pausa, clatterans, populus in corridoro. Hancnisi mors mihi adimet nemo! Juncea puellula, jo pensavo fondis-sime, nobserva nihil quidquam ; but, of course, in another moment I might have committed some dreadful blunder; fortunately, she returned to the treasure box. From the bathroom, where it took me quite a time to shift back into normal gear for a humdrum purpose, I heard, standing, drumming, retaining my breath, my Lolita’s “oo’s” and “gee’s” of girlish delight. She had used the soap only because it was sample soap. “Well, come on, my dear, if you are as hungry as I am.” And so to the elevator, daughter swinging her old white purse, father walking in front ( nota bene: never behind, she is not a lady). As we stood (now side by side) waiting to be taken down, she threw back her head, yawned without restraint and shook her curls. “When did they make you get up at that camp?” “Half-past—” she stifled another yawn—“six”—yawn in full with a shiver of all her frame. “Half-past,” she repeated, her throat filling up again. The dining room met us with a smell of fried fat and a faded smile. It was a spacious and pretentious place with maudlin murals depicting enchanted hunters in various postures and states of enchantment amid a medley of pallid animals, dryads and trees.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Her face was perfect to him, and her embroidered gown had fallen deep into the crease between her legs so that he could see he shape of her sex beneath it. He drew out his sword, with which he had cut back all the vines outside, and gently slipping the blade between her breasts, let it rip easily through the old fabric. Her dress was laid open to the hem, and he folded it back and looked at her. Her nipples were a rosy pink as were her lips, and the hair between her legs was darkly yellow and curlier than the long straight hair of her head which covered her arms almost down to her hips on either side of her. He cut the sleeves away, lifting her ever so gently to free the cloth, and the weight of her hair seemed to pull her head down over his arm, and her mouth opened just a little bit wider. He put his sword to one side. He removed his heavy armor. And the he lifted her again, his left arm under her shoulders, his right had between her legs, his thumb on top of her pubis. She made no sound; but if a person could moan silently, then she mad such a moan with her whole attitude. Her head fell towards him, and he felt the hot moisture against his right had, and laying her down again, he cupped both of her breasts, and sucked gently on one and then the other. They were plumb and firm, these breasts. She'd been fifteen when the curse struck her. And he bit at her nipples, moving the breasts almost roughly so as to feel their weight, and then lightly he slapped them back and forth, delighting in this. His desire had been hard and almost painful to him when he had come into the room, and now it was urging him almost mercilessly. He mounted her, parting her legs, giving the white inner flesh of her thighs a soft, deep pinch, and, clasping her right breast in his left hand, he thrust his sex into her. He was holding her up as he did this, to gather her mouth to him, and as he broke through her innocence, he opened her mouth with his tongue and pinched her breast sharply. He sucked on her lips, he drew the life out of her into himself, and felling his seed explode within her, heard her cry out. And then her blue eyes opened. "Beauty!" he whispered to her. She closed her eyes, her golden eyebrows brought together in a little frown and the sun gleaming on her broad white forehead.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  this letter was different: in this man she seemed to have inspired a quasi- the seducer [ Johannes] , far religious ardor. The letter, written in a disguised handwriting, contained a from seeking to close in on poem dedicated to her; titled "To One Who Is Too Gay," it began by prais- her, seeks to maintain his distance by various ploys: ing her beauty, yet ended with the lines he does not speak directly to her but only to her aunt, And so, one night, I'd like to sneak, and then about trivial or stupid subjects; he neutral- When darkness tolls the hour of pleasure, izes everything by irony A craven thief, toward the treasure and feigned pedanticism; Which is your person, plump and sleek. . . . he fails to respond to any feminine or erotic move- And, most vertiginous delight! ment, and even finds her a Into those lips, so freshly striking sitcom suitor to disenchant And daily lovelier to my liking— and deceive her, to the Infuse the venom of my spite. point where she herself takes the initiative and breaks off her engagement, Mixed in with her admirer's adoration, clearly, was a strange kind of lust, thus completing the seduction and creating the with a touch of cruelty to it. The poem both intrigued and disturbed ideal situation for her total her—and she had no idea who had written it. abandon. A few weeks later another letter arrived. As before, the writer en- —JEAN BAUDRILLARD, veloped Sabatier in cultlike worship, mixing the physical and the spiritual. SEDUCTION, TRANSLATED BY And as before, there was a poem, "All in One," in which he wrote, BRIAN SINGER 385 386 • The Art of Seduction The rumor spread No single beauty is the best, everywhere. It was even Since she is all one flower divine told to the queen O mystic metamorphosis! [ Guinevere] , who was seated at dinner. She My senses into one sense flow— nearly killed herself when Her voice makes perfume when she speaks, she heard the perfidious Her breath is music faint and low! rumor of Lancelot's death. She thought it was true and was so greatly Clearly the author was haunted by Sabatier's presence, and thought of her perturbed that she was constantly—but now she began to be haunted by him, thinking of him scarcely able to speak. . . . night and day, and wondering who he was. His subsequent letters only She arose at once from the table, and was able to give deepened the spell. It was flattering to hear that he was enchanted by more vent to her grief without than her beauty, yet also flattering to know that he was not immune to her being noticed or overheard. physical charms. She was so crazed with the thought of killing herself One day an idea occurred to Madame Sabatier as to who the writer that she repeatedly grabbed