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 208 of 344 · 20 per page

• From Hot Rods: Gay Erotic Stories (2011)

  “Get used to it. We all wear the same cologne down here—Eau de Sandhog,” I laugh. “C’mon, let’s go eat.” I try to ignore the fact that my cock is filling again. As I turn away I readjust myself, hoping Billy hasn’t noticed that I’ve been sporting wood for the better part of the morning. Damn, what is it about this boy that has me so fucking turned on? His body is hot, that’s the reason, and I know it. No use lying to myself. He’s not a pretty boy, but then I’ve never been attracted to sweet little twinks. I don’t want to change diapers—I want to fuck. I like my men beefy, men who can take what I’ve got to give and give it right the fuck back. The kind of guys I don’t have to be afraid of breaking when I ride them. Billy fits the bill. Clean shaven when we met at seven in the morning, his jaw is already covered by a blue-black shadow and smudged with dirt and grease. His eyes are deep set under thick dark brows that are trying to meet in the middle but don’t quite make it across his wide forehead. Billy’s nose is strong but slightly twisted, as if it might have been broken a time or two. The prettiest part of his face is his mouth. Full and lush, his lips are the kind made for kissing, the sort that make a man ache to taste them. Billy is all Man, with a capital M, from his short-cropped black hair to his size 14 boots. Everything in between is rock solid and slathered in testosterone, exactly made to order for a guy like me. I can’t seem to keep my eyes off him, or keep my mind from doing things to him that would make a porn star blush. It’s going to be a long fucking afternoon. I lead Billy away from the conveyer belt and the clouds of dust and rock that choke the air, into one of the dark, narrow side tunnels. It’s even colder there, away from the heat generated by the machinery and the bodies of the men who work them, but it’s relatively quiet and dry. The only light comes from the beams on our hard hats, weak yellowish rays that illuminate dust motes floating in the air. I flick on a portable lantern and set it down on an empty oil barrel, shedding a little more light on our impromptu café. Settling down on a pair of wooden crates, we crack open our metal lunch boxes and dig in. Regardless of my current state of horniness, sandhogging is hungry work and I’m starved. I wolf down two bologna sandwiches and half a thermos of coffee without pausing to take a breath between bites.

• From Hot Rods: Gay Erotic Stories (2011)

  I tried to put the flood of sexual images out of my head, but my dick was twitching like a divining rod, sniffing out manmeat. “Oh. Well, it seems a little foolish if you ask me.” He shrugged again. “I didn’t ask you.” He smiled as he crossed the room and I felt more blood rush to my groin. Straith had only been with the operation two weeks, but I had gotten used to his big body; wide, green eyes; and that high, round ass. Or at least I thought I had gotten used to him. “Where’d they stick it this time?” he asked as he knelt before me. I could smell his mildly sweaty scent mixing with the starch in his laundered shirt and fought back the urge to say, “Way high up inside my ass, go looking for it.” Instead I directed him to the spot on my thigh. “Okay, this is Special Agent Straith Anderson. I am in the process of patting down Zack McCallister after a meeting on the…” He turned to find the wall calendar hanging by my desk and stated the date. Starting with my ankles, he began feeling my body, being careful around the transmitter and very thorough everyplace else. When he got to my crotch, he placed a large, warm palm directly over my almost fully erect cock and squeezed slightly. As he measured the size and rigidity inside my pants, his eyes darted up to meet mine and I felt a high-voltage spark of attraction arc between us. My cock sprang up into full readiness and he dragged his palm along its length as he stood to frisk the upper half of my body. Starting with my arms, he squeezed each muscle, gauging its tone and firmness like a personal trainer. His hands cupped my damp armpits, digging into them as his eyes remained locked on mine. He was inches from my face; I could feel his breath on my cheek and see his lips part to expose the tip of his wide, pink tongue. His hands moved over my chest and his thumbs pressed down slightly over the center of my nipples. My stomach quivered as his fingers slid down along my waist and then over my belly, his fingertips leaving traces of heat in their wake. Stepping around me, Straith ran his hands over my back, kneading the tight muscles that stretched along my spine and shoulders until he came to the curve of my ass. I blessed myself for spending longer than needed on that cursed StairMaster as his hands quickly gripped the globes of my ass, slightly spreading the cheeks. Before I knew it, he was done and had stepped in front of me again, his eyes falling to the unmistakable outline of my now fully locked-and-loaded erection as it extended down my right thigh.

