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 Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Cousin Abercrombie was so bewildered by it all that she let a tremendous fart and out tumbled the carrot. At least, that’s how Curley related it to me. He was an outrageous liar, to be sure, and there may not be a grain of truth in the yarn, but there’s no denying that he had a flair for such tricks. As for Miss Abercrombie and her high-tone Narragansett ways, well, with a cunt like that one can always imagine the worst. By comparison Hymie was a purist. Somehow Hymie and his fat circumcised dick were two different things. When he got a personal hard on, as he said, he really meant that he was irresponsible. He meant that Nature was asserting itself—through his, Hymie Laubscher’s, fat circumcised dick. It was the same with his wife’s cunt. It was something she wore between her legs, like an ornament. It was a part of Mrs. Laubscher but it wasn’t Mrs. Laubscher personally, if you get what I mean. Well, all this is simply by way of leading up to the general sexual confusion which prevailed at this time. It was like taking a flat in the Land of Fuck. The girl upstairs, for instance . . . she used to come down now and then, when the wife was giving a recital, to look after the kid. She was so obviously a simpleton that I didn’t give her any notice at first. But like all the others she had a cunt too, a sort of impersonal personal cunt which she was unconsciously conscious of. The oftener she came down the more conscious she got, in her unconscious way. One night, when she was in the bathroom, after she had been in there a suspiciously long while, she got me to thinking of things. I decided to take a peep through the keyhole and see for myself what was what. Lo and behold, if she isn’t standing in front of the mirror stroking and petting her little pussy. Almost talking to it, she was. I was so excited I didn’t know what to do first. I went back into the big room, turned out the lights, and lay there on the couch waiting for her to come out. As I lay there I could still see that bushy cunt of hers and the fingers strumming it like. I opened my fly to let my pecker twitch about in the cool of the dark. I tried to mesmerize her from the couch, or at least I tried letting my pecker mesmerize her. “Come here, you bitch,” I kept saying to myself, “come in here and spread that cunt over me.” She must have caught the message immediately, for in a jiffy she had opened the door and was groping about in the dark to find the couch. I didn’t say a word, I didn’t make a move. I just kept my mind riveted on her cunt moving quietly in the dark like a crab.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I went as far as one could go in a state of complete deadness, and then by a law, which must be the law of creation, I suppose, I suddenly flared up and began to live inexhaustibly, like a star whose light is unquenchable. Here began the real cannibalistic excursions which have meant so much to me: no more dead chippies picked from the bonfire, but live human meat, tender, succulent human flesh, secrets like fresh bloody livers, confidences like swollen tumors that have been kept on ice. I learned not to wait for my victim to die, but to eat into him while he was talking to me. Often when I walked away from an unfinished meal I discovered that it was nothing more than an old friend minus an arm or a leg. I sometimes left him standing there—a trunk full of stinking intestines. Being of the city, of the only city in the world and no place like Broadway anywhere, I used to walk up and down staring at the floodlit hams and other delicacies. I was a schizerino from the sole of my boots to the tips of my hair. I lived exclusively in the gerundive, which I understood only in Latin. Long before I had read of her in the Black Book I was cohabiting with Hilda, the giant cauliflower of my dreams. We traversed all the morganatic diseases together and a few which were ex cathedra . We dwelt in the carcass of the instincts and were nourished by ganglionic memories. There was never a universe, but millions and billions of universes, all of them put together no bigger than a pinhead. It was a vegetal sleep in the wilderness of the mind. It was the past, which alone comprises eternity. Amidst the fauna and flora of my dreams I would hear long distance calling. Messages were dropped on my table by the deformed and the epileptic. Hans Castorp would call sometimes and together we would commit innocent crimes. Or, if it were a bright freezing day, I would do a turn in the velodrome with my Presto bike from Chemnitz, Bohemia. Best of all was the skeleton dance. I would first wash all my parts at the sink, change my linen, shave, powder, comb my hair, don my dancing pumps. Feeling abnormally light inside and out I would wind in and out of the crowd for a time to get the proper human rhythm, the weight and substance of flesh. Then I would make a bee-line for the dance floor, grab a hunk of giddy flesh and begin the autumnal pirouette. It was like that I walked into the hairy Greek’s place one night and ran smack into her. She seemed blue-black, white as chalk, ageless. There was not just the flow to and from, but the endless chute, the voluptuousness of intrinsic restlessness. She was mercurial and at the same time of a savory weight.