Desire

Passages

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

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• From The Fermata (1994)

  I let her check out her book (she and the library man had a moment of feeling eye contact, as I had expected) and walk out onto the street, and then I brought the universe down and got out the Butterfly. My plan was to put it on her as she walked home, because I thought that she would feel it less, perhaps, if she was in a state of movement than if she was sitting down. But I had to be sure that it wouldn’t startle her—I wasn’t interested in disturbing her or making her feel she was losing her sanity. Consequently I had to test the product out on myself: I kicked off my pants and underpants, and, placing a Handi Wipe between the pleasure-nubbins of the machine and my scrotum so that I wouldn’t be exposing Ms. Henna to any of my germs when I did finally strap it on her, I stepped into its straps and pulled it snugly in place. I walked around the lobby of the library with it on, looking at the high corners of the room and concentrating on what it felt like. I was surprised to find that, though fairly tight, the black straps around my ass and thighs weren’t perceptible at all as I walked. What was perceptible, unfortunately, was the width of the Butterfly itself between my thighs. Perhaps if the bulk of my genitalia weren’t in the way the device would have nestled more comfortably, but even then it might be instantly apparent to the woman that something was there. I recalled reading a news item about a large woman who shoplifted portable TVs by walking out with them between her legs; but it wouldn’t do here to have a shape that the woman could feel as she walked. But all was not lost—I found that when I was sitting down, even with my legs crossed, it was as if the rubbery shape of the Butterfly didn’t exist. My body adjusted instantly to its presence. I put the two free Sonic-brand batteries in the pink plastic battery case and turned the dial until the vibration started. On full, the noise was appallingly loud. She would hear it. Even at the lowest level, which is where I would have it when I put it on her (so that it would remain below the threshold of consciousness, would be a vibration that was perceptible only as a change of mood, not as an actual physical signal), it made a sound that was not so much a buzz as a kind of low chuckling.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  She was going faster than I was and impassively began to pass me; I lost sight of her for a minute as she entered that place where passing cars don’t exist—a kind of Fold-effect of the rear- and side-view mirrors. I accelerated very slightly, so that when she did pass, it would take longer. I had only seen her face for an instant, in fact I had only had time to notice that she was a woman of twenty or so with lots of thickly wavy multihued fair hair driving alone, but my very sketchy simplistic sense of her windshielded face merged with my equally simplistic sense of the headlights of her unflashy blue car to turn her instantly into a well-developed character in my imagination. As she invisibly pulled closer to me in the fast lane and I heard her tires singing and sensed how close she was to me, the idea that she was soon going to pass me became swoonsomely powerful: the steering wheel seemed to become flexible and expand in widening ripples; I felt that I was a glowing lump of something melting on the fly. I could not believe that in a matter of thirty seconds or so this person was going to pull up next to me and that I would be able to look over at her; when she did I felt I would shout or weep. At the same time I felt a blip of self-irritable disgust at the astonishing potency of these car-crushes and at how much mental air-time they consumed when I drove. It was insane to think that someone was more wonderful and mysterious just because she was passing me in her car. What could be more common than two people driving nearly side by side on a highway, one drawing abreast of the other?

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  “Severe,” he agreed. Why did I do that. Why did I. I got butkus. Then it just sort of came out of my mouth as, “I think I did it because I was hurting. I think I wanted to mark that hurt on the outside. I think I wanted to be someone else. But I didn’t know who yet.” It almost sounded aware. “I see,” he said, “and who are you now?” Goddamn this guy just goes straight for the kill. Aren’t guys his age supposed to be shallow insensitive arrogants? So I said, “I’m your teacher.” We both cracked up. The kind of laughter that reveals a gaping fault line big enough to drive a U-haul through. Then it just got ridiculous - I couldn’t stop watching his lips move and I couldn’t shut down the electricity creeping up my spine and then it became impossible to maintain the teacher student charade when he took off of his sun glasses for a moment and I took off mine and I swear he performed some kind of sly guy Marlon Brando like from Streetcar eye hoodoo on me. Still, I gave him my written comments on his work like a professional should and sent him away. But he already knew my weakness. “ Um, Dr. Lidia? Don’t you need a ride home?” I know you are not used to women saying this, but I wanted him to drive down into me and eat me alive. Ecstatic State OUR FIRST “DATE” ANDY SAID HE WANTED TO GO SWIMMING with me. He knew all about the swimmer of me from reading my stories, which he’d apparently gone home and looked up that night. Also from stories he’d been told. Now that I look back at it, it was a brave move. He wasn’t that great a swimmer. He was great at other things - but not swimming. So that must have taken some man guts. And he was mildly allergic to chlorine. When he dipped himself in chlorine for long periods, his nose ran. Non-stop. Still he asked to come swim with me. No one has ever done that. No one. So we swam. In a little Y pool near my rented one bedroom house in Ocean Beach a block from the sea. In the pool he fought the water with all his might. Six foot three and built like a tree his body was meant for land. But he swam with me. Lap after lap. I lapped him a dozen times. Still he swam. His nose ran. He stayed with me in the water. When I finally stopped, he looked me right in the eye. Chlorine smell between us. His eyes were bloodshot because he refused to wear goggles. He was more present than anyone in my entire life had ever been. He smiled. Snot running down his mouth. I smiled back. Fear in my chest. You can’t order a highball in the pool to calm the fuck down.