• From Hot Rods: Gay Erotic Stories (2011)

  BETWEEN SHOTS FIRED Jay Starre Kent kicked the door in, the flimsy wood splintering under the heavy thrust of his combat boot. He shouted out a warning in English, even though he was certain no local would understand the foreign tongue. Weapon cradled in one arm and finger on the trigger, he burst into the stone hovel and whirled in circles, noting two low windows and lack of any other exits, simple table and chairs, woodstove with a rickety pipe chimney, two unmade beds in the opposite corner—and no occupants. “All clear! Come on in, Randy.” His partner, lurking outside under the morning shade of a pair of scraggly pines, scanned the rugged hillsides surrounding them with sharp eyes one last time, before following Kent inside. “No fucking terrorists, as usual. Looks like they headed for the hills at dawn.” Kent pointed to the dirty bowls abandoned on the wobbly table. Randy nodded, breathing heavily after their stiff hike up the trail to this hidden cabin. They’d exchanged fire with the enemy less than twenty minutes earlier at the base of the Afghan mountain, and his body still tingled from those hairraising few minutes. Kent was busy on his radio, reporting to their unit commander, appearing outwardly calm while Randy, on his first combat tour and barely off the plane from Germany, couldn’t stop fidgeting and pacing. Their eyes met. Sergeant and private assessed each other, almost like enemies, almost like lovers. They’d just shared an intimate hour of life-threatening danger, and they had been together for almost twenty-four hours a day over the past seven. “I think we can take a quick breather. Are you okay?” Kent’s gray eyes gave little away, although his broad, placid features offered a measure of the comfort Randy craved desperately at that moment. He attempted a smile but felt it fail as he experienced a wracking shudder that rocked him from head to toe. The eyes softened and a hand came out to settle on his shoulder. Those strong fingers and the calm pressure they exerted almost instantly calmed his shaking. But, at the same time, his heart began to hammer, and he actually gasped for breath. The twenty-two-year-old private had not felt particularly brave over the past week. He’d been defending himself rather than attacking the enemy, and had relied on the older, more experienced Kent to lead him in all ways. With a small moan, he dropped to his knees in front of the tall sergeant and buried his face in the officer’s crotch. With the memory of recent gunshots echoing in his mind, Private Randy Brown frantically tore at the fly of Sergeant Kent Graham’s combat khakis, desperate for the cock he craved, the memory of its fat length as keen as the memory of the shattering echo of those shots.

• From Hot Rods: Gay Erotic Stories (2011)

  The bike glistened beneath him. The leather had never felt so smooth, so good, as it did when Teddy’s crown scraped across it, smearing the precum. He had never seen chrome so bright, never seen lines so perfect. Howard moved liked an extension of the bike, like he and the motorcycle were part of the same being. He moved his hips with perfectly timed thrusts, his fingers digging into Teddy’s hips, each of his moans low and hungry like the Harley’s rumble. Teddy dropped his head, looking under his extended arm to see Howard’s boot on the floor. It was planted there, unmoving, solid as the motorcycle. He stared at it as Howard quickened his pace, each thrust almost hard enough to rattle Teddy’s teeth. He wanted to howl each time Howard filled him. He closed his eyes, and he saw a black ribbon of road winding ahead of him, stretching into the horizon. The bike shook beneath him, vibrating from the force of each driving thrust. His flesh burned until he thought his entire body would ignite like nothing more than a slick of oil. The thick cock in his ass would have felt amazing no matter what, but knowing that he was with Howard, on Howard’s bike, made it so much better. Knowing that this would probably be his only chance to enjoy Howard’s body, and the smell of his sweat, and the sound of his pleasure, made Teddy treasure each second of it. He held it all close, burning it into his memory, preparing to relive the moments over and over for the rest of his life. Howard reached beneath Teddy’s body and gripped the base of his cock, his fingers as hard as any steel cock ring. He gave Teddy a good squeeze, as if to remind him that Teddy did not get to come—did not get to have any pleasure at all—until Howard said he could. That was fine with Teddy. He was in no hurry to rush their fucking, or to lose Howard’s fat cock. He was in no hurry to release the bike and get dressed again. He was in no hurry to return to the life that awaited him outside the garage, while Howard rode off at dawn. “Fuck, boy, you’re so tight. Fuck.” Teddy liked the sound of Howard’s voice—like his throat was full of gravel. Every time he spoke, Teddy clamped around his cock, prompting another torrent of words. Not just words: compliments. Like Teddy was actually giving him something, actually doing something that nobody else could. “Fuck…fuck…fuck…fuck…fuck.” The final word exploded out of Howard’s mouth at the same moment his cock jerked deep in Teddy’s body. Teddy quivered, his thighs tense, his balls tight, his breath lodged in his chest. If Howard let him come, he’d shoot all over the seat. For the second time that night, the Harley would bear the mark of his pleasure. If only Howard would loosen his fingers. “Do you want to come again?”

