Desire

Passages

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

Page 157 of 344 · 20 per page

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Since we had met he had been my only partner, he was the only partner I wanted, but it was a risk, I knew, neither of us could be sure the other was safe, and maybe the risk was part of my excitement, of course it was. Though it wasn’t my usual role or a role I usually enjoyed I was eager for it, more than eager, I was surprised by what I felt as I slicked myself with lubricant from the same drawer, hissing a little at the cold of it; and then I applied it to R., between the legs he had raised. I would take my time, I would be gentle, otherwise it would be difficult for him, I thought, I mean more difficult. But he didn’t want me to take my time, Go on, he said, I’m ready, drawing his legs up farther to make room for me. But he wasn’t ready, when I entered him he cried out, a terrible sound. I stopped but only briefly, since he said again Go, at least that’s what I thought he said, go, and I pressed farther into him, drawn forward by what he had said and by my own pleasure, which was exquisite; I had never fucked anyone bare before, there was a heat and silkenness in it I had never felt. R. had covered his face with his arm again, I couldn’t read his expression as I began to move, and really I was marveling so much at my own feeling that for a moment I neglected his. Anyway he was hiding it, that was why he had covered his face, to hide from me what he felt. I lowered my own face to the arm beneath which he hid, to the pit of his arm; I loved the smell of him, and tonight beside the familiar scent there was something else, his endurance, maybe, his response to pain, since pain was what his noises meant, or some of his noises. When I pressed into him there was a grunt of pain and when I drew out a little sound of need, an invitation or demand that I return, so that if it was pain it was pleasure too, or anyway satisfaction. I liked that I could make him feel this, I found myself seeking new angles to make him feel more, need and satisfaction and pain, it was like a new intimacy, though maybe there was something cruel in it as well, some cruelty in myself I sensed the shape of, a shape I had sensed before but never before with R. I would give him what he wanted, I thought, though whether I was giving something or taking it away I wasn’t sure.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I should have stopped him as he leaned forward, I was giving him too free a rein, but I let him touch the tip of his tongue to the drop, not gathering it up but tasting it, and then he pulled back, so that it stretched out gossamer between us. He closed his eyes, his tongue still extended, and I felt again that he was acting something out, that he had slipped into a fantasy that had very little, had possibly nothing, to do with me. He was posing, inhabiting a scene, something out of porn, some image in which he was a star. He made these images, he would tell me later, they were his main source of income, he performed on webcam sites for men who paid him to do whatever they wanted. I love it, he said, all those guys watching me and jerking off, I love it. There were dozens of guys sometimes, once nearly a hundred, a little counter on the screen told him how many, they would urge him on as he brought out his toys, ever larger dildos and plugs. It was never much money, he said, unless a guy wanted a private show, and then they could leave the site and go to Skype, and he might earn thirty or forty euro. But I don’t really do it for the money, he said. Once he had auditioned to do porn, or not auditioned exactly, there had been a call on one of the websites he used and he had sent his photos to a company in Germany, but they didn’t want me, he said, they didn’t even send me a response. Can you believe it, I would have been amazing, they wouldn’t even have to pay me, I would have been a star. Maybe it was to shock him out of his fantasy that when he moved forward to take me in his mouth I stopped him, catching his forehead in my palm. He objected, he made a little grunt, half protest and half question, bending his head back to look up at me.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  Trevor pulled me by the arm to my feet. We stepped out of the oil lamp’s gold circle, leaving it empty and perfect again. He led me, along the barn, his grip tight. The moths dipped in and out between us. When one hit my forehead and I stopped, he yanked and I stumbled behind him. We reached the other side, then through the door, into the night. The air was cool and starless. In the sudden dark, I made out only his pale back, grey-blue in the un-light. After a few yards, I heard the water. The river’s current, although gentle, frothed white around his thighs. The crickets grew louder, lush. The trees rustled unseen in the massed shadows across the river. Then Trevor let go, dipped under, before quickly surfacing. Droplets ran down his jaw, tinkled around him. “Clean yourself,” he said, his tone oddly tender, almost frail. I pinched my nose and dunked under, gasping from the cold. In an hour, I’ll be standing in our dim kitchen, the river still damp in my hair, and Lan will shuffle into the glow of the night-light above the stove. I won’t tell anyone you been at sea, Little Dog. She will put her finger over her lips and nod. This way, the pirate spirits won’t follow you. She will take a dishrag and dry my hair, my neck, pausing over the hickey that, by then, will be the shade of dried blood under my jaw. You been far away. Now you home. Now you dry, she will say as the floorboards creak under our shifting weight. The river up to my chest now, I waved my arms to keep steady. Trevor put his hand on my neck and we stood, quiet for a moment, our heads bent over the river’s black mirror. He said, “Don’t worry about that. You heard?” The water moved around me, through my legs. “Hey.” He did that thing where he made a fist under my chin and tilted my head up to meet his gaze, a gesture that would usually get me to smile. “You heard me?” I just nodded, then turned to shore. I was only a few steps ahead of him before I felt his palm push hard between my shoulders, leaning me forward, my hands instinctually braced on my knees. Before I could turn around, I felt his stubble, first between my thighs, then higher. He had knelt in the shallows, knees sunk in river mud. I shook—his tongue so impossibly warm compared to the cold water, the sudden, wordless act, willed as a balm to my failure in the barn. It felt like an appalling second chance, to be wanted again, in this way.

