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 Aquinas's Summa Theologiae (Critical Essays on the Classics Series) (2006)

  Understood in this way, the will can be seen as part of a larger scheme. Because all things are created by a good God who wills what is good for his creatures, all things are created with an inclination of their own to the good, but of very different sorts. Some, like plants or even inanimate things, have a built-in inclination to the good apart from any cognition of the good. Aquinas sometimes calls this inclination a natural appetite. (The sort of thing he has in mind is exemplified by plants naturally turning toward sunlight.) Higher up the ladder of being are animals of certain sorts which are naturally inclined to the good but with some (sensory) cognition.7 They can cognize particular goods, although they lack the ability to reflect on them or to think of them as good. Inclination dependent on limited cognition of this sort Aquinas calls ‘sensory appetite’. Higher still are human beings whose inclination to the good is dependent on intellect, which allows them not only to cognize particular goods but to think about them reflectively as good. This inclination is rational appetite, and it is what Aquinas takes the will to be.8 So close is the association between intellect and will for Aquinas that he often speaks of the will as being in the intellect,9 and he thinks that anything which has intellect must also have will.10 Understood as rational appetite, the will is the primary mover of all the powers of the soul (including itself) except the nutritive powers,11 and it is also the efficient cause of motion of the body. Most important for our purposes, the will exercises some degree of efficient causality over the intellect. In some circumstances, it can command the intellect directly to adopt or to reject a particular belief.12 It can also move the intellect by directing it to attend to some things and to neglect others,13 or even to stop thinking about something altogether. So, for example, while you are reading a magazine, you come across an advertisement asking for money for children, with an emotionally powerful picture of a starving child. Your intellect recognizes that if you look at the ad for very long, you are likely to succumb to its emotional force. Intellect sees the goodness of contributing to the charity, but it also recognizes that if you give money to this charity, you won’t have it for the new computer you have been coveting. Your desire for the new computer is strong and influences intellect to rank saving money for the computer as best for you now. In consequence of the finding on intellect’s part, and with this influence from the passions, will directs intellect to stop thinking about the charity, and (after a further interaction of intellect and will) you turn the page of your magazine.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Oh, you wise boy!” she laughed, “don’t you see you are skipping the time I most desire you, and that’s not kind to either of us; is it?” “There’s still another way of evasion”, I said, “get me to withdraw before I come the first time, or get up immediately and syringe yourself with water thoroughly: water kills my seed as soon as it touches it—” “But how will that help if you go on half a dozen times more?” she asked. “Doctors say,” I replied, “that what comes from me afterwards is not virile enough to impregnate a woman: I’ll explain the process to you if you like; but you can take it, the fact is as I state it.” “When did you learn all this?” she asked. “It has been my most engrossing study,” I laughed, “and by far the most pleasureful!” “You dear, dear,” she cried, “I must kiss you for that.” “Do you know you kiss wonderfully?” she went on reflectingly, “with a lingering touch of the inside of the lips and then the thrust of the tongue: that’s what excited me so the first time” and she sighed as if delighted with the memory. “You didn’t seem excited,” I said half reproachfully, “for when I wanted another kiss, you drew away and said ‘tomorrow’! Why are women so coquettish, so perverse?” I added, remembering Lucille and Jessie. “I think it is that we wish to be sure of being desired,” she replied, “and a little too that we want to prolong the joy of it, the delight of being wanted, really wanted! It is so easy for us to give and so exquisite to feel a man’s desire pursuing us! Ah how rare it is”, she sighed passionately, “and how quickly lost! You’ll soon tire of your mistress”, she added, “now that I am all yours and thrill only for you” and she took my head in her hands and kissed me passionately, regretfully. “You kiss better than I do, Lorna! Where did you acquire the art, Madame?” I asked, “I fear that you have been a naughty, naughty girl!” “If you only knew the truth,” she exclaimed, “if you only knew how girls long for a lover and burn and itch in vain and wonder why men are so stupid and cold and dull as not to see our desire.