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

  As the discussion of same-gender loving in chapter 2 made transparent, sexual labels do not (always) encompass a person's sexual expression or experiences; and, as the persona of Ma Rainey's song suggests, one's sexuality is complex; as such, anyone who wants to label her or her sexuality will have to "prove it on me." Moreover, like Ann Allen Shockley, Ma Rainey elucidates that sexuality is a constellation of desires and intimate acts along a continuum rather than along a linear or bifurcated trajectory. Rainey thus complicates the working-class blues by imbuing them with a certain black middle-class respectability and formality that resist categorizations as "aberrant." All of this relates to Naylor's character Etta, who is emblematic of a blues lyricism of unbridled sexual pleasure that privileges sexuality, a fullness of life, and "sexual imagery." She experiences what feminist scholar Lynne Segal identifies as a reclamation of "sex for women" that does not merely "liberate women in the process"-whereby sex becomes a conduit for liberation-but, rather, whereby women, in this case Etta, engage in "liberated sex."" Etta especially demonstrates this in her utilization of sex in what she considers "business opportunities" (61). She ends up on Brewster Place after stealing the car of the affluent married man with whom she had an affair. When he refused to give her either air - or train fare, she takes his car, as she would "be damned if [she] was coming into the city on a raggedy old Greyhound" (58). She is able to not only make it to the city, but is also able to sell the car for a couple of thousand dollars until another "business opportunity" presents itself; and, because her lover was the son-in-law of the sheriff, Etta need not worry about any legal ramifications of her transgressive conduct. Thus, her flouting of sexual codes-breaking of the law and rupturing of the limits constituting transgression-is concretized in her affair with the son-in-law of the sheriff, an allegory for the law, legal authority, and the system itself.

• From Vox (1992)

  Excuse me for a second.” There was a pause. “What did you do?” he asked. “I just got a towel so that I can have it whenever I need it to mop myself up. I don’t want to come yet, and I seem to be getting awfully wet.” “Does that mean you’ve taken off your black pants and your sneakers?” he asked. “Yes.” “Underpants?” “No.” “And what color is the towel?” “Green,” she said. “Where is it?” “It’s bunched in my hand, held in my unders where I need it. Now I’ve put it aside.” “Why don’t you want to come yet? I won’t object, you know.” “Because if I do, I’ll crash, I’ll want to stop talking to you this way, and I like talking to you this way. My clitoris is duplicitous: it always tries to trick me when I’m with someone, or when I’m alone, even—it says, ‘Go on and come, Abby, no problem, you can come a second time in a few minutes, this feels real good, come on, don’t be so conservative, I’m good for three or four!’ But I know better. I’m not a multiple-orgasm sort of person. The second after I’ve come, no matter how foaming and frothing my level of arousal was, that’s it, my clit is already starting to creep back into its clit-cloister and I’m thinking about other things. Two or three hours after that generally I’ll top myself off in the shower, but not before.” “I see. Well then by all means keep that towel handy. I’m in for the long pull.” “Good. Where were we?” “You were just about to tell me the exact thing that was in your mind when you came in the shower yesterday evening.” “Right, but do you mean the image that made me come, or do you mean the image that I had in my head when I came?” “I—don’t know.” “There’s a big difference,” she said. “I mean, the actual images that I have when I’m coming are things like, I don’t know, elephant seals dozing on rocks, a carousel selection of greeting cards, a painting tightly wrapped in canvas, porch furniture—my brain is going so wild that there’s no way to predict what sort of oddment will be there when all the flashbulbs go off. They’re almost never sexual images. But before that, when I’m getting close, you mean, right?” “I guess, yes.” “Yesterday I think there were two ideas, combined. I’m embarrassed.” “You’re embarrassed , after just telling me about a triple-cock blowout?” “But that’s nothing, that’s just a picture. The thing that made me come, I’ve acted on, to a degree, indirectly.” “I told you about buying the romance novel, didn’t I?” he said. “I even told you about making obscene fingerings on the roof of my car. I’ve let my hair down!” “Tell me what you look like erect.” “You mean from memory?” “No.” “You mean undo my bathrobe etcetera?” “Yes.” There was a pause. “Welp. Um.

• From Vox (1992)

