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 24 of 344 · 20 per page

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Oh, my dearest, how can you say such things? Have you lost all regard for your honour and that of your parents? Do you mean to say you prefer to stay on here, living in mortal sin as this man’s strumpet, rather than to live in Pisa as my wife? When this fellow grows tired of you, he will turn you out and make you an object of ridicule, whereas I will always cherish you, and you will always be the mistress of my house whatever happens. Do you mean to cast aside your honour and forsake one who loves you more than life itself, simply because of this immoderate and unseemly appetite of yours? Oh, my treasure, don’t say these things any more, come away with me. Now that I know what you want, I’ll make a special effort in the future. Do change your mind, my precious, and come back to me, for my life has been sheer misery ever since the day you were taken away from me.’ ‘As to my honour,’ the lady replied, ‘I mean to defend what remains of it as jealously as anyone. I only wish my parents had displayed an equal regard for it when they handed me over to you! But since they were so unconcerned about my honour then, I do not intend to worry about their honour now. And if I am living in mortar sin, it can be pestle sin7 too for all I care, so stop making such a song and dance about it. And let me tell you this, that I feel as though I am Paganino’s wife here. It was in Pisa that I felt like a strumpet, considering all that rigmarole about the moon’s phases and all those geometrical calculations that were needed before we could bring the planets into conjunction, whereas here Paganino holds me in his arms the whole night long and squeezes and bites me, and as God is my witness, he never leaves me alone.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  particular to women. I felt the country’s heart breaking. It was all breaking inside me. After one semester as a premed major I immersed myself in art studio classes and dance. I did not have the math and science background to do well in the chemistry and biology classes that were required for premed. I changed my major to studio art. “I’m not interested in marriage or finding yet another man to break my heart,” I remember telling a friend as we stood in the heat in front of the student union. The tech people were making a racket while they set up the microphones and tables for a National Indian Youth Council and Kiva Club press conference. I had just finalized the divorce with my son’s father. A fine-looking contingent from NIYC made its way to the makeshift stage to join our leaders for a press conference. Its members were modern-age warriors in sunglasses and with long black hair. There is my future, I remarked to myself as I watched a Pueblo man whose hair was pulled back in a sleek ponytail. I watched his sensitive hands as he balanced his coffee and unclasped his shoulder bag full of papers. He felt familiar, though I didn’t know him. I had heard him holding forth at meetings and had seen him in passing on campus. As we stood in the hot sun listening to the prepared statements, I felt the immense preciousness of each breath. We all mattered — even our small core fighting for justice despite all odds. That day would become one of those memories that surface in my mind at major transitional points in my life. I feel the sun on my shoulders, hear the scratch of the cheap sound system, and become emotional. I recall a Navajo girl in diapers learning to walk, her arms stretched out to her father. I remember picking up my son at the day care across campus, his bright yellow lunchbox shaped like a school bus swinging as he darted along beside me. That night there was an impromptu party after the strategy meeting. I watched from the doorway of the kitchen of the student apartment we gathered in, as the eloquent Pueblo man I’d eyed at the press conference easily rolled a cigarette with his hands, pulling me over to him with his eyes. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke in my direction. The lazy lasso hung in the air between us. I passed him a beer and took one for myself. “Who are you, skinny girl?” he asked. “Come over here.”

• From Trash (1988)

