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 licked her knuckles; I tapped my dick against her breasts to see how they quivered; I straddled the tub just as she was straddling it, facing her, and beat my richard savagely until I was almost there. When I was ready I stood and said, “Let me be there with you, honey, you’re so sexy, please let me come on your face,” in a strange almost singsong pleading voice, and without waiting for an answer from her I let all of my burning bechamel jump out onto her tightly closed eyes, unable to resist doing so even though I knew that I would probably regret it afterward—not least because it would be so much trouble to get all of it off her eyelashes and eyebrows. When I was done I sat down on the tub for a second to rest. “Thank you,” I said. I wasn’t crazy about the way my come looked on her closed eyes, but the beauty of her ecstatic expression survived it; in fact the existence of the outcome of my orgasm on her still-coming face seemed entirely irrelevant, as it should have. I turned time on for the tiniest fraction of a second, so that she would have a tactile flash of the sensation of liquid warmth, in case it would add a novel touch to her clasm, and then I spent a good ten minutes tamping and gently rinsing every sign of my sperm off of her. I put her dirty clothes back in her hamper. I took a last look around to be sure I had left everything in order. I stood behind her and flashed time on again for a second or two to be sure that, post-orgasm, she didn’t suspect that she had had company, and when I was convinced that she felt safe and unviolated I went downstairs and got dressed and let myself quietly out. It hadn’t really happened. I intended to leave my UPS story buried in the sand where she had marked it with three shells, in case she wanted it at some future date, but as I mounted my borrowed motorcycle, vanity overcame me and I hustled back to dig it up. Then, still in the Fold, I drove slowly home. I kept thinking of Michelle’s bath as I cruised down the shoulder of Route 3; I ardently wished I had a picture of Michelle’s come-face (before I had come on it myself, I mean): it was the kind of sight that could enhance your life for a decade.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  I like to see that boy-dick slapping in there!” said Marian, turning the showerhead on her clit. “I can feel it in my cunt just looking at it! Yeah! My cunt is so empty and yours is so full of that sweet hot dickmeat!” As they fucked, Sylvie focused on the dildos, which lay tumbled on the grass. The girl turned so that her face was close to Marian’s. Her hair was in her eyes. In an uneven whisper, she said, “I need one of those. Pick one and put it in my ass, will you? Please?” Marian brushed the tulips down Sylvie’s back and tapped them against her asshole. Then she replaced the flowers with her middle finger, resting it lightly on the opening. “Is that where you want something? Right in there?” “Oh,” moaned Sylvie, “I want what’s in your ass.” “Honey, I’ve got something much better than that for you,” said Marian. “Kevin, look where my finger is. Isn’t that a pretty little asshole? Has your cock ever been in there?” Kevin shook his head no. His hands were on Sylvie’s hips, and he was pushing with a circling motion of his hips, making gravelly grunts. “I want to see that dick up that gorgeous little butt. That okay with you, Sylvie? You want your honey’s big burning dick up your ass? Believe me, it’ll feel good. You know you want it, don’t you.” “Yeah I want it, I want it,” said Sylvie. “You want it straight up your ass, don’t you,” Marian repeated. “I need it up my ass,” Sylvie pleaded. “Kev, I need it up my ass!” Marian grabbed the four-foot-long Welsh Fusilier and turned it on. She whispered to Sylvie, “Slide this up my cunt.” Sylvie fumblingly obliged. “That’s good. I want our slutty cunts to be connected while you get fucked up the ass for the first time,” Marian said. She handed her end of it to Kevin. “Pull out of her, baby. Push this in instead.” Kevin’s long glossy dick emerged from behind the horizon of Sylvie’s ass-curve and with evident reluctance he fed the end of the double-vibe where he had just been. Sylvie made a surprised shout and arched her back and started fucking against it. As soon as Marian saw Kevin’s cock reappear, she knew she had to suck it. This was her one chance. “Oh, God, that’s a pretty cock,” she said. “I need a real dick in my mouth for a second, just for a second . Come over here for a second, baby. Sylvie, he needs to be super stiff for your tight little butt. You don’t mind if I get his dick good and stiff for you with my tongue, do you? I’m sorry, but I just have to suck on this dick.” “Suck him!” said Sylvie. “Ooh, God, suck him stiff for me. Just hurry and get something big up my ass. I’m so hot for it.”

