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 Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Max and Selena like to play with possessiveness, but both are dead certain of the rules of the game. When Elsa returns from a conference, Gerard is always curious about whom she met. “Was there anyone interesting? Did you tell him about your fantastic husband? And were you flirting while you were raving about me?” Wendy has always known that George has a weakness for blonds. So last Thursday she decided to be one for the day. She donned a platinum wig and a trench coat and showed up unannounced at the building site to take him to lunch. He says, “Great. The guys are going to think I’m having an affair.” Wendy doesn’t miss a beat: “Let them be jealous.” These couples, in their own ways, have chosen to acknowledge the possibility of the third: the recognition that our partner has his or her own sexuality, replete with fantasies and desires that aren’t necessarily about us. When we validate one another’s freedom within the relationship, we’re less inclined to search for it elsewhere. In this sense, inviting the third goes some way toward containing its volatility, not to mention its appeal. It is no longer a shadow but a presence, something to talk about openly, joke about, play with. When we can tell the truth safely, we are less inclined to keep secrets. Rather than inhibiting a couple’s sexuality, recognizing the third has a tendency to add spice, not least because it reminds us that we do not own our partners. We should not take them for granted. In uncertainty lies the seed of wanting. In addition, when we establish psychological distance, we, too, can peek at our partner with the admiring eyes of a stranger, noticing once again what habit has prevented us from seeing. Finally, renouncing others reaffirms our choice. He is the one I want. We admit our roving desires, yet push them back. We flirt with them, all the while keeping them at a safe distance. Perhaps this is another way of looking at maturity: not as passionless love, but as love that knows of other passions not chosen. Inviting the Third There are a lot of ways to invite the third into a relationship that don’t include extramarital sex, and a few that do. For most people, the mention of sexually open relationships sets off the red warning lights. Few subjects having to do with committed love evoke such a visceral response. What if she falls in love with him? What if he never comes back? The idea that you can love one person and have sex with another with impunity makes us shudder. We fear that transgressing one limit can lead to the potential breach of all limits. We conjure up images of chaos: promiscuity, orgies, debauchery.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  And then he repeated the word I didn’t know but that I thought meant steady and suddenly my mouth was filled with warmth, bright and bitter, his urine, which I took as I had taken everything else, it was a kind of pride in me to take it. Kuchko , he said as I drank, speaking softly and soothingly, addressing me again, mnogo si dobra , you’re very good, and he said this a second time and a third before he was done. 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.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  You’ve replaced sensual love with something else. It’s what the sex therapist Dagmar O’Connor calls comfort love.” Candace nods, “Like a flannel nightgown.” The caring, protective elements that nurture home life can go against the rebellious spirit of carnal love. We often choose a partner who makes us feel cherished; but after the initial romance we find, like Candace, that we can’t sexualize him or her. We long to create closeness in our relationships, to bridge the space between our partner and ourselves, but, ironically, it is this very space between self and other that is the erotic synapse. In order to bring lust home, we need to re-create the distance that we worked so hard to bridge. Erotic intelligence is about creating distance, then bringing that space to life. In one of our sessions Candace describes how nothing turns her on more than to see Jimmy perform onstage. But when I ask her if she ever goes backstage afterward, she tells me no. “Why don’t you go into the dressing room?” I ask her. “You look at him up there onstage and you’re all excited by him. He’s totally in possession of himself and his talent. But then you wait until he comes home and he instantly becomes deeroticized.” She nods in agreement; he looks disappointed. “Why don’t you divorce him?” I suggest. “Stay with him but divorce him. If you’re not married to him, he won’t look like such a homebody.” “You know what I said to him?” she admits, “I said, ‘If you left me today I would be sexually interested in you.’” Candace recognizes that the feeling of emotional closeness she longs for with Jimmy stands in the way of what excites her sexually. In order to circumvent this pitfall, she needs to create psychological distance. Long before meeting me, Candace had attempted to do just that. She had come up with her own solution to the predicament: Jimmy was to ignore her when he came home, rather than instantly approach her. As she said, “If I feel that you don’t need me at all, you become desirable.” Intuitively, without knowing why she needed this particular plot, she was trying to generate desire. Unfortunately, Jimmy wasn’t up for the game. He saw her need for being at arms-length as a rejection of him. He poignantly articulated his longing when he explained, “I’ve had so much anger. I remember a time when all I had to do was rub my knee up her thigh and she’d get all turned on. But for so long I haven’t truly felt that she wanted me like that. I want her to want me. I want her to be hungry for one thing and one thing only.