Desire

Passages

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

Page 165 of 344 · 20 per page

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  Curtain, he said. No. I’m a bishop, and I have a friend with me, a pocket-sized child. This little, pocket-sized protégé . . . Lifting his coat to the side, he showed us a rag doll in plaid shorts, its mouth attached to his robe, at his crotch. It’s a little boy, he said. Phoebe, I want to be introduced. This is Will Kendall. Will, this is Julian Noh. You’ve— Oh, you’re Will, he said. He whirled toward me, his robe flaring. Of course, you are. I’m delighted. Phoebe’s told me all about you. Julian, Phoebe said. Yes. The doll, she said. I know, it’s brilliant. I mean, he is. He’s a brilliant little child, so gifted. Oh, please. It’s an homage. I’m paying tribute to the Church, with its, hm, sacerdotal—I think Liesl’s waving at me. I’m going. If you want to find us, we’ll be at 161 Lowell all night. You, too, Will. Let’s be friends. He thumbed a cross on top of Phoebe’s head, and left. So, that’s Julian, I said. She’d talked about him: a close friend, the first person she’d met at Edwards. I asked what he’d said about an homage, and she explained he was raised Catholic. But he’s since quit the faith, she said. I had more questions, but singing burst out again. Three additional men, friends of Phoebe, tumbled toward us. They sported loose ties, silk leashes they’d pulled free. She introduced everyone, using full names. They asked if they’d see us at Phil Buxton’s tonight. She’d told me she had to go home in a little while: to fit in a bit of studying, for once, she’d said. But they teased Phoebe; they cajoled, like puppies. I smiled at jokes I didn’t understand. I’d attended Jubilee, the Bible college in California, until I lost my faith, at which point I’d had to give up a long- held plan to assign my life to God. I then applied to new schools, including Edwards, as distant from California as I could get. Child evangelical that I’d been, I knew as little about pop culture as I did about East Coast shibboleths. Why did Edwards men wear so much pink, and what, exactly, was a—cocksin? No, a coxswain. But Phoebe, think of Buxton! the three men cried. It’s his birthday, no less. While they begged, I kept smiling. She showed a wide slice of throat each time she laughed. Blood surged up the sharp, pale incline of her face. The tips of her ears burned red. I imagined Phoebe sprawled in bed, a thin dress pulled up like a blown magnolia. The halfwit lout on top, his pants down. I thought about what I’d offered Phoebe. I figured it would be a joke, this John Leal riddle. Phoebe’s friends loved plotting intricate pranks; they hosted lavish parties, springing naked through college lawns.

• From Hot Rods: Gay Erotic Stories (2011)

  He’d seen the big tool before. They had shared the camp’s shower twice and, restricted to sparing use of the hot water, had taken turns soaping and rinsing. Randy had sprung wood, captivated by the blond sergeant’s lean build and flopping rod. He had thought, or maybe only imagined that the sergeant’s cock had thickened as well. Now, on his knees on the floor of an enemy hovel, he prayed it would grow again and rise up to meet his trembling lips and tongue. “If cock is what you need right now, be my guest, private.” Randy shuddered again, mewling as he managed to fish out the prize he sought, and stunned at the words he’d heard coming from above. Out it came. Bobbing from between the gaping fly of Kent’s combat fatigues, the pink rod rose up in a jutting arc to slap against Randy’s dimpled, unshaven chin and across his open mouth. For the first time in his short tour of duty, he attacked. His mouth opened, his full lips gobbled as his tongue came out to thrust and twist. Hooded, the cock in his face revealed itself as flesh peeled back, and knob and slit slammed into his wet mouth. Randy, on his knees, weapon on the floor between his thighs, sucked cock. The taste, the feel, the heat of that soaring tool in his mouth was exactly what he craved, longed for, absolutely had to have. He bobbed over the fat crown, slurping noisily, smacking his lips, tongue twirling to suck up the dribble of drooling precum. Not content with just the plump head, he gulped air as he drove downward, intent on feeling the torrid shank between his lips. It was one of the thickest he’d ever encountered, his small mouth stretched wide as he pushed lower and lower. Still, a mere half of the big thing in his mouth was not enough. He needed it all. Shaking, snorting, and slurping, he lunged, opening his gullet and gobbling like an insane man—or one whose life was in constant and immediate danger. He took it to the root, feeling blond hair in his nostrils, throbbing cockhead in his pulsing throat, and fat meat stuffing his mouth. He gurgled around it, amazed at how he’d managed to deep-throat all that cock. “Fuck, private! So good! So damn good!” Kent’s usually impassive voice shook as his lean body jerked forward, cock impaled in soldier-throat to the root. Randy felt the big meat pulse in his mouth and throat and reveled in the realization he was pleasing the tall sergeant. He began to bob over the stiff joint, using his full lips to massage the shank as his tongue tickled the crown, and then his throat encased it. Gulping like a starving man, he assaulted the sergeant’s prick with total abandon.

