Desire

Passages

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

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• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  The chief interest of the objects, in the collector's eyes, is that they are a collection, and that they are his. Rivalry, to be sure, inflames this, as it does every other passion, yet the objects of a collector's mania need not be necessarily such as are generally in demand. Boys will collect anything that they see another boy collect, from pieces of chalk and peach-pits up to books and photographs. Out of a hundred students whom I questioned, only four or five had never collected anything. [399] The associationist psychology denies that there is any blind primitive instinct to appropriate, and would explain all acquisitiveness, in the first instance, as a desire to secure the pleasures' which the objects possessed may yield; and, secondly, as the association of the idea of pleasantness with the holding of the thing, even though the pleasure originally got by it was only gained through its expense or destruction. Thus the miser is shown to us as one who has transferred to the gold by which he may buy the goods of this life all the emotions which the goods themselves would yield; and who thereafter loves the gold for its own sake, preferring the means of pleasure to the pleasure itself. There can be little doubt that much of this analysis a broader view of the facts would have dispelled. 'The miser' is an abstraction. There are all kinds of misers. The common sort, the excessively niggardly man, simply exhibits the psychological law that the potential has often a far greater influence over our mind than the actual. A man will not marry now, because to do so puts an end to his indefinite potentialities of choice of a partner. He prefers the latter. He will not use open fires or wear his good clothes, because the day may come when he will have to use the furnace or dress in a worn-out coat, 'and then where will he be? For him, better the actual evil than the fear of it; and so it is with the common lot of misers. Better to live poor now, with the power of living rich, than to live rich at the risk of losing the power. These men value their gold, not for its own sake, but for its powers. Demonetize it, and see how quickly they will get rid of it! The associationist theory is, as regards them, entirely at fault: they care nothing for the gold in se. With other misers there combines itself with this preference of the power over the act the far more instinctive element of the simple collecting propensity. Every one collects money, and when a man of petty ways is smitten with the collecting mania for this object he necessarily becomes a miser. Here again the associationist psychology is wholly at fault.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I had already planned this visit, fully, in my head. I wanted to have sex with him on a bed. I didn’t even care if he slept over or not. I just wanted a place to be with him where we could relax that wasn’t freezing and where we weren’t looking around for people to catch us. The way I felt when we kissed or when he went down on me—I wanted to create that feeling and live in that for as long as I could. I wanted to build a tent of it in the warmth of my sister’s house: a container where I could bottle the feeling, like a little ship, and hold the glow. Here was a bit of magic that could happen in my life. After all the nothingness, maybe this fantasy was worth living for. I suppose that whenever you’re addicted to something, this is what they mean when they say you forget about the consequences and don’t care about the other side. All I cared about was my plan. 33.Theo was waiting by the rocks, hanging on to the side of them. I ran across the beach and climbed up, feeling like Catherine running to Heathcliff across the moors, in my long skirt. I imagined that I looked like a child. I knew that I wasn’t, but I felt time to be slowing as I ran—or at least, I wasn’t getting any older anymore. I was alive and that was it. “Hi,” I said, and crouched down to kiss him. “I’m coming up,” he said, and twisted himself up onto the rock. For a second I was shocked to see his black tail, the sash still around his pelvis. He kissed me hard and laid me down onto the rock. Then he pulled himself on top of me and I could feel his cock, my skirt and his sash between us. It was all so natural. My legs spread and his pelvis and tail were between them, just where his legs would be if he were a regular man. As we kissed I imagined eating his tail with garlic butter. I wanted to suck his cock and also to see it. I rolled us over and sat up on top of him, kissing my way down his torso, my skirt fanned out around both of us, covered in ocean water and seaweed and black slime from his tail. I felt like an octopus or an anemone. I sucked on his neck, his nipples, the insides of his arms. I licked his meaty rib cage, kissed my way down his belly, sucked on his belly button. My head hovered over his sash. I teased him, kissing the outside of it, licking it. Like a salt lick, the sash had accreted so much salt. I wondered how many sashes he had, if he ever changed them.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  I can assure you, I’m not so set on a bourgeois life as Mother and Margot. I’d like to spend a year in Paris and London learning the languages and studying art history. Compare that with Margot, who wants to nurse newborns in Palestine. I still have visions of gorgeous dresses and fascinating people. As I’ve told you many times before, I want to see the world and do all kinds of exciting things, and a little money won’t hurt! This morning Miep told us about her cousin’s engagement party, which she went to on Saturday. The cousin’s parents are rich, and the groom’s are even richer. Miep made our mouths water telling us about the food that was served: vegetable soup with meatballs, cheese, rolls with sliced meat, hors d’oeuvres made with eggs and roast beef, rolls with cheese, genoise, wine and cigarettes, and you could eat as much as you wanted. Miep drank ten schnapps and smoked three cigarettes -- could this be our temperance advocate? If Miep drank all those, I wonder how many her spouse managed to toss down? Everyone at the party was a little tipsy, of course. There were also two officers from the Homicide Squad, who took photographs of the wedding couple. You can see we’re never far from Miep’s thoughts, since she promptly noted their names and addresses in case anything should happen and we needed contacts with good Dutch people. Our mouths were watering so much. We, who’d had nothing but two spoonfuls of hot cereal for breakfast and were absolutely famished; we, who get nothing but half-cooked spinach (for the vitamins!) and rotten pota- toes day after day; we, who fill our empty stomachs with nothing but boiled lettuce, raw lettuce, spinach, spinach and more spinach. Maybe we’ll end up being as strong as Popeye, though up to now I’ve seen no sign of it! If Miep had taken us along to the party, there wouldn’t have been any rolls left over for the other guests. If we’d been there, we’d have snatched up everything in sight, including the furniture. I tell you, we were practically pulling the words right out of her mouth. We were gathered around her as if we’d never in all our lives heard of ” delicious food or elegant people! And these are the granddaughters of the distinguished millionaire. The world is a crazy place! Yours, Anne M. Frank DTUESDAY, MAY 9, 1944 Dearest Kitty, I’ve finished my story about Ellen, the fairy. I’ve copied it out on nice notepaper, decorated it with red ink and sewn the pages together. The whole thing looks quite pretty, but I don’t know if it’s enough of a birthday present. Margot and Mother have both written poems. Mr. Kugler came upstairs this afternoon with the news that starting Monday, Mrs. Broks would like to spend two hours in the office every afternoon. Just imagine!