• From The Fermata (1994)

  I wasn’t the sort of man that she really wanted, and she wasn’t for me, either—there would be a temporary wonder and excitement in those loose neck-holes, and then the differences between us would doom us—and why do any of that, when all I really wanted to know was how, exactly, she was naked beneath her clothes? I could imagine some of the unseen her in advance, having undressed so many women on the sly in my life—I’m aware of certain connoisseurial correlations between the type of face a woman has and the type of back she has: in fact, I felt that I had a fairly well defined sense of how her back would look and feel, how high her hidden waist was. But breasts were always a wild card, and the ass, too (I mean the real-world ass, not the dirty-magazine ass), was a thing of a billion unique variations. I wanted, failing knowledge of her nakedness, simply to announce to her, in a quiet, serious voice, “I am, too.” And when she turned her face to me in sociable puzzlement, I would gesture at her book and say, clarifyingly, “I mean that I’m naked, too, beneath. Really, I am.” Maybe she would roll with this lameness. One of the very first times I ever made out with a girl was in a park when I was fifteen: we lay on a slight slope, among many short conifer trees. Eventually her hand undid my pants and went into my underpants, and she hoisted my moist troika out into the world and left it there. Neither of us looked down for a long time—I was concentrating on making her come without taking off her jeans, which was not all that easy. Finally we gave up, needing real privacy to make any headway, and then we both looked down, and there was a sight of my naked self that I had never seen, or never paid attention to—an almost shockingly awful sight: the ultra-pale skin of my horizontalized balls was stretched very tight, stretched to a state of egg-glaze glossiness (because the waistband of my too-small underpants was underneath them, pushing my balls up), and it was overwritten with many delicate, infantile blood vessels, as in a Lennart Nilsson photograph of the head of a developing fetus. And—adding considerably to the overall obscene effect—sparse hair follicles made little white bumps in the stretched skin.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Orowitz-Rudman gently. “The image is degrading.” “I forgot. I’ll try. I’ll try. And so then he puts her tits back in her bra and tucks her shirt in and scampers back into the magnet and he lies there on the pad just where he was and snaps his fingers, and time starts up again, and he lies there thinking of the tits he has just sucked on, how great they felt in his hands, and it’s such a tremendous thought that he has to come, he doesn’t care how much it hurts—oh, that’s right. I want to come inside your magnet, doctor. It hurts, but I don’t care. I like you to take all kinds of graphic pictures of my nerve while I pump this hot nasty piece of meat off for you. I like being hard and hot in your core. Oh, doctor. Doctor? I’ve got to call you Susan when I come. Sorry. Is that okay?” “That’s okay,” said Dr. Orowitz-Rudman. “Just try to stroke a little slower, if it’s at all possible.” “Oh, thank you. Oh Susan, oh Susan, oh Susan, uff, uffuck . Tell me you want to see me come. I want to hear you say it.” I heard only silence over the intercom, and then: “As I said before, I do think it’s important for you to climax.” “I will climax, you bet, you got it. I’m going to think of your tits and climax. Oh, you gave me your lipstick to hold. That was so good of you. I wish I could’ve circled your lips and nipples with it. Oh that feels nice. Squeeze my meat, Susan. Squeeze it in your big magnetic hole. Open that hole up for me. Suck me in, baby. Oh God yeah. Tighten that force down on my cock, uffuck. Uffuck. Here it is: oh yeah, oh fuck yeah. Oh yeah! Urrrrr!” I let the comeshots jump up and land on my stomach muscles. I lay there for what seemed like a long time, breathing peacefully. “Am I done?” I beatifically asked at last. “Almost,” said Dr. Orowitz-Rudman. “Normally, at this point might you resume writing?” “If I’d been alternating writing and jacking, yes.” “Then could you type the baseline sentence again?” she said. “It might be useful to have. Remember it? ‘The cure …’?” “Don’t tell me!” I put the fake keyboard on my chest, avoiding the sperm, and typed the sentence from memory. The technicians dragged me out on the gantry and handed me a brown paper towel.