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 Little Birds (1979)

  “The women who are unabashedly sexual, with the womb written all over their faces, who arouse in a man the desire to fling his penis at them immediately; the women for whom clothes are only a means of making certain fragments of the body more prominent, like the women who wore bustles to exaggerate their asses, and the women who wore corsets that thrust their breasts out of their clothes; the women who throw their sex out at us, from the hair, the eyes, the noses, the mouth, the whole body—these are the women I love. “The others . . . how you have to search for the animal in them. They have diluted it, disguised it, perfumed it, so it will smell like something else—like what? angels? “Let me tell you what happened to me once with Bijou. Bijou was naturally faithless. She asked me to paint her up for the Art Ball. It was a year when the painters and models were supposed to go dressed as African savages. So Bijou asked me to paint her up artistically, and for this purpose she came to my studio a few hours before the ball. “I set about decorating her body with African designs of my own invention. She stood stark naked before me, and at first I stood up and began to paint her shoulders and breasts, and then I crouched to paint the belly and back, then I kneeled and began to paint the lower part of the body and legs . . . I painted her lovingly, adoringly, like an act of worship. “Her back was broad, strong, like the back of a circus horse. I could have mounted her and she would not have bent under the burden. I could have sat on this back and slid down and given it to her from behind, like a whip. I wanted to. Even more, perhaps, I wanted to squeeze her breasts until all the paint came off, caressed them clean so that I could kiss them . . . But I restrained myself and continued to paint her into a savage. “When she moved, the bright designs now moved with her, like an oily sea with undercurrents. Her nipples were hard like berries under the touch of the brush. Every curve gave me a delight. I unfastened my pants. I let my penis free. She never looked at me. She stood there without moving. As I painted the hips and then the valley leading to the pubic hair, she realized I would not be able to finish my task and said, “You will spoil the whole thing if you touch me. You can’t touch me. After it is dry, you will be the first. I will wait for you at the ball. But not now.” And she smiled at me.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  Before her astonished face, he took hold of his erect penis and caressed it, giving himself all the pleasure he could extract, sometimes using only two fingers around the tip of it, sometimes the whole hand, and Jeanette could see every contraction and expansion. It was as if he held a palpitating bird in his hand, a captive bird that tried to leap at her but that Pierre kept for his own pleasure. She gazed at Pierre’s penis, fascinated. She drew her face nearer. But his anger at her for darting out of the room to Jean was still fresh in him. She knelt in front of him. Although she was throbbing between the legs, she felt if she could at least kiss his penis she might satisfy her desire. Pierre let her kneel. He seemed about to offer his penis to her mouth, but he did not. He continued to massage it, angrily enjoying his own motions, as if to say, “I don’t need you.” Jeanette threw herself on the bed and became hysterical. Her wild gestures, the way she pressed her head back into the pillow so she could no longer see Pierre caressing himself, the way her body lay arched upwards—all of this stirred Pierre. But still he did not give her his penis. Instead, he buried his face between her legs. Jeanette fell back and grew quieter. She murmured softly. Pierre’s mouth gathered the fresh foam between her legs, but he would not let her reach her pleasure. He teased her. As soon as he felt the rhythm of her pleasure starting he stopped. He held her legs apart. His hair fell on her belly and caressed her. His left hand reached for one of her breasts. Jeanette lay almost swooning. He knew now that Jean could come in and she would not notice him. Jean could even make love to her, and she would not notice him. She was completely under the spell of Pierre’s fingers, awaiting pleasure from him. When finally his erect penis touched her soft body, it was as if he had burned her; she trembled. He had never seen her body so abandoned, so unconscious of all but the desire to be taken and satisfied. She bloomed under his caresses, no longer the girl but the woman already being born. [image file=image_rsrcWZ.jpg] About the AuthorANAÏS NIN (1903–1977) was born in Paris and aspired at an early age to be a writer. An influential artist and thinker, she was the author of several novels, short stories, critical studies, a collection of essays, two volumes of erotica, and nine published volumes of her Diary. Connect with HMH on Social MediaFollow us for book news, reviews, author updates, exclusive content, giveaways, and more. [image "HMH on Twitter" file=image_rsrcX0.jpg] [image "HMH on Facebook" file=image_rsrcX1.jpg] [image "HMH on Tumblr" file=image_rsrcX2.jpg] [image "HMH on Pinterest" file=image_rsrcX3.jpg] [image "HMH on Instagram" file=image_rsrcX4.jpg] [image "HMH on YouTube" file=image_rsrcX5.jpg] [image "Houghton Mifflin Harcourt" file=image_rsrcX6.jpg] Footnotes*Adapted from the introduction to the story published as “Marianne” in Delta of Venus. [back]