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Joey looked around; they really had torn up the apartment. Dead plants were turned over in their broken pots, slashed pillows spilled yellow foam out onto the floor, cardboard boxes lay with their lids yanked open, their contents exposed and strewn. The filing cabinet was tipped over, its open drawers freeing a white dance of paper. At least the broken bottles had been swept safely into piles. Eliot’s rare book collection was preserved in a prim stack beside the couch. Joey could see the three Bartolovs he’d sold him. Eliot had been awed when he’d discovered that Joey’s pill connection was Alexander Bartolov, the famous poet. “Oh, come on Rita, just a little blow job,” said Eliot. “I won’t come or anything.” “Forget it,” said Rita. She lay back into the couch, her spidery white hand over her eyes. Her long limp legs recalled the flying grasshopper on Daisy’s valentine. “She’s still hot for you, you know,” said Eliot. “I still have to hear about the times you tied her up and spanked her.” “Can’t we change the subject?” said Joey. “Okay,” said Eliot cheerfully. “I’m going to the bathroom anyway. I’m nauseous.” “Don’t relax,” said Rita. “He’ll be back in a minute.” “It’s all right with me,” said Joey. He took a magazine off the table. It was open to a picture of a masked woman dressed in a red rubber suit that a man was inflating with a pump. On the next page, a naked girl was tied with belts in a kneeling position on a bathroom floor. An ornery-looking young fellow approached her from behind with a rubber hose; she looked over her shoulder, her lips parted in a look of coy fear. He was surprised at how pretty she was. Her cheekbones and shoulders were like Daisy’s. — Daisy and Joey emerged from the movie theater holding hands. “We have no place to go,” said Daisy. “It’s been a month since we’ve been alone in a room. And David won’t leave.” They walked, still holding hands. “I feel so terrible about David,” she said. “He’s such a lovely, innocent person. He’s the purest person I know.” “There are no pure people.” “You haven’t seen David. He has such naked eyes. When you touch him, it’s like there’s nothing between you and him.” She looked at him quizzically. “You’re not like that. When I touch you, I don’t feel you at all.” “There’s nothing to feel.” “Don’t say that about yourself.” She dropped his hand and rubbed his back with her mittened hand. “Anyway, it’s good you’re not like David. Even as you are, I worry about you being too nice to me.” He put his hand around her neck. “I don’t know what makes you think I have any intention of being nice to you.” She turned and kissed him. He took a handful of her hair in his fist and pulled her head tautly back while he kissed her.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Hymie of course told her it wouldn’t make any difference to him one way or the other. Glued to her like a snake, a cigarette in his mouth, the girls passing below on the boulevard, it was hard for him to imagine a woman not being able to fuck any more. He was sure the operation would be successful. Successful! That’s to say that she’d fuck even better than before. He used to tell her that, lying on his back looking up at the ceiling. “You know I’ll always love you,” he would say. “Move over just a little bit, will you. . . . there, like that. . . . that’s it. What was I saying? Oh yes . . . why sure, why should you worry about things like that? Of course I’ll be true to you. Listen, pull away just a little bit . . . yeah, that’s it. . . . that’s fine.” He used to tell us about it in the chop suey joint. Steve would laugh like hell. Steve couldn’t do a thing like that. He was too honest—especially with women. That’s why he never had any luck. Little Curley, for example—Steve hated Curley—would always get what he wanted. . . . He was a born liar, a born deceiver. Hymie didn’t like Curley much either. He said he was dishonest, meaning of course dishonest in money matters. About such things Hymie was scrupulous. What he disliked especially was the way Curley talked about his aunt. It was bad enough, in Hymie’s opinion, that he should be screwing the sister of his own mother, but to make her out to be nothing but a piece of stale cheese, that was too much for Hymie. One ought to have a bit of respect for a woman, provided she’s not a whore. If she’s a whore that’s different. Whores are not women. Whores are whores. That was how Hymie looked at things. The real reason for this dislike, however, was that whenever they went out together Curley always got the best choice. And not only that, but it was usually with Hymie’s money that Curley managed it. Even the way Curley asked for money irritated Hymie—it was like extortion, he said. He thought it was partly my fault, that I was too lenient with the kid. “He’s got no moral character,” Hymie would say. “And what about you , your moral character?” I would ask. “Oh me! Shit, I’m too old to have any moral character. But Curley’s only a kid.” “You’re jealous, that’s what,” Steve would say. “Me? Me jealous of him?” And he’d try to smother the idea with a scornful little laugh. It made him wince, a jab like that. “Listen,” he would say, turning to me, “did I ever act jealous toward you? Didn’t I always turn a girl over to you if you asked me? What about that red-haired girl in SU office . . . you remember . . .