  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. I wanted to scream, “Hurry,” but clamped my teeth instead. If I said a word, she would just slow down and tease me more ruthlessly. I heard my sobs like they were echoes in a wind tunnel. She inched my jeans down over my butt until I was whining like a monkey strapped to a metal table. “Oh, fuck me. Goddamn it! Fuck me!” I begged. Toni slid me to the edge of the table until my head hung off and my hair swept the floor. When her fingers opened my cunt and her teeth found my breast, I started to scream and the monkeys in the wall cages screamed with me. I jerked and pushed against her, wanting to fight, wanting to give in, wanting the world to stop and wait while I did it all. When I finally started to come, I swung my head until the cages blurred and the monkeys became red and brown shimmering cartoons. Toni climbed over me and put her naked belly against mine, and I began to cry the deepest aching sobs. It felt as if my skin itself were trying to absorb her, soak up the peace and silence inside her. I wanted to stuff myself with her until I was all cotton-battened, dark and still. “Love,” Toni whispered. “Sex,” I told myself, inside my vast quiet open body. “Sex, sex, just sex.”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  But whilst he was struggling with his passion, the time arrived for marching against the Prince, who by now had almost reached the Duke’s territories. Accordingly, at a given signal, the Duke set out from Athens with Constant and all the others, and they took up combat positions along certain stretches of the frontier so as to halt the Prince’s advance. Constant’s thoughts and sentiments continued to focus on the woman, and now that the Duke was no longer near her, he fancied that he had an excellent opportunity for obtaining what he wanted. And so a few days after their arrival at the frontier, he pretended to be seriously ill so that he would have a pretext for returning to Athens. He then handed over all his powers to Manuel, and with the Duke’s permission he returned to Athens to stay with his sister. A few days later, having steered the conversation round to the sense of injury under which she was labouring on account of the Duke’s mistress, he told her that if she so desired he could be of considerable assistance to her in this affair, in that he could have the woman removed from where she was staying and taken elsewhere. Thinking that Constant was motivated by brotherly love and not by his love for the woman, the Duchess said that she would be only too pleased, provided it could be carried out in such a way that the Duke never discovered that she had given her consent to the scheme. Constant reassured her completely on this point, and accordingly the Duchess gave him permission to proceed in whatever way he considered best. The first thing he did was to fit out a fast boat in secret, which one evening, having informed his men on board what they were to do, he sent to a spot near the garden of the place where the lady was living. Then he went there with another group of his men, to be amicably received by her retainers as well as by the lady herself, who, at her visitor’s suggestion, accompanied Constant and his companions into the garden, whilst her servants trailed along behind. As though he wished to impart some message from the Duke, he then led her off alone in the direction of a gate, overlooking the sea, which had already been unlocked by one of his accomplices. At a given signal, the boat nosed her way inshore, and having had the lady seized and bundled quickly aboard, he turned to her servants, saying: ‘Unless you want to be killed, don’t move or make any sound. It is not my intention to steal the Duke’s mistress, but to remove the injury he does to my sister.’

• From Trash (1988)

  “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. For breakfast she wanted me to cook grits in a twenty-quart pan, though she wasn’t sure margarine wouldn’t be healthier than butter, and maybe most people would just like granola anyway. “They’ll want doughnuts and coffee,” I told her matter-of-factly. I had a vision of myself standing in front of a hundred angry lesbians crying out for coffee and white sugar. Lee soothed me with kisses and poppy-seed cake made with gluten flour, assured me that it would be fun to run the kitchen with her.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Although he could obtain no other answer from her at this first encounter, the Provost was not the sort of man to be discouraged or defeated by a single rebuff, and with his habitual arrogance and effrontery he importuned her repeatedly by means of letters and messages, as well as by word of mouth whenever he saw her coming into church. And so the lady, finding that his attentions were becoming quite intolerable, resolved that she would teach him a salutary lesson, albeit she would do nothing without first consulting her brothers. She therefore told them all about the Provost’s importunate behaviour, and explained what she was proposing to do about it. Having obtained their full consent, a few days later she went to the church as usual, and no sooner did the Provost catch sight of her than he came over to her and spoke to her in his customary, over-familiar manner. When she saw him coming, the lady fixed her gaze upon him and gave him a cheerful smile. So the Provost led her to a secluded corner of the church, and plied her with his usual stream of endearments, whereupon the lady fetched a deep sigh and said: ‘Sir, I have frequently heard it said that no fortress is sufficiently strong to withstand a perpetual siege, and I have now discovered, from my own experience, that this is perfectly true. For you have beleaguered me so completely with your tender words and countless acts of courtesy that you have forced me to break my former resolve. And seeing that you find me so much to your liking, I am willing to surrender.’ ‘Heaven be praised!’ said the Provost, who could scarcely contain his joy. ‘To tell you the truth, madam, I am amazed that you should have held out for so long, seeing that this has never happened to me with any woman before. And in fact, I have sometimes had occasion to reflect, that if women were made of silver, you couldn’t turn them into coins, as they bend too easily. But no more of this: when and where can we be together?’ ‘Sweet my lord,’ replied the lady, ‘we can meet whenever you please, for I have no husband to whom I must give an account of my nights. But as to where we are going to meet, I have no idea.’ ‘Why not?’ said the Provost. ‘Why don’t we meet in your house?’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Federigo, who desired this beyond measure, taking his opportunity, repaired thither on the day appointed him towards vespers and Gianni not coming thither that evening, supped and lay the night in all ease and delight with the lady, who, being in his arms, taught him that night a good half dozen of her husband's lauds. Then, neither she nor Federigo purposing that this should be the last, as it had been the first time [of their foregathering], they took order together on this wise, so it should not be needful to send the maid for him each time, to wit, that every day, as he came and went to and from a place he had a little farther on, he should keep his eye on a vineyard that adjoined the house, where he would see an ass's skull set up on one of the vine poles, which whenas he saw with the muzzle turned towards Florence, he should without fail and in all assurance betake himself to her that evening after dark; and if he found the door shut he should knock softly thrice and she would open to him; but that, whenas he saw the ass's muzzle turned towards Fiesole, he should not come, for that Gianni would be there; and doing on this wise, they foregathered many a time. But once, amongst other times, it chanced that, Federigo being one night to sup with Mistress Tessa and she having let cook two fat capons, Gianni, who was not expected there that night, came thither very late, whereat the lady was much chagrined and having supped with her husband on a piece of salt pork, which she had let boil apart, caused the maid wrap the two boiled capons in a white napkin and carry them, together with good store of new-laid eggs and a flask of good wine, into a garden she had, whither she could go, without passing through the house, and where she was wont to sup whiles with her lover, bidding her lay them at the foot of a peach-tree that grew beside a lawn there. But such was her trouble and annoy that she remembered not to bid the maid wait till Federigo should come and tell him that Gianni was there and that he should take the viands from the garden; wherefore, she and Gianni betaking themselves to bed and the maid likewise, it was not long before Federigo came to the door and knocked softly once. The door was so near to the bedchamber that Gianni heard it incontinent, as also did the lady; but she made a show of being asleep, so her husband might have no suspicion of her. After waiting a little, Federigo knocked a second time, whereupon Gianni, marvelling, nudged his wife somewhat and said, 'Tessa, hearest thou what I hear? Meseemeth there is a knocking at our door.'