• From Branded: Brainwashed Inside NXIVM (2020)

  423 00:20:05,370 --> 00:20:07,806 for their leadership positions. 424 00:20:09,341 --> 00:20:12,444 [Paige] Nancy, his number two at that point, is the Prefect, 425 00:20:12,544 --> 00:20:15,447 which essentially is head student. 426 00:20:15,547 --> 00:20:17,349 [Armando] She is the senior student 427 00:20:17,449 --> 00:20:20,586 who's authorized to give discipline. 428 00:20:22,588 --> 00:20:28,527 Keith was only to be referred to as Vanguard. 429 00:20:30,162 --> 00:20:31,496 [Paige] Much like in Scientology, 430 00:20:31,597 --> 00:20:36,301 LRH was the Commandant or the Admiral. 431 00:20:36,401 --> 00:20:38,036 Raniere is Vanguard. 432 00:20:38,136 --> 00:20:40,706 Everyone is underneath him. 433 00:20:40,806 --> 00:20:42,908 [Dr. Joseph] If he's called by the birth name, 434 00:20:43,008 --> 00:20:44,676 then he's just a mere mortal. 435 00:20:44,776 --> 00:20:48,413 But a one-word name or a mysterious symbol, 436 00:20:48,513 --> 00:20:50,449 what this does on an unconscious level 437 00:20:50,549 --> 00:20:54,286 is it tells the members that they are merely human 438 00:20:54,386 --> 00:20:56,121 and this person is special. 439 00:20:56,221 --> 00:20:58,991 And so it's really a form of psychological manipulation 440 00:20:59,091 --> 00:21:03,562 for him to transform and evolve into this new title of Vanguard. 441 00:21:05,731 --> 00:21:07,466 [Narrator] NXIVM's classes attract those 442 00:21:07,566 --> 00:21:09,401 looking to excel in their career, 443 00:21:09,501 --> 00:21:12,504 or simply get more out of life. 444 00:21:12,604 --> 00:21:17,109 I had been seeking the answer to how to be a better person, 445 00:21:17,209 --> 00:21:18,710 how to be more enlightened. 446 00:21:18,810 --> 00:21:20,679 I felt like I was really missing something. 447 00:21:20,779 --> 00:21:22,981 And then someone introduced me to NXIVM. 448 00:21:23,081 --> 00:21:26,852 And I thought, okay, well, I'll try that, why not? 449 00:21:26,952 --> 00:21:29,521 [Narrator] Kelly signs up for a five-day session. 450 00:21:30,789 --> 00:21:32,791 When I started looking at the classes, 451 00:21:32,891 --> 00:21:35,594 I thought it was kind of expensive. 452 00:21:35,694 --> 00:21:38,864 And when I first went to my first five-day, 453 00:21:38,964 --> 00:21:43,435 I was greeted by a bunch of really nice people. 454 00:21:43,535 --> 00:21:46,972 They were just so interested in helping me 455 00:21:47,072 --> 00:21:50,442 to learn the curriculum. 456 00:21:50,542 --> 00:21:52,277 At first, I thought it was a little weird. 457 00:21:52,377 --> 00:21:54,846 But then, you know, it kind of felt good. 458 00:21:54,946 --> 00:21:56,615 I felt special. 459 00:21:56,715 --> 00:21:58,750 The introductory classes 460 00:21:58,850 --> 00:22:03,021 basically focus on the main tools of NXIVM. 461 00:22:03,121 --> 00:22:06,892 They were teaching us that when we're always comfortable, 462 00:22:06,992 --> 00:22:08,060 we're not growing, 463 00:22:08,160 --> 00:22:10,429 and that there's no growth if there isn't pain. 464 00:22:10,529 --> 00:22:12,431 Comfort is like an addiction. 465 00:22:12,531 --> 00:22:15,434 The more we indulge in this addiction, 466 00:22:15,534 --> 00:22:17,102 the more we have to lose.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  He was just visiting Sofia, though he had stayed for a long time, he said, and had no plans to leave. I didn’t know whether I should sit or lie on this bed, I stood waiting for a signal. He looked at me, hesitating, and then stepped forward. Neither of us spoke. I watched him, unsure how to begin, though I knew I should be the first to act. He smiled a little, as if he saw my uncertainty and forgave it, forgave it or mocked it, I’m not sure which. I knew the kind of disdain I had felt for men who weren’t sure what they wanted, you could sense it from the first moment, the first tepid move; I had despised them sometimes for offering less than they had promised. He raised his hand and placed it on my chest, a tender gesture, and then he leaned toward me to kiss me. But I didn’t let him kiss me, I would kiss him later but it wasn’t the right way to begin, I grabbed his throat to stop him. He had closed his eyes but they opened now in surprise, and I held his gaze as I tightened my grip, not much, not to hurt him or frighten him but to assert something, to chastise him a little for having made the first move, though he had had to, we both knew, it had given me permission to begin. There was a kind of negotiation as we looked at each other, a question, and then he moaned low in his throat and closed his eyes again, and I knew that it would work between us. I turned his head a little, tilting it first to the left and then the right, as if I were examining him, but really I was examining myself, my willingness to master him as much as his willingness to be mastered. And then I pushed him away and dropped my hand and told him brusquely to get undressed. He took another step back and lifted his hand to the zipper of his hoodie, which he drew down slowly, glancing at me and then looking away, seductive or shy. His chest was boyish, slender and almost hairless, his nipples small and dark and already tight with excitement. He was slow with his belt, too, and with the zipper of his jeans, not quite performing for me as he undid them and pushed his jeans and his briefs down to reveal his cock, which was already hard and sprang out, eager and comic. He posed for a moment, showing it off. It was thickish and hooded, the long foreskin even though he was hard drawn over the head. He pulled it back now, stroking himself two or three times before I told him to stop and he dropped his hand. I had spoken sternly, but I was glad to see it, that he was so eager, that he was enjoying himself.