Desire

Passages

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

Page 182 of 344 · 20 per page

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  One new entrant tottered to the deserted front row, which in this tiny space was only a few feet from the screen. There was a rustle of papers, and I could see him in silhouette remove his coat, fold it neatly and place it on the seat next to that in which he then sat down. The rustling recurred intermittently, and I guessed he must be a man I’d seen at the Brutus the very first time I went there, a spry little chap of sixty-five or so who, like a schoolgirl taken to a romantic U picture, sat entranced by the movies and worked his way through a bag of boiled sweets as the action unfolded. A fiver from his pension, perhaps, and 30p for the humbugs, might be set aside weekly for this little outing. How he must look forward to it! His was a complete and innocent absorption in the fantasy world on screen. Could he look back to a time when he had behaved like these glowing, thoughtless teenagers, who were now locked together sucking on each other’s cocks in the hay? Or was this the image of a new society we had made, where every desire could find its gratification? The old man was happy with his cough-drops, but I wanted some other oral pleasure (the Winchester slang ‘suction’, meaning sweets, I realised was the comprehensive term). Not, however, from the person who came scouting up to the rear rows now, one of the plump, bespectacled Chinese youths who, with day-return businessmen and quite distinguished Oxbridge dons, made a haunt of places like this, hopping hopefully from row to row, so persistent that they were inevitably, from time to time, successful. The man on the end of the row had to shift, and I realised I was to be the next recipient of Eastern approaches. The boy sat down next to me, and though I carried on looking at the screen and laid my hand across my cock, I was aware that he was staring at me intently to try and make out my face in the darkness, and I felt his breath on my cheek. Then there was the pressure of his shoulder against mine. I gathered myself emphatically, and leant across into the empty place on the other side. He sprawled rather, with his legs wide apart, one of them straying into my space and pressing against my thigh.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘You’re looking very big, Stan,’ I said, smiling at him teasingly. He was a hard man to clothe and at night often went out as he was now, his torso draped in the tatters of some sweat-scorched singlet, a broad leather belt (which he assured me came in handy) needlessly supporting pale old jeans rubbed thin under his bum and along the thick bolt of his cock. He once showed me a picture of how he looked at fifteen—tall and uncertain, and indifferently built. I think some sort of crisis about being gay had got him to the gym, which gave him both lovers and a new body. An element of defiance had made him a now almost unconscious exhibitionist. A lot of sex went on in the lock-ups of the Shaft, but one evening I had stumbled in for a piss to find Stan fucking a boy just inside the door. He had him with one leg cocked up on a washbasin and as he laid into his ass the bracket of the basin was breaking free of the wall, and the kid, who looked the younger and slighter in his giant grasp, rode up and down against his own breath-smeared reflection in the mirror. An ever-growing group of admirers deserted the dance floor and stood around feeling themselves and muttering encouragement. Phil was back with the much-jogged pints of beer. I craved liquid, and as I drank my dry palate seemed to admit the alcohol straight to my brain. ‘See you, sweetheart,’ said Stan, realising we would be no good to him—the endearment, as always when spoken by a real man, a virtual stranger, moving me for a few seconds intensely. Phil watched him amble off. ‘Some bloke grabbed my cock, at the bar,’ he said, in a tone which strove to combine pleasure and resentment and came out, neutrally, as a statement of fact. I drank and then kissed him, squirting cold lager into his mouth, though much of it, in his surprise, ran back down his chin. As I held him I could squeeze the sweat from his shirt where it clung down the channel of his back—so I took his drink from him, and helped him tug the wet garment off. The atmosphere was more and more liquid. Everyone was stripping off, and those who touched each other could cream off the sweat with a finger.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  I couldn’t stand it suddenly, being in that room with their bodies and the passion joining them at the mouths, I wanted to be anywhere else, though I still couldn’t look away. I don’t think I had let myself realize until then what I wanted or how much I wanted it. Finally they stopped kissing, K. pulled her mouth away and whispered something in his ear and then lowered her head to his crotch, using both her hands to unbutton his jeans before she placed her mouth where her hand had been. I pulled my knees up and hugged them against my chest. I couldn’t see anything, she had turned her head so that her hair hung down like a veil, but I watched frozen as K. put one of his hands on her head and then dropped it to her shoulder, gripping her there. I looked at K.’s face then and saw that he was watching me, that he had seen me watching them and was waiting for me to look up. He caught me and held my gaze without welcome or warmth or any hint of what we had shared, and my sense of having violated something, of having looked where I shouldn’t have faded, as I understood that this was what he wanted me to see all along, that I was there not as guard but as audience. I was there to see how different from me he was, how free of the foulness my father had shown him; and now that I had seen it, I knew our friendship had run its course. He closed his eyes then, he gave himself over and with a quick breath sucked between his teeth