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 The Art of Seduction (2001)

  He made cruel remarks, grew indifferent. But this only seemed to push her further. She sent him the customary lock of hair, but from her pubis; she followed him in the street, made public scenes—finally her family sent her abroad to avoid further scandal. After Byron made it clear the affair was over, she de- scended into a madness that would last several years. In 1813, an old friend of Byron's, James Webster, invited the poet to stay at his country estate. Webster had a young and beautiful wife, Lady Frances, and he knew Byron's reputation as a seducer, but his wife was quiet and chaste—surely she would resist the temptation of a man such as Byron. To Webster's relief, Byron barely spoke to Frances, who seemed equally uninterested in him. Yet several days into Byron's stay, she contrived to be alone with him in the billiards room, where she asked him a question: how could a woman who liked a man inform him of it when he did not perceive it? Byron scribbled a racy reply on a piece of paper, which made her blush as she read it. Soon thereafter he invited the couple to stay with him at his infamous abbey. There, the prim and proper Lady Frances saw him drink wine from a human skull. They stayed up late in one of the abbey's secret chambers, reading poetry and kissing. With Byron, it seemed, Lady Frances was only too eager to explore adultery. That same year, Lord Byron's half sister Augusta arrived in London to get away from her husband, who was having money troubles. Byron had not seen Augusta for some time. The two were physically similar—the same face, the same mannerisms; she was Lord Byron as a woman. And his behavior toward her was more than brotherly. He took her to the theater, to dances, received her at home, treating her with an intimate spirit that Augusta soon returned. Indeed the kind and tender attention that Byron showered on her soon became physical. Augusta was a devoted wife with three children, yet she yielded to her half brother's advances. How could she help herself? He stirred up a strange passion in her, a stronger passion than she felt for any other man, including her husband. For Byron, his relationship with Augusta was the ultimate and crowning sin of his career. And soon he was writing to his friends, openly We eternally chafe at restrictions, covet \ Whatever's forbidden. (Look how a sick man who's told \ No immersion hangs round the bath- house.) \ . . . Desire \ Mounts for what's kept out of reach. A thief's attracted \ By burglar-proof premises. How often will love \ Thrive on a rival's approval?

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  "First you will make out a deed for my maintenance," Thubuit replied, "and you will establish a dowry for me of all the things and goods which belong to you, in writing." Satni acquiesced, saying, "Bring me the scribe of the school." • When he had done what she asked, Thubuit rose and dressed herself in a robe of fine linen, through which Satni could see all her limbs. His passion increased, but she said, "If it is true that you desire to have your pleasure of me, you will make your children subscribe to my deed, that they may not seek a quarrel with my children." Satni sent for his children. "If it is true that you desire to have your pleasure of me, you will cause your children to be killed, that they may not seek a quarrel with my children." Satni consented again: "Let any crime be done to them which your heart desires." "Go into that room," said Thubuit; and while the little corpses were thrown out to the stray dogs and cats, Satni at last lay on a bed of ivory and ebony, that his love might be rewarded, and Thubuit lay down at his side. "Then," the texts modestly say, "magic and the god Amen did much." • The charms of the Divine Women must have been irresistible, if even "the wisest men" were Use Physical Lures • 401 with an open, unrestrained attitude that infected their minds. Understand: it all starts from you. When the time comes to make the seduction physical, train yourself to let go of your own inhibitions, your doubts, your linger- ing feelings of guilt and anxiety. Your confidence and ease will have more power to intoxicate the victim than all the alcohol you could apply. Exhibit a lightness of spirit—nothing bothers you, nothing daunts you, you take nothing personally. You are inviting your targets to shed the burdens of civilization, to follow your lead and drift. Do not talk of work, duty, mar- riage, the past or future. Plenty of other people will do that. Instead, offer the rare thrill of losing oneself in the moment, where the senses come dive and the mind is left behind. When he kissed me, it evoked a response I had never known or imagined before, a giddying of all my senses. It was instinctive joy, against which no warning, reasoning monitor within me availed. It was new and irresistible and finally overpowering. Seduction—the word implies being led—and so gently, so tenderly. —LINDA CHRISTIAN Keys to Seduction N ow more than ever, our minds are in a state of constant distraction, barraged with endless information, pulled in every direction.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Just as ladies do love men which be valiant and bold under arms, so likewise do they love such as be of like sort in love; and the man which is cowardly and over and above respectful toward them, will never win their good favor. Not that they would have them so overweening, bold, and presumptuous, as that they should by main force lay them on the floor; but rather they desire in them a certain hardy modesty, or perhaps better a certain modest hardihood. For while themselves are not exactly wantons, and will neither solicit a man nor yet actually offer their favors, yet do they know well how to rouse the appetites and passions, and prettily allure to the skirmish in such wise that he which doth not take occasion by the forelock and join encounter, and that without the least awe of rank and greatness, without a scruple of conscience or a fear or any sort of hesitation, he verily is a fool and a spiritless poltroon, and one which doth merit to be forever abandoned of kind fortune. • I have heard of two honorable gentlemen and comrades, for the which two very honorable ladies, and of by no means humble quality, made