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 Little Birds (1979)

  “I have known other sexual angels. It is wonderful to see the change in them. These clear eyes that you can see through, these bodies that take such beautiful harmonious poses, these delicate hands . . . how they change when desire takes hold of them. The sexual angels! They are wonderful because it is such a surprise, such a change. You, for instance, with your appearance of never having been touched, I can see you biting and scratching . . . I am sure your very voice changes—I have seen such changes. There are women’s voices that sound like poetic, unearthly echoes. Then they change. The eyes change. I believe that all these legends about people changing into animals at night—like the stories of the werewolf, for instance—were invented by men who saw women transform at night from idealized, worshipful creatures into animals and thought that they were possessed. But I know it is something much simpler than that. You are a virgin, aren’t you?” “No, I am married,” I said. “Married or not, you are a virgin. I can tell. I am never deceived. If you are married your husband has not made you a woman yet. Don’t you regret that? Don’t you feel you are wasting time, that real living only begins with sensation, with being a woman . . . ?” This corresponded so exactly to what I had been feeling, to my desire to enter experience, that I was silent. I hated to admit this to a stranger. I was conscious of being alone with the illustrator in an empty studio building. I was sad that Stephen had not understood my desire to become a woman. I was not frightened but fatalistic, desiring only to find someone I might fall in love with. “I know what you are thinking,” he said, “but for me it would not have any meaning unless the woman wanted me. I never could make love to a woman if she did not want me. When I first saw you, I felt how wonderful it would be to initiate you. There is something about you that makes me feel you will have many love affairs. I would like to be the first one. But not unless you wanted it.” I smiled. “That is exactly what I was thinking. It can only be if I want it, and I do not want it.”

• From Little Birds (1979)

  “There are other ways of making love between women.” “But I won’t have it, I won’t have it.” Then one day I said, “Why don’t you come with me and visit Michel? I want you to see his explorer’s den.” Michel had said to me, “Bring her, I will hypnotize her. You will see.” She consented. We went up to his apartment. He had been burning incense, but an incense I did not know. Lina was quite nervous when she saw his place. The erotic atmosphere disturbed her. She sat down on the fur-covered couch. She looked like a beautiful animal, one well worth capturing. I could see that Michel wanted to dominate her. The incense was making us slightly drowsy. Lina wanted to open the window. But Michel came over and sat between us and began talking to her. His voice was gentle and enveloping. He was telling stories of his voyages. I saw that Lina was listening, that she had ceased twitching and smoking feverishly, that she was lying back and dreaming over his endless stories. Her eyes were half-closed. Then she fell asleep. “What did you do, Michel?” I felt quite drowsy myself. He smiled, “I burned a Japanese incense that makes one sleepy. It’s an aphrodisiac. It is not harmful.” He was smiling mischievously. I laughed. Lina was not altogether asleep. She had crossed her knees. Michel climbed over her and tried to open them gently with his hands, but they remained tightly closed. Then he inserted his own knee between her thighs and parted them. I was roused by the sight of Lina so yielding and open now. I began caressing her, undressing her. She knew what I was doing but she was enjoying it. She kept her mouth on mine and her eyes closed and let Michel and me undress her completely. Her rich breasts covered Michel’s face. He bit the nipples. She let Michel kiss her between her legs and insert his penis, and she let me kiss her breasts and caress them. She had wonderful firm round buttocks. Michel kept pushing her legs apart and biting into her soft flesh until she began to moan. She would have nothing but the penis. So Michel took her and when she had enjoyed him he wanted to take me. She sat up, opened her eyes and watched us wonderingly for a moment, then took Michel’s penis out of me and would not let him insert it again. She threw herself on me with a sexual fury, caressing me with her mouth and her hands. Michel took her again from behind. When we came out on the street, Lina and I, holding each other by the waist, she pretended not to remember anything that had happened. I let her. The next day she left Paris.