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  He was harder now, he pressed his hips up against mine, but I lifted myself off him, beyond his reach. He moaned in frustration, he tried to pull his hands free but I held them firm; Porta-te bem , I said to him, and then I did kiss him, I put my tongue in his mouth and he sucked at it hard, tasting me but tasting himself, too, that was what he loved, the taste of himself in my mouth. I broke off the kiss and dipped my head to his chest, kissing first one nipple and then the other, which he didn’t really like, he tolerated it, and then to go farther I had to let go of his wrists, which didn’t matter, he kept them obediently above his head. I kissed his ribs and then his stomach, always one side and then the other, keeping a symmetrical pattern, keeping it at his pelvis, too, pressing my lips to his right hip and his left but avoiding his cock, moving quickly. He made a noise of complaint but kept his arms where I had left them, still playing our game. He jerked a little when I kissed the inside of his thighs, he was sensitive there, too, but he didn’t try to stop me, he was being good, he let me do what I wanted. But I wasn’t sure what I wanted, or what I wanted had changed. I had thought I wanted to make him laugh, that after that I wanted sex, but I didn’t want sex, I realized, or not only sex. I had let my knees drop off the end of the bed as I moved lower, soon I was kneeling on the floor at the foot of the bed. He was relaxed, more or less, his legs were outstretched, his feet splayed to either side, but his whole body tensed when he felt my lips on the sole of his foot, which he snatched away, I had to grab it and pull it back. He was ticklish there, too, he didn’t like to be touched there. It had been a line drawn early on, when it became clear I was more adventurous in sex, had a wider palette of things that turned me on; I hope you’re not into that, he had said, laughing, it’s gross, I don’t want you to be into that.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I took off my shoes and walked up to N., our erstwhile guide, who was smoking a cigarette, standing well away from the surf where the others were wading, letting the waves brush their ankles and calves, shouting and laughing. Hi, he said, smiling at me, speaking in English though my Bulgarian was better, it is beautiful here, no? And I said it was, very much so, prekrasno . He asked me about the morning’s workshop, and I told him it was fine, that they were interesting writers, I liked them very much. And how was the Bulgarian group, I asked, and he turned to me, smiling widely, and said Today we talked about the G-spot of the story, how it is like with a woman, it is difficult to make the story come. Ah, I said, taken aback, I see. And then, after a pause, But I don’t understand, I said, why should the story be a woman? It was a fair question, I thought, but he looked at me with blank incomprehension, even though I had spoken in his language. Couldn’t it be a man, I asked, would it change anything, and I thought he was going to say something in response, but then our attention was claimed by a commotion farther down the beach. What’s that, I said as we started walking toward the others, who had gathered in a circle, what’s going on, and then, as we heard whistles and catcalls and voices chanting strip, strip, N. told me that the priest had said he wanted to swim. We could see him now, already bare-chested, his bearded face bright in the light of cell phone cameras brought out of pockets. Immediately, catching sight of him, I felt myself in that strange state of vibrancy and stasis, like a flame submerged in glass, sealed off as always when I feel desire I shouldn’t feel. Not that he was so desirable: he was thin and pale, with a silver cross glinting on his chest. His hand drifted to his jeans and he paused, letting the encouragement rise, looking around the circle until he found D., eager as the rest, hooting and calling Take it off, and with a look that seemed to dedicate the act to her, the whole evening, the night and the sea, he undid the buttons of his fly and stripped. There was an eruption of cheers, and he began playing to the crowd, lifting his arms and flexing, smiling at the flashing lights; he was entirely one with them now, I thought, all his sanctity was gone. He wasn’t naked, he was still wearing a pair of tight black briefs, and I was surprised to see they were a designer brand, sleek and European, not at all what I would have expected.