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Fortunately, when she told her mother that she had finally kicked David out, her mother promptly came through with a check for three thousand dollars. Money worries eased for the moment, she hired the neighbor kid to mow the rest of the lawn using the new green ridem mower. His name was Kev. She watched him from various windows as he jounced around on her lawn. He had ostentatiously deliberate rips in the legs of his jeans from which his brown knees protruded, and he was wearing brown work boots. His shirt was off. He was wiry; he had that adolescent ability to bend at the waist and not produce a little bloomp of waist fat. The small side muscles in his upper arms had a sort of a sideways S shape that called out to her. They were the muscles he would use if he were supporting his own weight over her. She watched him lean into a turn up the slight slope toward the tractor tire in the middle of the front yard. The previous owner had put it there, painted it white, and planted peonies in it. David had insisted on keeping it as it was, he being one of those non-gay would-be camp enthusiasts who rave automatically over anything tacky, and now Marian, too, had grown to like it. She had never expected to be living in a house like this, on a rural highway a mile out of a town one town over from the town the college was in, getting sexed up watching a seventeen-year-old neighbor kid drive her lawn-mower around. His chest muscles were indisputably square and flat; the cord of his Walkman headphones looked frail and kinky against his skin. How could he possibly be hearing any music with the mower going? She thought of gently removing his headphones and his pants, and then of making some sort of herbal wreath for his young penis, mainly of Sweet Genovese Basil (a kind she had recently planted), like a laurel crown; perhaps as a final touch she could insert a short sprig of curly parsley into the opening of his urethra, so that when she slid and stroked his soft newborn sex-skin twistingly up and down, murmuring to him not to worry, that it was just nature’s way, and he finally whimpered the conclusive whimper, the sprig of parsley would flip right in the air from the force of his clotted sperm.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  She looked at Kevin with amused surprise—the employer surprised at the precocity of the employee. “Yeah,” Kevin agreed, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the road. “We’ll probably go on over to the fish hatchery.” “Well, terrific,” Marian said. “Have a glorious glorious time, you two. I wish I could … I mean, I wish you well.” She shifted a little on the brass tray and felt the thick steadfast dilderstatesman issuing official pleasure-briefings down her legs and up to the warm unforgotten Fijis of her nipples. It was so fucking hard —so hard to keep from saying the things she wanted to say with it deep in there: she wanted to yank up her wet dress for them and say, “Go on and fuck each other silly! Take a good look at this monster cock jammed up my butt! I want you to look right at my asshole crammed with this big fat dick and then go out and fuck and suck each other and slam your bodies together!” Her skin prickled with the almost irresistible wish to be obscene. But all she said was, “I must say, I envy you both a little. I’m just sorry I can’t get up and see you off …” Sylvie was immediately full of concern. She touched Marian lightly on the arm. “Are you okay? Can we help you up? You know your dress has gotten a little wet.” “I know, I know,” said Marian, “I’ve been watering everywhere.” “Everywhere?” said Sylvie. “Isn’t it kind of cold?” “The water’s warm. It’s from my shower. Feel.” Marian turned the stopcock on and whisked the showerhead spray once over Sylvie’s outstretched hand. “Feels really nice,” said Sylvie thoughtfully. “The tulips love it,” said Marian. “In fact, will you two do me a favor and pick some for each other before you go? As my present to you? Pick the ones you like most. The Etruscan Prune variety is my favorite at the moment, but choose whichever ones you want.” Sylvie and Kevin liked this idea a lot and set to work assembling reciprocal bouquets. Now that their eyes were off Marian, she was free to move on the tray again and make pleasure noises in a whispery undertone. She watched them circle her beds. She imagined them all breathless and loving and wide-eyed in a shady spot near the fish hatchery. They were beautiful—fit, healthy, incredibly young—so inexperienced that they thought that their two-digit courtship, or coitship, made them seasoned fuckers. She knew so much more than they did.