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  She fascinates me because sensuality pours from her. At eight years old she was already having a Lesbian affair with an older cousin. We both share the love of finery, perfume and luxury. She is so lazy, languid—purely a plant, really. I have never seen a woman more yielding. She says that she always expects to find the man who will arouse her. She has to live in a sexual atmosphere even when she feels nothing. It is her climate. Her favorite statement is, “At that time, I was sleeping around with everybody.” If we speak of Paris and of people we knew there, she always says, “I don’t know him. I didn’t sleep with him.” Or, “Oh, yes, he was wonderful in bed.” I have never once heard of her resisting—this, coupled with frigidity! She deceives everybody, including herself. She looks so wet and open that men think she is continuously in a state of near orgasm. But it is not true. The actress in her appears cheerful and calm, and inside she is going to pieces. She drinks and can sleep only by taking drugs. She always comes to me eating candy, like a schoolgirl. She looks about twenty. Her coat is open, her hat is in her hand. Her hair is loose. One day she falls on my bed and knocks off her shoes. She looks at her legs and says, “They are too thick. They are like Renoir legs, I was told once in Paris.” “But I love them,” I say, “I love them.” “Do you like my new stockings?” She raises her skirt to show me. She asks for a whiskey. Then she decides that she will take a bath. She borrows my kimono. I know that she is trying to tempt me. She comes out of the bathroom still humid, leaving the kimono open. Her legs are always held a little apart. She looks so much as if she were about to have an orgasm that one cannot help feeling: only one little caress will drive her wild. As she sits on the edge of my bed to put on her stockings, I cannot withhold any longer. I kneel in front of her and put my hand on the hair between her legs. I stroke it gently, gently, and I say, “The little silver fox, the little silver fox. So soft and beautiful. Oh, Mary, I can’t believe that you do not feel anything there, inside.” She seems on the verge of feeling, the way her flesh looks, open like a flower, the way her legs are spread. Her mouth is so wet, so inviting, the lips of her sex must be the same. She parts her legs and lets me look at it. I touch it gently and spread the lips to see if they are moist. She feels it when I touch her clitoris, but I want her to feel the bigger orgasm.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “When I was attached to the Quaestor’s staff, in Asia, I was quartered with a family at Pergamus. I found things very much to my liking there, not only on account of the refined comfort of my apartments, but also because of the extreme beauty of my host’s son. For the latter reason, I had recourse to strategy, in order that the father should never suspect me of being a seducer. So hotly would I flare up, whenever the abuse of handsome boys was even mentioned at the table, and with such uncompromising sternness would I protest against having my ears insulted by such filthy talk, that I came to be looked upon, especially by the mother, as one of the philosophers. I was conducting the lad to the gymnasium before very long, and superintending his conduct, taking especial care, all the while, that no one who could debauch him should ever enter the house. Then there came a holiday, the school was closed, and our festivities had rendered us too lazy to retire properly, so we lay down in the dining-room. It was just about midnight, and I knew he was awake, so I murmured this vow, in a very low voice, ‘Oh Lady Venus, could I but kiss this lad, and he not know it, I would give him a pair of turtle-doves tomorrow!’ On hearing the price offered for this favor, the boy commenced to snore! Then, bending over the pretending sleeper, I snatched a fleeting kiss or two. Satisfied with this beginning, I arose early in the morning, brought a fine pair of turtle-doves to the eager lad, and absolved myself from my vow.” CHAPTER THE EIGHTY-SIXTH.