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Belcolore came down and taking a seat, fell to picking over cabbage-seed which her husband had threshed out a while before; whereupon quoth the priest to her, 'Well, Belcolore, wilt thou still cause me die for thee on this wise?' She laughed and answered, 'What is it I do to you?' Quoth he, 'Thou dost nought to me, but thou sufferest me not do to thee that which I would fain do and which God commandeth.' 'Alack!' cried Belcolore, 'Go to, go to. Do priests do such things?' 'Ay do we,' replied he, 'as well as other men; and why not? And I tell thee more, we do far and away better work and knowest thou why? Because we grind with a full head of water. But in good sooth it shall be shrewdly to thy profit, an thou wilt but abide quiet and let me do.' 'And what might this "shrewdly to my profit" be?' asked she. 'For all you priests are stingier than the devil.' Quoth he, 'I know not; ask thou. Wilt have a pair of shoes or a head-lace or a fine stammel waistband or what thou wilt?' 'Pshaw!' cried Belcolore. 'I have enough and to spare of such things; but an you wish me so well, why do you not render me a service, and I will do what you will?' Quoth the priest, 'Say what thou wilt have of me, and I will do it willingly.' Then said she, 'Needs must I go to Florence, come Saturday, to carry back the wool I have spun and get my spinning-wheel mended; and an you will lend me five crowns, which I know you have by you, I can take my watchet gown out of pawn and my Sunday girdle[367] that I brought my husband, for you see I cannot go to church nor to any decent place, because I have them not; and after I will still do what you would have me.' 'So God give me a good year,' replied the priest, 'I have them not about me; but believe me, ere Saturday come, I will contrive that thou shalt have them, and that very willingly.' 'Ay,' said Belcolore, 'you are all like this, great promisers, and after perform nothing to any. Think you to do with me as you did with Biliuzza, who went off with the ghittern-player?[368] Cock's faith, then, you shall not, for that she is turned a common drab only for that. If you have them not about you, go for them.' 'Alack,' cried the priest, 'put me not upon going all the way home. Thou seest that I have the luck just now to find thee alone, but maybe, when I return, there will be some one or other here to hinder us; and I know not when I shall find so good an opportunity again.' Quoth she, 'It is well; an you choose to go, go; if not, go without.' [Footnote 367: Or apron.]