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Yes, she acknowledged, she had been through the same kind of experience as Ernest, and it had not been easy. But it was less painful than she had suggested: she was, she confessed, only being polite. It was only to help Ernest to talk about his difficulties that she had mentioned she’d recently been deserted by a man. Though he had bailed out with no explanation to her, she had not been much troubled by the event. The relationship hadn’t been meaningful, and she was certain that it was far more his problem than hers. Ernest looked at her in amazement: this woman was more centered than he could ever hope to be. Relaxing, he officially went off duty as a therapist and turned to enjoying the rest of the evening. Halston’s enthusiastic account had prepared Ernest for the events to come. But it soon became clear that Halston had understated, and probably underappreciated, everything. The conversation with Artemis was delightful, the chanterelle ragout a small miracle, and the rest of the evening a much larger miracle. Suspecting that Halston’s experience might have been drug induced, Ernest refused the after-dinner marijuana that Artemis offered. But even without it, something unusual, almost surreal, seemed to be working in him. During dinner a warm, wonderful flush began to sweep over him from head to toe. Pleasant feelings from the past flooded his mind, each entering from a different portal. The smell of his mother’s baking kichel on Sunday mornings; the warmth in the first few seconds after wetting his bed; his first kiss; his first pistol-shot orgasm while masturbating in the bathtub and imagining undressing Aunt Harriet; eating hot-fudge ice-cream cakes at the Georgia Avenue Hot Shoppe; the weightlessness during roller-coaster rides at Glen Echo Amusement Park; moving his queen, protected by a sly bishop, and saying “Shah mott” (Checkmate) to his father. His sense of heimlichkeit—warm and wet at-homeness—was so strong, so enveloping, that he momentarily lost track of where he was. “Do you want to go upstairs to the bedroom?” Artemis’s soft voice snapped him out of his reverie. Where had he gone? Could there have been something in the mushrooms, he wondered? Do I want to go to the bedroom? I would follow this woman anywhere. I desire her like no other woman I have ever known. Maybe it is neither the grass nor the mushrooms but some unusual pheromone. My olfactory bulb, behind my back, consorting with her musk aroma?

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Or maybe that’s not what I thought, maybe I’m adding it now, maybe then all I felt was a seam or line drawn taut from my throat to my groin, a circuit that came alive in contact with him. He smiled and bent his arm at the elbow, pumping the muscle, and I let my other hand join the first, linking my fingers around his arm to take in the full span of it. I had stopped dancing, I realized, and I dropped my hands as I felt the embarrassment of admiring him for too long. But he didn’t seem embarrassed, he didn’t stop smiling, though he wasn’t dancing anymore, either; he stopped to slide his hand into the front pocket of his jeans, which were tight, my eyes followed as he worked his fingers in and slid out his phone. His face was studious in the light cast by the screen, and then he held it up and I saw that he had typed in all caps IRON MAN. He expected me to laugh but I didn’t laugh, I looked at him, past the glare of the phone which must have been lighting my face now, letting him read whatever he could see there, I looked and shook my head from right to left in affirmation; Da , I said, though he couldn’t hear me or the tone in which I said it, which was a serious tone, grave, Da . He slid the phone back in his pocket, smiling more broadly, and took a step toward me. He squared himself off, facing me and planting both his feet, like a challenge, and then he balled one of his hands into a fist and struck his own stomach twice, hard, showing off the muscles there, too, before he opened his hand to make a welcoming gesture, jerking his head up in invitation. He wanted me to try, and when I didn’t immediately strike him he reached out and grabbed my wrist, pulling it toward his stomach. I made a fist and let him strike himself with it, he was like iron, I thought, or like something more precious, like marble, and when he gestured for me to hit him again, harder, I did hit him, not very hard but hard enough to satisfy him. I left my hand there, my knuckles flush with his abdomen, and then I opened my hand and laid my palm flat against his stomach, the cotton of his shirt just slightly damp with sweat, and let my fingers trace the muscles there, risen in their rows as he clenched them, I curved the ends of my fingers around them and pressed against them as long as I dared. Then I released my grip and smiled and brushed his stomach quickly up and down with the back of my hand, as if to erase the trace of how I had touched him.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  He stepped back, withdrawing from my mouth, and told me to lay myself out on the gray carpet face down, with my arms stretched over my head. It was a difficult position, the carpet was rough and there was no good place for my cock, which was still hard, having never softened, or softened only briefly, though we had been together I thought for a long time. He grunted as he knelt beside me, settling his large frame, and then he placed his hands on my back, not stroking or kneading but appraising. Mnogo si debel, he said again, you’re very fat, pinching my flesh between his fingers, but I like you, he said, haresvash mi, you’re pleasing to me, and I thanked him, I said radvam se, I’m glad of that, though a more literal translation would be something like I rejoice or take joy in it, which was closer to what I felt. His hands moved lower then, to my ass and the opening there, which he touched, still tenderly, though I flinched as he tested it, he said How is your hole and inched the tip of one dry finger inside. Kuchko, he said again, and again I like you, still speaking tenderly to me, so that I felt I had passed some test, that I had proven myself and entered within the scope of his