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 Fermata (1994)

  After ten or fifteen minutes she stood, letting the water pour off her, and toweled herself. I was on alert to push up my glasses at any second if she decided to throw the towel into the hamper, but she didn’t. After she dried her hair, she put the towel around her shoulders, and then she planted her hands on the edge of the bathtub and knelt with one leg in the bathwater and one outside on the floor. “Ooh that’s so cold,” she said, when her vadge touched the rounded edge of the tub. I was too crumpled in the hamper even to think of doing anything physical with my richard, but all I wanted in any event was the sight I was seeing; the sight of her leaning forward on her hands and rocking the weight of her hips down against the edge of the tub. “Where is that cock?” she said. “I want to see that cock.” She fished around in the water and pulled out the dildo and looked at it. She dipped it several times in the water and pulled it out, shaking it each time, evidently liking the way it glistened. Then she worked herself down the edge of the tub and suctioned the black dick onto the tiled shower wall at about her eye level. She moved her face over it, kissing it in the most wonderfully fetishistic way, and biting on it. “You like when I suck that big dick, don’t you?” she said. She put two fingers down on the edge of the tub and rocked forward on them, so that her clit was straddled. She let the head of the rubberdick pass over her closed eyelids, and then she stood up a little, one leg still in the bathtub and one out, and stroked her slit very fast while she circled the wall-mounted dick with her nipples. When she had straightened her legs completely, she was able to lean herself against the tile wall with the rubberdick between her legs and move its resilience over her clit-lump. Her forehead and nipples touched the cold green tile. She kissed the towel on her shoulders once. I was dying with visual happiness. “You want this ass?” she asked the dildo and seemed to get an affirmative answer, for she turned away from it with her hands on the edge of the tub, wiggling her ass back and forth in front of it. The suction base lost suction and the cock fell suddenly onto a scallop-shell soap dish. “Aw, did I shock you, honey?” she said. “Am I going too fast for you?” She dipped it in the bathwater again, shook it off, and, straddling the tub, stuck it back on the edge of the tub and sucked it. “See how easy it is to get you hard again?” she said.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  ‘I have already described how we met — in the long mirror of the Cecil, before the open door of the ballroom, on a night of carnival. The first words we spoke were spoken, symbolically enough, in the mirror. She was there with a man who resembled a cuttle-fish and who waited while she examined her dark face attentively. I stopped to adjust an unfamiliar bow-tie. She had a hungry natural candour which seemed proof against any suggestion of forwardness as she smiled and said: “There is never enough light.” To which I responded without thought: “For women perhaps. We men are less exigent.” We smiled and I passed her on my way to the ballroom, ready to walk out of her mirror-life forever, without a thought. Later the hazards of one of those awful English dances, called the Paul Jones I believe, left me facing her for a waltz. We spoke a few disjointed words — I dance badly; and here I must confess that her beauty made no impression on me. It was only later when she began her trick of drawing hasty illdefined designs round my character, throwing my critical faculties into disorder by her sharp penetrating stabs; ascribing to me qualities which she invented on the spur of the moment out of that remorseless desire to capture my attention. Women must attack writers — and from the moment she learned I was a writer she felt disposed to make herself interesting by dissecting me. All this would have been most flattering to my amour-propre had some of her observations been further from the mark. But she was acute, and I was too feeble to resist this sort of game — the mental ambuscades which constitute the opening gambits of a flirtation. ‘From here I remember nothing more until that night — that marvellous summer night on the moon-drenched balcony above the sea with Justine pressing a warm hand on my mouth to stop me talking and saying something like: “Quick. Engorge-moi. From desire to revulsion — let’s get it over.” She had, it seemed, already exhausted me in her own imagination. But the words were spoken with such weariness and humility — who could forbear to love her?

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  It’s very soon; it’s sooner than you think.’ “I make a face and he knows that I think Wednesday is years from now and that I will have so many feelings and thoughts that he won’t be a part of until Wednesday, and he says, ‘I’m on our app. I’m here, even if I’m not physically with you.’” She puts on her sunglasses. “This is usually when I stop feeling anything and leave the car.” I see that she becomes disconnected in order to leave him, and that she does it again right before my eyes as she tells me about it. I lose her to a long silence before she leaves. MANY OF MY patients come to see me because of my professional writing and teaching on the subject of sexuality. I see men and women who feel destroyed by a partner’s affair, others who had or are having affairs, and those who are lovers of married people. Their stories are different and their motivations are diverse, but all these people reveal themselves to be tortured as they struggle with their own secrets or with the secrets of the people in their lives. While I am aware of the transactional aspect of every relationship, I also believe in love. I believe in the power of attachment between two people, in loyalty as one of the basic foundations of trust, and I consider destructive and creative forces to be part of every relationship. We love and at times we also hate the people we love; we trust them but are also afraid of the injuries and hurt they might cause us. One of the goals associated with growth is the ability to integrate positive and negative feelings: to hate lovingly, to love while recognizing moments of disappointment and anger. The more we can know and own our destructive urges, the more able we become to love fully. Life, to some degree, is always about that tension between the wish to destroy—ruin the love, goodness, and life itself—and Eros, which represents not only sex, but also the urge to survive, create, produce, and love. That tension exists in every aspect of our lives, including in our relationships. Psychological awareness helps us to identify and bring those urges and wishes into consciousness, and to question our choices and the choices of the people who came before us. When it comes to affairs, that work is multilayered, and the distinction between destruction and death, and survival and life isn’t always obvious. One significant reason why people come to therapy is to search for unknown truths about themselves. That investigation starts with a wish to know who we truly are and who our parents were, and it always includes the dread of knowing. Why does Eve have this relationship with Josh? Why now?

