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 Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  It was that day on which people appear in summer shirts to show they have passed muster. Despite the warmth of the day, I had a cold, and my bronchial tubes were irritated. One of my friends happened to be suffering with an upset stomach, and we went together to the medical office to get written excuses that would permit us merely to watch gymnastic exercises without having to participate. On our way back, we walked along toward the gymnasium as slowly as possible. Our visit to the medical office provided us with a good reason for being tardy, and we were anxious to shorten even by a little the boring time we would have to spend watching the gymnastics. "My, it's hot, isn't it?" I said, taking off the jacket of my uniform. "You'd better not do that, not with a cold. And they'll make you do gymnastics anyway if they see you that way." I put my jacket on again hurriedly. "But it'll be all right for me, because its only my stomach." And, instead of me, it was my friend who ostentatiously took off his jacket, as though taunting me. Arriving at the gymnasium, we saw by the clothing hanging on the hooks along the wall that all the boys had taken off their sweaters, and some even their shirts. The area round the outdoor exercise bars, where there was sand and grass, seemed to be blazing brightly as we looked out at it from the dark gymnasium. My sickly constitution produced its usual reaction, and I walked toward the exercise bars giving my petulant little coughs. The insignificant gymnastics instructor scarcely glanced at the medical excuses which we handed him. Instead he turned immediately to the waiting boys and said: "All right now, let's try the horizontal bar. Omi, you show them how it's done." Friendly voices began calling Omi's name stealthily. He had simply evaporated, as he often did during gymnastics. There was no knowing what he did on these occasions, but this time again he came lounging out from behind a tree whose young green leaves were trembling with light. When I saw him my heart set up a clamor in my breast. He had taken off his shirt, leaving nothing but a dazzlingly white, sleeveless undershirt to cover his chest. His swarthy skin made the pure whiteness of the undershirt look almost too clean. It was a whiteness that could almost be smelled from a distance, like plaster of Paris. And that white plaster was carved in relief, showing the bold contours of his chest and its two nipples."The horizontal bar is it?" he asked the instructor, speaking curtly, with a tone of confidence. "Yes, that's right." Then, with that haughty indolence so often exhibited by the possessors of fine physiques, Omi stretched his hands down leisurely to the ground and smeared his palms with damp sand from just beneath the surface.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Love ’em up. Show me how much you want to belong to me.” Before she could begin to fill that order, Joy took her crawling, with the leash and with a handful of her hair, to the far end of the dungeon. She protested, and Joyous Day lifted her and threw her up against the cross. She was still gaping with amazement at the strength in that slender frame when Joy began to lace her to its arms. “We keep you face out t’face the music, my lovely girl,” Joy purred. Chris was in front of Roxanne, pressing up against her, rubbing her leather pants and the cold shuriken (their edges barely perceptible) into Roxanne’s naked flesh. She worked her tits hard, grabbing and twisting them, massaging them, and flicking and pinching the nipples. Each contact with her hands made a little explosion go off between Roxanne’s legs. Her thighs were slippery. She glanced down at her arm and caught a glimpse of Joy threading rope through an eye bolt, binding her securely, then Chris took her chin in her hand and shoved a tongue that tasted of saki into her mouth. “Kiss me like you mean it,” she whispered. “Kiss me good and maybe I won’t whip you.” She tried, but Chris disengaged as Joy brought two long pieces of rope over her shoulders. Chris dragged the bullwhip off of Roxanne’s body, coiled it and snapped it onto her belt, then buckled Roxanne’s waist to the cross. “Let’s leave this corset on her, it’ll keep her from getting slivers,” she suggested to Joy. “You don’ want to give her the porcupine treatment, it’s all the same to me, mon,” Joy said. “She gonna look like a porcupine herself soon enough. You and I seen somethin’ go in the autoclave over there, look sharper than a serpent’s tooth t’me.” It took at least half an hour for Joy to lace the first set of ropes in diamonds around Roxanne’s arms, torso, thighs, and calves. She stood, legs apart, on a narrow shelf at the foot of the cross. Chris checked the bindings and her circulation. She warned Roxanne to keep her knees relaxed and not locked into one position. After getting a thumbs-up from Chris, Joy took four short lengths of rope and vanished behind the cross. Chris was murmuring words of love and damnation, keeping Roxanne firmly under their spell, playing with her clit and nipples. She gasped as Joyous Day looped more rope around the binding that was already in place, and cinched the web around one arm a little tighter. She could barely move anything except her fingers, toes, and head. Yet she was completely comfortable. Joyous Day cinched up the ropes on her other arm, then each of her legs. Well—almost comfortable.