• From Satyricon (1)

  (Notwithstanding), however (these caprices of the third person of the trinity) I cannot see why pleasure should be regulated, or why a woman who has surveyed all the charms of a young girl of eighteen years should give herself up to the rude embraces of a man. What comparisons can be made between those red lips, that mouth which breathes pleasure for the first time, those snowy and purplous cheeks whose velvet smoothness is like the Venus flower, half in bloom, that new-born flesh which palpitates softly with desire and voluptuousness, that hand which you press so delicately, those round thighs, those plastic buttocks, that voice sweet and touching,--what comparison can be made between all this and pronounced features, rough beard, hard breast, hairy body, and the strong disagreeable voice of man? Juvenal has wonderfully expended all his bile in depicting, as hideous scenes, these mysteries of the Bona Dea, where the young and beautiful Roman women, far from the eyes of men, give themselves up to mutual caresses. Juvenal has painted the eyes of the Graces with colors which are proper to the Furies; his tableau, moreover, revolts one instead of doing good. The only work of Sappho’s which remains to us is an ode written to one of her loved ones and from it we may judge whether the poetess merited her reputation. It has been translated into all languages; Catullus put it into Latin and Boileau into French. Here follows an imitation of that of Catullus: Peer of a God meseemeth he, Nay passing Gods (and that can be!) Who all the while sits facing thee Sees thee and hears Thy low sweet laughs which (ah me!) daze Mine every sense, and as I gaze Upon thee (Lesbia!) o’er me strays My tongue is dulled, limbs adown Flows subtle flame; with sound its own Rings either ear, and o’er are strown Mine eyes with night. (LI. Burton, tr.) After that we should never again exhort the ministers and moralists to inveigh against love of women for women; never was the interest of men found to be so fully in accord with the precepts of divine law. Here I should like to speak of the brides of the Lord; but I remember “The Nun” of Diderot, and my pen falls from my hand. Oh, who would dare to touch a subject handled by Diderot? V. Giton venait de la deflorer, et de remporter une victoire sanglante. Giton the victor had won a not bloodless victory.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  3 When Luther then published an open letter of congratulation to Koppe, he revealed that he had known all about the plan, which was an impudent snub to his old enemy Duke Georg. The women came from the upper nobility of his lands, but their families were unable to welcome them back for fear of offending their Catholic ruler—or so Luther argued. One of them was Staupitz’s sister. 4 Luther needed to settle the women in respectable marriages as soon as possible, so as to avoid malicious gossip, and thus found himself in the unexpected position of marriage broker. As a result, the situation forced him to think about female desire. In August 1524 he wrote to some nuns, candidly informing them that, although they might not like to think so, God had created them with powerful sexual urges, which they ignored at their peril: “Though womenfolk are ashamed to admit to this, nevertheless Scripture and experience show that among many thousands there is not a one to whom God has given to remain in pure chastity. A woman has no control over herself.” 5 It may have been that the subject came to mind because he was beginning to be tempted himself. The progress of this transformation can be charted through banter with his old friend Spalatin. While in the Wartburg, the subject of marriage had arisen more than once in their correspondence, but Luther insisted he had no sexual desires, and that marriage was not for him. Although Karlstadt, Jonas, and Melanchthon all married, “They won’t force a wife on me,” he had written in 1521: 6 When Luther first returned from the Wartburg he put on his old monastic habit again—the town council even presented him with a new one, specially made. 7 But there was no returning to the monastic life. Most of the monks had left under the impact of Zwilling’s fiery sermons and only the prior and a couple of old monks remained. The monastery was no longer a going concern. In mid-April 1525, having been busily arranging matches for the nuns, Luther could still joke to Spalatin: I do not want you to wonder that a famous lover like me does not marry. It is rather strange that I, who so often write about matrimony and get mixed up with women, have not yet turned into a woman, to say nothing of not having married one.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  From 1523, groups of nuns, convinced by evangelical teachings against monasticism, had begun leaving their convents and arrived in Wittenberg, where it fell to Luther to find lodgings for them and even provide them with new clothes.2 He was not entirely innocent in all this. That year, Leonhard Koppe, a businessman and a relation of his friend Amsdorf, smuggled a group of nuns out of the Nimbschen convent in Duke Georg’s territory and over the border to Wittenberg, hiding them among barrels of herrings.3 When Luther then published an open letter of congratulation to Koppe, he revealed that he had known all about the plan, which was an impudent snub to his old enemy Duke Georg. The women came from the upper nobility of his lands, but their families were unable to welcome them back for fear of offending their Catholic ruler—or so Luther argued. One of them was Staupitz’s sister.4 Luther needed to settle the women in respectable marriages as soon as possible, so as to avoid malicious gossip, and thus found himself in the unexpected position of marriage broker. As a result, the situation forced him to think about female desire. In August 1524 he wrote to some nuns, candidly informing them that, although they might not like to think so, God had created them with powerful sexual urges, which they ignored at their peril: “Though womenfolk are ashamed to admit to this, nevertheless Scripture and experience show that among many thousands there is not a one to whom God has given to remain in pure chastity. A woman has no control over herself.”5 It may have been that the subject came to mind because he was beginning to be tempted himself. The progress of this transformation can be charted through banter with his old friend Spalatin. While in the Wartburg, the subject of marriage had arisen more than once in their correspondence, but Luther insisted he had no sexual desires, and that marriage was not for him. Although Karlstadt, Jonas, and Melanchthon all married, “They won’t force a wife on me,” he had written in 1521:6 When Luther first returned from the Wartburg he put on his old monastic habit again—the town council even presented him with a new one, specially made.7 But there was no returning to the monastic life. Most of the monks had left under the impact of Zwilling’s fiery sermons and only the prior and a couple of old monks remained. The monastery was no longer a going concern. In mid-April 1525, having been busily arranging matches for the nuns, Luther could still joke to Spalatin:

• From Satyricon (1)