let his head fall back against the wall. He knew I was watching and he let me watch. It was like a parting gift, I thought as I kept watching his face and the movements it made, it looked almost as if he were in pain. I was in pain too, and almost without thinking I let my hand drop between my legs and gripped myself hard. I’ve sought it ever since, I think, the combination of exclusion and desire I felt in his room, beneath the pain of exclusion the satisfaction of desire; sometimes I think it’s the only thing I’ve sought. I had been walking away from the base of the hill, into that declivity or bay where all the runoff from the surrounding districts must have run, so that despite the dryness everywhere else the ground here was a morass, I was mired in roots and mud. I couldn’t get across, I realized, I was ankle-deep in it already, I had ruined my shoes. I turned back to the base of the hill I had climbed down and continued to walk there, skirting the mud as best I could.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Before going to the Corry I cut down through Soho Square to a cinema in Frith Street. It wasn’t so much to see a film as to sit in a dark, anonymous place and do dark, anonymous things. Arthur and I had got wrecked on tequila the night before, the bottled romance of Mexico, as it described itself. The evenings had been getting longer lately, in two senses, and we both needed a little help with our own bottled romance. As it was he had become brash and giggly and fallen into an open-mouthed, stertorous sleep during the first five minutes of the Royal Command Performance. Deeply drunk myself, I roamed off to bed, and the next morning, when I woke groaning and groping at nine, dimly remembered looking at myself with immense self-satisfaction in the hall mirror and giving a barely prophetic rendition of ‘Nessun dorma’ seven or eight times. As always when I had a bad hangover I felt criminally randy, but Arthur, whom I found still lying on the sitting-room floor, his chin sticky with a dozer’s saliva, spent the morning alternately shitting and vomiting (which was painful for him) and walking very slowly from one item of furniture to another, his lower lip drooping and with a funny look about him which I realised was his equivalent of pallor. Though it was not much fun, this hangover created a minor drama in our life and we reacted to it with disbelieving shakings of the head, exaggerated winces and a vocabulary honed down to ‘man’, ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’ produced in gasps or cracked whispers. Then Arthur, with a comical ungainliness, as if he were running a three-legged race with an invisible partner, would canter off to the lavatory once more. Later I got him to go to bed and went out, still quite speedy from the drink and in the mood for what sex-club owners call an experience.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " I see plainly," said Oisille, " that as long as the con- versation runs upon this topic, those who do not like to be treated harshly will say everything bad they can of us ; so be pleased. Dagoucin, to give your voice to some one." Third day. \ QUEEN OF NAVARKE. 247 " I give it to Longarine," said he, " being assured that she will tell us something no\el and speak the very- truth without sparing either men or women." " Since you have such a good opinion of my sinceri- ty," said Longarine, " I will relate an anecdote of a great prince who surpassed in endowments all the princes of his time. Permit me also to remark, that falsehood and dissimulation are things which should be least of all used, unless in a case of extreme necessity. They are very ugly and disgraceful vices, especially in princes and great lords, whom truth becomes still more than other men. But there is no prince in the world, however glorious or rich he may be, who does not acknowledge the empire of love, and submit to its tyranny. Indeed, that arrogant god disdains all that is common, and delights only in working miracles everyday, such as weakening the strong, strengthening the weak, making fools of the wise, and knowing persons of the ignorant, favouring the passions, destroying reason, and, in a word, turning everything topsy-turvy. As princes are not exempt from it, no more so are they from the necessity in which they are put by the desire of amorous servitude. Thence it comes that they are forced to use falsehood, hypocrisy, and feigning, which, according to Maitre Jean de Meun, are means for vanquishing enemies. Though conduct of this nature is laudable in a prince, though it be censurable in all other men, I will recount to you the device employed by a young prince who tricked those who are used to trick all the world." ,^8 THE HMFTAMEROA OL THE {Novel 25. NOVEL XXV. Cunning contrivance of a young prince to enjoy the wife of an advocate of Paris.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Begin Reading Table of Contents About the Author Copyright Page Thank you for buying this Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook. To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters. Or visit us online at us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup For email updates on the author, click here . The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy . For Alan Pierson and Max Freeman and for Luis Muñoz I MITKO That my first encounter with Mitko B. ended in a betrayal, even a minor one, should have given me greater warning at the time, which should in turn have made my desire for him less, if not done away with it completely. But warning, in places like the bathrooms at the National Palace of Culture, where we met, is like some element coterminous with the air, ubiquitous and inescapable, so that it becomes part of those who inhabit it, and thus part and parcel of the desire that draws us there. Even as I descended the stairs I heard his voice, which like the rest of him was too large for those subterranean rooms, spilling out of them as if to climb