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 Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  The two had shared wrestling rooms and road trips for years, summers on end, as part of the youth wrestling fanaticism in the state. They had known for years that they were different, a little special. Dan was more pronouncedly so, the son of a wrestling coach; it was a given, knowing Dan’s father, Doug LeClere, that Daniel would be brought into the sport and kept there, even if no one realized back then how much he might achieve. It would never occur to Dan that he might find himself, at the moment of approaching that kind of greatness, in a position to suddenly lose it all. It would never occur to him to think that way, because there’s no future in it, and that makes it impractical, and wrestling, like farming, is just not the sort of thing one can do and be impractical at the same time. And it would certainly never occur to Dan that his path might carry a personal cost beyond the physical, beyond exhaustion and mere pain. He would never see the dark side coming. Only gradually would it become apparent that Dan had other opponents to deal with before he could try to become the wrestler that he and Doug wanted him to be. Jay and Dan have known each other since elementary school, began wrestling at about the same time they got any good at walking. They are the ones who grew up in the shadow of the Iowa Hawkeyes program, becoming Little Hawks themselves, dreaming of their futures with Gable in Iowa City. They are the ones who gradually shunned other sports, casting them off one by one, year by year, advancing upon this singular pursuit. They will join with six or eight other athletes from the eastern part of the state to form arguably the greatest senior class in the annals of wrestling in Iowa. But without that fourth title, Jay and Dan will join a long list of people who won a bunch but didn’t really get it all—respected wrestlers, who had periodic bouts of excellence without quite ascending to heaven. Merely really good, is all. By essentially winning everything in sight for as long as anyone has been taking notice, Jay and Dan have made it clear what the expectations should be of their talent. You don’t leave your talent lying around in a sport like wrestling. You tend it. They will tend their talent, then, because nobody else can. They will ultimately do it on their own, because the sport is wrestling, and the thing about wrestling that makes it so perfect is the fact of there being no easy way to approach it. You want to become an immortal? Listen, everybody does. It’s the part about actually getting there that makes this such an Iowa tale.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Objection 2: Further, hunger and thirst after justice imply a desire for good. Now this belongs properly to charity, to which the gift of wisdom, and not the gift of fortitude, corresponds, as stated above ([3419]Q[45]). Therefore this beatitude corresponds, not to the gift of fortitude, but to the gift of wisdom. Objection 3: Further, the fruits are consequent upon the beatitudes, since delight is essential to beatitude, according to Ethic. i, 8. Now the fruits, apparently, include none pertaining to fortitude. Therefore neither does any beatitude correspond to it. On the contrary, Augustine says (De Serm. Dom. in Monte i): “Fortitude becomes the hungry and thirsty: since those who desire to enjoy true goods, and wish to avoid loving earthly and material things, must toil.” I answer that, As stated above ([3420]Q[121], A[2]), Augustine makes the beatitudes correspond to the gifts according to the order in which they are set forth, observing at the same time a certain fittingness between them. Wherefore he ascribes the fourth beatitude, concerning the hunger and thirst for justice, to the fourth gift, namely fortitude. Yet there is a certain congruity between them, because, as stated (A[1] ), fortitude is about difficult things. Now it is very difficult, not merely to do virtuous deeds, which receive the common designation of works of justice, but furthermore to do them with an unsatiable desire, which may be signified by hunger and thirst for justice. Reply to Objection 1: As Chrysostom says (Hom. xv in Matth.), we may understand here not only particular, but also universal justice, which is related to all virtuous deeds according to Ethic. v, 1, wherein whatever is hard is the object of that fortitude which is a gift. Reply to Objection 2: Charity is the root of all the virtues and gifts, as stated above (Q[23], A[8], ad 3; [3421]FS, Q[68], A[4], ad 3). Hence whatever pertains to fortitude may also be referred to charity. Reply to Objection 3: There are two of the fruits which correspond sufficiently to the gift of fortitude: namely, patience, which regards the enduring of evils: and longanimity, which may regard the long delay and accomplishment of goods. OF THE PRECEPTS OF FORTITUDE (TWO ARTICLES)We must next consider the precepts of fortitude: (1) The precepts of fortitude itself; (2) The precepts of its parts. Whether the precepts of fortitude are suitably given in the Divine Law?Objection 1: It seems that the precepts of fortitude are not suitably given in the Divine Law. For the New Law is more perfect than the Old Law. Yet the Old Law contains precepts of fortitude (Dt. 20). Therefore precepts of fortitude should have been given in the New Law also. Objection 2: Further, affirmative precepts are of greater import than negative precepts, since the affirmative include the negative, but not vice versa. Therefore it is unsuitable for the Divine Law to contain none but negative precepts in prohibition of fear.