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 23 of 344 · 20 per page

• From Trash (1988)

  I was thinking about Bobby, remembering her sitting, smoking, squint-eyed, and me looking down at the way her thighs shaped in her jeans. I have always loved women in blue jeans, worn jeans, worn particularly in that way that makes the inseam fray, and Bobby’s seams had that fine white sheen that only comes after long restless evenings spent jiggling one’s thighs one against the other, the other against the bar stool. After a year as my sometimes lover, Bobby’s nerves were wearing as thin as her seams. She always seemed to be looking to the other women in the bar, checking out their eyes to see if, in fact, they thought her as pussy-whipped as she thought herself, for the way she could not seem to finally settle me down to playing the wife I was supposed to be. Bobby was a wild-eyed woman, proud of her fame for running women ragged—all the women who had fallen in love with her and followed her around long after she had lost all interest in them. Hanging out at soft-ball games on lazy spring afternoons, Bobby would look over at me tossing my head and talking to some other woman and grind her thighs together in impatience. The woman was as profoundly uncomfortable with my sexual desire as my determined independence. But nothing so disturbed her as the idea other people could see both in the way I tossed my hair, swung my hips, and would not always come when she called. Bobby believed lust was a trashy lower-class impulse, and she so wanted to be nothing like that. It meant the one tool she could have used to control me was the very one she could not let herself use. Oh, Bobby loved to fuck me. Bobby loved to beat my ass, but it bothered her that we both enjoyed it so much. Early on in our relationship, she established a pattern of having me over for the evening and strictly enforcing a rule against sex outside the bedroom. Bobby wanted dinner—preferably Greek or Chinese takeout—and at least two hours of television. Then there had to be a bath, bath powder and tooth brushing, though she knew I preferred her un-bathed and gritty, tasting of the tequila she sipped through dinner. I was not supposed to touch her until we entered the sanctuary of her bedroom, that bedroom lit only by the arc lamp in the alley outside. Only in that darkness could I bite and scratch and call her name. Only in that darkness would Bobby let herself open to passion.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Dearest ladies, one cunning deed is often capped by another, and hence it is unwise to take a delight in deceiving others. Many of the stories already narrated have caused us to laugh a great deal over tricks that people have played on each other, but in no case have we heard of the victim avenging himself. I therefore propose to enlist your sympathy for an act of just retribution that was dealt to a fellow townswoman of ours, who very nearly lost her life when she was hoist with her own petard. Nor will it be unprofitable for you to hear this tale, for it will teach you to think twice before playing tricks on people, which is always a sensible precaution. Not many years ago, there lived in Florence a young woman called Elena, who was fair of body, proud of spirit, very gently bred, and reasonably well endowed with Fortune’s blessings. When her husband died prematurely, leaving her a widow,1 she made up her mind that she would never remarry, having fallen in love with a handsome and charming young man of her own choosing. And now that she was free from all other cares, she succeeded, with the assistance of a maidservant whom she greatly trusted, in passing many a pleasant hour in his arms, to the wondrous delight of both parties. Now it happened that around that time, a young nobleman of our city called Rinieri,2 having spent some years studying in Paris with the purpose, not of selling his knowledge for gain as many people do, but of learning the reasons and causes of things (a most fitting pursuit for any gentleman), returned from Paris to Florence. There he was held in high esteem for his nobility and his learning, and he led the life of a gentleman. But it frequently happens that the more keen a man’s awareness of life’s profundities, the more vulnerable he is to the forces of Love, and so it was in the case of this Rinieri. For one day, being in need of a little diversion, he went to a banquet, where his eyes came to rest upon this young woman, Elena, who was dressed (as our widows usually are) in black, and seemed to him the loveliest and most fascinating woman he had ever seen. He thought to himself that the man to whom God should grant the favour of holding her naked in his arms could truly claim that he was in Paradise. And having stolen many a cautious glance at the lady, knowing that so great and precious a prize could not be won without considerable effort, he firmly resolved to devote all his care and attention to pleasing the lady, so that he might win her love and savour her manifest beauty to the full.

• From Trash (1988)