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I soon got my arm round her and kept kissing her till she told me she had never known a man so greedy of kisses as I was. It was delicious flattery to me to speak of me as a man and in return I raved about her eyes and mouth and form; caressing her left breast I told her I could divine the rest and knew she had a lovely body. But when I put my hand up her clothes, she stopped me when I got just above her knee and said: “We’d have to be engaged before I could let you do that. Do you really love me?” Of course I swore I did, but when she said she’d have to tell her father that we were engaged to be married, cold shivers went down my back. “I can’t marry for a long time yet”, I said, “I’ll have to make a living first and I’m not very sure where I’ll begin.” But she had heard that an old man wished to adopt me and everyone said that he was very rich, and even her father admitted that I’d be “well fixed.” Meanwhile my right hand was busy: I had got my fingers to her warm flesh between the stockings and the drawers and was wild with desire; soon mouth on mouth I touched her sex. What a gorgeous afternoon we had! I had learned enough now to go slow and obey what seemed to be her moods. Gently, gently I caressed her sex with my finger till it opened and she leaned against me and kissed me of her own will, while her eyes turned up and her whole being was lost in thrills of ecstasy. When she asked me to stop and take my hand away, I did her bidding at once and was rewarded by being told that I was a “dear boy” and “a sweet” and soon the embracing and caressing began again. She moved now in response to my lascivious touchings and when the ecstasy came on her, she clasped me close and kissed me passionately with hot lips and afterwards in my arms wept a little and then pouted that she was cross with me for being so naughty. But her eyes gave themselves to me even while she tried to scold. The dinner bell rang and she said she’d have to go, and we made a meeting for afterwards on the top deck; but as she was getting up, she yielded again to my hand with a little sigh and I found her sex all wet, wet! She got down out of the boat by the main rigging and I waited a few moments before following her. At first our caution seemed likely to be rewarded, chiefly, I have thought since, because everyone believed me to be too young and too small to be taken seriously. But everything is quickly known on seaboard at least by the sailors.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Not at once, eh?” she pouted, “talk to me first. I want to know how you are?” and I drew her to the big armchair and sat down with her in my arms. “What am I to tell you?” I asked, while my hand went up her dress to her warm thighs and sex. She frowned but I kissed her lips and with a movement or two stretched her out on me so that I could use my finger easily. At once her lips grew hot and I went on kissing and caressing till her eyes closed and she gave herself to the pleasure. Suddenly she wound herself upon me and gave me a big kiss. “You don’t talk”, she said. “I can’t”, I exclaimed, making up my mind. “Come”, and I lifted her to her feet and took her into the bedroom. “I’m crazy for you”, I said, “take off your clothes, please.” She resisted a little but when I began loosening her dress, she helped me and took it off. Her knickers, I noticed, were new. They soon fell off and she stood in her chemise and black stockings. “That’s enough, isn’t it?” she said, “Mr. Curious”, and she drew the chemise tight about her. “No”, I cried, “beauty must unveil, please!” The next moment the chemise slipping down caught for a moment on her hips and then slid circling round her feet. Her nakedness stopped my heart; desire blinded me: my arms went round her, straining her soft form to me: in a moment I had lifted her on to the bed, pulling the bed clothes back at the same time. The foolish phrase of being in bed together deluded me: I had no idea that she was more in my power just lying on the edge of the bed; in a moment I had torn off my clothes and boots and got in beside her. Our warm bodies lay together: a thousand hot pulses beating in us: soon I separated her legs and lying on her tried to put my sex into hers, but she drew away almost at once. “O—O, it hurts” she murmured and each time I tried to push my sex in, her “O’s” of pain stopped me.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  For the first time in my life I notice here that the writer’s art is not only inferior to reality in keenness of sensation and emotion; but also more same, monotonous even, because incapable of showing the tiny, yet ineffable differences of the same feeling which difference of personality brings with it. I seem to be repeating myself in describing Kate’s love after Mrs. Mayhew’s, making the girl’s feelings a fainter replica of the woman’s. In reality the two were completely different. Mrs. Mayhew’s feelings long repressed flamed with the heat of an afternoon in July or August; while in Kate’s one felt the freshness and cool of a summer morning, shot through with the suggestion of heat to come. And this comparison even is inept because it leaves out of the account, the effect of Kate’s beauty, the great hazel eyes, the rosied skin, the superb figure. Besides there was a glamour of the spirit about Kate: Lorna Mayhew would never give me a new note that didn’t spring from passion; in Kate I felt a spiritual personality and the thrill of undeveloped possibilities. And still using my utmost skill, I haven’t shown my reader the enormous superiority of the girl and her more unselfish love. But I haven’t finished yet. Smith had given me “The Mill on the Floss” to read; I had never tried George Eliot before and I found that this book almost deserved Smith’s praise. I had read till about one o’clock when my heart heard her; or was it some thrill of expectance? The next moment my door opened and she came in with the mane of hair about her shoulders and a long dressing gown reaching to her stockinged feet. I got up like a flash; but she had already closed the door and bolted it; I drew her to the bed and stopped her from throwing off the dressing-gown: “let me take off your stockings first”, I whispered, “I want you all imprinted on me!” The next moment, she stood there naked, the flickering flame of the candle throwing quaint arabesques of light and shade on her beautiful ivory body: I gazed and gazed: from the navel down she was perfect; I turned her round and the back too, the bottom even was faultless though large; but alas! the breasts were far too big for beauty, too soft to excite! I must think only of the bold curve of her hips, I reflected, the splendor of the firm thighs, the flesh of which had the hard outline of marble and her—sex? I put her on the bed and opened her thighs: her pussy was ideally perfect. At once I wanted to get into her; but she pleaded: “please, dear, come into bed: I’m cold and want you.” So in I got and began kissing her.