• 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)

  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 The Decameron (1353)

  Next, having approached the bed and found the lady with a little girl beside her, both soundly asleep, he uncovered her from head to toe and saw that she was every bit as beautiful without any clothes as when she was fully dressed. But her body contained no unusual mark of any description except for the fact that below her left breast there was a mole, surrounded by a few strands of fine, golden hair.2 Having noted this, he silently covered her up again, although on seeing how beautiful she was he was sorely tempted to hazard his life and lie down beside her. However, having heard tales of her unbending strictness and her violent distaste for that sort of thing, he decided not to risk it. Roaming about the room at his leisure for most of the night, he removed a purse and a long cloak from a strong-box, together with some rings and one or two ornamental belts, all of which he stowed away in the chest before retiring into it himself and clamping down the lid again from the inside. And in this way he spent two whole nights there without the lady noticing that anything was amiss. The good woman, following his instructions, returned on the morning of the third day for her chest, and had it taken back to its original place. Ambrogiuolo let himself out, and having paid the woman the sum he had promised her, he hurried back to Paris with his ill-gotten gains, arriving well within the agreed time-limit. He then called together the merchants who had been at the discussion when the bets were placed, and in Bernabò’s presence he announced that since he had made good his boast he had won the wager. By way of proof, he began by describing the shape of the bedroom and the pictures it contained, then he showed them the things he had brought back with him, claiming that they had been given to him by the lady herself. Bernabò conceded that his description of the room was correct, and furthermore he admitted that he did indeed recognize the exhibits as having once belonged to his lady. But he pointed out that Ambrogiuolo could have learnt about the arrangement of the room from one of the servants, and obtained these objects in similar fashion. So that, unless further evidence was forthcoming, he did not feel that the claim was substantiated. ‘In all conscience, this should have been quite sufficient,’ Ambrogiuolo retorted. ‘But since you want me to provide further evidence, I will do so. And I will tell you that just below her left breast, your wife Zinevra has a sizeable little mole surrounded by about half-a dozen fine golden hairs.’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  About a mile away from Trapani itself, Messer Amerigo kept a very charming property, to which his wife, with their daughter and various other ladies and maidservants, frequently went by way of recreation. Having gone there one day when the weather was very hot, taking Pietro with them, they suddenly found that the sky had become overcast with thick dark clouds, such as we occasionally observe in the course of the summer. And so the lady, not wishing to be caught there by the storm, set off with her companions along the road leading back to Trapani, making all the haste they could. But Pietro and Violante, being young and fit, soon found themselves well ahead of the girl’s mother and the other ladies, perhaps because they were prompted no less by their love than by fear of the weather. And when they had drawn so far ahead of the others that they were almost out of sight, there was a series of thunderclaps,6 immediately followed by a very heavy hailstorm, from which the lady and her companions took shelter in the house of a farm-labourer. Pietro and the girl, having nowhere more convenient to take refuge, entered an old, abandoned cottage that was almost totally in ruins; and, having both squeezed in beneath the fragment of roof that still remained intact, they were forced by the inadequacy of their shelter to huddle up close to one another. The contact of their bodies made them pluck up the courage to disclose their amorous yearnings, Pietro being the first to broach the subject by saying: ‘Would to God that this hailstorm would never come to an end, so that I could remain here for ever!’ ‘That would suit me very well,’ said the girl. Having uttered these words, they went on to hold and squeeze one another’s hands, after which they proceeded to embrace and then to exchange kisses, while the hailstorm continued. But to cut a long story short, by the time the weather improved they had tasted Love’s ultimate delights and arranged to meet again in secret for their mutual pleasure. The cottage was not far from the city gate, and once the storm was over they went and waited there for the lady, and returned with her to the house. Every so often, employing the maximum of secrecy and discretion, they would meet again, to their considerable enjoyment, in the same place as before. But what happened in the end was that the girl became pregnant, much to the dismay of both parties, whereupon she took various measures to frustrate the course of nature and miscarry, but all to no effect. Pietro, in fear of his life, made up his mind to flee, and told her so. But on hearing this, the girl said: ‘If you go away, I shall kill myself without fail!’ To which Pietro, who was deeply in love with her, replied:

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Being quite unprepared for what was to follow, the Count answered her summons without the slightest delay. Having entered the room, he found himself alone with the lady, and at her request he sat down beside her on a sofa. He then asked her, twice, why she had summoned him, but each time the lady remained silent. Finally, driven on by her passion, she blushed a deep crimson and, almost on the point of tears, trembling from head to toe, she started hesitantly to speak: ‘Sweet friend and master, dearest one of all, since you are wise you will readily acknowledge that men and women are remarkably frail, and that, for a variety of reasons, some are frailer than others. It is therefore right and proper that before an impartial judge, people of different social rank should not be punished equally for committing an identical sin. For nobody would, I think, deny that if a member of the poorer classes, obliged to earn a living through manual toil, were to surrender blindly to the promptings of love, he or she would be far more culpable than a rich and leisured lady who lacked none of the necessary means to gratify her tiniest whim. ‘I consider, then, that circumstances such as these must go a long way towards excusing any woman who allows herself to be enmeshed in the toils of love; and if, in addition, she has chosen a judicious and valiant lover on whom to bestow her affection, she no longer needs any justification whatever. Now, since it is my opinion that both of these prerequisites are present in my own case, and since, moreover, I possess additional incentives for loving, such as my youth and my husband’s absence, they must inevitably operate in my favour and elicit your sympathy for my impetuous passion. And if they carry as much influence as they ought to carry with a man of your experience, I appeal to you for your advice and assistance.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  I was once informed that there lived in Perugia a young man whose name was Andreuccio di Pietro, a horsedealer, who, having heard good reports of the Neapolitan horse-trade, stuffed five hundred gold florins in his purse and, though he had never left home before, set out for Naples with one or two other merchants. He arrived one Sunday evening as darkness was falling, and the next morning, having been told by his innkeeper how to get there, he went to the market. He saw a great many horses, to a number of which he took a liking, and he made offers for several of them without however being able to strike a single bargain. But in order to indicate his willingness to buy, he kept pulling out his purse bulging with florins, and waving it about in full view of all the passers-by, thus displaying a lack of both caution and experience. While he was conducting his business in this manner and holding out his money for inspection, it happened that a young Sicilian woman passed by, without attracting his attention. She was not only very beautiful, but willing to do any man’s bidding for a modest fee, and when she saw the purse she immediately fell to thinking how contented she would be if she could lay her hands on the money. However, she walked straight on. She was accompanied by an old woman, also Sicilian, who on seeing Andreuccio allowed her companion to go on ahead, whilst she herself rushed over to him and threw her arms around him in a display of affection. On seeing this, the young woman said nothing, but held herself aloof from the proceedings and waited for the other woman to catch her up. Andreuccio, having turned round and recognized the old woman, made a great fuss of her and extracted a promise that she would call and see him at his inn. After conversing briefly with him, she then went away, and Andreuccio returned to business, without however purchasing anything that morning. The young woman, having spied Andreuccio’s purse and noted how well her companion was acquainted with him, was determined to see if she could find some way of relieving him of the whole or a part of his cash. So she began to put out feelers, asking the older woman who he was, where he came from, what he was doing in Naples, and how it came about that she knew him. Andreuccio himself could hardly have furnished her with a more particular account of his affairs than the one given her by the old woman, for she had lived with Andreuccio’s father over a long period in Sicily, and later in Perugia. Moreover she was also able to reveal where he was staying and why he had come to Naples.

• From Trash (1988)

  The truth was Toni loved the lab, the perfectly square cinder-block rooms, the walls of cages, and the irritable way I’d stalk around with my broom and dustpan. She loved to follow me over in the evening to watch me sweep up the little gray turds and chopped-up computer printouts that lined the bottoms of the cages. Sipping from her omnipresent thermos of vodka and orange juice, she’d throw cashews at the bald-headed monkeys and tease me about how my ass moved when I bent over with my pan. Once I’d gotten so angry I’d grabbed her thermos and threatened to kick her out of “my” lab. “Oh sweetheart, you don’t want me to go,” she’d told me, and tried to coax me up on one of the big empty lab tables beside her. “Have a sip. Have a little smoke. Tell me how you always wanted to find somebody like me to tease you, and love you, and suck on your nipples till you’re howling at the moon.” “Oh yeah. Uh huh. I just always knew some black-eyed woman was gonna come along dying to fuck me silly in front of a bunch of toothless monkeys.” “Prescient. That’s what you were.” “Desperate, maybe. That’s what I was when I let you talk me into bringing you over here.” “Oh, girl.” She held a joint in her left hand and using her right hand only, she pulled out a match, struck it against the pack, lit the joint, took a puff, and then held it out to me. “Have a smoke and lighten up. I’m the one on your side, you know.” Her mouth was wide and soft, the right side turned up a little in that way made my hips feel loose. Above that mouth her black eyes were shining and bright. Sometimes when I wanted to make her feel good, I would make my own eyes widen, intensify my gaze, and give her the look of love she was giving me at that moment. 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.