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  The last two strokes were administered so quickly they elicited a single scream. Roxanne did not raise her torso from the table, but she kicked. Anne-Marie barely jumped out of the way in time. “That was naughty, dear,” she said. “Ponies prance, ladies dance. Tyre?” Roxanne put her head back down and just listened to Tyre stalk over to the horse and unrack her cane. It was thicker and longer than Anne-Marie’s favorite size, and not as flexible. Alex perked up and watched closely, curious to see how Tyre would handle this piece of equipment. Tyre stood behind and slightly to one side of Roxanne, tapping the cane on the toe of her boot. “What’s the damage, Anne-Marie?” she asked. “How vicious do you feel, Tyre?” The madam considered. “Why don’t we just make it one,” she said, “with one for practice.” Alex was disappointed. Two strokes (one and a half, really) didn’t sound like much of a show. Maybe Tyre didn’t like administering corporal punishment. Tyre folded her right arm across her chest. The cane stretched out at a right angle to her body. Then it flew toward its target, impelled by a series of three snaps, from shoulder, elbow, and wrist. It landed with an audible “thunk,” and rebounded out of the channel it had made for itself in Roxanne’s thighs. Roxanne seemed to have crammed a whole fist into her mouth, but she did not scream, jump, or kick. “That gives me the distance,” Tyre said pleasantly. “Now for the home run.” “Oh, these Yankee metaphors,” Anne-Marie sighed. “Such a jarring anachronism.” This stroke landed so hard across the middle of Roxanne’s cheeks that Alex could have sworn it shoved the girl and table forward by a good six inches. Of course, they hadn’t moved at all. Only Roxanne’s flesh had been displaced, and when it returned to its original contours, it bore a lovely purple welt that did not quite bleed, except for a few drops at the very end, where the tip of the cane (going faster than the body of the rod) had bitten in. “Well caned!” Anne-Marie applauded. “Weren’t you, dear?” “Yes, ma’am. I was, was well caned. For my fault. Jesus. Thank you, Tyre. Ma’am. Anne-Marie led her victim to the tiny bathroom, unchained her hands, and closed the door. “If we do not respect their privacy,” she said to all assembled, “how can we hope that they will ever respect ours?” EZ snorted, and Kay elbowed her in the gut. When Roxanne came out of the bathroom, she had refilled the enema bag and timidly offered it to Anne-Marie. “Please,” she said, “I’m not certain I’m clean yet.” “Certainly, dear girl. Bend over. This time we’ll use a dilating nozzle.” The dilating nozzle was the size of Michael’s cock.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  My desire for you is desperate, as if making you respond in bed could make up for all the things that go wrong elsewhere and give me back what I lose when you make a contemptuous remark about something I love or tell a story that is supposed to prove you will always be better than me at everything I care about doing well. I take it because I love you. But making love to you barely salvages my self-esteem, and keeps me addicted to you. Anybody could do this for you. I will know I don’t love you any more, that the anger has outweighed the lust, when I stop myself from taking that first puppy-lick, ice-cream-cone-lick, you-are-the-most-desirable-woman-inthe-world-lick that leads to two hours of being muzzled by your cunt, my tongue chasing itself around your clit, aching to have your wet and coming cunt plastered across my nose and mouth, my neck in the scissors of your thighs, hurting for those few seconds when I don’t need to breathe or think or remember my name or my pride. It’s so difficult to make you come that only three of your lovers have been able to do it. Did any of them have the stamina to eat you twice in one night? How would you like to come again? Macho Sluts A Note on Lesbians, AIDS, and Safer Sex The lesbian community has a relatively low rate of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), in part because we also have a relatively low number of different sex partners per lesbian. The way that most lesbians have sex may also be a factor. However, any lesbian who deviates from this pattern by having more female partners, male partners, or exposing her bloodstream or mucous membranes to her partners’ sexual fluids, piss, shit, or blood, is at higher risk. So are lesbian IV drug users. Many lesbians believe that diseases are only brought into our community by bisexual women. Sadly, the AIDS epidemic has reinforced an attitude in some quarters that lesbians are somehow inherently cleaner or more healthy than gay men. Most of us don’t think of vaginal infections as STDs, and few of us take precautions to prevent the spread of vaginitis or herpes. But women can give each other these diseases as well as chlamydia, hepatitis, intestinal parasites, syphilis, and others. You can try to protect yourself against disease by segregating your sex life so that you have no intimate contact with bisexual women, IV drug users, recently-reformed heterosexual women who are now exclusively lesbian, and any other “high risk” group. This has the potential to polarize us, and make some women scapegoats. The lesbian community is too small to survive excommunicating or quarantining some of its members. And the lesbian leather community is even smaller.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Kay cuffed her shoulder and pushed Roxanne over to Joyous Day, who untied her leather-and-fur bikini and rubbed the inside of it all over Roxanne’s face. Then her dark hands closed over the blonde head and pulled it between her thighs to service her. Chris, standing next to Joy, unzipped her leather pants, and Joy pushed her hand inside them. She made Roxanne lick her fingers, and used the wetness to jerk Chris off. Every time Joy got close to coming, she made Roxanne stop going down on her long enough to lick Chris’s cream from her fingers. Then Joy rubbed the moisture into Chris’s vulva, over and over again until Chris sobbed and came all over her hand. Chris had been hanging onto Joy’s full, brown breasts, and now she held them up to her mouth and sucked hard on Joy’s nipples while Roxanne held on to her tattooed thighs and licked her quickly and lightly to orgasm. Tyre didn’t feel like coming yet. She had Roxanne spread her legs wide and lean back, bracing herself with her hands flat on the floor. Then she put her foot up on the girl’s mound, and carefully tucked the high heel of her boot into Roxanne’s pussy. The chained girl was terribly excited after experiencing so many orgasms vicariously, and she tried to tilt her hips and take all of the boot-heel. Tyre knew it was the wrong angle to go in without hurting her, so she kept Roxanne at the edge of danger and climax and surprised herself by masturbating at