tryst one day at Paris to go walking in a garden. Being come thither, each lady did separate apart one from the other, each alone with her own cavalier, each in a several alley of the garden, that was so close covered in with a fair trellis of boughs as that daylight could really scarce penetrate there at all, and the coolness of the place was very grateful. The Anti-Seducer • 139 For two months Meilcour trembled in de Lursay's presence. He was afraid of her, and did not know what to do. One evening they were dis- cussing a recent play. How well one character had declared his love to a woman, Madame remarked. Noting Meilcour's obvious discomfort, she went on, "If I am not mistaken, a declaration can only seem such an em- barrassing matter because you yourself have one to make." Madame de Lursay knew full well that she was the source of the young man's awkward- ness, but she was a tease; you must tell me, she said, with whom you are in love. Finally Meilcour confessed: it was indeed Madame whom he desired. His mother's friend advised him to not think of her that way, but she also sighed, and gave him a long and languid look.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Use absence only when you are sure of the target's affection, and never let it go on too long. It is most effective later in the seduction. Also, never create too much space—don't write too rarely, don't act too cold, don't show too much interest in someone else. That is the strategy of mixing pleasure with pain, detailed in chapter 20, and will create a dependent victim, or will even make him or her give up completely. Some people, too, are inveterately passive: they are waiting for you to make the bold move, and if you don't, they will think you are weak. The pleasure to be had from such a victim is less than the pleasure you will get from someone more active. But if you are involved with such a type, do what you need to if you are to have your way, then end the affair and move on. Use Physical Lures Targets with active minds are dangerous: if they see through your manipulations, they may suddenly develop doubts. Put their minds gently to rest, and waken their dormant senses, by combining a nondefen- sive attitude with a charged sexual presence. While your cool, nonchalant air is calming their minds and lowering their inhibitions, your glances, voice, and bearing— oozing sex and desire— are getting under their skin, agi- tating their senses and raising their temperature. Never force the physical; instead infect your targets with heat, lure them into lust. Lead them into the moment— an intensified present in which mo- rality, judgment, and concern for the fu- ture all melt away and the body succumbs to pleasure. Raising the Temperature In 1889, the top New York theatrical manager Ernest Jurgens visited France on one of his many scouting trips. Jurgens was known for his honesty, a rare commodity in the shady entertainment world, and for his ability to find unusual acts. He had to spend the night in Marseilles, and while wandering along the quay of the old harbor, he heard excited catcalls issuing from a working-class cabaret, and decided to go in. A twenty-one- The year was 1907 and year-old Spanish dancer named Caroline Otero was performing, and the La Belle [ Otero] , by then, minute Jurgens laid eyes on her he was a changed man. Her appearance was had been an international figure for over a dozen startling—five foot ten, fiery dark eyes, black waist-length hair, her body years. The story was told corseted into a perfect hourglass figure. But it was the way she danced that by M. Maurice Chevalier. made his heart pound—her whole body alive, writhing like an animal in • "I was a young star about to make my first heat, as she performed a fandango. Her dancing was hardly professional, but appearance at the Folies.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  He asked her a million questions—about Hollywood, her interests, on and on. She began to relax a little and open up. There were other beautiful women there, princesses, actresses, but Aly Khan ignored them all, acting as if Rita were the only woman there. He led her onto the dance floor, and though he was an expert dancer, she felt uncomfortable—he held her a lit- tle too close. Still, when he offered to drive her back to her hotel, she agreed. They sped along the Grande Corniche; it was a beautiful night. For one evening she had managed to forget her many problems, and she was grateful, but she was still in love with Welles, and an affair with a rake like Aly Khan was not what she needed. Aly Khan had to fly off on business for a few days; he begged her to stay at the Riviera until he got back. While he was away, he telephoned constantly. Every morning a giant bouquet of flowers arrived. On the tele- phone he seemed particularly annoyed that the Shah of Iran was trying hard to see her, and he made her promise to break the date to which she had finally agreed. During this time, a gypsy fortune-teller visited the hotel, and Rita agreed to have her fortune read. "You are about to embark on the In Cairo Aly bumped into [the singer] Juliette Greco again. He asked her to dance. • "You have too bad a reputation," she replied. "We're going to sit very much apart. " • "What are you doing tomorrow?" he insisted. • "Tomorrow I take a plane to Beirut." • When she boarded the plane, Aly was already on it, grinning at her surprise. ...• Dressed in tight black leather slacks and a black sweater [Greco] stretched languorously in an armchair of her Paris house and observed: • "They say I am a dangerous woman. Well, Aly was a dangerous man. He was charming in a very special way. There is a kind of man who is very clever with women. He takes you out to a restaurant and if the most beautiful woman comes in, he doesn't look at her. He makes you feel you are a queen. Of course, I understood it. I didn 't believe it. I would laugh and point out the beautiful woman. But that is me. . . . Most women are made very happy by that kind of attention. It's pure vanity. She thinks, 'I'll be the one and the others will leave.' • "... With Aly, how the woman felt was most important. . . . He was a great charmer, a great seducer. He made you feel fine and that everything was easy. No problems. Nothing to worry about. Or regret. It was always, 'What can I do for you? What do you need?'