  By refusal, however, he was only made more ardent, followed me everywhere, entered my room at night, and, after his entreaties had met with contempt, he had recourse to violence against me, at which I yelled so lustily that I aroused the entire household, and, by the help of Lycurgus, I was delivered from the troublesome assault and escaped. At last, perceiving that the house of Lycurgus was not suitable to the prosecution of his design, he attempted to persuade me to seek his hospitality, and when his suggestion was refused, he made use of Tryphaena’s influence over me. She besought me to comply with Lycas’ desires, and she did this all the more readily as by that she hoped to gain more liberty of action. With affairs in this posture, I follow my love, but Lycurgus, who had renewed his old relations with Ascyltos, would not permit him to leave, so it was decided that he should remain with Lycurgus, but that we would accompany Lycas. Nevertheless, we had it understood among ourselves that whenever the opportunity presented itself, we would each pilfer whatever we could lay hands upon, for the betterment of the common stock. Lycas was highly delighted with my acceptance of his invitation and hastened our departure, so, bidding our friends good-bye, we arrived at his place on the very same day. Lycas had so arranged matters that, on the journey, he sat beside me, while Tryphaena was next to Giton, the reason for this being his knowledge of the woman’s notorious inconstancy; nor was he deceived, for she immediately fell in love with the boy, and I easily perceived it. In addition, Lycas took the trouble of calling my attention to the situation, and laid stress upon the truth of what we saw. On this account, I received his advances more graciously, at which he was overjoyed. He was certain that contempt would be engendered from the inconstancy of my “sister,” with the result that, being piqued at Tryphaena, I would all the more freely receive his advances. Now this was the state of affairs at the house of Lycas, Tryphaena was desperately in love with Giton, Giton’s whole soul was aflame for her, neither of them was a pleasing sight to my eyes, and Lycas, studying to please me, arranged novel entertainments each day, which Doris, his lovely wife, seconded to the best of her ability, and so gracefully that she soon expelled Tryphaena from my heart. A wink of the eye acquainted Doris of my passion, a coquettish glance informed me of the state of her heart, and this silent language, anticipating the office of the tongue, secretly expressed that longing of our souls which we had both experienced at the same instant. The jealousy of Lycas, already well known to me, was the cause of my silence, but love itself revealed to the wife the designs which Lycas had upon me.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  He looked down at the sight of her wide red mouth so beautifully curved around his penis. With one hand she touched his balls, with the other she moved the head of the penis, enclosing it and pulling it gently. Then, sitting against him, she took it and directed it between her legs. She rubbed the penis gently against her clitoris, over and over again. Louis watched the hand, thinking how beautiful it looked, holding the penis as if it were a flower. It stirred but did not harden sufficiently to enter her. He could see at the opening of her sex the moisture of her desire appearing, glistening in the moonlight. She continued to rub. The two bodies, equally beautiful, were bent over this rubbing motion, the small penis feeling the touch of her skin, her warm flesh, enjoying the friction. She said, “Give me your tongue,” and leaned over. Without interrupting the rubbing of his penis, she took his tongue into her mouth and touched the tip of it with her own tongue. Each time the penis touched her clitoris, her tongue touched the tip of his tongue. And Louis felt the warmth running between his tongue and his penis, running back and forth. In a husky voice she said, “Stick your tongue out, out.” He obeyed her. She again cried, “Out, out, out, out . . .” obsessively, and when he did so he felt such a stirring through his body, as if it were his penis extending towards her, to reach into her. She kept her mouth open, two slender fingers around his penis, her legs parted, expectantly. Louis felt a turmoil, the blood running through his body and down to his penis. It hardened. The woman waited. She did not take in his penis at once. She let him, now and then, touch his tongue against hers. She let him pant like a dog in heat, open his being, stretch towards her. He looked at the red mouth of her sex, open and waiting, and suddenly the violence of his desire shook him, completed the hardening of his penis. He threw himself over her, his tongue inside of her mouth, and his penis pressing inside of her. But again he could not come. They rolled together for a long while. Finally they got up and walked, carrying their clothes. Louis’ sex was stretched and taut, and she delighted in the sight. Now and then they fell on the sand, and he took her, and churned her, and left her, moist and hot. And as they again walked, she in front of him, he encircled her in his arms, and threw her on the ground so that they were like dogs coupling, on their hands and knees. He shook inside of her, pushed and vibrated, and kissed her, and held her breasts in his hands. “Do you want it? Do you want it?” he asked.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  She fascinates me because sensuality pours from her. At eight years old she was already having a Lesbian affair with an older cousin. We both share the love of finery, perfume and luxury. She is so lazy, languid—purely a plant, really. I have never seen a woman more yielding. She says that she always expects to find the man who will arouse her. She has to live in a sexual atmosphere even when she feels nothing. It is her climate. Her favorite statement is, “At that time, I was sleeping around with everybody.” If we speak of Paris and of people we knew there, she always says, “I don’t know him. I didn’t sleep with him.” Or, “Oh, yes, he was wonderful in bed.” I have never once heard of her resisting—this, coupled with frigidity! She deceives everybody, including herself. She looks so wet and open that men think she is continuously in a state of near orgasm. But it is not true. The actress in her appears cheerful and calm, and inside she is going to pieces. She drinks and can sleep only by taking drugs. She always comes to me eating candy, like a schoolgirl. She looks about twenty. Her coat is open, her hat is in her hand. Her hair is loose. One day she falls on my bed and knocks off her shoes. She looks at her legs and says, “They are too thick. They are like Renoir legs, I was told once in Paris.” “But I love them,” I say, “I love them.” “Do you like my new stockings?” She raises her skirt to show me. She asks for a whiskey. Then she decides that she will take a bath. She borrows my kimono. I know that she is trying to tempt me. She comes out of the bathroom still humid, leaving the kimono open. Her legs are always held a little apart. She looks so much as if she were about to have an orgasm that one cannot help feeling: only one little caress will drive her wild. As she sits on the edge of my bed to put on her stockings, I cannot withhold any longer. I kneel in front of her and put my hand on the hair between her legs. I stroke it gently, gently, and I say, “The little silver fox, the little silver fox. So soft and beautiful. Oh, Mary, I can’t believe that you do not feel anything there, inside.” She seems on the verge of feeling, the way her flesh looks, open like a flower, the way her legs are spread. Her mouth is so wet, so inviting, the lips of her sex must be the same. She parts her legs and lets me look at it. I touch it gently and spread the lips to see if they are moist. She feels it when I touch her clitoris, but I want her to feel the bigger orgasm.