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  LEO. (Serm. 60.4.) He did not out of any fear forsake Christ, but through lust of money cast Him off; for in comparison of the love of money all our affections are feeble; the soul athirst for gain fears not to die for a very little; there is no trace of righteousness in that heart in which covetousness has once taken up its abode. The traitor Judas, intoxicated with this bane, in his thirst for lucre was so foolishly hardened, as to sell his Lord and Master. JEROME. The wretched Judas would fain replace, by the sale of his Master, that loss which he supposed he had incurred by the ointment. And he does not demand any fixed sum, lest his treachery should see in a gainful thing, but as though delivering up a worthless slave, he left it to those who bought, to determine how much they would give. ORIGEN. The same do all who take any material or worldly things to cast out of their thoughts the Saviour and the word of truth which was in them. And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver, as many pieces as the Saviour had dwelt years in the worlda. JEROME.Joseph was not sold as many, following the LXX (Gen. 37:28.), think for twenty pieces of gold, but as the Hebrew text has for twenty pieces of silver, for it could not be that the servant should be more valuable than his Master. AUGUSTINE. (Quæst. Ev. i. 41) That the Lord was sold for thirty pieces of silver by Judas, denotes the unrighteous Jews, who pursuing things carnal and temporal, which belong to the five bodily senses, refuse to have Christ; and forasmuch as they did this in the sixth age of the world, their receiving five times six as the price of the Lord is thus signified; and because the Lord’s words are silver, but they understood even the Law carnally, they had, as it were, stamped on silver the image of that worldly dominion which they held to when they renounced the Lord. ORIGEN. The opportunity which Judas sought is further explained by Luke, how he might betray him in the absence of the multitude; (Luke 22:6.) when the populace was not with Him, but He was withdrawn with His disciples. And this he did, delivering Him up after supper, when He was withdrawn to the garden of Gethsemane. And from that time forward, such has been the season sought for by those that would betray the word of God in time of persecution when the multitude of believers is not around the word of truth. 26:17–1917. Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the Passover?

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  SEDUCTION OF EVE BY THE DEVILThe devil, who had already fallen into sin, saw that man was so equipped that he could arrive at everlasting happiness, from which the devil himself had been cast out. Yet, as he knew, man could still sin. So he sought to lead man astray from the straight path of justice, by attacking him on his weaker side; that is, he tempted the woman, in whom the gift of light or wisdom shone with a lesser brilliance. The more easily to induce her to break the command, he lyingly drove from her mind the fear of death, and promised her what man naturally desires, namely, the overcoming of ignorance. “Your eyes shall be opened,” he said (Gen. 3:5) ; and in adding: “You shall be as gods,” he held out to her the excellence of greatness. He further promised perfect knowledge, with the words: “knowing good and evil.” On the part of his intellect man naturally shuns ignorance and desires knowledge; and on the part of his will, which is naturally free, he desires high station and perfection, so that he may be subject to no one, or at any rate to as few as possible. CHAPTER 190 THE WOMAN’S SINThe woman craved both the promised exaltation and the perfection of knowledge. Added to this were the beauty and sweetness of the fruit, which attracted her to eat of it. And so, scorning the fear of death, she violated God’s command, and ate of the forbidden tree. Upon analysis, her sin is found to have many aspects. First, there was a sin of pride, whereby she inordinately desired her own excellence. Her second sin was one of curiosity, whereby she coveted knowledge beyond the limits fixed for her. The third sin was that of gluttony, whereby the sweetness of the fruit enticed her to eat. A fourth sin was infidelity, growing out of a false estimate of God, so that she believed the words of the devil who gave the lie to God. Fifthly, there was a sin of disobedience, consisting in a transgression of God’s command. CHAPTER 191 THE MAN’S SINThe sin came to the man through the woman’s blandishments. He, however, as the Apostle says in 1 Timothy 2:14, “ was not seduced,” as the woman was. That is, he did not believe the words the devil spoke against God. The thought could not cross his mind that God would utter a lying threat or that He would forbid the use of a thing for no good purpose. Yet he was drawn by the devil’s promise to an undue desire of excellence and knowledge. As a result, his will fell away from the right pursuit of justice and, consenting to his wife’s importunities, he followed her in transgressing the divine command, and ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree. CHAPTER 192

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  One new entrant tottered to the deserted front row, which in this tiny space was only a few feet from the screen. There was a rustle of papers, and I could see him in silhouette remove his coat, fold it neatly and place it on the seat next to that in which he then sat down. The rustling recurred intermittently, and I guessed he must be a man I’d seen at the Brutus the very first time I went there, a spry little chap of sixty-five or so who, like a schoolgirl taken to a romantic U picture, sat entranced by the movies and worked his way through a bag of boiled sweets as the action unfolded. A fiver from his pension, perhaps, and 30p for the humbugs, might be set aside weekly for this little outing. How he must look forward to it! His was a complete and innocent absorption in the fantasy world on screen. Could he look back to a time when he had behaved like these glowing, thoughtless teenagers, who were now locked together sucking on each other’s cocks in the hay? Or was this the image of a new society we had made, where every desire could find its gratification? The old man was happy with his cough-drops, but I wanted some other oral pleasure (the Winchester slang ‘suction’, meaning sweets, I realised was the comprehensive term). Not, however, from the person who came scouting up to the rear rows now, one of the plump, bespectacled Chinese youths who, with day-return businessmen and quite distinguished Oxbridge dons, made a haunt of places like this, hopping hopefully from row to row, so persistent that they were inevitably, from time to time, successful. The man on the end of the row had to shift, and I realised I was to be the next recipient of Eastern approaches. The boy sat down next to me, and though I carried on looking at the screen and laid my hand across my cock, I was aware that he was staring at me intently to try and make out my face in the darkness, and I felt his breath on my cheek. Then there was the pressure of his shoulder against mine. I gathered myself emphatically, and leant across into the empty place on the other side. He sprawled rather, with his legs wide apart, one of them straying into my space and pressing against my thigh.