the spectacle until she came, relishing Roxanne’s frustrated and tear-spattered face. “So you think we’re going to wear ourselves out on you?” Alex asked her. “Yes. I want more!” Roxanne cried. “Oh, I don’t think that will be a problem,” Alex said drily. “Next?” She helped Roxanne to her feet, untied and loosened her corset, then put her back on the floor. Kay and EZ had moved over to the sling. EZ was perched on its edge, swinging. Kay was applying an emery board to her nails. They gave each other a quick, conspiratorial smile. “How’s the old manicure?” Kay asked EZ. EZ stretched out her hand and examined her fingertips. “Flawless,” she said. “Soft as a baby’s bottom. How’s yours?” “Down to the knuckles,” Kay averred. “Where do you think they hide the grease in this establishment? It don’t look to me like Mama’s gonna fry much chicken in this here restaurant.” “Why, you near-sighted fool, there’s a whole fucking five-pound can of it hanging from a chain right over here.”

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  She kept thinking that she was going to run off to the bathroom and masturbate, but she put if off so often that Alex arrived (ten minutes early, such a top’s trick) before she had a chance to find out exactly how wet she was. Instead, she was in the lunch room (and out of character) setting the table. She had expected someone Anne-Marie’s age. But the woman who strode easily, a bit arrogantly, toward her was young—twenty-five at the most. She was tall (although not as tall as Tyre herself) and had the thick neck of a body-builder. She had a broad face with high cheekbones and almond-shaped brown eyes. Her head had been shaved about a month ago, so a short nap of black velvet covered her scalp. She was wearing black-leather pants with a studded crotch-piece, engineer boots, and an old, cracked black-leather jacket. The kidney panel, shoulders, and arms of the jacket were heavily padded. ‘I do so love those zippers that run from wrist to elbow,’ Tyre thought, and bit her napkin when she realized Alex was staring at her zippers, too. It took her a few seconds to register the fact that her guest was holding out her hand, apparently wanting it to be shaken. This charmed her completely. “Alex?” she questioned, in a tone of voice that clearly indicated she was pleasantly surprised. “Yes. And you must be Tyre. I hope I didn’t offend you by calling you the madam.” “Offended? It is an honorific, after all. Sit down, sit down. Georgia is going to makes us a blender full of killer margaritas. Would you mind hitting the button on the microwave, dear? Do you want to join us for luncheon?” “Not on your life, boss-woman. I am trotting my tushie downstairs with a hot covered dish for Simba the lion-hearted, who is no doubt exhausted after watching everybody scrub away at the slings and chains and clamps and pulleys until everything twinkles like a little star.” “And who will no doubt quickly uncover and devour any hot dish within arm’s length,” Tyre returned. “Hope springs eternal. Salt with those margaritas, ladies?” They both said yes, and Georgia dimpled at them and adjourned to the kitchenette. “Let me help you,” Alex said, and followed her out. She returned with a big casserole dish full of the hot chicken-in-salsa that was the basis for the fajitas, then went back for the sour cream, refritos, tortillas, chopped tomato and lettuce, and other fixings. She didn’t sit down until Tyre held out her chair and gestured firmly toward it. Once seated, Alex immediately put her napkin in her lap.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  He wanted to dispatch Joe, because he had some dignity wrapped up in the notion of inferior goods and dumb culture and stupid America. He was one of those kids who spent hours in front of the television shouting That would never happen. Sandy Williams expected to be cheated. He was ready for it. And it came to pass almost every time, and in this way the world seemed good and true. When he seized his doll, therefore, he pulled the elastic that connected the dog tag to its interior machinery as though he were going to strangle Joe with it. He seized it as though his certainty about being ripped off was the one thing he knew. —We’ll attack north at the next pass! Joe said. Wendy noticed again how silent everything was, how silent the house was, now that the storm had settled in to do its worst for a while. Sandy was stunned by Joe’s loquaciousness. Absently he scratched his testicles. He picked Joe up, shook him, held him up to his own ear. —Let’s hang him anyway. —Sure, Wendy said. So they did. What’s a noose but a slipknot? Joe fit snugly, and Sandy pulled the knot tight, and there he was, dangling. The whole gesture didn’t satisfy, really. And it left Wendy and Sandy alone in the room. She asked if he could turn Joe’s face to the wall and Sandy tried, but the rope was really wound up the wrong way. He kept spinning back around to face them. And something strange was happening right then. Wendy noticed Sandy was sitting on the bed with his pillow across his lap. Some emotion was overtaking them. She knew what this meant. She knew that Sandy was emerging briefly from under the rock where he lived. Sandy had Wendy alone in his room, in this warm room, in the midst of a swirling winter storm when his brother wanted her, when his brother was looking for her maybe. The whole thing was a gigantic turn-on. Wendy wished she had a helium balloon and could inhale that stuff and whisper in her helium tongue in Sandy’s ear. She wished he had booties on the ends of his pajama legs. She wanted to tickle him with a peacock feather. She wished he was standing naked under the swivel lamp wearing only hockey skates. —Why’ve you been avoiding me? she said. Sandy actually smiled. —Not avoiding, he said. Then scowling again. She slid up on the bed, and one by one with exaggerated slowness, she removed her snow boots, like they were stiletto heels. Fuck-me pumps. She knew what was under the pillow, she knew, like a little pinkie, like the stump of an amputated digit, Sandy’s miniature, little penis. She slid up the bed beside him.