• From The Fermata (1994)

  If she were in a certain mood? An intensity in my gaze may have unsettled her slightly. The more her enthusiasm for the whole idea appeared to diminish, the eagerer I was to convince her that it had to be attractive to her. Any tiny Latino swimsuit was fair game, I said. Any penis-bulge in the world that she wanted to inquire into and even heft was hers to inquire into and heft. Right? But despite her having clearly said at the beginning of the plane ride that the idea of seeing naked beautiful men held more and more appeal, she now began to contend that really the sight of a penis per se didn’t do all that much for her. Yes, possibly, she would investigate a crotch or two hands-on, if the crotch-context was truly extraordinary, but what she really needed was the possibility that a given penis could become aware of her and could grow and develop with the help of this knowledge. She needed to be in some sort of unfolding dramatic relationship with a specific penis for it to become a full-blown sex-object. “But you’re such a voyeur,” I countered. “When we go for walks, you’re always trying to get a look in the windows.” “It’s foyerism, not voyeurism,” she replied. “I want to look in windows because I like to see how people arrange their rooms, how they have decided to live. If I had a magical Tristan chord on tape that stopped time, I probably would wander through people’s houses, if they were unlocked.” “Ah! Okay!” I said wildly. “Now we’re getting somewhere. And if in your wandering you came across a paused couple having Sunday-afternoon sex, wouldn’t you at least walk up and touch the man’s flexed butt-muscle between her parted legs as he drives that dick home? Or if you happened upon a guy doing himself up right, pumping his fluke with two fists, his eyes closed, his face all slack from the pleasure, wouldn’t you pull his hands away and give that fucking girder of a dick a suck or two, if it looked extra good and suckable? You would!” Rhody thought. “I’m not ruling it out. But I need movement. What you’re talking about is so static. I need to be seduced. That’s what I really want. I want to be seduced .” She said this with such conviction that I dropped the whole subject. It was obvious to her that if the universe were stopped, any form of seduction would be impossible. I resisted the temptation to itemize the manifold ways in which a Fold-effect could make certain kinds of seduction possible, because I didn’t want to seem to have given it a lifetime’s thought.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  The whole room belonged to Melissa — the pitiful dressing-table full of empty powder-boxes and photos: the graceful curtain breathing softly in that breathless afternoon air like the sail of a ship. How often had we not lain in one another’s arms watching the slow intake and recoil of that transparent piece of bright linen? Across all this, the image of someone dearly loved, held in the magnification of a gigantic tear moved the brown harsh body of Justine naked. It would have been blind of me not to notice how deeply her resolution was mixed with sadness. We lay eye to eye for a long time, our bodies touching, hardly communicating more than the animal lassitude of that vanishing afternoon. I could not help thinking then as I held her tightly in the crook of an arm how little we own our bodies. I thought of the words of Arnauti when he says: ‘It dawned on me then that in some fearful way this girl had shorn me of all my force morale. I felt as if I had had my head shaved.’ But the French, I thought, with their endless gravitation between bonheur and chagrin must inevitably suffer when they come up against something which does not admit of préjugés; born for tactics and virtuosity, not for staying-power, they lack the little touch of crassness which armours the Anglo-Saxon mind. And I thought: ‘Good. Let her lead me where she will. She will find me a match for her. And there’ll be no talk of chagrin at the end.’ Then I thought of Nessim, who was watching us (though I did not know) as if through the wrong end of an enormous telescope: seeing our small figures away on the skyline of his own hopes and plans. I was anxious that he should not be hurt. But she had closed her eyes — so soft and lustrous now, as if polished by the silence which lay so densely all around us. Her trembling fingers had become steady and at ease upon my shoulder. We turned to each other, closing like the two leaves of a door upon the past, shutting out everything, and I felt her happy spontaneous kisses begin to compose the darkness around us like successive washes of a colour. When we had made love and lay once more awake she said: ‘I am always so bad the first time, why is it?’ ‘Nerves perhaps. So am I.’ ‘You are a little afraid of me.’