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I cannot eat in her presence. But I am calm outwardly, with that Oriental placidity of bearing that is so deceptive. She drinks and smokes. She is quite mad, in a sense, subject to fears and manias. Her talk, mostly unconscious, would be revealing to an analyst, but I cannot analyze it. It is mostly lies. The contents of her imagination are realities to her. But what is she building so carefully? An aggrandizement of her personality, a fortifying and glorifying of it. In the obvious and enveloping warmth of my admiration she expands. She seems at once destructive and helpless. I want to protect her. What a joke! I, protect her whose power is infinite. Her power is so strong that I actually believe it when she tells me her destructiveness is unintentional. Has she tried to destroy me? No, she walked into my house and I was willing to endure any pain from her hands. If there is any calculation in her, it comes only afterwards, when she becomes aware of her power and wonders how she should use it. I do not think her evil potency is directed. Even she is baffled by it. I have her in myself now as one to be pitied and protected. She is involved in perversities and tragedies she cannot live up to. I have at last caught her weakness. Her life is full of fantasies. I want to force her into reality. I want to do violence to her. I, who am sunk in dreams, in half-lived acts, see myself possessed by a furious intention: I want to grasp June’s evasive hands, oh, with what strength, take her to a hotel room and realize her dream and mine, a dream she has evaded facing all her life. I went to see Eduardo, tense and shattered by my three hours with June. He saw the weakness in her and urged me to act out my strength. I could hardly think clearly because in the taxi she had pressed my hand. I was not ashamed of my adoration, my humility. Her gesture was not sincere. I do not believe she could love. She says she wants to keep the rose dress I wore the first night she saw me. When I tell her I want to give her a going-away present, she says she wants some of that

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “But how did you do it!” we wanted to know and he gave us his whole experience. “Girls love kissing,” he said, “and so I kissed and kissed her and put my leg on her, and her hand on my cock and I kept touching her breasts and her cunny (that’s what she calls it) and at last I got on her between her legs and she guided my prick into her cunt (God it was wonderful!) and now I go with her every night and often in the day as well. She likes her cunt touched, but very gently”, he added, “she showed me how to do it with one finger like this” and he suited the action to the word. Strangways in a moment became to us not only a hero but a miracle-man; we pretended not to believe him in order to make him tell us more, but in our hearts we knew he was telling us the truth, and we were almost crazy with breathless desire. I got him to invite me up to the Vicarage and I saw Mary the nurse-girl there, and she seemed to me almost a woman and spoke to him as “Master Will” and he kissed her, though she frowned and said “Leave off” and “Behave yourself”, very angrily; but I felt that her anger was put on to prevent my guessing the truth. I was aflame with desire and when I told Howard, he, too, burned with lust, and took me out for a walk and questioned me all over again and, under a haystack in the country we gave ourselves to a bout of frigging which for the first time thrilled me with pleasure. All the time we were playing with ourselves I kept thinking of Mary’s hot slit, as Strangways had described it, and at length a real orgasm came and shook me; the imagining had intensified my delight. Nothing in my life up to that moment was comparable in joy to that story of sexual pleasure as described, and acted for us, by Strangways. MY FATHER. Father was coming: I was sick with fear: he was so strict and loved to punish. On the ship he had beaten me with a strap because I had gone forward and listened to the sailors talking smut: I feared him and disliked him ever since I saw him once come aboard drunk.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I used to illustrate the absurdity of our present system of educating the young by a quaint simile. “When training me to shoot”, I said, “my earthly father gave me a little single-barreled gun, and when he saw that I had learned the mechanism and could be trusted, he gave me a double-barreled shot-gun. After some years I came into possession of a magazine gun which could shoot half a dozen times if necessary without reloading, my efficiency increasing with my knowledge.” My Creator, or Heavenly Father, on the other hand, when I was wholly without experience and had only just entered my teens, gave me, so to speak, a magazine gun of sex, and hardly had I learned its use and enjoyment when he took it away from me forever, and gave me in its place a double-barreled gun: after a few years, he took that away and gave me a single-barreled gun with which I was forced to content myself for the best part of my life. Towards the end the old single-barrel began to show signs of wear and age: sometimes it would go off too soon, sometimes it missed fire and shamed me, do what I would. I want to teach youths how to use their magazine gun of sex so that it may last for years, and when they come to the double-barrel, how to take such care that the good weapon will do them liege service right into their fifties, and the single-barrel will then give them pleasure up to three score years and ten. Moreover, not only do I desire in this way to increase the sum of happiness in the world while decreasing the pains and disabilities of men, but I wish also to set an example and encourage other writers to continue the work that I am sure is beneficent, as well as enjoyable.