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Would you happen to have one?” A pack was extracted from a leather shirt pocket and went flying toward Iduna, closely followed by a silver lighter. She caught them both in the same hand, took a cigarette, lit it, and tossed both packet and lighter back. They were caught and returned to the breast pocket. Kerry waited two heartbeats, then relented and fished them out again and lit a cigarette for herself. Iduna smiled. It was a minor triumph, a small victory, to have them share even this much common ground—a quiet smoke together in a dark alley, with rats just out of eyeshot, telling each other their tribal stories about eating garbage and tormenting human babies, fucking their mothers and devouring their own succulent children. Smoke curled around her fingers as she resumed talking. “I have been an archivist of your legend ever since I came to the city. In fact, your legend is what brought me here.” Kerry gave her a brief nod, accepting this as her due. “I’ve been collecting all the stories about you, verifying what I can, making observations of my own. I’m always interested in legends even if the people who inspire them are not really of mythic proportions. But when I realized just how legendary you truly are, I began to keep very close track of you. As far as I know, James was your last … shall we say, completely satisfying experience? It’s a little less cold than calling him a meal. He says you tied him down, took a scalpel, exposed an artery in his thigh and partially sutured it, slit it between the sutures and drank nearly a pint of his blood before you pulled the stitches tight and closed the incision with butterflies of surgical tape. All with his permission, of course, and he says it made you quite sick to have that much at once. He was close to passing out, so he may have been hallucinating. But I don’t think so. Was his blood bad? Is that what stops you now? A fear of tainted blood? Disease, perhaps? Or did you get enough from him to last you all this while?” Now they both knew the game, her question and the answer, and Iduna saw the mirrored shades removed for her benefit, saw herself regarded by cold eyes, eyes surrounded by darkness, eyes that already saw her dead in six different positions. “James,” said Kerry hoarsely, “talks too much.” “Don’t be hasty,” Iduna cautioned, smiling and blowing smoke up at the moonless sky. “Surely you haven’t lived this long by being rash and impulsive.”

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  You come for a long time, longer if I can keep on licking you or shove my fingers into you, past your locked thighs, just as you begin to come. After the shouting, you lie very still, like someone who has fainted. I am terribly excited. As soon as your thighs relax a little, I push my hand between them, put my fingers up to feel how wet you are, and slide them in. You always say, “No. No, lover, don’t.” And I say, “Why? Why not? I want it. You can’t stop me. Give it to me.” Then I fuck you. You don’t like it, but it makes you come anyway, you can’t help it, you jerk and throb around my hand and lock me between your thighs once more, and come until you’re screaming obscenities at me, it feels so good to you. If I can, I fuck you yet again, and this time you really protest. It’s too much, you’re too tired, you’re sore. But I am adamant. I’ve worked so hard to get you to this place, thrown open to me, responding with these free and easy, quick and intense orgasms, that I have to use your pussy as often as you will let me take it. It’s what I want myself, for you to pin me down and fuck me, but coming has left you too enervated to struggle with me, so I fuck you instead and like it just as much as coming myself. Besides, this is the only time you can come when I fuck you, right after you’ve been eaten into an orgasm. You love to get fucked and will take literally hours of it, but never give in and come completely around me, come until you are satisfied. It’s almost like a feeding frenzy, this letch to fuck you again and again while pleasure has made you helpless. I once scared myself by fucking you until you passed out, and continuing without noticing you were unconscious. I didn’t stop until I simply could not move my arm any more. Since then, I’ve tried to restrict myself to doing it once or twice. Yes, it’s difficult to make you come. You are difficult in other ways, too. You expect me to do things for you that I think people should do for themselves. I try anyway, and in return you hurt my feelings by complaining that I don’t take good enough care of you.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Do you do that for everybody who puts the make on you?” “No” “Just for me?” “Just for you.” “Liar. Unbutton the top button of your jeans.” Any ideas about hearing her life story vanished from my mind. I put my hand to my crotch and complied with her request. She savored her smoke, exhaling it slowly and tapping her ashes lazily, as if she were on a Sunday drive to no place special. “You can undo another button now.” I opened my pants another notch. She took another drag, this time exhaling more smoke in my face. We played this game until there were no more buttons. Then she shifted her attention to another part of my body. “Put your hand inside your leotard. Now touch your breast. The left one. Play with the nipple. How does that feel?” “Ah—” “Do the same thing with the other one. Is it hard yet?” “Yes. Wrinkled like a raisin.” “Can you lick your own nipples?” “I don’t know.” “Try.” I found that by bending my neck down and turning my nipple up, I could, indeed, get it in my mouth. The sensation of sucking on my own tit was delicious. She waited, already one step ahead of me, lost in her plans. “Put one hand inside your pants. Can you feel your pubic hair?” “Yes. It’s crisp and curly.” “What color is it?” “Black.” “You must not be a real blonde then. Cigarette—but don’t move that hand.” I managed to light the cigarette with my left hand. She watched me, amused by my fumbling. “Slide your hand down and just cup it over your cunt. I want you to keep playing with your tits with the other hand. But don’t try to beat off. Just leave that hand quiet on your cunt, like a good girl.” “I can feel the heat—Jessie—” “I think I’d like to listen to the radio,” she said to no one in particular, and turned it on. She sang along with the music, her harsh, vibrant voice reminding me (if I needed reminding) who I was sitting next to. I dared complain during a commercial. “Jessie, my nipples are sore.” “Okay, you want to stop? I don’t care. Button up and put your hands in your lap.” “Jessie, please, I’m so turned on I hurt. Please—” “Don’t,” she warned. “I need to—” “I don’t care what you need. You’ll wait until I want to hear you come.” Five more long minutes of music. She switched off the radio in the middle of a song. “You can put your finger between the inner lips, down by your hole. Are you wet?” “Yes,” I gasped. “How wet?” “I’ve been lubricating for over an hour, thinking about how it felt to be pressed up against your hip. Even your eyes looking at me felt like you were stroking my cunt.