  And he unhooks it from its little mounts and he hands it to Mr. Forkman, who again looks closely at it, holds it up in the air. Harvey says, ‘For a fiancée or something? What’s her complexion, dark or light?’ And Forkman vagues out, saying, ‘I don’t really know who it’s for.’ Again Harvey looks at you, and you don’t say anything, and so Harvey swallows and he says, he almost whispers, ‘Really you can’t get a good sense of it unless you see it worn.’ And the fork guy says, ‘Gee, yeah, too bad.’ And he asks what the stones are and Harvey tells him and the guy just nods. Finally Harvey, almost in exasperation, says, ‘Look, she made it, she knows all about it, she’ll tell you everything you want to know, I’m going to get a bite to eat.’ He turns to you and says, ‘Show him the piece, all right?’ He grabs his jacket and goes out, pulling the door shut with unusual force, so that the sign saying OPEN flips down to say CLOSED . And so …” “Mm-hmm?” “No, that’s it, I shot my wad getting the two of you face-to-face.” “No! You’re bailing out right there? Did you really shoot your wad, or you mean figuratively?” “At the moment, my true wad could not be farther from shooting. It is work getting the two of you together. I feel that any second I’m going to misstep in telling this. It’s very stressful.” “Now listen,” she said. “Harvey leaves, slamming the door, so the sign says CLOSED , and I, me, I am left, abandoned right in the middle of things by Harvey, and I’m standing there in the shop with the taciturn and very rich guy Forky, Forky Pigtail, who’s holding the necklace that I made in his big knuckly fingers. He sits down on a step stool, he looks down at the necklace, looks up at me. What does he do? ” “He says, ‘I really do have to see what it looks like on someone before I know whether it’s something I want.’ And you look down at your shirt with the green and black stars and you sort of pluck at it and smile and say, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not wearing the clothes for that piece. It’s really an evening piece, for a low-cut dress.’ With your finger you trace the ideal curve of the neckline of the dress. And Fork says, ‘Then unbutton your shirt.’ Well, what can you do? You unbutton the top three buttons of your shirt. With each button, you feel the fabric shift slightly against your collarbone. Fork stands up, letting the necklace dangle from his left hand, and, to your astonishment, he begins unbuttoning the buttons of his fly. Because of course he’s a button-fly kind of guy.

• From Vox (1992)

  113 Jones kind of movie, with lots of gratuitous grotesquerie, stuff I hate, torchlit sets, dwarves, but in the midst of that stuff of course there were, bang, these shocking pure normal sex scenes, whose abruptness I felt through Emily, because Emily was my guest on my couch watch ing them. Then the preview was over, and the ATOM logo came on and focused itself again, and I looked over at her. She was looking straight at the TV—the light from the kitchen was behind her profile—and she had her legs crossed, and one of her forearms was resting on her stom ach, and her tea was in her left hand. Her skirt was pleated. She looked so exceedingly clothed. She lifted the mug, and I could see her lips meet it—the water was still too hot, so she had to do one of those long inward sips that makes the liquid lift off from the surface into a tea aerosol, and her eyes narrowed when she felt the fine hot spray of it touch the tip of her tongue. And then the movie began—Pleasure So Deep. It starts with a maid who hears a tinkling bell and takes something on a tray to a man and they talk for a second and then she walks away." "Have you rented this movie since then?" she asked. "Twice. It's also one of the three I rented tonight, which I'm probably not going to watch. Much more fun telling it to you. Anyway, the maid walks away, and then this thin Europop electronic sex-music starts going, and then instantly: cut to half-naked woman and man with cock, with dubbed moans. The woman is in her late

• From The Decameron (1353)

  An we have promised it Him, let Him find Himself another or others to perform it to Him.' 'Or if,' went on her fellow, 'we should prove with child, how would it go then?' Quoth the other, 'Thou beginnest to take thought unto ill ere it cometh; when that betideth, then will we look to it; there will be a thousand ways for us of doing so that it shall never be known, provided we ourselves tell it not.' The other, hearing this and having now a greater itch than her companion to prove what manner beast a man was, said, 'Well, then, how shall we do?' Quoth the first, 'Thou seest it is nigh upon none and methinketh the sisters are all asleep, save only ourselves; let us look about the hortyard if there be any there, and if there be none, what have we to do but to take him by the hand and carry him into yonder hut, whereas he harboureth against the rain, and there let one of us abide with him, whilst the other keepeth watch? He is so simple that he will do whatever we will.' Masetto heard all this talk and disposed to compliance, waited but to be taken by one of the nuns. The latter having looked well all about and satisfied themselves that they could be seen from nowhere, she who had broached the matter came up to Masetto and aroused him, whereupon he rose incontinent to his feet. The nun took him coaxingly by the hand and led him, grinning like an idiot, to the hut, where, without overmuch pressing, he did what she would. Then, like a loyal comrade, having had her will, she gave place to her fellow, and Masetto, still feigning himself a simpleton, did their pleasure. Before they departed thence, each of the girls must needs once more prove how the mute could horse it, and after devising with each other, they agreed that the thing was as delectable as they had heard, nay, more so. Accordingly, watching their opportunity, they went oftentimes at fitting seasons to divert themselves with the mute, till one day it chanced that one of their sisters, espying them in the act from the lattice of her cell, showed it to other twain. At first they talked of denouncing the culprits to the abbess, but, after, changing counsel and coming to an accord with the first two, they became sharers with them in Masetto's services, and to them the other three nuns were at divers times and by divers chances added as associates. Ultimately, the abbess, who had not yet gotten wind of these doings, walking one day alone in the garden, the heat being great, found Masetto (who had enough of a little fatigue by day, because of overmuch posting it by night) stretched out asleep under the shade of an almond-tree, and the wind lifting the forepart of his clothes, all abode discovered.