  Instantly her body lifts, becomes again a cloud. Her phantom laughter is rich and close. I bite my lips and hold myself still again. She comes down again. So cold. So hot. I groan. She lifts, laughs, and rises again. It goes on and on. Do you love me? Do you want me? Do you remember me? Do you hate me? Do you love me? I love you, love you, lover you, come all over you, come up into the dark of you, the pit of you. Pull me down into the pit of you. Memory and touch and taste. You are never alone, never going to be alone. If you cry, I will. If you scream, I will. If you are, I am. “I love you,” she says. I am drifting. I have come so much my bones have turned to concrete. Their weight immobilizes me. Katy’s hot skin presses all over me. It is so dark, so still. It is the pit of the night, and I am drifting off into sleep. I want to wrap my arms around her and pull her down with me, sleep in the luxury of her embrace. But hours of conditioning stop me, and I do not move. I just slide further down into sleep. She says it again . “I love you.” “You’re dead,” I mumble. Her weight increases, presses down on me. I open my eyes. “Doesn’t matter.” She has spread out, filled the room. She is enormous, masses of dark all around me. I am afraid. Suddenly I am deeply, deeply afraid, and when she laughs I feel the cold. “Doesn’t matter at all.” Don’t Tell Me You Don’t Know I came out of the bathroom with my hair down wet on my shoulders. My Aunt Alma, my mama’s oldest sister, was standing in the middle of Casey’s dusty hooked rug looking like she had just flown in on it, her gray hair straggling out of its misshapen bun. For a moment I was so startled I couldn’t move. Aunt Alma just stood there looking around at the big bare room with its two church pews bracketing the only other furniture—a massive pool table. I froze while the water ran down from my hair to dampen the collar of the oversized tuxedo shirt I used for a bathrobe. “Aunt Alma,” I stammered. “Well . . . welcome . . .” “You really live here?” she let out a loud breath as if, even for me, such a situation was quite past her ability to believe. “Like this?” I looked around as if I were seeing it for the first time myself, shrugged and tried to grin. “It’s big,” I offered. “Lots of space, four porches, all these windows. We get along well here, might not in a smaller place.”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Once his father had answered one of his questions, his curiosity was satisfied and he went on to ask about something else. And so they went along, with the son asking questions and the father replying, until they chanced upon a party of elegantly dressed and beautiful young ladies, who were coming away from a wedding; and no sooner did the young man see them, than he asked his father what they were. ‘My son,’ replied his father, ‘keep your eyes fixed on the ground and don’t look at them, for they are evil.’ ‘But what are they called, father?’ inquired his son. Not wishing to arouse any idle longings in the young man’s breast, his father avoided calling them by their real name, and instead of telling him that they were women, he said: ‘They are called goslings.’8 Now, the extraordinary thing about it was that the young man, who had never set eyes on one of these objects before, took no further interest in the palaces, the oxen, the horses, the asses, the money, or any of the other things he had encountered, and promptly replied: ‘Oh, father, do please get me one of those goslings.’ ‘Alas, my son, hold your tongue,’ said his father. ‘I tell you they are evil.’ ‘Do you mean to say evil looks like this?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You can say what you like, father, but I don’t see anything evil about them. As far as I am concerned, I don’t think I have ever in my whole life seen anything so pretty or attractive. They are more beautiful than the painted angels that you have taken me to see so often. O alas! if you have any concern for my welfare, do make it possible for us to take one of these goslings back with us, and I will pop things into its bill.’ ‘Certainly not,’ said his father. ‘Their bills are not where you think, and require a special sort of diet.’ But no sooner had he spoken than he realized that his wits were no match for Nature, and regretted having brought the boy to Florence in the first place. But I have no desire to carry this tale any further, and I shall now direct my attention to the people for whose ears it was intended.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  FIFTH STORYZima presents a palfrey to Messer Francesco Vergellesi, who responds by granting him permission to converse with his wife. She is unable to speak, but Zima answers on her behalf, and in due course his reply comes true. The ladies shook with laughter over Panfilo’s story of Friar Puccio, and when he had finished, the queen, with womanly grace, called upon Elissa to continue. Whereupon, speaking rather haughtily, not from affectation but from habit long established, Elissa began to address them as follows: Many people imagine, because they know a great deal, that other people know nothing; and it frequently happens that when they think they are hoodwinking others, they later discover that they have themselves been outwitted by their intended victims. Consequently I consider it is quite insane for anyone to put another person’s powers of intelligence to the test when he has no need to do so. But since, possibly, there are those who would not share my opinion, I should like, without straying from the topic of our discussion, to tell you what happened once to a certain nobleman of Pistoia. The nobleman in question was called Messer Francesco, and belonged to the Vergellesi family of Pistoia.1 He was a very wealthy and judicious man, and he was also shrewd, but at the same time he was exceedingly mean. On being appointed Governor of Milan, he laid in all the paraphernalia appropriate to his new rank before setting out for that city, but was unable however to find a palfrey handsome enough to suit his requirements, and this caused him no small concern. Now, in Pistoia at that time there was a very rich young man of humble birth called Ricciardo, who because of his well-groomed, elegant appearance was generally referred to by all the townspeople as Zima, or in other words, the Dandy. For a long time he had loved and wooed, without success, the exceedingly beautiful and virtuous wife of Messer Francesco, and it so happened that this man owned one of the finest palfreys in Tuscany, to which he was deeply attached because of its beauty. And since it was common knowledge that he was madly fond of Messer Francesco’s wife, someone told Messer Francesco that if he asked for the palfrey he was bound to get it on account of Zima’s devotion to his lady. Spurred on by his greed, Messer Francesco sent for Zima and asked him to sell him the palfrey, in the expectation that Zima would hand it over for nothing.