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  I don’t think whoever does the room when I check out should have to deal with that sort of relic.” She would tell me that I was a considerate person. I would lower my voice to a whisper and tell her how much I wanted to see her ass. “That may or may not happen,” she would say. I would ask her what she had been planning to do with the washcloth in her bath. “Wash with it,” she would say. She would now be kneeling very close to the door. She was, I would verify, wearing a white towel. My face would be so close to hers that I would be able to hear every detail of her breathing, and yet we would not comfortably be able to kiss. She would be smiling, pleased that I was so obviously hers. I would be able to smell her lipstick. She would finally say, “I suppose I should take my bath now. The water is going to get cold.” “You’ve had the bath ready this whole time?” I would say, distressed. “I had no idea. And here I’ve been stuffing all of this month’s pornography through the door at you.” “I’ll add some warm if it’s gotten cold,” Adele would say. Then: “It’s not that I hate those magazines, it’s just that they didn’t do anything for me.” “You know what I wish?” I would say. “I wish you would wash right here at the door.” “You do, do you,” Adele would say. She would think. “Let me see you for a second.” Up until then, I would have been leaning so that my body was out of her sight-line. I would shift so that one of my knees was against the door, and one was just outside the door-frame. I would be sitting on my feet. All I would have on would be a pair of venerable 1984 red Calvin Klein underpants that had gone loose around the leg. I would pull one leg-hole sideways over my dick-bundle so that I was free to shake my yokel a little for her as it stiffened. “Will you wash your breasts for me while I activate this?” I would ask. “You know that I’m not opening this door,” she would say firmly. “The chain stays on.” “I know,” I would say. She would relax then, because she would see that we were both content to play by the same rules. “You’d be interested in seeing me wash my breasts?” she would ask. She would run her tongue over her lips.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  Whoever was staying in the Princess and the Pea or the Salish or the Far East, they must’ve gotten an earful. Hours of woman on woman on woman whose regular lives didn’t allow for such wild abandon. Sometimes Hannah’s fist up my cunt Claire’s mouth on mine or me sucking her epic tits. Sometimes Hannah on her stomach me up her ass with a strap on Claire behind me giving me a reach around - a skill she intuited. Sometimes Claire on all fours me and Hannah filling every hole licking every mouth rubbing her clit making her scream making her entire corpus shiver her head rock back her woman wail let loose gone primal cum and shit stains and spit and tears. I came in Hannah’s mouth, her face between my legs like some goddess in a new myth. Claire came with Hannah’s fingers in her ass and pussy, her body convulsing and falling off the bed, me wrapped around her and laughing and hitting my head on the wall. Hannah came jamming a dildo up herself while I buried my face in the clit of her. She pulled my hair. She pushed my head. Claire curled under me licking and gagging but not not not stopping. I don’t know how many times we came … it seemed unending. We ate each other we ate pickled herring we ate gruyere cheese. We ate the animal out of each other’s bodies we ate steak we ate chocolate two women my chocolate. We drank each other we drank all the beer we drank all the wine we peed outside. We got high on skin and cum and sweat we got high on pot. We came in waves we ran out and into the waves. I wanted to stay like that forever - outside of any “relationship” I had ever had and inside the wet of an unnamed sexuality. The moon a grand spectator. As full of alive as the ocean outside the door. All the night it was difficult to tell whose body was whose. The woman of it drowned me. It nearly cleaved my mind. And again. Again. Waves. I don’t know why women can’t make the story do what they want. I don’t. When we got back to our ordinary lives, Claire told me she was in love with me. A sentiment I couldn’t find in myself to return, hard as I tried. I wish I could go back and try. It was real, what she offered. But kindness wasn’t something I even recognized. A Body in a Kayak WITH HANNAH, IT TOOK ME WEEKS TO FIGURE OUT IF she was attracted to me or just really pissed off - her jokes always seemed a little mean, always left me feeling like a female headed slow-poke. Sometimes she’d charley horse me good ones in the arm or thigh hard enough to leave a lump. It didn’t weird me out. Unlike everything else, I could feel it.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "Who has not been sentient of the manifold feelings produced by the touch of a hand? Many persons seem to bear a temperature of their own about them. They are hot and feverish in mid-winter, while others are cold and icy in the dog-days. Some hands are dry and parched, others continually moist, clammy, and slimy. There are fleshy, pulpy, muscular, or thin, skeleton and bony hands. The grasp of some is like that of an iron vice, others feel as limp as a bit of rag. There is the artificial product of our modern civilization, a deformity like a Chinese lady's foot, always enclosed in a glove during the day, often poulticed at night, tended by a manicure; they are as white as snow, if not as chaste as ice. How that little useless hand would shrink from the touch of the gaunt, horny, clay-coloured, begrimed workman's hand, which hard, unremitting labour has changed into a kind of hoof. Some hands are coy, others paddle you indecently; the grip of some is hypocritical, and not what it pretends to be; there is the velvety, the unctuous, the priestly, the humbug's hand; the open palm of the spendthrift, the usurer's tight-fisted claw. There is, moreover, the magnetic hand, which seems to have a secret affinity for your own; its simple touch thrills your whole nervous system, and fills you with delight. "How can I express all that I felt from the contact of Teleny's hand? It set me on fire; and, strange to say, it soothed me at the same time. How sweeter, softer, it was, than any woman's kiss. I felt his grasp steal slowly over all my body, caressing my lips, my throat, my breast; my nerves quivered from head to foot with delight, then it sank downwards into my reins, and Priapus, re-awakened, uplifted his head. I actually felt I was being taken possession of, and I was happy to belong to him. "I should have liked to have said something polite in acknowledgment for the pleasure he had given me by his playing, still what unhackneyed phrase could have expressed all the admiration I felt for him? "'But, gentlemen,' said he, 'I am afraid I am keeping you away from the music.' "'I, myself, was just going away,' quoth I. "'The concert bores you then, does it?' "'No, on the contrary; but after having heard you play, I cannot listen to any more music to-night.' "He smiled and looked pleased. "'In fact, Réné, you have outdone yourself this evening,' said Briancourt. 