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I ran my fingers through my flat, shorn locks; the action - and the cigarette that I had just smoked - made me feel wonderfully calm.I said: ‘You can’t tell, can you, that it’s a false one?’Now Alice sat up with the blankets gripped before her. ‘You needn’t look so horrified,’ I said. ‘I told you all, I wrote and told you: I’ve joined the act; I’m not Kitty’s dresser any more. I’m on the stage myself, now, doing what she does. Singing, dancing...’She said, ‘You never wrote it like it was really true. If it was true we would have heard! I don’t believe you.’‘I don’t care whether you believe me or not.’She shook her head. ‘Singing,’ she said. ‘Dancing. That’s a tart’s life. You couldn’t. You wouldn’t...’I said, ‘I do’; and just to show her that I meant it, I lifted my nightie and did a little shuffle across the rug.The dance seemed, like the hair, to frighten her. When she spoke next it was with a show of bitterness - but her voice was thick with rising tears. ‘I suppose you lift your skirts like that, do you? and show your legs, on stage, for all the world to look at!’‘My skirts?’ I laughed. ‘Good heavens, Alice, I don’t wear skirts! I didn’t get my hair cut off to wear a frock. It’s trousers I wear: I wear gentlemen’s suits -!’‘Oh!’ Now she had begun to cry. ‘What a thing to do! What a thing to do, in front of strangers!’I said. ‘You thought it good enough when Kitty did it.’‘Nothing she did was ever good! She took you off, and has made you strange. I don’t know you at all. I wish you’d never gone with her - or never come back!’She lay down, pulled the blankets to her chin, and wept; and since I don’t know a girl who is not moved to tears by the sight of her own sister weeping, I climbed in beside her, and my own eyes began to sting.But when she felt me close she gave a jerk. ‘Get off me!’ she cried, and wriggled away. She said it with such real passion, such horror and grief, I could do nothing but what she asked, and let her lie at the cold edge of the bed. Soon she ceased her shaking, and fell silent; and my own eyes dried, and my face grew hard again. I reached for the lamp, and put it out; then lay on my back and said nothing.The bed, that had been chill, grew warmer. I began at last to wish that Alice would turn, and talk to me. Then I began to wish that Alice was Kitty. Then I began - I couldn’t help it! - to think of all that I would do with her, if she was. The sudden force of my desire unnerved me.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  I was tempted to walk to a bookstore in the Fold and pick up some other Virago to show off to her, but I thought better of it: too aggressive a manufactured coincidence. Instead I erased the Inequality to end the time-transplantation and, once back in the swing, pulled out a turn-of-the-century biography of Edward FitzGerald by A. C. Benson that I had been halfheartedly reading; I held it open with the edge of my plate. The waiter came. I ordered dinner in a fairly loud, friendly voice in order to draw Rhody’s attention. When I had handed over the menu, I dropped my eyes immediately to my book as if I were impatient to get back to it, and then absent-mindedly began moving my watch up and down on my wrist. I knew “Rhoda E. Levering” was watching me. I turned a page, lifting the plate so that it would clear, and went back to playing with my watch. Suddenly I looked up, caught Rhody’s eye, and gave her a friendly hello-look. I felt bad about doing this, because I know how hard it is to go back to a book, no matter how engrossed you were in it, when you are alone at a table in a restaurant and you become aware of someone else who may or may not be lonely, and may or may not be curious about you—suddenly, whether you welcome it or not, there is a fiery transversity connecting the two of you, where before there had only been a narrow rectilinear green-carpeted Thai restaurant that tolerated solo readers. I returned to my book, deliberately making ugly lip-pursed faces to show that I was deeply caught up in Edward FitzGerald —and to release Rhody from the tyranny of the transversity if she wanted to return to Lady Audley’s Secret . Without lifting my eyes from the page (though I was still sure that her black-rimmed glasses were flashing in my direction), I raised my left hand and very slowly and teasingly pulled on the flap of my watchband until the tiny gold prong of its buckle hung free of the slightly elongated second hole. Like a stripper delaying a moment of conclusive disrobing, I held the unbuckled watch in place for a time, turning my wrist slowly within its loosened embrace; finally I slid the buckle off the strap and caught the face of the watch as it fell from my arm. I did everything as smoothly and unsuddenly and strokingly as I could, not as if I were aware of Rhody and trying to entice her, but as if I were reading with such intense concentration that my unconscious watch-removal movements were being slowed to a fraction of their normal speed by the rapture of my literary appreciation.