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

  As soon as we had looked round this inviting spot, and every preliminary of privacy was duly settled, strip was the word: when the young gentlemen soon dispatched the undressing each his partner and reduced us to the naked confession of all those secrets of person which dress generally hides, and which the discovery of was, naturally speaking, not to our disadvantage. Our hands, indeed, mechanically carried towards the most interesting part of us, screened, at first, all from the tufted cliff downwards, till we took them away at their desire, and employed them in doing them the same office, of helping off with their clothes; in the process of which, there passed all the little wantonnesses and frolics that you may easily imagine. As for my spark, he was presently undressed, all to his shirt, the fore-lappet of which as he leaned languishingly on me, he smilingly pointed to me to observe, as it bellied out, or rose and fell, according to the unruly starts of the motion behind it; but it was soon fixed, for now taking off his shirt, and naked as a Cupid, he shewed it me at so upright a stand, as prepared me indeed for his application to me for instant ease; but, though the sight of its fine size was fit enough to fire me, the cooling air, as I stood in this state of nature, joined to the desire I had of bathing-first, enabled me to put him off, and tranquillize him, with the remark, that a little suspense would only set a keener edge on the pleasure. Leading them the way, and shewing our friends an example of continency, which they were giving signs of losing respect to, we went hand in hand into the stream, till it took us up to our necks, where the no more than grateful coolness of the water gave my senses a delicious refreshment from the sultriness of the season, and made more alive, more happy in myself, and, in course, more alert, and open to voluptuous impressions.

• From Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  What couples loveMen love kissing, and women do, too—it’s a fact. For men, the more open-mouthed and deep, the better. The chemical cues in the saliva, swapped during kissing, may alert the male brain to a woman’s reproductive status. But, science aside, kissing encourages deeper intimacy between you, so don’t relegate it to the bedroom. For women, kissing of all kinds is good: light, deep, soft, and passionate. Next time you get the chance, let your man know how much kissing turns you on. Smooch with him to enhance intimacy, to arouse him, and to show him how hot you find him. When your man kisses you, he is telling you that he is feeling sexy, he wants to get up close and intimate, and that only you can satisfy his passion. Accept the compliment by allowing his caresses to arouse you and get you in the mood for some life-enhancing sex. Your very own styleHowever, don’t be too concerned if your kissing connection isn’t always sizzling. You can get your kisses back on track by giving your lover positive reinforcement and demonstrating the styles you prefer. For instance, if his kissing style is too aggressive for your liking, say “I love it when you kiss me softly and slowly”—then show him just what you mean. Or when you see a stirring kiss at the movies or on TV, lean over and whisper, “That really turns me on—let’s try kissing like that.” If you are in a new relationship, asking him what he enjoys isn’t very romantic, but you could find out by letting him take the lead. Are his kisses quick and intense or slow and moist? Discovering his style lets you deliver the lip action he craves—and then you can show him what drives you wild. Being clear about your likes and dislikes early on avoids problems later. [image file=image_rsrc3B2.jpg] “Kiss-switching”You can also try out a “kiss-switching” policy. Take turns kissing each other the way you most enjoy being kissed. Try sweet, soft kisses interspersed with deeper, wetter, tongue-fondling ones. Spend time experimenting. You’ll both learn about the kisses the other desires and get pretty aroused in the process.

• From Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  Set the sceneDim the lights or arrange candles right around the room to subtly light your body. This can help make you feel more confident—since you won’t be standing under the glare of electric lighting—and create the dusky atmosphere of a strip club. Choose the music wisely. The best music for dancing and stripping is the kind that makes you feel happy and confident. Whether this is a classic hit or a romantic slow number, find one that fits you, rather than trying to fit yourself to the music. Just make sure it has a good beat and is not too fast for you to dance to. Get into the roleTo get the moves of a striptease dancer, just remember what your mother taught you—about posture, at least. Keep your back straight, hold your head high, and smile—not only will this help you relax and exude confidence, it will also keep your tummy tucked in and your breasts out. Pointing your toes will elongate your legs and make cellulite disappear. Wear stilettos to show off your legs and your toe cleavage. Private dancerMaintain eye contact with your lover throughout and keep your hips moving seductively. Smile softly and shyly bite your lip as you unhook your bra. Once you have removed it, return to dancing in front of him and then move on to the next piece of clothing. When he can contain himself no longer, strip off your panties. Remind your man that most strip clubs don’t allow fraternization between clients and dancers, but tell him that you are ready to break the rules for him. Slowly grind your body against his crotch. When he can’t take the anticipation any longer, tell him the only tip that you require is sex with him. He’ll get his pleasure, but you will also get to call the shots and have sex exactly the way you like it. Take this opportunity to show him some of the moves you enjoy. Paid pleasuresTurn the tables and play with the idea of paying your man for private pleasures. Indulge in a little male-escort or sexual-slave fantasy. You could demand oral sex, an erotic massage, or some S&M—handcuff him to the bed—or even get him to perform a strip show of his own. Enjoy yourselfStrip one piece of clothing off at a time and enjoy yourself. Take your time and show your man different views of your body—your back, your legs, and your bottom—by turning around as you dance. When you get down to just your bra and panties, walk over and give him his very own lap dance. As you move your body, caress your skin seductively. Enjoy showing him how sexy you are. Let him look, but not touch.