• From Hot Rods: Gay Erotic Stories (2011)

  “Damn right,” I growled, carefully hiding my shudder as the horsehair again tickled my arm. “I’m going to milk your tits and your dick and your nuts, then I’m going to fuck you, ponyboy.” I twisted the other nipple. “This stallion’s ready to mount your ass and ride you hard. You ready for some topclass stud service?” “Yes, sir!” Jake gasped. He cried out as I pulled on the horsehair. I tugged a few more times, letting the plug stretch him some more. Then I slowly pulled the pony-tailed butt plug free. It was warm from his ass, slick and dripping with lube. His asslips were loose and puffy, so goddamn inviting. I couldn’t resist one little kiss. Okay, more than one. Then I reached down and grabbed my dick. I indulged myself in a deep, long, slurping, sucking, tongue-fuck that had Jake moaning and shaking beneath me. Damn, his ass tasted fine. “Please, sir. Please! Fuck, oh fuck! That feels good!” My dick was ready to shoot. I stood up and gloved on the rubber. I stuffed handfuls of lube up Jake’s ass and slathered my dick. Then I positioned myself, grabbed his slender hips, and let the tip of my dick kiss softly up against his waiting hole. As I pressed against the warm gate to his body, I licked my lips and once again savored the taste of Jake’s ass. “Get ready for a ride, cowboy,” I growled, pressing in lightly. My dick slid in with no resistance. I shuddered as his warm, welcoming ass slowly enveloped my shaft. I swear his asslips kissed their way up my dick. Fuck, oh, FUCK! This boy was good! I held his hips tightly, setting up a slow, steady rhythm, in and out, in and out, grinding deep each time he gasped. “Harder, sir. Fuck me harder. Right there! Please!” I shook as he trembled violently at the pressure on his joy spot, then I shoved in again. Jake’s breathing quickened. I reached down and grabbed his nuts. They were tight up against his wildly waving cock. He was building up to one helluva come. “These ready to shoot, cowboy? You ready to drain your balls with a good, hot come?” “Yes, SIR!” he gasped. He arched up against me, the hat crushing between us. My hand slid down over his turgid shaft and as my fingers slid up, I felt the silky smoothness of his thoroughly exposed cockhead slide beneath my fingertips. Jake jerked hard beneath me. I felt the spasm all the way to my balls. I yanked his hips up hard and growled low in my throat. “Jerk your dick, cowboy. We’re going for a long, hard ride.”

• From Hot Rods: Gay Erotic Stories (2011)

  “Really?” He squeezed Teddy’s skull for a moment. “How do I know you’re not lying to me?” “I’m not, sir.” “Oh, I think you’re probably not. So, what is it? You saw my bike and you just lost all sense of control?” The tank was entirely clean of cum at that point, but Howard didn’t let him lift his head. The tongue bath continued, and the smell of gasoline filled his head. Would he always link gasoline to that moment? Would he be able to fill up his car without getting a hard-on? Teddy suspected the answer to that question was no, especially since he wanted to beg Howard to never let go of him. “I couldn’t…I couldn’t help myself, sir.” “Is that a fact?” “Yes, sir.” “Because it’s my bike?” “Yes, sir.” The words were barely out of his mouth before he cried out with shock and pain. Howard’s fingers were closed around his balls like a vise, squeezing him through the denim of his shorts. He didn’t try to twist away—but only because he didn’t want to risk tipping the bike. “You like this, too?” “I…” “Don’t lie to me, boy.” “Yes, sir.” “Get down off that bike. It’s not yours.” As soon as Howard released him, Teddy scrambled off the bike. A hard hand on his shoulder forced him to the dirty floor. It put him eye-level with Howard’s cock, and his erection seemed even more massive from that vantage. Every muscle in his body strained forward, and he wanted to close his mouth over the hard line and bite him through the thick denim. “Get down on your hands and knees. Like a dog.” Teddy dropped forward without protest. His cock hung between his legs, poking out through his open fly. He wished he could tuck himself back in his pants. Or take off his shorts completely. “You like the taste of dirt and oil so much? Lick my boots.” “Sir?” “Lick them.” Teddy looked up through his lashes, staring at Howard’s face, looking for any sort of sign. The man’s features were impassive, his eyes small and impossible to read. Teddy lowered his head slowly, giving Howard ample time to tell him to stop, that he was just kidding, that this was ridiculous. But Howard didn’t speak. He didn’t move—not even a twitch. And Teddy had no choice but to lick the tip, wincing at the strong taste of the road—asphalt, and exhaust, and oil, and leather, and heat. “Again. Lick the other one.”

• From Hot Rods: Gay Erotic Stories (2011)