• From Vox (1992)

  “Ninety-five cents per half minute, I think.” “So give me your number and I’ll call you back,” she said. “All right. But.” “Yes?” “But then you’ll have to turn your light on again to write my number down,” he said. “What do you mean? I have a good memory for numbers.” “Oh, I’m sure it’s much better than mine. But what if in this one isolated case the number slips your mind?” “Okay, to be safe I’ll turn on the light and write it down.” “But what if you write it down wrong, just because this is such an unusual sort of occasion, and you reverse two numbers, the first time you’ve ever done it?” “Sexual dyslexia.” “Right! Or what if you hang up and you get another Diet Coke and then you decide, no, this is crazy, I don’t want to call him back? How do I know you won’t just not call?” “I’m going to call you back,” she said. “I’m enjoying this. I’m going to call.” “Okay, but what if you do call, but because of the break, even that one-minute break, when we aren’t connected, what if fate shifts, and we’re suddenly awkward with each other, and we’re never quite able to resume the intimacy that we seemed to hit so easily the first time?” “All right, you convinced me. Don’t give me your number.” “Really I think two dollars a minute is cheap for this. I need this. I’d spend twenty dollars a minute for this. And there isn’t a time limit on this line, either—at least my ad says NO TIME LIMIT in big letters.” “Okay,” she said.

• From Vox (1992)

  62 unique moment, with precisely this order of images and that fold of yourself being moved by your middle finger in just that way and that biting of lower lip with exactly that degree of force, all entirely private. I almost think that each one of the times a woman comes in private in her life has to continue to exist as a kind of sphere, a foot-and-a-half-wide sphere, in some ideal dimension, sort of like all the ovums you've got queued up in you, except these are . . . ovums of past orgasms, weird as that sounds, and I am this one viable spermazoid lurking around among them, and I would happily spend my life floating up to one after another of these unique orgasm- spheres and looking inside and I'd be able to watch you make yourself come that one time." "I bet each one of these mystical spheres has a little window in it with a little Levelor blind that's down al most but not quite all the way, right, that you creep up to and peer into, am I right?" "Exactly, as if it's a stylized cartoon bubble with a curved window drawn on it, and you're naked in there, strumming like there's no tomorrow. But no, actually it isn't like simple voyeurism, I don't think—it's holier or more reverent than that, because when I'm in that mood I don't want to exist. I don't mean I want to kill myself, I mean that I'm a man and a man is a watcher and a watcher disturbs the purity of the event, so I don't want to exist, I want to be faded away to almost nothing. And of course all other men are completely foreign, they aren't allowed in this at all. When I'm very aroused I

• From Vox (1992)

  “All right. You do whatever you want with those index fingers, and I’ll tell you about a kind of sensing device that I own. What it does, it doesn’t eavesdrop, it doesn’t pick up sounds, it simply senses the presence nearby of any intelligent strumming woman. It looks like an antique pocket watch, it’s gold, with a cover, but when you open it, instead of the dial, there is this mysterious fluid, this very special fluid in there that glows in several colors when the right conditions are met, for reasons that are not clear, except that of course a woman masturbating is so important an event in the physical universe that elemental relations in matter are affected as it occurs, and there are these sort of currents in the fluid that slowly move in a certain direction, like lines of force, which give you some sense of where the masturbation signals are coming from, although it takes years of practice, and of course a great deal of native skill as well, to learn how to read the fluid correctly. It’s called the Bionic Mmmm-Detector, as you might suspect. Well, I’m driving down the expressway of an eastern city one evening around ten o’clock, in town on business, in my rented midsize car, my Ford Topaz, with the radio going, a classics oldie station, playing ‘Ain’t Nobody,’ and I’m just driving along, and as usual I have my Mmmm-Detector open on the seat beside me, but the fluid is dark, and then I start curving through this residential area, very close to the buildings on either side, and I glance down at the seat beside me, and my God, I’m getting a very strong signal, I’m getting wave patterns I’ve never seen before, from very near and to my right, and craning my neck I catch sight of a lighted window, and I know that behind it you are in process, you are beginning. My years of practice in reading the flux patterns in the watch tells me this is something very special, something I cannot pass by, and so I palm the steering wheel around suddenly and veer onto the off ramp and scoot back through the narrow streets, swearing at all the one-way signs, and when I come to the door where the Mmmm-forces are flowing from, I park in a place that is sure to get me a ticket, and I leave my flashers on, and I go into the foyer. There’s a row of buttons with names beside them: I hold the detector to each one until one, the third one down, makes the Mmmm-Detector glow with strange colors, and I hesitate, I know that I am interrupting you, and I don’t want to do that, that’s the last thing I want to do, but it seems so clear to me, reading the force waves, that there is a strong possibility that you would want me to interrupt you, if you knew me, and the conviction that this is true grows in me, and my finger trembles at your button, and there is a huge interior war between reticence and attraction, between the fear that I will inspire fear and the certainty that I should not inspire fear and that we would like each other if I could simply push that button, and I look down at the Mmmm-Detector and I see that you are going to come in less than four minutes if you keep on at that rate, you’re really moving, the colors are increasingly intense, and I’m trembling, I’m shivering, but I’m compelled, and I push the button, bzzzzt . You’re on your bed, and you’re wearing a blue long-sleeved pullover sort of shirt, and black pants and black sneakers, but your black pants are around your ankles, and you’ve got that tattered, disintegrating issue of Forum in your left hand, and you’re reading about a job interview in which the woman interviewer is sucking the interviewee’s cock, and you’re right in the middle of things, when bzzzzt , the doorbell. Who could that be?” “So I do up my pants and I go to the speaker and I say, ‘Hello?’ ”