• From Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  Make a date No matter how busy your lives and careers are, or whether you have children, all long-term couples benefit from setting a date night and spending quality time together outside the home. Go to a restaurant or a bar and spend an hour or two flirting with each other. Don’t talk about work, domestic troubles, or the kids’ homework. Instead, make each other laugh, enjoy kissing at the bar, holding hands in the taxi home, and having great sex afterward. [image file=image_rsrc3AP.jpg] AffairsThe urge to be with an attractive stranger is often a natural element of our sexuality, and striving for something new is part of being human. This is even more true when a relationship is faltering as a result of arguments, miscommunication, and unspoken needs. Affairs can create the rush of the unknown, a sense of romance, and a feeling of being sexy and desired. While infidelity is damaging, some people believe it is easier to satisfy their sexual desires with someone other than their partner. Face the truthAs tempting as that sexy stranger or seductive co-worker may be, you first need to ask yourself a hard question: what are you looking for? Is it sex? Romance? Feeling attractive, wanted, or loved? The latter is the common response, but while you get this feeling in the short term, an affair doesn’t provide for your long-term emotional needs. Is an affair worth it? If your partner caught you or knew you were doing it, would it then be worth it? You also need to ask yourself another hard question: are you willing to do the work needed in your relationship to get what you want? If your relationship has been under duress because of external factors, such as a change in financial circumstances, blame the issue at hand and not your partner. An affair might help you forget problems at home, but it won’t solve them. The danger of emotional cheatingEven if you remain faithful physically, emotional infidelity has the potential to short-change your partner and stifle your relationship. Emotional cheating comes about when you devote undue amounts of time, energy, humor, sensitivity, and affection to someone other than your partner—a colleague, for instance, especially as many of us now spend more time with our co-workers than we do with our partners. We only have so much emotional energy, and if we bestow these gifts on other people, our partners will inevitably feel neglected and resentful. Know what is real, and what isn’tYou can allow yourself to feel lust for that handsome guy in Marketing. It’s okay to think someone is sexy and to express those feelings in private, because the more you repress your thoughts the more they will persist in your mind. You can even daydream from time to time that you are with a different person—but that doesn’t mean you actually have to act on those fantasies.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  The second date he took me to a ratty little hole in the wall Ocean Beach gym where he hit the heavy bag and did mixed martial arts things I’d never seen, nearly making me cream my jeans and pass out. I know. How not evolved of me. How not feminist and Ph.D. and university professor. I’m just saying. You could have hosed me down and carried me out on a stretcher. Then he wrapped and wrapped and wrapped my hands and put the red gloves on me and took me over to a smaller weenier bag and tried to show me how to hit it. Everything smelled like man and sweat and leather and socks. I was the only woman there, and I was not young and hot. I was 38 and he was 28 and it looked that way. But I put my fists up. For him. For him, I tried to find some game. It was going OK, but mostly I bat at it like a girl. Not because I couldn’t bring something harder, I was an athlete back in the day after all. But I was COMPLETELY UTTERLY STUPIDLY RIDICULOUSLY SELF CONSCIOUS. Middle-aged woman with hot guy in an O.B. gym. At one point he tried to help me improve my jabs by having me put both gloves up in front of my face - I didn’t realize I was supposed to protect my face, I was intently staring dreamily at his, hoping to look at least minimally sexy. So when he jabbed at my little red paws? I ended up punching myself out. My eyes watered and my nose went numb for a bit. But I stayed. And I hit the bag harder and harder. And when I hit it as hard as I could? It felt good. Um, really good. I hit it and hit it and hit it. I hit it like I was hitting my own past. Then he hit the heavy outdoor bag and knocked it off its metal moorings. So, yeah. You know those illustrated Karma Sutra books? Here’s a brief run-down: stimulations of desire, types of embraces, caressing and kisses, marking with nails, biting and marking with teeth, on copulation (positions), slapping by hand and corresponding moaning, virile behavior in women, superior coition and oral sex, preludes and conclusions to the game of love. Oh and it describes 64 types of sexual acts (10 chapters).