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  Once when I was spending the night at Jacque’s, I could no longer restrain my curiosity about her body, which she’d always hidden from me and which I’d never seen. I asked her whether, as proof of our friendiship, we could touch each other’s breasts. Jacque refused. I also had a terrible desire to kiss her, which I did. Every time I see a female nude, such as the Venus in my art history book, I go into ecstasy. Sometimes I find them so exquisite I have to struggle to hold back my tears. If only I had a girlfriend! THURSDAY, JANUARY 6, 1944 Dearest Kitty, My longing for someone to talk to has become so unbearable that I somehow took it into my head to select Peter for this role. On the few occasions when I have gone to Peter’s room during the day, I’ve always thought it was nice and cozy. But Peter’s too polite to show someone the door when they’re bothering him, so I’ve never dared to stay long. I’ve always been afraid he’d think I was a pest. I’ve been looking for an excuse to linger in his room and get him talking without his noticing, and yesterday I got my chance. Peter, you see, is currently going through a crossword-puzzle craze, and he doesn’t do anything else all day. I was helping him, and we soon wound up sitting across from each other at his table, Peter on the chair and me on the divan. It gave me a wonderful feeling when I looked into his dark blue eyes and saw how bashful my unexpected visit had made him. I could read his innermost thoughts, and in his face I saw a look of helplessness and uncertainty as to how to behave, and at the same time a flicker of awareness of his masculinity. I saw his shyness, and I melted. I wanted to say, “Tell me about yourself. Look beneath my chatty exterior.” But I found that it was easier to think up questions than to ask them. The evening came to a close, and nothing happened, except that I told him about the article on blushing. Not what I wrote you, of course, just that he would grow more secure as he got older. That night I lay in bed and cried my eyes out, all the i while making sure no one could hear me. The idea that I had to beg Peter for favors was simply revolting. But people will do almost anything to satisfy their longings; take me, for example, I’ve made up my mind to visit Peter more often and, somehow, get him to talk to me. You mustn’t think I’m in love with Peter, because I’m not. If the van Daans had had a daughter instead of a son, I’d have tried to make friends with her. This morning I woke up just before seven and immediately remembered what I’d been dreaming about.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Things were definitely looking good. All I had to do was sit there, his hands firm on my breasts, his breath and tongue hot in my ear, and his fine dick ramming me with beautiful precision. I knew this would be the first of many a hot afternoon getting my brains fucked out. Denise ignores her better judgment and forges ahead. The violation of her own values, not to mention her common sense, inevitably produces some guilt. Yet if she’s seriously troubled by what happens, she’s keeping that to herself. It appears as if Denise mentions the inappropriateness of her behavior only to set up the forbidden circumstances of this encounter, which, of course, also includes ambivalent feelings toward her boss. Hers is a tale of ambivalence and guilt transformed into desire, of reluctance converted to the purposes of passion, of restraint replaced with freedom. But how is guilt, the great inhibitor, so thoroughly transformed? The first principle is that when guilt is in the forefront of a sexual situation, it almost always gets in the way. After all, the purpose of guilt is to inhibit. If, however, it can be held in the background, called up only to be overpowered by arousal, it will usually produce a sense of liberation, as it does for Denise. However, when our sexual behavior involves serious violations of our own values, after orgasm guilt will probably return with a vengeance in the form of remorse. The cycle of attraction, guilt, excitement, remorse, attraction is what makes many illicit affairs seem irresistible. For those who place some value on sexual exclusivity, yet have an affair anyway, it is logical to assume that they proceed despite their guilt. But I believe that guilt creates a type of resistance all but impossible within a committed relationship, and thereby provides a significant portion of the erotic fuel that helps make affairs so alluring. June, a church secretary in her early fifties, offers a case in point: I hate to admit it, but I had my most exciting sex during a two-month affair I had with a handsome man who worked with me on a fund-raising event. Most of our meetings were spent in intimate conversation, with very little real work accomplished. We were both unhappy in our marriages and found solace in each other. At first we just hugged and kissed which for me was more than enough to bring on torrents of guilt. Many times we vowed to keep our relationship platonic. But each time we broke our vow our passion grew more reckless. In contrast to my husband who no longer found me attractive anymore (I’m not sure he ever did), “Bill” was excited by me. He was sensuous, romantic, and passionate—everything my husband wasn’t. These reasons explain what I did, but for me they can never justify it. My affair was wrong but neither of us was willing to stop it.