'I never heard you play like that before.' "'Do you know why?' "'No, unless it is that you had such a full theatre.' "'Oh, no! it is simply because, whilst I was playing the gavotte, I felt that somebody was listening to me.' "'Oh! somebody!' echoed the young men, laughing.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  “This is the pose in Titian’s picture. But now enough of joking. Don’t always look so solemn, it makes me feel sad. As far as the world is concerned you are still merely my servant; you are not yet my slave, for you have not yet signed the contract. You are still free, and can leave me any moment. You have played your part magnificently. I have been delighted, but aren’t you tired of it already, and don’t you think I am abominable? Well, say something—I command it.” “Must I confess to you, Wanda?” I began. “Yes, you must.” “Even if you take advantage of it,” I continued, “I shall love you the more deeply, adore you the more fanatically, the worse you treat me. What you have just done inflames my blood and intoxicates all my senses.” I held her close to me and clung for several moments to her moist lips. “Oh, you beautiful woman,” I then exclaimed, looking at her. In my enthusiasm I tore the sable from her shoulders and pressed my mouth against her neck. “You love me even when I am cruel,” said Wanda, “now go!—you bore me—don’t you hear?” She boxed my ears so that I saw stars and bells rang in my ears. “Help me into my furs, slave.” I helped her, as well as I could. “How awkward,” she exclaimed, and was scarcely in it before she struck me in the face again. I felt myself growing pale. “Did I hurt you?” she asked, softly touching me with her hand. “No, no,” I exclaimed. “At any rate you have no reason to complain, you want it thus; now kiss me again.” I threw my arms about her, and her lips clung closely to mine. As she lay against my breast in her large heavy furs, I had a curiously oppressive sensation. It was as if a wild beast, a she-bear, were embracing me. It seemed as if I were about to feel her claws in my flesh. But this time the she-bear let me off easily. With my heart filled with smiling hopes, I went up to my miserable servant’s room, and threw myself down on my hard couch. “Life is really amazingly droll,” I thought. “A short time ago the most beautiful woman, Venus herself, rested against your breast, and now you have an opportunity for studying the Chinese hell. Unlike us, they don’t hurl the damned into flames, but they have devils chasing them out into fields of ice. “Very likely the founders of their religion also slept in unheated rooms.” * * * * * During the night I startled out of my sleep with a scream. I had been dreaming of an icefield in which I had lost my way; I had been looking in vain for a way out. Suddenly an eskimo drove up in a sleigh harnessed with reindeer; he had the face of the waiter who had shown me to the unheated room.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  I was soon pretty well recovered, and at certain hours allowed to range all over the house, but cautiously kept from seeing any company till the arrival of Lord B——, from Bath, to whom Mrs. Brown, in respect to his experienced generosity on such occasions, proposed to offer the perusal of that trinket of mine, which bears so great an imaginary value; and his lordship being expected in town in less than a fortnight, Mrs. Brown judged I would be entirely renewed in beauty and freshness by that time, and afforded her the chance of a better bargain than she had driven with Mr. Crofts. In the meantime, I was so thoroughly, as they call it, brought over, so tame to their whistle, that, had my cage door been set open, I had no idea that I ought to fly anywhere, sooner than stay where I was; nor had I the least sense of regretting my condition, but waited very quietly for whatever Mrs. Brown should order concerning me; who on her side, by herself and her agents, took more than the necessary precautions to lull and lay asleep all just reflections on my destiny. Preachments of morality over the left shoulder; a life of joy painted in the gayest colours; caresses, promises, indulgent treatment; nothing, in short, was wanting to domesticate me entirely and to prevent my going out anywhere to get better advice. Alas! I dreamed of no such thing. Hitherto I had been indebted only to the girls of the house for the corruption of my innocence: their luscious talk, in which modesty was far from respected, their description of their engagements with men, had given me a tolerable insight into the nature and mysteries of their profession, at the same time that they highly provoked an itch of florid warm-spirited blood through every vein: but above all, my bed fellow Phœbe, whose pupil I more immediately was, exerted her talents in giving me the first tinctures of pleasure: whilst nature, now warmed and wantoned with discoveries so interesting, piqued a curiosity which Phœbe artfully whetted, and leading me from question to question of her own suggestion, explained to me all the mysteries of Venus. But I could not long remain in such a house as that, without being an eye-witness of more than I could conceive from her descriptions. One day, about twelve at noon, being thoroughly recovered of my fever, I happened to be in Mrs. Brown’s dark closet, where I had not been half an hour, resting upon the maid’s bed, before I heard a rustling in the bed-chamber, separated from the closet only by two sash doors, before the glasses of which were drawn two yellow damask curtains, but not so close as to exclude the full view of the room from any person in the closet.