• From Wild (2012)

  “Thanks, but I can’t. My friends just got here and we’re all camped,” I said, gesturing to the rise beyond the road, behind which my tent and probably by now the tents of the Three Young Bucks were erected. As I did so, I had a precise image of what the Three Young Bucks were likely doing at that very moment, the way they’d be crouched beneath their raincoats in the rain, trying to eat their loathsome dinners, or sitting alone in their tents because there was simply no other place to be, and then I thought of that warm fire and the booze and how if the men went with me to drink with the ranger I could use them to help me dodge whatever else he had in mind. “But maybe,” I wavered, as the ranger drooled and then blotted his mouth. “I mean, as long as it’s okay to bring my friends.” I returned with the cake to our camp. The Three Young Bucks were all zipped into their tents. “I have cake!” I called, and they came and stood around me and ate it with their fingers out of my hands, splitting it among themselves in the easy, unspoken way they’d honed over months of endless deprivation and unity. In the nine days since I’d said goodbye to them, it seemed as if we’d grown closer, more familiar, as if we’d been together in that time instead of apart. They were still the Three Young Bucks to me, but they’d also begun to differentiate in my mind. Richie was hilarious and a little bit strange, with a dark edge of mystery I found compelling. Josh was sweet and smart, more reserved than the others. Rick was funny and incisive, kind and a great conversationalist. As I stood there with the three of them eating cake out of my hands, I realized that though I had a little crush on all of them, I had a bigger crush on Rick. It was an absurd crush, I knew. He was nearly four years younger than me and we were at an age when those nearly four years mattered, when the gap between what he had done and what I had done was large enough that I was more like a big sister than I was someone who should be thinking about being alone with him in his tent—so I didn’t think about it, but I couldn’t deny that to an increasing degree I got a little fluttery feeling inside me every time Rick’s eyes met mine, and I also couldn’t deny that I could see in his eyes that he got a little fluttery feeling too. “I’m sorry about dinner,” I said, after explaining what had happened. “Did you guys eat?” I asked, feeling guilty, and they all nodded, licking the frosting from their fingers. “Was it good?” asked Richie in his New Orleans accent, which only increased his appeal, in spite of my crush on Rick.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  She was wearing a white shirt and white shorts, and I could see the outlines of her white bra and white panties. Her skin was pale white. Milky white. Cloud white. So she was all white on white on white, like the most perfect kind of vanilla dessert cake you’ve ever seen. I wanted to be her chocolate topping. She was serving against the mean girls from Davenport Lady Gorillas. Yeah, you read that correctly. They willingly called themselves the Lady Gorillas. And they played like superstrong primates, too. Penelope and her teammates were getting killed. The score was like 12 to 0 in the first set. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to watch the sweaty Penelope sweat her perfect sweat on that perfectly sweaty day. She stood at the service line, bounced the volleyball a few times to get her rhythm, then tossed it into the air above her head. She tracked the ball with her blue eyes. Just watched it intensely. Like that volleyball mattered more than anything else in the world. I got jealous of that ball. I wished I were that ball. As the ball floated in the air, Penelope twisted her hips and back and swung her right arm back over her shoulder, coiling like a really pretty snake. Her leg muscles were stretched and taut. I almost fainted when she served. Using all of that twisting and flexing and concentration, she smashed the ball and aced the Lady Gorillas. And then Penelope clenched a fist and shouted, “Yes!” Absolutely gorgeous. Even though I didn’t think I’d ever hear back, I wanted to know what to do with my feelings, so I walked over to the computer lab and e-mailed Rowdy. He’s had the same address for five years. “Hey, Rowdy,” I wrote. “I’m in love with a white girl. What should I do?” A few minutes later, Rowdy wrote back. “Hey, Asshole,” Rowdy wrote back. “I’m sick of Indian guys who treat white women like bowling trophies. Get a life.” Well, that didn’t do me any good. So I asked Gordy what I should do about Penelope. “I’m an Indian boy,” I said. “How can I get a white girl to love me?” “Let me do some research on that,” Gordy said. A few days later, he gave me a brief report. “Hey, Arnold,” he said. “I looked up ‘in love with a white girl’ on Google and found an article about that white girl named Cynthia who disappeared in Mexico last summer. You remember how her face was all over the papers and everybody said it was such a sad thing?” “I kinda remember,” I said.