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  In other instances, time is a memorability factor for the opposite reason: because there’s so little of it. Stolen moments with a secret lover, a hurried outdoor tryst, a passionate embrace in an elevator, a “quickie” before running off to work—all stand out because time is scarce. A desire so intense that it demands expression, even when there is insufficient time for it, demonstrates its compelling urgency. Norman recalls with enthusiasm one evening when he and his girlfriend were rushing to get ready for a concert: Tammy and I often disagree about who should initiate sex, when, how often, and how long it should last. Sometimes it can be such a pain in the butt I’d rather avoid the whole thing. But there have been several times when all that crap goes out the window. This usually happens when we’re running late for something. Knowing that nothing will come of it I find it easier to be passionate, like one night when Tammy was dressing for the symphony. I rubbed her shoulders and she tried to push me away. But I wouldn’t quit. I enjoyed turning her on even though she whined, “Norrrrman, we’re going to be late.” Next thing you know I was kissing her neck and reaching in her panties. All of a sudden she became like an animal. She grabbed me and kissed me deep and hard while I rubbed her clit and brought her to an orgasm in a minute or two—much faster than usual. Just a few strokes of my cock and I came too. Then we went flying out the door, laughing like lunatics. At the concert she told me there was lipstick smeared on my face. We couldn’t stop laughing. Now why can’t it be like this all the time? Dr. Maslow noticed a curious phenomenon, difficult to explain or even describe, in his research on all kinds of peak experiences: pleasurable distortions of time and space. He made this observation: Not only does time pass in their ecstasies with a frightening rapidity so that a day may pass as if it were a minute, but also a minute so intensely lived may feel like a day or a year. It’s as if they had, in a way, some place in another world in which time simultaneously stood still and moved with great rapidity.6 Although this sounds rather “cosmic,” if you’ve ever had any kind of peak experience, you probably sense what Maslow’s getting at. PRACTICAL USES OF EROTIC MEMORABILITYJust because peak experiences can’t be ordered on demand, you need not wait passively. Knowledge of which memorability factors have contributed to your arousal in the past can help you cultivate conditions for more fulfilling sex now and in the future.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Here the apostle was confined two whole years (58–60), awaiting his trial before the Sanhedrin, uncondemned, occasionally speaking before Felix, apparently treated with comparative mildness, visited by the Christians, and in some way not known to us promoting the kingdom of God.417 After the accession of the new and better procurator, Festus, who is known to have succeeded Felix in the year 60, Paul, as a Roman citizen, appealed to the tribunal of Caesar and thus opened the way to the fulfilment of his long-cherished desire to preach the Saviour of the world in the metropolis of the world. Having once more testified his innocence, and spoken for Christ in a masterly defence before Festus, King Herod Agrippa II. (the last of the Herods), his sister Bernice, and the most distinguished men of Caesarea, he was sent in the autumn of the year 60 to the emperor. He had a stormy voyage and suffered shipwreck, which detained him over winter at Malta. The voyage is described with singular minuteness and nautical accuracy by Luke as an eye-witness. In the month of March of the year 61, the apostle, with a few faithful companions, reached Rome, a prisoner of Christ, and yet freer and mightier than the emperor on the throne. It was the seventh year of Nero’s reign, when he had already shown his infamous character by the murder of Agrippina, his mother, in the previous year, and other acts of cruelty. In Rome Paul spent at least two years till the spring of 63, in easy confinement, awaiting the decision of his case, and surrounded by friends and fellow- laborers "in his own hired dwelling." He preached the gospel to the soldiers of the imperial body-guard, who attended him; sent letters and messages to his distant churches in Asia Minor and Greece; watched over all their spiritual affairs, and completed in bonds his apostolic fidelity to the Lord and his church.418 In the Roman prison he wrote the Epistles to the Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Philemon. 6. A.D. 63 and 64. With the second year of Paul’s imprisonment in Rome the account of Luke breaks off, rather abruptly, yet appropriately and grandly. Paul’s arrival in Rome secured the triumph of Christianity. In this sense it was true, "Roma locuta est, causa finita est." And he who spoke at Rome is not dead; he is still "preaching (everywhere) the kingdom of God and teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, with all boldness, none forbidding him."419 But what became of him after the termination of those two years in the spring of 63? What was the result of the trial so long delayed? Was he condemned to death? or was he released by Nero’s tribunal, and thus permitted to labor for another season? This question is still unsettled among scholars. A vague