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Not the act itself, but the threat of it. For Proust, an injection of jealousy is the only thing capable of rescuing a relationship ruined by habit. —Alain de Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life The bonds of wedlock are so heavy that it takes two to carry them, sometimes three. —Alexandre Dumas THE TALMUD, THE GREAT COMPILATION of rabbinic tradition, tells the following parable. Every night, Rabbi Bar Ashi would prostrate himself before the merciful God and beg to be saved from the evil urge. His wife, overhearing him, would think, “It’s been a number of years since he has withdrawn from me. What makes him say that?” So one day, as he is studying in the garden, she dresses herself up as Haruta and meets him there. (Haruta was the name of the quintessential prostitute in ancient Babylon. The word also means “freedom” in Hebrew.) “Who are you?” he asks. “I am Haruta,” she answers. “I want you,” he commands. “Bring me the pomegranate on the uppermost branch,” she demands in turn. He brings her the pomegranate, and takes her. When he returns home his wife is tending the fire. He rises, and tries to throw himself in. She asks, “Why are you doing so?” “Because thus and thus happened,” he confesses. “But it was I,” she responds. “I, however, intended the forbidden.” Monolithic Monogamy The moment two people become a couple, they begin to deal with boundaries—what is in and what is out. You choose one among all others, then draw the lines around your blissful union. Now the questions begin. What am I free to do alone and what do I have to share? Do we go to bed at the same time? Will you be joining my family at every Thanksgiving? Sometimes we negotiate these arrangements explicitly, but more often we proceed by trial and error. You see how much you can get away with before tripwiring on sensitivities. Why didn’t you ask me to join you? I thought we’d travel together. A look, a comment, a bruised silence—these are the clues we have to interpret. We intuit how often to see each other, how often to talk, and how much sharing is expected. We sift through our respective friendships and decide how important they’re allowed to be now that we have each other. We sort out ex-lovers— do we know about them, talk about them, see them? Whether aboveboard or below, we delineate zones of privacy as well as zones of togetherness. The mother of all boundaries, the reigning queen, is fidelity, for she more than any other confirms our union.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  “That’s a little extreme, but yeah. I became different with her, more cautious, not as free. I guess it stopped me from being aggressive or passionate or desiring her in that way—really giving myself to her, or taking her, when normally that’s how we were together. It was definitely a shift.” “Couldn’t do that to the mother of your children?” I ask. “Apparently not,” he answers. “Let’s talk about this whole Madonna/whore business,” I continue. “It has deep psychological roots. A lot of men find it difficult to eroticize the mother of their children. It feels too regressive, too incestuous, too oedipal. What you need to remember is that she’s their mom, not yours. At this point, I recommend anything that can introduce a little healthy objectification. Anything that might distinguish her from ‘the mother.’” Carla had been quiet for much of the session, but the following week I had no doubt she’d been paying attention. Laughing, she told me the story. “I really wanted to let go with Leo. I wanted to give him an involved, prolonged, great blow job. Not just the compulsory head, not just the polite head. But I knew there was this thing with the wife, ‘the mother.’ Would he let me? So I initiated this game and said, ‘You know, we can have a couple of different kinds of sex and you can call it what you will, but if you want this blow job to continue it’s going to cost you.’ I said, ‘A hundred bucks if you want that kind of head. A hundred bucks.’ I thought the money would be fun, but I was really into seeing if Leo could de-role that mother. Well, you don’t pay the mother of your kids for a blow job, do you? You don’t pay your wife for a blow job. It was a lovely experiment, that’s all I’m going to say.” “Maybe you could start taking credit cards. Keep a credit card machine by the bed,” Leo jokes. Carla’s playful erotic intervention has stayed with me for years. In one gesture she cleverly captured and subverted the whole issue: how to retrieve the lover from the mother. Leo feared expressing the rawness of his desire to the mother of his children, a woman too worthy of love and respect. Carla took a risk, interrupted the pattern, and invited him into an erotic complicity. She uncloaked the repression and became a sexually provocative, slutty woman who demanded to be paid. In the midst of this explicitly staged endorsement of blatant sexuality, Leo’s lustfulness was finally unleashed. Escaping the Siege of Family Life

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  It was a long room, and she kept me going, toward the back. There was a balcony—no, a fire escape—on my right. The window let in some light from the street, and I could see potted plants sitting outside. A tape deck and stereo gear sat in front of the window. The floor was covered with several deep, soft Oriental and Navajo rugs, thrown on top of each other. To my left was her bed. It had four posts of even height, hand-carved statuettes of naked women. And there was a large wardrobe sitting against the back wall. It was here that she led me. “Drop the towel,” she said softly, and opened its doors. A light came on inside it. Mirrors had been hung on the doors and back panel of the wardrobe. I was startled by the picture we made. We were a study in contrasts. I was small in front of her, very naked, my skin rosy from arousal and need. My full curves were juxtaposed with her height and angularity and the black velvet suit. She looked the part of a perfect gentleman-dyke who just happened to have a lady on a leash. We spent some time looking at ourselves. Our reflections fell behind the whips and restraints she had hung inside the cupboard. She touched each one, setting them all to swaying. There was a Victorian