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 Vox (1992)

  91 right side of the page. I wrote 70% REDUCTION on the copy. But obviously my plan to strum off hastily and then make the second copy had to be abandoned, because my dick wouldn't even begin to reach over the plastic strip between me and where the glass started when it was soft. But by now I was crazed with the idea of doing some thing for this woman that retained some shred of play fulness to it, so she could think to herself, All in fun, all in fun, and yet which conveyed the full force of the idea that I had been alone in that office that weekend with a huge erection, thinking of her. How do I give her that sense? Actually come onto the asterisk memo? That seemed crude. Do you think that would have crossed the line?" "I think, yeah." "I thought so. So instead what I did was—you remem ber making outlines of your hands in kindergarten? You held your hand still on the page and you traced around each finger, and all the little contours of your finger joints were captured, and you would go around a few times, and each time the pencil was at a slightly different angle, so you got this aura of your hand, that was so much more accurate than you could ever draw, and all you had to do was put in the fingernails and the little wrinkles on the backs of your fingers and you really had something? Once this girl traced my hand and I traced hers at the same time—I went very slowly, which trig gered her ticklishness, and she laughed hard every time

• From Vox (1992)

  Once I asked some question like ‘Is that one of the counterfeiters?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’ Otherwise we were totally silent, while these hardworking Europeans struggled and jacked and sucked and moaned and came in English in front of us. The men came, anyway. It’s still a rarity to see a woman really come on a video, as opposed to thrashing around. There was more of the dimensionless electronic Europop music. After one giant come-shot Emily put her tea down and took a deep breath and puffed out her cheeks and smiled. I laughed with relief. I said, ‘Is it as you remembered it?’ And she said, ‘I’m a little chilly.’ So I unsnapped the plastic cover of the blanket and unfolded this big acrylic plaid thing and put it over her, but I did it wrong, evidently, because she said, ‘Could you turn it this way?’ and she showed me how she wanted it. So I tucked her in with the fringe of the blanket running under her neck. Then I sat down again, focused on the movie, and again there was the jolt—you have a moment of two fully clothed work friends in a living room adjusting a blanket, and I’m stuffing two of its corners behind her shoulders, probably the first time I’d ever touched both of Emily’s shoulders at the same time, absolute coziness, we should have been talking about the very first birthday we could remember or something, and then we turn to the TV and there are tits swinging around and a woman’s hairdo swinging around while she rises up and down on some expressionless Eurodick and we’re hearing ‘Oh Mario Mario!’ After a little while there were some movings around under the blanket, and then it started to shake, sort of. She didn’t say anything, she didn’t even change her breathing, she was keeping it very steady. Her mouth was closed. She said, ‘Could you do me a favor and hold the blanket for a second so it doesn’t slide down?’ So I held it in place while she lifted her hips and moved around some more, frowning. Her face was fairly close to mine but we didn’t have eye contact. Then her panty hose appeared from under the bottom of the blanket, with her underpants still nested in it, and then her feet disappeared again. She said, ‘Thanks,’ and took hold of the top of the blanket. Again the slight fast movement underneath. Her mouth opened slightly, and I could see her tongue pushing against her lower teeth, and she made these very subtle little movements with her lip—not twitches, that sounds too obvious and uncontrolled, just these very controlled barely perceptible sudden movements, as if several times she were on the verge of saying something that began with the word ‘you.’ On the TV a woman was making her fist go up and down on a cock with her mouth slack. When a sex scene ended, Emily’s blanket would stop.