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  For three years he had her trained in all of the arts—not just singing, dancing, and calligraphy, but how to dress, how to talk, how to play the coquette. And it worked: Hsi Shih did not allow Fu Chai a moment's rest. Everything about her was exotic and unfamiliar. The more attention he paid to her hair, her moods, her glances, the way she moved, the less he thought about diplo- macy and war. He was driven to distraction. All of us today are kings protecting the tiny realm of our own lives, weighed down by all kinds of responsibilities, surrounded by ministers and advisers. A wall forms around us—we are immune to the influence of other people, because we are so preoccupied. Like Hsi Shih, then, you must lure your targets away, gently, slowly, from the affairs that fill their mind. And what will best lure them from their castles is the whiff of the exotic. Offer something unfamiliar that will fascinate them and hold their attention. Be different in your manners and appearance, and slowly envelop them in this different world of yours. Keep your targets off balance with coquettish changes of mood. Do not worry that the disruption you represent is mak- ing them emotional—that is a sign of their growing weakness. Most people are ambivalent: on the one hand they feel comforted by their habits and duties, on the other they are bored, and ripe for anything that seems exotic, that seems to come from somewhere else. They may struggle or have doubts, but exotic pleasures are irresistible. The more you can get them the king either for good or ill. ...• Amidst the revelers in the halls of Wu, Hsi Shih wove her net of fascination about the heart of the susceptible monarch. . . . "Inflamed by wine, she now begins to sing / The songs of Wu to please the fatuous king; / And in the dance of Tsu she subtly blends /All rhythmic movements to her sensuous ends." . . . But she could do more than sing and dance to amuse the king. She had wit, and her grasp of politics astonished him. When there was anything she wanted she could shed tears which so moved her lover's heart that he could refuse her nothing.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  For a fleeting second I thought she might turn around and follow me. " • What would Chevalier have done had she pursued him? His lower lip dropped into that half pout which is the Frenchman's exclusive possession. Then he grinned. • "I'd have slowed down and let her catch up." —ARTHUR H. LEWIS, LA BELLE OTERO Use Physical Lures • 397 Onstage she made every man in the audience come alive, abandoning her- self in dance. In person she was cooler, or slightly so. A man likes to feel that a woman is enflamed not because she has an insatiable appetite but be- cause of him; so Otero personalized her sexuality, using glances, a brushing of skin, a more languorous tone of voice, a saucy comment, to suggest that the man was heating her up. In her memoirs she revealed that Prince Albert was a most inept lover. Yet he believed, along with many other men, that with her he was Hercules himself. Her sexuality actually originated from her, but she created the illusion that the man was the aggressor. The key to luring the target into the final act of your seduction is not to make it obvious, not to announce that you are ready (to pounce or be pounced upon). Everything should be geared, not to the conscious mind, but to the senses. You want your target to read cues not from your words or actions but from your body. You must make your body glow with desire— for the target. Your desire should be read in your eyes, in a trembling in your voice, in your reaction when your bodies draw near. You cannot train your body to act this way, but by choosing a victim (see chapter 1) who has this effect on you, it will all flow naturally. During the seduction, you will have had to hold yourself back, to intrigue and frustrate the victim. You will have frustrated yourself in the process, and will already be champing at the bit. Once you sense that the target has fallen for you and cannot turn back, let those frustrated desires course through your blood and warm you up. You do not need to touch your tar- gets, or become physical. As La Belle Otero understood, sexual desire is contagious. They will catch your heat and glow in return. Let them make the first move. It will cover your tracks. The second and third moves are yours. Spell SEX with capital letters when you talk about Otero. She exuded it. —MAURICE CHEVALIER Lowering Inhibitions O ne day in 1931, in a village in New Guinea, a young girl named Tu- perselai heard some happy news: her father, Allaman, who had left some months before to work on a tobacco plantation, had returned for a visit. Tuperselai ran to greet him.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  the most glamorous, interesting people he could find. To be part of his in-triangular (including the ner circle meant that you were desirable as well. By placing himself in the other— mediator or model— whose desire desire middle but keeping himself aloof from it all, he made everyone compete imitates), every desire is for his attention. He stirred people's desire to possess him by holding back. thus from its inception Practices like these not only stimulate competitive desires, they take aim tapped by hatred and rivalry; in short, the origin at people's prime weakness: their vanity and self-esteem. We can endure of desire is mimesis— feeling that another person has more talent, or more money, but the sense mimeticism— and no that a rival is more desirable than we are—that is unbearable. In the early desire is ever forged which eighteenth century, the Duke de Richelieu, a great rake, managed to se-does not desire forthwith the death or disappearance duce a young woman who was rather religious but whose husband, a dolt, of the model or exemplary was often away. He then proceeded to seduce her upstairs neighbor, a character which gave rise young widow. When the two women discovered that he was going from to it. one to the other in the same night, they confronted him. A lesser man —JAMES MANDRELL, DON JUAN AND THE POINT OF would have fled, but not the duke; he understood the dynamic of vanity H O N O R and desire. Neither woman wanted