affection, or if not his affection at least his regard. Then he stretched out beside me, not quite touching me, and brought his face close to mine as his hand moved lower still, between my legs, which I spread slightly before lifting up my hips to let his hand snake between my legs and touch my cock for the first time. And you like me too, he said, feeling how hard I was; he gripped me tightly before letting me go. Very much, I said, I like you very much, and it was true, I was excited by him in a new way, or almost new; I had never been with anyone so skilled or so patient. His hand was on my balls now, which he drew together and down, making a kind of ring with his thumb and forefinger, drawing them tighter before folding the rest of his hand around them. He wasn’t hurting me yet but I grew tense anyway, and he sensed this, bringing his forehead to my temple, laying it there and whispering again that I was good. And then he began to tighten his grip, very slowly and with a steady pressure on all sides, causing that terrible low ache to build in my abdomen, and I pressed my own forehead into the coarse fabric of the carpet, rubbing it very slightly back and forth. I groaned as he continued to squeeze, and then gasped as I felt his tongue on my cheek, a broad swipe from my jaw to my temple. Mozhesh, he said, you can take it, and then I cried out when suddenly he squeezed me harder and let me go.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  Which is why, when the boy came to me one afternoon, the boy who would change what I knew of summer, how deep a season opens when you refuse to follow the days out of it, I said “Sorry.” The boy from whom I learned there was something even more brutal and total than work—want. That August, in the fields, it was he who came into my vision. Near day’s end, I felt another worker beside me but, caught in the rhythm of the harvest, couldn’t stop to consider him. We picked for about ten minutes, his presence intensifying on the periphery until he stepped in front of me as I reached to lift a wilted stalk. I looked up at him, a head taller, his finely boned face dirt-streaked under a metal army helmet, tipped slightly backward, as if he had just walked out from one of Lan’s stories and into my hour, somehow smiling. “Trevor,” he said, straightening up. “I’m Trevor.” I would know only later that he was Buford’s grandson, working the farm to get away from his vodka-soaked old man. And because I am your son, I said, “Sorry.” Because I am your son, my apology had become, by then, an extension of myself. It was my Hello. That first day after meeting him in the field, I found Trevor again in the barn. The dusked light had washed the interior with a bluish glow. Outside, the workers’ axes clinked against their belt straps as they climbed the dirt knoll back to their Airstreams by the edge of the wood. The air was cool, tinged with chlorophyll from the fresh-cut tobacco now suspended from the beams above us, some still dripping, making tiny dust swirls along the barn floor. I don’t know why I lingered at my bike, taking time checking the spokes. Trevor sat on a bench along the wall, chugging a neon-yellow Gatorade. There was something about the way he looked when lost in thought, his brow pinched under squinted eyes, giving his boyish face the harsh, hurt expression of someone watching his favorite dog being put down too soon. The way his mud-streaked and dusty edges juxtaposed against that rounded mouth and pert lips sealed into a flushed, feminine pout. Who are you, I thought to myself as I worked the brakes.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  He spread his legs a little, revealing his asshole, which was hairless and clean, beautiful, and which moved gently, maybe he wasn’t aware of it, it tightened and relaxed like the mouth of some primitive creature, all appetite. I placed my thumb over it and he moaned again and tightened it more, so that it kissed me, almost, or made as if to swallow me, it invited me in. Even without lube it was easy to enter him, he relaxed and took my thumb to the first knuckle without any strain at all, and then he tightened again around me. He pushed back, tilting his pelvis slightly. But I couldn’t go deeper, or not easily, I could only apply pressure in and out, encouraging his own movement, his rocking back and forth. But it wasn’t enough, for him or for me. He stopped sucking me when I pulled my thumb free, raising his head and looking back, and then opening his mouth for my thumb, which he sucked at eagerly, as he did the first two fingers of the same hand when I presented them, taking both at the same time, moving his head to take them deeper, as far as they would reach. I lifted my head to spit on his hole, rubbing it in a way meant to give pleasure, and then gave him my whole thumb, to the second joint, and then, since he had taken it so easily, immediately starting his back and forth motion, I inserted my first two fingers at once, together, not quite gently, pressing them in a single motion to the base. This gave him pause, he arched his back, taking a moment before he began to fuck himself again, fucking himself at both ends, pressing back on my fingers and then diving down on my cock. I pressed forward as he moved back, withdrew to the second knuckle or even the first when he moved forward, each of us meeting the other in our movement until it became a single movement, a movement meant for his pleasure though there was something savage in it, too, the way he moaned when on every third or fourth thrust I twisted my wrist, stretching him; he made a sound that wasn’t as sharp as a cry but that wasn’t entirely of pleasure, I liked making him make that sound. I could feel him moving against me, not just forward and back but pressing around my fingers as well, making himself tighter and then giving way. He was showing me what he could do, I thought, how good he was at getting fucked.