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  I looked around at all the earnest grad student folks at orientation and felt kind of like I had a big red “A” on my chest due to my checkered academic past. Flunked out of undergraduate school in Lubbock. Quit undergraduate school in Eugene. Went back with a pile of D’s and F’s and clawed my way up to the pretty people. Then I saw a guy who looked equally out of place and very uncomfortable with astonishingly beautiful long black hair and eyelashes. I watched him. He kept looking at the door. And fidgeting like he didn’t fit in the seat. I didn’t hear an orientation thing. After the orientation I sort of sauntered up next to him and without looking at me he said, “I feel like I might get arrested here,” and I replied without looking at him, “Do you think they can tell I’m not wearing underwear,” and we went straight from the orientation meeting to a bar and didn’t stop drinking for 11 years, so you might say I was perfectly primed to cross his path. This man was gorgeous. I’m mentioning this because women live their lives secretly waiting for their lives to become movies. We act like men are the ones shallow enough to desire an unending stream of beautiful women but really, if a charismatic narcissist beautiful bad boy man actually desires us, seems to choose us, we go to pieces. We suddenly feel like we are finally in that movie rather than a life. Just what we always wanted. To be chosen by the best looking man in the room. Rhett Butler. Even though we are of course smarter and more mature and more together than to ever want that. Or admit it. Honestly I remember feeling shocked every time he walked up to my Toyota pickup truck and got in. I always expected him to veer off at the last moment, get into someone else’s vehicle. Or bed. Or house. Or life. Our love, was liquid. Turned out we both loved drinking more than almost anything else. The anything else turned out to be fucking. Drinking in bathrooms and kitchens and alleys and hallways and bars and cars. Drinking all the way to the coast and all night at a bar and in the morning with eggs and oyster shooters in some crappy run-down motel and all the way back to Eugene. Drinking before, during, and after classes. Drinking in beds and in baths and at the rivers and in the rose garden and in the graveyard next to U of O and on top of Prince Lucien Campbell Hall. We drank Guinness. We drank cheap turn your teeth purple wine. We drank Chivas, because he had a thing about Jim Morrison. We drank vodka, because of… well, me. We drank everything his favorite poet drank - Bukowski - and like Bukowski’s women, I matched him drink for drink. We drank each other blind.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Then I began tapping my hand on my napkin. I refilled Joyce’s water glass. I went to the bathroom and checked how I looked. I looked fine—a little sheepish and worried about the eyes. I sat down again and poked around at my plate, but I didn’t want to eat anything without Joyce “there.” I didn’t enjoy the enveloping silence this time, as I usually did; it was like sitting at a table with someone who wasn’t speaking to me. In fact, it wasn’t like that, it was that. I didn’t want to be under the Fermata at all just then; I wanted time to be rolling forward at a nice brisk clip, so that Joyce would get used to the things that I had told her and forgive me for them, if forgiveness was still a possibility. It might take weeks. I snapped my fingers. “I just did it,” I said. “What did you do?” She looked quickly down at her dress and back at me. “I had absolutely no sense of anything happening.” “I didn’t do that much. I was chastened by your reaction, so I took it easy. I refilled your water glass.” Joyce looked at her water glass suspiciously, “It was already that high.” “No, really, it was about a quarter full,” I said. “I’m sure it was that high. I’ve been drinking mostly wine.” “Should we debate water levels?” I said. “Or should you simply tell me what you want me to do, what will prove to you that I really can stop time, so that I can Snap out right now and do it?” “You could … “Joyce looked around the room for inspiration. I saw her eyes alight on the waiter. “I don’t know. Anything. What would you want to do?” I leaned forward. “See those two men? I could switch their ties. But I don’t really want to do that. I hate practical jokes. It’s hard enough to tie my own tie. The Fold is sexual for me.” I looked pensive for a moment, then brightened. “I could take off your bra and put it in your briefcase in the coatroom. I’d be happy to do that. Would that convince you?” “Yes, it probably would,” said Joyce. “But hold off.” I said, “If you could snap your fingers right now and stop time, suspend all cause and effect, what would you do?” I leaned forward again and began speaking in a soft coaxing urgent voice. “There’s the waiter there. I saw you check him out. He’s got a nice butt, right? Think about it. This entire room is filled with cock. There is cock in every direction. Prosperous cock, arrogant cock, dumb cock, smart cock, old-regime cock, new-age cock.