  “Don’t look up,” I yell over the grating metallic scream of the cage, wrapping my fingers around his forearm. His muscles are tense and as hard as stone under my hand. Lifting weights, doing chin-ups and push-ups has kept him in shape, bulked him up. He’s strong enough to wield a sledgehammer, or keep a jackhammer under control. Strong enough for the work that needs to get done, if he can just keep his cool. “Don’t think about it. We’re almost there.” The fear fades, and he nods, takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. I can feel his muscles relax under my hand. Good boy. That’s when I know for sure that he’s going to be okay. He’ll make it, tough it out. He’s got sandhog blood. We finally hit bottom, stepping out of the cage into the bellout area. Assigned to work breaking up rocks the tunnel boring machine spits out, we pick up a pair of sledgehammers and hop the railroad car that will take us to the rock face at the head of the tunnel. It’s hard, backbreaking, sweaty work, but it sure as hell ain’t rocket science. Billy’s got a strong back. He should do fine. The morning passes without incident. Billy proves to be a hard worker, swinging his sledge tirelessly against the rock, breaking down the larger pieces so they can be carried back up to the surface on the conveyer belts. After an hour at this, his flannel shirt is plastered to his body, soaked from both sweat and the water that constantly drips down from the rock ceiling. Under the pretense of supervision, I stand back and watch Billy’s muscles move fluidly underneath the wet material, rock-hard biceps bulging as he smashes the rock into gravel. Billy’s thighs are powerful, his ass firm as it clenches under his jeans. I wonder if he’d look as good naked as he does under those wet clothes. Some guys don’t, but I imagine that Billy would look even better in his skin. It’s the best show I’ve seen all week, and I’m almost disappointed when the lunch whistle blows. “Lunchtime. Good, I’m starving,” I holler over the roar of the machinery. True enough, but it’s not food that I want. I’m hungry to take a bite out of Billy’s tight ass, to suck his cum out through his dick until he whimpers, but unfortunately that’s not on the menu. “I smell like a fucking sewer,” Billy says, taking a quick whiff of his armpit after he drops his sledge. Personally, I’m into the smell of a hardworking man, musky and strong, the odor of male. I wouldn’t mind burying my face in his hairy pit, taking a lick, but Billy doesn’t seem to have the same appreciation for it. He screws up his face, waving a hand in front of his nose.

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  Nel's experience on the train and her newfound "me-ness" foster her creation of a self, like Sula, outside the confines of girlhood/womanhood, and exclusive of the repressive middle-class Victorian values of her mother and licentious behavior of her grandmother Rochelle Sabat, "a Creole whore" (16). Not only does Nel dissociate herself from the sexual disarray, marked by both agency and vulnerability, but she undergoes, concomitantly, a journey toward her newfound identity: a "me-ness" rooted not in an already fixed state of being but, rather, gained through an existential process marked by catharsis in which her identity (politics) is not only transformed but actualized. Nel's cathartic experiences reverberate with what Deborah McDowell recognizes precisely as the "notion of character as static essence" reinstated "with the idea of character as process. Whereas the former is based on the assumption that the SELF is knowable, centered, and unified," as she further avers, "the latter is based on the assumption that the SELF is multiple, fluid, relational, and in a perpetual state of becoming."22 And so, Nel establishes a "self" incongruous with the diametrically opposing identities of Helene and Rochelle, the apotheosis of propriety and promiscuity, respectively. She enacts her/this incongruity through her cultivation of a friendship with Sula, the embodiment of nonconformity. Sula's and Nel's inventing themselves outside the script and its strictures materializes in "1922" in two consequential correlating events: their masturbatory and homoerotic "grass play" scene and, second, the interlocking tragic interactions with Chicken Little. Both events evidence their disengagement with expectations governing black female behavior through their empowering homosocial relationship, as well as illumine their gestures toward liberation, if even metaphorically, from patriarchy and the regulation of female sexuality. Transpiring near the riverbank, the grass play scene involves Sula and Nel, "without ever meeting each other's eyes," stroking blades of grass "up and down, up and down." Upon taking possession of a "thick twig," Nel removes its bark with her nail, stripping it down to "a smooth, creamy innocence." Sula replicates Nel's move with a twig of her own, before the two begin uprooting grass to make a bare spot, on which to trace "intricate patterns" with their twigs, after which they "poked" them "rhythmically and intensely into the earth, making a small neat hole that grew deeper and wider with the least manipulation of [the] twig" (58). After "more strenuous digging and [...] rising," the holes grew deeper and larger, and "[t]ogether they worked until the two holes were one and the same."

• From The Decameron (1353)

  It is not many years since there lived (and belike yet liveth) at Bologna a very great and famous physician, known by manifest renown to well nigh all the world. His name was Master Alberto and such was the vivacity of his spirit that, albeit he was an old man of hard upon seventy years of age and well nigh all natural heat had departed his body, he scrupled not to expose himself to the flames of love; for that, having seen at an entertainment a very beautiful widow lady, called, as some say, Madam Malgherida[70] de' Ghisolieri, and being vastly taken with her, he received into his mature bosom, no otherwise than if he had been a young gallant, the amorous fire, insomuch that himseemed he rested not well by night, except the day foregone he had looked upon the delicate and lovesome countenance of the fair lady. Wherefore he fell to passing continually before her house, now afoot and now on horseback, as the occasion served him, insomuch that she and many other ladies got wind of the cause of his constant passings to and fro and oftentimes made merry among themselves to see a man thus ripe of years and wit in love, as if they deemed that that most pleasant passion of love took root and flourished only in the silly minds of the young and not otherwhere. [Footnote 70: Old form of Margherita.]