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘You’re looking very big, Stan,’ I said, smiling at him teasingly. He was a hard man to clothe and at night often went out as he was now, his torso draped in the tatters of some sweat-scorched singlet, a broad leather belt (which he assured me came in handy) needlessly supporting pale old jeans rubbed thin under his bum and along the thick bolt of his cock. He once showed me a picture of how he looked at fifteen—tall and uncertain, and indifferently built. I think some sort of crisis about being gay had got him to the gym, which gave him both lovers and a new body. An element of defiance had made him a now almost unconscious exhibitionist. A lot of sex went on in the lock-ups of the Shaft, but one evening I had stumbled in for a piss to find Stan fucking a boy just inside the door. He had him with one leg cocked up on a washbasin and as he laid into his ass the bracket of the basin was breaking free of the wall, and the kid, who looked the younger and slighter in his giant grasp, rode up and down against his own breath-smeared reflection in the mirror. An ever-growing group of admirers deserted the dance floor and stood around feeling themselves and muttering encouragement. Phil was back with the much-jogged pints of beer. I craved liquid, and as I drank my dry palate seemed to admit the alcohol straight to my brain. ‘See you, sweetheart,’ said Stan, realising we would be no good to him—the endearment, as always when spoken by a real man, a virtual stranger, moving me for a few seconds intensely. Phil watched him amble off. ‘Some bloke grabbed my cock, at the bar,’ he said, in a tone which strove to combine pleasure and resentment and came out, neutrally, as a statement of fact. I drank and then kissed him, squirting cold lager into his mouth, though much of it, in his surprise, ran back down his chin. As I held him I could squeeze the sweat from his shirt where it clung down the channel of his back—so I took his drink from him, and helped him tug the wet garment off. The atmosphere was more and more liquid. Everyone was stripping off, and those who touched each other could cream off the sweat with a finger.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  He was thinner than I expected, less defined, and the hair that covered his torso had been shaved to bare stubble, so that for the first time I realized how young he was (I would learn he was twenty-three) as he stood boyish and exposed before me. He motioned me forward again with the exaggerated courtesy some drunk men assume, which can precede, the thought even in my excitement was never far, equally exaggerated outbursts of rage. Mitko surprised me then by leaning forward and laying his mouth on mine, kissing me generously, unrestrainedly, and though I hadn’t done anything to invite such contact it was welcome and I sucked eagerly on his tongue, which was antiseptic with alcohol. I knew he was performing a desire he didn’t feel, and really I think he was drunk past the possibility of desire. But then there’s something theatrical in all our embraces, I think, as we weigh our responses against those we perceive or project; always we desire too much or not enough, and compensate accordingly. I was performing too, pretending to believe that his show of passion was a genuine response to my own desire, about which there was nothing feigned. As if he sensed these thoughts he pressed me more tightly to him, and for the first time I caught, beneath the more powerful and nearly overwhelming smell of alcohol, his own scent, which would be the greatest source of the pleasure I took from him and which I would seek out (at his neck and crotch, beneath his arms) at each of our meetings. It put an end to my thinking, I lifted one of his hands above his head, breaking our kiss to press my face into the pit of his arm (he shaved there too, the skin was rough against my tongue), sucking at his scent as if taking some necessary nourishment at an inadequate source. And then I sank to my knees and took him in my mouth. A few minutes later, well before he had given me what I was owed, the obligation he took on when he took a soiled twenty-leva note from my hand, Mitko made a strange loud sound and tensed himself, placing both of his palms flat against the sides of the stall. It was a poor performance of an orgasm, if that’s what it was, not least because for the few minutes I had sucked him he had shown no response at all. Chakai , I said to him in protest as he pulled away, iskam oshte , I want more, but he didn’t relent, he smiled at me and motioned me back, still courteous as he put on the shirt he had hung so carefully behind him.