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  These writers aimed at the dissolution of the self within the divine, and at a powerful inward-looking style of devotion; such mysticism was taken up by monks and nuns across German lands as well as by laypeople. Staupitz could therefore write in an explicit manner of the revelation of Christ, the eternal bridegroom, “now with kisses, now with embraces, now with advancing of the naked to the naked”—but all chastely revealed. 62 He wrote of different “stages” of union of the soul, the first being that of “young maids in faith,” the second that of the “concubine,” the third, the “queens”: “They are naked and copulate with the naked one. They taste that outside Christ there is nothing sweet and they enjoy [his] continuous sweetness. For the naked Christ cannot deny himself to these naked,” while in the fourth stage, which Mary alone experienced, Jesus “sleeps naked with her naked and he shows other signs of such love.” Highly sensual language is also applied to Christ’s suffering—the naked Christ is the suffering Christ, and Staupitz had referred in his earlier sermons at Salzburg to Christ’s “little bed of enjoyment” ( lustpetel ), by which he meant the Cross. 63 These Salzburg sermons, preached to the townspeople, were transcribed by the Benedictine nuns of St. Peter’s convent next door to the church, and one wonders what they made of this fairly explicit eroticism. Staupitz defended himself against the objection that human love cannot be a model for divine love because it springs from concupiscence, by arguing (in line with tradition) that what matters is not “the contact of bodies but…the perversion of the [natural] order, that is when temporal enjoyment is given preference to eternal ones.” 64 But this hardly obliterated the powerful sexual charge of his language. Erotic mysticism was not unusual in the late Middle Ages, dwelling on sweetness, pleasure, melting, and union, but in Staupitz’s hands it has a saccharine literalness that exploited its potential for eroticizing suffering. 65 Eroticism of this variety, characterized by displaced desire, can readily be twinned with suspicion of the other sex.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  Wrinkling his brow, Jan looked intently to find the outline, but he did not see it. He began to draw at random, following rough ragged edges and confused lines, and what began to take form was a dog who was climbing over the woman, and, with one last ironic stroke of the charcoal, he drew in the dog’s knifelike sex almost touching the woman’s pubic hair. Laura said, “I see another dog.” “I don’t see it,” said Jan, and he lay back fully on the bed to admire his drawing, while Laura stood up and began to draw a dog that was climbing over Jan’s dog from behind, in the most classical of poses, his shaggy head of hair buried in the other’s back as if he were devouring it. Then with the charcoal Laura began to search for a man. At all cost she wanted a man in this picture. She wanted a man to look at while Jan was looking at the woman with her skirt raised. She began to draw, cautiously, for the lines could not be invented, and if they wavered too much and too faithfully and according to the contours of the plaster, she would have a tree, or a bush, or a monkey. But slowly the man’s torso emerged. True, he was legless, and his head was small, but all this was amply compensated for by the largeness of his sex, which was quite obviously in an aggressive mood as he watched the dogs coupling almost on top of the reclining woman. And then Laura was satisfied and lay back. They both looked at the drawing, laughing, and as they did so, Jan with his big hands still full of drying paint, began to explore under her skirt as if he were drawing, molding the contours with a pencil, touching each line amorously, very gradually traveling up the legs, making sure of having caressed every region and of having gone around every curve. Laura’s legs were half pressed together like the legs of the woman on the ceiling, toes pointed like a ballet dancer’s, so when Jan’s hand reached her thighs and wanted to be allowed between them, he had to part them with a little force. Laura was nervously resisting, as if she did not want to be anything but the woman on the ceiling, merely exposed, the sex closed, the legs rigid. Jan labored to melt this rigidity, this firmness, and he set about doing it with utmost gentleness and persistence, making magic circles with his fingers on the flesh, as if he could make the blood turn in eddies a little faster, and then yet a little faster.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  Rango stood above Hilda and stared at her. Then he said, “Do you want to walk?” Hilda said yes. Rango walked with his hands in his pockets, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He was sober now, his head as clear as the night. He was walking towards the outskirts of the city. They came to the ragpickers’ shacks, little shacks built unevenly, crazily, with sloping roofs and no windows—enough air came through the cracked boards and badly built doors. The paths were made of earth. A little farther on stood a row of gypsy carts. It was four in the morning, and people were asleep. Hilda did not talk. She walked in the shadow of Rango with a great feeling of being taken out of herself, of having no will and no knowledge of what was happening to her, merely a pervading sense of flow. Rango’s arms were bare. Hilda was aware of only one thing, that she wanted these bare arms to grip her. He bowed to enter his cart. He lit a candle. He was too tall for the low ceiling, but she was smaller and could stand straight. The candles made huge shadows. His bed was open, merely a blanket thrown back. His clothes were strewn around. There were two guitars. He took one up and began to play, sitting among his clothes. Hilda had the feeling that she was dreaming, that she must keep her eyes on his bare arms, on his throat showing through the open shirt, so that he would feel what she felt, the same magnetism. At the same moment that she felt she was falling into darkness, into his golden-brown flesh, he fell towards her, covered her with kisses, very hot, quick kisses, into which his breath passed. He kissed her behind her ears, on her eyelids, her throat, her shoulders. She was blinded, deafened, made senseless. Every kiss, like a gulp of wine, added to the warmth of her body. Every kiss increased the heat of his lips. But he made no gesture to raise her dress or to undress her. They lay there for a long time. The candle was finished. It sputtered and went out. In the darkness she felt his burning dryness, like desert sand, enveloping her. Then in this darkness, the Hilda who had made this gesture so many times before was impelled to make it once more, out of her dream and drunkenness of kisses. Her hand fumbled for his belt with the cold silver buckle, felt below the belt at the buttons of his pants, felt his desire. Suddenly he pushed her away as if she had wounded him. He stood up, reeling a little, and lit another candle. She could not understand what had happened. She saw that he was angry. His eyes had grown fierce. His high cheeks, which seemed always to be smiling, no longer smiled. His mouth was compressed. “What have I done?” she asked.