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  When she returned a few weeks later, I felt as if she were new and unknown and I had to win her again; but as soon as my hand touched her sex, the strangeness disappeared and she gave herself to me with renewed zest. I teased her to tell me just what she felt and at length she consented. “Begin with the first time” I begged, “and then tell what you felt in Kansas City.” “It will be very hard”, she said, “I’d rather write it for you.” “That’ll do just as well”, I replied, and here is the story she sent me the next day. “I think the first time you had me,” she began “I felt more curiosity than desire: I had so often tried to picture it all to myself. When I saw your sex, I was astonished, for it looked very big to me and I wondered whether you could really get it into my sex which I knew was just big enough for my finger to go in. Still I did want to feel your sex pushing into me, and your kisses and the touch of your hand on my sex made me even more eager. When you slipped the head of your sex into mine, it hurt dreadfully; it was almost like a knife cutting into me, but the pain for some reason seemed to excite me and I pushed forward so as to get you further in me; I think that’s what broke my maidenhead. At first I was disappointed because I felt no thrill, only the pain; but when my sex became all wet and open and yours could slip in and out easily, I began to feel real pleasure. I liked the slow movement best; it excited me to feel the head of your sex just touching the lips of mine and when you pushed in slowly all the way, it gave me a gasp of breathless delight; when you drew your sex out, I wanted to hold it in me. And the longer you kept on, the more pleasure you gave me. For hours afterwards my sex was sensitive; if I rubbed it ever so gently, it would begin to itch and burn.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  It will be six or seven years at least before I shall know whether the book is good and life-worthy or not and yet need drives me to publish it at once. Did not Horace require nine years to judge his work? I, therefore, want the reader to know my intention; I want to give him the key, so to speak, to this chamber of my soul. First of all I wished to destroy or, at least, to qualify the universal opinion that love in youth is all romance and idealism. The masters all paint it crowned with roses of illusion: Juliet is only fourteen: Romeo, having lost his love, refuses life: Goethe follows Shakespeare in his Mignon and Marguerite: even the great humorist Heine and the so-called realist, Balzac, adopt the same convention. Yet to me it is absolutely untrue in regard to the male in boyhood and early youth, say from thirteen to twenty: the sex-urge, the lust of the flesh was so overwhelming in me that I was conscious only of desire. When the rattlesnake’s poison-bag is full, he strikes at everything that moves, even the blades of grass; the poor brute is blinded and in pain with the overplus. In my youth I was blind, too, through excess of semen. I often say that I was thirty-five years of age before I saw an ugly woman, a woman that is, whom I didn’t desire. In early puberty, all women tempted me; and all girls still more poignantly. From twenty to twenty-three, I began to distinguish qualities of the mind and heart and soul; to my amazement, I preferred Kate to Lily, though Lily gave me keener sensations: Rose excited me very little yet I knew she was of rarer, finer quality than even Sophy who seemed to me an unequalled bedfellow. From that time on the charms of spirit, heart and soul, drew me with ever-increasing magnetism, overpowering the pleasures of the senses though plastic beauty exercises as much fascination over me today as it did fifty years ago. I never knew the illusion of love, the rose-mist of passion till I was twenty-seven and I was intoxicated with it for years; but that story will be for my second volume. Now strange to say, my loves till I left America just taught me as much of the refinements of passion, as is commonly known in these States. France and Greece made me wise to all that Europe has to teach; that deeper knowledge too is for the second volume in which I shall relate how a French girl surpassed Sophy’s art as far as Sophy surpassed Rose’s ingenuous yielding.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The story marks an epoch in my life. We were taught singing at school and when it was found that I had a good alto voice and a very good ear, I was picked to sing solos, both in school and in the church choir. Before every church festival there was a good deal of practice with the organist, and girls from neighbouring houses joined in our classes. One girl alone sang alto and she and I were separated from the other boys and girls; the upright piano was put across the corner of the room and we two sat or stood behind it almost out of sight of all the other singers; the organist, of course, being seated in front of the piano. The girl E… who sang alto with me was about my own age: she was very pretty or seemed so to me, with golden hair and blue eyes and I always made up to her as well as I could, in my boyish way. One day while the organist was explaining something, E... stood up on the chair