back into the bright afternoon that, though it was mid-October, had nothing autumnal about it; the grapes that hung ripe from vines throughout the city burst warm still in one’s mouth. I was surprised to hear someone talking so freely in a place where, by unstated code, voices seldom rose above a whisper. At the bottom of the stairs I paid my fifty stotinki to an old woman who looked up at me from her booth, her expression unreadable as she took the coins; with her other hand she clutched a shawl against the chill that was constant here, whatever the season. Only as I neared the end of the corridor did I hear a second voice, not raised like the first, but answering in a low murmur. The voices came from the second of the bathroom’s three chambers, where they might have belonged to men washing their hands had the sound of water accompanied them. I paused in the outermost room, examining myself in the mirrors lining its walls as I listened to their conversation, though I couldn’t understand a word. There was only one reason for men to be standing there, the bathrooms at NDK (as the Palace is called) are well enough hidden and have such a reputation that they’re hardly used for anything else; and yet as I turned into the room this explanation seemed at odds with the demeanor of the man who claimed my attention, which was cordial and brash, entirely public in that place of intense privacies.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  For the first time I asked him where he lived and he answered S priyateli , with friends, a term that he used often and that I was never sure how to interpret, since in addition to its usual meanings Mitko used it to refer to his clients. It became clear to me, as I struggled to understand his stream of talk (frequently punctuated with razbirash li , do you understand?), that Mitko shuttled between places, sometimes sleeping with these friends, sometimes walking the streets until morning. When the weather was bad, he could go to a small garret room to which a friend had given him a key ( Edna mansarda , he said, making the shape of a roof with his hands), where there was a mattress but no heat or running water. Speaking of these things seemed to make Mitko uneasy, and he changed the subject by saying that, though I had found him at NDK, where he had spent much of the day, he had nevertheless been saving himself for our evening together. He looked at me sidelong as he said this ( Razbirash li? ) and I felt myself flush with excitement. Mitko seemed eager, too, full of an energy that propelled him forward, and as we walked down Vasil Levski toward Graf Ignatief, crossing innumerable side streets and alleyways, more than once I had to grab his arm and, saying to him again Chakai chakai chakai , pull him back from oncoming traffic. When we turned onto Graf Ignatief, he stopped in front of the many electronics stores and pawnshops, evaluating the products laid out in their windows. I was surprised by how much he knew about these phones and tablets, his monologues punctuated by English words for the various devices’ specs, pixels and memory cards and battery life, information he must have gleaned from the advertisements and brochures he picked up wherever they were offered. I tried to hurry him along, impatient to get home and uneasy at what seemed more and more like hints, especially when Mitko told me that his current phone, a model he clearly hoped to upgrade, was a gift from one of his friends. This word, podaruk , gift, would recur again and again in Mitko’s conversation that evening, applied, it seemed, to nearly everything he owned. Finally we came to the end of Graf Ignatief, and as we approached the small river that circles central Sofia, really little more than a drainage ditch, Mitko said Chakai malko , wait a little, and stepped off the sidewalk toward the sparse vegetation at the river’s bank. I walked on a few steps, then turned to look back at him, though I could barely make him out (it was dark now, the autumn night had fallen as we walked) as he stood at the bank to relieve himself into the water.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  It took him a moment to realize it wasn’t the same device that had so fascinated him in Sofia, and when I told him that that one had been stolen, that a man had taken it from me during an encounter, he shook his head in sympathy—such is the world—and then his features hardened. When I’m in Sofia, he said, we’ll look for him, you show me who he is and I’ll take care of him. Samo da go vidya i do tam. It was clear that his sickness, whatever it was, hadn’t kept him from the brawls I suspected he enjoyed; above his left eye, now, there was a wound just a day or two old, the skin still split. I tried to delay, settling in a bit, arranging my things, but his presence was too much for me, I went to him and touched him and he put his hand on my neck and pushed me down, then unbuttoned his fly and fished himself out, still clutching my iPod in his other hand. It was only when I stood up again and took his arm, tugging him toward the bed, that he laid the device aside and made himself more fully available to me. But he was still detached, he kept glancing at the television, and when I asked him what was wrong he just shrugged and answered that he had already had sex that afternoon, which seemed like a breach of contract, though I suppose I had no real basis for complaint. I fell back from him then, I lay next to him thinking, as I had had cause to think before, of how helpless desire is outside its little theater of heat, how ridiculous it becomes the moment it isn’t welcomed, even if that welcome is contrived. Mitko was right next to me, naked now and stretched out with his arms behind his head, but he didn’t touch me or respond to my touch, his cock lay half-hard against his stomach. He was granting me access but he wasn’t really present, and finally I fell back beside him, my eyes closed, and concentrated on his warmth where our bodies touched as I brought myself off. I woke early the next morning and went for a walk on my own. The sun was just rising, the wind was chill and fresh and laced with salt.