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  She is as opulent as a burlesque queen. As she stands on her toes to lean towards the mirror and paint her eyelashes more carefully, I am again affected by her body. I come up behind her and watch her. I feel a little timid. She isn’t as inviting as Mary. She is, in fact, sexless, like the women at the beach or at the Turkish bath, who think nothing of their nakedness. I try a light kiss on her shoulder. She smiles at me and says, “I wish Paul were not so irritable. I would have liked to try the bathing suit on you. I would love to see you wearing it.” She returns my kiss, on the mouth, taking care not to disturb her lipstick outline. I do not know what to do next. I want to take hold of her. I stay near her. Then Paul comes into the bathroom without knocking and says, “Miriam, how can you walk around like this? You mustn’t mind, Mandra. It is a habit with her. She is possessed with the need to go around without clothes. Get dressed, Miriam.” Miriam goes into her room and slips on a dress, with nothing underneath, then a fox cape, and says, “I’m ready.” In the car she places her hand over mine. Then she draws my hand under the fur, into a pocket of the dress, and I find myself touching her sex. We drive on in the dark. Miriam says she wants to drive through the park first. She wants air. Paul wants to go directly to the nightclub, but he gives in and we drive through the park, I with my hand on Miriam’s sex, fondling it and feeling my own excitement gaining so that I can hardly talk. Miriam talks, wittily, continuously. I think to myself, “You won’t be able to go on talking in a little while.” But she does, all the time that I am caressing her in the dark, beneath the satin and the fur. I can feel her moving upwards to my touch, opening her legs a little so I can fit my entire hand between her legs. Then she grows tense under my fingers, stretching herself, and I know she is taking her pleasure. It is contagious. I feel my own orgasm without even being touched. I am so wet that I am afraid it will show through my dress. And it must show through Miriam’s dress, too. We both keep our coats on as we go into the nightclub. Miriam’s eyes are brilliant, deep. Paul leaves us for a while and we go into the ladies’ room. This time Miriam kisses my mouth fully, boldly. We arrange ourselves and return to the table. RunawayPierre was sharing an apartment with a much younger man, Jean. One day Jean brought home a young girl he had found wandering in the streets. He had seen that she was not a prostitute.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  “I was enjoying myself,” said Jeanette, startled. “Of course I was. I was only afraid of Jean’s coming and of his hearing me. I thought, if he comes and finds me here, at least if he does not hear me he may think you took me against my will. But if he hears me, he will know I enjoy it and be hurt, for he is the one who keeps saying to me, ‘So you like it, so you like it, say so then, go on, speak, cry out, you like it, eh? It gets you, you enjoy it, enjoy it then, say so, speak, how does it feel?’ I can’t tell him how it feels, but it makes me cry out and then he is happy and that excites him.” Jean should have known what would happen between Jeanette and Pierre while he was out, but he did not believe Pierre could take a real interest in her; she was too much of a child. He was immensely surprised when he returned and found that Jeanette had stayed on and that Pierre was perfectly willing to console her, to take her out. Pierre took pleasure in buying her clothes. For this purpose he accompanied her to the shops and waited as she tried on clothes inside the little booths provided for this. He delighted in seeing through a slit of the hastily drawn curtains not only Jeanette, her girlish body slipping in and out of dresses, but other women too. He would sit quietly in a chair facing the dressing rooms, smoking. He could see portions of shoulders, bare backs, legs, flitting behind the curtains. And Jeanette’s gratitude for the clothes he gave her took the form of a coquetry comparable only to the mannerisms of stripteasers. She could hardly wait to be out of the shop to glue herself to him as they walked, saying, “Look at me. Isn’t it beautiful?” And she would thrust her breasts out provocatively. As soon as they got into a taxi she wanted him to touch the material, to approve the buttons, to straighten the neckline. She stretched her body voluptuously, to see how closely the dress fit her; she caressed the material as if it were her own skin. As eager as she had been to wear the dress, she now seemed eager to take it off, to have it handled by Pierre, to have it wrinkled, to have it baptized by his desire.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  I have a great urge to chime in with some information, but I hold off for propriety’s sake and because Otto would beat me up. Otto’s got a giant throbbing blue-veiner for Romaine Lewis’s little sister, Rayette. She is probably the most beautiful girl in town, and that includes Belle. Our critical view may be slightly clouded because Rayette is black and seems mysterious to us. But if she’s not at least as beautiful as Belle, I’ll eat her panties off. But then I’d like to do that, anyway. Rayette is one of those black girls like Leeland Wain’s wife, Joretta. Very delicately featured. A little turned-up nose, gigantic brown eyes, long thin bones, and tits like women in Marvel comics. The problem is she’s only fifteen. Otto takes her out sometimes, I know, because Romaine told me how nice Rayette said he was. Except for their both being tall, Romaine and Rayette look so different it’s hard to believe they’re brother and sister. Every place Rayette is delicate, Romaine is obtuse. Rayette, for example, has very thin lips. But Romaine has a nose almost exactly like a gorilla’s, and as Balldozer noted Tuesday before the match, he’s got lips “like the brim of a chamber pot.” “Hey!” Mike says to Otto and me. “Why don’t we get a few people together and have supper at my place after the dance?” “Great idea,” I say, “but what’ll I eat? I can see your mom trying to feed me all that good Japanese food. ‘Sorry, Mrs. Konigi. Just a bowl of spinach, please. A little on the rare side. And a can of Nutrament for dessert.’ Sure,” I continue seriously. “I think Carla and I could go for that.” I’ll have to check to see if Carla was thinking of anything special for after the dance. “Sounds great, Konig,” says Otto. “I’ll letcha know.” Mike struts back down the aisle and I turn back to the Lolo National Forest of eastern Montana. About two seconds later Mike’s little brother, Jerry, pops up beside us in an identical outfit. Jerry’s, however, is all wrinkled and covered in RyKrisp crumbs. “Was Mike telling you guys how he’s gonna give Keiko the big one after the dance?” Jerry asks. “Didn’t say a word about it to us, Jer,” I reply. “Don’t see how he could give her the big one,” Otto says, and turns. “I never promised to lend him my dick.” Jerry laughs and scurries back down the aisle. We hear him laughing and repeating Otto’s line until Mike bops him with a sleeping bag. We stay with families from the other schools, so we have to bring sleeping bags. We cross the Bitterroot River, which means it’s about time to get dressed. Coach is knotting his tie. We have a rule that says David Thompson athletes have to dress presentably on road trips. That used to mean a tie and a sport coat.

• From Satyricon (1)

  (Notwithstanding), however (these caprices of the third person of the trinity) I cannot see why pleasure should be regulated, or why a woman who has surveyed all the charms of a young girl of eighteen years should give herself up to the rude embraces of a man. What comparisons can be made between those red lips, that mouth which breathes pleasure for the first time, those snowy and purplous cheeks whose velvet smoothness is like the Venus flower, half in bloom, that new-born flesh which palpitates softly with desire and voluptuousness, that hand which you press so delicately, those round thighs, those plastic buttocks, that voice sweet and touching,--what comparison can be made between all this and pronounced features, rough beard, hard breast, hairy body, and the strong disagreeable voice of man? Juvenal has wonderfully expended all his bile in depicting, as hideous scenes, these mysteries of the Bona Dea, where the young and beautiful Roman women, far from the eyes of men, give themselves up to mutual caresses. Juvenal has painted the eyes of the Graces with colors which are proper to the Furies; his tableau, moreover, revolts one instead of doing good. The only work of Sappho’s which remains to us is an ode written to one of her loved ones and from it we may judge whether the poetess merited her reputation. It has been translated into all languages; Catullus put it into Latin and Boileau into French. Here follows an imitation of that of Catullus: Peer of a God meseemeth he, Nay passing Gods (and that can be!) Who all the while sits facing thee Sees thee and hears Thy low sweet laughs which (ah me!) daze Mine every sense, and as I gaze Upon thee (Lesbia!) o’er me strays My tongue is dulled, limbs adown Flows subtle flame; with sound its own Rings either ear, and o’er are strown Mine eyes with night. (LI. Burton, tr.) After that we should never again exhort the ministers and moralists to inveigh against love of women for women; never was the interest of men found to be so fully in accord with the precepts of divine law. Here I should like to speak of the brides of the Lord; but I remember “The Nun” of Diderot, and my pen falls from my hand. Oh, who would dare to touch a subject handled by Diderot? V. Giton venait de la deflorer, et de remporter une victoire sanglante. Giton the victor had won a not bloodless victory.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “Next night, when the same opportunity presented itself, I changed my petition, ‘If I can feel him all over with a wanton hand,’ I vowed, ‘and he not know it, I will give him two of the gamest fighting-cocks, for his silence.’ The lad nestled closer to me of his own accord, on hearing this offer, and I truly believe that he was afraid that I was asleep. I made short work of his apprehensions on that score, however, by stroking and fondling his whole body. I worked myself into a passionate fervor that was just short of supreme gratification. Then, when day dawned, I made him happy with what I had promised him. When the third night gave me my chance, I bent close to the ear of the rascal, who pretended to be asleep. ‘Immortal gods,’ I whispered, ‘if I can take full and complete satisfaction of my love, from this sleeping beauty, I will tomorrow present him with the best Macedonian pacer in the market, in return for this bliss, provided that he does not know it.’ Never had the lad slept so soundly! First I filled my hands with his snowy breasts, then I pressed a clinging kiss upon his mouth, but I finally focused all my energies upon one supreme delight! Early in the morning, he sat up in bed, awaiting my usual gift. It is much easier to buy doves and game-cocks than it is to buy a pacer, as you know, and aside from that, I was also afraid that so valuable a present might render my motive subject to suspicion, so, after strolling around for some hours, I returned to the house, and gave the lad nothing at all except a kiss. He looked all around, threw his arms about my neck. ‘Tell me, master,’ he cried, ‘where’s the pacer?’ [‘The difficulty of getting one fine enough has compelled me to defer the fulfillment of my promise,’ I replied, ‘but I will make it good in a few days.’ The lad easily understood the true meaning of my answer, and his countenance betrayed his secret resentment.)” CHAPTER THE EIGHTY-SEVENTH.