• From Vox (1992)

  And you can just tell me, you can just say, ‘Jim, please lift the waistband of your gray underpants up to its extreme limit of stretch so that it clears your erection and then bring it around and hook it under your balls, and then take that Juggs magazine and use it to fan your overheated pop stand.’ And you know what? I would do it.” “Well, yes, I could tell you to do all that, but I don’t know, those are important decisions you maybe ought to make for yourself.” “And I could probably ask you to tell me anything about yourself and you will tell me.” “Maybe,” she said. “You told me the secret word you have for the adult male cock, anyway. Not for my cock, leave me out of it. For the one you think about on your own . See, see, this is what I need. I need to know secrets and have secrets and keep secrets. I need to be confided in. Each time you come alone and you don’t tell anybody, that’s a sexual secret. The event has taken place and only you know about it and you have ministered to yourself in exactly the way you wanted to and thought of exactly what you wanted to think about. And each of these thousands of times you have come alone constitutes a perfectly unique moment, with precisely this order of images and that fold of yourself being moved by your middle finger in just that way and that biting of lower lip with exactly that degree of force, all entirely private. I almost think that each one of the times a woman comes in private in her life has to continue to exist as a kind of sphere, a foot-and-a-half-wide sphere, in some ideal dimension, sort of like all the ovums you’ve got queued up in you, except these are … ovums of past orgasms, weird as that sounds, and I am this one viable spermazoid lurking around among them, and I would happily spend my life floating up to one after another of these unique orgasm-spheres and looking inside and I’d be able to watch you make yourself come that one time.” “I bet each one of these mystical spheres has a little window in it with a little Levelor blind that’s down almost but not quite all the way, right, that you creep up to and peer into, am I right?” “Exactly, as if it’s a stylized cartoon bubble with a curved window drawn on it, and you’re naked in there, strumming like there’s no tomorrow.

• From Vox (1992)

  36 air, and she looks down at herself, and she's got quite small breasts—" "I thought you didn't like that word." "You're right, but sometimes it seems right. Actually most of the time it's the right word. Anyway, she's got quite small breasts but quite large little hips, and large little thighs, and she's wearing this tiny little outfit that's torn or jaggedly cut and barely covers her, and she looks down at herself, a lovely little pouty face, and she puts her hands on her hips as if to measure them, and she shakes her head sadly—too wide, too wide. Oh that got me hot! This tiny sprite with big hips. And then a second later she gets caught in a dresser drawer among a lot of sewing things and she tries to fly out the keyhole but— nope, her hips are too wide, she gets stuck!" "Sounds sizzling hot." "It was." "You remember Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, when Marilyn Monroe tries to squeeze through a porthole on a ship, but her hips are too wide?" "I dont remember that. I better rent that." "It would be funny if Tinker Bell inspired old Mari lyn," she said. "You know, I found the Disney Peter Pan vaguely sexual, too." "Well, yeah—J. M. Barrie was a fudgepacker from way back, and clearly some of that forbiddenness sneaks into every version." "The girl floats around in her nightgown," she said.

• From Vox (1992)

  64 "I know that, I realize that, and that's how I trick myself into accepting men's existence: women often imagine men when they come, so men have a reason to exist. In fact, this secondary deductive twist allows me to get aroused by stuff that doesn't really arouse me, like for instance when you went into that catalog thing earlier about the row of male models in the warehouse with their cream horns popping out of their shorts, I could think to myself, okay, her arousal is supremely arousing to me, and this image she's describing is the source or current expression of her arousal, and I could imagine your face thinking of those images, and therefore I was able to make them somewhat arousing to me. Like the religious nut who embraces the devil because it shows his utter humility before God—except I don't go that far. Oh! I know what I meant to tell you." "What?" "You know you mentioned that friend of yours reading you a romance novel all night? Okay, this is a good example of what I'm talking about. I went into this used bookstore one time, just to browse around, called Bonnie's Books. But it wasn't really the kind of place I thought it was going to be, it had hardly any old books, what it had was recently published pre-enjoyed books. A de-facto library. Shelf after shelf of these things, big thick historical romances, super neatly shelved, sometimes five or six copies of the same book side by side, Loves Hurry, Loves Eager Trial, Love's Tender Fender Bender, all that