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  And yet I, O my God, Thou lifter up of my humility, and rest of my labour, Who hearest my confessions, and forgivest my sins: seeing Thou commandest me to love my neighbour as myself, I cannot believe that Thou gavest a less gift unto Moses Thy faithful servant, than I would wish or desire Thee to have given me, had I been born in the time he was, and hadst Thou set me in that office, that by the service of my heart and tongue those books might be dispensed, which for so long after were to profit all nations, and through the whole world from such an eminence of authority, were to surmount all sayings of false and proud teachings. I should have desired verily, had I then been Moses (for we all come from the same lump, and what is man, saving that Thou art mindful of him?), I would then, had I been then what he was, and been enjoined by Thee to write the book of Genesis, have desired such a power of expression and such a style to be given me, that neither they who cannot yet understand how God created, might reject the sayings, as beyond their capacity; and they who had attained thereto, might find what true opinion soever they had by thought arrived at, not passed over in those few words of that Thy servant: and should another man by the light of truth have discovered another, neither should that fail of being discoverable in those same words.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  What if Mrs Lethaby should come?’‘She won’t. She is leaving me, as a kind of punishment.’ I touched her knee, and then her thigh, through the layers of her skirts.‘We cannot ...’ she said again; but this time, her voice was fainter. And when I tugged at her frock and said, ‘Come on, take this off — or shall I tear the buttons?’ she gave a drunken sort of laugh: ‘You shall do no such thing! Help me nicely, now.’Naked she was very thin, and strangely coloured: flaming crimson at the cheeks, a coarser red from her elbows to her fingertips, and palely white - almost bluish-white - on her torso, upper arms, and thighs. The hair between her legs - you can never guess at that kind of thing in advance - was quite ginger.When I dipped my lips to it, she gave a squeal: ‘Oh! What a thing to do!’ But then, after a moment, she held my head and pressed it. She didn’t seem to be at all sorry about my swollen nose, then. She only said: ‘Oh, turn around, turn around quick, that I might do it to you!’ After that, I pulled the counterpane over us, and we drank more champagne, taking turns to sip from the bottle. I put my hand upon her. I said: ‘Did you used to frig yourself in the reformat’ry?’ She gave me a slap, saying, ‘Oh, you are as bad as them downstairs! I nearly died!’ She pushed the blanket back, and squinted at her quim. ‘To think of me with a cock! What an idea!’‘What an idea? Oh, Zena, I should love to see you with one! I should love -’ I sat up. ‘Zena, I should love to see you in Diana’s dildo!’‘That thing? She’s made you filthy! I should die with shame, before I ever tried such a thing!’ Her lashes fluttered.I said, ‘You are blushing! You’ve fancied it, haven’t you? You’ve fancied a bit of that kind of sport - don’t tell me you haven’t!’‘Really, a girl like me!’ But she was redder than ever, and would not gaze at me. I caught hold of her hand, and pulled her up.‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You have got me all hot for it. Diana will never know.’‘Oh!’I pulled her to the door, then peered into the corridor outside. The music and laughter from downstairs was fainter, but still loud and rather furious.

• From Less (2017)

  “You are a friend of Alexander? I am Javier,” the man says. He holds in his hand a plate of salmon and couscous. Green-golden eyes. Straight black hair, center parted, long enough to push behind his ears. Less says nothing; he suddenly feels hot and knows he has flushed bright pink. Perhaps it is the drink. “And you are American!” the man adds. Nonplussed, Less turns an even brighter hue. “How…how did you know?” The man’s eyes dart up and down his body. “You are dressed like an American.” Less looks down at his linen pants, his furred leather jacket. He understands that he has fallen under the spell of a shopkeeper, as has many an American before him; he has spent a small fortune to dress as Parisians might rather than as they do. He should have worn the blue suit. He says, “I’m Arthur. Arthur Less. A friend of Alexander; he invited me. But he doesn’t seem to be coming.” The man leans in but has to look up; he is quite a bit shorter than Less. “He always invites, Arthur. He never comes.” “Actually, I was about to leave. I don’t know anybody here.” “No, don’t leave!” Javier seems to realize he has said this too loudly. “I have a plane to catch tonight.” “Arthur, stay one moment. I also know nobody here. You see those two over there?” He nods toward a woman in a backless black dress, her blond chignon lit by a nearby lamp, and a man all in grays with an oversized Humphrey Bogart head. They are standing side by side, examining a drawing. Javier gives a conspiratorial grin; a strand of hair has come loose and hangs over his forehead. “I was talking with them. We all just met, but I could…sense…very quickly that I was not needed. That is why I came over here.” Javier pats the stray hair back in place. “They are going to sleep together.” Less laughs and says surely they didn’t say that. “No, but. Look at their bodies. Their arms are touching. And he leans in to talk to her. It is not loud here. He is leaning in just to be close to her. They did not want me there.” At that moment, Humphrey Bogart puts his hand on the woman’s shoulder and points to the drawing, talking. His lips are so close to her ear that his breath blows her loose wisps of hair. Now it is obvious; they are going to sleep together. He turns back to Javier, who shrugs: What can you do? Less asks, “And that is why you came over here.” Javier’s eyes remain on Less. “It is part of why I came over here.”