• From Shunned (2018)

  I considered telling him my Witness story but thought better of it. “Well, if you want my advice,” he said, “don’t ever get any. You’re a natural salesperson, very articulate and trustworthy. Formal training would spoil you.” He was eighteen years my senior. His experience and opinions meant something to me. He looked at me with limpid eyes, and I knew I could trust him. I learned he’d been divorced for several years and had two children. He told me fascinating stories about his time in the military, with two-year rotations in Moscow, Paris, and Vienna, working on “secret stuff.” This made me laugh, but he was quite serious. Our sales efforts required regular strategy meetings back in Portland. Gradually, meetings that could be handled by phone were taking place in person, followed by lunch or a quick drink after work. We became a resource for each other, sharing news from the grapevine about the potential reorganization and adding our own interpretations to what we heard. I could feel myself being drawn to Geoff, flirting with him, looking forward to our meetings, paying extra attention to what I wore on those days. He walked into the office with a leonine grace that exuded confidence but fell short of the arrogance and aloofness common among successful executives. One day, an after-work drink turned into a spontaneous dinner. Neither of us had anyone waiting at home, and we weren’t ready for the conversation to end. We had given each other unspoken permission to make even more personal inquiries, and so we started sharing what had failed about our marriages. That was the day it first occurred to me that maybe my marriage had been a success. Ross and I had grown up together and learned a lot along the way. “Can’t success be knowing when it’s time to move on, taking the best of what you learned?” I asked. “That’s a very enlightened view, especially for someone still going through the process,” Geoff said. “And what does your family think about it? Are they supportive?” There was no way to answer that question fully without telling him the scope of my situation, that I’d left not only an unhappy marriage but also a religion where divorce is rare and looked upon as a sign of spiritual weakness. I explained how devout my family was, how I’d disappointed them all, how my brother wasn’t talking to me. I’d wanted to share this with Geoff for some time. I could see by the way his eyes darkened that something protective was rising in him. “I’ve lost my appetite,” he said, and stopped eating, setting his fork down. He removed his wire-frame glasses and rubbed his eyes. He reached out and placed his hand on mine. “I had no idea all this was going on. You always seem so happy, so positive.” His warm touch resonated through my whole being.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  Before I took up my new profession I was known as a poet, as a woman who was independent and wrote only for her own pleasure. Many young writers, poets, came to me. We often collaborated, discussed and shared the work in progress. Varied as they were in character, inclinations, habits and vices, all the writers had one trait in common; they were poor. Desperately poor. Very often my “maison” was turned into a cafeteria where they dropped in, hungry, saying nothing, and we ate Quaker Oats because that was the cheapest thing to make, and it was said to give strength. Most of the erotica was written on empty stomachs. Now, hunger is very good for stimulating the imagination; it does not produce sexual power, and sexual power does not produce unusual adventures. The more hunger, the greater the desires, like those of men in prison, wild and haunting. So we had here a perfect world in which to grow the flower of eroticism. Of course, if you get too hungry, too continuously, you become a bum, a tramp. Those men who sleep along the East River, in doorways, on the Bowery, they have no sexual life at all, it is said. My writers—some of them lived in the Bowery—had not reached that stage yet. As for me, my real writing was put aside when I set out in search of the erotic. These are my adventures in that world of prostitution. To bring them into the light was at first difficult. The sexual life is usually enveloped in many layers, for all of us—poets, writers, artists. It is a veiled woman, half-dreamed. Little BirdsManuel and his wife were poor, and when they first looked for an apartment in Paris, they found only two dark rooms below the street level, giving onto a small stifling courtyard. Manuel was sad. He was an artist, and there was no light in which he could work. His wife did not care. She would go off each day to do her trapeze act for the circus. In that dark under-the-earth place, his whole life assumed the character of an imprisonment. The concierges were extremely old, and the tenants who lived in the house seemed to have agreed to make it an old people’s home. So Manuel wandered through the streets until he came to a sign: FOR RENT. He was led to two attic rooms that looked like a hovel, but one of the rooms led to a terrace, and as Manuel stepped out onto this terrace he was greeted with the shouts of schoolgirls on recess. There was a school across the way, and the girls were playing in the yard under the terrace.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  “She was the queen of the whores, Bijou. Yes, Bijou. Only a few years ago she could still be seen sitting at some little café in Montmartre, like an Oriental Fatima, but still pale, the eyes still burning. She was like a womb turned inside out. Her mouth, not a mouth that made you think of a kiss, or of food; not a mouth to speak with, to form words, to greet you—no, it was like the mouth of woman’s sex itself, the shape of it, the way it moved—to draw you in, to rouse you—always moistened, red and alive like the lips of a caressed sex . . . Each motion of this mouth had the power to awaken the same motion, the same undulation in the sex of a man, as if transmitted by contagion, directly, immediately. As it undulated, like a wave about to curl and engulf one, it ordained the undulation of the penis, the undulation of the blood. As it grew moist, it drew out my erotic secretion. “Somehow, Bijou’s whole body was guided only by eroticism, guided by a genius for exposing every expression of desire. It was indecent, I tell