• From Manhunt (2022)

  She’d come with a tall, statuesque brunette who was currently lighting Nam-joo’s cigarette for her by the bar’s restaurant’s front window, the lighter’s flame dancing in the glass. All told there were maybe fifty women—Screws, TERFs, and Raymonders—in the Lighthouse, the town’s best restaurant and the only one that had managed to dodge the pre-plague council’s draconian zoning laws to get a view of the ocean, even if it was only from the back patio. “What’s a girl like you doing all alone up here?” came Viv’s smooth, smoky voice. Fran jumped, nearly dropping her drink. The older woman had snuck up on her where she stood by the bar. She was close, one foot on the floor, the other on the brass heel rest of the stool she’d sunk onto. With her undercut and shaggy forelock, chin propped up on a fist, elbow on the bar, she looked like a big cat sunning itself on a rock. Fran swallowed and reached up to fiddle with the topmost button of her dress, a fitted black challis with half sleeves and a high collar. “Oh, I’m just not much of a partier.” “But you’ll dance with me, surely, if only to avoid the appearance of rudeness?” “Sure.” She gave her best approximation of an easy smile, the thought of her body close against a TERF’s both exhilarating and disgusting. “Just keep your hands at ten and two, officer.” “Captain,” said Viv, leading her out onto the polished dance floor to scattered applause and a piercing wolf whistle from the end of the bar. A few other couples were out there already, dancing awkwardly to Goldfrapp’s crackling Eurobeat. “Not that I’m trying to impress you.” “No,” said Fran, mock serious. “Of course not.” “But supposing, just hypothetically, that I were.” That lazy smile widened. “Where would you suggest I start?” The camp was burning. Robbie saw bodies in among the tents, and people staggering out of the thick, choking smoke. There would be men here before long, fighting one another over these heaps of cooked meat and twisted limbs. He stopped the van not far from the Screw’s scorched blast doors and unclipped the walkie from its rest beside the busted air conditioner dial. The cabin stank of smoke and blackened pork. He clicked the transmitter. Three long. Two short. Two long. A moment of breathless anticipation before the doors began to open. The women in the back of the van released their breath nearly in unison. “Good work,” Zia whispered. She had a clipped way of speaking, low and quick and urgent. He nodded, his voice caught in his throat. Five years between Midge and the women he’d killed today.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Mr. H... had clapped a livery upon him; and his chief employ was, after being shewn my lodgings, to bring and carry letters or messages between his master and me; and as the situation of all kept ladies is not the fittest to inspire respect, even to the meanest of mankind, and, perhaps, less of it from the most ignorant, I could not help observing that this lad, who was, I suppose, acquainted with my relation to his master by his fellow servants, used to eye me in that bashful confused way, more expressive, more moving and readier caught at by our sex, than any other declarations whatever: my figure had, it seems, struck him, and modest and innocent as he was, he did not himself know that the pleasure he took in looking at me was love, or desire; but his eyes, naturally wanton, and now inflamed with passion, spoke a great deal more than he durst have imagined they did. Hitherto, indeed, I had only taken notice of the comeliness of the youth, but without the least design: my pride alone would have guarded me from a thought that way, had not Mr. H....’s condescension with my maid, where there was not half the temptation, in point of person, set me a dangerous example; but now I began to look on this stripling as every way a delicious instrument of my designed retaliation upon Mr. H.... of an obligation for which I should have made a conscience to die in his debt. In order then to pave the way for the accomplishment of my scheme, for two or three times that the young fellow came to me with messages, I managed so, or without affectation to have him admitted to my bed side, or brought to me at my toilet, where I was dressing; and by carelessly shewing or letting him, as if without meaning or design, sometimes my bosom rather more bare than it should be; sometimes my hair, of which I had a very fine head, in the natural flow of it while combing; sometimes a neat leg, that had unfortunately slipt its garter, which I made no scruple of tying before him, easily gave him the impressions favourable to my purpose, which I could perceive to sparkle in his eyes, and glow in his cheeks: then certain slight squeezes by the hand, as I took letters from him, did his business completely. When I saw him thus moved, and fired for my purpose, I inflamed him yet more, by asking him several leading questions, such as: “Had he a mistress?... was she prettier than me?... could he love such a one as I was?...” and the like; to all which the blushing simpleton answered to my wish, in a strain of perfect nature, perfect undebauched innocence, but with all the awkwardness and simplicity of country breeding.