and leant over the back of the piano to hear better or see more. Seated in my chair behind her, I caught sight of her legs; for her dress rucked up behind as she leaned over: at once my breath stuck in my throat. Her legs were lovely, I thought, and the temptation came to touch them; for no one could see. I got up immediately and stood by the chair she was standing on. Casually I let my hand fall against her left leg. She didn’t draw her leg away or seem to feel my hand, so I touched her more boldly. She never moved, though now I knew she must have felt my hand, I began to slide my hand up her leg and suddenly my fingers felt the warm flesh on her thigh where the stocking ended above the knee. The feel of her warm flesh made me literally choke with emotion: my hand went on up, warmer and warmer, when suddenly I touched her sex: there was soft down on it. The heart-pulse throbbed in my throat. I have no words to describe the intensity of my sensations. Thank God, E…. did not move or show any sign of distaste. Curiosity was stronger even than desire in me; I felt her sex all over and at once the idea came into my head that it was like a fig (the Italians, I learned later, call it familiarly “fica”); it opened at my touches and I inserted my finger gently, as Strangways had told me that Mary had taught him to do; still E… did not move. Gently I rubbed the front part of her sex with my finger. I could have kissed her a thousand times out of passionate gratitude.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  It will be six or seven years at least before I shall know whether the book is good and life-worthy or not and yet need drives me to publish it at once. Did not Horace require nine years to judge his work? I, therefore, want the reader to know my intention; I want to give him the key, so to speak, to this chamber of my soul. First of all I wished to destroy or, at least, to qualify the universal opinion that love in youth is all romance and idealism. The masters all paint it crowned with roses of illusion: Juliet is only fourteen: Romeo, having lost his love, refuses life: Goethe follows Shakespeare in his Mignon and Marguerite: even the great humorist Heine and the so-called realist, Balzac, adopt the same convention. Yet to me it is absolutely untrue in regard to the male in boyhood and early youth, say from thirteen to twenty: the sex-urge, the lust of the flesh was so overwhelming in me that I was conscious only of desire. When the rattlesnake’s poison-bag is full, he strikes at everything that moves, even the blades of grass; the poor brute is blinded and in pain with the overplus. In my youth I was blind, too, through excess of semen. I often say that I was thirty-five years of age before I saw an ugly woman, a woman that is, whom I didn’t desire. In early puberty, all women tempted me; and all girls still more poignantly. From twenty to twenty-three, I began to distinguish qualities of the mind and heart and soul; to my amazement, I preferred Kate to Lily, though Lily gave me keener sensations: Rose excited me very little yet I knew she was of rarer, finer quality than even Sophy who seemed to me an unequalled bedfellow. From that time on the charms of spirit, heart and soul, drew me with ever-increasing magnetism, overpowering the pleasures of the senses though plastic beauty exercises as much fascination over me today as it did fifty years ago. I never knew the illusion of love, the rose-mist of passion till I was twenty-seven and I was intoxicated with it for years; but that story will be for my second volume. Now strange to say, my loves till I left America just taught me as much of the refinements of passion, as is commonly known in these States. France and Greece made me wise to all that Europe has to teach; that deeper knowledge too is for the second volume in which I shall relate how a French girl surpassed Sophy’s art as far as Sophy surpassed Rose’s ingenuous yielding. [Illustration]

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Since then I have read lascivious books in half a dozen languages and they all represent women coming to an orgasm in the act, as men do, followed by a period of content: which only shows that the books are all written by men and ignorant, insensitive men at that. The truth is hardly one married woman in a thousand is ever brought to her highest pitch of feeling: usually, just when she begins to feel, her husband goes to sleep. If the majority of husbands satisfied their wives occasionally, the Woman’s Revolt would soon move to another purpose: women want above all a lover who loves to excite them to the top of their bent. As a rule men through economic conditions marry so late that they have already half exhausted their virile power before they marry. And when they marry young they are so ignorant and so self-centered that they imagine their wives must be satisfied when they are. Mrs. Mayhew told me that her husband had never excited her really. She denied that she had ever had any acute pleasure from his embraces. “Shall I make you hysterical again?” I asked, out of boyish vanity, “I can, you know!” “You mustn’t tire yourself!” she warned, “my husband taught me long ago that when a woman tires a man, he gets a distaste for her and I want your love, your desire, dear, a thousand times more even that the delight you give me—” “Don’t be afraid”, I broke in, “you are sweet, you couldn’t tire me: turn sideways and put your left leg up, and I’ll just let my sex caress your clitoris back and forth gently; every now and then I’ll let it go right in until our hairs meet.” I kept on this game perhaps half an hour until she first sighed and sighed and then made awkward movements with her pussy which I sought to divine and meet as she wished when suddenly she cried: “Oh! Oh! hurt me, please! hurt me, or I’ll bite you! Oh God, oh, oh”—panting, breathless till again the tears poured down! “You darling!” she sobbed, “how you can love! Could you go on forever?” For answer I put her hand on my sex: “Just as naughty as ever”, she exclaimed, “and I am choking, breathless, exhausted! Oh, I’m sorry”, she went on, “but we should get up, for I don’t want my help to know or guess: niggers talk—” I got up and went to the windows; one gave on the porch but the other directly on the garden. “What are you looking at?” she asked coming to me. “I was just looking for the best way to get out if ever we were surprised”, I said, “if we leave this window open I can always drop into the garden and get away quickly.” “You would hurt yourself”, she cried.