• From Vox (1992)

  My painter loaded up his roller with wall paint, this was a warm neutral gray, and I mean warm, and he came over and he lay down on the floor underneath me, in the opposite direction, with his head touching the baseboard, so I could see his face and his paint-spattered glasses between my breasts, and he touched the roller to one of my nipples, and then rolled up between my breasts and down and over the other nipple, and as he was doing that he used his foot to pull another paint can into position, and then, still lying on his back, he lifted his hips up in the air with both boots resting on the can of paint sort of like a circus elephant on one of those little stools, you know? And he brought out his cock. The hall ass painter took this moment to remove his hands from my back, so that all his weight was directed through his thigh muscles and his cock into my ass, while at the same time the leg painter, who was standing, pulled almost all the way out of me and then he slid himself all the way back in so that I could feel the muscles of his legs hit against me, and I opened my mouth to say, ‘Hooh!’ which is I think almost certainly what I would say if all that was going on in my front hall, but of course as soon as I opened my mouth the cock of the man underneath me slid right inside, so all I could do was hum, and then all three of them came in me, one right after another, first the one in my mouth, surprisingly enough, then the one in my pussy, then finally the one in my ass.”

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  When my mother was out for the evening I’d take off my clothes and dance naked, barefoot, through the dim apartment on the shaggy carpets. The glittering spires outside surrounded me like astounded adults. Snow fell, swirled, slalomed past our windows. A cloud got caught between our building and the next. The second Sibelius symphony provided me with exalted feelings to interpret. What a relief to feel longing in my arms, passion in my legs, craving after beauty in my hands rather than in my head for once. When I returned to school I started cruising all the time, all the time. Every free moment between classes I was in the student union or the third-floor toilet in Main Hall. I’d sit for hours in a stall, dropping cigarettes into the bowl, studying a book on Chinese social structure or Buddhist art, awaiting an interesting customer, like one of those gypsy fortune-tellers who prospect clients in storefronts where they also live. Their mixture of homely paraphernalia and mystical apparatus (TV beside crystal ball) might serve as an analogy to my blend of scholarship and sex. I was obsessed. Hour after hour I’d sit there, inhaling the smells other people made, listening to their sounds, studying the graffiti scribbled all over the thick marble partitions in Main Hall or the metal ones in the union. Someone comes in, heavy brown cordovans before the urinal, worn-down heels and scuff marks on the leather—neglects himself, can’t be gay. I can hear his urine splatter but I can’t see its flow. I wait for it to stop—the crucial moment, for if he stays on, then I’ll stand in my stall, peek through the crack, soundlessly unbolt my door as an invitation. Now, in this indeterminate second, I can put one head after another on his unseen shoulders, invent for him one scenario after another. I get hard in anticipation, stiff before the void of my own imagination. Nothing. His calves flex slightly as he buttons up (heavy weight to lift) and then he’s gone. One of the toilets two stalls down drips and I picture the mad anesthesiologist mixing poison, drop by drop, into the sedative. Time and again I’d focus on this stranger on the other side of the door, will him into wanting me, impart to him perverse demands, blond hair, full lips, only to see him through the crack in the door: the middle-aged janitor with hairy ears. But then, just as I was ready to cash in my chips, someone sat beside me, dropped his pants to the floor in a puddle, revealing strong tan calves above crisp white ribbed athletic socks. A silence like a storm cloud gathered over the room, blocking out the hall noises. He tapped his foot slightly; I tapped mine. Then two taps, matched by two of mine. Three and three.

• From Vox (1992)

  “And,” she said, “I take the Forum and read what you’re pointing at, and you’re pretty close, it’s not exactly the right phrase, but you’ve found the right paragraph, anyway. And I don’t know quite what to do. I probably should be calling the cops, because you seem to know all this stuff about me, but on the other hand, there you are, and I am still feeling all puffy down below, and you have a certain amount of charm, and an intriguing pocket watch, and so I offer you a, a what? A dry Vermouth on the rocks. And you accept.”