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  with the symbols on a section, you could lay the disk over the section. You received points according to the configuration of the disks on the board, and the sum of these points entitled you to prizes arranged in tiers against the back of the stall: ashtrays, paperweights, Kewpie dolls, porcelain bulldogs on the lowest tier; baseball mitts, stuffed animals, lighters shaped like pistols, clock radios, stiletto knives, ID bracelets on the next; and so on up to the topmost tier, where they kept the big prizes. Portable TVs. Binoculars. Cameras. Gold pinky rings set with diamonds. Diamond necklaces on gold chains, draped casually among the other prizes. Gold watches. And, attached to each of these prizes by a ribbon, a rolled-up one-hundred-dollar bill. The two men behind the counter saw us eyeing the prizes. Smoke and Rusty, their names were. Rusty was thin and nervous. Smoke was a fat smiling guy with gaps between his teeth. It turned out that Smoke had been a Scout himself, so for auld lang syne he let each of us have a free game. Rusty tried to talk him out of it, but Smoke insisted. It was just as easy as it looked. Two of the Ballard boys won paperweights, and I racked up enough points for an ID bracelet. Rusty was getting it down for me when Smoke happened to mention that if we wanted another chance he’d let us keep the points we’d already earned and apply them toward a bigger prize. The Ballard boys had no money so they took their ashtrays, but I shelled out a quarter and told Smoke to deal. This time I came close to what I needed for the clock radio. “Can I keep the points again?” I asked. Smoke and Rusty looked at each other. “No way,” Rusty said. “The boss’ll kill us.” “Fuck the boss,” Smoke said. “The boss ain’t here.” Smoke set me up again. I thought I’d won the points I needed but Smoke said, “Too bad, Jack. Star Straddle.” “Star Straddle?” “Right. Star Straddle. See this star here? You got one on that section too. Means you have to straddle. Straddle’s minus forty. You damn near got her, though, Jack buddy.” I asked if I could try again. Smoke leaned over the counter and peered up and down the midway. “I don’t see him coming. How about it?” he said to Rusty. “Okay, but hurry it up,” Rusty said. “Our ass is grass if he catches us.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Brill, a famous New York psychiatrist, but he regarded her as out of touch with reality. Hysterical psychosis was his diagnosis, and he advised her to take the Weir rest cure—one to two years of total rest in a sanitarium. Given my grandmother’s finances and the nature of Merges’s curse, it is obvious that it was Dr. Brill who was out of touch with reality.” As Artemis began to put away the dishes, Ernest stopped her. “We can do that later.” “Perhaps, Ernest,” Artemis said, her voice tight and strained, “now that dinner is over, you might like to come upstairs.” After a pause, she added, “You know now that I cannot keep myself from asking this.” “Excuse me,” Ernest said, rising and heading for the front door. “Good-bye, then,” Artemis called after him. “I know. I understand completely. No excuses necessary. And no guilt, please.” “What do you know, Artemis?” asked Ernest, looking back from the open door. “Where am I going?” “You’re going far away as fast as you can. And who can blame you? I know why you go. And I understand, Ernest.” “You see, Artemis, as I told you before, you don’t know as much as you think you do. I’m going just twenty feet to my car, from which I intend to fetch my overnight bag.” When he returned, she was upstairs bathing. He cleared the dinner table, packed up the remaining food, and then, bag in hand, ascended the stairs. The next hour in the bedroom proved one thing: it wasn’t the chanterelle stew. All was as before. The warm, lush lust, the cat-licking, the sensuous tongue, the Fourth of July fireworks slowly building up to their pyrotechnic climax, the incandescent roman candles, the roar of the howitzer. For a few moments Ernest was visited by extraordinary flashbacks: all the past orgasms of his life swooooshing through him, years of jerking spasms into palms and towels and sinks and then watching a procession of the large-breasted lovers, lovely vessels of consolation, into whom he had drained the cares of his life. Gratitude! Gratitude! And then blackness as he fell into the sleep of the dead. Ernest was awakened by Merges’s howling. Again he felt the room shake; again the scratching and scraping at the wall of the house. Fear flickered, but he got quickly out of bed and—shaking his head vigorously and inhaling deeply—calmly opened the window wide, leaned out, and called, “This way, this way, Merges. Save your claws. The window is open.” Sudden silence. Then Merges bounded in, ripping and shredding the thin linen curtains. Hissing, his head raised, his red eyes blazing, his glistening claws unsheathed, he circled Ernest. “I’ve been expecting you, Merges. Won’t you please sit down?” Ernest settled into a massive redwood burl chair next to the night table, beyond which all was darkness.