• From Satyricon (1)

  METRO: Please don’t flare up so quickly when you hear something unpleasant. A good woman must put up with everything. It’s all my fault for gossiping. My tongue ought to be cut out; honestly it should: but to get back to the question I asked you a moment ago: who stitched the dildo? Tell me if you love me! What makes you laugh when you look at me? What does your coyness mean? Have you never set eyes on me before? Don’t fib to me now, Koritto, I beg of you. KORITTO: Why do you press me so? Kerdon stitched it. METRO: Which Kerdon? Tell me, because there are two Kerdons, one is that blue-eyed fellow, the neighbor of Myrtaline the daughter of Kylaithis; but he couldn’t even stitch a plectron to a lyre--the other one, who lives near the house of Hermodorus, after you have left the street, was pretty good once, but he’s too old, now; the late lamented Kylaithis--may her kinsfolk never forget her--used to patronize him. KORITTO: He’s neither of those you’ve mentioned, Metro; this fellow is bald headed and short, he comes from Chios or Erythrai, I think--you would mistake him for another Prexinos, one fig could not look more like another, but just hear him talk, and you’ll know that he is Kerdon and not Prexinos. He does business at home, selling his wares on the sly because everyone is afraid of the tax gatherers. My dear! He does do such beautiful work! You would think that what you see is the handiwork of Athena and not that of Kerdon! Do you know that he had two of them when he came here! And when I got a look at them my eyes nearly burst from their sockets through desire. Men never get--I hope we are alone --their tools so stiff; and not only that, but their smoothness was as sweet as sleep and their little straps were as soft as wool. If you went looking for one you would never find another ladies’ cobbler cleverer than he! METRO: Why didn’t you buy the other one, too? KORITTO: What didn’t I do, Metro dear’? And what didn’t I do to persuade him’? I kissed him, I patted his bald head, I poured out some sweet wine for him to drink, I fondled him, the only thing I didn’t do was to give him my body. METRO: But you should have given him that too, if he asked it. KORITTO: Yes, and I would have, but Bitas slave girl commenced grinding in the court, just at the wrong moment; she has reduced our hand mill nearly to powder by grinding day and night for fear she might have four obols to pay for having her own sharpened. METRO: But how did he happen to come to your house, Koritto dear? You’ll tell me the truth won’t you, now?

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Like Karlstadt and Müntzer, Luther chose a noblewoman, albeit poor. But as he presented it, the initiative to marry had come from her. Katharina had originally fallen in love with Hieronymus Baumgartner, a rich merchant patrician from Nuremberg, but his family had better plans for him than marriage to a runaway nun. Luther had then suggested Caspar Glatz, the man who had supplanted Karlstadt at Orlamünde—hardly an enticing prospect, with his tumbledown house and farm. Indeed, the twenty-six-year-old Katharina rejected Glatz out of hand as an old “miser,” and told Luther’s friend Nikolaus von Amsdorf that she would marry either him or Luther, nobody else.12 However, this account contrasts sharply with Luther’s behavior in all other areas of his life, where he always took the initiative. It seems that on this occasion, he was happy to be seduced, overruled by a strong woman. As he put it in a letter to Amsdorf: “I feel neither passionate love nor burning for my spouse, but I cherish her.”13 This narrative conveniently defended him against any accusations that he was acting out of lust. Luther claimed that he married in order to please his father and give him “the hope of progeny.”14 But his choice would hardly have fit into Hans Luder’s dynastic plans. Katharina did not come from the mining elite, and Luder had carefully married all his children into the small circle of mine owners and smelters at Mansfeld, hoping to buttress his position; indeed, his son’s refusal to follow suit was one of the reasons his monastic vocation had been so resented. Nor did Katharina come from an urban family packed with lawyers, which might at least have provided access to the legal expertise Hans Luder had sought when he destined his son for the law. Luther married up by choosing a poor noblewoman, but not in a way that would benefit his family. However, Katharina was, by all accounts, attractive, feisty, and passionate.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  Then he got up, flung his pencil on the table, leaned over me and kissed me fully on the mouth, forcing my head backwards. I pushed him off violently. This made him smile. He slipped his hand swiftly up under my skirt, felt my thighs where the stockings stopped and before I could move was back in his seat. I took the pose and said nothing, because I had just made a discovery—that in spite of my anger, in spite of the fact that I was not in love, the kiss and the caress on the naked thighs had given me pleasure. While I fought him off, it was only out of a habit, but actually it had given me pleasure. The pose gave me time to awaken from the pleasure and remember my defenses. But my defenses had been convincing and he was quiet for the rest of the morning. From the very first I had divined that what I really had to defend myself against was my own susceptibility to caresses. I was also filled with great curiosities about so many things. At the same time I was utterly convinced that I would not give myself to anyone but the man I fell in love with. I was in love with Stephen. I wanted to go to him and say: “Take me, take me!” I suddenly remembered another incident, and that was a year before this when one of my aunts had taken me to New Orleans to the Mardi Gras. Friends of hers had driven us in their automobile. There were two other young girls with us. A band of young men took advantage of the confusion, the noise, the excitement and gaiety to jump into our automobile, remove our masks and begin kissing us while my aunt raised an outcry. Then they disappeared into the crowd. I was left dazed and wishing that the young man who had taken hold of me and had kissed me on the mouth were still there. I was languid from the kiss, languid and stirred. Back at the club I wondered what all the rest of the models felt. There was a great deal of talk about defending oneself, and I wondered whether it was all sincere. One of the loveliest models, whose face was not particularly beautiful but who had a magnificent body, was talking:

• From Satyricon (1)

  “Next night, when the same opportunity presented itself, I changed my petition, ‘If I can feel him all over with a wanton hand,’ I vowed, ‘and he not know it, I will give him two of the gamest fighting-cocks, for his silence.’ The lad nestled closer to me of his own accord, on hearing this offer, and I truly believe that he was afraid that I was asleep. I made short work of his apprehensions on that score, however, by stroking and fondling his whole body. I worked myself into a passionate fervor that was just short of supreme gratification. Then, when day dawned, I made him happy with what I had promised him. When the third night gave me my chance, I bent close to the ear of the rascal, who pretended to be asleep. ‘Immortal gods,’ I whispered, ‘if I can take full and complete satisfaction of my love, from this sleeping beauty, I will tomorrow present him with the best Macedonian pacer in the market, in return for this bliss, provided that he does not know it.’ Never had the lad slept so soundly! First I filled my hands with his snowy breasts, then I pressed a clinging kiss upon his mouth, but I finally focused all my energies upon one supreme delight! Early in the morning, he sat up in bed, awaiting my usual gift. It is much easier to buy doves and game-cocks than it is to buy a pacer, as you know, and aside from that, I was also afraid that so valuable a present might render my motive subject to suspicion, so, after strolling around for some hours, I returned to the house, and gave the lad nothing at all except a kiss. He looked all around, threw his arms about my neck. ‘Tell me, master,’ he cried, ‘where’s the pacer?’ [‘The difficulty of getting one fine enough has compelled me to defer the fulfillment of my promise,’ I replied, ‘but I will make it good in a few days.’ The lad easily understood the true meaning of my answer, and his countenance betrayed his secret resentment.)” CHAPTER THE EIGHTY-SEVENTH.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  I did not know how I could pose for him. But he was thinking of another picture. He said, “It will be easy. I want you to fall asleep. But you will be wrapped in white sheets. I saw something in Morocco once that I always wanted to paint. A woman had fallen asleep among her silk spools, holding the silk weaving frame with her hennaed feet. You have beautiful eyes, but they’ll have to be closed.” He went into the cabin and brought out sheets which he draped around me like a robe. He propped me against a wooden box, arranged my body and hands as he wanted them and began to sketch immediately. It was a very hot day. The sheets made me warm, and the pose was so lazy that I actually fell asleep, I don’t know for how long. I felt languid and unreal. And then I felt a soft hand between my legs, very soft, caressing me so lightly I had to awaken to make sure I had been touched. Reynolds was bending over me, but with such an expression of delighted gentleness that I did not move. His eyes were tender, his mouth half open. “Only a caress,” he said, “just a caress.” I did not move. I had never felt anything like this hand softly, softly caressing the skin between my legs without touching my sex. He only touched the tips of my pubic hair. Then his hand slipped down to the little valley around the sex. I was growing lax and soft. He leaned over and put his mouth on mine, lightly touching my lips, until my own mouth responded, and only then did he touch the tip of my tongue with his. His hand was moving, exploring, but so softly, it was tantalizing. I was wet, and I knew if he moved just a little more he would feel this. The languor spread all through my body. Each time his tongue touched mine I felt as if there were another little tongue inside of me, flicking out, wanting to be touched too. His hand moved only around my sex, and then around my ass, and it was as if he magnetized the blood to follow the movements of his hands. His finger touched the clitoris so gently, then slipped between the lips of the vulva. He felt the wetness. He touched this with delight, kissing me, lying over me now, and I did not move. The warmth, the smells of plants around me, his mouth over mine affected me like a drug. “Only a caress,” he repeated gently, his finger moving around my clitoris until the little mound swelled and hardened. Then I felt as if a seed were bursting in me, a joy that made me palpitate under his fingers. I kissed him with gratitude. He was smiling. He said, “Do you want to caress me?”