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  I like the atmosphere of a deserted office, there is a feeling of calm which does not represent an end of activity, merely a suspension of it. The harassment of the working day is over, but it still threatens in the shape of a telephone ringing persistently, the gaping jaw of a computer monitor, a file left open. All the tools, all the materials and all the space at my disposal – and mine alone – give me the illusory but calming impression that I have an unlimited capacity for work. As I have already said, when others vacate space, they also vacate time, and it is as if I have all eternity at my disposal to learn how to use every piece of equipment, and to analyse and resolve every problem; it is as if the very fact that I can go into an office without having to introduce myself or apologise smoothes out my fitful, halting life. In these situations, and when I was joined in my solitary pursuit by a colleague who doubled as a sexual partner, I only very occasionally made use of the relative comfort of the carpet. Worktops were more commonly my platforms. You might think it was because that position, with the woman sitting on the edge of a table and the man standing between her legs, is easier to modify if a colleague should burst into the room. This is not so. It was actually because the movements flowed naturally. Vincent used to make up the dummies, and he and I would sometimes stand side by side looking through the page layouts, not thinking to sit down because he was a man in a hurry and perhaps because we felt we could evaluate them better with an extra 30cm distance. The slightest hesitation in the team of our work and I would turn round. One quick hop and, with my buttocks next to the dummies, my pubis was at the right level. And the level matters. Quite often the best moment to slip from a professional discussion to a silent embrace corresponds to a lapse in concentration, when, for example, you need to look for a document in a bottom drawer. As I bend over to get it, I push out my buttocks. All they want is to be grasped by two firm hands. Then they need a desk to lean on; I am always very cautious if I have to clear everything aside to lie on my back. But not all work surfaces are at the correct height, many are too low, and there are some desks I never went back to a second time. One graphic designer I used to go to see at his agency had cleverly addressed the problem by acquiring pedestal chairs whose height can be adjusted to the nearest centimetre. I would sit down on it in front of him, my genitals exactly opposite his. We had arranged to have a table behind him for me to put my feet on. We could stay like that for a long time without either of us tiring, for me it was like lying in a deck chair, while he rolled his supple waist as if he were turning a hula hoop. Intermittently he would substitute his own movement with that of the chair seat, grabbing it with both hands and swinging it fluidly from side to side.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  The craving for drink in real dipsomaniacs, or for opium or chloral in those subjugated, is of a strength of which normal persons can form no conception. "Were a keg of rum in one corner of a room and were a cannon constantly discharging balls between me and it, I could not refrain from passing before that cannon in order to get the rum;" "If a bottle of brandy stood at one hand and the pit of hell yawned at the other, and I were convinced that I should be pushed in as sure as I took one glass, I could not refrain:" such statements abound in dipsomaniacs' mouths. Dr. Mussey of Cincinnati relates this case: "A few years ago a tippler was put into an almshouse in this State. Within a few days he had devised various expedients to procure rum, but failed. At length, however, he hit upon one which was successful. He went into the wood-yard of the establishment, placed one hand upon the block, and with an axe in the other, struck it off at a single blow. With the stump raised and streaming he ran into the house and cried, 'Get some rum! get some rum! my hand is off!' In the confusion and bustle of the occasion a bowl of rum was brought, into which he plunged the bleeding member of his body, then raising the bowl to his mouth, drank freely, and exultingly exclaimed, 'Now I am satisfied.' Dr. J. E. Turner tells of a man who, while under treatment for inebriety, during four weeks secretly drank the alcohol from six jars containing morbid specimens. On asking him why he had committed this loathsome act, he replied: 'Sir, it is as impossible for me to control this diseased appetite as it is for me to control the pulsations of my heart.'"[491] The passion of love may be called a monomania to which all of us are subject, however otherwise sane. It can coexist with contempt and even hatred for the 'object' which inspires it, and whilst it lasts the whole life of the man is altered by its presence. Alfieri thus describes the struggles of his unusually powerful inhibitive power with his abnormally excited impulses toward a certain lady:

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  to touch my breasts and listen to the quiet, steady beating of my heart. Unconsciously, I had these feelings even before I came here. Once when I was spending the night at Jacque’s, I could no longer restrain my curiosity about her body, which she’d always hidden from me and which I’d never seen. I asked her whether, as proof of our friendiship, we could touch each other’s breasts. Jacque refused. I also had a terrible desire to kiss her, which I did. Every time I see a female nude, such as the Venus in my art history book, I go into ecstasy. Sometimes I find them so exquisite I have to struggle to hold back my tears. If only I had a girlfriend! THURSDAY, JANUARY 6, 1944 Dearest Kitty, My longing for someone to talk to has become so unbearable that I somehow took it into my head to select Peter for this role. On the few occasions when I have gone to Peter’s room during the day, I’ve always thought it was nice and cozy. But Peter’s too polite to show someone the door when they’re bothering him, so I’ve never dared to stay long. I’ve always been afraid he’d think I was a pest. I’ve been looking for an excuse to linger in his room and get him talking without his noticing, and yesterday I got my chance. Peter, you see, is currently going through a crossword-puzzle craze, and he doesn’t do anything else all day. I was helping him, and we soon wound up sitting across from each other at his table, Peter on the chair and me on the divan. It gave me a wonderful feeling when I looked into his dark blue eyes and saw how bashful my unexpected visit had made him. I could read his innermost thoughts, and in his face I saw a look of helplessness and uncertainty as to how to behave, and at the same time a flicker of awareness of his masculinity. I saw his shyness, and I melted. I wanted to say, “Tell me about yourself. Look beneath my chatty exterior.” But I found that it was easier to think up questions than to ask them. The evening came to a close, and nothing happened, except that I told him about the article on blushing. Not what I wrote you, of course, just that he would grow more secure as he got older.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  spinach, spinach and more spinach. Maybe we’ll end up being as strong as Popeye, though up to now I’ve seen no sign of it! If Miep had taken us along to the party, there wouldn’t have been any rolls left over for the other guests. If we’d been there, we’d have snatched up everything in sight, including the furniture. I tell you, we were practically pulling the words right out of her mouth. We were gathered around her as if we’d never in all our lives heard of ” delicious food or elegant people! And these are the granddaughters of the distinguished millionaire. The world is a crazy place! Yours, Anne M. Frank DTUESDAY, MAY 9, 1944 Dearest Kitty, I’ve finished my story about Ellen, the fairy. I’ve copied it out on nice notepaper, decorated it with red ink and sewn the pages together. The whole thing looks quite pretty, but I don’t know if it’s enough of a birthday present. Margot and Mother have both written poems. Mr. Kugler came upstairs this afternoon with the news that starting Monday, Mrs. Broks would like to spend two hours in the office every afternoon. Just imagine! The office staff won’t be able to come upstairs, the potatoes can’t be delivered, Bep won’t get her dinner, we can’t go to the bathroom, we won’t be able to move and all sorts of other inconveniences! We proposed a variety of ways to get rid of her. Mr. van Daan thought a good laxative in her coffee might do the trick. “No,” Mr. Kleiman answered, “please don’t, or we’ll never get her off the can. A roar of laughter. “The can?” Mrs. van D. asked. “What does that mean?” An explanation was given. “Is it all right to use that word?” she asked in perfect innocence. “Just imagine,” Bep giggled, “there you are shopping at The Bijenkorf and you ask the way to the can. They wouldn’t even know what you were talking about!” Dussel now sits on the “can,” to borrow the expression, every day at twelve- thirty on the dot. This afternoon I boldly took a piece of pink paper and wrote: Mr. Dussel’s Toilet Timetable

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  The other case proves that the sharpest of our sensual experiences can forge a path for itself even through our least sensitive points of access. Even though I have no ear at all, and I only ever go to the opera for reasons that have nothing to do with the art of music, it is thanks to his voice that Jacques first appeared on the horizons of the vast plain of my desire. And yet his does not correspond to the stereotype of a sexy voice, it is neither velvet nor cracked. Someone had recorded him reading a text and then played the tape to me over the telephone. I can still feel the echo it set up within me, radiating out to the most highly receptive point on my body. I gave myself up entirely to this voice which itself seemed to give up entirely every detail of its speaker, a voice with the clarity and the calm rhythm of its brief inflexions, as firm and assured as a hand turning up its palm to mean ‘there you have it’. Some time later I heard it on the telephone again, live this time, pointing out a typo in a catalogue in which Jacques had been involved and on which I was working. Jacques offered to come and help me correct the copies. We spent hours on the work, just inches away from each other in a tiny office, with me very embarrassed by my mistake while he just got on with correcting it. He was attentive without being especially friendly. After one of these tedious sessions, he asked whether I would like to join him for dinner at the home of a close friend of his. After dinner, when several of us were squeezed next to each other on a bed serving as a sofa (which meant adopting an uncomfortable, semi-prone position), he stroked my wrist with the back of his index finger. It was an unexpected, unusual and quite delicious gesture, and it still moves me now, even when it is addressed to someone else’s skin. I followed Jacques to the studio he was living in at the time. In the morning he asked me who I was sleeping with. ‘With lots of people,’ I replied. ‘Damn,’ he said, ‘I’m beginning to fall in love with a girl who’s sleeping with lots of people.’