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Then he saw who it was I sat with - It was Diana and Maria - and he stared. I gave a shrug, he looked thoughtful - then rolled his eyes again, as much as to say, What a business!To all these places, as I have said, I went clad as a boy — indeed, the only time I ever dressed as a girl, now, was for our visits to the Cavendish. This was the single spot in the city at which Diana might have put me in trousers and not cared who knew it; but after Miss Bruce’s complaint they introduced a new rule, and ever after I was taken there in skirts - Diana having something made up for me, I forget the cut and colour of it now. At the club I would sit and drink and smoke, and be flirted with by Maria, and eyed by other ladies, while Diana met friends or wrote letters. She did this very often, for she was known - I suppose I might have guessed it, in a way - as a philanthropist, and ladies courted her for schemes. She gave money to certain charities. She sent books to girls in prisons. She was involved in the producing of a magazine for the Suffrage, named Shafts. She attended to all this, with me at her side. If I leaned to pick up a paper or a list and idly read it, she would take the sheet away, as if gazing too hard at too many words might tire me. In the end, I would settle on the cartoons in Punch. These, then, were my public appearances. There were not too many of them - I am describing here a period that lasted about a year. Diana kept me close, for the most part, and displayed me at home. She liked to limit the numbers who gazed at me, she said; she said she feared that like a photograph I might fade, from too much handling.When I say display, of course, I mean it: it was part of Diana’s mystery, to make real the words that other people said in metaphor or jest. I had posed for Maria and Dickie and Evelyn in my trousers with the scorch-mark and my underthings of silk. When they came a second time, with another lady, Diana had me pose for them again in a different suit. After that, it became a kind of sport with her, to put me in a new costume and have me walk before her guests, or among them, filling glasses, lighting cigarettes. Once she dressed me as a footman, in breeches and a powdered wig. It was the costume I had worn for Cinderella, more or less - though my breeches at the Brit had not been so snug, nor so large at the groin.The freak with the breeches inspired her further.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Besides this there was an album of photographs of big-buttocked girls with hairless parts, bearing feathers; also a collection of erotic pamphlets and novels, all hymning the delights of what I would call tommistry but what they, like Diana, called Sapphic Passion. They were gross enough, I suppose, in their way; but I had never seen the like of them before, and would gaze at them, squirming, till Diana laughed. Then there were cords, and straps and switches - the kind of thing that might be found, I suppose, in a strict governess’s closet, certainly nothing heavier. Lastly, there were more of Diana’s rose-tipped cigarettes. They contained, as I guessed very early on, some fragrant French tobacco that was mixed with hashish; and they were, I thought, the pleasantest things of all, since, when used in combination with the other items, they rendered their interesting effects more interesting still.I might be weary or stupid; I might be nauseous with drink; I might be sore, at the hips, with the ache of my monthlies, but the opening of this box, as I have said, never ceased to stir me - I was like a dog twitching and slavering to hear his mistress call out Bone!And every jerk, every slaver, made Diana more complacent.‘How vain I am, of my little hoard!’ she would say, a we lay smoking in the soiled sheets of her bed. She might be clad in nothing but a corset and a pair of purple gloves; I would have the dildo about me, perhaps with a rope of pearls wound round it. She would reach to the foot of the bed, and run her hand across the gaping box, and laugh. ‘Of all the gifts I’ve given you,’ she said once, ‘this is the finest, isn’t it, isn’t it? Where in London would you find its like?’‘Nowhere!’ I answered. ‘You’re the boldest bitch in the city!’‘I am!’‘You’re the boldest bitch, with the cleverest quim. If fucking were a country - well, fuck me, you’d be its queen ... !’These were the words which, pricked on by my mistress, I used now - lewd words which shocked and stirred me even as I said them. I had never thought to use them with Kitty. I had not fucked her, we had not frigged; we had only ever kissed and trembled.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I lifted my hand to still it; and when she saw me do that she placed her own fingers over mine, and made them grasp the shaft and stroke it. Now the base’s insinuating nudges grew more insinuating still: it was not long before my legs began to tremble and she, sensing my rising pleasure, began to breathe more harshly. She took her hands away, and turned and lifted her hair from the nape of her neck, and gestured for me to undress her.I found the hooks of her gown, and then the laces of her corset: beneath this, I saw, she was mottled scarlet from the hundred tiny creases of her chemise. She stooped to remove her petticoats, but retained her drawers, her stockings and her boots and, still, her gloves. Very daring - for I had not touched her at all, yet - I slid a hand into the slit of her drawers; and with the other I caught hold of one of her nipples, and pressed it.At that, she put her mouth to mine. Our kisses were imperfect ones, as all new lovers’ kisses are, and tasted of tobacco; but - again, like all new lovers’ kisses - their very strangeness made them thrilling. The more I fingered her the harder she kissed me, and the hotter I grew between my legs, behind my sheath of leather. Finally she pulled away, and seized my wrists.‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Not yet, not yet!’With my hands still clasped in hers she led me to one of the straight-backed chairs and sat me on it, the dildo all the while straining from my lap, rude and rigid as a skittle. I guessed her purpose. With her hands close-pressed about my head and her legs straddling mine, she gently lowered herself upon me; then proceeded to rise and sink, rise and sink, with an ever speedier motion. At first I held her hips, to guide them; then I returned a hand to her drawers, and let the fingers of the other creep round her thigh to her buttocks. My mouth I fastened now on one nipple, now on the other, sometimes finding the salt of her flesh, sometimes the dampening cotton of her chemise.Soon her breaths became moans, then cries; soon my own voice joined hers, for the dildo that serviced her also pleasured me - her motions bring it with an ever faster, ever harder pressure against just that part of me that cared for pressure best.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  It was reassuring for them that it was a real friendship, and not just a schoolgirl mash, that had me travelling so often to the Palace, and spending all my savings on the train fare; and yet, I thought I heard them ask themselves, what manner of friendship could there be between a handsome, clever music-hall artiste, and the girl in the crowd that admired her? When I said that Kitty had no young man (for I had found this out, early on, amongst the pieces of her history) Davy said that I should bring her home, and introduce her to my handsome brother - though he only said it when Rhoda was near, to tease her. When I spoke of brewing her pans of tea and tidying her table, Mother narrowed her eyes: ‘She’s doing all right out of you by the sound of it. It’s a little more help with the tea and the tables we could do with, from you, home here ...’ It was true, I suppose, that I rather neglected my duties in the house for the sake of my trips to the Palace. They fell to my sister, though she rarely complained about it. I believe my parents thought her generous, allowing me my freedom at her own expense. The truth was, I think, that she was squeamish of mentioning Kitty now - and by that alone I knew that it was she, more than any of them, who was uneasy. I had said nothing more to her about my passion. I had said nothing of my new, strange, hot desire to anyone. But she saw me, of course, as I lay in my bed; and, as anyone will tell you who has been secretly in love, it is in bed that you do your dreaming - in bed, in the darkness, where you cannot see your own cheeks pink, that you ease back the mantle of restraint that keeps your passion dimmed throughout the day, and let it glow a little. How Kitty would have blushed, to know the part she played in my fierce dreamings - to know how shamelessly I took my memories of her, and turned them to my own improper advantage !

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  [image file=image_rsrc3DE.jpg] Black MagicThe royal mistress who went to the greatest lengths to obtain and then retain her position against rivals was Athénaïs de Montespan. Ravishingly beautiful, venomously cunning, Madame de Montespan hoped for several years to replace Louis XIV’s maîtresse-en-titre Louise de La Vallière. But the king was unmoved by Madame de Montespan’s flirtation. “She tries hard,” he told his brother, “but I’m not interested.”7 In 1667, hoping to break up the relationship, Madame de Montespan visited a witch for assistance. La Voisin, as she was called, looked much older than her thirty-five years. She lived in a dark and crumbling house on the outskirts of Paris, surrounded by a large, unkempt garden. Garbed in flowing robes embroidered with ancient symbols, La Voisin, along with her colleagues, performed magic tricks, read palms and tarot cards, cast horoscopes, babbled in tongues, and held séances for a steep fee. Her more innocuous services included offering lotions to beautify the skin and spells to increase breast size or firm up sagging thighs. Her more sinister services included sticking pins in dolls to incapacitate and kill an enemy, performing abortions, providing poison to slip to annoying husbands, and celebrating Black Masses with a dead baby’s blood while preparing her magic potions. For years the carriages of the rich and famous lined up outside her house as her patrons vied with each other for her services, offering her rich rewards. But Madame de Montespan had no need of potions to improve her breasts or thighs. She wanted the king to forsake Louise and fall in love with her. Louise de La Vallière was an unlikely object of black magic. Extremely religious, she came from a noble but obscure family and by a stroke of good fortune, found herself at Versailles and soon after in the young king’s arms. The abbé de Choisy reported that Louise “had an exquisite complexion, blond hair, blue eyes, a sweet smile…an expression once tender and modest.”8 Though all agreed she was a lovely girl, tenderness and modesty did not fare well on the bloody battlefield of Versailles, a court where a healthy slathering of etiquette and a splash of perfume barely disguised savage ambition and vicious greed. After five years as royal mistress, Louise sensed Louis was growing restless. Heavily pregnant with her fourth child, she invited her good friend Athénaïs de Montespan to join her private meals with the king. Louise knew that her friend was a witty, scintillating conversationalist—all that she, Louise, was not. Ironically, dull Queen Marie-Thérèse was also pregnant and likewise needed help in amusing the king. She considered all the ladies she knew and also selected her dear friend Madame de Montespan to entertain the king during meals. Both queen and mistress committed a naive and deadly mistake.