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

  Reply to Objection 1: Virtue and sin do not arise from the same source. For sin arises from the desire of mutable good; and consequently the desire of that good which helps one to obtain all temporal goods, is called the root of all sins. But virtue arises from the desire for the immutable God; and consequently charity, which is the love of God, is called the root of the virtues, according to Eph. 3:17: “Rooted and founded in charity.” Reply to Objection 2: The desire of money is said to be the root of sins, not as though riches were sought for their own sake, as being the last end; but because they are much sought after as useful for any temporal end. And since a universal good is more desirable than a particular good, they move the appetite more than any individual goods, which along with many others can be procured by means of money. Reply to Objection 3: Just as in natural things we do not ask what always happens, but what happens most frequently, for the reason that the nature of corruptible things can be hindered, so as not always to act in the same way; so also in moral matters, we consider what happens in the majority of cases, not what happens invariably, for the reason that the will does not act of necessity. So when we say that covetousness is the root of all evils, we do not assert that no other evil can be its root, but that other evils more frequently arise therefrom, for the reason given. Whether pride is the beginning of every sin?Objection 1: It would seem that pride is not the beginning of every sin. For the root is a beginning of a tree, so that the beginning of a sin seems to be the same as the root of sin. Now covetousness is the root of every sin, as stated above [1854](A[1]). Therefore it is also the beginning of every sin, and not pride. Objection 2: Further, it is written (Ecclus. 10:14): “The beginning of the pride of man is apostasy [Douay: ‘to fall off’] from God.” But apostasy from God is a sin. Therefore another sin is the beginning of pride, so that the latter is not the beginning of every sin. Objection 3: Further, the beginning of every sin would seem to be that which causes all sins. Now this is inordinate self-love, which, according to Augustine (De Civ. Dei xiv), “builds up the city of Babylon.” Therefore self-love and not pride, is the beginning of every sin. On the contrary, It is written (Ecclus. 10:15): “Pride is the beginning of all sin.”

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  how the upper class perpetuates itself. Its motive was supposedly democratic, to attack snobbery and subvert the upper class by giving away its secrets. But I didn’t read it as social criticism. To seek status seemed the most natural thing in the world to me. Everyone did it. The people who bought the book were certainly doing it. They consulted it with the same purpose I had, not to deplore the class problem but to solve it by changing classes. Whatever he meant it to be, Packard’s book was the perfect guide for social climbers. He listed the places you should live and the colleges you should go to and the clubs you should join and the faith you should confess. He named the tailors and stores you should patronize, and described with filigree exactitude the ways you could betray your origins. Wearing a blue serge suit to a yacht-club party. Saying davenport for sofa, ill for sick, wealthy for rich. Painting the walls of your house in bright colors. Mixing ginger ale with whiskey. Being too good a dancer. He showed boxes within boxes, circles within circles. Of course you would go to an Ivy League school, but that by itself wouldn’t do the trick. “The point is not Harvard, but which Harvard? By Harvard one means Porcellian, Fly, or AD.” And he said that the key to which Harvard one attended, or which Yale, or which Princeton, and therefore which life one led thereafter, was one’s prep school. “Harvard or Yale or Princeton is not enough. It is the really exclusive prep school that counts. . . .” Packard said there were over three thousand private schools in America. Only a very few satisfied his standard of exclusivity. He specified them in a brief list almost exactly the same as Geoffrey’s. I understood, pondering these names in the library of Concrete High, that the brilliant life they promised depended on leaving most people out, to loud walls and bad tailors. I did not want to be left out. Now that I had felt the possibility of this life, any other life would be an oppression. Packard made a point of saying that these schools were just about impossible for outsiders to get into. But he did mention that they gave scholarships, and that many of the scholarships went to “descendants of once-prosperous alumni who had come into difficult times.” That made me feel as if the people at Deerfield were just sitting around waiting to hear from me. I wrote off for application forms. The schools responded quickly, with cover letters in whose stiff courtesy I managed to hear panting enthusiasm. I did get a friendly note from John Boyden, the headmaster of Deerfield and the son of the man who had thrown my father out. He said that the school was already

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I was walking with another American, a graduate student in a program he hated in the South. He was younger than I was, and fit; in the mornings he ran along the sea, on the path that led to the new town, where the shops were open, he said, it was a real city, not just a museum. He was friendly and I tried to match his friendliness, it was why I was here, I told myself, to meet people, to make friends. But I didn’t trust myself, I was too eager, I caught myself looking at him, at almost every man I passed, with a kind of hunger R. had shielded me from, I mean the thought of R. It might be possible, I thought about the other writer, he looked at me sometimes in a way that made me think maybe I could have him, or he could have me, we could have a little romance, though that wasn’t what I wanted; I wanted something brutal, which was what frightened me, I wanted to go back to what R. had lifted me out of. It was a childish feeling, maybe, I wanted to ruin what he had made, what he had made me, I mean, the person he had made me. We were trailing behind the others, we could hear them ahead of us in the dark, their occasional bursts of laughter. We were walking up Apolonia, the main thoroughfare, though it wasn’t until we reached the center of town that there were any real signs of life, some open shops, a restaurant, a man at a table outside, hunched over a slice of pizza. We caught up with the others in front of a convenience store, and waited until N. and the priest emerged with new bottles of wine and a stack of plastic cups. N. handed these out as the priest busied himself with one of the bottles, cutting the foil at the neck with a pocketknife attached to his keys, working at it slowly, with the deliberateness of drunkenness. He had arrived after the rest of us, driving in from Veliko Turnovo. We had all been curious to meet him, but there was nothing especially priestly about the man who appeared dressed all in black, not in a cassock but in jeans and a T-shirt he wore tucked in, tight on his thin frame.