• From Trash (1988)

  Her Thighs I was thinking about Bobby, remembering her sitting, smoking, squint-eyed, and me looking down at the way her thighs shaped in her jeans. I have always loved women in blue jeans, worn jeans, worn particularly in that way that makes the inseam fray, and Bobby’s seams had that fine white sheen that only comes after long restless evenings spent jiggling one’s thighs one against the other, the other against the bar stool. After a year as my sometimes lover, Bobby’s nerves were wearing as thin as her seams. She always seemed to be looking to the other women in the bar, checking out their eyes to see if, in fact, they thought her as pussy-whipped as she thought herself, for the way she could not seem to finally settle me down to playing the wife I was supposed to be. Bobby was a wild-eyed woman, proud of her fame for running women ragged—all the women who had fallen in love with her and followed her around long after she had lost all interest in them. Hanging out at soft-ball games on lazy spring afternoons, Bobby would look over at me tossing my head and talking to some other woman and grind her thighs together in impatience. The woman was as profoundly uncomfortable with my sexual desire as my determined independence. But nothing so disturbed her as the idea other people could see both in the way I tossed my hair, swung my hips, and would not always come when she called. Bobby believed lust was a trashy lower-class impulse, and she so wanted to be nothing like that. It meant the one tool she could have used to control me was the very one she could not let herself use. Oh, Bobby loved to fuck me. Bobby loved to beat my ass, but it bothered her that we both enjoyed it so much. Early on in our relationship, she established a pattern of having me over for the evening and strictly enforcing a rule against sex outside the bedroom. Bobby wanted dinner—preferably Greek or Chinese takeout—and at least two hours of television. Then there had to be a bath, bath powder and tooth brushing, though she knew I preferred her un-bathed and gritty, tasting of the tequila she sipped through dinner. I was not supposed to touch her until we entered the sanctuary of her bedroom, that bedroom lit only by the arc lamp in the alley outside. Only in that darkness could I bite and scratch and call her name. Only in that darkness would Bobby let herself open to passion. Let me set the scene for you, me in my hunger for her great strong hands and perfect thighs, and her in her deliberate disregard. When feeling particularly cruel, Bobby would even insist on doing her full twenty-minute workout while I lay on the bed tearing at the sheets with my nails.

• From Trash (1988)

  There was three-bean salad from cans packed with vinaigrette, pickle loaf on thin sliced white bread, American and Swiss cheese in slices, and antipasto from a jar sent directly from an uncle still living in New York City. “Deli food,” her mama kept saying, “is the best food in the world.” I nodded, chewing white bread and a slice of American cheese, the peanuts in my belly weighing me down like a mess of little stones. Mona picked at the pickle loaf and pushed her ankle up into my lap where her mother couldn’t see. I choked on the white bread and broke out in a sweat. Lee wore her hair pushed up like the whorls on scallop shells. She toasted mushrooms instead of marshmallows, and tried to persuade me of the value of cabbage and eggplant, but she cooked with no fat; everything tasted of safflower oil. I loved Lee but hated the cabbage—it seemed an anemic cousin of real greens—and I only got into the eggplant after Lee brought home a basketful insisting I help her to cook it up for freezing. “You got to get it to sweat out the poisons.” She sliced the big purple fruits as she talked. “Salt it up so the bitter stuff will come off.” She layered the salted slices between paper towels, changing the towels on the ones she’d cut up earlier. Some of her hair came loose and hung down past one ear. She looked like a mother in a Mary Cassatt painting, standing in her sunlit kitchen, sprinkling raw sea salt with one hand and pushing her hair back with the other. I picked up an unsalted wedge of eggplant and sniffed it, rubbing the spongy mass between my thumbs. “Makes me think of what breadfruit must be like.” I squeezed it down, and the flesh slowly shaped up again. “Smells like bread and feels like it’s been baked. But after you salt it down, it’s more like fried okra, all soft and sharp-smelling.” “Well, you like okra, don’t you?” Lee wiped her grill with peanut oil and started dusting the drained eggplant slices with flour. Sweat shone on her neck under the scarf that tied up her hair in back. “Oh yeah. You put enough cornmeal on it and fry it in bacon fat and I’ll probably like most anything.” I took the wedge of eggplant and rubbed it on the back of her neck. “What are you doing?” “Salting the eggplant.” I followed the eggplant with my tongue, pulled up her T-shirt, and slowly ran the tough purple rind up to her small bare breasts. Lee started giggling, wiggling her ass, but not taking her hands out of the flour to stop me. I pulled down her shorts, picked up another dry slice and planted it against her navel, pressed with my fingers and slipped it down toward her pubic mound.

• From Trash (1988)