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  The blood immediately started to rill, and she cupped her hands under her breasts to help her corset push them close enough together to gather it and keep it in a pool. She knew that she was as beautiful then as she ever would be— her head tossed back, her mass of curly, blonde hair being rearranged by a breeze, her white throat, shoulders, and breasts exposed, and the red color of the thread of blood just barely distinguishable from the ebony of her dress in the darkness. She thought for a moment that her adversary had disappeared, because she suddenly was not where she had been. But then muscular hands dug into her back, claws bent and held her. There was a tongue lapping between her breasts, but what was there was quickly consumed, and there were sharp teeth biting, and warm, soft, strong lips pressing around them, sucking. The pain disappeared as soon as her blood mingled with the fluids in the other’s mouth. Of course there’s no pain while they’re feeding, she thought sleepily. It’s their adaptive trait, evolutionarily speaking … The hands moved to her breasts and began to knead them, like nursing kittens, and she writhed from the sudden pleasure it brought her. Apparently she moved too much, because one of the hands left her breast and took her by the hair. Steel fingers kept her bent back in a perfect bow, the bleeding part of her uppermost, taut, an available feast. She could smell her own blood. It was sickening and yet very satisfying, familiar, comforting. The scent of fresh blood was nicer than menstrual fluid, though it was always pleasant to bleed. The body over her moved convulsively, paying heed only to what it was drawing in from her, taking care only that she would not escape until she had given satisfaction, satiation, quieted all hunger. She was painfully aware of her heart beating in her left bosom, and realized that was the breast that the brutal hand kept milking and bruising, as if to keep the heart pumping, as if to squeeze its contents directly into the waiting mouth full of razors. Iduna slipped on the gravel, and immediately the hand left her breast and a strong arm was wedged between her legs, the hand clasping the small of the back, holding her the way a mother holds an infant.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  a boat sailing on the 4th of September. I met the friends to whose care my brother had commended me. They also agreed that I should not let go the opportunity of going in such company. There was no time to be lost. I wired to my brother for permission, which he granted. I asked my brother-in-law to give me the money. But he referred to the order of the Sheth and said that he could not afford to lose caste. I then sought a friend of the family and requested him to accommodate me to the extent of my passage and sundries, and to recover the loan from my brother. The friend was not only good enough to accede to my request, but he cheered me up as well. I was so thankful. With part of the money I at once purchased the passage. Then I had to equip myself for the voyage. There was another friend who had experience in the matter. He got clothes and other things ready. Some of the clothes I liked and some I did not like at all. The necktie, which I delighted in wearing later, I then abhorred. The short jacket I looked upon as immodest. But this dislike was nothing before the desire to go to England, which was uppermost in me. Of provisions also I had enough and to spare for the voyage. A berth was reserved for me by my friends in the same cabin as that of Sjt. Tryambakrai Mazmudar, the Junagadh vakil. They also commended me to him. He was an experienced man of mature age and knew the world. I was yet a stripling of eighteen without any experience of the world. Sjt. Mazmudar told my friends not to worry about me. I sailed at last from Bombay on the 4th of September. 15.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  She shucked her pants. I kept my place. “Better,” she said approvingly. “You’re learning.” She moved forward. “Tilt your head back a little,” she told me. She shoved her pussy into my face, enveloping my eyes and nose and mouth in her cunt. “Remember me,” she said, rubbing her perfume into my skin. “That is my smell, the essence of me. Now open your mouth a little and give me your tongue. Suck me. Go ahead. Eat me out. Flick that little pink tongue on my clit. Come on, you want it. Do it.” I put my face between her thighs and devoured her, whimpering with greed. My mouth was full of her soft folds and thick honey and stray little curly hairs. She moaned when I hit a spot just above her clit, so I lavished every caress my lips and tongue could devise on it. It didn’t take long. She clamped my head to her, shook and bucked, crying my name. When she pushed me away, my cheeks were smeared with her juices. She cupped my head in both hands and wiped my face with her thumbs. Our eyes met. “Now you have a taste of what I want,” she whispered. “I am going to possess you utterly, for my own pleasure, make you completely and totally mine. Are you willing?” “I’ve never wanted anything more.” “That’s the last time I’ll ask for your permission or consent. Follow me.” I struggled to my feet. She took me into the bathroom and untied