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  But I insisted, wanting to assert something, to set the terms of the evening, to claim, finally, the goods for which I had contracted, to put it as brutally as that; it was something brutal that I wanted. When he saw I wouldn’t be put off, Mitko became compliant, even eager; he rose from the chair and put his arms around my neck, then hopped and wrapped his legs around me. I had never felt his weight before, he had always been standing when we had sex, and I was surprised by how light he was as I carried him from the kitchen to the bed. I set him down and he stretched out, extending his arms to either side, as if in welcome, and the new sternness I had assumed fell away; I was the compliant one now, this compliance being, finally, what I had purchased. The room was dark, but I could still see him in the light from the hallway and the window, the glow of neon signs and streetlamps, and I gazed at him without moving, as if now that he had given me permission I was hesitant to touch him. He smiled at me, or at what he saw on my face, and then he reached up and pulled me to his mouth, which was sweet with soda. He kept his hand at my neck, and after we kissed he pulled my face away and then pushed my head down; he was already hard, he had responded to our kiss as much as I. But I wasn’t so compliant after all, I shook my head to free it, and then I took his hands in mine, as I had imagined doing, his wounded hands, and brought them to my lips. He smiled at me again, tilting his head a little in confusion at the delay, but I didn’t delay for long, and he shifted his legs apart as I lowered my mouth to his cock, clasping his hips with both my hands like the brim of a cup from which I drank. He was wrong to have feared (if he did fear it) that I would want him to leave once he had settled our accounts, as it were, that I would make him return to the center and wander its streets. I wanted him to stay, I wanted to lie close to him, to touch him without passion now but more tenderly, and I felt disappointment and even pain when he bounded up off the bed, as if eager to escape. Everything good, he asked, vsichko li e nared , and then he receded down the hall naked, returning to the computer as I put my clothes back on.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Penny is right about spending money though. Penny is right about everything. Penny said if I were to save about twenty dollars a month and give it to Northwest Medical Teams or Amnesty International, I would literally be saving lives. Literally. But that stupid pleasure center goes off in my brain, and it feels like there is nothing I can do about it. I told Penny about the pleasure center and how I needed the remote control car to make the pleasure center light up, and she just took the phone away from her ear and beat it against her chair. The thing about the extension cord is I was pretty sure I had one in the basement, in a box with some other cords, but if I looked I might have found it, and then I would not have been able to go to Home Depot. What we needed was a new extension cord, the latest technology, I thought to myself. I put my boots on very quickly. The good voice, the frugal voice, the Penny voice started inside my head: Don, please, there are children who could use this money for Christmas presents. It’s August, I said out loud. What about environmental movements, Good Voice said, what about the rain forests that could hold a cure for cancer, a cure for AIDS. Tree hugger, I said to Good Voice while putting on my motorcycle helmet. You have a problem, Good Voice said. You’re a pansy, I said back. You’re irresponsible! Good Voice shouted. Shut your gaping pie hole, I yelled back. The thing about new things is you feel new when you buy them, you feel as though you are somebody different because you own something different. We are our possessions, you know. There are people who get addicted to buying new stuff. Things. Piles and piles of things. But the new things become old things so quickly. We need new things to replace the old things. I like things with buttons. A writer I like named Ravi Zacharias says that the heart desires wonder and magic. He says technology is what man uses to supplant the desire for wonder. Ravi Zacharias says that what the heart is really longing to do is worship, to stand in awe of a God we don’t understand and can’t explain. I started thinking about what Penny was saying and what Ravi Zacharias says. I was riding my motorcycle down to Home Depot, wondering if Penny and Ravi would make good friends, when I decided I was being stupid, very wasteful and stupid. I knew we had an extension cord in the basement, and I knew I was really going to Home Depot to get some drill bits or a laser level or one of those tap lights, and that I wasn’t going to get an extension chord but something else, something I would find when I got there, something that would call to me from its shelf.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  There was a third man there as well, who entered and exited the farthest stall several times, looking earnestly at us but never approaching or speaking a word. Finally, after we had reached the end of our introductions and after this third man entered his stall again, closing the door behind him, Mitko (as I knew him now) pointed toward him and gave me a look of great significance, saying Iska , he wants, and then making a lewd gesture the meaning of which was clear. Both he and his companion, whom he referred to as brat mi and who hadn’t spoken since I arrived, laughed at this, looking at me as if to include me in the joke, though of course I was as much an object of their ridicule as the man listening to them from inside his stall. I was so eager to be one of their party that almost without thinking I smiled and wagged my head from side to side, in the gesture that signifies here both agreement or affirmation and a certain wonder at the vagaries of the world. But I saw in the glance they exchanged that this attempt to associate with them only increased the distance between us. Wanting to regain my footing, and after pausing to arrange the necessary syllables in my head (which seldom, despite these efforts, emerge as they should, even now when I’m told that I speak hubavo and pravilno , when I see surprise at my proficiency in a language that hardly anyone bothers to learn who hasn’t learned it already), I asked him what he was doing there, in that chill room with its impression of damp. Above us it felt like summer still, the plaza was full of light and people, some of them, riding skateboards or in-line skates or elaborately tricked-out bicycles, the same age as these men. Mitko looked at his friend, whom he referred to as his brother although they were not brothers, and then the friend moved toward the outer door and Mitko drew his wallet out of his back pocket. He opened it and took out a small square packet of glossy paper, a page torn from a magazine and folded over many times. He unfolded this page carefully, his hands shaking slightly, balancing it to keep whatever loose material was inside from falling to the dampness and filth on which we stood. I guessed what he would reveal, of course; my only surprise was at how little he had, a mere crumble of leaves. Ten leva, he said, and then added that he and his friend and I, the three of us, might smoke it together.