  “It’s a dessert my sister and I used to bake, unhealthy as sin and twice as delicious. Made up with chocolate, buttermilk, vinegar, and baking soda, and a little bottle of that poisonous red dye number two. Tastes like nothing you’ve ever had.” “You got to put the dye in it?” “Uh huh.” I nodded. “Wouldn’t be right without it.” “Must look deadly.” “But tastes good. It’s about time I baked one. You come to dinner at my place, tell me about riding, and I’ll cook you up one.” She shifted, leaned back, and half-sat on a table full of magazines. She looked me up and down again, her grin coming and going with her glance. “What else would you cook?” “Fried okra maybe, fried crisp, breaded with cornmeal. Those big beefsteak tomatoes are at their peak right now. Could just serve them in slices with pepper, but I’ve seen some green ones, too, and those I could fry in flour with the okra. Have to have white corn, of course, this time of the year. Pinto beans would be too heavy, but snap beans would be nice. A little milk gravy to go with it all. You like fried chicken?” “Where you from?” “South Carolina, a long time ago.” “Your mama teach you to cook?” “My mama and my aunts.” I put my thumbs in my belt and tried to look sure of myself. Would she like biscuits or cornbread, pork or beef or chicken? “I’m kind of a vegetarian.” She sighed when she said it. Her eyes looked sad. “Eat fish?” I was thinking quickly. She nodded. I smiled wide. “Ever eat any crawfish pan-fried in salt and Louisiana hot sauce?” “You got to boil them first.” Her face was shining, and she was bouncing her cane on the hardwood floor. “Oh yeah, ’course, with the right spices.” “Sweet Bleeding Jesus.” Her face was flushed. She licked her lips. “I haven’t eaten anything like that in, oh, so long.” “Oh.” My thighs felt hot, rubbing on the seams of my jeans. She was beautiful, Victoria in her black cloud of curls. “Oh, girl,” I whispered. I leaned toward her. I put my hand on her wrist above the cane, squeezed. “Let me feed you,” I told her. “Girl . . . girl, you should just let me feed you what you really need.”

• From Trash (1988)

  Wearing those silly-assed sandals and damn fool embroidered denim blouses. Always telling those drawling lies about all your cousins, and grand-daddies, and uncles . . . ” “They an’t lies.” “Then they should be.” “And you.” She was making me angry again. “Who do you think you are?” She pulled her legs up, ran one hand down her heavily muscled thigh, arched her back to stretch, and gave me another of her slow wandering looks, her eyes sliding up from my crotch to my face, heating my skin as she went. “Me?” she drawled. “Me? Why, I’m just the daughter of the man with the smallest used car lot in Pinellas County and a mama who an’t been sober since the day I was conceived. They wanted me to go to college and make something of myself, so here I am. Trouble is they an’t got the first notion that all I really want is to be the sun and the moon and the stars to some butter-tongued girl in silly-assed sandals and an embroidered denim blouse.” “You say.” “I do indeed.” I’d laughed, not believing her, but enjoying her anyway—maybe because I didn’t believe her. It was so much easier if she was not too serious, if I didn’t have to think about what might happen if what was going on between us was love—love the way people talked about it, real love, dangerous and scary and not to be trusted at all. I pulled open the top snap on my blouse and trailed my fingernails up from my breasts to my throat. “You the butter-tongued one it seems to me.” I leaned forward until my face was close to hers. She turned the joint around, tucked the lit end in her mouth, and kissed me so that the smoke shotgunned into my lungs. I melted into her ribs, pushing my hips against her thighs. She kept pushing smoke into me until the room seemed to rock unsteadily and my hands started to roam over her bunched and shaking shoulders. Toni hadn’t seemed to draw a breath through all that long speech, but when I slid into her arms she was breathless, and so was I . “Do me.” The words came out in a grating whisper. “Do me right.” “Oh, girl!” Her voice was hoarse. Her teeth raked my neck, and her fingernails tore at my ribs. My hands started shaking so bad I couldn’t get my jeans unzipped. She grabbed my wrists and pulled my hands behind my back, holding them there with one hand while she used the other to rip the snaps of my blouse open and unzip my jeans slowly.

• From Trash (1988)

  Her Thighs I was thinking about Bobby, remembering her sitting, smoking, squint-eyed, and me looking down at the way her thighs shaped in her jeans. I have always loved women in blue jeans, worn jeans, worn particularly in that way that makes the inseam fray, and Bobby’s seams had that fine white sheen that only comes after long restless evenings spent jiggling one’s thighs one against the other, the other against the bar stool. After a year as my sometimes lover, Bobby’s nerves were wearing as thin as her seams. She always seemed to be looking to the other women in the bar, checking out their eyes to see if, in fact, they thought her as pussy-whipped as she thought herself, for the way she could not seem to finally settle me down to playing the wife I was supposed to be. Bobby was a wild-eyed woman, proud of her fame for running women ragged—all the women who had fallen in love with her and followed her around long after she had lost all interest in them. Hanging out at soft-ball games on lazy spring afternoons, Bobby would look over at me tossing my head and talking to some other woman and grind her thighs together in impatience. The woman was as profoundly uncomfortable with my sexual desire as my determined independence. But nothing so disturbed her as the idea other people could see both in the way I tossed my hair, swung my hips, and would not always come when she called. Bobby believed lust was a trashy lower-class impulse, and she so wanted to be nothing like that. It meant the one tool she could have used to control me was the very one she could not let herself use. Oh, Bobby loved to fuck me. Bobby loved to beat my ass, but it bothered her that we both enjoyed it so much. Early on in our relationship, she established a pattern of having me over for the evening and strictly enforcing a rule against sex outside the bedroom. Bobby wanted dinner—preferably Greek or Chinese takeout—and at least two hours of television. Then there had to be a bath, bath powder and tooth brushing, though she knew I preferred her un-bathed and gritty, tasting of the tequila she sipped through dinner. I was not supposed to touch her until we entered the sanctuary of her bedroom, that bedroom lit only by the arc lamp in the alley outside. Only in that darkness could I bite and scratch and call her name. Only in that darkness would Bobby let herself open to passion. Let me set the scene for you, me in my hunger for her great strong hands and perfect thighs, and her in her deliberate disregard. When feeling particularly cruel, Bobby would even insist on doing her full twenty-minute workout while I lay on the bed tearing at the sheets with my nails.