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘In fact, I first got off with my current friend in a cinema in Frith Street. He was very shy afterwards about admitting that it had been him—in the dark, you know. He’s a very shy boy, actually, but in those places people seem to lose their inhibitions.’ Charles was not paying attention, and perhaps I shouldn’t have been telling this story. I still wasn’t wholly sure it had been Phil that I had felt up that day in the basement of the Brutus. Blushing, abstruse, he would not, when I put it to him, confirm or deny it. If it had been him, then he seemed to want it forgotten; if not, then he showed an odd readiness to be incorporated into some half-apprehended fantasy of my own. If it had been him, that squalid and exaggerated little episode must alter my understanding of him, open up the faintly sickening possibility of there being another Phil, whom I could not account for. He might have been at the Brutus at this very moment—or at the Bona or the Honcho or the Stud … ‘It’s always gone on, of course,’ Charles recalled. ‘We had little private bars, sex clubs really, in Soho before the war, very secret. And my Uncle Edmund had fantastic tales of places and sort of gay societies in Regent’s Park—a century ago now, before Oscar Wilde and all that—with beautiful working boys dressed as girls and what-have-you. Uncle Ned was a character …’ Charles sat beaming. ‘I’m always forgetting how sexy the past must have been—it’s the clothes or something.’ ‘Oh, it was unbelievably sexy—much more so than nowadays. I’m not against Gay Lib and all that, of course, William, but it has taken a lot of the fun out of it, a lot of the frisson. I think the 1880s must have been an ideal time, with brothels full of off-duty soldiers, and luscious young dukes chasing after barrow-boys. Even in the Twenties and Thirties, which were quite wild in their way, it was still kind of underground, we operated on a constantly shifting code, and it was so extraordinarily moving and exciting when that spurt of recognition came, like the flare of a match! No one’s ever really written about it, I know what you mean, sex somehow becomes farcical in the past,’ Charles looked at me very tenderly. ‘Perhaps you will, my dear.’ ‘Are you finished, my Lord?’ Graham was enquiring in his complaisant basso.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  He was thinner than I expected, less defined, and the hair that covered his torso had been shaved to bare stubble, so that for the first time I realized how young he was (I would learn he was twenty-three) as he stood boyish and exposed before me. He motioned me forward again with the exaggerated courtesy some drunk men assume, which can precede, the thought even in my excitement was never far, equally exaggerated outbursts of rage. Mitko surprised me then by leaning forward and laying his mouth on mine, kissing me generously, unrestrainedly, and though I hadn’t done anything to invite such contact it was welcome and I sucked eagerly on his tongue, which was antiseptic with alcohol. I knew he was performing a desire he didn’t feel, and really I think he was drunk past the possibility of desire. But then there’s something theatrical in all our embraces, I think, as we weigh our responses against those we perceive or project; always we desire too much or not enough, and compensate accordingly. I was performing too, pretending to believe that his show of passion was a genuine response to my own desire, about which there was nothing feigned. As if he sensed these thoughts he pressed me more tightly to him, and for the first time I caught, beneath the more powerful and nearly overwhelming smell of alcohol, his own scent, which would be the greatest source of the pleasure I took from him and which I would seek out (at his neck and crotch, beneath his arms) at each of our meetings. It put an end to my thinking, I lifted one of his hands above his head, breaking our kiss to press my face into the pit of his arm (he shaved there too, the skin was rough against my tongue), sucking at his scent as if taking some necessary nourishment at an inadequate source. And then I sank to my knees and took him in my mouth. A few minutes later, well before he had given me what I was owed, the obligation he took on when he took a soiled twenty-leva note from my hand, Mitko made a strange loud sound and tensed himself, placing both of his palms flat against the sides of the stall. It was a poor performance of an orgasm, if that’s what it was, not least because for the few minutes I had sucked him he had shown no response at all. Chakai , I said to him in protest as he pulled away, iskam oshte , I want more, but he didn’t relent, he smiled at me and motioned me back, still courteous as he put on the shirt he had hung so carefully behind him.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  But I insisted, wanting to assert something, to set the terms of the evening, to claim, finally, the goods for which I had contracted, to put it as brutally as that; it was something brutal that I wanted. When he saw I wouldn’t be put off, Mitko became compliant, even eager; he rose from the chair and put his arms around my neck, then hopped and wrapped his legs around me. I had never felt his weight before, he had always been standing when we had sex, and I was surprised by how light he was as I carried him from the kitchen to the bed. I set him down and he stretched out, extending his arms to either side, as if in welcome, and the new sternness I had assumed fell away; I was the compliant one now, this compliance being, finally, what I had purchased. The room was dark, but I could still see him in the light from the hallway and the window, the glow of neon signs and streetlamps, and I gazed at him without moving, as if now that he had given me