• From Vox (1992)

  117 ments, as if several times she were on the verge of saying something that began with the word 'you.' On the TV a woman was making her fist go up and down on a cock with her mouth slack. When a sex scene ended, Emily's blanket would stop. We got to the scene where the guy with the wide yellow tie with a dollar sign on it has sex with the heroine. She says something like, 'Don't play around, just fuck me,' and so he does. This scene really got to Emily, and she took the blanket in her teeth so she could have both hands free and yet have it over her, so now there were these loomings as her left hand moved back and forth between breasts, and the little circling rhythm was slightly less constrained." "What were you doing?" "Whenever we were in a sex scene, I mean in the middle of watching one, I would slip my hand under my belt and press on myself, through my underpants. When the sex scene was over, I took my hand out and rested it decorously on my leg. Anyway, this scene with the man with the yellow tie with the dollar signs really aroused her, and when it was over she took the blanket out of her teeth and wiped her mouth with the back of her right hand, spitting out some of the blanket fuzz, and in the TV light I could see that her two fingers were all shiny from stroking herself. We waited through the filler stuff, we didn't care about dialogue or cars driving or any of that, now we both wanted to see fucking, period. The next scene was two women and a man. Halfway through,

• From Vox (1992)

  I’m sure you remember those water slides that you set up on the lawn, that destroyed the grass? This was not as fast-moving as that, much slower-moving, but no friction, and in a luminous tube. As I went along these pairs of hands would enter the tube a little ahead of me, waving around blindly, looking for something to feel, and then my feet would brush under them, and they would try to grasp my ankles, but their fingers were dripping with oil, and as I moved forward they slid up my legs, holding me quite hard, but without friction because of the oil, and then they pressed down as my stomach went under them, and then they sort of turned to encounter my breasts, the two thumbs were almost touching, and they slid very slowly over my breasts, pushing them up, and believe me, in this fantasy I had very large heavy breasts, it took a long time for the hands to slide over them.” “Wow! What did old Pamela say when you told her that?” “I finished describing it, and I asked her if she had thoughts like that and she said ‘No!’ in quite a shocked voice. She said, ‘No! Tell me another.’ You think maybe my tube was what turned her into a lesbian?” “Well, it certainly would have turned me into a lesbian. But now—can you clarify one thing for me? Do you right now have the light on or off in the room you’re in, the combination living room dining room?” “I have it on. It’s a table lamp. I could turn it off if you’d like.” “Perhaps that, perhaps that would …” “Listen.” There was a click. “Now your silverware is glinting in the moonlight, right?” he said. “I can’t see it.” “Have you noticed that little juncture in movies, or I guess it’s more in TV shows, when somebody has some pensive thought, or peaceful thought, close-up of her face, and then she reaches over and turns out the bedside light, click, but of course this is a movie set, with elaborate lights all over the place, so her turning that little switch has to coincide with the shutting off of major flows of current, kashoonk , and the problem then is that movie film doesn’t work in the dark, so there has to be quite a high light level but with the impression of darkness, and so at the same instant the big imitation incandescent lamp lights are turned off, the imitation moonlight or streetlight lights have to come on outside the window, and yet there is often a problem, there is often a tiny millisecond delay while the filaments of the moonlight lights heat up and reach their peak, and so in this changeover you can see the second set of lights that are supposed to mean ‘dark peaceful room’ spread over the bed and the walls?

• From Vox (1992)