• From Trash (1988)

  Tastes like nothing you’ve ever had.” “You got to put the dye in it? ” “Uh huh.” I nodded. “Wouldn’t be right without it.” “Must look deadly.” “But tastes good. It’s about time I baked one. You come to dinner at my place, tell me about riding, and I’ll cook you up one.” She shifted, leaned back, and half-sat on a table full of magazines. She looked me up and down again, her grin coming and going with her glance. “What else would you cook?” “Fried okra maybe, fried crisp, breaded with cornmeal. Those big beefsteak tomatoes are at their peak right now. Could just serve them in slices with pepper, but I’ve seen some green ones, too, and those I could fry in flour with the okra. Have to have white corn, of course, this time of the year. Pinto beans would be too heavy, but snap beans would be nice. A little milk gravy to go with it all. You like fried chicken?” “Where you from?” “South Carolina, a long time ago.” “Your mama teach you to cook?” “My mama and my aunts.” I put my thumbs in my belt and tried to look sure of myself. Would she like biscuits or cornbread, pork or beef or chicken? “I’m kind of a vegetarian.” She sighed when she said it. Her eyes looked sad. “Eat fish?” I was thinking quickly. She nodded. I smiled wide. “Ever eat any crawfish pan-fried in salt and Louisiana hot sauce?” “You got to boil them first.” Her face was shining, and she was bouncing her cane on the hardwood floor. “Oh yeah, ’course, with the right spices.” “Sweet Bleeding Jesus.” Her face was flushed. She licked her lips. “I haven’t eaten anything like that in, oh, so long.” “Oh.” My thighs felt hot, rubbing on the seams of my jeans. She was beautiful, Victoria in her black cloud of curls. “Oh, girl,” I whispered. I leaned toward her. I put my hand on her wrist above the cane, squeezed . “Let me feed you,” I told her. “Girl . . . girl, you should just let me feed you what you really need.” I’ve been dreaming lately that I throw a dinner party, inviting all the women in my life. They come in with their own dishes. Marty brings barbecue carried all the way from Marietta. Jay drags in a whole side of beef and gets a bunch of swaggering whiskey-sipping butch types to help her dig a hole in the backyard. They show off for each other, breaking up stones to line the fire pit. Lee watches them from the porch, giggling at me and punching down a great mound of dough for the oatmeal wheat bread she’d promised to bake.

• From Trash (1988)

  She imagined Bo’s chorus of when we grow up, and found herself thinking that when she had kids, she’d sit them all down on the dirt floor and tell ’em to sign with the union. Shirley’s chair made a hollow sound on the bare floor. Now, Mattie thought. Now, she will get up and come over there, and she will slap me. What will I do then? She took another bite of rice and smiled. What will I do then? Granny Mattie always said Great-grandma Shirley lived too long. “One hundred and fourteen when she died, and didn’t nobody want to wash her body for the burying. Had to hire an undertaker’s assistant to pick something to bury her in. She’d left instructions, but didn’t nobody want to read them. Bo had always sworn he would throw a party when she died, but shit, he didn’t live to see it. And his sons didn’t have the guts to do it for him. Only thing Bo ever managed to do to her was go piss on her porch steps the year before he died. The whole time, she sat up there staring over his head, pretending she didn’t see his dick or nothing. She lived too long, too long. She should have died when Bo was alive to throw his party. Every damn child out of her body would have come to party with him. Anybody ever tells you I’m mean, you tell them about your Great-grandma Shirley, the meanest woman ever left Tennessee.” Gospel Song A t nine, I knew exactly who and what I wanted to be. Early every Sunday morning I got up to watch The Sunrise Gospel Hour and practice my secret ambition. More than anything in the world I wanted to be a gospel singer—a little girl in a white fringe vest with silver and gold crosses embroidered on the back. I wanted gray-headed ladies to cry when they saw my pink cheeks. I wanted people to moan when they heard the throb in my voice when I sang of the miracle in my life. I wanted a miracle in my life. I wanted to be a gospel singer and be loved by the whole wide world. All that summer, while Mama was off at work, I haunted the White Horse Cafe over on the highway. They had three Teresa Brewer songs on the jukebox, and the truckers loved Teresa as much as I did. I’d sit out under the jalousie windows and hum along with her, imagining myself crooning with a raw and desperate voice. Half asleep in the sun, reassured by the familiar smell of frying fat, I’d make promises to God. If only He’d let it happen! I knew I’d probably turn to whiskey and rock ’n’ roll like they all did, but not for years, I promised. Not for years, Lord.