to feel that he preferred the other. And so he managed to arrange a little menage a trois, knowing that now they would struggle between themselves to be the favorite. When people's vanity is at risk, you can make them do whatever you want. According to Stendhal, if there is a woman you are interested in, pay attention to her sister. That will stir a triangular desire. Your reputation—your illustrious past as a seducer—is an effective way Appear to Be an Object of Desire—Create Triangles • 201 of creating an aura of desirability. Women threw themselves at Errol Flynn's It's annoying that our new feet, not because of his handsome face, and certainly not because of his acquaintance likes the boy. But aren't the best things acting skills, but because of his reputation. They knew that other women in life free to all? The sun had found him irresistible. Once he had established that reputation, he did shines on everyone. The not have to chase women anymore; they came to him. Men who believe moon, accompanied by that a rakish reputation will make women fear or distrust them, and should countless stars, leads even the beasts to pasture. What

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  My knuckles lay against the child’s blue jeans. She was barefooted; her toenails showed remnants of cherry-red polish and there was a bit of adhesive tape across her big toe; and, God, what would I not have given to kiss then and there those delicate-boned, long-toed, monkeyish feet! Suddenly her hand slipped into mine and without our chaperon’s seeing, I held, and stroked, and squeezed that little hot paw, all the way to the store. The wings of the driver’s Marlenesque nose shone, having shed or burned up their ration of powder, and she kept up an elegant monologue anent the local traffic, and smiled in profile, and pouted in profile, and beat her painted lashes in profile, while I prayed we would never get to that store, but we did. I have nothing else to report, save, primo: that big Haze had little Haze sit behind on our way home, and secundo: that the lady decided to keep Humbert’s Choice for the backs of her own shapely ears. Thursday. We are paying with hail and gale for the tropical beginning of the month. In a volume of the Young People’s Encyclopedia, I found a map of the States that a child’s pencil had started copying out on a sheet of lightweight paper, upon the other side of which, counter to the unfinished outline of Florida and the Gulf, there was a mimeographed list of names referring, evidently, to her class at the Ramsdale school. It is a poem I know already by heart. Angel, Grace Austin, Floyd Beale, Jack Beale, Mary Buck, Daniel Byron, Marguerite Campbell, Alice Carmine, Rose Chatfield, Phyllis Clarke, Gordon Cowan, John Cowan, Marion Duncan, Walter Falter, Ted Fantasia, Stella Flashman, Irving Fox, George Glave, Mabel Goodale, Donald Green, Lucinda Hamilton, Mary Rose Haze, Dolores Honeck, Rosaline Knight, Kenneth McCoo, Virginia McCrystal, Vivian McFate, Aubrey Miranda, Anthony Miranda, Viola Rosato, Emil Schlenker, Lena Scott, Donald Sheridan, Agnes Sherva, Oleg Smith, Hazel Talbot, Edgar Talbot, Edwin Wain, Lull Williams, Ralph Windmuller, Louise A poem, a poem, forsooth! So strange and sweet was it to discover this “Haze, Dolores” (she!) in its special bower of names, with its bodyguard of roses—a fairy princess between her two maids of honor. I am trying to analyze the spine-thrill of delight it gives me, this name among all those others. What is it that excites me almost to tears (hot, opalescent, thick tears that poets and lovers shed)? What is it? The tender anonymity of this name with its formal veil (“Dolores”) and that abstract transposition of first name and surname, which is like a pair of new pale gloves or a mask? Is “mask” the keyword?

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  She was the loveliest nymphet green-red-blue Priap himself could think up. As I looked on, through prismatic layers of light, dry-lipped, focusing my lust and rocking slightly under my newspaper, I felt that my perception of her, if properly concentrated upon, might be sufficient to have me attain a beggar’s bliss immediately; but, like some predator that prefers a moving prey to a motionless one, I planned to have this pitiful attainment coincide with one of the various girlish movements she made now and then as she read, such as trying to scratch the middle of her back and revealing a stippled armpit—but fat Haze suddenly spoiled everything by turning to me and asking me for a light, and starting a make-believe conversation about a fake book by some popular fraud. Monday. Delectatio morosa . I spend my doleful days in dumps and dolors. We (mother Haze, Dolores and I) were to go to Our Glass Lake this afternoon, and bathe, and bask; but a nacreous morn degenerated at noon into rain, and Lo made a scene. The median age of pubescence for girls has been found to be thirteen years and nine months in New York and Chicago. The age varies for individuals from ten, or earlier, to seventeen. Virginia was not quite fourteen when Harry Edgar possessed her. He gave her lessons in algebra. Je m’imagine cela . They spent their honeymoon at Petersburg, Fla. “Monsieur Poe-poe,” as that boy in one of Monsieur Humbert Humbert’s classes in Paris called the poet-poet. I have all the characteristics which, according to writers on the sex interests of children, start the responses stirring in a little girl: clean-cut jaw, muscular hand, deep sonorous voice, broad shoulder. Moreover, I am said to resemble some crooner or actor chap on whom Lo has a crush. Tuesday . Rain. Lake of the Rains. Mamma out shopping. L., I knew, was somewhere quite near. In result of some stealthy maneuvering, I came across her in her mother’s bedroom. Prying her left eye open to get rid of a speck of something. Checked frock. Although I do love that intoxicating brown fragrance of hers, I really think she should wash her hair once in a while. For a moment, we were both in the same warm green bath of the mirror that reflected the top of a poplar with us in the sky.