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Accordingly, the two boys and their nurse abode patiently in Messer Guasparrino's house several years, ill-clad and worse shod and employed about the meanest offices. But Giannotto, who was now sixteen years of age, and had more spirit than pertained to a slave, scorning the baseness of a menial condition, embarked on board certain galleys bound for Alexandria and taking leave of Messer Guasparrino's service, journeyed to divers parts, without any wise availing to advance himself. At last some three or four years after his departure from Genoa, being grown a handsome youth and tall of his person and hearing that his father, whom he thought dead, was yet alive, but was kept by King Charles in prison and duresse, he went wandering at a venture, well nigh despairing of fortune, till he came to Lunigiana and there, as chance would have it, took service with Currado Malespina, whom he served with great aptitude and acceptance. And albeit he now and again saw his mother, who was with Currado's lady, he never recognized her nor she him, so much had time changed the one and the other from that which they were used to be, whenas they last set eyes on each other. Giannotto being, then, in Currado's service, it befell that a daughter of the latter, by name Spina, being left the widow of one Niccolo da Grignano, returned to her father's house and being very fair and agreeable and a girl of little more than sixteen years of age, chanced to cast eyes on Giannotto and he on her, and they became passionately enamoured of each other. Their love was not long without effect and lasted several months ere any was ware thereof. Wherefore, taking overmuch assurance, they began to order themselves with less discretion than behoveth unto matters of this kind, and one day, as they went, the young lady and Giannotto together, through a fair and thickset wood, they pushed on among the trees, leaving the rest of the company behind. Presently, themseeming they had far foregone the others, they laid themselves down to rest in a pleasant place, full of grass and flowers and shut in with trees, and there fell to taking amorous delight one of the other.

• From Vox (1992)

  “All right, tell me what the most recent thing or event was that aroused you.” “The idea of making this call,” he said. “Before that.” “Let me think back,” he said. “The Walt Disney character of Tinker Bell. I was just leaving the video store, and I came to this big cardboard display of Peter Pan , the Walt Disney cartoon Peter Pan , which has just been rereleased, with a TV beside it playing the movie.” “When was this?” “This was today, about an hour and a half ago, I guess. I rented three X-rated tapes.” “And you’re going to play them later this evening?” “Maybe. Maybe not, I don’t know. I was going to play them when I got home.” “The second you got home.” “That’s right.” “What about dinner?” “I ate at a pizza place.” “What kind?” “Small mushroom anchovy.” “All right. So you got home with the tapes …” “Yeah, and I put them on top of the TV and got out of my work clothes and put on a bathrobe …” “Just a bathrobe?” “Well, I have my T-shirt and underwear on underneath, of course.” “White underwear?” “Gray, white, somewhere in that range. Anyway, I came out and saw the pile of X-rated tapes on top of my TV, and they’re in these orange boxes. The store uses brown boxes for their normal tapes, like adventure, comedy, slasher, etcetera, and then they use a whole different color, an orange box, for the adult tapes. It’s to avoid confusion, because now there are so many X-rated Christmas tapes and X-rated versions of Cinderella and all that. And I’d never seen two of these particular tapes before, but of course I knew what was in them anyway, and I heartily approved of it, I’m enthusiastically pro-pornography, obviously, but suddenly I foresaw my own crude arousal—I saw myself fast-forwarding through the numbing parts, trying to find some image that was good, or at least good enough to come to, and the sound of the VCR as it fast-forwards, that industrial robot sound, and I suddenly thought no, no, even though one of the tapes has got Lisa Melendez in it, who I think is just … delightful, I thought no, I don’t want to see these right now. Fortunately, I’d also bought a Juggs magazine, because this anti-orange-tape reaction has hit me before. There are just times when you want a fixed image.” “There’s always the pause button,” she suggested. “Well, but then you get those white sawtooth lines across the screen.” “Four heads are better than two, as they say. Of course, the resolution is better on the magazine page, I imagine.”