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “I’ll give you two,” I whispered, “right now: the first is, I dare you to strip naked as I’m going to do, and I’ll tell you the other when we’re in bed.” Again she tossed her little blue-black head: “pooh!” she cried, “I’ll be undressed first”, and she was. Her beauty made my pulses hammer and parched my mouth. No one could help admiring her: she was very slight, with tiny breasts, as I have said, flat belly and straight flanks and hips: her triangle was only brushed in, so to speak, with fluffy soft hairs, and as I held her naked body against mine, the look and feel of her exasperated my desire. I still admired Kate’s riper, richer, more luscious outlines; her figure was nearer my boyish ideal; but Lily represented a type of adolescence destined to grow on me mightily. In fact as my youthful virility decreased, my love of opulent feminine charms diminished, and I grew more and more to love slender, youthful outlines with the signs of sex rather indicated than pronounced. What an all-devouring appetite Rubens confesses with the great, hanging breasts and uncouth fat pink bottoms of his Venuses! I lifted Lily on to the bed and separated her legs to study her pussy. She made a face at me; but as I rubbed my hot sex against her little button that I could hardly see, she smiled and lay back contentedly. In a minute or two her love-juice came and I got into bed on her and slipped my root into her small cunt: even when the lips were wide open it was closed to the eye and this and her slim nakedness excited me uncontrollably. I continued the slow movements for a few minutes; but once she moved her sex quickly down on mine as I drew out to the lips, and gave me an intense thrill: I felt my seed coming and I let myself go in short, quick thrusts that soon brought on my spasm of pleasure and I lifted her little body against mine and crushed my lips on hers: she was strangely tantalizing, exciting like strong drink. I took her out of bed and used the syringe in her, explaining its purpose, and then went to bed again and gave her the time of her life! Lying between her legs but side by side an hour later, I dared her to tell me how she had lost her maidenhead. I had to tell her first what it was. She maintained stoutly that no “feller” had ever touched her except me and I believed her, for she admitted having caressed herself ever since she was ten: at first she could not even get her forefinger into her pussy she told me. “What are you now?” I asked. “I shall be sixteen next April”, was her reply. About eleven o’clock she dressed and went home, after making another appointment with me.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  GIOVANNI'S ROOM 163 back to her butIfelther eyes. I felt her wait- ing — everything seemed to be waiting. 1 wasn't sure about that letter.' Iwas think- ing. PerhapsI canget out of itwithout having to tell her anything.Tou were so sortof — offhand—I couldn't be sure whether you were glad or sorrytobe throwing in withme.* 'Oh/ she said,iDutwe've always been off- hand. It's the only way I could have said it.Iwas afraidof embarrassing you—don't youunder- standthat?' What I wantedto suggest wasthat she was takingmeoutof desperation, lessbecauseshe wantedmethanbecauseI was there. But I couldnot sayit. I sensed that,thoughitmight be true,sheno longerknewit. TBut,perhaps,' she said, carefully,*youfeel differentlynow. Please say so if youdo.' She waitedformy answerfor a moment.Then: Touknow, I'm notreallythe emancipated girl I trytobe atall. I guessIjust wanta man to comehome tomeevery night. I wanttobeable to sleep with aman withoutbeing afraid he's going toknock me up. Hell,Iwantto be knocked up. I want to starthavingbabies. In a way, it's really all I'm good for.'There was silence again. Is that whatyouwant?' Tes,' Isaid, Tve always wanted that.' I turned toface her, veryquickly, or as though strong hands onmy shoulders had turnedme around. Theroom wasdarkening. She lay on the bed watching me,her mouth slightlyopen and her eyes likelights. I was 164 James Baldwin terribly aware of her body, and of mine. I walked over toher and put my head on her breast. Iwanted to hethere, hidden and still. Butthen, deep within, Ifelt her moving, rush- ing toopen the gates of her strong, walled city and let theking of glory come in. Dear Dad, I wrote, Iwon'tkeep any secrets from youanymore, I found agirl and I want to marryherand itwasn'tthat Iwaskeeping sec- rets from you, I just wasn't sure she wanted to marryme. Butshe's finally agreed toriskit, poor soft-headedthing that sheis, andwe're plan- ningtotiethe knotwhile we're still overhere andmake ourway homeby easy stages.She's not French, incaseyou're worried (Iknow you don'tdisliketheFrench, it's justthatyoudon't think they have ourvirtues —I mightadd, they don't.) Anyway,Hella — hernameisHella Lin- coln,shecomes from Minneapolis, her father and mother still live there, he's a corporation lawyer,she'sjustthe little woman — Hellawould likeusto honeymoon here and itgoes without saying thatI like anything she likes.So. Now willyou sendyour loving son some of his hard- earnedmoney.Tout de suite. That's French for pronto. Hella — the photo doesn't reallydo her jus- tice — came over here a couple of yearsago to study painting. Then she discovered shewasn't a painter and just about the time she was ready to throw herself into the Seine,wemet,and