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Some, then, of my censurers say that I do ill, young ladies, in studying overmuch to please you and that you please me overmuch. Which things I do most openly confess, to wit, that you please me and that I study to please you, and I ask them if they marvel thereat,--considering (let be the having known the dulcet kisses and amorous embracements and delightsome couplings that are of you, most sweet ladies, often gotten) only my having seen and still seeing your dainty manners and lovesome beauty and sprightly grace and above all your womanly courtesy,--whenas he who had been reared and bred on a wild and solitary mountain and within the bounds of a little cell, without other company than his father, no sooner set eyes on you than you alone were desired of him, you alone sought, you alone followed with the eagerness of passion. Will they, then, blame me, back bite me, rend me with their tongues if I, whose body Heaven created all apt to love you, I, who from my childhood vowed my soul to you, feeling the potency of the light of your eyes and the sweetness of your honeyed words and the flame enkindled by your piteous sighs,--if, I say, you please me or if I study to please you, seeing that you over all else pleased a hermitling, a lad without understanding, nay, rather, a wild animal? Certes, it is only those, who, having neither sense nor cognizance of the pleasures and potency of natural affection, love you not nor desire to be loved of you, that chide me thus; and of these I reck little.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Angela Crossby was amazingly blonde, her hair was not so much golden as silver. She wore it cut short like a medieval page; it was straight, and came just to the lobes of her ears, which at that time of pompadours and much curling gave her an unusual appearance. Her skin was very white, and Stephen decided that this woman would never have a great deal of colour, nor would her rather wide mouth be red, it would always remain the tint of pale coral. All the colour that she had seemed to lie in her eyes, which were large and fringed with long fair lashes. Her eyes were of rather an unusual blue that almost seemed to be tinted with purple, and their candid expression was that of a child — very in- nocent it was, a trustful expression. And Stephen as she looked at those eyes felt indignant, remembering the gossip she had heard about the Crossbys. The Crossbys, as she knew, were deeply resented. He had been an important Birmingham magnate who had lately retired from some hardware concern, on account of his health, or so ran the gossip. His wife, it was rumoured, had been on the stage in New York, so that her antecedents were doubtful — no one really THE WELL OF LONELINESS 145 knew anything at all about her, but her curious hair gave grounds for suspicion. An American wife who had been an actress was a very bad asset for Crossby. Nor was Crossby himself a prepossess- ing person; when judged by the county’s standards, he bounded. Moreover he showed signs of unpardonable meanness. His sub- scription to the Hunt had been a paltry five guineas. He had writ- ten to say that his very poor health would preclude his hunting, and had actually added that he hoped the Hunt would keep clear of his covers! And then every one felt a natural resentment that The Grange should have had to be sacrificed for money — quite a small Tudor house it was yet very perfect. But Captain Ramsay, its erstwhile owner, had died recently, leaving large debts behind him, so his heir, a young cousin who lived in London, had promptly sold to the first wealthy bidder — hence the advent of Mr. Crossby. Stephen, looking at Angela, remembered these things, but they suddenly seemed devoid of importance, for now those child- like eyes were upon her, and Angela was saying: “1 don’t know how to thank you for saving my Tony, it was wonderful of you! If you hadn’t been there they’d have let him get killed, and I’m just devoted to Tony.’

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Lucidity: There is in Henry a lack of feeling (not a lack of passion or emotion) that is betrayed by his emphasis on fucking and talking. When he speaks about other women, what he remembers of them are the defects, the sensual characteristics, or the disputes. The rest is either absent or implied. I don’t know yet. But feelings are fetters. Henry is not to be worshiped as a human being, but as a genius-monster. He may be soft-hearted but only indiscriminately so. He gave Paulette, out of generosity, the pair of stockings I had left in his drawer, my best pair, while I was wearing mended stockings so I could save to buy gifts for him. The money I sent him from Austria, for a woman, he spent on records for me. Yet he stole 500 francs from Osborn’s legacy to his girl friend when Osborn left for America. He gives my dog half his steak, yet he keeps the surplus change given to him by a taxi driver. These sudden acts of callousness, which also appear in June, bewilder me and I expect to suffer from them, though Henry swears he could never act thus with me. And so far I cannot see anything in his treatment of me but the utmost delicacy. He has not hesitated to fling out cruel truths—he is fully aware of my defects—but at the same time he succumbs to the spell, the softness. Why do I trust him so, believe in him, have no fear of him? Perhaps it’s as much of a mistake as it is for Hugo to trust me. I crave Henry, only Henry. I want to live with him, be free with him, suffer with him. Phrases from his letters haunt me. Yet I have doubts about our love. I fear my impetuosity. Everything is in danger. All that I have created. I follow Henry the writer with my writer’s soul, I enter into his feelings as he wanders through the streets, I partake of his curiosities, his desires, his whores, I think his thoughts. Everything in us is married. Henry, you are not lying to me; you are all I feel you are. Don’t deceive me. My love is too new, too absolute, too deep. As Hugo and I walked tonight from the top of the hill I saw Paris lying in a heat haze. Paris. Henry. I did not think of him as a man, but as life. Perfidiously, I said to Hugo, “It is so fearfully hot. Couldn’t we ask Fred and Henry and Paulette for a visit overnight?”