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Gabrielle d’Estrées received gifts on a regular basis from foreign monarchs and the French nobility. She kept a detailed record of gifts she received when making an official visit with Henri IV to the city of Rouen. Queen Elizabeth I of England sent Gabrielle a large diamond-and-sapphire broach mounted in gold; Archduke Ferdinando de Medici of Tuscany gave her a set of twenty-four goblets of chased silver; a French politician presented an emerald pin; a noblewoman handed her a jar of fine perfumed oil; and a courtier bestowed on her two stags he had just killed. In 1669, Barbara, Lady Castlemaine’s rapacious appetite for gifts and bribes ate up the French ambassador’s budget. “I have given away everything I brought from France,” he lamented, “not excepting my wife’s skirts…. As for Lady Castlemaine, if we lavish handsome gifts on her King Charles will understand that we believe she rules him in spite of his denials. We ought to dispense no more than ribbons, dressing gowns and other little fineries.”17 But Louis XIV had a difficult task in mind for Lady Castlemaine, one that required an ampler reward than mere ribbons. First, Lady Castlemaine was to convince Charles II that he should not extend a general religious indulgence. Second, she should persuade him against reconvening Parliament. The French foreign minister replied to the ambassador, “The King highly appreciates the confidence you have cultivated with Lady Castlemaine…and since…you believe she can put more pressure on King Charles…than any other person, His Majesty wishes you to cultivate this good beginning with her…. In this regard he has ordered your brother to send you a gift of jewels from France which you may present to her in your own name—and jewels always go down well with ladies, whatever their mood.”18 The gift of jewels was valued at a thousand pounds. Delighted, Lady Castlemaine showed it to King Charles, who—not seeming to mind his mistress’s being bribed to influence him—agreed it was in excellent taste. The French-English alliance took two years to craft, but Barbara abandoned the cause early in the game. She kept the diamonds, however. The French king had more luck with Lady Castlemaine’s replacement, Louise de Kéroualle, who, fortunately for Louis, happened to be French. She rendered her native land such indispensable services in influencing Charles II’s pro-French position that in 1675 Louis gave her a pair of earrings worth the astonishing sum of eighteen thousand pounds, his most expensive gift to England that year, and certainly more lavish than anything he had ever given Charles’s queen.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Some of Napoleon’s predatory expeditions were completely unsuccessful. One evening the lecherous emperor entered a dimly lit drawing room, sat down on a sofa next to a fetching creature in an ornate gown, slipped his hand beneath the skirt to find a shapely leg within a silk stocking, and pinched it. The bishop of Nancy stood up bellowing in protest. The kinkiest sexual relationship on record between monarch and mistress was that of raven-haired Lola Montez and Ludwig I of Bavaria. Ludwig developed an obsession with the dancer’s feet. In her exile, he wrote her, “I take your feet into my mouth, where I have never had any others, that would have been repugnant to me, but with you, it’s just the opposite.”34 And another letter, “I want to take your feet in my mouth, at once, without giving you time to wash them after you’ve arrived from a trip.”35 Their letters indicated that Lola performed oral sex on Ludwig, and at other times he masturbated as he sucked on her feet. It is likely that these practices occurred in lieu of sexual intercourse, which Lola had with the king on only a handful of occasions. Perhaps she had little sexual attraction for a man thirty-four years her senior with a knob growing in the middle of his forehead. She often excused herself from intercourse on the grounds of menstruation, poor health, or the danger of pregnancy. In addition, during their fifteen-month relationship in Munich, Ludwig would ask her to wear pieces of flannel in two places next to her skin—we can only imagine which two places—and give them to him. Later, during her exile, he made the same request and she sent him the flannel she had worn. He particularly wanted to know which side of the flannel had been against her skin, as he would wear this side next to his. He insisted on knowing if she had worn the flannel in both places. During Lola’s exile, she sent Ludwig a letter with a little circle she had drawn to represent her mouth for him to kiss. Ludwig replied, “The drawing in your letter that is meant to represent your mouth (each time I give it a kiss), I took at first to represent your cuño [vagina], and my jarajo [penis] began to get erect. As much pleasure as your mouth has given me, your cuño would have pleased me greatly. I give kisses to one and to the other.”36

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I went to the pocket of my coat, and drew out the photograph of Kitty and me, that I had got from Jenny, at the Boy in the Boat; and I carried it to the bookcase and set it there, beneath the other portraits. ‘Your Lilian,’ I said, ‘may have got a thrill from gazing at Eleanor Marx. Sensible girls used to put pictures of me on their bedroom walls, five years ago.’‘Stop boasting,’ she answered. ‘All this talk about the music hall. I’ve never heard you sing a song to me.’She had taken my place in the armchair, and now I went and nudged at her knees with my own. ‘Tommy,’ I sang - it was an old song of W. B. Fair’s - ‘Tommy, make room for your uncle.’She laughed. ‘Is that a song you used to sing with Kitty?’‘I should say not! Kitty would have been too afraid, in case there was a real torn in the crowd who got the joke and thought we meant it.’‘Sing me one of the ones you sang with Kitty, then.’‘Well...’ I was not sure I liked the idea; but I sang her a few lines of our song about the sovereigns - strolling about the parlour as I did so, and kicking my moleskinned legs. When I finished, she shook her head.‘How proud she should have been of you!’ she said softly. ‘If I’d been her -’ She didn’t finish. She only rose, and came to me, and drew back the shirt where it flapped beneath my throat, and kissed the flesh that showed there, until I trembled. She had seemed chaste as a plaster saint to me, once; she had seemed plain. But she was not chaste now - she was marvellously bold and frank and ready; and the boldness made her bonny, made her gleam, like a kind of polish. I could not look at her and not want to touch her.