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  White wrinkles would form in the fabric—a sort of plush white terry-cloth sphincter would gather around my stiff middle finger as I forced my way in. “Eeeeeyeah!” Adele would say. “The texture of it!” Carefully I would withdraw my finger, leaving the washcloth in place. “Now tighten it and make yourself come,” I would say. “It really tingles in there,” she would say. I would lean all my weight against the door and aim my cock through the gap. Adele would begin pushing against the doorjamb in a steady rhythm. This movement would finally make the washcloth slide off her ass-curves and hang down; but it would not fall to the floor, since it was still held tightly by her asshole. She would sense something amiss. “Oh no!” she would say breathlessly, alarmed. “It’s all right!” I would reassure her. “It’s hanging there! I still can’t really see anything. Just hold it in there real tight, don’t let it fall, okay? I’m going to deliver a whole candygram of come right through this doorway any second.” “Ooh, you are?” Adele would say. She would be pushing against the door with her ass so hard now that she would practically be shutting it in my face. “Come on my washcloth!” she would call. “Squeeze it off on my washcloth!” In my frenzy, I would aim wrong and release my first two smut-schnapps on the carpet and the door, but with the third I would manage to fling some fertile distillate on her upper thigh. Feeling it, she would give her commotion the final go-ahead—and the limply hanging washcloth, tightly cinched in her raving sphincter, would begin to move hypnotically, pulling in and out several times where it disappeared, making the free end gently lift and wag, like a handkerchief waved in farewell from an ocean liner. She would turn and sit and look in at me. We would describe how pleasant it had been. “And see?” I would say. “The washcloth did not fall. Your modesty was maintained.” “Now I can sleep,” she would say. I would refocus on her hair, which would look beautiful and thick and tossed around. Though we wouldn’t be able to shake hands properly through the door, we would hook index fingers and shake good-bye that way. Her door would close and I would hear the lock on the knob turn and the bolt slide spftly into place. I would close my door, too, and lock it, but I wouldn’t reinstate the chain lock on my side—for it would seem to me that the sound of my chaining would constitute a faint rudeness after what we had done together. The next morning, when I opened the door to the outside, I would find a small white bundle at my feet.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I handed the book to her. ‘Read it to me, now,’ I said.‘You have already read it.’‘Read me the bits you used to read to her ...’She hesitated, then did so; and as she murmured, I put my hand between her legs and touched her, and her voice grew less steady, the more firmly I stroked.‘There are books written especially for this sort of thing,’ I said to her, thinking back to the many times I had lain doing something similar with Diana - on the very same nights, probably, that Florence had lain squirming next to Lilian. ‘Wouldn’t you rather I bought you a book like that? I can’t believe Mr Carpenter really intended his poem to be enjoyed in such a way.’She put her lips against my throat. ‘Oh, I think Mr Carpenter would approve all right.’She had let the book fall on to her breast. Now I pushed it aside, and rolled upon her.‘And this,’ I said, moving my hips, ‘is really contributing to the social revolution?’‘Oh, yes!’I wriggled lower. ‘And this, too?’‘Oh, certainly!’I slid beneath the sheet. ‘And how about this?’‘Oh!’‘Lord,’ I said a little later. ‘To think I have been part of the socialist conspiracy all these years, and never knew it till now ...’We kept Towards Democracy beside the bed permanently, after that; and just as Florence would sometimes say to me, when the house was quiet, ‘Sing me a song, in your moleskins, Uncle ...’, so I would occasionally lean to whisper to her, over supper or as we walked side by side: ‘Shall we be democratic tonight, Flo ... ?’ Of course, there were certain songs - ‘Sweethearts and Wives’ was one of them - I would never have sung for her. And Leaves of Grass, I noticed, stayed downstairs, on the shelf beneath the photographs of Eleanor Marx and Kitty. I didn’t mind it. How could I mind it? We had struck a kind of bargain. We had fixed to kiss for ever. We had never once said, I love you. ‘Isn’t it marvellous to be in love, in spring-time?’ Annie asked us one evening in April: she and Miss Raymond were sweethearts now, and spent long hours in our parlour, sighing over one another’s charms. ‘I went visiting a factory today, and it was the grimmest, most broken-down old place you ever saw. But I came out into its yard and there was a piece of pussy-willow growing there — just a piece of common old pussy-willow, but with a bit of yellow sun on it, and it looked so exactly like my dear Emma I thought for a moment I would fall down and kiss it, and weep.’Florence snorted. ‘They should never have let women into the civil service, I said it all along.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  Before I met her in that auditorium in Eugene, Oregon, I’d been to exactly three SM play parties in Eugene. Wanna know how? Because my former best friend who went on the little beach excursion got me invited. At the SM play parties I saw some awesome things happen. Once I saw a man wrapped in plastic wrap with nothing but his mouth and dick unwrapped. Sometimes he got drops of water in his mouth. Mostly he got his dick whipped until it was red as a screaming infant. I saw a woman ample as a Michelangelo cherub with her wrists bound and hung above her head get her twat whipped for over an hour while her pussy swelled and reddened and purpled until even the air shuddered and felt faint. I went back. I saw a woman’s thighs pierced with tiny blue capped needles - 20 up one thigh and 20 down the other - her eyes streaming with tears, her endorphin rush coming at those around her like a tsunami, her cunt gushing. I saw reddened welts rise on a woman’s ass like swollen railroad tracks from caning, I saw a tranny pierce her cheek with what looked like a barbeque skewer all the way through to the other cheek without blinking, I saw a man hang from giant meat hooks carefully puncturing his back slabs. I saw bondage in 300 varieties, fistings, bloodsport, dungeons, crossbeams, strange wands shooting out electricity anywhere you wanted. Some of which I began to let happen to me. Watching pain and feeling pain