permission I was hesitant to touch him. He smiled at me, or at what he saw on my face, and then he reached up and pulled me to his mouth, which was sweet with soda. He kept his hand at my neck, and after we kissed he pulled my face away and then pushed my head down; he was already hard, he had responded to our kiss as much as I. But I wasn’t so compliant after all, I shook my head to free it, and then I took his hands in mine, as I had imagined doing, his wounded hands, and brought them to my lips. He smiled at me again, tilting his head a little in confusion at the delay, but I didn’t delay for long, and he shifted his legs apart as I lowered my mouth to his cock, clasping his hips with both my hands like the brim of a cup from which I drank. He was wrong to have feared (if he did fear it) that I would want him to leave once he had settled our accounts, as it were, that I would make him return to the center and wander its streets. I wanted him to stay, I wanted to lie close to him, to touch him without passion now but more tenderly, and I felt disappointment and even pain when he bounded up off the bed, as if eager to escape. Everything good, he asked, vsichko li e nared , and then he receded down the hall naked, returning to the computer as I put my clothes back on.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Penny is right about spending money though. Penny is right about everything. Penny said if I were to save about twenty dollars a month and give it to Northwest Medical Teams or Amnesty International, I would literally be saving lives. Literally. But that stupid pleasure center goes off in my brain, and it feels like there is nothing I can do about it. I told Penny about the pleasure center and how I needed the remote control car to make the pleasure center light up, and she just took the phone away from her ear and beat it against her chair. The thing about the extension cord is I was pretty sure I had one in the basement, in a box with some other cords, but if I looked I might have found it, and then I would not have been able to go to Home Depot. What we needed was a new extension cord, the latest technology, I thought to myself. I put my boots on very quickly. The good voice, the frugal voice, the Penny voice started inside my head: Don, please, there are children who could use this money for Christmas presents. It’s August, I said out loud. What about environmental movements, Good Voice said, what about the rain forests that could hold a cure for cancer, a cure for AIDS. Tree hugger, I said to Good Voice while putting on my motorcycle helmet. You have a problem, Good Voice said. You’re a pansy, I said back. You’re irresponsible! Good Voice shouted. Shut your gaping pie hole, I yelled back. The thing about new things is you feel new when you buy them, you feel as though you are somebody different because you own something different. We are our possessions, you know. There are people who get addicted to buying new stuff. Things. Piles and piles of things. But the new things become old things so quickly. We need new things to replace the old things. I like things with buttons. A writer I like named Ravi Zacharias says that the heart desires wonder and magic. He says technology is what man uses to supplant the desire for wonder. Ravi Zacharias says that what the heart is really longing to do is worship, to stand in awe of a God we don’t understand and can’t explain. I started thinking about what Penny was saying and what Ravi Zacharias says. I was riding my motorcycle down to Home Depot, wondering if Penny and Ravi would make good friends, when I decided I was being stupid, very wasteful and stupid. I knew we had an extension cord in the basement, and I knew I was really going to Home Depot to get some drill bits or a laser level or one of those tap lights, and that I wasn’t going to get an extension chord but something else, something I would find when I got there, something that would call to me from its shelf.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Objection 2: Further, that which incites a mar to do good is apparently not a sin. Now the desire of glory incites men to do good. For Tully says (De Tusc. Quaest. i) that “glory inflames every man to strive his utmost”: and in Holy Writ glory is promised for good works, according to Rom. 2:7: “To them, indeed, who according to patience in good work . . . glory and honor” [*Vulg.: ‘Who will render to every man according to his works, to them indeed who . . . seek glory and honor and incorruption, eternal life.’]. Therefore the desire for glory is not a sin. Objection 3: Further, Tully says (De Invent. Rhet. ii) that glory is “consistent good report about a person, together with praise”: and this comes to the same as what Augustine says (Contra Maximin. iii), viz. that glory is, “as it were, clear knowledge with praise.” Now it is no sin to desire praiseworthy renown: indeed, it seems itself to call for praise, according to Ecclus. 41:15, “Take care of a good name,” and Rom. 12:17, “Providing good things not only in the sight of God, but also in the sight of all men.” Therefore the desire of vainglory is not a sin. On the contrary, Augustine says (De Civ. Dei v): “He is better advised who acknowledges that even the love of praise is sinful.” I answer that, Glory signifies a certain clarity, wherefore Augustine says (Tract. lxxxii, c, cxiv in Joan.) that to be “glorified is the same as to be clarified.” Now clarity and comeliness imply a certain display: wherefore the word glory properly denotes the display of something as regards its seeming comely in the sight of men, whether it be a bodily or a spiritual good. Since, however, that which is clear simply can be seen by many, and by those who are far away, it follows that the word glory properly denotes that somebody’s good is known and approved by many, according to the saying of Sallust (Catilin.) [*The quotation is from Livy: Hist., Lib. XXII C, 39]: “I must not boast while I am addressing one man.”