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  cious night we've just spent." Was she referring to what had happened in however wealthy, was the pavilion? "There is an even more charming room in the château," she deserving of a noble wife. went on, "but I can't show you anything," implying he had been too for-And on discovering that all he was capable of despite ward. She had mentioned this room ("Monsieur's apartment") several times his massive wealth, was before; he could not imagine what could be so interesting about it, but by distinguishing wool from now he was dying to see it and insisted she show it to him. "If you promise cotton, supervising the to be good," she replied, her eyes widening. Through the darkness of the setting up of a loom, or debating the virtues of a house she led him into the room, which, to his delight, was a kind of tem-particular yarn with a ple of pleasure: there were mirrors on the walls, trompe l'oeil paintings spinner-woman, she evoking a forest scene, even a dark grotto, and a garlanded statue of Eros. resolved that as far as it lay within her power she Overwhelmed by the mood of the place, the young man quickly resumed would have nothing what he had started in the pavilion, and would have lost all track of time whatsoever to do with his if a servant had not rushed in and warned them that it was getting light beastly caresses. Moreover she was determined to seek outside—Monsieur would soon be up. her pleasure elsewhere, in They quickly separated. Later that day, as the young man prepared to the company of one who leave, his hostess said, "Goodbye, Monsieur; I owe you so many pleasures; seemed more worthy of her affection, and so it was that but I have paid you with a beautiful dream. Now your love summons you she fell deeply in love with to return. . . . Don't give the Countess cause to quarrel with me." Reflect-an extremely eligible man ing on his experience on the way back, he could not figure out what it in his middle thirties. And meant. He had the vague sensation of having been used, but the pleasures whenever a day passed without her having set eyes he remembered outweighed his doubts. upon him, she was restless for the whole of the following night. • However, the gentleman Interpretation. Madame de T is a character in the eighteenth-century suspected nothing of all libertine short story "No Tomorrow," by Vivant Denon. The young man is this, and took no notice of the story's narrator. Although fictional, Madame's techniques were clearly her; and for her part, being

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  In the state of mind I now found myself, I had lost contact with Trapp’s image. It had become completely engulfed by the face of Clare Quilty—as represented, with artistic precision, by an easeled photograph of him that stood on his uncle’s desk. In Beardsley, at the hands of charming Dr. Molnar, I had undergone a rather serious dental operation, retaining only a few upper and lower front teeth. The substitutes were dependent on a system of plates with an inconspicuous wire affair running along my upper gums. The whole arrangement was a masterpiece of comfort, and my canines were in perfect health. However, to garnish my secret purpose with a plausible pretext, I told Dr. Quilty that, in hope of alleviating facial neuralgia, I had decided to have all my teeth removed. What would a complete set of dentures cost? How long would the process take, assuming we fixed our first appointment for some time in November? Where was his famous nephew now? Would it be possible to have them all out in one dramatic session? A white-smocked, gray-haired man, with a crew cut and the big flat cheeks of a politician, Dr. Quilty perched on the corner of his desk, one foot dreamily and seductively rocking as he launched on a glorious long-range plan. He would first provide me with provisional plates until the gums settled. Then he would make me a permanent set. He would like to have a look at that mouth of mine. He wore perforated pied shoes. He had not visited with the rascal since 1946, but supposed he could be found at his ancestral home, Grimm Road, not far from Parkington. It was a noble dream. His foot rocked, his gaze was inspired. It would cost me around six hundred. He suggested he take measurements right away, and make the first set before starting operations. My mouth was to him a splendid cave full of priceless treasures, but I denied him entrance. “No,” I said. “On second thoughts, I shall have it all done by Dr. Molnar. His price is higher, but he is of course a much better dentist than you.” I do not know if any of my readers will ever have a chance to say that. It is a delicious dream feeling. Clare’s uncle remained sitting on the desk, still looking dreamy, but his foot had stopped push-rocking the cradle of rosy anticipation. On the other hand, his nurse, a skeleton-thin, faded girl, with the tragic eyes of unsuccessful blondes, rushed after me so as to be able to slam the door in my wake. Push the magazine into the butt. Press home until you hear or feel the magazine catch engage. Delightfully snug. Capacity: eight cartridges. Full Blued. Aching to be discharged.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I welcomed its desultory character and pseudoliterary aspects, attending to it whenever I had nothing better to do. On the other hand, I was urged by a war-time university in New York to complete my comparative history of French literature for English-speaking students. The first volume took me a couple of years during which I put in seldom less than fifteen hours of work daily. As I look back on those days, I see them divided tidily into ample light and narrow shade: the light pertaining to the solace of research in palatial libraries, the shade to my excruciating desires and insomnias of which enough has been said. Knowing me by now, the reader can easily imagine how dusty and hot I got, trying to catch a glimpse of nymphets (alas, always remote) playing in Central Park, and how repulsed I was by the glitter of deodorized career girls that a gay dog in one of the offices kept unloading upon me. Let us skip all that. A dreadful breakdown sent me to a sanatorium for more than a year; I went back to my work—only to be hospitalized again. Robust outdoor life seemed to promise me some relief. One of my favorite doctors, a charming cynical chap with a little brown beard, had a brother, and this brother was about to