  She was looking straight at the TV—the light from the kitchen was behind her profile—and she had her legs crossed, and one of her forearms was resting on her stomach, and her tea was in her left hand. Her skirt was pleated. She looked so exceedingly clothed . She lifted the mug, and I could see her lips meet it—the water was still too hot, so she had to do one of those long inward sips that makes the liquid lift off from the surface into a tea aerosol, and her eyes narrowed when she felt the fine hot spray of it touch the tip of her tongue. And then the movie began— Pleasure So Deep . It starts with a maid who hears a tinkling bell and takes something on a tray to a man and they talk for a second and then she walks away.” “Have you rented this movie since then?” she asked. “Twice. It’s also one of the three I rented tonight, which I’m probably not going to watch. Much more fun telling it to you. Anyway, the maid walks away, and then this thin Europop electronic sex-music starts going, and then instantly: cut to half-naked woman and man with cock, with dubbed moans. The woman is in her late thirties maybe, very attractive, with her hair pinned back. Emily watched this for maybe a minute, and then she looked over at the windows and she said, ‘Are you sure people can’t see in?’ I do have curtains, but I honestly wasn’t sure if people could possibly see in or not, and my apartment is on the first floor, on the side of the building, so it was a legitimate concern, so I hopped up again and got my keys and said I’d be back in a second, and I went outside and tried to look in my windows, and it was surprisingly secure: not only could you not see Emily or anything in the room, you couldn’t even tell the TV set was on, I guess because it’s a small set. So I went back in and sat down, slightly out of breath, and told her that you couldn’t see a thing from outside. She said, ‘Great, thanks.’ I said, ‘What’s happened so far?’ and she said, in a slightly unnatural voice, ‘The woman and her lover have been fucking in various ways.’ It was the same scene, in fact—this Italian guy, whose name turns out to be Mario, has his amazingly long cock between her breasts—I remember seeing that image and immediately turning to Emily and watching her eyes: every time there was a cut, I could see her eyes make a tiny movement to find the center of gravity of the next image.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  William Everett Hunton was one of the first handsome homosexuals I’d ever met, a small, neatly made little guy who would flounce and languish around me but turn gravely masculine around the other law students. Even though he was hoping to reform himself and was quite optimistic about a cure, at least for a while he had been gay, and could still be considered at least a transitional case. Annie and I would sit around his room in the law quad and listen to his adventures, presented as evidence of his depravity but with a suggestion that his scarlet sins, at least, had been mink-lined. We were alone, he and I, for a moment. He was shaving and dressing and I watched him as a child might, as though I myself didn’t perform these same rites every morning (or in the case of shaving, every third morning). When I told him in which Midwestern city I’d been born, he laughed and said, “But that’s where my patron lives, the real Everett Hunton.” “Come again?” William widened his blue eyes, smiled, and came over and sat on my lap. “Oh, look, I’ve gotten foam on your neck,” and he brushed it away. He swiveled in my lap, linked his hands behind my neck, and leaned back to look at me. With one more wiggle of his bottom he whispered, “I was wondering if I could get a rise out of you.” He stood and pretended to be a matron slowly raising a lorgnette to her eye to inspect the degree and angle of the damage she’d done. “I can’t tell if you pack a big basket or not.” “What do you mean exactly?” “You’re not that naive.” He went back to his sink and mirror. “God, but do I feel like a tarnished angel around you.” He turned and held up a warning finger. “Equal emphasis on tarnished and angel.” “You are angelic, William, a naughty angel,” I said, surprising myself with my low tone, which was the vocal counterpart to a lazy pat on a chorus girl’s fanny. William instantly responded with a shiver. “You think so? Oh, I was telling you about my ‘patron.’ He’d die if he heard me using that word; he tells everyone we’re cousins, though that’s just as dangerous—with these really old families the cousins are all present and accounted for.” He clapped his hand over his mouth. “No, I must change the subject. So, tell me, Ducky, are you hung or not?” He slapped himself, looked at his reflection, and hissed, “You slut, I didn’t say that.” “Do I have a big penis? Oh, I suppose it’s just average.” “Suppose? Darling, a real man might get away with vagueness about that one vital statistic, but it’s not as though you haven’t done major comparison shopping.” He laughed as an actress might, tossing his head back to emphasize his long neck.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  In the locker room the man smiled at me again, not in the usual furtive way (seductive, hostile, afraid) but just as though we were already friends. He had wonderful green eyes and an engaging smile, although one tooth was a delicate biscuit brown. His shoulders reflected the overhead light. When he turned I could see that his buttocks registered in sinewy detail every motion he made; they weren’t piled high like stiff mounds of whipped cream, the way teenage boys’ butts looked. No, his hips were narrow and fluent. No one else was around in the locker room, although two or three voices boomed from the pool. The smell of chlorine was giving me a headache. We started talking, and everything I said made him nod and smile. I thought he might be laughing at me. What puzzled me was why someone so handsome would show an interest in me. As he dressed, I could see he had beautiful clothes, and that intimidated me, too. He invited me to come to his apartment for a cup of tea. It was already dark out. A cold wind was blowing steadily, sifting snow. The afternoon had been warm enough to melt the snow on the sidewalk, but now it had frozen white as milk glass. I felt a small secret pride in being with someone so handsome. His carefully combed hair froze stiff. His salient cheekbones shone and caught the passing lights. The intimacy between us seemed as sudden and transitionless as in a dream. When we reached a dark side street, he put my mittenless hand in his pocket and held it without saying anything. His apartment was big and underfurnished, as though a flood had scattered the contents of a single room over several. He sat me on a straight-back chair stranded in the middle of a carpetless wood floor, but when he stepped back and saw me marooned there he laughed and invited me into his bedroom. His name, he said, was Fred. His window cast a yellow trapezoid on the pure blue snow outside. The wind had traced in snow the black bark of the tree below. A soft tango was playing on the radio. He switched off the light. The snow looked fluffier, almost as though it had risen slightly. We sprawled side by side, athwart the bed, fully dressed, our wet shoes on the floor, staring at the ceiling. Fred’s voice and the tango explored the folds of my brain like a deadly parasite, whose progress can’t be detected except after it slowly starts to unsnap higher functions. In the center of the ceiling a pressed metal rosette had lost detail under each new layer of paint. Fred’s voice made my ear glow, or was it the cold? He told me that he’d just been released from a mental hospital.