me long enough to unsnap the crotch of my leotard and pull it off over my head. She retied my hands so they were crossed in front of my throat. Then she took down my pants. It was humiliating, being exposed like a small child, but comforting, too. She put me on the toilet. The seat was cold against my bare ass, but when she stood close to me and hugged me to her breasts, I was warm all over. “Go ahead, piss,” she said, a patient teacher encouraging a not-too-bright student to give the right answer to a very simple question. To my horror, I could not. It was not the right time to get piss-shy. She made a tch-tch noise with her tongue and turned on the bathtub faucets. Keeping her back to me, she tossed two pearls of bath oil into the tub and emptied a packet of bubble bath in after them. I could smell the fragrance, but it was the sound of the falling water that affected me the most powerfully. My bladder began to empty. She was with me in a split second, and, for a miracle, my urethra did not lock itself back up. Her arms tightened around me, and I knew the sound was arousing her.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  You haven’t been watching me the way I’ve been watching you, and anyway, I don’t expose a lot of skin in the clubs. I like to show cleavage and nothing else, not even my forearms or my calves.” Kerry was staring at her décolletage. Iduna knew that her breasts were very prominent and was always amused by men and women who were so attracted to them that they talked to her tits rather than to her face. It was appropriate, in a way, because breasts were symbolic of nurturing. ‘But the nourishment I provide,’ she thought, ‘is not milk, but a different humor.’ She continued her pedantic, distracting speech. “My skin is very pale, almost transparent. It looks fragile, but I heal very quickly. My veins are close to the surface, easy to get to. See how thick and blue they are? I never have any trouble giving blood. The needle just pops right in, and out it spurts. Easy as sin.” She was picking at her wrist with the point of the blade, then caressing the inside of her elbow. “All it would take is a little more pressure, and we’d have a fountain here. A scarlet fountain, pouring onto the dirty ground, completely wasted, unless … unless someone had a use for it. Unless someone caught it in their mouth before it hit the ground. Caught it and drank it, took life from it, rolled it around their tongue and palate and described the vintage to me, swallowed and swallowed as if they would never get enough. Look, my pulse is beating right here.” The arm was held out steady, not shaking. A glinting edge pressed against old scars along the vein, hard enough to make an indentation but not to break the skin. The sight made Kerry’s leather-clad hips jerk, just once, but Iduna saw it and was immediately excited. How interesting, to see a reflexive response there, in the crotch, instead of just the jaws and hands. What possibilities it opened up … but the words the leatherwoman spoke next shattered her erotic fantasies. “You will bleed to death if you cut yourself there, that way,” said she. It might have been a report on the temperature and time of day. “Don’t you want it? Need it? Wouldn’t you like to smell it, falling through the air? The wind is behind me. It would bring the scent to you at once, fresh and abundant.” The other shook her head. “No.” “No?” “No. Why are you surprised? Even if this mad story you’ve concocted is true, you yourself said I’ve already gone without it for months.” Iduna made the mistake of arguing. “Then the need must be intense right now. You must be hungry. I don’t think you’ll die without blood, but it must make you feel a little sick to be deprived. A little less powerful than usual, a little less energetic. Distracted. Frustrated.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  The lashes flicked her tender thighs as well, leaving red stripes that quickly faded. She alternated the blows with moments of loving praise and encouragement, during which time she would tickle Clarissa between the legs with a whip handle. She soon had her writhing upon the horse, her behind plunging up and down like a lusty mare. The girl gasped for breath and clenched and unclenched her tiny hands. “You’re blushing,” Berenice said. She ran a cool hand over Clarissa’s hindquarters. She struck again, harder. “Hush. This is nothing. Hush. Nothing.” She walked to the head of the horse and took possession of the bound girl’s mouth. “More? Yes. More.” She resumed her position at the foot of the horse and landed several well-aimed blows. “Now you can go ahead. Sing. I like to hear you. God, I’d love to flog the skin off your dimpled, pink behind.” The cat whished through the air, creating a small breeze that stirred Berenice’s curls. Clarissa snorted and snuffled. Her hair hung in wet strands, and her body was shimmering with perspiration. A streak of more viscous moisture stained the division of her pubic fleece. “I can take more,” she said as Berenice appeared by her head. Berenice smiled. “So sweet,” she murmured. “You are so sweet.” “Kiss?” “Oh, yes.” Berenice’s penetrating tongue was so strong! Clarissa forgot herself and began to nip and swallow at it. Berenice laughed at her and withdrew. “Oh—more!” Clarissa wailed. “I’m on fire from head to toe. Don’t leave me!” “Naughty girl,” said Berenice. “Salacious little slut. Biting at my mouth like a common streetwalker. We must punish the baggage, or she will go from bad to worse. Isn’t that so, my darling?” Clarissa fought back her agreement and remained silent. “Oh? She wants to argue with her betters. Impudence on top of a sensuous disposition. This is a frightful combination. Tell me this, rebellious miss, did you or did you not nip at me? Eh?” “I—I did,” Clarissa confessed. “And was it out of pain or fright?” “Nooo.” “Then we must conclude that you were overwhelmed by carnal impulses. And you know that cannot be tolerated.” “Yes,” Clarissa admitted, defeated. “I know.” “Well, then. Let’s have no more vain attempts to avoid punishment. Ooh, just you wait till I get my hands on you. Baggage! Tart!” While calling the wrath of heaven down upon her disobedient child, Berenice gave her a sip or two of brandy, then she visited the lacquer chest again. She glanced quickly over the tray that perched on top of its other contents, a tray that originally had contained velvet boxes full of strands of pearls, earrings, diamond brooches, and the like. Now it held another sort of jewelry. She selected one of the trinkets, diabolical miniatures that winked at her.