walking cane, a riding whip, a cat, a bullwhip, and some others I didn’t know by name. A few of them looked too menacing to be applied to human flesh. I hoped they were there for effect only. While my attention was engaged by the instruments of flagellation and various other toys in her closet, she reached for a long rope that dangled from the ceiling. She clipped the snap at the end of it through both bracelet rings, and removed her scarf from around my neck. I was sorry to see it go, it being the first thing that had bound me to her. She tickled my nose with the fringes, trying to make me laugh. I wouldn’t. “Well, if you insist on getting sentimental about it,” she shrugged, and tied it around my eyes. I could hear her moving around, humming, picking things up, opening drawers. She turned on a little electric heater—I could hear its fan. She pushed a tape into the stereo, and dark music throbbed softly in the background, gathering power. The hairs on my skin stirred slightly, announcing that she had returned and was standing quite close to me. “I’m going to touch you,” she said, and left me time to wonder how and when. I anticipated a slap, a whip, a caress, a scratch—but not what actually happened.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  She wrapped Iduna’s cloak more snugly about her to shut out the cold, transparent fingers of the wind, hugged her newly opened vessel to her breast, then took her deeper into darkness. The Eyrie was still far away. The slut moaned, twisted, exposed her throat. She wanted it again. It was going to be difficult to avoid draining her completely before dawn. What had she done? Safe, at home in the inhuman arms, Iduna dabbled her fingers in her still-oozing wound and thought, ‘After the long hunt, the desperate search, the years of doing without, being alone and bereft, with no wings to shelter me, no sharp teeth in any of the mouths that kissed me, I have you. You are no dream, no fantasy. Finally, my treasure, my pet, my lord, I will make you my beloved. Your strength, your magic, my death and your immortality—I have it all within my reach.’ This rare and beautiful creature did not know how happy she was going to make her, how much she would change her life. Iduna assumed she would never know how Kerry really felt about her, if only because she was so ignorant about her own emotions. The first one, the almost-forgotten one, so needy and yet powerful, had been that way, and Kerry seemed younger, less experienced than it. But Kerry would always need her because her blood was so sweet. Evolutionarily speaking, it was an adaptive trait. And she knew how to make it interesting to take. She had been well schooled. How old are you, Iduna wondered, and how old am I? Will you ever bother to ask me the kind of questions I’ve been asking about your kind for these countless lonely, crazy years? Is my blood, precious as it is to me, enough to pay for the wonder and contentment I feel in your presence? She twined one arm around her captor’s neck and reached with the other hand for the leather seam that accentuated, pulled up, and divided Kerry’s genitals. The curve was like a ripe peach pushed into her hand. It rubbed insistently against her palm. Kerry made the same noise she had made to warn the man in Purgatory to keep his distance, but Iduna only smiled. Abstinence is the mother of shameless lust. “Sex doesn’t seem to be out of the question after all, does it?” the vampire said. The Spoiler

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "I shall if I possibly can. I should be fearfully proud if I had a child by him." It was no use talking to her. Hilda pondered. "And doesn't Clifford suspect?" she said. "Oh, no! Why should he?" "I've no doubt you've given him plenty of occasion for suspicion," said Hilda. "Not at all." "And tonight's business seems quite gratuitous folly. Where does the man live?" "In the cottage at the other end of the wood." "Is he a bachelor?" "No! His wife left him." "How old?" "I don't know. Older than me." Hilda became more angry at every reply, angry as her mother used to be, in a kind of paroxysm. But still she hid it. "I would give up tonight's escapade if I were you," she advised calmly. "I can't! I _must_ stay with him tonight, or I can't go to Venice at all. I just can't." Hilda heard her father over again, and she gave way, out of mere diplomacy. And she consented to drive to Mansfield, both of them, to dinner, to bring Connie back to the lane-end after dark, and to fetch her from the lane-end the next morning, herself sleeping in Mansfield, only half an hour away, good going. But she was furious. She stored it up against her sister, this baulk in her plans. Connie flung an emerald-green shawl over her window sill. On the strength of her anger, Hilda warmed towards Clifford. After all, he had a mind. And if he had no sex, functionally, all the better: so much the less to quarrel about! Hilda wanted no more of that sex business, where men became nasty, selfish little horrors. Connie really had less to put up with than many women, if she did but know it. And Clifford decided that Hilda, after all, was a decidedly intelligent woman, and would make a man a first-rate helpmeet, if he were going in for politics for example. Yes, she had none of Connie's silliness, Connie was more a child: you had to make excuses for her, because she was not altogether dependable. There was an early cup of tea in the hall, where doors were open to let in the sun. Everybody seemed to be panting a little. "Good-bye, Connie girl! Come back to me safely." "Good-bye, Clifford! Yes, I shan't be long." Connie was almost tender. "Good-bye, Hilda! You will keep an eye on her, won't you?" "I'll even keep two!" said Hilda. "She shan't go very far astray." "It's a promise!" "Good-bye, Mrs. Bolton! I know you'll look after Sir Clifford nobly." "I'll do what I can, your Ladyship." "And write to me if there is any news, and tell me about Sir Clifford, how he is." "Very good, your Ladyship, I will. And have a good time, and come back and cheer us up."