mattered on my skin more than anything had since I was a child. Unlike drinking. Unlike drugs. I could feel it. I could more than feel it. But I wanted to feel it more. Harder. “ Tell me what you want.” That’s how it began. If I said something dumb like, I’d like a kiss, she’d say, “No, that’s not right, Angel.” And lightly sting my skin with a riding crop or this crop with thornish things dangling from it in a kind of tassel. “Try again,” she’d say. I’d try again. And again. Until I said what it was I really wanted. What I really wanted was to be taken to whatever the edge of self was. To a death cusp. Maybe not literally. But maybe literally. I suppose it’s good I was in the hands of a professional. A calm sadist. An intellectual. Because she took my request and made it deeper. “Can you take the pain and go somewhere? Can you make it a journey?” I don’t know why, but I thought of my mother - who was under hypnosis during my birth. “Dorothy? Do you have pain? Where is the pain?” At first I didn’t know what she meant by “journey.” I just wanted to be with her. I just wanted her to hurtpleasure me. So when she asked me that, it was annoying. It involved thinking. Can’t we just do it?

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Maurice Baring’s autobiography, The Puppet Show of Memory , was on the shelf, as was George Santayana’s Persons and Places, The Memoirs of John Addington Symonds , and Jane Addams’s Twenty Years at Hull-House . I sat down at a large table and looked my books over. The particular library table I had chosen with some care, of course: it had one other resident—a petite woman in her late thirties with curly salt-and-pepper hair, wearing a short-sleeved top and earrings made of cloudy yellow glass. She was looking through several piles of microfilm copies, sorting them and circling paragraphs every so often. She spun her pen gently, silently, on the table as she read, as if it were a spinner in a child’s game. Her eyes moved with impressive speed over the chemical-smelling legal-sized pages, but she looked tired from spending hours gazing at the gray light of one of the library’s horrible microfilm readers, contending with the trembling magnified crotch hairs and scratches on its screen. I stopped time to find out what she had been microfilming: it turned out to be copies of Harper’s Bazaar from the late forties. I didn’t touch her. I wanted only to arouse her—or not even to arouse her, but simply to be a subliminal part of her life. I wanted her to become vaguely aroused, without knowing I was the source of her arousal. She needed, it seemed to me, to see, or sense, my Moving Psi Squares. I had in my briefcase three rarely opened envelopes. One held many one-inch squares of construction paper, some black, some pink. The second held one-inch squares I had cut out of fashion magazines and Garnet Hill catalogs, just faces: beautiful, interesting, exotic, or otherwise noteworthy women’s and men’s faces. The third envelope held squares I had cut out of a flyer I had gotten in the mail from a place called Elmwood Distributors, a somewhat low-end distributor of porn films, most of which were compilations, or “revues,” of surprising specificity, with titles such as Double Hand-Job Revue, Brunette Lactating Hermaphrodite Blowjob Revue , and Big Uncut Dick Facial Cumshot Revue . Each film was illustrated by a single one-inch-square still, some of which I had cut out.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I had one brief moment of self-consciousness, when I saw myself as from a distance, straddled by a stranger in an unknown house, buckled inside that monstrous instrument, panting with pleasure and sweating with lust. Then in another moment I could think nothing, only shudder; and the pleasure - mine and hers - found its aching, arching crisis, and was spent.After a second she eased herself from my lap, then straddled my thigh and rocked gently there, occasionally jerking, and at last growing still. Her hair, which had come loose, was hot against my jaw.At length she laughed, and moved again against my hip.‘Oh, you exquisite little tart!’ she said. And thus we clasped one another, sated and spent, our legs inelegantly straddling that elegant, high-backed chair; and as the minutes passed I thought with something like dismay of how the night would now proceed. I thought, She’s had me fuck her; now she’ll send me home. If I’m in luck I might get a pound, for my trouble. It was the prospect of the sovereign, after all, which had lured me to her parlour in the first place. And yet, now, there was something inexpressibly dreary to me at the idea of quitting her company - of surrendering the toy to which I was strapped, and quieting the tommish urges it and its mistress had all unexpectedly revived.She raised her head and saw, I suppose, my downcast look.‘Poor child,’ she said. ‘And do you always grow sorry, when your business is complete?’ She put a hand to my chin and tilted my face to the lamplight, and I caught her wrist and shook my head free. My cap - which had remained on my head through all our violent kisses - now fell off. She at once returned her hands to my face, and fingered my pomade-stiff ened hair; then she laughed, and rose, and walked into her bedroom. ‘Pour yourself some wine,’ she called. ‘And light me a cigarette, will you?’ I heard the hiss of water against china, and guessed that she was using the commode.I moved to the glass, and examined myself. My face was as scarlet, almost, as my jacket, my hair was ruffled, my lips looked bruised and swollen. I remembered the dildo at my hip, and stooped to unfasten it. Its lustre was cloudy now, and its nether straps were sodden and limp from my own lavish spendings; yet it was as indecently rigid and ready as before - that never happened with the gents in Soho. There was a handkerchief on the little table before the fire, and with this I wiped first it, and then myself.