• From Little Birds (1979)

  Novalis noticed that when she took these pills she did not hear him get up, move about, or even spill objects in the room. One morning he awakened early, with the intention of working, and watched her sleep, so deeply that she rarely stirred at all. A strange idea occurred to him. He drew back the sheets that covered her, and slowly began to lift up her silk nightgown. He was able to raise it above her breasts without her giving any sign of awakening. Now her whole body lay exposed and he could contemplate it as long as he wanted. Her arms were flung outwards; her breasts lay under his eyes like an offering. He was roused with desire for her but still did not dare touch her. Instead he brought his drawing paper and pencils, sat at her side and sketched her. As he worked, he had the feeling that he was caressing each perfect line in her body. He was able to continue for two hours. When he observed the effect of the sleeping pills beginning to wear off, he pulled down the nightgown, covered her with the sheet and left the room. Later, María was surprised to notice a new enthusiasm for work in her husband. He locked himself in his studio for whole days, painting from the pencil sketches he made in the mornings. In this way he completed several paintings of her, always reclining, always asleep, as she had been the first day she posed. María was amazed by this obsession. She thought it was merely a repetition of the first pose. He always altered the face. Since her actual expression was forbidding and severe, no one who saw these paintings ever imagined that the voluptuous body was that of María. Novalis no longer desired his wife when she was awake, with her puritanical expression and stern eyes. He desired her when she was asleep, abandoned, rich and soft. He painted her without respite. When he was alone with a new painting in his studio he lay on the couch in front of it, and then a warmth ran through his whole body, as his eyes rested on the maja’s breasts, on the valley of her belly, on the hair between her legs. He began to feel an erection stirring. He was surprised at the violent effect of the painting. One morning he stood in front of María as she lay sleeping. He had succeeded in parting her legs slightly, so as to see the line between them. Watching her unconstrained pose, her opened legs, he fingered his sex with the illusion that she was doing it. How often he had led her hand to his penis, trying to obtain this caress from her, but she was always repulsed and moved her hand away. Now he enclosed his penis fully in his own strong hand.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  “I have known other sexual angels. It is wonderful to see the change in them. These clear eyes that you can see through, these bodies that take such beautiful harmonious poses, these delicate hands . . . how they change when desire takes hold of them. The sexual angels! They are wonderful because it is such a surprise, such a change. You, for instance, with your appearance of never having been touched, I can see you biting and scratching . . . I am sure your very voice changes—I have seen such changes. There are women’s voices that sound like poetic, unearthly echoes. Then they change. The eyes change. I believe that all these legends about people changing into animals at night—like the stories of the werewolf, for instance—were invented by men who saw women transform at night from idealized, worshipful creatures into animals and thought that they were possessed. But I know it is something much simpler than that. You are a virgin, aren’t you?” “No, I am married,” I said. “Married or not, you are a virgin. I can tell. I am never deceived. If you are married your husband has not made you a woman yet. Don’t you regret that? Don’t you feel you are wasting time, that real living only begins with sensation, with being a woman . . . ?” This corresponded so exactly to what I had been feeling, to my desire to enter experience, that I was silent. I hated to admit this to a stranger. I was conscious of being alone with the illustrator in an empty studio building. I was sad that Stephen had not understood my desire to become a woman. I was not frightened but fatalistic, desiring only to find someone I might fall in love with. “I know what you are thinking,” he said, “but for me it would not have any meaning unless the woman wanted me. I never could make love to a woman if she did not want me. When I first saw you, I felt how wonderful it would be to initiate you. There is something about you that makes me feel you will have many love affairs. I would like to be the first one. But not unless you wanted it.” I smiled. “That is exactly what I was thinking. It can only be if I want it, and I do not want it.”