you. It was like making love with her in public, in a café, in the street, before everyone. “She kept nothing for night, for the bed. It was all in the open, on view. She was indeed the queen of the whores, enacting possession at every instant of her life, even while she ate; and when she played cards, she did not sit impassive, her body deprived of sensuality, as other women would sit with their attention on the game. One felt from the pose of her body, the way her ass spread on the seat, that everything was still set for possession. Her breasts almost touched the table with their fullness. If she laughed, then it was the sexual laugh of a satisfied woman, the laugh of a body enjoying itself through every pore and cell, being caressed by the whole world. “In the street, walking behind her sometimes when she did not know that I was there, I could see even urchins following her. Before they had seen her face, men followed her. It was as if she left an animal scent behind her. Strange what it can do to a man to see a truly sexual animal before him. The animal nature of woman has been so carefully disguised—the lips and ass and legs made to serve other purposes, made, like some colored plumage, to distract man from his desire rather than accentuate it.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  “No,” said the young girl, very seriously. “But I always wanted to. That is why I ran away. I knew my mother would continue to hide me. Meanwhile she was receiving men all the time. I heard them. My mother is quite beautiful, and men often came and locked themselves in with her. But she would never let me see them, or even let me go out alone. And I wanted to have a few men to myself.” “A few men,” said Jean laughing. “One is not enough?” “I don’t know yet,” she said with the same seriousness. “I will have to see.” Then Jean turned his whole attention to Jeanette’s firm and pointed little breasts. He kissed them and fondled them. Jeannette was watching him with great interest. Then when he stopped to rest himself, she suddenly unbuttoned his shirt, and laid her fresh breasts against his chest and rubbed herself against it exactly like a languorous, voluptuous cat. Jean was amazed at her talent for lovemaking. She was progressing fast. Her nipples had known just how to touch his own, just how to rub against his chest and excite him. So now he uncovered her and began to unfasten the cord of her pajamas. But at this point she asked him to turn out the light. Pierre came home about midnight, and as he walked past the room he heard the moaning sounds of a woman, which he recognized as sounds of pleasure. He stopped. He could imagine the scene behind the door. The moans were rhythmic, then at times like the cooing of doves. Pierre could not help listening. Then the next day Jean told him about Jeanette. He said, “You know, I thought she was just a young girl, and she was . . . she was a virgin, but you have never seen such an aptitude for love. She is insatiable. She has already worn me out.” Then he went out to work, and was gone the whole day. Pierre remained in the apartment. At noon Jeanette appeared quite timidly and asked if she was going to have lunch. So they had lunch together. Then after lunch she disappeared until Jean came home. The same thing happened the next day. And the next. She was as quiet as a mouse. But every night Pierre heard the moaning and crooning, the dove-cooing behind the door. After eight days, he noticed that Jean was growing tired. Jean was twice Jeanette’s age to begin with, and then Jeanette, keeping her mother in mind, must have been seeking to outdo her. On the ninth day Jean stayed out all night. Jeanette came to wake Pierre. She was alarmed. She thought Jean had met with an accident. But Pierre had guessed the truth. Indeed, Jean was already tired of her and wanted to inform her mother of her whereabouts. But he had not been able to extract the address from Jeanette. So he merely stayed away.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  She gratified this man because she loved him. She learned to seek out his penis and touch it until he was aroused, to seek his mouth and stir his tongue, to press her body against his, to incite him. Sometimes they would be lying down and talking. She would place her hand over his penis and find it hard. Yet he made no move towards her. Slowly then, she became used to expressing her own desire, her own moods. She lost all her reserve, her timidity. One night at a party in Montparnasse, she met a Mexican painter, a huge dark man with heavy charcoal eyes, eyebrows and hair. He was drunk. She was to discover that he was almost always drunk. But the sight of her gave him a profound shock. He pulled himself up from his faltering, tottering posture and faced her as if he were a big lion facing a tamer. Something about her made him stand still and try to become sober again, to rise from the fog and fumes in which he lived continuously. Something about her face made him stand ashamed of his unkempt clothes, the paint under his nails, the uncombed black hair. She, on the other hand, was struck by this image of a demon, the demon she had imagined to exist behind the work of the American writer. He was huge, restless, destructive, loved no one, was attached to nothing, a tramp and an adventurer. He would paint at the studios of friends, borrowing oils and canvas, then leave his work there and go off. Most of the time he lived with the gypsies on the outskirts of Paris. With them he shared their life in the gypsy carts, traveling all through France. He respected their laws, never made love to the gypsy women, played the guitar with them at night clubs when they needed money, ate their meals—very often made of stolen chicken. When he met Hilda he had his own gypsy cart just outside one of the gates of Paris, near the ancient barricades, which were now crumbling. The cart had belonged to a Portuguese who had covered its walls with painted leather. The bed was hung at the back of the cart, suspended like a ship’s bunk. The windows were arched. The ceiling was so low it was difficult for one to stand up. At the party that evening, Rango did not invite Hilda to dance, although friends of his were providing the music for the night. The lights in the studio had been put out because enough light came from the street, and couples stood on the balcony with their arms around each other. The music was languid and dissolving.