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Then there were photographs in which he wore nothing at all, angling himself in postures of erotic display that were difficult to reconcile with the sweetly innocent gesture he had just made. In one of these photos Mitko was lying on a bed, leaning on one side so that he faced the camera, fully extending the length of his long body. He was hard, and one of his hands angled his cock, too, toward the lens, the focus and centerpiece of the photograph. He wasn’t smiling now, his expression was serious, as is almost always true of the photographs on such sites; I’ve spent whole nights scrolling through them, feeling an odd mixture of anticipation and dullness, each click a promise of novelty that’s never kept. Even without his smile, there was an intensity to Mitko’s gaze that convinced me this camera, too, was held by someone significant, someone who elicited his look; and the effectiveness of the photograph (were I scrolling through images I would have lingered, I would have been caught by him) was precisely this gaze, which, though it wasn’t meant for any of the men who might be scanning through these pages, still we could claim for ourselves. I tried to claim it now, I turned to Mitko and placed my hand on the inside of his thigh and again leaned in to kiss his neck; the photos had excited me, I wanted to pull him away from the computer. Chakai , he said, imame vreme , we have time, I want to show you something else. He clicked on another photo, and I saw that I was right, there had been someone behind the camera: a young man of Mitko’s height and build, with the same style of hair and dress. They were fully clothed, which only made their embrace more erotic, and their attention was focused wholly on each other; there was no one behind the camera now, it was held by Mitko, one of whose arms extended weirdly toward us, toward me and that other Mitko as we gazed at him together. His other arm was wrapped around the boy, both of whose arms in turn gripped him; they seemed balanced in desire, in their urgency and their hunger for each other. It was tempting to think there was nothing theatrical about this kiss, that it was wholly sincere; and yet the very lens that allowed me access to it made their embrace a pose, so that even if their audience was only hypothetical, even it was only a later version of themselves, later by a year or an hour, still it made their grappling, however passionate, a performance. Here Mitko, the Mitko who sat next to me, taking long drafts from the tumbler he had refilled, put his finger on the screen, a finger stained with cigarettes ( mrusen ) and flattened with labor, broad and inelegant, the new wounds still fresh at the knuckle.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I came up dripping and panting from the pool to the changing-room. As I pushed open the swing door with its steamed-up little window designed, like those in restaurants, to prevent hurrying people from knocking each other flat, I heard the hiss of the crowded showers, and felt the warm, dense atmosphere of the place in my throat and on my skin. I sauntered along between the two files of hot jets whose spray danced up off the black tiles, shifting or suddenly cutting off as the men, naked or in their trunks, edged about, soaped a foot raised against the wall, gave their stomachs resounding smacks, or turned, as the doors to the outside world thwacked open, to see what beauty had arrived. Exchanging short greetings with a couple of chaps I scarcely knew, I chose a vacant position between a pale, ravaged-looking youth with tattoos snaking up his arms and a huge dark brown man, six foot eight tall at a guess, very round and heavy, with an enormous childish face and not a hair on his head—or, I soon found, anywhere on his body. His sleek, heavy cock, cushioned on a tight, crinkled scrotum, stuck out from beneath a roll of fat. He was soaping himself vigorously, leaving a silky smear over his smooth, plump expanses of back and belly; and with cheery unselfconsciousness singing as he went about it. I nodded to him, as if to say that I could see he was happy enough, then, and he grinned back in a way that suggested a fond, exuberant disposition. I felt that he might stroke me as a golem does some little girl who trusts him, or inadvertently crush me to death. I set down my soap box and shampoo, let the water drum on my shoulders, and looked about. At the Corry the men undress at their lockers, and then bring their towels to the duckboarded place at the end of the shower room. Often those who have swum still have their trunks on and some stud may allow a mocking minute of tension before the languid unknotting of the drawstring, and the peeling down of the tiny garment, freeing the cock and balls in one of the most mundane and heartstopping moments there is. An American guy, I thought, was doing this just now on the other side of the room; square and trim he stood breathing heavily and luxuriating under the water before turning his back and loosening his glittering briefs to reveal a firm hairless ass, milky white between the sun or sunbed-tanned zones of his back and thighs. I still had my really absurdly tiny black trunks on, and felt my cock protesting against their constraint, thickening up, and aching as it did so after the pounding it had lately been taking.