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

  Apart from all this, not knowing the content and direction of Nessim’s thoughts I could in no way set his inmost fears at rest: by telling him that Justine was merely working out with me the same obsessive pattern she had followed out in the pages of Arnauti. She was creating a desire of the will which, since it fed secretly on itself, must be exhausted like a lamp — or blown out. I knew this with only a part of my mind: but there I detected the true lack in this union. It was not based on any repose of the will. And yet how magically she seemed to live — a mistress so full of wit and incantation that one wondered how one had ever managed to love before and be content in the quality of the loving. At the same time I was astonished to realize that the side of me which clave to Melissa was living its own autonomous existence, quietly and surely belonging to her yet not wishing her back. The letters she wrote me were gay and full and unmarred by any shadow of reproof or self-pity; I found in all she wrote an enlargement of her self-confidence. She described the little sanatorium where she was lodged with humour and a nimble eye, describing the doctors and the other patients as a holidaymaker might. On paper she seemed to have grown, to have become another woman. I answered her as well as I was able but it was hard to disguise the shiftless confusion which reigned in my life; it was equally impossible to allude to my obsession with Justine — we were moving through a different world of flowers and books and ideas, a world quite foreign to Melissa. Environment had closed the gates to her, not lack of sensibility. ‘Poverty is a great cutter-off’ said Justine once, ‘and riches a great shutter-off.’ But she had gained admittance to both worlds, the world of want and the world of plenty, and was consequently free to live naturally.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  I risked being seen, emboldened by how loud the vibrator was, timing my mastur-strokes to the shaking of her knees and the somewhat Zen-like whooshing of her breathing, and when she began to come for the second time I did in fact stop time for an instant and laid my dick in her palm and closed my fist around her fist, and squeezed on it so tightly my knuckles turned yellow, sliding within my skin in and out of her grip. As the inexorability of my clasm began I pulled down on my glasses so that she and I were living coterminously, and as she came I released one-liners of sperm up her forearm and then squeezed the last semi-painful droplets of my orgasm out on her curled fingers. I let her just begin to register the fact of my cooling slime on her arm after she finished coming herself before I stopped time and toweled her off and left. The next day she looked at me oddly—she said, “Were you …?” and “Did you …?” and then stopped. I said, “Was I what?” smiling innocently. She didn’t pursue it. Now that I have recorded it here, it seems to me that Arlette’s flowershop story and my behavior in her apartment afterward may mark the end of one phase of my Fold-life and the beginning of another. I was always, or almost always, quite careful, even painstaking, in my sexual adventures in the Fold up until then, but Arlette’s recklessness liberated me, at least to a degree. I still revere the word “painstaking,” as I always have—I pronounce it and think of it as if it were divisible into “pain” and “staking,” because the “staking” contributes a tweezery sort of push-pinned delicacy to the connotation and is in its pointedness the secret reason for the word’s success, even though technically it merely means taking pains, or exerting oneself. But sometimes when I’m recording detailed notes as I remove a woman’s clothes (“left bra strap fallen” or “panties inside out and worked partway into asscrack”) so that I will be sure to replace everything perfectly, just as it was, I feel a gurgle of Arlette’s joyful who-gives-a-fuckness working in me, and I want to strip the entire city of Boston and mound all the clothes together in the middle of Washington Street and dance on top of them screaming, “We’re totally fucking naked, we’re totally fucking naked!”—or failing that (since sudden widespread big-city nudity could lead to rapes and other unforeseen turbulence), I might want to strip everyone in an idyllic small town like Northampton and see how they would adjust to it. That actor on Unsolved Mysteries could do a nice twenty-minute segment about the event—the Quiet Little College Town That Stripped. Nobody would connect it to me and my Solonoid.