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  There was a third man there as well, who entered and exited the farthest stall several times, looking earnestly at us but never approaching or speaking a word. Finally, after we had reached the end of our introductions and after this third man entered his stall again, closing the door behind him, Mitko (as I knew him now) pointed toward him and gave me a look of great significance, saying Iska , he wants, and then making a lewd gesture the meaning of which was clear. Both he and his companion, whom he referred to as brat mi and who hadn’t spoken since I arrived, laughed at this, looking at me as if to include me in the joke, though of course I was as much an object of their ridicule as the man listening to them from inside his stall. I was so eager to be one of their party that almost without thinking I smiled and wagged my head from side to side, in the gesture that signifies here both agreement or affirmation and a certain wonder at the vagaries of the world. But I saw in the glance they exchanged that this attempt to associate with them only increased the distance between us. Wanting to regain my footing, and after pausing to arrange the necessary syllables in my head (which seldom, despite these efforts, emerge as they should, even now when I’m told that I speak hubavo and pravilno , when I see surprise at my proficiency in a language that hardly anyone bothers to learn who hasn’t learned it already), I asked him what he was doing there, in that chill room with its impression of damp. Above us it felt like summer still, the plaza was full of light and people, some of them, riding skateboards or in-line skates or elaborately tricked-out bicycles, the same age as these men. Mitko looked at his friend, whom he referred to as his brother although they were not brothers, and then the friend moved toward the outer door and Mitko drew his wallet out of his back pocket. He opened it and took out a small square packet of glossy paper, a page torn from a magazine and folded over many times. He unfolded this page carefully, his hands shaking slightly, balancing it to keep whatever loose material was inside from falling to the dampness and filth on which we stood. I guessed what he would reveal, of course; my only surprise was at how little he had, a mere crumble of leaves. Ten leva, he said, and then added that he and his friend and I, the three of us, might smoke it together.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Then there were photographs in which he wore nothing at all, angling himself in postures of erotic display that were difficult to reconcile with the sweetly innocent gesture he had just made. In one of these photos Mitko was lying on a bed, leaning on one side so that he faced the camera, fully extending the length of his long body. He was hard, and one of his hands angled his cock, too, toward the lens, the focus and centerpiece of the photograph. He wasn’t smiling now, his expression was serious, as is almost always true of the photographs on such sites; I’ve spent whole nights scrolling through them, feeling an odd mixture of anticipation and dullness, each click a promise of novelty that’s never kept. Even without his smile, there was an intensity to Mitko’s gaze that convinced me this camera, too, was held by someone significant, someone who elicited his look; and the effectiveness of the photograph (were I scrolling through images I would have lingered, I would have been caught by him) was precisely this gaze, which, though it wasn’t meant for any of the men who might be scanning through these pages, still we could claim for ourselves. I tried to claim it now, I turned to Mitko and placed my hand on the inside of his thigh and again leaned in to kiss his neck; the photos had excited me, I wanted to pull him away from the computer. Chakai , he said, imame vreme , we have time, I want to show you something else. He clicked on another photo, and I saw that I was right, there had been someone behind the camera: a young man of Mitko’s height and build, with the same style of hair and dress. They were fully clothed, which only made their embrace more erotic, and their attention was focused wholly on each other; there was no one behind the camera now, it was held by Mitko, one of whose arms extended weirdly toward us, toward me and that other Mitko as we gazed at him together. His other arm was wrapped around the boy, both of whose arms in turn gripped him; they seemed balanced in desire, in their urgency and their hunger for each other. It was tempting to think there was nothing theatrical about this kiss, that it was wholly sincere; and yet the very lens that allowed me access to it made their embrace a pose, so that even if their audience was only hypothetical, even it was only a later version of themselves, later by a year or an hour, still it made their grappling, however passionate, a performance. Here Mitko, the Mitko who sat next to me, taking long drafts from the tumbler he had refilled, put his finger on the screen, a finger stained with cigarettes ( mrusen ) and flattened with labor, broad and inelegant, the new wounds still fresh at the knuckle.