• From Vox (1992)

  32 "To myself, I sometimes call it 'dithering myself off. "Okay, a possibility. What about just 'fiddle'? Fiddlin' yourself off? The dropped g is kind of racy. No, no. Strum." "Strum." "That's it. I looked through the Juggs, and even though it was a poolside scene, I tried to strum, and there was one shot where the woman was looking straight at me, on her elbows on a yellow pool raft, and her frans were at their point of perfect beauty, not erect nipples but soft rounded tolerant nipples, which you have to have in a poolside photo set because as soon as you see those erect nipples in a poolside layout you think cold water, you don't think arousal. I want you to know, by the way, that I am not one of these sad individuals who hang out at the frozen fried-chicken section of the supermarket where it's extra cold just to see women's nipples get hard. I don't get the least thrill from wet T-shirt contests either, because I have to have an answering arousal there in the woman, and cold water is anti-sexual, except if in the case of the wet T-shirt contest I can convince myself that this woman is using the shock of the cold water, the giggliness and the splutteriness of it, to make something possible that otherwise wouldn't be possible and yet is arousing to her: I mean if she wants to show off her breasts, if she's proud of them and yet knows she's not the kind of person who's going to go off and become a stripper or whatever, and the douse of cold water is distracting enough to keep her

• From Vox (1992)

  161 is just buried in your pubic hair, and I breathe through it, I fill it with warmth, and I open my mouth more, and I bring my tongue out, and I start low, and the underside of my tongue is touching my lower teeth, and I lick slowly upwards, until I reach the place where the skin is more folded, and I find that beautiful clitoris, and I move over it with my tongue, and then when I've found it I close my mouth and sort of burrow my way into you so that all your pubic hair is away from my mouth, and my mouth is entirely around your clit, and I hold my hands very high on the insides of your thighs, feeling those stretched tendons, so you feel how wide apart you are, and I suck the skin around your clitoris into my mouth, like I did with your nipple, so that you feel it drawn into my mouth, and when you feel it drawn in I take my tongue, very high, right at the base of your clitoris, where I can feel that little ridge beginning, and I start to go back and forth over it, back and forth slowly over it, and you feel the tip of my tongue traveling down toward the part where it's hotter, and then I reach the very full part of your clitoris, and you pull your hips in slightly and re adjust to that feeling, and I cup my hands under your ass and lift you into my mouth and just suck on you, and I shake my whole head back and forth very fast, as if I'm saying, no, no, no, but I'm saying yes to your clit with my tongue." "Oh, I'm going to come soon. Put your cock in me, I want to think about your cock in me."

• From Vox (1992)

  “True, but no—actually, it’s interesting. Because I’ve heard for so long about those studies that say that women like stories and men like pictures I’ve started to feel lately that stories represent women and are therefore sexually charged for me, and in fact that’s what got me so hot at Bonnie’s Books that time, the idea that I was peeping in on a women’s preserve. I think I am slowly starting to understand why in general people would prefer written porn. It gives your brain a vaginal orgasm rather than a clitoral orgasm, so to speak, whatever that means. I read one story in some men’s magazine once, years ago, in the first person, written by a woman, or probably not, but written at least with the pretense that a woman was telling the story, about a sixteen-year-old girl who goes swimming in a neighbor’s pool and of course her frans are still somewhat new and unfamiliar to her, and she’d forgotten that her top from last year was flimsy and inadequate to the demands that were made on it, and presto it comes off after she’s swum a lap, and she’s so embarrassed and apologetic, but Mr. Grunthole reassures her that she needn’t be ashamed, he doesn’t mind if she swims without her top, and so on and so on, and even though it was a totally conventional and undistinguished story, the fact that it was written in the voice of this girl, so I could peep in on her mixed feelings when her top came off, did give me a huge … an unexpectedly large return on my investment. I guess insofar as verbal pornography records thoughts rather than exclusively images, or at least surrounds all images with thoughts, or something, it can be the hottest medium of all. Telepathy on a budget. But still honestly I need the images. For instance of you there in the shower. I mean, when you come are your legs slightly apart?” “Yes.” “And do you have one of those legendary Water Pik shower-massage showerheads?” “I do, but I don’t use it with any of the special settings. It was installed already when I moved in. It’s useful for cleaning the tub. But when I’m—I don’t hold it or put it between my legs or anything, I just treat it as a regular showerhead. What I do is …” “Yes?” “When I start to come?” “Yes?” “Yes?” “I open my mouth and let it fill with water. The feeling of the water overflowing my mouth … You there?” “ Don’t stop talking.” “But that’s all,” she said. “You were in the shower, yesterday night, and the water was coursing onto your face and falling down from one part of you to another, like balls in a pinball machine, and your eyes were closed. What was in your mind? Oh I’d like to …” “Excuse me? You’re murmuring.” “I said I’d like to clk, ” he said. “What?”