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  Besides, it bothers me that Margot has to sit downstairs all by herself, while I’m upstairs enjoying Peter’s company. But what can I do about it? I wouldn’t mind it if she came, but she’d just be the odd one out, sitting there like a lump on a log. I’ve had to listen to countless remarks about our sudden friendship. I can’t tell you how often the conversation at meals has been about an Annex wedding, should the war last another five years. Do we take any notice of this parental chitchat? Hardly, since it’s all so silly. Have my parents forgotten that they were young once? Apparently they have. At any rate, they laugh at us when we’re serious, and they’re serious when we’re joking. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, or whether we’ll run out of things to say. But if it goes on like this, we’ll eventually be able to be together without talking. If only his parents would stop acting so strangely. It’s probably because they don’t like seeing me so often; Peter and I certainly never tell them what we talk about. Imagine if they knew we were discussing such intimate things. I’d like to ask Peter whether he knows what girls look like down there. I don’t think boys are as complicated as girls. You can easily see what boys look like in photographs or pictures of male nudes, but with women it’s different. In women, the genitals, or whatever they’re called, are hidden between their legs. Peter has probably never seen a girl up close. To tell you the truth, neither have I. Boys are a lot easier. How on earth would I go about describing a girl’s parts? I can tell from what he said that he doesn’t know exactly how it all fits together. He was talking about the “Muttermund,” [* cervix], but that’s on the inside, where you can’t see it. Everything’s pretty well arranged in us women. Until I was eleven or twelve, I didn’t realize there was a second set of labia on the inside, since you couldn’t see them. What’s even funnier is that I thought urine came out of the clitoris. I asked Mother one time what that little bump was, and she said she didn’t know. She can really play dumb when she wants to! But to get back to the subject. How on earth can you explain what it all looks like without any models? Shall I try anyway? Okay, here goes!

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  A particular porn film made quite an impression on me. The man was taking the woman from behind. The camera was facing her so that her face was in the foreground. Thanks to the pressure exerted on her whole body, her face was projected forwards and distorted as things are when they come too close to the lens. You could hear the man's orders: "Look! Look at the camera!", and the girl looked directly at you, the viewer. I thought he might well be pulling her hair to force her to raise her head. This scene has given me a lot of inspiration for the little scenarios which nourish my masturbating. In real life, a man that I met only once gave me such intense pleasure that I have very precise memories of it, and this was because with every thrust he would order me "Look me in the eye." I did as I was told, knowing that he was witness to the decomposition of my face.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  The Sophists set themselves up as educators. Democracy had made it possible for any gifted man to make his mark in the assembly, if he could speak eloquently and persuasively. But the ordinary curriculum did not help young men to acquire these skills. Greek boys learned reading, writing, sport, and a great deal about Homer, but their education finished when they were fourteen years old. The Sophists stepped in to fill the gap, offering a higher education to anybody who could pay the required fee. One of the most notable Sophists was Hippias of Elis, a regular polymath, who gave courses in arithmetic, mnemonics, surveying, history, music, poetry, and mathematics. Like Empedocles, he was a celebrity. He recited his poems at the Olympic games and lectured to huge crowds. He was also a craftsman, and made all his own clothes and shoes. This self-sufficiency underlined his philosophy. People must rely on their own insights. Instead of undermining common sense, Hippias and his colleagues tried to give their pupils confidence in the workings of their minds. They could never know absolute truth, but once they realized that all thought was subjective, they would at least be free of delusion. Their ideas were as good as anybody else’s, so they should regard their own thoughts as sovereign and autonomous. The Sophists touched on many themes of the Axial Age: the desire for liberation, autonomy, individualism, and the ability to reach out to ordinary people, instead of confining knowledge to a small elite. But there was a fundamental difference. So far the Greeks had shown no desire for radical transformation, such as that sought by the yogins. They had a strong sense of their potential as human beings, but little interest in where this might take them. They concentrated on what they were rather than on what they might become.19 Focused on the present, they were chiefly interested in techne, a technology that would make them more effective here and now. The Sophists did not want a techne that would take them out of this world; they had no ambition to create a different kind of person, but simply wanted to enhance their pupils’ mundane skills. Instead of renouncing possessions, the Sophists were keen to make money. Other philosophers despised this, but the Sophists were not sordid mercenaries. They sincerely believed that they were performing a valuable service in helping ordinary citizens to take advantage of their new opportunities, regardless of birth and status.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  The new Qin dynasty must, therefore, be dominated by water, which was associated with the season of winter. The first emperor seized upon this idea as an endorsement of his rule. He dressed in black, the color of winter, which seemed appropriate to the dark, cold policies of Legalism, with its “resolute harshness, deciding all things by law, incising and deleting without benevolence, generosity, mildness or righteousness.” 5 At the same time, he supported the latest experiments to find the elixir of life. Some of Zou Yan’s disciples in the Qin court were trying to concoct herbal and mineral recipes for immortality—a debased form of magic that would later be associated with philosophical Daoism. 