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  It’s good for a week, but then there’s three weeks of bumps and stubble till you can wax again. I cannot tolerate bumps and stubble for three weeks. So I shave, every single time. I do it dry, using lots of baby powder and two new two-blade disposable razors each time. Against the grain, but gently. It never cuts and never takes off a layer of skin like wet shaving. Then there’s shape. I began with the simple side trims, the tutu trim, from my ballet-dancing days—a nice isosceles triangle. But then I went to a few strip clubs and got jealous of those very exposed, hairless pussies. Now I shave everything in between, smooth, smooth lips, and leave a nice little triangle on top—though carefully, carefully I trim on either side of the top of my slit, just to highlight and expose the magic crevice—very sexy, very porn. On the bed, legs over the head, mirror in hand, I shave the few hairs around my ass—smooth as a baby. I have, with this view, really come to see what he sees, what he loves, where he goes. My rosebud—not Citizen Kane’s. I dress. There are three firm knocks on the door. I’m ready. New Year’s Arithmetic Eighty-four anal fucks this year—that averages 7 per month, that’s 1.75 a week, one every 4.3 days. But he was out of town 21 weeks, in town 31 weeks, which averages 2.7 ass-fucks a week, which makes one every 2.6 days. I like the math; I do it to believe. Me and the Marquis de Sade: he counted, too. HIS COCK I always found cocks rather ugly—better not to look too closely. Wrinkled, asymmetrical, disparate shades of color. Dangling and silly when down, curved, veiny, and just plain weird when up. Was this foreign protuberance supposed to get me wet? Visually, it dried me up. Visually, it was humorous. And scary. And they all want you to lick it, suck it, and rub it. Ugh. The only thing I liked about it was the metaphor, a monument of vertical desire. And that unruly hair all over the place. It’s insulting. When I deigned to go down on a man, hairs always caught on my tongue—and it can take ages to find that one curly culprit. In short, a cock was not a thing of beauty to me. Now, women, they are beautiful. Breasts, hips, curves, asses, faces, eyes, lips, smell, pussy—everything about a beautiful woman is, well, beautiful. Would my eyes ever see a cock as an object of beauty? I tolerated them at worst and felt a mild, passing affection at best. And since they rarely did much for me during intercourse, I really had no proper place for them. Then he came along and it all changed—in those first three hours.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Even so, it didn’t stop her knowing what the apple was for... But in case I still wondered, the lady now spoke. ‘Put it on,’ she called - she must have caught the opening of the trunk - ‘put it on, and come to me.’ I struggled for a moment or two over the placing of the straps, and the tightening of the buckles. The brass bit into the white flesh of my hips, but the leather was wonderfully supple and warm. I glanced again towards the looking-glass. The base of the phallus was a darker wedge upon my own triangular shield of hair, and its lowest tip nudged me in a most insinuating way. From this base the dildo itself obscenely sprang - not straight out, but at a cunning angle, so that when I looked down at it I saw first its bulbous head, gleaming in the red glow of the fire and split by a near-invisible seam of tiny, ivory stitches. When I took a step, the head gave a nod. ‘Come here,’ said the lady when she saw me in the doorway ; and as I walked to her, the dildo bobbed still harder. I lifted my hand to still it; and when she saw me do that she placed her own fingers over mine, and made them grasp the shaft and stroke it. Now the base’s insinuating nudges grew more insinuating still: it was not long before my legs began to tremble and she, sensing my rising pleasure, began to breathe more harshly. She took her hands away, and turned and lifted her hair from the nape of her neck, and gestured for me to undress her. I found the hooks of her gown, and then the laces of her corset: beneath this, I saw, she was mottled scarlet from the hundred tiny creases of her chemise. She stooped to remove her petticoats, but retained her drawers, her stockings and her boots and, still, her gloves. Very daring - for I had not touched her at all, yet - I slid a hand into the slit of her drawers; and with the other I caught hold of one of her nipples, and pressed it. At that, she put her mouth to mine. Our kisses were imperfect ones, as all new lovers’ kisses are, and tasted of tobacco; but - again, like all new lovers’ kisses - their very strangeness made them thrilling. The more I fingered her the harder she kissed me, and the hotter I grew between my legs, behind my sheath of leather. Finally she pulled away, and seized my wrists. ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Not yet, not yet!’ With my hands still clasped in hers she led me to one of the straight-backed chairs and sat me on it, the dildo all the while straining from my lap, rude and rigid as a skittle. I guessed her purpose.