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  This brings me to the last consideration of the erotic. To share the power of each other’s feelings is different from using another’s feelings as we would use a kleenex. When we look the other way from our experience, erotic or otherwise, we use rather than share the feelings of those others who participate in the experience with us. And use without consent of the used is abuse. In order to be utilized, our erotic feelings must be recognized. The need for sharing deep feeling is a human need. But within the european-american tradition, this need is satisfied by certain proscribed erotic comings-together. These occasions are almost always characterized by a simultaneous looking away, a pretense of calling them something else, whether a religion, a fit, mob violence, or even playing doctor. And this misnaming of the need and the deed give rise to that distortion which results in pornography and obscenity—the abuse of feeling. When we look away from the importance of the erotic in the development and sustenance of our power, or when we look away from ourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert with others, we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy in the satisfying, rather than make connection with our similarities and our differences. To refuse to be conscious of what we are feeling at any time, however comfortable that might seem, is to deny a large part of the experience, and to allow ourselves to be reduced to the pornographic, the abused, and the absurd. The erotic cannot be felt secondhand. As a Black lesbian feminist, I have a particular feeling, knowledge, and understanding for those sisters with whom I have danced hard, played, or even fought. This deep participation has often been the forerunner for joint concerted actions not possible before. But this erotic charge is not easily shared by women who continue to operate under an exclusively european-american male tradition. I know it was not available to me when I was trying to adapt my consciousness to this mode of living and sensation. Only now, I find more and more women-identified women brave enough to risk sharing the erotic’s electrical charge without having to look away, and without distorting the enormously powerful and creative nature of that exchange. Recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama. For not only do we touch our most profoundly creative source, but we do that which is female and self-affirming in the face of a racist, patriarchal, and anti-erotic society. The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Not a bit of it”, I answered, “I could drop half as far again without injury, the only thing is, I must have boots on and trousers, or those thorns of yours would give me gip!.” … “You boy”, she exclaimed laughing: “I think after your strength and passion, it is your boyishness I love best”—and she kissed me again and again. “I must work”, I warned her, “Smith has given me a lot to do.” “Oh, my dear”, she said, her eyes filling with tears, “that means you won’t come tomorrow or”, she added hastily, “even the day after?” “I can’t possibly”, I declared, “I have a good week’s work in front of me; but you know I’ll come the first afternoon I can make myself free and I’ll let you know the day before, sweet!” She looked at me with tearful eyes and quivering lips: “love is its own torment!” she sighed while I dressed and got away quickly. The truth was I was already satiated: her passion held nothing new in it: she had taught me all she could and had nothing more in her, I thought; while Kate was prettier and much younger and a virgin. Why shouldn’t I confess it? It was Kate’s virginity attracted me irresistibly: I pictured her legs to myself, her hips and thighs and her sex: she wouldn’t have a harsh bush of hairs; already I felt the silken softness of her triangle: would it be brown or have strands of gold in it like her hair? The next few days passed in reading the book Smith had lent me, especially “Das Kapital”, the second book of which, with its frank exposure of the English factory system, was simply enthralling: I read some of Tacitus, too, and Xenophon with a crib and learned a page of Greek every day by heart, and whenever I felt tired of work, I laid siege to Kate. That is, I continued my plan of campaign: one day I called her brother into my room and told him true stories of buffalo hunting and of fighting with Indians; another day I talked theology with the father or drew the dear mother out to tell of her girlish days in Cornwall: “I never thought I’d come down to work like this in my old age; but then children take all and give little; I was no better as a girl; I remember”—and I got a scene of her brief courtship! I had won the whole household long before I said a word to Kate beyond the merest courtesies. A week or so passed like this till one day I held them all after dinner while I told the story of our raid into Mexico. I took care, of course, that Kate was out of the room. Towards the end of my tale, Kate came in: at once I hastened to the end abruptly and after excusing myself, went into the garden.