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  Ken Kesey’s hair between your fingers feels like lamb’s wool. If you hold it up to the light you can imagine shapes in clouds - like the touch of dreams kids have when they look up into the sky. In anthropology the word fetiches was popularized by C. de Brosses’ Le Culte de Dieux Fetiches, which influenced the current spelling in English, and introduced the obsessive desire part. A nicey way to say it would be to say “something irrationally revered.” Fetishism in its psycho-sexual sense first cropped up in that swank sex writer’s work, Havelock Ellis, around 1897. Have you read Havelock Ellis? Was that guy high or what? Kathy Acker’s hair is like blades of bleached grass - sharp and stiff - and smells like swimming pools. It’s not just hair. There’s the hair, and it’s true to this day if I meet someone with beautiful hair I want to put my face in it and lose myself, and one other thing. Scars. I like to run my tongue along them like mouth Braille. Buddhist hair smells like smooth stones taken from a river. Whereas Christian hair has a cross between new car smell, dollar bills, and after shave. Alternately like chocolate chip cookies. There is a woman I want to tell you about. Right after I tell you about my mother. Which is where everything gets born. My mother was born with one leg six inches shorter than the other. In my life it meant something completely different than it did in hers. In my life as a child it meant that the pearled gleam of her scar appeared exactly at eye level. So white. So beautiful. I wanted to touch it. Mouth it. When she got out of the bath I hugged her leg and closed my eyes and saw it and saw it and saw it. I saw the crossed white tracks, the too-white non-skin on her misshapen leg, the dark wire of her pubic hair. It made me dizzy enough to see stars. And that’s not all. My mother wore her hair wound in a never-ending spiral at the back of her head. When she let it down, it reached her calves. It smelled like fir trees. Every desire that flickered alive in me as a child came from those two images. My mother said that as a girl, she let her hair grow long enough to cover her body, her deformed leg, her scars. So that there would be something about her that was beautiful to cover a crippled girl.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Since Arlette, I have taken many more risks; I have increasingly wanted to give the world something to digest—something big and anarchic and sloppy but not (I hope) harmful or even particularly embarrassing in any permanent way to the individuals concerned. Probably my decision to assemble something on paper about my life flows in part from this urge. But I do have limits and hesitations. Only a few days after my evening chat with Arlette, I was waiting in the lobby of the same building for a cab to show up. It was about eleven at night. A Hammermill box full of backup documents was to be put in a cab to go out to a partner’s house. (The partner was sick but, good man, planning to work all night.) The cab was delayed. Every so often I spotted a rat moving fast across the plaza in the dark. The security guard was in a chatty mood. I knew him slightly. He was in his forties, with some serious dental problems. Once, when I had stopped to say hello for a second, he had raved about a piece of music on his radio—“Listen to this, I just love it! I wish I knew what it was. It’s mint!”—proud of himself for his sudden affinity for what he took to be Rachmaninoff or Bruckner or somebody. I listened for a phrase or two and inquired whether it wasn’t the theme from Love Boat . His face went through a male menopause as he realized that I was right and that his attempt to demonstrate his culture had betrayed him into humming enthusiastically along with a tired old TV show. So in a general way I thought I liked him. While I was waiting for the cab, I decided to ask him what he would do if he had a remote-control device that, instead of pausing a video, froze the entire universe. He understood the sexual implications of what I was asking immediately. “What would I do?” he said. “I’d find the nicest, best-looking chick I could find and rip her clothes off and plank her right there.” I was a little taken aback. “But she wouldn’t be moving. You would really fuck her?” He said absolutely he would. “I’d find the nicest, mintest chick I could find and carry her off to an alley and rip her clothes off and start hammering the shit out of her.” “But she wouldn’t be responding!” I again protested. “So what? I’m talking about a mint chick now, a really mint chick.