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  The room was full of his paintings. His palette was covered with paint that was still wet. He had asked Laura to pose for him, and began the work with great eagerness, not seeing her as a person, but observing the shape of her head, the way it seemed to rest on a neck too small for its weight, which gave her an air of almost frightening fragility. She had thrown herself on the bed. As she posed she looked up at the ceiling. The house was a very old one, with chipped paint and uneven plastering. As she had looked, the roughness of the plaster and its many cracks began to assume shapes. She smiled. There in the jumbled lines and cracks and churned surface she could see all kinds of forms. She had said to Jan: “When you are finished with your work, I want you to make a drawing for me on the ceiling, of something that is already there, if you can see what I see . . .” Jan had become curious, and he did not want to work much longer anyway. He had reached the baffling and difficult stage of feet and hands, which he disliked; they perpetually eluded him, so he often wrapped them up in a cloud of formless swathing, like the feet and hands of a cripple, and left the drawing as it was, all body, a body without feet to run away on or hands to caress anyone with. He turned to the study of the ceiling. To do this he lay back on the bed next to Laura and looked up with keen interest, seeking the forms she had distinguished and following the outlines she indicated with her forefinger. “See, see, there . . . do you see the woman lying back . . . ?” Jan rose halfway in the bed—the ceiling was very low in that corner, being an attic room—and with his charcoal began to draw on the plaster. First he sketched the woman’s head and her shoulders, but then he found the outline of the legs, which he completed, pointing the toes. “The skirt, the skirt, I see the skirt,” said Laura. “I see it here,” said Jan, drawing a skirt that was quite evidently thrown upwards, leaving her legs and thighs bare. Then Jan darkened the hair around the sex, carefully, as if he were painting grass blade by blade, and added detail to the converging lines of the legs. And there was the woman, reclining on the ceiling without shame, where Jan could look at her with a tiny flame of erotic response, which Laura caught in his intensely blue eyes, and which made her jealous. To irritate him as he looked at the woman she said, “I see a little piglike animal very near her.”

• From Shunned (2018)

  I knew if my mother saw me, she’d freak out. I was walking dangerously close to the line of adultery. My divorce was in process, and I hadn’t seen my soon-to-be-ex-husband in weeks. But in Jehovah’s eyes, we were still married. I was playing with fire and enjoying it. Geoff and I had an unspoken understanding that our relationship was shifting. In the days and moments leading up to our first date, I felt excitement, desire, and longing. I knew there might be an opportunity for sex. If it didn’t happen that night, it was coming soon. “If it feels good, do it. That’s my motto.” Our conversation over dinner delved further into the past. We shared stories about how we’d been raised, poignant memories of how life had disappointed us, books we’d read, and places we’d seen. There was no talk of the office, no mention of the present or the future. Strolling hand in hand from the restaurant toward Geoff’s car, my silk dress swaying over my bare legs, I felt sensual and content, filled up by the meal and the company. “Where to now, Linda?” Geoff asked, as he opened my car door. “Back to my place.” “Your wish is my command.” He drove back to my apartment complex and parked. We rode the elevator up to the fourth floor, holding hands in silence. As I turned the key to open my door, Geoff spoke. “Are you sure you want me to come in?” he whispered. “ I won’t be offended if you shoo me away.” “I’m sure.” I couldn’t bear the thought of his leaving. “Let’s say good night inside.” I pushed the door open. “Would you like tea, or another glass of wine?” I was aware of an abiding calm and lusty anticipation. We took our wine out to the balcony overlooking the fountain and illuminated flower garden. I shivered in the spring night, and Geoff took off his leather jacket and draped it over my shoulders. His body heat was still in the lining as it touched my neck and arms. As he squeezed my shoulders with both hands, I felt the potency of his body. I leaned over and kissed him. It was a long, provocative kiss. A feeling like champagne bubbles traveled through my body. His jacket fell to the floor. I didn’t need it anymore anyway; I could feel heat swirling up my chest. His hand pressed on the small of my back as he kissed my neck. We stopped just long enough to put down our wineglasses. I slid open the glass door to my bedroom and walked inside. Geoff followed and watched as I lit a candle on the nightstand. We sat down on the bed and came together again. Everything moved faster then—our hands, our hearts, our breathing.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  She moved against him, inside of the new dress, which made him keenly aware of her aliveness. And when finally they got home, she wanted to be locked in his room with him, to have him appropriate the dress as much as he had her body, not satisfied until by friction, rubbing, undulations, Pierre felt the urge to tear the dress off her. When this was done, she did not remain in his arms, but went all over the room in her underwear, brushing her hair, powdering her face and acting as if that was all she intended to remove, and Pierre would have to be content with her as she was. She still wore her high-heeled shoes, her stockings, her garters, and the flesh showed between the garters and the beginning of her panties, and again between her waist and the little brassiere. After a moment Pierre tried to hold her. He wanted to undress her. He managed only to unfasten the brassiere when she slipped out of his arms again to perform a little dance for him. All the steps she knew she wanted to do for him. Pierre admired her lightness. He caught her as she passed, but she refused to let him touch her panties. She let him take off only her stockings and shoes. But at this moment she