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Never eloquent,” he replied deprecatingly, “but sometimes very earnest perhaps, especially when some event of the day comes to point the Gospel story—” he talked like a man of fair education and I could see he was pleased at being drawn to the front. Then Kate brought me fresh coffee and Mrs. Gregory came in and continued her meal and the talk became interesting, thanks to Mr. Gregory who couldn’t help saying how the fire in Chicago had stimulated Christianity in his hearers and given him a great text. I mentioned casually that I had been in the fire and told of Randolph Street Bridge and the hanging and what else I saw there and on the lakefront that unforgettable Monday morning. At first Kate went in and out of the room removing dishes as if she were not concerned in the story, but when I told of the women and girls half-naked at the lakeside while the flames behind us reached the zenith in a red sheet that kept throwing flame-arrows ahead and started the ships burning on the water in front of us, she too stopped to listen. At once I caught my cue, to be liked and admired by all the rest; but indifferent, cold to her. So I rose as if her standing enthralled had interrupted me and said: “I’m sorry to keep you: I’ve talked too much, forgive me!” and betook myself to my room in spite of the protests and prayers to continue of all the rest. Kate just flushed; but said nothing. She attracted me greatly: she was infinitely desirable, very good-looking and very young (only sixteen, her mother said later) and her great hazel eyes were almost as exciting as her pretty mouth or large hips and good height. She pleased me intimately but I resolved to win her altogether and felt I had begun well: at any rate she would think about me and my coldness. I spent the evening in putting out my half dozen books, not forgetting my medical treatises, and then slept, the deep sleep of sex recuperation. The next morning I called on Smith again where he lived with the Reverend Mr. Kellogg, who was the Professor of English History in the University, Smith said. Kellogg was a man of about forty, stout and well-kept, with a faded wife of about the same age. Rose, the pretty servant, let me in: I had a smile and warm word of thanks for her: she was astonishingly pretty, the prettiest girl I had seen in Lawrence: medium height and figure with quite lovely face and an exquisite rose-leaf skin! She smiled at me; evidently my admiration pleased her.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Pluck?” She wrinkled her forehead and pursed her large mouth; “Courage, I mean”, I said. “Oh, I have courage!” she rejoined. “Did you ever come upstairs to Mrs. Mayhew’s bedroom”, I asked, “when I had gone up for a book?” The black eyes danced and she laughed knowingly. “Mrs. Mayhew said that she had taken you upstairs to bathe your poor head after dancing”, she retorted disdainfully, “but I don’t care: it’s nothing to do with me what you do!” “It has too,” I went on, carrying the war into her country. “How?” she asked. “Why, the first day you went away and left me though I was really ill”, I said, “so I naturally believed that you disliked me though I thought you lovely!” “I’m not lovely,” she said, “my mouth’s too big and I’m too slight.” “Don’t malign yourself,” I replied earnestly, “that’s just why you are seductive and excite a man.” “Really?” she cried, and so the talk went on while I cudgeled my brains for an opportunity but found none and all the while was in fear lest her father and mother should return. At length angry with myself, I got up to go on some pretext and she accompanied me to the stoop. I said “Good-bye” on the top step and then jumped down by the side with a prayer in my heart that she’d come a step or two down and she did. There she stood, her hips on a level with my mouth; in a moment my hands went up her dress, the right to her sex, the left to her bottom behind to hold her: the thrill as I touched her half-fledged sex was almost painful in intensity. Her first movement brought her sitting down on the step above me and at once my finger was busy in her slit. “How dare you!” she cried, but not angrily, “take your hand away!” “Oh, how lovely your sex is!” I exclaimed as if astounded, “Oh, I must see it and have you, you miracle of beauty!” and my left hand drew down her head for a long kiss while my middle finger still continued its caress. Of a sudden her lips grew hot and at once I whispered.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “I want you so, Kate,” I said, trying to kiss her: she drew her head aside: “That’s why you’ve kept away all afternoon” I suppose; and she looked at me with sidelong glance. An inspiration came to me: “Kate”, I exclaimed, “I had to be fitted for my new clothes!” “Forgive me”, she cried at once, that excuse being valid: “I thought, I feared—oh I’m suspicious without reason, I know, am jealous without cause, there! I confess!” and the great hazel eyes turned on me full of love. I played with her breasts, whispering “When am I to see you naked, Kate? I want to; when?” “You’ve seen most of me!” and she laughed joyously! “All right,” I said, turning away, “if you are resolved to make fun of me and be mean to me—” “Mean to you!” she cried, catching me and swinging me round, “I could easier be mean to myself. I’m glad you want to see me, glad and proud, and tonight, if you’ll leave your door open, I’ll come to you: mean, oh—’and she gave her soul in a kiss. “Isn’t it risky?” I asked. “I tried the stairs this afternoon,” she glowed, “they don’t creak: no one will hear, so don’t sleep or I’ll surprise you”—By way of sealing the compact, I put my hand up her clothes and caressed her sex; it was hot and soon opened to me. “There now, Sir, go!” she smiled, “or you’ll make me very naughty and I have a lot to do!” “How do you mean ‘naughty’,” I said, “tell me what you feel? please!” “I feel my heart beating”, she said, “and, and—oh! wait till tonight and I’ll try to tell you, dear!” and she pushed me out of the door.