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Kevin looked surprised. He had finally pieced it together. “You mean that all the time we’ve been here it’s been …” Marian took a deep breath. “Up my ass, yes.” “Up your … It’s not in your … it’s in your …?” Sylvie, pointing to parts of herself to clarify her exclamation, looked genuinely surprised. “It feels super, I must tell you,” said Marian. “But that’s not the crazy thing. The crazy thing is how badly I want to show it to you. While it’s in there, I mean. I’m doing everything I can to keep from hauling this dress up right now and leaning back and showing you how good it feels stuffed up my tight butt. Oh man! Just thinking about it gets me going. Are you repulsed?” They continued to look a little surprised, but not repulsed. Marian went on. “I’m afraid you caught me at a particular moment. Kevin, you can attest to the fact that I don’t normally talk this way.” “She doesn’t at all, no,” Kevin agreed. “It’s dildo talk, frankly,” Marian went on. “It’s the way I talk when I’m sitting on a big fat artificial dick. What can I say? My butt is stretched so damn tight right now—I wish you could see, I really do. I wish I could show you, and I wish when you saw it in my ass you’d take off all your clothes and make love for me right here. Is that so unthinkable? I don’t think it’s so unthinkable. Kevin, I was so good last summer. Do you realize that? I thought about your cock quite a number of times, I thought about sucking it and jerking it off—I even thought of putting a sprig of parsley in your tiny little cockhole, and yet I never once did anything ! And now you’ve found Sylvie, this wonderful friendly open person, who probably sucks your cock beautifully, and it makes me feel so good that you’ve found her—it makes me want to see her suck on your cock. God, I wish I could show you what I have up my ass right now. It feels so fucking hot.” She paused. “See, that’s a sample of dildo talk.” Sylvie was the first to speak. “You can show it to us,” she said. “We won’t mind.” “Really?” said Marian. “Well, you take off all your clothes, then, both of you. I’m not going to show you anything until all your clothes are off. Take them off.” Obediently Sylvie and Kevin took off their pants and underpants and pulled off their matching striped shirts.

• From Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  Switching the pace Let your man alternate between different speeds and pressures, avoiding random flicks and licks. Some men prefer to move their tongue in a figure-eight motion, while others find that spelling out the alphabet with their tongue works as well. Find the motion you prefer together, then let him tease you a little. He should keep his tongue well-lubricated so that the strokes are pleasurable for you. Revel in the sensations before he sends you over the edge. The kiss of pleasure Get your lover to place his mouth around your clitoris to create suction around the entire area, and let him use his tongue to delicately stimulate your clitoris. The varying sensations of being sucked and licked will give you intense pleasure. He can also try kissing and mouthing the peri-urethral area. This is very sensitive for you and will get you aroused and ready for more sex play. FellatioMen love oral sex. The combination of your warm, wet mouth and lips and the texture of your tongue is enough to drive any man wild. Yet many couples find that oral sex falls by the wayside in their relationship and becomes something they do only on special occasions. This is not because women in long-term relationships regard oral sex as an activity belonging to their younger selves, but rather that when it’s already hard to find time for a quickie, oral sex seems to be a luxury. Intimate oralIt is easy to see how fellatio is something for special occasions, but engaging in it regularly is a sure way of keeping your relationship sexy and fresh. Performing fellatio on your man creates an instant and very intimate bond between the two of you. Oral sex demonstrates trust, love, and seductive power, while also telling your man that you think he is hot, and his genitals are sexy—vital to his self-esteem and body image. Plus, most men adore fellatio—even more, rumor has it, than “normal sex.” You may be worried about oral techniques, but with a few clever skills (and a wet tongue), it’s easy to give your man good head. In fact, most men would agree that there is no such thing as bad oral sex. What’s more, you don’t need any special accessories to enjoy it—you don’t even need to get undressed, making it great for a quickie. When you have more time, make oral sex part of foreplay to enhance your lovemaking sessions.

• 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.