• From Bluets (2009)

  61. In his book On Being Blue, William Gass argues that what we readers really want is “the penetration of privacy”: “We want to see under the skirt.” But his penetration is eventually tiresome, even to himself: “What good is my peek at her pubic hair if I must also see the red lines made by her panties, the pimples on her rump, broken veins like the print of a lavender thumb, the stepped-on look of a day’s-end muff? I’ve that at home.” After asserting that the blue we want from life is in fact found only in fiction, he counsels the writer to “give up the blue things of this world in favor of the words which say them.” 62. This is puritanism, not eros. For my part I have no interest in catching a glimpse of or offering you an unblemished ass or an airbrushed cunt. I am interested in having three orifices stuffed full of thick, veiny cock in the most unforgiving of poses and light. I will not choose between the blue things of the world and the words that say them: you might as well be heating up the poker and readying your eyes for the altar. Your loss. 63. Generally speaking I do not hunt blue things down, nor do I pay for them. The blue things I treasure are gifts, or surprises in the landscape. The rocks I dug up this summer in the north country, for example, each one mysteriously painted round its belly with a bright blue band. The little square junk of navy blue dye you brought me long ago, when we barely knew each other, folded neatly into a paper wrapper. 64. It was around this time that I was planning to travel to many famously blue places: ancient indigo and woad production sites, the Chartres Cathedral, the Isle of Skye, the lapis mines of Afghanistan, the Scrovegni Chapel, Morocco, Crete. I made a map, I used colored pins, etc. But I had no money. So I applied for grant after grant, describing how exciting, how original, how necessary my exploration of blue would be. In one application, written and sent late at night to a conservative Ivy League university, I described myself and my project as heathen, hedonistic, and horny. I never got any funding. My blues stayed local. 65. The instructions printed on the blue junk’s wrapper: Wrap Blue in cloth. Stir while squeezing the Blue in the last rinsing water. Dip articles separately for a short time; keep them moving . I liked these instructions. I like blues that keep moving. 66. Yesterday I picked up a speck of blue I’d been eyeing for weeks on the ground outside my house, and found it to be a poison strip for termites. Noli me tangere, it said, as some blues do. I left it on the ground.

• From Bluets (2009)