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  I insisted upon verifying the accounts of cooks and caterers myself; there were times when I recalled that my grandfather had been miserly. Neither the small Greek theater of the Villa, nor the Latin theater, hardly larger, had been completed, but I had a few plays produced in them nevertheless, tragedies, pantomimes, musical dramas, and old local farces. I delighted above all in the subtle gymnastics of the dance, and discovered a weakness for women with castanets, who reminded me of the region of Gades and the first spectacles which I had attended as a child. I liked that brittle sound, those uplifted arms, the furling and unfurling of veils, the dancer who changed now from woman to cloud, and then to bird, who became sometimes the ship and sometimes the wave. For one of these creatures I even took a fancy, though briefly enough. Nor had the kennels and studs been neglected in my absence; I came back to the rough coats of the hounds, the silken horses, the fair pack of the pages. I arranged a few hunting parties in Umbria, on the shore of Lake Trasimene, or nearer Rome, in the Alban woods. Pleasure had regained its place in my life; my secretary Onesimus served me as purveyor. He knew when to avoid certain resemblances, or when, just the reverse, it was better to seek them out. But such a hurried and half attentive lover was hardly loved in return. Now and then I met with a being finer and gentler than the rest, someone worth hearing talk, and perhaps worth seeing again. Those happy chances were rare, though I may have been to blame. Ordinarily I did no more than appease (or deceive) my hunger. At other times my indifference to such games was like that of an old man. In my wakeful hours I took to pacing the corridors of the Villa, proceeding from room to room, sometimes disturbing a mason at work as he laid a mosaic. I would examine, in passing, a Satyr of Praxiteles and then would pause before the effigies of the beloved dead. Each room had its own, and each portico. Sheltering the flame of my lamp with my hand, I would lightly touch that breast of stone. Such encounters served to complicate the memory's task; I had to put aside like a curtain the pallor of the marble to go back, in so far as possible, from those motionless contours to the living form, from the hard texture of Paros or Pentelikon to the flesh itself. Again I would resume my round; the statue, once interrogated, would relapse into darkness; a few steps away my lamp would reveal another image; these great white figures differed little from ghosts.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I never think of myself as being endangered should the train jump the track. We’re wedged in like sardines and all the hot flesh pressed against me diverts my thoughts. I become conscious of a pair of legs wrapped around mine. I look down at the girl sitting in front of me, I look her right in the eye, and I press my knees still further into her crotch. She grows uneasy, fidgets about in her seat, and finally she turns to the girl next to her and complains that I am molesting her. The people about look at me hostilely. I look out of the window blandly and pretend I have heard nothing. Even if I wished to I can’t remove my legs. Little by little though, the girl, by a violent pushing and squiggling, manages to unwrap her legs from mine. I find myself almost in the same situation with the girl next to her, the one she was addressing her complaints to. Almost at once I feel a sympathetic touch and then, to my surprise, I hear her tell the other girl that one can’t help these things, that it is really not the man’s fault but the fault of the company for packing us in like sheep. And again I feel the quiver of her legs against mine, a warm, human pressure, like squeezing one’s hand. With my one free hand I manage to open my book. My object is twofold: first I want her to see the kind of book I read, second, I want to be able to carry on the leg language without attracting attention. It works beautifully. By the time the train empties a bit I am able to take a seat beside her and converse with her—about the book, naturally. She’s a voluptuous Jewess with enormous liquid eyes and the frankness which comes from sensuality. When it comes time to get off we walk arm in arm through the streets, toward her home. I am almost on the confines of the old neighborhood. Everything is familiar to me and yet repulsively strange. I have not walked these streets for years and now I am walking with a Jew girl from the ghetto, a beautiful girl with a strong Jewish accent. I look incongruous walking beside her. I can sense that people are staring at us behind our backs. I am the intruder, the goy who has come down into the neighborhood to pick off a nice ripe cunt. She on the other hand seems to be proud of her conquest; she’s showing me off to her friends. This is what I picked up in the train; an educated goy, a refined goy! I can almost hear her think it. Walking slowly I’m getting the lay of the land, all the practical details which will decide whether I call for her after dinner or not. There’s no thought of asking her to dinner.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  I’d wake up in the mornings with the whole sheet soaked. I felt guilty at first. I actually thought I was committing a sin, dreaming it, thinking it, just watching them. But then one afternoon I crawled on top of a Rawlings basketball in my bedroom and did it for the sheer pleasure of doing it. And it felt good. It felt so good that I did it again after that, and again, and again—with teddy bears in my bed making believe they were Marilyn Monroe, in the bathroom in the bathtub, in the basement laying the side pocket of the pool table seventeen times, in the back yard against trees. I did it everywhere. And no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t stop. It got so bad after a while, I started saying Acts of Contrition after doing it. I asked God to forgive me for feeling this thing and then I couldn’t understand why I’d be asking God to forgive me for doing something that felt so good. * * * For some reason Mom and I just didn’t get along back then. I was being sent to my room for punishment almost every night after dinner. “Take a bath,” “Clean your room,” “Take out the garbage.” . . . It was always something like that, and after battling it out with Mom in the kitchen and getting hit with the egg turner I’d be back in my room cursing her out under my breath as she’d be shouting, “God’s going to punish you, Ronnie! God’s going to punish you!” Later she’d come in and tell me she was sorry for yelling at me and I’d give her a big hug and tell her I was sorry too for making her so angry. Mom always wanted me to be the best at whatever I did, especially at school. “If you fail any subjects this year,” she’d tell me, “you’re not going out for any sports.” I kept telling her I was trying to do my best, but the only thing I could think of was baseball and instead of doing my homework every night I read every sports book I could get my hands on. For hours I’d swing the baseball bat in front of the mirror in my room. I still wanted to play for the New York Yankees more than anything else in the world. I joined the track team in the spring. I wanted to be the greatest pole-vaulter in the history of the school and so I worked out every day until dark on the parallel bars Dad had built the summer before in the back yard. I remember Mom in the kitchen cheering me on, turning on the porch lights so I could work out even more. I loved those bars and when my brother Tommy was home from school, we’d both get on them together.