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  She turned and looked at him. "We came off together that time," he said. She did not answer. "It's good when it's like that. Most folks lives their lives through and they never know it," he said, speaking rather dreamily. She looked into his brooding face. "Do they?" she said. "Are you glad?" He looked back into her eyes. "Glad," he said. "Ay, but never mind." He did not want her to talk. And he bent over her and kissed her, and she felt, so he must kiss her for ever. At last she sat up. "Don't people often come off together?" she asked with naive curiosity. "A good many of them never. You can see by the raw look of them." He spoke unwittingly, regretting he had begun. "Have you come off like that with other women?" He looked at her amused. "I don't know," he said, "I don't know." And she knew he would never tell her anything he didn't want to tell her. She watched his face, and the passion for him moved in her bowels. She resisted it as far as she could, for it was the loss of herself to herself. He put on his waistcoat and his coat, and pushed a way through to the path again. The last level rays of the sun touched the wood. "I won't come with you," he said; "better not." She looked at him wistfully before she turned. His dog was waiting so anxiously for him to go, and he seemed to have nothing whatever to say. Nothing left. Connie went slowly home, realising the depth of the other thing in her. Another self was alive in her, burning molten and soft in her womb and bowels, and with this self she adored him. She adored him till her knees were weak as she walked. In her womb and bowels she was flowing and alive now and vulnerable, and helpless in adoration of him as the most naive woman.--It feels like a child, she said to herself; it feels like a child in me.--And so it did, as if her womb, that had always been shut, had opened and filled with new life, almost a burden, yet lovely. "If I had a child!" she thought to herself; "if I had him inside me as a child!"--and her limbs turned molten at the thought, and she realised the immense difference between having a child to oneself, and having a child to a man whom one's bowels yearned towards. The former seemed in a sense ordinary: but to have a child to a man whom one adored in one's bowels and one's womb, it made her feel she was very different from her old self, and as if she was sinking deep, deep to the centre of all womanhood and the sleep of creation.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Ernest could think of nothing but Artemis. He was enchanted with her. Again and again he prodded himself: Concentrate! Focus! Earn your fee! Sweep this woman from your mind. But Artemis refused to be swept. She had set up housekeeping in his frontal cortex, and there she stayed. There was something eerie and alluring about Artemis that brought to mind the immortal, irresistible African queen he remembered from Rider Haggard’s novel She. It did not escape Ernest that he was thinking more about Artemis’s charms than about alleviating her distress. Ernest, mind your priorities, he rebuked himself. What are you doing? This whole project is deeply suspect even without any sexual adventures. You’re already treading on thin ice—milking Halston for data about how to find Artemis, turning yourself into an uninvited traveling therapist paying a house call on an attractive female stranger. You’re being grandiose, he cautioned himself, and unethical and unprofessional. Careful, careful, careful! “Your honor,” he imagined his supervisor’s voice booming from the witness stand, “Dr. Lash is a fine and ethical clinician except when he occasionally lapses into thinking with his small head.” No, no, no! Ernest protested. I’m doing nothing unethical. I intend an act of integrity, an act of charity. Halston, my patient, wantonly inflicted a grievous wound on another person, and it is inconceivable that he will ever be willing to make reparation. I, and only I, can redress the injury and do it quickly and efficiently. Artemis’s Hansel-and-Gretel house—small, high-gabled, dripping with gingerbread lacework and surrounded by a dense row of topped junipers—would have better suited Germany’s Black Forest than Marin County. Greeting him at the door with a glass of fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice, Artemis apologized for not having alcohol in the house—”Drug-free zone here,” she said, then added, “except for ganja, the holy herb.” As soon as he sat down on the sofa, a faux-Louis XVI canapé covered with petit point and supported by dainty gray-white legs, Ernest returned to the subject of abandonment. But although he used all his practiced skills to draw her out, he soon had to recognize that he had overestimated Artemis’s distress. 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.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  There were things I could say in his language, because I spoke it poorly, without self-consciousness or shame, as if there were something in me unreachable in my own language, something I could reach only with that blunter instrument by which I too was made a blunter instrument, and I found myself at last at the end of my strange litany saying again and again I want to be nothing, I want to be nothing. Good, the man said, good, speaking with the same tenderness and smiling a little as he cupped my face in his palm and bent forward, bringing his own face to mine, as if to kiss me, I thought, which surprised me though I would have welcomed it. Good, he said a third time, his hand letting go of my cheek and taking hold of my hair again, forcing my neck farther back, and then suddenly and with great force he spat into my face. He pulled me forward, still holding my hair, and pressed my face hard into his crotch, hard enough that it must have been as uncomfortable for him as for me; any pleasure we took would be an accident, or a consequence of some other aim. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t feel pleasure; I had never stopped being hard, and when he said to me Breathe me in, smell me, I did so eagerly, taking great gasps. I had felt it before, too, when he spat on me it was like a spark along the track of my spine, who knows why we take pleasure in such things, maybe it’s best not to look into it too closely. He was feeling it too, I could feel his cock thicken against my cheek, then lengthen and lift; there had been no change in it during my long recitation, that catalog of desires I had named, but now at our first real touch he grew hard. He kept one hand at the back of my head, gripping my hair and holding me in place, though there was no need, as surely he knew; but with the other he was reaching for something, as I could tell from the shifts in his balance and weight, and when he pulled me away from him, he slipped it quickly over my head.