  Each female mates only once. She incubates the eggs alone. 69. When I see photos of these blue bowers, I feel so much desire that I wonder if I might have been born into the wrong species. 70. Am I trying, with these “propositions,” to build some kind of bower?—But surely this would be a mistake. For starters, words do not look like the things they designate (Maurice Merleau-Ponty). 71. I have been trying, for some time now, to find dignity in my loneliness. I have been finding this hard to do. 72. It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one’s solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem. Can blue solve the problem, or can it at least keep me company within it?—No, not exactly. It cannot love me that way; it has no arms. But sometimes I do feel its presence to be a sort of wink— Here you are again, it says, and so am I . 73. In his Opticks, Newton periodically refers to an invaluable “assistant” who helps him refract the shaft of sunlight streaming in through the aperture Newton had drilled into the wall of his “dark chamber”—an assistant to Newton’s discovery, or revelation, of the spectrum. Over time, however, many have questioned whether this assistant ever really existed. Many now believe him to be, essentially, a “rhetorical fiction.” 74. Who, nowadays, watches the light stream through the walls of her “dark chamber” with the company of a phantasmagoric assistant, or smashes at her eyes to reproduce lost color sensations, or stays up all night watching colored shadows drift across the walls? At times I have done all of these things, but not in service of science, nor of philosophy, not even of poetry. 75. Mostly I have felt myself becoming a servant of sadness. I am still looking for the beauty in that. 76. At one point in history, to approximate the color of ultramarine, which comes from lapis, which for quite some time was available in only one mine, in what we now call Afghanistan— Sar-e-Sang, the Place of the Stone— and had to be journeyed out via hundreds of miles of treacherous trade roads, Westerners would churn up cheaper pigments with blood and copper. Generally speaking we don’t do this anymore. We don’t store our oils in the bladders of pigs. We go to the store. If we want to know what a phosphene is, we don’t mash our fists into our eyes. We Google the word. If you’re depressed, you take a pill. Some of these pills are bright blue. If you’re lonely, there’s a guy on Craigslist two blocks away who says he has an hour to kill and a dick longer than a donkey’s. He has posted a photograph to prove it. 77. “Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way?” (Thoreau). 78.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  His life—the underworld, Careo, violence, ruthlessness, monstrosity, gold digging, debauch. I read his notes avidly and with horror. For a year, in semisolitude, my imagination has had time to grow beyond measure. At night, in a fever, Henry’s words press in on me. His violent, aggressive manhood pursues me. I taste that violence with my mouth, with my womb. Crushed against the earth with the man over me, possessed until I want to cry out. At the Café Viking, Henry talks about discovering my real nature one evening when I danced the rumba for a few minutes alone. He still remembers a passage in my novel, wants to have the manuscript, to be able to read it over. He says it is the most beautiful writing he has read lately. Talks about the fantastic possibilities in me: his first impression of me standing on the doorstep—“so lovely”—and then sitting in the big black armchair “like a queen.” He wants to destroy the “illusion” of my great honesty. I read him what I wrote on the effect of his notes. He said I could only write like that, with imaginative intensity, because I had not lived out what I was writing about, that the living-out kills the imagination and the intensity, as happens to him. Note to Henry in purple ink on silver paper: “The woman will sit eternally in the tall black armchair. I will be the one woman you will never have. Excessive living weighs down the imagination. We will not live, we will only write and talk to swell the sails.” Writers make love to whatever they need. Henry conforms to my image and tries to be more subtle, becomes poetic. He said he could very well imagine June saying to him, “I would not mind your loving Anaïs because it is Anaïs.” I affect their imaginations. It is the strongest power. I have seen romanticism outlast the realistic. I have seen men forget the beautiful women they have possessed, forget the prostitutes, and remember the first woman they idolized, the woman they never could have. The woman who aroused them romantically holds them. I see the tenacious yearning in Eduardo. Hugo will never be healed of me. Henry can never really love again after loving June. When I talk about her, Henry says, “What a lovely way you have of putting things.” “Perhaps it is an evasion of facts.” He says to me exactly what I wrote some time ago: I submit to life and then I find beautiful explanations for my act. I make the piece fit into the creative weaving. “You and June wanted to embalm me,” I say. “Because you seem so utterly fragile.” I dream of a new faithfulness, with stimulation from others, imaginative living, and my body only for Hugo.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  God, I have known such a day, such hours of female submission, such a gift of myself there can be nothing left to give. But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough, not savage enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted. Before we met that day, he had written to me: “All I can say is that I am mad about you. I tried to write a letter and couldn’t. I am waiting impatiently to see you. Tuesday is so far off. And not just Tuesday—I am wondering when you will come to stay overnight, when I can have you for a long spell. It torments me to see you just a few hours and then surrender you. When I see you, all that I wanted to say vanishes. The time is so precious and words are extraneous. But you make me so happy, because I can talk to you. I love your brightness, your preparations for flight, your legs like a vise, the warmth between your legs. Yes, Anaïs, I want to demask you. I am too gallant with you. I want to look at you long and ardently, pick up your dress, fondle you, examine you. Do you know I have scarcely looked at you? There is still too much sacredness clinging to you. I don’t know how to tell you what I feel. I live in a perpetual expectancy. You come and the time slips away in a dream. It is only when you go that I realize completely your presence. And then it is too late. You numb me. I try to picture your life at Louveciennes but I can’t. Your book? That too seems unreal. Only when you come and I look at you does the picture become clearer. But you go away so quickly, I don’t know what to think. Yes, I see the Pouch-kine legend clearly. I see you in my mind as sitting on that throne, jewels around your neck, sandals, big rings, painted fingernails, strange Spanish voice, living some kind of a lie which is not a lie exactly but a fairy tale. This is a little drunken, Anaïs. I am saying to myself: ‘Here is the first woman with whom I can be absolutely sincere.’ I remember your saying: ‘You could fool me, I wouldn’t know it.’ When I walk along the boulevards and think of that, I can’t fool you—and yet I would like to. I mean that I can never be absolutely loyal—it’s not in me. I love women, or life, too much—which it is, I don’t know.