• From Untrue (2018)

  We are not chimps or langurs, of course. But Hrdy and the numerous scientists and thinkers she has influenced ask, Why would human females be designed as we are (and why would males have the penis shaped the way it is, and ejaculate with spermicide, and testicles the size they are) if women hadn’t been able to seek out the rewards our bodies promised, presumably serially and without much trepidation or undue fear of serious reprisals or consequences? And if seeking sex with multiple partners had always been restricted and at times even as lethal as it is today, how could we be here, designed as we are now? To consider the clitoris and the nature of female orgasm and the cervix too, as well as male equipment and the way we have sex, is to confront not just the vague possibility but the likelihood that women are made for sexual gratification and for pursuing it, and for mating multiply, in ways that men—who come and are done—are not. Female biology suggests that women are built for sexual experimentation, for reckless days and heedless nights, putting us in conflict with our current cultural container, to put it mildly. There is no one way of having sex we “evolved” for—we are flexible sexual and social strategists. But our essence, if we can be said to have one, is likely less matron and more macaque. Female infidelity is a behavior with one foot in the present day and the other in our ancient past, linked to anatomy, physiology, and reward seeking. And the best mother is the one who, when circumstances are right, does what it takes to line up allies who will be well disposed toward her offspring. She might do so on her back, or with her rump in the air. In the field of primatology, from Hrdy’s game-changing multiple-mating and infanticide hypothesis and insights about the nature of female orgasm to Barbara Smuts’s unexpected observations about female olive baboons who choose mates from among numerous male “friends” to Meredith Small’s assertion that the single most observable characteristic among female non-human primates is a preference for sexual novelty, presumptions that female monogamy is timeless and essential have taken a beating. Promiscuity, Thy Name Is Woman—why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on; and yet, within a month— Let me not think on’t—Frailty, thy name is woman! —Hamlet, act 1, scene 2

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “All right, I’m not a slave. With me it’s more a matter of love.” She was just barely aware that she was pitching her voice higher and softer than it was naturally, so that she sounded like a cartoon girl. “It’s like the highest form of love.” He thought this was really cute. Sure it was nauseating, but it was feminine in a radio-song kind of way. “You don’t seem interested in love. It’s not about that for you.” “That’s not true. That’s not true at all. Why do you think I was so rough back there? Deep down, I’m afraid I’ll fall in love with you, that I’ll need to be with you and fuck you…forever.” He was enjoying himself now. He was beginning to see her as a locked garden that he could sneak into and sit in for days, tearing the heads off the flowers. On one hand, she was beside herself with bliss. On the other, she was scrutinizing him carefully from behind an opaque facade as he entered her pasteboard scene of flora and fauna. Could he function as a character in this landscape? She imagined sitting across from him in a Japanese restaurant, talking about anything. He would look intently into her eyes…. He saw her apartment and then his. He saw them existing a nice distance apart, each of them blocked off by cleanly cut boundaries. Her apartment bloomed with scenes that spiraled toward him in colorful circular motions and then froze suddenly and clearly in place. She was crawling blindfolded across the floor. She was bound and naked in an S&M bar. She was sitting next to him in a taxi, her skirt pulled up, his fingers in her vagina. …and then they would go back to her apartment. He would beat her and fuck her mouth. Then he would go home to his wife, and she would make dinner for him. It was so well balanced, the mere contemplation of it gave him pleasure. The next day he would send her flowers. He let go of the wheel with one hand and patted her head. She gripped his shirt frantically. He thought: This could work out fine. Something Nice“What’s your name, sir?” The freckled woman wore green stretch pants, and had her red hair tucked under a neat pink scarf. “Fred?” She was making her naturally coarse voice go soft and moist as warm mayonnaise. “I’d like you to meet my girlfriends, Fred.” The four girls stared at him. Two sat up and smiled, holding their purses with tight fingers, their legs pinched together at the knees. A beautiful black-haired girl, with jutting cheekbones and a lush, full mouth, lolled in an orange beanbag chair, her long legs sprawled rudely on the floor, half open and tenting her tight silk dress so you could almost see between her legs. She gawked at him with open disgust.