• From Story of O (1954)

  “You’re lying, darling, don’t be an ass. You have every right in the world to sleep with him. And I might add that that’s no reason to reject me. Come, let me caress you and I’ll tell you all about Roissy.” Had Jacqueline been afraid that O’s jealousy would explode in her face and then yield to her out of relief when it did not, or was it curiosity, did she want to hear the promised explanations, or was it merely because she loved the patience, the slowness, the passion of O’s caresses? In any event, yield she did. “Tell me about it,” she later said to O. “All right,” O said. “But first kiss the tips of my breasts. It’s time you got used to it, if you’re ever to be of any use to René.” Jacqueline did as she was bade, so well in fact that she wrested a moan from O. “Tell me about it,” she said. O’s tale, however faithful and clear it may have been, and notwithstanding the material proof she herself constituted, seemed completely mad to Jacqueline. “You mean you’re going back in September?” she said. “After we’ve come back from the Midi,” O said. “I’ll take you, or René will.” “To see what it’s like, I wouldn’t mind that,” Jacqueline went on, “but only to see what it’s like.” “I’m sure that can be arranged,” said O, though she was convinced of the contrary. But, she kept telling herself, if she could only persuade Jacqueline to enter the gates at Roissy, Sir Stephen would be grateful to her—and once she was in, there would be enough valets, chains, and whips to teach Jacqueline to obey. She already knew that the summer house that Sir Stephen had rented near Cannes on the Riviera, where she was scheduled to spend the month of August with René, Jacqueline, and him (and with Jacqueline’s younger sister, whom Jacqueline had asked if she could bring along, not because she cared especially to have her but because her mother had been hounding her to obtain O’s permission), she knew that her room, to which she was certain she could entice Jacqueline, who would be unable to refuse when René was away, was separated from Sir Stephen’s bedroom by a wall that looked as though it was full but actually was not; the wall was decorated with a trompe l’oeil latticework which enabled Sir Stephen to raise a blind on his side and thus to see and hear as well as if he had been standing beside the bed. Jacqueline would be surrendered to Sir Stephen’s gaze while O was caressing her, and by the time she found out it would be too late. O was pleased to think that she would deliver Jacqueline by an act of betrayal, because she had felt insulted at seeing Jacqueline’s contempt for her condition as a flogged and branded slave, a condition of which O herself was proud.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  No kids, a serial monogamist, independent, she’s committed to the cause but getting a little tired of the lifestyle. He goes on, “She’s beautiful, too, did I mention that? She lives the life I didn’t live. I feel middle-age and middle-class around her. Nothing wrong with that, you’ll say, but her adrenaline is contagious. She really hits a nerve in me, and she excites me. I’ve developed this amazing crush on her. You know how I’ve been talking about this feeling of deadness, my energy dropping, my body getting heavier? It’s like when I settled down, I shut down. Well, her energy has woken me up. I want to kiss her. I’m scared to do it and scared not to. I feel like a fool, guilty, but I can’t stop thinking about her. You know, I meant it when I made my vows. I’m in love with my wife; this has nothing to do with her. It’s about something I’ve lost that I’m afraid I’ll never get back.” When Ryan married Christine, he slammed the door on cruising. He left his struggling acting career, turned his paralegal moonlighting into a full-time job, and applied for law school. Now he works for environmental organizations as a legal consultant. As I listen to him sounding bewildered by his crush, I see an awakening of his dormant senses. I don’t discourage Ryan’s “immature” wishes, and I don’t lecture him. Nor do I try to talk reason into him or explore the emotional dynamics beneath this presumably “adolescent” crush. I simply value his experience. He is looking at something beautiful; fantasizing about Barbara is a way of living the life he hasn’t chosen. I marvel with him at the allure of the enchantment, while also calling it by its true name: a fantasy. The question I pose to him is how he can relish this experience without allowing the momentary exhilaration to endanger his marriage. “How beautiful and how pathetic,” I say. “It’s great to know you can still come to life like that. And you know that you can never compare this state of intoxication with life at home, because home is about something else. Home is safe. Here, you’re trembling; you’re on shaky ground. You like it, but you’re also afraid that it can take you too far away. I think that you probably don’t let your wife evoke such tremors in you. There’s an evolutionary anthropologist named Helen Fisher who explains that lust is metabolically expensive. It’s hard to sustain after the evolutionary payoff: the kids. You become so focused on the incessant demands of daily life that you short-circuit any electric charge between you. At our next session, Ryan knows exactly where he wants to start. Earlier that week, Christine and Barbara had made plans to go out to dinner.