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  This club had a different name then, and catered to vanilla swingers. But Kerry, a master of her craft, was not distracted. She knew you must practice this despised art where you can, and disregard what is tawdry or unclean—or learn to love the dirt, the sleaze, because it represents your membership in the elite. Now she had him remove his shirt and grab a rung far above his head. He was stretched on his tiptoes in front of her. She asked him a question only he could hear. “Ah don’t want no bondage,” he said loudly. Iduna and Teddy shared a brief, unpleasant laugh. Planarians can learn. Howard sat up and took notice when Kerry began to work on Bill’s naked back with a short, suede flail. Hanging from her belt, it looked homemade, innocuous. In her hand, it was a weapon. She whirled it so quickly that there was no apparent difference between the sound it made swinging through the air and the sound it made striking skin. It was one continuous, ominous tone, a single voice that became a duet when the man began to scream. However, he did not let go. Gil leaned toward Howard and whispered that he had seen some people cut and run at this stage. Howard was still skeptical, but now he was keeping an open mind. Everyone watched. It was what you did at the club when someone hung by their cold and sweating palms and took a beating. Granted, not all of them approved. By tomorrow night, rumor would have it that Kerry had half-killed someone. Heavy S/M is not popular with most of the adherents of light bondage and discipline. Unless you love pure pain for its own sake, it is difficult to see that deliberately administered, controlled agony retains its own severe sensuality. Iduna rocked on her bar stool, separating her legs enough to let the edge of it press across the middle of her cunt. Teddy spared a glance for her and smiled at her flushed cheeks, then ran a hand along his own erection. It had been a long time since he had played with Kerry. She hadn’t been in for a while. Maybe Iduna would take a quick stint behind the bar. The leatherwoman had switched to a longer flail. It was not suede, and the tails had knots in them. Bill’s broad back was now an evenly raised mass of bruises. Kerry danced behind him, side to side, quick as a cat, cruel and exact. He was crying out continuously, twisting from side to side. He seemed to have forgotten he could let go of the ladder. Iduna swallowed a mouthful of wine and thought, how delicious, it would take only one good stroke to split that wide open. And of course this is what Kerry (wielding the braided cat now) did. Nine narrow tails whistled through the air, and the skin divided, rent, bled.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  I want somebody I can perfect with hard, constant training. A living work of art I can take out and show off on Folsom Street as my counterpart. So pretty and so alive and responsive to me it will make all the other tops, boys and girls, gnaw on their arms. It’s makin’ me crazy, what I want. What do you think?” Tyre thoughtfully chewed her lower lip. “Well, the only problem is the classic one of determining consent. Since my negotiations are with you and not with Roxanne, I have no way to determine if this really is one of her fantasies.” “Well, what do you want me to do? Give her a safe word?” “Since the whole thing is being set up as a test, I don’t think that would ruin the ambiance. And I also need to check your credentials, and her background. You understand. If I’m going to find tops she doesn’t know, I’d have to do that anyway.” “I think my reputation will bear up under scrutiny. You plan to be equally careful when you select the other members of the party?” Tyre nodded. But she seemed distracted. “What else is bothering you?” Alex asked. “I was just wondering if that’s what they say about me—that I have no interest in dominance and submission.” Alex shook her head. “You wanna know everything they say about you, we can sit here all day and I still won’t be done.” Her eyes had gone cold, calculating. “What the fuck does it matter to you? You’re not exactly working for commission.” “I just get sick of being the object of so much gossip. It’s ostensibly a form of attention, but it actually makes me feel slighted and ignored. Because what people are really paying attention to are their own fantasies, their own needs, their own ideas about who or what I should be in relation to them. They have no idea what the Calyx means to me, why I do this, what keeps me going. And they don’t care.” “How could they ever get to know you? You’re a very private lady. You have a huge fan club of adoring little baby dykes, but you keep ’em away with the color of your money and your Snow Queen attitude. The ninjas and cat-ladies you got workin’ for you are a buncha hard-core bodyguards.” “I have to be very careful to protect my privacy. Because you know what happens when women find out something about me that doesn’t agree with their fantasies, their projections? They get angry. And there’s nothing more dangerous than a disappointed fan.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  LODOVICO DISCOVERETH TO MADAM BEATRICE THE LOVE HE BEARETH HER, WHEREUPON SHE SENDETH EGANO HER HUSBAND INTO THE GARDEN, IN HER OWN FAVOUR, AND LIETH MEANWHILE WITH LODOVICO, WHO, PRESENTLY ARISING, GOETH AND CUDGELLETH EGANO IN THE GARDEN Madam Isabella's presence of mind, as related by Pampinea, was held admirable by all the company; but, whilst they yet marvelled thereat, Filomena, whom the king had appointed to follow on, said, "Lovesome ladies, and I mistake not, methinketh I can tell you no less goodly a story on the same subject, and that forthright. You must know, then, that there was once in Paris a Florentine gentleman, who was for poverty turned merchant and had thriven so well in commerce that he was grown thereby very rich. He had by his lady one only son, whom he had named Lodovico, and for that he might concern himself with his father's nobility and not with trade, he had willed not to place him in any warehouse, but had sent him to be with other gentlemen in the service of the King of France, where he learned store of goodly manners and other fine things. During his sojourn there, it befell that certain gentlemen, who were returned from visiting the Holy Sepulchre, coming in upon a conversation between certain young men, of whom Lodovico was one, and hearing them discourse among themselves of the fair ladies of France and England and other parts of the world, one of them began to say that assuredly, in all the lands he had traversed and for all the ladies he had seen, he had never beheld the like for beauty of Madam Beatrice, the wife of Messer Egano de' Gulluzzi of Bologna; to which all his companions, who had with him seen her at Bologna, agreed.