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I came up dripping and panting from the pool to the changing-room. As I pushed open the swing door with its steamed-up little window designed, like those in restaurants, to prevent hurrying people from knocking each other flat, I heard the hiss of the crowded showers, and felt the warm, dense atmosphere of the place in my throat and on my skin. I sauntered along between the two files of hot jets whose spray danced up off the black tiles, shifting or suddenly cutting off as the men, naked or in their trunks, edged about, soaped a foot raised against the wall, gave their stomachs resounding smacks, or turned, as the doors to the outside world thwacked open, to see what beauty had arrived. Exchanging short greetings with a couple of chaps I scarcely knew, I chose a vacant position between a pale, ravaged-looking youth with tattoos snaking up his arms and a huge dark brown man, six foot eight tall at a guess, very round and heavy, with an enormous childish face and not a hair on his head—or, I soon found, anywhere on his body. His sleek, heavy cock, cushioned on a tight, crinkled scrotum, stuck out from beneath a roll of fat. He was soaping himself vigorously, leaving a silky smear over his smooth, plump expanses of back and belly; and with cheery unselfconsciousness singing as he went about it. I nodded to him, as if to say that I could see he was happy enough, then, and he grinned back in a way that suggested a fond, exuberant disposition. I felt that he might stroke me as a golem does some little girl who trusts him, or inadvertently crush me to death. I set down my soap box and shampoo, let the water drum on my shoulders, and looked about. At the Corry the men undress at their lockers, and then bring their towels to the duckboarded place at the end of the shower room. Often those who have swum still have their trunks on and some stud may allow a mocking minute of tension before the languid unknotting of the drawstring, and the peeling down of the tiny garment, freeing the cock and balls in one of the most mundane and heartstopping moments there is. An American guy, I thought, was doing this just now on the other side of the room; square and trim he stood breathing heavily and luxuriating under the water before turning his back and loosening his glittering briefs to reveal a firm hairless ass, milky white between the sun or sunbed-tanned zones of his back and thighs. I still had my really absurdly tiny black trunks on, and felt my cock protesting against their constraint, thickening up, and aching as it did so after the pounding it had lately been taking.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I had left far too much time for my journey to the Boys’ Club and dreading to arrive conspicuously early I walked by on the other side of the street, crossed over Commercial Road and went briskly along to St Anne’s church, whose bizarre and gigantic tower I had seen from the distance. The day had grown heavier as it grew older, and the early evening light was neutral and overcast as I crossed the churchyard. The leaning birches along the path gathered a further gloom to them, and I gazed up through their branches at the giant uprearing of masonry beyond. A slight noise like a snapped stick made me look sideways and peer at where, under the young trees, a youth was sitting on one of the table-tombs, elbows on knees, flicking and stripping a long twig in his hands. I could make out no expression, and barely hesitated in my walk, continuing to the north door, which I had no doubt would be locked, and then, with affected nonchalance such as I would have shown equally under the gaze of a mugger or a pick-up, sauntered up the half-open fan of steps beneath the tower, my absorption in its weight-lifting baroque disturbed and strained by my awareness of the boy. There is always that question, which can only be answered by instinct, of what to do about strangers. Leading my life the way I did, it was strangers who by their very strangeness quickened my pulse and made me feel I was alive—that and the irrational sense of absolute security that came from the conspiracy of sex with men I had never seen before and might never see again. Yet those daring instincts were by no means infallible: their exhilaration was sharpened by the courted risk of rejection, misunderstanding, abuse. The church was thoroughly locked and the west door, with fine grit and year-old leaves driven against it, was clearly never used. The abandoned mood, and the mental image I had of the vast, dusky interior, made the church somehow repugnant to me, monolithic, full of dead sensibility. I turned and casually took in the figure sitting under the trees. It was hard to see, but I had the feeling he was looking at me, picking at the bark on the stick in his hands in an indolent, time-wasting way. I trotted down the steps and turned back across the churchyard.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 1: Magnanimity regards two things. It regards one as its end, in so far as it is some great deed that the magnanimous man attempts in proportion to his ability. In this way presumption is opposed to magnanimity by excess: because the presumptuous man attempts great deeds beyond his ability. The other thing that magnanimity regards is its matter, viz. honor, of which it makes right use: and in this way ambition is opposed to magnanimity by excess. Nor is it impossible for one mean to be exceeded in various respects. Reply to Objection 2: Honor is due to those who are in a position of dignity, on account of a certain excellence of their estate: and accordingly inordinate desire for positions of dignity pertains to ambition. For if a man were to have an inordinate desire for a position of dignity, not for the sake of honor, but for the sake of a right use of a dignity exceeding his ability, he would not be ambitious but presumptuous. Reply to Objection 3: The very solemnity of outward worship is a kind of honor, wherefore in such cases honor is wont to be shown. This is signified by the words of James 2:2,3: “If