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “Wait! Stop action, Myrna! Here we are again, back in that space. Listen to me. I do not disagree—the dating situation is rough. Hear me: I do not disagree. But our job is to help you make changes in yourself that might make the situation better. Look, I’ll put it straight. You’re an intelligent and attractive woman, very attractive. If you weren’t tied up by disturbing feelings—like resentment and anger, fear and competitiveness—then you’d have no trouble meeting a suitable man.” Myrna felt shaken by Dr. Lash’s bluntness. Although she knew she should stay and respond to his point, she persisted in her agenda. “You’ve never said anything before about my being attractive.” “You don’t consider yourself attractive?” “Sometimes, sometimes not. But I don’t get much affirmation from men. I could use some direct feedback from you.” Ernest paused. How much to say? Knowing he’d have to repeat his words to the countertransference seminar in a few weeks gave him pause. “I have a hunch that if men aren’t responding to you, it’s not because of your physical appearance.” “If you were single, would you respond to my physical appearance?” “Same question; I’ve already answered that. Just a minute ago I said you were an attractive woman. So, tell me, what are you really asking now?” “No, I’m asking a different question. You say I’m attractive, but you haven’t said whether you would respond to my attractiveness.” “Respond?” “Dr. Lash, you’re hedging. I think you know what I mean. If you had met me not as a patient but in some singles situation, then what? Would you check me out in ten seconds and then walk away? Or flirt with me, or maybe try for a one-night stand, planning to walk away afterward?” “Can we take a look at what’s going on between us today? You’re really putting me on the spot. How come? What’s your payoff for that? What’s going on inside, Myrna?” “But aren’t I doing what you’ve said I should be doing, Dr. Lash? Talking about our relationship, about the here-and-now?” “I agree. No question, things have changed here—and for the better. I feel better about the way we’re working, and I hope you do too.” Silence. Myrna refused to meet Ernest’s gaze. “I hope you do too,” Ernest tried again. Myrna nodded, ever so slightly. “You see? Your nod, that microscopic, that embryonic nod! Three millimeters at best. That’s what I mean. I could hardly see it. It’s as though you want to give me as little as possible. That’s what puzzles me. It seems to me that you’re primarily asking, not talking, about our relationship.” “But you said—and said it more than once—that the first stage of change was getting feedback.” “Getting and assimilating feedback. Right. But in our last few hours you’ve just been collecting feedback—more of a question-and-answer format. I mean, I give you feedback, and you then proceed to another question.” “Rather than?”

• From Cleanness (2020)

  It was a chain, I realized as I felt it cold against my neck, or rather the kind of leash you use with difficult dogs, and immediately he pulled it tight, letting me feel the pinch of it. This didn’t excite me, it was part of the pageantry I was indifferent to, but I didn’t object; I assented, though he hadn’t sought my permission or consent. And then he took another chain, this one shorter and finer, with little toothed clamps at each end, which (using both his hands, letting the leash fall free, since after all I wasn’t an animal, I didn’t need to be bound) he attached to my chest. It was the first real pain he had caused me, it made me suck in my breath, but it wasn’t too much pain, and not unexciting; a thrill ran through me at this, too, and at what it promised. Dobre , he said when he had finished, good, though he was speaking of his own work now and not of me. He took up the larger chain again and pulled it tight, twisting his wrist to gather up the slack, which he wrapped around his curled fingers until they were nearly flush against my neck. He was putting me on a short leash, I thought, though I was thinking more of his cock, which I was eager for now, perhaps because of the pain at my chest, which was more than pain, which was excitement too, as was the tightness of the chain around my neck, in which I felt the strength of his arm keeping me from what I wanted. Whatever chemical change desire is had taken hold and I was lit up with it, so that after all I did strain against the leash, he had been right to make it so short. It was a kind of disobedience but a kind he would like, and even as he tightened his grip on the chain I heard him laugh or almost laugh, a slow satisfied chuckle. It was a sound of approval and I glowed with it. She wants something, he said, still chuckling, and he lifted his foot to my crotch, feeling my erection as I knelt before him, she likes it, and then he used his foot to pull my cock down, letting it go so that it snapped back up, making me flinch. Then his foot moved lower and he placed his toes beneath my balls, which he fondled roughly, flexing his ankle until there was not quite pain but an intimation of pain.