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  But as soon as I cuddled up to Carla’s back and got myself all contoured and warmed, I fell right to sleep and slept like an old tree till morning. XVIIThe phone rings me out of my reverie. It’s junior high and Otto and I are in Belle’s basement watching her big brother and his friends take turns violating her body. She loves it. They invite us to join in, but we’re too embarrassed and scared her mom will come home. We leave and run over to Otto’s and flog our dummies raw. I have a superturgid boner and it hurts to sprint upstairs. I catch the phone on about the zillionth ring. It’s Dad waking me for the match. I like to take naps before a match if I can. For some reason they can be absolutely subterranean, so I like to make sure someone wakes me. No doubt I’m riddled with subconscious fears. Dad wishes me good luck and asks again if I want him to come to the match. I tell him no, that this one won’t be much to see, but to be sure to take off early next Tuesday night for the Shute match. He says he won’t forget. Back downstairs the bed’s all warm still. Belle was probably the world’s most beautiful and licentiously precocious seventh-grader. She really doesn’t look much older now, except that the rest of her body has filled out to match her tits. Her legs are like the legs of a racehorse, long, smooth-muscled, and precisely defined. In seventh grade she was mostly legs and tits and long pigtails. I find it strange that even though I could not ask for more or better sex, I still fantasize about other girls. Even sometimes when Carla and I are making love I’ll think of Belle. I’ll think of coming on her tits, which her brother and his friends did to her great delight. She’d rub it all over with her hands—like suntan lotion. Once when we were making love, I imagined Mrs. Brockington, my history teacher, fucking a horse. I think it was because she had shown us a movie about the potentially future-shocking effects of artificial insemination, or maybe that was the time Tanneran told us about the death of Catherine the Great. There’s almost nothing sexually imaginable Carla is not up for. I guess we could shit on each other or something like that, but we don’t. So I don’t figure I’m sexually frustrated. I guess maybe I just have a lot of energy that works itself out through my cock. I think of Belle’s nipples all pumped up and brown, of Mrs. Brockington bending over her desk with a horse mounted behind, of Romaine Lewis about to introduce his cock to Carla’s lips, of Lemon Pie’s pictures of the dick-licking boys, of Mom. Weird.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  He studied me from every side. Then he came up to me and said, “When I made the drawing, this part of the body showed clearly, here, between the legs.” He touched me lightly as if it were merely part of his work. I curved in my belly a little to throw the hips forward and then he said, “Now it is fine. Hold it.” He began to sketch. As I sat there I realized that there was one uncommon detail about the saddle. Most saddles, of course, are shaped to follow the contour of the ass and then rise at the pommel, where they are apt to rub against a woman’s sex. I had often experienced both the advantages and disadvantages of being supported there. Once my garter came loose from the stocking and began to dance around inside my riding trousers. My companions were galloping and I did not want to fall behind, so I continued. The garter, leaping in all directions, finally fell between my sex and the saddle and hurt me. I held on, gritting my teeth. The pain was strangely mixed with a sensation I could not define. I was a girl then and did not know anything about sex. I thought that a woman’s sex was inside of her, and I did not know about the clitoris. When the ride was over I was in pain. I mentioned what had happened to a girl I knew well and we both went into the bathroom. She helped me out of my trousers, out of my little belt with the garters on it, and then said, “Are you hurt? That’s a very sensitive spot. Maybe you’ll never have any pleasure there if you got hurt.” I let her look at it. It was red and a little swollen, but not so very painful. What bothered me was her saying I might be deprived of a pleasure by this, a pleasure I did not know. She insisted on bathing it with a wet cotton, fondled me and finally kissed me, “to make it well.” I became acutely aware of this part of my body. Particularly when we rode a long while in the heat, I felt such a warmth and stirring between my legs that all I desired was to get off the horse and let my friend nurse me again. She was always asking me, “Does it hurt?” So once I answered, “Just a little.” We dismounted and went into the bathroom, and she bathed the chafed spot with cotton and cool water. And again she fondled me, saying, “But it does not look sore anymore. Maybe you will be able to enjoy yourself again.” “I don’t know,” I said. “Do you think it has gone . . . dead . . . from the pain?” My friend very tenderly leaned over and touched me. “Does it hurt?” I lay back and said, “No, I do not feel anything.”

• From Little Birds (1979)

  Donald had left. He waited in the bathroom and looked into the mirror of the door. He saw Dorothy standing by John, her breasts in her hands. The fur had opened to reveal her whole body, glowing, luminous, rich in the fur, like some jeweled animal. Donald was stirred. John did not touch the body, he suckled at the breasts, sometimes stopping to feel the fur with his mouth, as if he were kissing a beautiful animal. The odor of her sex—pungent shell and sea odors, as if woman came out of the sea as Venus did—mixed with the odor of the fur, and John’s suckling grew more violent. Seeing Dorothy in the mirror, seeing the hair of her sex like the hair of the fur, Donald felt that if John touched her between the legs he would strike him. He came out of the bathroom, his penis exposed and erect, and walked towards Dorothy. This was so much like the first scene of her passion for Robert that she moaned with joy, tore herself from John and turned fully upon Donald, saying: “Take me, take me!” Closing her eyes, she imagined Robert crouching over her, tigerlike, tearing open the fur, and caressing her with many hands and mouths and tongues, touching every part of her, parting her legs, kissing her, biting her, licking her. She incited the two men to a frenzy. Nothing was heard but the breathing, the little suckling sounds, the sound of the penis swimming in her moisture. Leaving them both drowsy, she dressed and went so quickly that they barely were aware of it. Donald cursed: “She couldn’t wait. She couldn’t wait, she had to go back to him just as before. All wet and juicy from other men’s lovemaking.” It was true that Dorothy did not wash. When Robert arrived home a few moments after her, she was filled with rich odors, open, vibrating still. Her eyes, her gestures, her languid pose on the couch invited him. Robert knew her moods. He was quick to respond to them. He was so happy that she was as she had been long ago. She would be moist between the legs now, responsive. He plunged into her. Robert was never quite certain of when she was coming. The penis is rarely aware of this spasm in woman, this little palpitation. The penis can feel only its own ejaculation. This time Robert wanted to feel the spasm in Dorothy, the wild little clutching. He withheld his orgasm. She was convulsed. The moment seemed to have come. He forgot his watching in his own wave of pleasure. And Dorothy carried off her deception, unable to reach the orgasm that she had had only an hour before while closing her eyes and pretending it was Robert who was taking her.