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  force, and the wash of its warm ecstasy was experienced as a communion with Dionysus. It is hard for us to appreciate the invisible but ubiquitous eff ects of wine in the Roman Empire. In his list of inputs and outputs that will have to be modulated to maintain a healthy equilibrium, Galen notably puts wine fi rst and sex last. Th e Romans were alive to wine’s eff ects on the body, attributing its disinhibiting qualities not to altered consciousness so much as to greater heat. Wine was an accelerant. Wine was especially healthy for older men, whose bodies were cold, and especially dangerous for younger ones, whose bodies were already hot. Wine was “Aphrodite’s milk”; it was, in the words of Achilles Tatius, “sex fuel.” Youth, gassy foods, wine, exposure to beauty: all precipitated the buildup of heat and the production of semen that spurred sexual desire. On the other side of the ledger, sex itself was an expenditure— a highly elaborate and particularly costly one. Th e sexual act set all the parts of the body to work simultaneously, “as in a dance,” pulling semen through the body’s channels. Seminal fl uid was blood packed with pneuma culled from the entire body; the pneuma discharged during sex included the precious and especially fi ne psychic pneuma , the medium of the soul itself. Blood and pneuma were brought to boil in the testes. Th en, the convulsive plea sure of orgasm was like a brief epilepsy that left the body depleted. Heat and moisture were expelled. For the Roman doctor, the most revealing part of sex was not the ecstasy but the aftermath— the immediate exhaustion, the languid body. Sex was a negative term on the body’s energy balance sheet and, for some doctors, ipso facto deleterious. For most, though, sex was simply one output among others that could be integrated within a balanced regimen. Th e amount of sex to be prescribed varied case by case, with age and individual constitution. Especially for the young in the prime of life, whose bodies were warm and moist, sex was salubrious. At any age, excessive indulgence left the body cold, dry, and withered. But abstinence had its own dangers too. Lovesickness was a very real pathology in the Roman Empire, and no less a scientist than Galen was able to diagnose its symptoms. Too little sex might slow the body’s natural cycles, leaving the person dull and melan-cholic. Unfulfi lled desire could lead to nausea, fever, and poor digestion. Th e retention of seed was unhealthy. Modern historians have been fi xated on the idea of sex as a loss of vital spirit, a notion that is certainly present in Roman medical literature. It is true that sex was a costly enterprise. Pneuma T H E M O R A L I T I E S O F S E X I N T H E R O M A N E M P I R E 

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Enter very calmly, Henry, and keep your eyes peeled! And I enter as per instructions on velvet toes, checking my hat and urinating a little as a matter of course, then slowly redescending the stairs and sizing up the taxi girls all diaphanously gowned, powdered, perfumed, looking fresh and alert but probably bored as hell and leg weary. Into each and every one of them, as I shuffle about, I throw an imaginary fuck. The place is just plastered with cunt and fuck and that’s why I’m reasonably sure to find my old friend MacGregor here. The way I no longer think about the condition of the world is marvelous. I mention it because for a moment, just while I was studying a juicy ass, I had a relapse. I almost went into a trance again. I was thinking, Christ help me, that maybe I ought to beat it and go home and begin the book. A terrifying thought! Once I spent a whole evening sitting in a chair and saw nothing and heard nothing. I must have written a good-sized book before I woke up. Better not to sit down. Better to keep circulating. Henry, what you ought to do is to come here some time with a lot of dough and just see how far it’ll take you. I mean a hundred or two hundred bucks, and spend it like water and say yes to everything. The haughty looking one with the statuesque figure, I bet she’d squirm like an eel if her palm were well greased. Supposing she said—twenty bucks! and you could say Sure! Supposing you could say—Listen, I’ve got a car downstairs . . . let’s run down to Atlantic City for a few days. Henry, there ain’t no car and there ain’t no twenty bucks. Don’t sit down . . . keep moving . At the rail which fences off the floor I stand and watch them sailing around. This is no harmless recreation . . . this is serious business. At each end of the floor there is a sign reading “No Improper Dancing Allowed.” Well and good. No harm in placing a sign at each end of the floor. In Pompeii they probably hung a phallus up. This is the American way. It means the same thing. I mustn’t think about Pompeii or I’ll be sitting down and writing a book again. Keep moving, Henry. Keep your mind on the music . I keep struggling to imagine what a lovely time I would have if I had the price of a string of tickets, but the more I struggle the more I slip back. Finally I’m standing knee deep in the lava beds and the gas is choking me. It wasn’t the lava that killed the Pompeians, it was the poison gas that precipitated the eruption. That’s how the lava caught them in such queer poses, with their pants down, as it were.