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I pulled off my own clothes at the door, I left them and walked to the bedroom naked. He was on his back, one of his arms across his face, as if to block the light from his eyes, though there wasn’t any light, or hardly any. The curtains were drawn across the windows, not the heavy drapes but the gauze that obscured the interior from view, my building was surrounded by others, someone might always be watching. I lay down next to him. He was beautiful in the dark, his form a deeper shadow beside me, his olive skin and the dense compactness of him, he was the most beautiful, I thought, as I had thought before. I didn’t touch him, we lay silent for a moment until finally I spoke, whispering Skupi , are you all right, talk to me, say something; and though he didn’t say anything he did make a noise, a small noise of desire or grief, I couldn’t tell which, and then he reached over and pulled me to him, my face first and then as we kissed the rest of me, his hands urged me to move until I was on top of him. It felt like passion, his mouth and his hands on me, it felt like the hunger I was still amazed I could arouse in him. He pressed his pelvis into me, making me feel that he was hard, as I was, his eyes were squeezed shut and his face wore an expression I couldn’t read, and then I pressed down and his lips parted and he made a sound that was unmistakably of pleasure, I thought. He pulled my face to his again, he slid his tongue into my mouth and drew out my own, which he caught with his lips and teeth, biting it almost to the point of pain. All the while he was making a sound I had never heard from him before, a series of short moans, almost pants, and as we kissed and pressed against each other he lifted his knees up on either side of me, as if to wrap them around me, as if to embrace me with all four of his limbs, though that’s not what he did, instead he shifted his hips up. I was confused, it was a reversal of our roles, I had never fucked him before, but when I whispered Are you sure the strange sounds he made intensified, in frequency and volume both. I lifted myself off him and reached to the side table to take a condom from the drawer, but as I tore the little package with my teeth I heard R. say No, and when I said What, taken aback, he said it again, more clearly, No, and though I hesitated I set it aside.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  On the patio a plan was forming to leave the restaurant and explore the town. It was a warm night, early June, still a week or two before the shops would open for the summer tourists, with signs in Russian hung out over cheap souvenirs; we would have the streets to ourselves. N. made a quick trip inside the restaurant, to the long table where food had been laid out, and returned with a bottle of wine, which he held low and tight against his body, hiding it from the waitress. Rations, he said, very important. The restaurant was near the hotel, at the tip of the little peninsula that formed the southern side of the harbor, and the street we walked along was like all the others in the old town, cobbled and lined on both sides with unpainted wooden houses in the National Revival style, two- or three-story buildings, oddly off-kilter and asymmetrical, with elaborate wooden beams buttressing upper floors jutting out over the foundations. They were in varying stages of upkeep, some renovated, others barely shacks, even here along the most desirable streets near the shore, where buildings jostled for a glimpse of the sea. Most of them were empty, shuttered hotels and vacation homes, but occasionally the sound of a television reached us from inside, or light spilled through the slats of the wooden shutters, a few people lived here all year long. 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.

• From Story of O (1954)

  Yet it did not take O long to realize that this smile could be provoked by two things, and Jacqueline was totally unaware of either. The first was the gifts that were given to her, the second, any clear evidence of the desire she aroused—providing, however, that the person who desired her was someone who might be useful to her or who flattered her vanity. In what way was O useful to her? Or was it simply that O was an exception and that Jacqueline enjoyed being desired by O both because she took solace in O’s manifest admiration and also because a woman’s desire is harmless and of no consequence? Still in all, O was convinced that if, instead of bringing Jacqueline a mother-of-pearl brooch or the latest creation of Hermes’ scarves, on which I Love You was printed in every language under the sun, she were to offer Jacqueline the hundred or two hundred francs she seemed constantly to need, Jacqueline would have changed her tune about never having the time to have lunch or tea at O’s place, or would have stopped evading her caresses. But of this O never had any proof. She had only barely mentioned it to Sir Stephen, who was chiding her for her slowness, when René stepped in. The five or six times that René had come by for O, when Jacqueline had happened to be there, the three of them had gone together to the Weber bar or to one of the English bars in the vicinity of the Madeleine; on these occasions René would contemplate Jacqueline with precisely the same mixture of interest, self-assurance, and arrogance with which he would gaze, at Roissy, at the girls who were completely at his disposal. The arrogance slid harmlessly off Jacqueline’s solid, gleaming armor, and Jacqueline was not even aware of it. By a curious contradiction, O was disturbed by it, judging an attitude which she considered quite natural and normal for herself, insulting for Jacqueline. Was she taking up cudgels in defense of Jacqueline, or was it merely that she wanted her all to herself? She would have been hard put to answer that question, all the more so because she did not have her all to herself—at least not yet. But if she finally did succeed, she had to admit it was thanks to René. On three occasions, upon leaving the bar where they had given Jacqueline considerably more whisky than she should have drunk—her cheeks were flushed and shining, her eyes hard—he had driven her home before taking O to Sir Stephen’s.