6 Some of these early scientists experimented with medicines; others cultivated longevity by breathing and gymnastic exercises; geographical expeditions were even dispatched to find the Isles of the Blest off the northeast coast of China, where, it was thought, privileged human beings could live forever. All this represented a desire to achieve control, to predict the future and keep death at bay by physical rather than spiritual means, but it was also a retreat from the vision of the Axial sages, who had believed that the quest for this type of permanence and security was immature and unrealistic. The first emperor had to decide how to organize the vast territories he had conquered. Should he give his sons feudal domains, like the Zhou? His prime minister, Li Si, Xunzi’s old pupil, advised him to grant his sons stipends instead of land, and to maintain absolute control of his empire. When in 213 a court historian criticized this breach with tradition, Li Si presented the emperor with a fateful memorandum. In the old days, he argued, people had consulted independent scholars and followed different schools of thought, but this could not be allowed to continue: Your Majesty has united the world. Yet some with their private teachings mutually abet each other, and discredit our laws and customs. If such conditions are not prohibited, the imperial power will decline above and partisanships will rise from below. 7 Li Si therefore counseled that “all historical records, save those of Qin, all the writings of the hundred schools, and all other literature, save that kept in the custody of the official scholars, and some works on agriculture, medicine, pharmacy, divination, and arboriculture should be delivered to the government and burned.” 8 Not only was there a massive book burning, but 460 teachers were executed. The Axial philosophers of China had arrived at a spiritual apprehension of the unity of all things. For Li Si, unification meant the violent destruction of the opposition. There was one world, one government, one history, and one ideology. Fortunately, the emperor allowed the seventy official philosophers of the regime to keep copies of the Chinese classics, or everything might have been lost.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Yet while the papacy might defy Byzantium, which seemed increasingly distant and feeble, and assume the trappings of sovereignty itself, it lacked the physical means to act like a sovereign power. It needed protection, and from the early eighth century it looked increasingly to the emergent power north of the Alps to provide it. The desire of the papacy for close alliance with the chief secular authority in western Europe coincided with a comparable urge, on the part of barbarian kings, to obtain the highest Christian sanction for their authority. Under paganism, these royal lines had claimed descent from mythical gods. Then came Christianization; and when, and if, the line failed, because of a lack of heirs, or defeat in battle, or poverty, the new royal house which succeeded needed the introduction of a religious ceremony as an initiation into the powers of kingship. Sacramental grace was poured into the new king as a substitute for the royal blood he lacked. Some primitive form of Christian service to mark the accession of kings no doubt developed in the West as early as the sixth century; and it is possible that a king, in Spain, received a Christian coronation anointing as early as 672. But in the eighth century events transformed the situation. By the 740s, the Merovingian kings of the Franks had lost their power in all but name. They had parted with their estates and thus could no longer afford to reward followers with land. Effective power was in the hands of the hereditary Mayors of the Palace. The head of the house, Pepin, asked the Pope’s opinion whether a king who could not effectively discharge his duties was in truth a king at all. The Pope replied, with abundant biblical quotations, that a king must rule in order to reign. Immediately this reply was received, Pepin and the court ecclesiastics acted. The last of the Merovingians, and his son, had their long kingly locks cut off, were tonsured, and imprisoned in a monastery. Pepin was anointed as king, in 751, by Archbishop Boniface, as the Pope’s special envoy with plenitudo potestatis; and three years later the Pope himself travelled north to repeat the ceremony. It is not absolutely clear how those concerned saw the function of the anointing. It may be that it served to absolve Pepin from the vow of fidelity to the fallen monarch. What is certain, however, is that king and Pope both regarded Christian sacramental intervention as in some way ending the magic of the old line and transferring it to the new. The Pope had now become a king-maker. The rapid expansion of the Frankish dominions in the second half of the eighth century, and the development of papal theory based on the forged Donation of Constantine, suggested that the Pope could

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  As I approached middle age I had two successive relationships, one easy-going, the other emotionally charged, but they nevertheless both followed a similar pattern: I took the time to take on board the desire I felt for the other, and this made that desire all the more pronounced; it culminated in passionate episodes of copulating during which my satisfaction was never as complete as it had been in the inaugural physical contact. For many years I faithfully maintained a friendship with the man who went to the Picasso exhibition with me, but it was threatened periodically by bursts of desire, sometimes aggressive, frustrated, not satisfactorily fulfilled, etc. It was my only truly chaotic experience. I would go to see him every day for weeks on end, then one day I would ring on the door and there would be no reply; the door would stay closed for several weeks, months even. And this would go on until my incredulous persistence was at last rewarded by a hoarse interjection on the telephone, authorising me to come before him once again. Probably because of this climate of uncertainty, I very frequently came instantly to orgasm with him. We would talk volubly, exchanging impressions of books, usually standing in a sparse interior that would have made a Quaker feel at home. Time would pass and I would move towards him. ‘Do we want a little cuddle?’ he would ask in the preoccupied but affectionate voice of an adult disturbed in their work by a child. Then his hand would push aside my knickers, and two fingers, four, would elicit a brief, anguished cry from me, because it was as much a sensation of suffocating surprise as of pleasure. He himself would derive pleasure from the fact that the passage was already dripping. We were generous with our kisses and caresses. He made sweeping movements. If I was lying down, he would brush aside the sheet with the same gesture that he used to stroke my breasts throughout; I could lie straight and motionless on my back while his palm swept up and down my entire length, as if I had been but a sketch. When it was my turn to attend to him, in contrast I explored him minutely, paying special attention to the folds in his body, behind the ear, his groin, his armpits, the parting between his buttocks. I even scoured the furrowed lines in the crook of his hands. Throughout these preliminaries, I kept thinking how delicious it would be later on when he made up his mind to turn me over and take me the way I like it, from behind, when he grabbed my buttocks and smacked into them loudly and abruptly with his hips. I particularly like it when the dick jerks in and out; every three or four pumps, a slightly harder thrust comes as a glorious surprise. And yet it was only on a few exceptional occasions that I felt the same intense pleasure as when his fingers opened up the way. So I would start thinking that perhaps the next time I would, and I busied myself – if I had to – trying to force the resistance of that closed door, or of the moral lesson.