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  He linked his hands behind his back again but almost immediately reached up to cup my balls in one hand, the first time he had actually touched me, my bare skin; I drew my breath in through my teeth at the shock, which was neither pleasure nor pain, but sensation, pure and unmarked. With his other hand he gripped the shaft and moved it to the right and left, up and down, not erotically, but as if examining it, I thought, like a physician; and maybe he was examining it, in part, looking for signs of disease though he claimed not to care about disease, I don’t know. My first American cock, he said then, looking up at me and smiling, my first cut cock; his English was remarkable, he spoke flawlessly the language of hook-up sites and porn. He gripped more tightly as he pulled up the shaft, milking me, and at the tip there appeared a small drop, opalescent, almost clear. I should have stopped him as he leaned forward, I was giving him too free a rein, but I let him touch the tip of his tongue to the drop, not gathering it up but tasting it, and then he pulled back, so that it stretched out gossamer between us. He closed his eyes, his tongue still extended, and I felt again that he was acting something out, that he had slipped into a fantasy that had very little, had possibly nothing, to do with me. He was posing, inhabiting a scene, something out of porn, some image in which he was a star. He made these images, he would tell me later, they were his main source of income, he performed on webcam sites for men who paid him to do whatever they wanted. I love it, he said, all those guys watching me and jerking off, I love it. There were dozens of guys sometimes, once nearly a hundred, a little counter on the screen told him how many, they would urge him on as he brought out his toys, ever larger dildos and plugs. It was never much money, he said, unless a guy wanted a private show, and then they could leave the site and go to Skype, and he might earn thirty or forty euro. But I don’t really do it for the money, he said.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  He was dulling my pleasure, I thought, not removing it entirely but taking off its edge. But he didn’t take off its edge, not really, and when there was a slackening in the leash I lunged forward, like the dog he called me. There wasn’t anything special about his cock, it was solid and sizeable and thick, but none of these to a remarkable degree, and he had shaved himself as all men here do, which I hate, the bareness of it is obscene somehow, I can’t accustom myself to it. But I was eager, and as I took him in my mouth I felt the gratitude I nearly always feel in such moments, not so much to him as to whatever arrangement of things had allowed me what as a child I thought I would always be denied. It was large enough that I didn’t try to take all of it at once; eager as I was there are certain preparations required, the relaxation and lubrication of passages, a general warming up. But immediately his hand was on my head again, forcing me down, and when it was clear that the passage was blocked, he used both of his hands to hold me, at once pulling me to him and jerking his hips forward in short, savage thrusts, saying Dai gurloto , give me your throat, an odd construction I had never heard before. This was painful, and not only for me, it must have hurt him too. But I did give my throat, I found an angle that gave him access, and soon enough I relaxed and there was a rush of saliva and he could move however he wanted, as he did for a while, maybe there was pleasure for him after all. As there was for me, the intense pleasure I’ve never been able to account for, that can’t be accounted for mechanically; the pleasure of service, I’ve sometimes thought, or more darkly the pleasure of being used, the exhilaration of being made an object that had been lacking in sex with R., though that had had its own pleasures, pleasures I longed for but that had in no way compensated for the lack of this. I want to be nothing, I had said to him, and it was a way of being nothing, or next to nothing, a convenience, a tool. He stopped moving then, taking his hands from my head and even from the chain, which fell superfluous and cold down my back. Kuchkata , he said, not kuchko anymore, the vocative that had softened the word and made it tender to my ears; no longer addressing me but speaking of the object I had become, he said Let the bitch do it herself.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  When I began to rise he snapped Dolu , stay down, and I moved across the space on all fours, the carpet featureless and gray and coarse. When I reached him he took my hair in his hand and lifted me up onto my knees, not roughly, maybe just as a means of communication more efficient than speech. I had told him I wasn’t Bulgarian in one of our online chats, warning him that when we met there might be things I wouldn’t understand, but he had asked none of the usual questions, he seemed not to care why I had come to his country, where so few come and fewer still stay long enough to learn the language, which is spoken nowhere else, which even here, as the country shrinks, is spoken by fewer people each day; it’s not difficult to imagine it disappearing altogether, the language and the country both. We’ll understand each other, he had said, don’t worry, and maybe it was just to ensure this understanding that he had taken me in hand, firmly but not painfully guiding me to my knees. He let go of my hair then, freeing his hand to move down the side of my face, almost stroking it before he cupped it in his palm. It was a tender gesture, and his voice was tender too as he said Kuchko , addressing me as if solicitously and tilting my head so that we gazed at each other face to face; his fingers flexed against my cheek, almost in a caress. I leaned my head into him, resting it on his palm as he spoke again in that tone of tenderness or solicitude, Tell me, kuchko , tell me what you want. And I did tell him, at first slowly and with the usual words, reciting the script that both does and does not express my desires; and then I spoke more quickly and more searchingly, drawn forward by the tone of his voice, what seemed like tenderness although it was not tenderness, until I found myself suddenly in some recess or depth where I had never been.