lead an expedition into arctic Canada. I was attached to it as a “recorder of psychic reactions.” With two young botanists and an old carpenter I shared now and then (never very successfully) the favors of one of our nutritionists, a Dr. Anita Johnson—who was soon flown back, I am glad to say. I had little notion of what object the expedition was pursuing. Judging by the number of meteorologists upon it, we may have been tracking to its lair (somewhere on Prince of Wales’ Island, I understand) the wandering and wobbly north magnetic pole. One group, jointly with the Canadians, established a weather station on Pierre Point in Melville Sound. Another group, equally misguided, collected plankton. A third studied tuberculosis in the tundra. Bert, a film photographer—an insecure fellow with whom at one time I was made to partake in a good deal of menial work (he, too, had some psychic troubles)—maintained that the big men on our team, the real leaders we never saw, were mainly engaged in checking the influence of climatic amelioration on the coats of the arctic fox. We lived in prefabricated timber cabins amid a Pre-Cambrian world of granite. We had heaps of supplies—the Reader’s Digest , an ice cream mixer, chemical toilets, paper caps for Christmas.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  By abandoning yourself to the seduced, you make them feel that you exist for them alone—a feeling re- flecting a truth, though a temporary one. Of the hundreds of women that Pablo Picasso, consummate rake, seduced over the years, most of them had the feeling that they were the only one he truly loved. The Rake never worries about a woman's resistance to him, or for that matter about any other obstacle in his path—a husband, a physical barrier. Resistance is only the spur to his desire, enflaming him all the more. When Picasso was seducing Françoise Gilot, in fact, he begged her to resist; he needed resistance to add to the thrill. In any case, an obstacle in your way gives you the opportunity to prove yourself, and the creativity you bring to matters of love. In the eleventh-century Japanese novel The Tale of Genji, by the court lady Murasaki Shikibu, the Rake Prince Niou is not disturbed by the sudden disappearance of Ukifune, the woman he loves. She has fled be- cause although she is interested in the prince, she is in love with another man; but her absence allows the prince to go to extreme lengths to track her down. His sudden appearance to whisk her away to a house deep in the woods, and the gallantry he displays in doing so, overwhelm her. Remem- ber: if no resistances or obstacles face you, you must create them. No se- duction can proceed without them. 26 • The Art of Seduction The Rake is an extreme personality. Impudent, sarcastic, and bitingly witty, he cares nothing for what anyone thinks. Paradoxically, this only makes him more seductive. In the courtlike atmosphere of studio-era Holly- wood, when most of the actors behaved like dutiful sheep, the great Rake Errol Flynn stood out in his insolence. He defied the studio chiefs, engaged in the most extreme pranks, reveled in his reputation as Hollywood's supreme seducer—all of which enhanced his popularity. The Rake needs a backdrop of convention—a stultified court, a humdrum marriage, a con- servative culture—to shine, to be appreciated for the breath of fresh air he provides. Never worry about going too far: the Rake's essence is that he goes further than anyone else. When the Earl of Rochester, seventeenth-century England's most no- torious Rake and poet, abducted Elizabeth Malet, one of the most sought- after young ladies of the court, he was duly punished. But lo and behold, a few years later young Elizabeth, though wooed by the most eligible bache- lors in the country, chose Rochester to be her husband. In demonstrating his audacious desire, he made himself stand out from the crowd. Related to the Rake's extremism is the sense of danger, taboo, perhaps even the hint of cruelty about him. This was the appeal of another poet Rake, one of the greatest in history: Lord Byron. Byron disliked any kind of convention, and happily played this up.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  This program rather appalled me, but I spoke to two intelligent ladies who had been connected with the school, and they affirmed that the girls did quite a bit of sound reading and that the “communication” line was more or less ballyhoo aimed at giving old-fashioned Beardsley School a financially remunerative modern touch, though actually it remained as prim as a prawn. Another reason attracting me to that particular school may seem funny to some readers, but it was very important to me, for that is the way I am made. Across our street, exactly in front of our house, there was, I noticed, a gap of weedy wasteland, with some colorful bushes and a pile of bricks and a few scattered planks, and the foam of shabby mauve and chrome autumn roadside flowers; and through that gap you could see a shimmery section of School Rd., running parallel to our Thayer St., and immediately beyond that, the playground of the school. Apart from the psychological comfort this general arrangement should afford me by keeping Dolly’s day adjacent to mine, I immediately foresaw the pleasure I would have in distinguishing from my study-bedroom, by means of powerful binoculars, the statistically inevitable percentage of nymphets among the other girl-children playing around Dolly during recess; unfortunately, on the very first day of school, workmen arrived and put up a fence some way down the gap, and in no time a construction of tawny wood maliciously arose beyond that fence utterly blocking my magic vista; and as soon as they had erected a sufficient amount of material to spoil everything, those absurd builders suspended their work and never appeared again. 