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  The practice of open-air fucking became anchored in the way Jacques and I organised our lives right from the beginning of our relationship. A visit to his grandmother in a nondescript little village in the Beauce region, included a compulsory stop-off by the side of the road. He would park the 2CV on the verge, we would nip through a hedge and find a field rising gently up to the horizon, and disappear into the grass. We really had to wriggle about to get out of our tight-fitting jeans. I would put my jacket down on the grass under my head for fear of insects, and Jacques protected the small of my back. Having not spent my adolescence in the countryside, I took naive pleasure in these hasty couplings of just two half-bodies; suddenly my legs and buttocks were not at the same temperature as the upper half of my body which was still clothed, and Jacques somehow had to manage with his underpants and the waist of his trousers hampering his thighs. There is a childish pleasure in showing those naked parts getting off, as if the swaddled other half were their alibi. The Mediterranean landscape in which we took to living for several weeks a year is very rugged, but its low vines and its scrubland offer hardly any hiding places and even fewer natural beds. There isn’t any grass and, as there are no trees, I often had to hang onto the windowless door of an abandoned car or to the uprights at the opening to a pigsty, my rear end jutting out all the further as my eyes and nose struggled with the smell of putrefaction. We often used a track which led up to a field of young vines planted in crushed white rocks, a track now almost disappeared since we stopped using it. We identified some favourite spots along that track as time went by. Halfway up, just before it became more steep, it widened out onto a sandy platform and all along one side the sand gave way to an outcrop of curved rocks; you could have fun imagining that they were the backs of hippopotamuses breaking through the muddy waters of a river which also deposited dented old petrol cans and broken pallets. I could lie down on the smooth surface of the rocks with Jacques leaning on his arms like an awning above me, giving me a few quick thrusts with his member. But it wasn’t easy for him to get deep enough in this position. The solution was for me to turn round and get onto all fours, like the Roman she-wolf on her pedestal, receiving the very special offering of her devoted priest.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  In the pages above I have mentioned the truly ravishing feeling of the first physical contact, and I have also evoked how I discovered a prolonged orgasm, thanks to a dildo; finally I have tried as best I can to describe changes that occur at the aperture of my vagina which becomes as hard as a ring of metal when my excitement is at its peak. I came across these facts relatively late on. For a large part of my life I fucked without regard to pleasure. First I should concede that, for someone who has known so many partners, no outcome was ever as guaranteed as when I sought it alone. I control the pitch of my pleasure to the nearest fraction of a second, which isn’t possible when you have to take into account someone else and when you depend on their moves not your own. Here’s my story. Let us say that I am a porn actress auditioning fifteen possible partners who offer themselves naked all in a row. While in my fantasy I am the officer reviewing the troops, examining each in turn and squeezing his apparatus, I rub my clitoris with the end of my middle finger and it soon becomes sticky. I feel the way it dilates. Sometimes I think it just rises up, a pointed little growth like a seedling. In fact the whole mons of Venus and vulva swell under my palm, and I can abandon my circular movements for a few seconds to prod and feel the whole as I would a pear. On with the story. I choose one and I lead him by the cock to a sort of massage table where I lie down, my pussy on the edge. At that point (but this preamble will already have taken a long time, six or eight minutes, sometimes more), my level of excitement can be extremely high. It is very localised, like a weight pulling towards the depths of my vagina and seeming to close it like the aperture of a lens. And yet I know (but where does this knowledge come from? From spontaneously measuring the exact degree of excitement which, bordering on exasperation, feels almost overcharged and can only stagnate? From the fact that it won’t be that position that gives me the impression of being satisfied by my imaginary partner?) that, if I carry on, I won’t get to orgasm or, if I do, it won’t be very intense. So I stop the movement abruptly and backtrack in my story. I lick a few stiffened dicks before choosing one. Back to the massage table. (There can be multiple flashbacks, each one slightly different.) This time there are two or three who will take it in turns in my cunt. I increase the pressure with my finger, my clitoris rolls over a firm base, a bone? I picture one of the boys hammering me. The friction becomes frenetic. I sometimes murmur a few basic words of encouragement, pronouncing the words quite clearly: ‘You’re so good,’ ‘Go on…’ When the time comes, my mind empties. Exit the fifteen stallions. I grimace with concentration, curl my mouth up in an ugly snarl; one of my legs becomes paralysed but, in an unexpected switch, I sometimes spontaneously knead one of my breasts gently with my free hand. The orgasm comes as the result of a decision. If I can put it like this: I can see it coming. In fact, I often really do have my eyes wide open, and they don’t see the wall in front of me or the ceiling, but a fantasy Xray. If it has gone well, the pleasure comes from far away, from the very depths of that long gut, with its ridged, grey walls, right to the mouth which opens and closes like the jaw of a fish. Every other muscle relaxes. There can be six or seven waves. Ideally, I stay there for a moment sliding my fingers over my vulva, then I bring them up to my nose to revel in the sweetish smell. I don’t wash my hands.