• From Trash (1988)

  Her thumb is in the hollow of my throat. My own pulse roars in my ears. Her laughter is soft, too soft. “Stop,” she says and it comes from very far away. Too far. “You’ll make yourself sick.” “I’ll take a pill.” “Junkie.” She laughs again. Her pleasure in being able to say that to me almost makes me laugh back. “You take too many pills.” That is too much. I go limp again and look up into her black, black eyes. “Oh, Mama,” I giggle. “Ooooh, Maaamaaaa.” Her mouth draws the words out delightfully, rich with lust. She rocks against me, and I can feel her, the flesh hard and cold and powerful. “I’ll make it interesting for both of us,” she promises. Her nails rake me lightly. Goose bumps radiate from every burning pinprick. I am not afraid. I burn. I want her so badly. Like a mad-woman, I don’t care anymore what is real. “You move,” she tells me, “and I’m gone.” The cloud of her lifts and it is all I can do to hold myself still until she comes back down. “You must hold yourself absolutely still. Absolutely.” Her skin burns me where it touches. I stiffen, holding myself for her. Her weight comes down until I shudder with pleasure. Instantly her body lifts, becomes again a cloud. Her phantom laughter is rich and close. I bite my lips and hold myself still again. She comes down again. So cold. So hot. I groan. She lifts, laughs, and rises again. It goes on and on. Do you love me? Do you want me? Do you remember me? Do you hate me? Do you love me? I love you, love you, lover you, come all over you, come up into the dark of you, the pit of you. Pull me down into the pit of you. Memory and touch and taste. You are never alone, never going to be alone. If you cry, I will. If you scream, I will. If you are, I am. “I love you,” she says. I am drifting. I have come so much my bones have turned to concrete. Their weight immobilizes me. Katy’s hot skin presses all over me. It is so dark, so still. It is the pit of the night, and I am drifting off into sleep. I want to wrap my arms around her and pull her down with me, sleep in the luxury of her embrace. But hours of conditioning stop me, and I do not move. I just slide further down into sleep. She says it again. “I love you.” “You’re dead,” I mumble. Her weight increases, presses down on me. I open my eyes. “Doesn’t matter.” She has spread out, filled the room. She is enormous, masses of dark all around me. I am afraid. Suddenly I am deeply, deeply afraid, and when she laughs I feel the cold. “Doesn’t matter at all.” Her Thighs

• From Trash (1988)

  For me it was lust; only in her eyes did it become love. But she was on my side, I knew that. Toni was old-school. For all that she was my age and just another scholarship student in a blue-jean jacket, she was and knew herself to be a bar dyke with a bar dyke’s studied moves, the low and sauntering strut of a great fighter and a better lover. She had, too, a bar dyke’s rough and ready talent for getting me angry and then charming me out of it. Every time she played that game and made those moves, all the anger went out of me. “Yeah,” I told her, looking into her soft eyes. “You’re on my side.” She drew the smoke deep into her lungs and smiled drunkenly. “Girl, girl. You act like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. Keeping your eyes down and your voice so soft. Wearing those silly-assed sandals and damn fool embroidered denim blouses. Always telling those drawling lies about all your cousins, and grand-daddies, and uncles . . .” “They an’t lies.” “Then they should be.” “And you.” She was making me angry again. “Who do you think you are?” She pulled her legs up, ran one hand down her heavily muscled thigh, arched her back to stretch, and gave me another of her slow wandering looks, her eyes sliding up from my crotch to my face, heating my skin as she went. “Me?” she drawled. “Me? Why, I’m just the daughter of the man with the smallest used car lot in Pinellas County and a mama who an’t been sober since the day I was conceived. They wanted me to go to college and make something of myself, so here I am. Trouble is they an’t got the first notion that all I really want is to be the sun and the moon and the stars to some butter-tongued girl in silly-assed sandals and an embroidered denim blouse.” “You say.” “I do indeed.” I’d laughed, not believing her, but enjoying her anyway—maybe because I didn’t believe her. It was so much easier if she was not too serious, if I didn’t have to think about what might happen if what was going on between us was love—love the way people talked about it, real love, dangerous and scary and not to be trusted at all. I pulled open the top snap on my blouse and trailed my fingernails up from my breasts to my throat. “You the butter-tongued one it seems to me.” I leaned forward until my face was close to hers.