• From Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  He’ll also need two hands on deck if he wants to explore your anal area while simultaneously massaging your clitoris (once his hand has touched your anal area it shouldn’t go anywhere near your vagina or urethra). Simultaneous anal and clitoral stimulation can be a fast track to orgasm for some women. Show him what you likeUse your body as a way of guiding him and telling him what you like. Try tilting or dipping your hips to encourage him to move his hands into a better position—he will quickly catch on to your body language and instinctively alter his hand movements. You can also offer to demonstrate the type of stimulation you prefer, or guide his hands with yours for some sexy show-and-tell. Getting sexyInvite your lover to discover your intimate erogenous zones using just his hands. After a warm-up kiss or two, guide his hand between your legs. Get him to make your clitoris and vagina the focus of his erotic tour, but ask him to explore your G-spot, too. If he doesn’t know how to find it, follow the instructions opposite for a very sexy tutorial. Clitoral stimulation Take your time over these strokes. Your man needs to spend a while stroking your body before heading to your genitals. Let him stroke your inner thighs and massage your labia. Once you’re feeling wet and fully aroused, then move his hand to your clitoris. His index or middle finger is more than enough to stimulate this little hot spot, and the pressure he applies is up to you. When he gets into a groove you enjoy, show him how much you like it. Vaginal massage Your vagina is full of highly sensitive nerve endings. He’ll love the wet sensation on his fingers, so move his hand to rest between your legs and let him feel how aroused you are. While he fingers you, move his other hand to gently rub and stroke your clitoris. Together, find the speed and the motion you like best: try clockwise, counterclockwise, or back and forth, or play around with a combination of all these moves. G-spot To turn up your pleasure factor, give him a sexy demonstration of how to stimulate your G-spot. Make it a show by opening your thighs wide to give him a great view. Now, make a come-hither motion with your index finger, then slip it inside your vagina and make the same motion to find your G-spot. Now it’s his turn. When he hits the spot, make sure you let him know. For the deepest orgasm, ask him to apply pressure to this sensitive spot and massage your clitoris at the same time.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Don’t you want to lose all conception of what ‘soon’ means, too?” “I do, kind of.” She lowered her eyes. Suddenly I remembered birth control. “Shoot, that’s right. A condom is out, because there has to be total contact.” I made popping sounds with my lips, thinking. “You’re not on the pill, are you?” “There’s a man I see sometimes. So I still am technically, yes.” “You are? Oh— great! Perfect.” I waved my hands. “Forget we talked about that. Let’s talk about something else for a while.” I asked her to tell me more about her botanical drawing class. She described the difficulties of rendering bark. She talked about her teacher. There was a nice moment when she finished saying something, and took a bite of bread, and noticed that I was looking at her with an odd, gleeful expression, and her face filled with friendly curiosity. It was time. “May I?” I said. “May you what?” “Snap my fingers?” She drank the rest of her wine. “Okay.” I snapped my fingers. I carried her down the stopped escalator to a sofa in the lobby and found a rolling cart that the bellhops used for suitcases. I went into the back rooms and found several blankets and pillows and padded the cart with them. I put her down on the cart, on her side, with her legs bent. It took me less than an hour to push her to her apartment. I stayed mostly in the middle of the street. It had begun to rain, but we didn’t get very wet because we were only dampened by the drops that were suspended in our path, not by the ones above us, and even in a heavy rain, the number of drops per cubic foot is far fewer than it appears when the rain is in motion. I left the cart by the mailboxes and carried her upstairs and used her key. I laid her down in the sunporch, on her bed. I kept my eyes closed while I pulled off her clothes and my own. (I wanted to be able to tell her that I hadn’t looked at her.) I arranged the covers of the bed over her and then got in next to her. She was very warm. I lay there for a while with my eyes closed, letting my heart calm down. Her mattress pad felt terrific. I was tired and sleepy. I had a nap of maybe half an Arno-hour. When I woke up I thought to myself, I’m lying in bed with the woman whom, above all others, I want to be in bed with. I snapped my fingers. Joyce began to say something that began with “Although.”

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  I say grab one, girls, and give him a job! The masseur had taught me how to make my orgasm, not his, the main event, how to allow oral sex to compete successfully, even override, intercourse. After all, for women, cunnilingus is a much more dependable pleasure. This is a hard lesson for a nice girl to learn, what with so many dicks always demanding attention. Hounds help. And so do crotchless panties. In fact, it is with a headstrong Hound that crotchless panties find their true place. First as a good girl, then as a married woman who didn’t dare imagine having sex with anyone but her husband, I’d had a fairly impoverished fantasy life. But once the masseur came along and became a real-life fantasy, that potent world was cracked open and my desires came tumbling out. All those unlived scenes told me a lot about myself. There was the rich woman who pays for cunnilingus—and I did pay, cash. There was the trashy girl in six-inch heels and crotchless wonders—“Lick my shoes! Lick them clean!” And then there was the virgin in Victorian white cotton whose rich father pays the “healer” to give her her first orgasm: it is the only way to save her life, for she is, of course, mortally ill. She resists mightily, feigning sleep and frigidity, and comes like a rolling avalanche—brought back from the brink of death by the anonymous roving tongue. The whore fantasies were prolific and my fee enormous. I found it fascinating that the man who materialized in these heated encounters was more often than not almost physically repugnant to me—a beast-man. Being a sucker for beauty in general, I gave this unexpected scenario a great deal of thought. I concluded that every woman must have a man—real or imaginary—to whom she is a whore, for whom she is a whore. I have always wanted, alas, to be some man’s bimbo. I don’t mean just acting like a slut or being desired for sex alone, although these are both excellent goals. I mean that the sex is for profit—be it financial or otherwise—more than for physical desire. If a woman is driven by a physical craving, she is vulnerable; with a beast-man, obviously, she retains her power. But that is not the most interesting part. I also discovered that imaginary sex with a man for gain is incredibly sexy. One’s inner whore gets a real workout, so to speak. Selling one’s sexuality, by choice, frees a woman’s desires from the incriminations, restrictions, and suppressions of good-girlness that proliferate when one is “in love.” And thus the paradoxical surprise: love is released as gratitude in great gushes of incredible uncensored sexual energy.