there shall come into your assembly a man having a golden ring, in fine apparel . . . and you . . . shall say to him: Sit thou here well,” etc. Wherefore ambition does not regard outward worship, except in so far as this is a kind of honor. OF VAINGLORY (FIVE ARTICLES)We must now consider vainglory: under which head there are five points of inquiry: (1) Whether desire of glory is a sin? (2) Whether it is opposed to magnanimity? (3) Whether it is a mortal sin? (4) Whether it is a capital vice? (5) Of its daughters. Whether the desire of glory is a sin?Objection 1: It seems that the desire of glory is not a sin. For no one sins in being likened to God: in fact we are commanded (Eph. 5:1): “Be ye . . . followers of God, as most dear children.” Now by seeking glory man seems to imitate God, Who seeks glory from men: wherefore it is written (Is. 43:6,7): “Bring My sons from afar, and My daughters from the ends of the earth. And every one that calleth on My name, I have created him for My glory.” Therefore the desire for glory is not a sin.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  THEOPHYLACT. Our Lord, knowing that the woman of Samaria was bringing the whole town out to Him, tells His disciples, I have meat that ye know not of. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxxiv. 1) The salvation of men He calls His food, shewing His great desire that we should be saved. As food is an object of desire to us, so was the salvation of men to Him. Observe, He does not express Himself directly, but figuratively; which makes some trouble necessary for His hearers, in order to comprehend His meaning, and thus gives a greater importance to that meaning when it is understood. THEOPHYLACT. That ye know not of, i. e. know not that I call the salvation of men food; or, know not that the Samaritans are about to believe and be saved. The disciples however were in perplexity: Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought Him ought to eat? AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xv. c. 31) What wonder that the woman did not understand about the water? Lo, the disciples do not understand about the meat. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxxiv. 1) They shew, as usual, the honour and reverence in which they hold their Master, by talking among themselves, and not presuming to question Him. THEOPHYLACT. From the question of the disciples, Hath any man brought Him ought to eat, we may infer that our Lord was accustomed to receive food from others, when it was offered Him: not that He who giveth food to all flesh, (Ps. 146.) needed any assistance; but He received it, that they who gave it might obtain their reward, and that poverty thenceforth might not blush, nor the support of others be esteemed a disgrace. It is proper and necessary that teachers should depend on others to provide them with food, in order that, being free from all other cares, they may attend the more to the ministry of the word. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xv. c. 31) Our Lord heard His doubting disciples, and answered them as disciples, i. e. plainly and expressly, not circuitously, as He answered the women; Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘I can see it would sort ill with Apollo, Tatler and GQ—but I expect newsagents get used to the strangest combinations of taste. They have to look on patiently while kids thumb through Men Only and Penthouse and end up buying the Beano and the Bucks Fizz fan mag. I saw someone the other day buy the Spanking Times and the Amateur Yachtsman, for instance …’ ‘That’s not so odd—and isn’t a spanker some sort of rope or something?’ ‘A sail, I believe—as in the limerick which ends “haul up the top sheet and spanker”.’ The train moved a few yards out of Queensway station and then stopped abruptly. ‘Could you ever get into spanking?’ James asked in the selfconscious silence that ensued. I was obliged to live up to it. ‘Not in a serious way. I put our young friend over my knee from time to time, but …’ In fact, drunk one night and recalling an evening when I had been picked up by a Polish workman who got me to whip his ass with his thick leather belt, I had made Arthur half kneel, half lie over the corner of the bed and given him several strokes of my old webbing corps-belt from school. I knew he would have let me go on, but excited though I was I dropped it. ‘I just can’t see the point of it,’ complained James. ‘Does Arthur actually like it?’ ‘I think he does rather. I mean it gives him a hard-on, and all that.’ The man beyond James looked up in a bothered way as the train started again. With James I often reverted to the flaunted deviancy we practised at Oxford, queening along the Cornmarket among the common people (as we more or less ironically called them), passing archly audible comments on boys from the town who took our fancy: ‘Quite go for that’, ‘Don’t think much of yours, dear’, ‘Get the buns on that’. James had worked up a cult of an overweight black youth, with a central gold tooth and a monstrous, lolling member. ‘What’s he really like?’ he asked, as we hammered into Lancaster Gate and the racket of the train spaced out and slowed. ‘I mean, is he a nice sort of person?’ ‘He is, actually, very nice, I think.’ I felt entirely penned in by not being able to speak of all the things that made the set-up so strange, and which, depriving Arthur of initiative, made him a non-social being. ‘Very nice in bed, certainly.’ James and I both saw how crass this comment was. ‘But what happens when you go out? I assume you’ve tired of each other’s company sufficiently to go to the pub or the flicks or whatever.’