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Desire resists confinement, and commitment mustn’t swallow freedom whole. At the same time, eroticism in the home requires active engagement and willful intent. It is an ongoing resistance to the message that marriage is serious, more work than play; and that passion is for teenagers and the immature. We must unpack our ambivalence about pleasure, and challenge our pervasive discomfort with sexuality, particularly in the context of family. Complaining of sexual boredom is easy and conventional. Nurturing eroticism in the home is an act of open defiance. Notes 1: From Adventure to Captivity The original primordial fire: Octavio Paz. 1995. The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism. San Diego, Calif.: Harvest, p. x. Hence the division between the romantics and the realists: Ethel Spector Person. 1988. Dreams of Love and Fateful Encounters: The Power of Romantic Passion. New York: Penguin. Stephen Mitchell: Stephen A. Mitchell. 2002. Can Love Last?: The Fate of Romance over Time. New York: Norton. Anthony Giddens describes: Anthony Giddens. 1992. The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. The motivational expert Anthony Robbins: At a workshop in Fiji, 2005. As Stephen Mitchell points out: Can Love Last?, p. 44. In the words of Proust: Marcel Proust, from http://www.quotation spage.com/quote/31288.xhtml. Mark Epstein explains: Mark Epstein. 2005. Open to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life. New York: Gotham, p. 45. 2: More Intimacy, Less Sex Love and lust: Jack Morin. 1995. The Erotic Mind. New York: HarperCollins, p. 200. Ethel Specter Person writes: Ethel Spector Person. 1988. Dreams of Love and Fateful Encounters: The Power of Romantic Passion. New York: W.W. Norton, p. 30. Dr. Patricia Love gives voice: Patricia Love and Jo Robinson. 1995. Hot Monogamy: Essential Steps to More Passionate, Intimate Lovemaking. New York: Plume. p. 95. The psychologist Michael Vincent Miller: Michael Vincent Miller. 1995. Intimate Terrorism: The Crisis of Love in an Age of Disillusion. New York: Norton, p. 39. The psychoanalyst Michael Bader: Michael J. Bader. 2002. Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies. New York: St. Martin’s. The sex therapist Dagmar O’Connor: Dagmar O’Connor. 1986. How to Make Love to the Same Person for the Rest of Your Life and Still Love It. London: Virgin. The psychologist Virginia Goldner: Virginia Goldner. 2004. “Review Essay: Attachment and Eros—Opposed or Synergistic?” Psa Dialogues, 14(3), pp. 381–96. Simone de Beauvoir writes: Simone de Beauvoir. 1952. The Second Sex. New York: Knopf, p. 446. The French psychologist Jacques Salomé: Jacques Salomé. 2002. Jamais seuls ensemble: Comment vivre à deux en restant différents. Québec: Éditions de l’Homme, p. 13. 3: The Pitfalls of Modern Intimacy We have no secrets: Carly Simon, from the album No Secrets, Elektra/ Asylum Records, 1972. Tevye, in Fiddler on the Roof: Joseph Stein. 2004. Fiddler on the Roof: Based on the Sholom Aleichem Stories. New York: Limelight. (Reprint of original script, Pocket Books, 1965.) The family therapist Lyman Wynne: Lyman C. Wynne and A. R. Wynne. 1986. “The Quest for Intimacy.”

• From Story of O (1954)

  How could she make her understand—and was it even worth the effort?—that it wasn’t so much that she was in love with Jacqueline, nor for that matter with Natalie or any other girl in particular, but that she was only in love with girls as such, girls in general—the way one can be in love with one’s own image—but in her case she always thought the other girls were more lovely and desirable than she found herself to be. The pleasure she derived from seeing a girl pant beneath her caresses, seeing her eyes close and the tips of her breasts stiffen beneath her lips and teeth, the pleasure she got from exploring her fore and aft with her hand—and from feeling her tighten around her fingers, then sigh and moan—was more than she could bear; and if this pleasure was so intense, it was only because it made her constantly aware of the pleasure which she in turn gave when she tightened around whoever was holding her, whenever she sighed or moaned, with this difference, that she could not conceive of being given thus to a girl, the way this girl was given to her, but only to a man. Moreover, it seemed to her that the girls she caressed belonged by right to the man to whom she belonged, and that she was only present by proxy. Had Sir Stephen come into her room during one of those previous afternoons when Jacqueline had been wont to nap with her, and found O caressing her, she would have spread her charge’s thighs and held them apart with both hands, without the slightest remorse, and in fact with the greatest of pleasure, if it had pleased Sir Stephen to possess her, rather than peering at her through the trellised wall as he had done. She was apt at hunting, a naturally trained bird of prey who would beat the game and always bring it back to the hunter. And speaking of the devil …