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Hugo says angrily that she is an empty box and that I am the full box. But who wants the ideas, the fantasies, the contents, if the box is beautiful and inspiring? I am inspired by June the empty box. To think of her in the middle of the day lifts me out of ordinary living. The world has never been as empty for me since I have known her. June supplies the beautiful incandescent flesh, the fulgurant voice, the abysmal eyes, the drugged gestures, the presence, the body, the incarnate image of our imaginings. What are we? Only the creators. She is. I get letters from Henry every other day. I answer him immediately. I gave him my typewriter, and I write by hand. I think of him day and night. I dream of an extraordinary extra life I am going to lead someday, which may even fill another and special diary. Last night, after reading Henry’s novel, I couldn’t sleep. It was midnight. Hugo was sleeping. I wanted to get up and go to my writing room and write Henry about his first novel. But I would have awakened Hugo. There are two doors to open, and they creak. Hugo was so exhausted when he went to bed. I lay very still and forced myself to sleep, with phrases rushing through my head like a cyclone. I thought that I would remember them in the morning. But I couldn’t remember, not even half. If Hugo did not have to go to work, I could have awakened him, and he could have slept on the next morning. Our whole life is spoiled by his work in the bank. I must get him out of it. And that makes me work on my novel, rewriting, which I hate, for a new book is boiling in my head—June’s book. The conflict between my being “possessed” and my devotion to Hugo is becoming unbearable. I will love him with all my strength but in my own way. Is it impossible for me to grow in only one direction? Tonight I am full of joy because Henry is here again. The impression is always the same: one is filled with the weight and lashing of his writing, and then he comes upon you so softly—soft voice, trailing off, soft gestures, soft, fine white hands—and one surrenders to his indefatigable curiosity and his romanticism towards women. Henry’s description of the Henry Street joint (where June brought Jean to live with them): Bed unmade all day; climbing into it with shoes on frequently; sheets a mess. Using soiled shirts for towels. Laundry seldom gotten out. Sinks stopped up from too much garbage. Washing dishes in bathtub, which was greasy and black-rimmed. Bathroom always cold as an icebox. Breaking up furniture to throw into fire.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I revolve around your richness of being. “Come close to me, come closer. I promise you it will be beautiful.” You keep your promise. Listen, I do not believe that I alone feel we are living something new because it is new to me. I do not see in your writing any of the feelings you have shown me or any of the phrases you have used. When I read your writing, I wondered, What episode are we going to repeat? You carry your vision, and I mine, and they have mingled. If at moments I see the world as you see it (because they are Henry’s whores I love them), you will sometimes see it as I do. To Henry the investigator I offer enigmatic replies. When I was dressing, I was laughingly commenting on my underwear, which June had liked, June who is always naked under her dress. “It is Spanish,” I said. Henry said, “What comes to my mind when you say this is how did June know that you wore such underclothing?” I said, “Don’t you think I am trying to make it all more innocent than it was, but at the same time, don’t go so directly at ideas like that or you’ll never quite get the truth.” He overlooks the voluptuousness of half-knowledge, half-possession, of leaning over the edge dangerously, for no specific climax. Both Henry and June have destroyed the logic and unity of my life. It is good, for a pattern is not living. Now I am living. I am not making patterns. What eludes me forever is the reality of being a man. When the imagination and emotions of a woman overstep normal boundaries, occasionally she is possessed by feelings she cannot express. I want to possess June. I identify myself with the men who can penetrate her. But I am powerless. I can give her the pleasure of my love, but not the supreme coition. What a torment! And Henry’s letters: “. . . terribly, terribly alive, pained, and feeling absolutely that I need you . . . But I must see you: I see you bright and wonderful and at the same time I have been writing to June and all torn apart, but you will understand: you must understand. Anaïs, stand by me. You’re all around me like a bright flame. Anaïs, by Christ, if you knew what I am feeling now. “I want to get more familiar with you. I love you. I loved you when you came and sat on the bed—all that second afternoon was like warm mist—and I hear again the way you say my name—with that queer accent of yours. You arouse in me such a mixture of feelings, I don’t know how to approach you. Only come to me—get closer and closer to me. It will be beautiful, I promise you. I like so much your frankness—a humility almost. I could never hurt that.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  And I, who was clapping at his show, was tempted to say, “I have not outgrown it. I have yet to run amuck.” I look at Hugo’s tormented face (a period of torment and jealousy in his analysis) and experience great effusions of tenderness. And Henry says, “When you and I get married, we will take Emilia with us.” As we climb the stairs to my “cave” he puts his hands between my legs. I am rushing again into June’s chaos. It is June I want and not Allendy’s wisdom, not even Henry’s love of aggressivity. I want eroticism, I want those moist dreams I dream at night, four more days like those summer days with Henry when he was constantly throwing me down on the bed, the carpet, or the ivy. I want to wallow in sexuality until I outgrow it or become as sated as Henry. I arrive at Clichy for dinner, drunk and feverish. Henry has been writing about my writing. The last page is still in the typewriter. And I read these extraordinary lines: “It was presumptuous of me to want to alter her language. If it is not English, it is a language nevertheless and the farther one goes along with it the more vital and necessary it seems. It is a violation of language that corresponds with the violation of thought and feeling. It could not have been written in an English which every capable writer can employ. . . . Above all it is the language of modernity, the language of nerves, repressions, larval thoughts, unconscious processes, images not entirely divorced from their dream content; it is the language of the neurotic, the perverted, ‘marbled and veined with verdigris,’ as Gautier put it, in referring to the style of decadence. . . . “When I try to think to whom it is you are indebted for this style I am frustrated—I do not recall anyone to whom you bear the slightest resemblance. You remind me only of yourself. . . . ” I rejoiced because it seemed to me Henry had written the male counterpart to my work. I sat with him at the kitchen table, drunk and stuttering: “It’s wonderful, what you’ve written!” We got ourselves more drunk, we fucked deliriously. Later, in the taxi, he takes my hand as if we have been lovers only a few days. I come home with two of his phrases engraved on my mind: “surcharged with life” and “saturated with sex.” And I will give him greater and more terrifying riddles to unravel than June’s lies! There is in our relationship both humanness and monstrosity. Our work, our literary imagination, is monstrous. Our love is human. I sense when he is cold, I am anxious about his eyesight. I get him glasses, a special lamp, blankets.