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I had left far too much time for my journey to the Boys’ Club and dreading to arrive conspicuously early I walked by on the other side of the street, crossed over Commercial Road and went briskly along to St Anne’s church, whose bizarre and gigantic tower I had seen from the distance. The day had grown heavier as it grew older, and the early evening light was neutral and overcast as I crossed the churchyard. The leaning birches along the path gathered a further gloom to them, and I gazed up through their branches at the giant uprearing of masonry beyond. A slight noise like a snapped stick made me look sideways and peer at where, under the young trees, a youth was sitting on one of the table-tombs, elbows on knees, flicking and stripping a long twig in his hands. I could make out no expression, and barely hesitated in my walk, continuing to the north door, which I had no doubt would be locked, and then, with affected nonchalance such as I would have shown equally under the gaze of a mugger or a pick-up, sauntered up the half-open fan of steps beneath the tower, my absorption in its weight-lifting baroque disturbed and strained by my awareness of the boy. There is always that question, which can only be answered by instinct, of what to do about strangers. Leading my life the way I did, it was strangers who by their very strangeness quickened my pulse and made me feel I was alive—that and the irrational sense of absolute security that came from the conspiracy of sex with men I had never seen before and might never see again. Yet those daring instincts were by no means infallible: their exhilaration was sharpened by the courted risk of rejection, misunderstanding, abuse. The church was thoroughly locked and the west door, with fine grit and year-old leaves driven against it, was clearly never used. The abandoned mood, and the mental image I had of the vast, dusky interior, made the church somehow repugnant to me, monolithic, full of dead sensibility. I turned and casually took in the figure sitting under the trees. It was hard to see, but I had the feeling he was looking at me, picking at the bark on the stick in his hands in an indolent, time-wasting way. I trotted down the steps and turned back across the churchyard.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Afterwards I wandered through Soho & then in Charing Cross Road saw three black GIs loitering along rather idyllically, smoking cigarettes & looking at girls. They had that touching quality which off-duty soldiers so often do have, as if they knew they ought to be up to something but didn’t quite know what it was. There was a fat one, a thin one & an inbetween one with a lost, ingenuous expression which was decidedly heart-stopping. He was clearly the butt of his two smart friends’ humour & had an infinitely tolerant, good-hearted glow about him. I walked beside them to pick up their talk, & then went on & took up an insouciant pose on the other side of Oxford Street, by the Lyon’s Corner House. By some sublime, birthday miracle they split up on the corner opposite, Fat & Thin turning back down Charing Cross Rd as if to have a second, more determined go at something they had funked or got wrong the first time, while my friend crossed over & then crossed again, to the far side of Tottenham Court Road. When I strolled over myself he was looking at the posters at the little cinema there. He appeared uncertain about the prospect of an afternoon of This Happy Breed and something else with Jack Hulbert in. He asked me if I’d seen these films, & I said I had (which I hadn’t) and that they were unutterably tedious. It seemed to me that if he cd be kept out of the cinema then there were possibilities: I wasn’t going to go in with him & sit it out expectantly in the dark for hours on end, smoking American cigarettes. I said why didn’t he come & have a swim at the Corinthian Club, that’s what I was going to do. Like a child who had been hoping for guidance, & with only the faintest hint of adult irony or doubt, he came along, & when he saw the bombed-out far end of the building under all its tarpaulins & scaffolding reacted to it as though it were a cause for personal sympathy and congratulation. I cd hardly wait to get him in the showers, but I hired him some drawers & a towel & drew out our time in the pool as if I were only there for the exercise. Roy (his name, Roy Bartholomew) was a clumsy swimmer, but jolly fast, soldier-fit & divinely constructed. I tested him gently by saying how muscly he was, & he flexed his arms & had me punch him in the stomach—at the same time saying how I shd see so-and-so in his regiment, who evidently has the biggest muscles imaginable. I discovered he likes to box, & wished for a moment I was twenty years younger & cd have taken him on.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I was following a line of the music—a sort of Mahler-and-French which came as close as sexless music could to being explicitly homosexual—when there was a nudge, and Aldo himself was standing beside me. He didn’t say anything, but announced himself in this physical way as some people do in clubs and bars, or as boys do abroad, when there is a language problem. I smirked at him and carried on reading, and he seemed happy to stand by. ‘Ronnie didn’t think you’d come,’ he said after a minute. ‘I’m a bit of a martyr myself,’ I said. ‘One day one of Ronnie’s little jeux d’esprit will finish me off altogether.’ ‘You don’t like the pictures?’ Aldo looked cast down. ‘Oh they’re all right. I like these ones here.’ We turned and ran our eyes over the plated athletes. ‘They aren’t martyrs, are they? I don’t like the martyrs so much—they’re just soft porn. You look very pretty in them … but I honestly prefer to have hard porn—or no porn at all. It’s all pretending, that stuff.’ ‘Still, you didn’t stay long at Ronnie’s house the other day,’ he objected. ‘It was very good fun. We made this great scene and then at the end everyone joined in.’ ‘That was just what I was afraid of.’ ‘Even Lord Charlie had a feel.’ ‘Please!’ ‘Those boys Raymond and Derek were so tired,’ he had to go on. ‘Not Abdul, though. He could have kept at it all night.’ ‘They should be showing the film here,’ I suggested, and Aldo was full of giggly shock. I looked him over candidly. In his tight white jeans and red-and-white checked shirt he reminded one vaguely of an Italian restaurant. ‘Is that all you?’ I asked, my question loitering around his groin. He seemed not to get it, and chuckled vacantly rather than asking me to repeat or explain. I pressed past him, squeezing his heavy bulge as I did so—it seemed real enough—a situation which my brother-in-law Gavin’s expression, as he suddenly reached out to me over several people’s heads, seemed to suggest he found tolerably typical. ‘Gavin! Wonderful to see you.’ We shook hands warmly and he said, ‘Good to see you, my dear,’ in that agreeable, almost nostalgic way that straight men sometimes flirt with gays. ‘How are things?’ ‘Things are rather sort of emotional and peculiar … fortunately one is in good shape and can cope.’ ‘Sounds fascinating!’ He looked quickly aside to Aldo, wondering perhaps if he could be the source of this peculiarity, and I hastened to introduce them. ‘Gavin, this is Aldo, he’s in some of the pictures upstairs, he impersonates John the Baptist—Aldo, this is Gavin, who’s married to my sister.’ The two of them shook hands, and Gavin bumbled on about how in that case he must know Ronnie. What puzzled me was how Gavin himself knew Ronnie, and I asked him.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Well knowing to whom these words applied, the gen- tleman responded, " Honour is born with you, madam. You are of so good a lineage that the rank of queen or empress could add nothing to your nobility ; but your beauty, your graces, and your winning deportment merit so much pleasure, that she who robs you of that which is your due does more harm to herself than to you, since for a glory which turns to shame she loses as much pleasui'e as you or any woman in the kingdom could enjoy. And I can tell you, madam, that the king, the crown apart, is not more capable than I of contenting a woman. Far from it, I am certain that to satisfy a woman of your merit the king ought to wish that he was of my temperament." •' Though the king is of a more delicate complexion than you," replied the queen, laughing, "the love he has for me gratifies me so much that I prefer it to any other thing." " If that be so, madam," returned the gentleman, " I no longer pity you. I know that if the king had for you a love as pure as that you have for him, you would literally enjoy the gratification you speak of ; but God has deter- mined that it should be otherwise, in order that, not find- ^o THE HEFTAMERON OF THE INovel \ ing in him what you desire, you should not n^ake him your god on earth *' " I own to you," said the queen, " that the love I have for him is so great that no heart can love with such passion as mine." " Allow me, if you please, to tell you, madam, that you have not fathomed the love in every heart. I dare assure you, madam, that there is one who loves you with a love so perfect and impassioned that what you feel for the king cannot be compared with it. His love grows stronger as that of the king grows weaker, and it only rests with yourself, madam, if you think proper, to be more than compensated for all you lose."

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Then he turned and carefully picked up his crumpled jacket, putting it on slowly, not just out of a need to manage his resources, I thought, but out of a reluctance to leave, so that even as he said again Trugvam si he made no movement toward the door. He went to the refrigerator instead, pulling it open and peering inside. I’m still hungry, he said, I’ll just fry an egg before I go, pet minuti , he said, five minutes. But I stepped toward him and put my hand on his shoulder. Mitko, I said, I’m sorry, I have to sleep, you can eat somewhere else, you have enough for that. And again I did feel sorry, I felt cruel forcing him to leave, though I had fed him and given him money. What would it mean to do enough, I wondered, as I had wondered before about that obligation to others that sometimes seems so clear and sometimes disappears altogether, so that now we owe nothing, anything we give is too much, and now our debt is beyond all counting. Dobre , he said, straightening up, and then once more, trugvam si . He took a few steps toward the door before he paused again, turning to face me. I’m okay now, he said, at first I thought referring to his recovered lucidity, now that the effects of alcohol and of whatever else he had taken were wearing off; but then he stepped closer, saying again Veche sum dobre , and as he placed his hand on my waist I understood what he was offering. I let him pull us together and press his pelvis to mine so that I felt his cock again, and for a moment I allowed my response, the flood of excitement that only he could make me feel. But then he leaned his head toward mine and I put my hand on his chest, not quite pushing him away but stopping his approach. Mite , I said, and then quickly, lest it seem an invitation or an expression of passion, as perhaps it was, ne , I said, and then said it again, ne . He didn’t argue, but he held me a moment longer, rubbing himself against me, grinding against the hardness that was already evident, as if to reassure himself of the effect he had. He was going, he said again, just a moment, and then before I could protest he went to the refrigerator and pulled out another little cup of yogurt. I can take this, he said, not really asking, and I said yes, of course.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘All right, Charlie?’ said the black man genially, amazingly. ‘You remember my young friend William.’ ‘How are you, William.’ He shook my hand too, in a casual fashion, and gave a drugged grin. ‘Come to see the show.’ He looked along to Aldo and Bobby, who clearly needed no introduction, and closing his eyes and biting his lower lip ground his hips around slowly, as if dancing to some very sexy music in his head. I was nearly shocked by this, and dazed and gulping like an innocent. Though he was twice my age I fancied Abdul crazily, was seriously moved by him. I remembered how I had watched those places where his black, black skin disappeared into his white chef’s uniform, the wrists and the long, thick neck, and the awareness I had of his body. As he turned away I followed him with what was probably a look of stricken devotion. It was the high, haunted African brow, and the high, rolling African ass, and the long, dangling, fishing, musical hands. Staines came rattling back in at this point, carrying a camera on a tripod, its legs unsplayed making it tall and unwieldy. I suppose it was inevitable that it would be a film, that this swaying, powerful chef, with all his virile elegance, would be doing something with these common little waiters. I was surprised to remember that Charles had told me there was no dining at Wicks’s on a Sunday evening. But I was staggered to think that he—and Staines—could actually lure the staff elsewhere and make them act out those fantasies which they must have fathered in sly glances over their fatty beef, soapy veg and boiled school puddings. What bizarre transactions and transitions must have taken place. The whole thing had that achieved bizarrerie which made it normal to the participants, demonic to the outsider. Staines’s hand was on my shoulder. ‘It’s the very last bit, dear,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be the most wonderful film ever. We’ve been doing it for months now—a cast of tens … I thought you’d like to see us polish it off in this sensationally sensational scene.’ ‘I don’t know,’ I hesitated. The backdrop, cracked in places where it had been rolled up, took on an air of redundant charm as the lights were switched on, isolating an area of tawdry small-ness in which the action was clearly to unfold.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  He rolled over, feet swinging above my head, and snuggled down beside me again, hugging me and resting his chin on my chest, putting off the looming fuck. My cock did look thick and threatening between his thighs, nudging its head up under his balls. Though he wanted to go through with all this he seemed baffled by some deeper incapacity. The childlike embraces were spontaneous, but the kisses, and the stroking of my cock, were acting, and made me an actor too. There followed a weird, long nothingness—perhaps an hour and a half of lying together, holding each other, barely whispering a word, occasionally shifting and rubbing against each other fiercely, but only for a few seconds. At one point blood-warm water ran suddenly from my ear and dried along my neck. Later, both our stomachs moaned at the same time: we had had nothing, couldn’t have managed anything, to eat. I felt I had lost all the command I’d had in the cinema, the certainty that made each seduction, as James drily remarked, ‘an act of Will’. Then Phil sat on the edge of the bed and said, ‘I’ve got to get ready.’ I’d been waiting for this moment, staring at the angle of the dormer embrasure, lining up the chair and the edge of the open window, first with my right eye, then with my left. I lay on the bed, and watched him put on dark socks, clean Y-fronts, a laundered white shirt, dark blue trousers with red side-tapes like the soldier I still wanted him to be. Then he took the shirt off again, and smiled at me sweetly as he put on his high-collared blue uniform jacket over his bare skin. I was stunned by his body, but thrilled to see him dressed up, warm and hard, privately beautiful in his uniform. He sat down again to lace up soft-soled black shoes, and leant over me before going and kissed me with a charming assumed air, as if I were a country girl with whom he had enjoyed a night of passion before riding off to join his regiment at dawn. At the door he paused and buffed up his shoes on the backs of his trouser-legs in a schoolboyish way. ‘I’ll be along soon,’ he said.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I slid the key into the lock notch by notch and opened the door a fraction. There was no light on, though the last of the day still lingered and without yet going in I could see the room in the dressing-table mirror, Phil lying on the bed, the white of his underpants. He didn’t move as I came forward, silently closed the door, and stood at the end of the bed. His breathing was extremely slow and distant and he was clearly deeply asleep. He was lying face downwards, but slightly turned to one side, his left leg half-drawn up, his mouth squashed open on the pillow, his thighs apart but not widely apart, his ass slewed a little to the right. I wanted x-ray eyes for that, though the barrack-room modesty of his sleeping in his knickers was beautiful too. Beside the pillow, trapped under a slumberous arm, was Tom Jones—the fat, squashy Penguin redolent of O levels and essays on virtue. I could hardly bear to look at him any longer, and shook him roughly to wake him up, falling on him before he knew what was happening and bothering him with kisses. I hadn’t made love like I did then since I was a schoolboy. It was extraordinarily innocent, fervent and complete. By the time Phil had to get to work it had begun to rain, and after he had gone I lay in the dark with the window open and listened to it pattering on the leads. Falling asleep I slid briefly through a zone of luminous happiness, a vision as clear as summer—not the ominous clarity of Hampshire or Yorkshire summer but a kind of desert radiance where rocks and water and scrawny shade, lying by chance together, seemed divinely disposed and glowed in their changelessness. I more or less forced Phil, who did it with a certain comical reluctance, to take the following night off in exchange with Celso. Celso, it transpired, was anxious to have Friday off to treat his wife on her birthday—a musical and dinner and then, one assumed, some especially Spanish and honourable congress. I’d hoped for a high noon of sunbathing, back on the roof, but it was one of those close dark days when one can never get dry and longs for a thunderstorm that never comes. We went back to my flat and lounged about and I came on rather fierce about wanting sex several times, at which Phil showed at first a demure disbelief though clearly, when it came to it, he wanted it just as much himself. Later we went up to the Corry, which was unmomentous, no one seeming to have noticed that I had been away and the virulent strains of exercise going on much as normal.