5 In a street called Thayer Street, in the residential green, fawn, and golden of a mellow academic townlet, one was bound to have a few amiable fine-dayers yelping at you. I prided myself on the exact temperature of my relations with them: never rude, always aloof. My west-door neighbor, who might have been a businessman or a college teacher, or both, would speak to me once in a while as he barbered some late garden blooms or watered his car, or, at a later date, defrosted his driveway (I don’t mind if these verbs are all wrong), but my brief grunts, just sufficiently articulate to sound like conventional assents or interrogative pause-fillers, precluded any evolution toward chummi-ness. Of the two houses flanking the bit of scrubby waste opposite, one was closed, and the other contained two professors of English, tweedy and short-haired Miss Lester and fadedly feminine Miss Fabian, whose only subject of brief sidewalk conversation with me was (God bless their tact!) the young loveliness of my daughter and the naive charm of Gaston Godin.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  But to her amazement, the man in velvet had begun to stroke Princess Lizetta's sex with a small instrument that was, as so much here, covered in smooth black leather. This was a three-pronged rod that somewhat resembled a hand, and as soon as he teased the helpless Princess, she began to struggle in her bonds. Beauty understood at once what was happening. The Princess's pink sex, terrifying to Beauty as it hung so unprotected, appeared to swell, to ripen. Beauty could see tiny droplets of moisture appear on it. And even as she watched, she felt her own sex ripening in this same manner. She felt the hard plaster that had been placed over the kernel of feeling there, and it seemed to do nothing to prevent the increased throbbing. As soon as the helpless Princess had been so awakened, the man in velvet left her with an approving smile, and continued his movement back down the row of slaves, stopping again to tease and torment the young blond-haired Prince who without pride or dignity pleaded from behind his leather bone gag. The victim beside him, another Princess, was even more abandoned in her wordless entreaties for satisfaction. Her sex was small, thick lipped, a mouth amid a thicket of brown curls, and she twisted her entire body struggling to gain some greater contact from the Lord in velvet who left her now to tease and torment yet another. Lord Gregory snapped his fingers. Beauty went down on her hands and knees again and followed him. "Need I tell you that you are well-suited for that sort of punishment, Princess?" he asked. "No, my Lord," Beauty whispered. She wondered if it was within his power to punish her this way for nothing. She longed for the Prince, and for the time when he alone had power over her. She could think of nothing but the Prince, and why had she ever displeased him by looking at Prince Alexi? Yet she had only to think of Prince Alexi and she was pitched into helpless misery. But if she could be in the Prince's arms, she would think of no one but him. She craved his tender punishment. "Yes, my dear, you would speak?" Lord Gregory asked, but there was something ruthless in his tone. "Only tell me how to obey, my Lord, how to please, how to avoid this discipline." "To begin with, my precious," he said angrily, "stop admiring the male slaves so very much, staring at them at every opportunity. Don't revel so much in all I show you to frighten you!" Beauty gasped. "And never, never again think of Prince Alexi." Beauty shook her head.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Friday. Saw her going somewhere with a dark girl called Rose. Why does the way she walks—a child, mind you, a mere child!—excite me so abominably? Analyze it. A faint suggestion of turned in toes. A kind of wiggly looseness below the knee prolonged to the end of each footfall. The ghost of a drag. Very infantile, infinitely meretricious. Humbert Humbert is also infinitely moved by the little one’s slangy speech, by her harsh high voice. Later heard her volley crude nonsense at Rose across the fence. Twanging through me in a rising rhythm. Pause. “I must go now, kiddo.” Saturday. (Beginning perhaps amended.) I know it is madness to keep this journal but it gives me a strange thrill to do so; and only a loving wife could decipher my microscopic script. Let me state with a sob that today my L. was sun-bathing on the so-called “piazza,” but her mother and some other woman were around all the time. Of course, I might have sat there in the rocker and pretended to read. Playing safe, I kept away, for I was afraid that the horrible, insane, ridiculous and pitiful tremor that palsied me might prevent me from making my entrée with any semblance of casualness.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  My parents are restored, their Kingdom is theirs again, and more significantly, life is theirs again, and I belong to him. She felt a great relaxation when she thought these things and a stirring in herself that seemed to make her sore and throbbing buttocks feel suddenly warmer. The pain made her so shamefully aware of that part of her body! But then as she squeezed her eyes against these soft and slow tears, she looked down at her swelling breasts and the tiny hard nipples and felt that same awareness of herself there too, just as if he'd slapped her breasts which he hadn't done in a great while, and she felt softly bewildered. My life, she struggled to understand. And she remembered that in the afternoon in the warm forest when she had been walking before his horse, she had felt her own long hair on her buttocks, brushing them as she walked ahead of him, and she had wondered if she looked beautiful to him, and she had wished that he would pick her up then, and kiss her and caress her. Of course she had not dared to look back. She couldn't imagine what he would have done had she been so foolish as to do that, but the sun had thrown their shadows ahead of them and she had seen the shadow of his profile, and felt such a pleasure that she was ashamed of it, and her legs had felt weak and there had been the oddest feeling in her, something she had never known in her earlier life, though perhaps in her dreams. She was awakened now, at the foot of his bed, by his low but firm command. "Come here, my darling." He motioned for her to kneel before him. "This shirt is to be opened down the front, and you will learn to do so with your lips and teeth, and I will be patient with you," he said. She had thought it would be the paddle. And, very relieved, she went almost too quickly to obey, pulling the thick tie that closed the shirt at his throat. His flesh felt warm and smooth to her. Men's flesh. So different, she thought. And she quickly pulled loose the second tie and the tired. She had a struggle with the fourth which was at his waist, but he didn't move, and then when she was finished, she bowed her head, her hands as before on the back of her neck and waited. "Open my breeches," he said to her. Her cheeks flamed; she could feel it. But again she didn't hesitate. She pulled the fabric forward over the hook until the hook slipped out and let it go. And now she could see his sex, bulging there, painfully twisted.