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Isn’t she beautiful, he said, taking my hand in his, but he answered the question himself, she is, isn’t she, I think she’s beautiful. WE WENT TO BOLOGNA because it was the cheapest place we could fly: there were tickets for forty euros, a price I could afford. We packed a single carry-on each, anything else would have meant a fee, and rode in a cab to the airport’s old terminal, which the budget airlines used. It was my first time leaving the country. During breaks, when the other American teachers left for places near or far—Istanbul, Tangier, St. Petersburg—I stayed behind; I didn’t want to travel, I said, I wanted to be settled in a single place. I studied Bulgarian, I read, I wandered the streets downtown. But I did want to travel with R., to leave Sofia, where even when his friends were gone there was a pressure of secrecy, where it was too dangerous to hold hands in the streets, to kiss in public, however chastely, where everywhere we had to keep a casual distance; I wanted to be with him in a place where we could be freer with each other, a place in the West. It was my gift to him, a getaway, a bit of romance. We arrived at the airport early enough to be first in line for the unassigned seats, and sat in the front row, where there was extra room for our legs. Even so my knees almost touched those of the single attendant who sat facing us, strapped into her foldout seat. She spoke English with an accent I couldn’t place, not Bulgarian but something Eastern European, and she smiled slightly, kindly I thought, when the plane started down the runway, thrusting us all back, and R. moved his hand to cover mine where it lay on my knee. WE BOOKED THE CHEAPEST HOTEL , too, a chain a good way from the city center, with a bus stop outside for getting to town. We arrived too late for any exploring, we’d have to wait until morning to see the city. It was hard not to feel depressed by our room, which had the corporate airlessness of such places, comfort sterilized of any human touch. It was on the second floor, overlooking the parking lot.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  We had been chatting for several days by then, emailing back and forth on a dating site, though it wasn’t for dating so much as for sex, which at first was all we thought we wanted. And anyway he was twenty-one, too young to take seriously; it might be a bit of fun, I thought when I looked at his profile, a bit of fun but nothing more. His pictures didn’t show very much, mostly his torso, which was thick and unsculpted, a little heavy in a way I liked. In his second email he sent a link to a video that showed what most men must have wanted to see: he was naked, exposing himself, turning to give a full view before he jerked himself off. There was something dispiriting about it, the faceless body too starkly displayed, turning as if on a dais; it shamed me a little to enjoy it. He waited several days before he showed me more, and only after I had promised to be discreet; he wasn’t out, he told me, not even to his closest friends, and so it was a pledge of trust to send the photo in which finally I saw his face. He was at a club, there were other people behind him in the dark, but he was the only one looking at the camera. The glare of the flash was bright on his skin, and he seemed gripped by joy, there’s no other way to say it, his eyes were shut and his mouth stretched impossibly wide, revealing teeth that were large and imperfect, an upper one in front just slightly skewed. When I saw it I knew I wanted to be smiled at like that. I would never get tired of it, I thought in the restaurant, each time he smiled it filled me with a happiness I had never felt before, a happiness that was particularly his to give. He told me about his day then, which was less regimented than mine, the day of a student. He was in Sofia as part of a program that shuttled college students around the EU, an attempt to stitch up the union though in R.’s case it hadn’t worked; he hated Bulgaria, he said, almost as much as he hated his own country.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  The music changed as we set our glasses down, there was a sudden assault of gaidi, the mountain bagpipes ubiquitous in Balkan folk music, and then a syncopated rush of drums that made both of us grin. It was a song we knew well, one of the big hits of Z.’s senior year, and we lifted our glasses again, toasting each other and the song and the memory of it we had. With the glass still at his lips Z. began to dance, he extended his other arm away from his body and twisted slightly from side to side, and though it was half ironic it made me feel a kind of pang, since it was for me, his dance, I was his only audience, it could only be for me. After a few seconds, he put his glass down, dropping his other arm too, abandoning his performance. But I raised my own arms, awkward and un-American, I shuffled a step toward him and he was in it again. It was like I had given him permission to dance, to be foolish in front of me, since I was so much more foolish, without his beauty or his youth, I was an old man in this place. But he smiled at me and I smiled back and we were dancing with each other, after a fashion, we made a little orbit together, a center of gravity. At one point I reached over and put my hand