• From Trash (1988)

  I opened stinging eyes to see her face, her intent and startling expression. I held my breath, waiting. I felt it before I understood it, and when I did understand I went on lying still under her, barely breathing. It burned me, ran all over my belly and legs. She put both hands down, brought them up, poured bitter yellow piss into my eyes, my ears, my shuddering mouth. “Swallow it,” she said again, but I held it in my mouth, pushed up against her and clawed her back with my nails. She whistled between her teeth. My hips jerked and rocked against her, making a wet sucking sound. I pushed my face to hers, my lips to hers, and forced my tongue into her mouth. I gripped her hard and rolled her over, my tongue sliding across her teeth, the taste of all her juices between us. I bit her lips and shoved her legs apart with my knee. “Taste it,” I hissed at her. “Swallow it.” I ran my hands over her body. My skin burned. She licked my face, growling deep in her throat. I pushed both hands between her legs, my fingertips opened her and my thumbs caught her clit under the soft sheath of its hood. “Go on, go on,” I insisted. Tears were running down her face. I licked them. Her mouth was at my ear, her tongue trailing through the sweat at my hairline. When she came her teeth clamped down on my earlobe. I pulled but could not free myself. She was a thousand miles away, rocking back and forth on my hand, and the stink of her all over us both. When her teeth freed my ear, I slumped. It felt as if I had come with her. My thighs shook and my teeth ached. She was mumbling with her eyes closed. “Gonna bathe you,” she whispered, “put you in a tub of hot lemonade. Drink it off you. Eat you for dinner.” Her hands dug into my shoulders, rolled me onto my back. She drew a long, deep breath with her head back and then looked down at me, put one hand into my cunt, and brought it up slick with my juice. “Swallow it,” Jay said. “Swallow it.” The year we held the great Southeastern Feminist Conference, I was still following around behind Lee. She volunteered us to handle the food for the two hundred women that were expected. Lee wanted us to serve “healthy food”—her vegetarian spaghetti sauce, whole-wheat pasta, and salad with cold fresh vegetables. Snacks would be granola, fresh fruit, and peanut butter on seven-grain bread.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  On this wise he bespoke him at one time and another, to enkindle him the more, till one night, what while it chanced my lord doctor held the light to Bruno, who was in act to paint the battle of the rats and the cats, the former, himseeming he had now well taken him with his hospitalities, determined to open his mind to him, and accordingly, they being alone together, he said to him, 'God knoweth, Bruno, there is no one alive for whom I would do everything as I would for thee; indeed, shouldst thou bid me go hence to Peretola, methinketh it would take little to make me go thither; wherefore I would not have thee marvel if I require thee of somewhat familiarly and with confidence. As thou knowest, it is no great while since thou bespokest me of the fashions of your merry company, wherefore so great a longing hath taken me to be one of you that never did I desire aught so much. Nor is this my desire without cause, as thou shalt see, if ever it chance that I be of your company; for I give thee leave to make mock of me an I cause not come thither the finest serving-wench thou ever setst eyes on. I saw her but last year at Cacavincigli and wish her all my weal;[402] and by the body of Christ, I had e'en given her half a score Bolognese groats, so she would but have consented to me; but she would not. Wherefore, as most I may, I prithee teach me what I must do to avail to be of your company and do thou also do and contrive so I may be thereof. Indeed, you will have in me a good and loyal comrade, ay, and a worshipful. Thou seest, to begin with, what a fine man I am and how well I am set up on my legs. Ay, and I have a face as it were a rose, more by token that I am a doctor of medicine, such as I believe you have none among you. Moreover, I know many fine things and goodly canzonets; marry, I will sing you one.' And incontinent he fell a-singing. [Footnote 402: _i.e._ love her beyond anything in the world. For former instances of this idiomatic expression, see ante, passim.]

• From Trash (1988)