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Actual contact would do it in one second flat. An interspace of a millimeter would do it in ten. Let us wait. There is nothing louder than an American hotel; and, mind you, this was supposed to be a quiet, cozy, old-fashioned, homey place—“gracious living” and all that stuff. The clatter of the elevator’s gate—some twenty yards northeast of my head but as clearly perceived as if it were inside my left temple—alternated with the banging and booming of the machine’s various evolutions and lasted well beyond midnight. Every now and then, immediately east of my left ear (always assuming I lay on my back, not daring to direct my viler side toward the nebulous haunch of my bed-mate), the corridor would brim with cheerful, resonant and inept exclamations ending in a volley of good-nights. When that stopped, a toilet immediately north of my cerebellum took over. It was a manly, energetic, deep-throated toilet, and it was used many times. Its gurgle and gush and long afterflow shook the wall behind me. Then someone in a southern direction was extravagantly sick, almost coughing out his life with his liquor, and his toilet descended like a veritable Niagara, immediately beyond our bathroom. And when finally all the waterfalls had stopped, and the enchanted hunters were sound asleep, the avenue under the window of my insomnia, to the west of my wake—a staid, eminently residential, dignified alley of huge trees—degenerated into the despicable haunt of gigantic trucks roaring through the wet and windy night. And less than six inches from me and my burning life, was nebulous Lolita! After a long stirless vigil, my tentacles moved towards her again, and this time the creak of the mattress did not awake her. I managed to bring my ravenous bulk so close to her that I felt the aura of her bare shoulder like a warm breath upon my cheek. And then, she sat up, gasped, muttered with insane rapidity something about boats, tugged at the sheets and lapsed back into her rich, dark, young unconsciousness. As she tossed, within that abundant flow of sleep, recently auburn, at present lunar, her arm struck me across the face. For a second I held her. She freed herself from the shadow of my embrace—doing this not consciously, not violently, not with any personal distaste, but with the neutral plaintive murmur of a child demanding its natural rest. And again the situation remained the same: Lolita with her curved spine to Humbert, Humbert resting his head on his hand and burning with desire and dyspepsia. The latter necessitated a trip to the bathroom for a draft of water which is the best medicine I know in my case, except perhaps milk with radishes; and when I re-entered the strange pale-striped fastness where Lolita’s old and new clothes reclined in various attitudes of enchantment on pieces of furniture that seemed vaguely afloat, my impossible daughter sat up and in clear tones demanded a drink, too.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I saw myself administering a powerful sleeping potion to both mother and daughter so as to fondle the latter through the night with perfect impunity. The house was full of Charlotte’s snore, while Lolita hardly breathed in her sleep, as still as a painted girl-child. “Mother, I swear Kenny never even touched me.” “You either lie, Dolores Haze, or it was an incubus.” No, I would not go that far. So Humbert the Cubus schemed and dreamed—and the red sun of desire and decision (the two things that create a live world) rose higher and higher, while upon a succession of balconies a succession of libertines, sparkling glass in hand, toasted the bliss of past and future nights. Then, figuratively speaking, I shattered the glass, and boldly imagined (for I was drunk on those visions by then and underrated the gentleness of my nature) how eventually I might blackmail—no, that is too strong a word— mauvemail big Haze into letting me consort with little Haze by gently threatening the poor doting Big Dove with desertion if she tried to bar me from playing with my legal step-daughter. In a word, before such an Amazing Offer, before such a vastness and variety of vistas, I was as helpless as Adam at the preview of early oriental history, miraged in his apple orchard. And now take down the following important remark: the artist in me has been given the upper hand over the gentleman. It is with a great effort of will that in this memoir I have managed to tune my style to the tone of the journal that I kept when Mrs. Haze was to me but an obstacle. That journal of mine is no more; but I have considered it my artistic duty to preserve its intonations no matter how false and brutal they may seem to me now. Fortunately, my story has reached a point where I can cease insulting poor Charlotte for the sake of retrospective verisimilitude. Wishing to spare poor Charlotte two or three hours of suspense on a winding road (and avoid, perhaps, a head-on collision that would shatter our different dreams), I made a thoughtful but abortive attempt to reach her at the camp by telephone. She had left half an hour before, and getting Lo instead, I told her—trembling and brimming with my mastery over fate—that I was going to marry her mother. I had to repeat it twice because something was preventing her from giving me her attention. “Gee, that’s swell,” she said laughing. “When is the wedding? Hold on a sec, the pup—That pup here has got hold of my sock. Listen—” and she added she guessed she was going to have loads of fun … and I realized as I hung up that a couple of hours at that camp had been sufficient to blot out with new impressions the image of handsome Humbert Humbert from little Lolita’s mind.