on his shoulder, a friendly gesture, casual, avuncular maybe, and then I let my hand slide down his arm and, as I felt him flex his bicep, that reflexive preening, I curled my fingers around the muscle there and squeezed, feeling how solid it was. I knew the gesture wasn’t casual anymore, that it showed too much, I was touching him as I had never allowed myself to touch a student before. But he wasn’t my student, I told myself, for one night we could face each other without all that, I could touch his arm and have all of that fall away. Or maybe that’s not what I thought, maybe I’m adding it now, maybe then all I felt was a seam or line drawn taut from my throat to my groin, a circuit that came alive in contact with him. He smiled and bent his arm at the elbow, pumping the muscle, and I let my other hand join the first, linking my fingers around his arm to take in the full span of it. I had stopped dancing, I realized, and I dropped my hands as I felt the embarrassment of admiring him for too long. But he didn’t seem embarrassed, he didn’t stop smiling, though he wasn’t dancing anymore, either; he stopped to slide his hand into the front pocket of his jeans, which were tight, my eyes followed as he worked his fingers in and slid out his phone.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  He raised his arms for me to pull his shirt up and off, and I felt the mood shifting already, it lightened as his passivity became a game almost, his passivity and my insistence as I struggled with the buckle of his belt, the button on his jeans; I could feel him almost smile as I kissed him, as he answered me back more in his kisses, his tongue pressing against mine. I pushed his jeans and underwear down, breaking our kiss to kneel and hold them at his ankles while he pulled his legs free, kissing his cock, which wasn’t hard yet, just once before I rose again. He moved to kiss me again but I pulled away, then shoved him back, not hard, he could have resisted but he didn’t, he fell backward onto the bed. Onto our bed, I thought, which was what it had become in those days, not a lonely place but a place that belonged to both of us, a loving place; it was something I could think to myself but not say out loud. I took off my own clothes quickly and then launched myself on top of him, which made him flinch and laugh, just once and as if against his will. I caught myself with my hands and when he reached out his own hands, bracing them against my chest, I grabbed them one by one at the wrist and pinned them above his head. He made a noise at this, a little growl, interested and interrogative, as I ground against him, his cock harder now, mine fully hard. I lowered my face but dodged his kiss again, teasing him, and instead kissed his collarbone, first one side and then the other, and then the inside of his arm, just below the elbow, where I knew he was ticklish, and then I licked the pit of his arm, slowly, because I loved the taste of him, first the right and then the left, and he growled again.

• From Cleanness (2020)

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

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  They eventually gained admission and roamed the three floors of the club, greedily looking around. Joel drank one paper cup of watered-down alcohol after another and stared at the moiling sweat-dampened crowd with an attitude of wistful contempt. They were coiffed like Dr. Seuss characters and dressed like children in their parents’ clothes. At one time he had wanted to be like them. Now he thought they were stupid, although he still liked to look at them. He saw a girl standing alone at a bar, dressed like a twelve-year-old’s idea of a hooker. Tight black bodice, short flared ballerina skirt. She was small, she stood with her ankles together. He edged along the wall, pretending to study the material hung up as art. He remembered the blow-up doll he had once hung up in his Ann Arbor apartment as a party decoration. It wore Sara’s clothes and bore, with Scotch tape, a sign that read “Hurt Me Beat Me Fuck Me.” Wilson had said, “Joel, come on. This is too much. It’s not funny.” Joel continued toward the girl at the bar, fighting the anxious crimp in his shoulders. The terse conversation with her didn’t result in her phone number on a piece of paper in his pocket. He found the lawyers again and stalked around with them, making jokes. They couldn’t find Jerry, so the three of them got into a cab and left together, a trio of masculine shoulders filling the paned-in back seat with gruff laughter and blurted comments. He entered his dark, narrow-halled apartment in a grainy mental state. He stopped briefly before the toilet on his way to bed. He stripped off his clothes and dropped them in the middle of the floor. He lay on his back and put one hand on his cock. He imagined dozens of intriguing images, perusing the possible nuance of each circumstance. There was Cecilia. There was the girl at the bar. There was Sara. “Get my belt,” he had said to her. She hesitated. “Don’t you think you deserve it?” He masturbated watching spread-legged Sara arch her neck and rub her injured-looking vagina. He finished. He mopped his abdomen with a “snot rag.” A memory separated from the fantasy and lingered. “I love you,” said Sara. “It’s not real,” he said. “It’s puppy love.” “No. I love you.” She nuzzled his cheek with her nose and lips, and her tenderness pierced him. The image became tiny and unnaturally white, was surrounded by darkness, then faded like the picture on a turned-off TV.