  That is too much. I go limp again and look up into her black, black eyes. “Oh, Mama,” I giggle. “Ooooh, Maaamaaaa.” Her mouth draws the words out delightfully, rich with lust. She rocks against me, and I can feel her, the flesh hard and cold and powerful. “I’ll make it interesting for both of us,” she promises. Her nails rake me lightly. Goose bumps radiate from every burning pinprick. I am not afraid. I burn. I want her so badly. Like a mad-woman, I don’t care anymore what is real. “You move,” she tells me, “and I’m gone.” The cloud of her lifts and it is all I can do to hold myself still until she comes back down. “You must hold yourself absolutely still. Absolutely.” Her skin burns me where it touches. I stiffen, holding myself for her. Her weight comes down until I shudder with pleasure. Instantly her body lifts, becomes again a cloud. Her phantom laughter is rich and close. I bite my lips and hold myself still again. She comes down again. So cold. So hot. I groan. She lifts, laughs, and rises again. It goes on and on. Do you love me? Do you want me? Do you remember me? Do you hate me? Do you love me? I love you, love you, lover you, come all over you, come up into the dark of you, the pit of you. Pull me down into the pit of you. Memory and touch and taste. You are never alone, never going to be alone. If you cry, I will. If you scream, I will. If you are, I am. “I love you,” she says. I am drifting. I have come so much my bones have turned to concrete. Their weight immobilizes me. Katy’s hot skin presses all over me. It is so dark, so still. It is the pit of the night, and I am drifting off into sleep. I want to wrap my arms around her and pull her down with me, sleep in the luxury of her embrace. But hours of conditioning stop me, and I do not move. I just slide further down into sleep. She says it again. “I love you.” “You’re dead,” I mumble. Her weight increases, presses down on me. I open my eyes. “Doesn’t matter.” She has spread out, filled the room. She is enormous, masses of dark all around me. I am afraid. Suddenly I am deeply, deeply afraid, and when she laughs I feel the cold. “Doesn’t matter at all.”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Once he had taken this step, very little time elapsed before temptation went to war against his willpower, and after the first few assaults, finding himself outmanoeuvred on all fronts, he laid down his arms and surrendered. Casting aside pious thoughts, prayers, and penitential exercises, he began to concentrate his mental faculties upon the youth and beauty of the girl, and to devise suitable ways and means for approaching her in such a fashion that she should not think it lewd of him to make the sort of proposal he had in mind. By putting certain questions to her, he soon discovered that she had never been intimate with the opposite sex and was every bit as innocent as she seemed; and he therefore thought of a possible way to persuade her, with the pretext of serving God, to grant his desires. He began by delivering a long speech in which he showed her how powerful an enemy the devil was to the Lord God, and followed this up by impressing upon her that of all the ways of serving God, the one that He most appreciated consisted in putting the devil back in Hell, to which the Almighty had consigned him in the first place. The girl asked him how this was done, and Rustico replied: ‘You will soon find out, but just do whatever you see me doing for the present.’ And so saying, he began to divest himself of the few clothes he was wearing, leaving himself completely naked. The girl followed his example, and he sank to his knees as though he were about to pray, getting her to kneel directly opposite. In this posture, the girl’s beauty was displayed to Rustico in all its glory, and his longings blazed more fiercely than ever, bringing about the resurrection of the flesh.3 Alibech stared at this in amazement, and said: ‘Rustico, what is that thing I see sticking out in front of you, which I do not possess?’ ‘Oh, my daughter,’ said Rustico, ‘this is the devil I was telling you about. Do you see what he’s doing? He’s hurting me so much that I can hardly endure it.’ ‘Oh, praise be to God,’ said the girl, ‘I can see that I am better off than you are, for I have no such devil to contend with.’ ‘You’re right there,’ said Rustico. ‘But you have something else instead, that I haven’t.’ ‘Oh?’ said Alibech. ‘And what’s that?’ ‘You have Hell,’ said Rustico. ‘And I honestly believe that God has sent you here for the salvation of my soul, because if this devil continues to plague the life out of me, and if you are prepared to take sufficient pity upon me to let me put him back into Hell, you will be giving me marvellous relief, as well as rendering incalculable service and pleasure to God, which is what you say you came here for in the first place.’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Whereas men, if they are very wise, will always seek to love ladies of higher station than their own, women, if they are very discerning, will know how to guard against accepting the advances of a man who is of more exalted rank. For which reason, and also because of the pleasure I feel at our having, through our stories, begun to demonstrate the power of good repartee, I have been prompted to show you, fair ladies, in the story that I have to tell, how through her words and actions a gentlewoman avoided this pitfall and guided her suitor clear of its dangers. The Marquis of Montferrat1 was a man of outstanding worth, who had sailed as Gonfalonier of the Church with a Christian host on a Crusade to the Holy Land.2 And one day, during a conversation about his merits at the court of King Philippe Le Borgne,3 who was also preparing to leave France to join the Crusade, a courtier observed that there was not a wedded couple under the sun to compare with the Marquis and his lady; for just as the Marquis was a paragon of all the knightly virtues, so the lady was more beautiful and worthy of esteem than any other woman in the world. These words left such a deep impression on the French king’s mind, that without having ever seen the lady, he at once became fervently enamoured of her, and decided that under no circumstances would he embark for the Crusade at any other port but Genoa, so that, by travelling overland, he would have a plausible pretext for paying the Marchioness a visit. In this way he thought he would succeed, since the Marquis would be absent, in bringing his desires to fruition.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  For his part, Minghino had made friends with the maidservant, working upon her to such good effect that she had delivered several messages to the girl and almost fired her with Minghino’s love. Moreover she had promised to convey him to her as soon as Giacomino chanced for any reason to be away from the house for the evening. A few days after his conversation with Giannole, Crivello persuaded Giacomino to accept an invitation to supper at the house of one of his friends; and having passed the word to Giannole, he arranged that on receiving a certain signal Giannole was to come to the front door, which he would find unlocked. Meanwhile the maidservant, knowing nothing of all this, sent word to Minghino that Giacomino was going out to supper, and told him to stay near the house so that, when she gave him the signal, he could come and be let in. Neither of the two lovers knew anything of the other’s movements, and soon after dusk, each of them, being suspicious of his rival, set out with a number of armed companions so as to be certain of carrying off the prize. Since they were obliged to wait for the signal, Minghino and his men stationed themselves in a house nearby belonging to one of his friends, whilst Giannole bided his time with his companions some little distance away from the girl’s house. Once Giacomino was out of the way, Crivello and the maidservant made strenuous efforts to send each other packing. ‘Why don’t you go to bed?’ said Crivello. ‘What are you pottering about the house for at this hour?’ ‘What about you?’ said the maidservant. ‘Why not go and wait for your master? What are you hanging about here for, now that you’ve had your supper?’ Thus neither could persuade the other to go away, and Crivello, realizing that the hour agreed upon with Giannole had come, said to himself: ‘Why should I worry about her? If she doesn’t keep her mouth shut, so much the worse for her.’