• From Bluets (2009)

  178. Neither Cornell nor Warhol made the mistake of thinking that all desire is yearning. For Warhol, fucking was less about desire than it was about killing time: it is take-it-or-leave-it work, accomplished similarly by geniuses and retards, just like everything else at the Factory. For Cornell, desire was a sharpness, a tear in the static of everyday life—in his diaries he calls it “the spark,” “the lift,” or “the zest.” It delivers not an ache, but a sudden state of grace. It might be worth noting here that both Warhol and Cornell could arguably be described, at least for periods of their lives, as celibate. 179. When I imagine a celibate man—especially one who doesn’t even jerk off—I wonder how he relates to his dick: what else he does with it, how he handles it, how he regards it. At first glance, this same question for a woman might appear more “tucked away” (pussy-as-absence, pussy-as-lack: out of sight, out of mind). But I am inclined to think that anyone who thinks or talks this way has simply never felt the pulsing of a pussy in serious need of fucking—a pulsing that communicates nothing less than the suckings and ejaculations of the heart. 180. I have not yet spoken of the princess of blue, which is somewhat intentional: it is unwise to give away too much information about a good dealer, and she has been, for almost two decades now, an excellent and primary supplier of blue. But I will say this: the other night I dreamed of visiting her in her forest. In the dream she was sitting cross-legged, as was I, but she levitated. She wasn’t a deity—it was just that I had sought her and was now her guest. The forest was translucent. We talked. She told me that pollution, too, could be worshiped, simply because it exists. But Eden, she said, there’s no Eden. And this forest where we’re sitting, it doesn’t really exist. 181. Pharmakon means drug, but as Jacques Derrida and others have pointed out, the word in Greek famously refuses to designate whether poison or cure . It holds both in the bowl. In the dialogues Plato uses the word to refer to everything from an illness, its cause, its cure, a recipe, a charm, a substance, a spell, artificial color, and paint. Plato does not call fucking pharmakon , but then again, while he talks plenty about love, Plato does not say much about fucking. 182. In the Phaedrus , the written word is also notoriously called pharmakon . The question up for debate between Socrates and Phaedrus is whether the written word kills memory or aids it—whether it cripples the mind’s power, or whether it cures it of its forgetfulness.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  After an initial failure in her exams, Ginou had made up her mind to come up again for the baccalaureate in October. She pretended to be very serious about it and I offered to coach her in literature, which she accepted vaguely, always postponing any action till the following week. As for me, I was beginning to be sick of all this comedy of hints and double meanings. Quite obviously, I was marking time, and I began to feel a bit foolish too, almost guilty about never having dared a more direct approach. All my classmates constantly talked of petting, of kissing, and even of other things that I disapproved of. Ginou, in my eyes, was more than a mere crush that one has to make the most of while it lasts. I respected her and I owed her a certain gratitude, though I might be able to allow myself more daring liberties within the framework of this respect. The very health of my love for her demanded more. Perhaps, after all, her new swim suit, a silver-colored knitwear model with red dots that revealed every contour of her exquisite figure, had something to do with it all. On one or two occasions, I had been ashamed of my own excitement and been forced to dive immediately under water in order to conceal my very obvious emotion. But now that I had decided to follow this line of action I couldn’t rest until I had worked out a plan. The most difficult step would be to get Ginou to agree that we be left alone together in a room, behind a closed door. On Saturday afternoons, my parents generally left our overheated apartment for a neighborhood beach. It never occurred to me that Ginou, too, had thought seriously of what I was about to propose to her. I can still remember every detail of that day and of the whole scene, though our days at the beach were so much alike that they now all melt into a single image in my memory. Ever since the morning, I had repeatedly failed in my attempts to drag her away from the rest of the crowd. Then the others all agreed to rent a rowboat, but Ginou felt tired and refused to join them. So we stayed alone, a real treat to be by ourselves. We lay together, face to face, on our stomachs in the sand. Ginou’s face seemed to fill the whole landscape ahead of me, spreading beyond the sky line of the hills, filling the whole sky, while the sunlight, reflected off her tousled hair, seemed to form a halo around her.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  “I don’t know what I expect of you, but it is something in the way of a miracle. I am going to demand everything of you—even the impossible, because you encourage it. You are really strong. I like even your deceit, your treachery. It seems aristocratic to me. (Does aristocratic sound wrong in my mouth?) “Yes, Anaïs, I was thinking how I could betray you, but I can’t. I want you. I want to undress you, vulgarize you a bit—ah, I don’t know what I am saying. I am a little drunk because you are not here. I would like to be able to clap my hands and voilà, Anaïs! I want to own you, use you, I want to fuck you, I want to teach you things. No, I don’t appreciate you—God forbid! Perhaps I even want to humiliate you a little—why, why? Why don’t I get down on my knees and just worship you? I can’t, I love you laughingly. Do you like that? And dear Anaïs, I am so many things. You see only the good things now—or at least you lead me to believe so. I want you for a whole day at least. I want to go places with you—possess you. You don’t know how insatiable I am. Or how dastardly. And how selfish! “I have been on my good behavior with you. But I warn you, I am no angel. I think principally that I am a little drunk. I love you. I go to bed now—it is too painful to stay awake. I am insatiable. I will ask you to do the impossible. What it is, I don’t know. You will tell me probably. You are faster than I am. I love your cunt, Anaïs—it drives me crazy. And the way you say my name! God, it’s unreal. Listen, I am very drunk. I am hurt to be here alone. I need you. Can I say everything to you? I can, can’t I? Come quickly then and screw me. Shoot with me. Wrap your legs around me. Warm me.” I felt as if I were reading his most unconscious feelings. I felt all life embracing me, in those words. I felt the supreme challenge to my worship of life, and I wanted to yield, to give myself to all life, which is Henry. What new sensations he arouses in me, what new torments, new fear and new courage! No letter from him after our day. He felt a tremendous relief, satisfaction, fatigue, just as I did. And then? Yesterday he came to Louveciennes. A new Henry, or, rather, the Henry sensed behind the one generally known, the Henry beyond what he has written down, beyond all literal knowledge, my Henry, the man I love tremendously now, too much, dangerously.