heard Jean enter. As she was, she leaped out of Pierre’s room and rushed to meet him. Jean saw her flinging herself into his arms, naked but for the panties. Then he saw Pierre, who had followed her, angry to be deprived of his satisfaction, angry that she should have preferred Jean to him. Jean understood. But he had no desire for Jeanette. He wanted to be free of her. So he rebuffed her, and left them. Then Jeanette turned on Pierre. Pierre tried to calm her. She remained angry. She began to pack, to dress, to leave. Pierre barred her way, carried her to his room and flung her on the bed. He would have her this time, at all cost. The struggle was pleasant, his rough suit against her skin, his buttons against her tender breasts, his shoes against her naked feet. In all this mixture of hardness and softness, coldness and warmth, rigidity and yielding, Jeanette felt for the first time Pierre as master. He sensed this. He tore off her panties, discovered her moisture. And then he was taken with a diabolical desire to hurt her. He inserted only his finger. When he had moved this finger until Jeanette pleaded to be satisfied and rolled with excitement, he stopped.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  My lover, Marcel, had to go home that night; he lived quite far away. I was free. I left him at eleven o’clock and went to see Mary. I was wearing my flounced Spanish cretonne dress and a flower in my hair, and I was all bronzed by the sun and feeling beautiful. When I arrived, Mary was lying on her bed cold-creaming her face, her legs and her shoulders because she had been lying on the beach. She was rubbing cream into her neck, her throat—she was covered with cream. This disappointed me. I sat at the foot of her bed and we talked. I lost my desire to kiss her. She was running away from her husband. She had married him only to be protected. She had never really loved men but women. At the beginning of her marriage, she had told him all sorts of stories about herself that she should not have told him—how she had been a dancer on Broadway and slept with men when she was short of money; how she even went to a whorehouse and earned money there; how she met a man who fell in love with her and kept her for a few years. Her husband never recovered from these stories. They awakened his jealousy and doubts, and their life together had become intolerable. The day after we met, she left Saint-Tropez, and I was filled with regrets for not having kissed her. Now I was about to see her again. In New York I unfold my wings of vanity and coquetry. Mary is as lovely as ever and seems much moved by me. She is all curves, softness. Her eyes are wide and liquid; her cheeks, luminous. Her mouth is full; her hair blond, and luxuriant. She is slow, passive, lethargic. We go to the movies together. In the dark she takes my hand. She is being analyzed and has discovered what I sensed long ago: that she has never known a real orgasm, at thirty-four, after a sexual life that only an expert accountant could keep track of. I am discovering her pretenses. She is always smiling, gay, but underneath she feels unreal, remote, detached from experience. She acts as if she were asleep. She is trying to awaken by falling into bed with anyone who invites her. Mary says, “It is very hard to talk about sex, I am so ashamed.” She is not ashamed of doing anything at all, but she cannot talk about it. She can talk to me. We sit for hours in perfumed places where there is music. She likes places where actors go. There is a current of attraction between us, purely physical. We are always on the verge of getting into bed together. But she is never free in the evenings. She will not let me meet her husband. She is afraid I will seduce him.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  Khomeini was now seventy years old. He must have thought it very unlikely that he would become the ruling faqih. In both Islamic Government and “The Greater Jihad,” Khomeini was trying to see how the mythology and mysticism of the Shiah could be adapted to break centuries of sacred tradition and allow a cleric to rule Iran. He had yet to see how this mythos would work out in practice. IN ISRAEL, a new form of Jewish fundamentalism had already started to translate myth into hard political fact. It had its roots in the religious Zionism which had grown up in the shadow of secular Zionism in the pre-state days in Palestine. These religious Zionists were modern Orthodox, and from an early date, they had started to found their own observant settlements alongside the socialist kibbutzim. Unlike the Haredim, this small group of religious Jews did not see Zionism as incompatible with Orthodoxy. They interpreted the Bible literally: in the Torah, God promised the Land to the descendants of Abraham, and thus gave Jews a legal title to Palestine. Moreover, in Eretz Israel, Jews would be able to observe the Law more fully than had been possible in the Diaspora. In the ghetto, it was obviously not feasible to observe many commandments relating to the farming and settlement of the Land, or the laws regarding politics and government. As a result, Diaspora Judaism had perforce been fragmented and compartmentalized. Now at last in their own land, Jews would be able to observe the whole of the Torah once again. As Pinchas Rosenbluth, one of the pioneers of Zionist Orthodoxy, explained: We accept upon ourselves the entire Torah, its commandments and ideas. The [old] Orthodoxy made do in fact with a small part of the Torah ... observed in synagogue or the family ... or certain areas of life. We want to carry out the Torah all the time and in every area, to grant [Torah] and its laws sovereignty in the life of the individual and the public. 77 Far from being incompatible with modernity, the Law would complete it. The world would see that Jews could create a new social order that was truly progressive because it had been planned by God. 78 There was a desire for wholeness that would always characterize religious Zionism; it was a way of finding healing and a more holistic vision after the trauma and constrictions of exile. But it was also a rebellion against the rationalist vision of the secular Zionists, who did not take these religious settlers seriously and who saw their ambition to create a Torah state in Eretz Israel as not only anachronistic but repellent.