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  How much smaller I have become, I said to myself, through an erosion necessary to survival perhaps and perhaps still to be regretted, I’ve worn myself down to a bearable size. And then I realized that I had wandered into a maze of narrow streets, the walls on either side too high to glimpse the gold dome of my landmark, and I began to walk more quickly, spurred by the unease that always claims me when I lose track of where I am. GOSPODAR It would have made me laugh in English, I think, the word he used for himself and that he insisted I use for him—not that he had had to insist, of course, I would call him whatever he wanted. It was the word for master or lord, but in his language it had a resonance it would have lacked in my own, partaking equally of the everyday ( Gospodine , my students say in greeting, mister or sir) and of the scented chant of the cathedral. He was naked when he opened the door, backlit in the entrance of his apartment, or naked except for a series of leather straps that crossed his chest, serving no particular function; and this too might have made me laugh, were there not something in his manner that forbade it. He didn’t greet me or invite me in, but turned without a word and walked to the center of what I took to be the apartment’s main room. I didn’t follow him, I waited at the edge of the light until he turned again and faced me, and then he did speak, telling me to undress in the hallway. Take off everything, he said, take off everything and then come in. I was surprised by this, which was a risk for him as for me, for him more than for me, since he was surrounded by neighbors any of whom might open their doors. He lived on a middle floor of one of the huge apartment blocks that stand everywhere in Sofia like fortresses or keeps, ugly and imperious, though this is a false impression they give, they’re so poorly built as already to be crumbling away. I obeyed him, I took off my shoes and then my coat and began to undo the long line of buttons on my shirt, my hands fumbling in the dark and in my excitement, too. I pulled down my pants, awkward in my haste, wanting him and also wanting to end my exposure, though it was part of my excitement.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Then Z. said something else and again I didn’t understand, so he took his phone out of his pocket and typed, holding up the screen for me to read. This is a great night, he had written, and I looked up and said Yes, and we raised our glasses, clinking them before we drank. The music changed as we set our glasses down, there was a sudden assault of gaidi , the mountain bagpipes ubiquitous in Balkan folk music, and then a syncopated rush of drums that made both of us grin. It was a song we knew well, one of the big hits of Z.’s senior year, and we lifted our glasses again, toasting each other and the song and the memory of it we had. With the glass still at his lips Z. began to dance, he extended his other arm away from his body and twisted slightly from side to side, and though it was half ironic it made me feel a kind of pang, since it was for me, his dance, I was his only audience, it could only be for me. After a few seconds, he put his glass down, dropping his other arm too, abandoning his performance. But I raised my own arms, awkward and un-American, I shuffled a step toward him and he was in it again. It was like I had given him permission to dance, to be foolish in front of me, since I was so much more foolish, without his beauty or his youth, I was an old man in this place. But he smiled at me and I smiled back and we were dancing with each other, after a fashion, we made a little orbit together, a center of gravity. At one point I reached over and put my hand on his shoulder, a friendly gesture, casual, avuncular maybe, and then I let my hand slide down his arm and, as I felt him flex his bicep, that reflexive preening, I curled my fingers around the muscle there and squeezed, feeling how solid it was. I knew the gesture wasn’t casual anymore, that it showed too much, I was touching him as I had never allowed myself to touch a student before. But he wasn’t my student, I told myself, for one night we could face each other without all that, I could touch his arm and have all of that fall away.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  At first I couldn’t understand what he was doing, he was moving his head back and forth just slightly, and then I realized he was trying to flip back the flap covering the zipper of my jeans. Once he had managed this, folding the fabric back with his nose, he rubbed his face against the metal, up and down, as if he were trying to undo it that way, all the while with his hands clasped behind his back. He wasn’t trying to undo it, of course, this was part of his performance, but he was rubbing hard and fast enough that I thought it must be something else, too, a desire for pain, or if not pain then sensation of a particular sort, a kind of intensity. Take it out, I said finally. He looked up at me, smiling, and then brought his hands to my belt, slowly now, the urgency gone, and pulled the leather strap free of its buckle. He surprised me by removing the belt altogether, taking a moment to coil it around his hand before setting it ceremoniously beside him. There was something ceremonious about all of his movements, if they had been animal before they were exaggeratedly refined now, careful and precise. He pulled my jeans down, waiting for me to step out of them before he folded them and placed them beside the belt and the shoes I had kicked off. Only then did he bring his hands back to my waist and pull my underwear down, stretching the elastic to let my cock spring out, bobbing in the air as I lifted first one foot and then the other to let him pull the fabric free. He took my underwear in both his hands, spreading it across his open palms, and then buried his face in it, taking famished breaths, wanting whatever chemical traces I had left there, some mix of sweat and urine, of detergent and soap. His hands were covering his eyes but I almost rolled my own back in sympathy, I had felt the rush of it many times, that scent, but I had never watched someone else be overcome by it, I had never before been the cause of it. He folded them carefully and settled back on his knees before me.