• From Vox (1992)

  So anyway, for the next full week I talked with her about Lee and talked with her about Lee, every possible angle on the situation, though I avoided telling her that I found him repulsive and childish, but otherwise we ventilated the topic fully. Finally I couldn’t stand to talk about him anymore, and I said, ‘Look, I have to ask your advice.’ Because what she obviously needed was to have her mind off her own troubles. It was six, we were again leaving work. And somehow, by pure luck, this was the perfect exact second to ask her advice: she just about crumpled with relief and helpfulness, and she pointed to a café across the street and she said, ‘Why don’t we go in there?’ So over a pair of up-signal caffè lattes, I told her the problem. I pulled out a piece of newspaper, and I unfolded it, and I looked at it, and I looked at her, and then I looked at it again, and then I told her that I was thinking of running a personals ad requesting something very specific. And she was politely curious about this, so I said, ‘This is what I was thinking of saying,’ and I handed it to her. It was the personals ad form, which I’d filled out. The ad went—this is going to disappoint you, though.” “I fully expect to be disappointed.” “Good. It said something like, ‘You and me are sitting side by side on my couch, watching X-vid, not touching. You are short or tall, etc., you want me to see pleasure transform your features. I am SWM, 29.’ ” “Was this an ad you really planned on running?” “I think so, possibly. No, I probably never would have. I’d carried it around in my pocket for a while, it was starting to get that folded-for-a-long-time look.” “How did she react?” “Emily said, ‘Well, you can try, but I seriously doubt anyone’s going to respond to that.’ Which was quite true.” “Oh, I don’t know.” “Even if she was wrong, I don’t think I really wanted what I said I wanted. Meeting strangers, the awkwardness. It would take such a huge effort of will to get over the pure chit-chat socialness of the context. My erection would never survive it. What I really wanted was to hand that folded piece of newsprint to Emily and watch her read it. I said, ‘What about if I took out the lame line about pleasure transforming their features?’ And she said, ‘But that’s the only thing in it that’s any good.’ So I asked her, if she were me—I said, ‘I know you’re not me, but if you were me and you wanted to achieve this objective, how would you word it?’ She said, ‘Well, tell me what your objective really is, in your own words, so I get a better sense of it.’

• From Vox (1992)

  I said it was three pillows wide. She said, ‘Like this?’ and on the place mat she started drawing a couch and a TV, so I said, ‘No no, like this,’ and I sketched the layout of the room. Just the couch, the walls, the doors, the electrical outlets. I drew two stick figures with two arrows to indicate where they’d be sitting on the couch. She looked at this, and nodded, and said, ‘Okay, now, the other thing is, you can’t just say “X-vid.” What tape will actually be playing when this is happening?’ I said ‘Wulp, it would be a pornographic movie of some sort, I guess I’d rent a bunch before she showed up, six or ten, and there’d be some trial and error.’ She said, ‘Well I just don’t think you’ll get a response with that kind of vagueness. You have to commit yourself to a situation.’ And I said, ‘But you know there are thousands upon thousands of dirty tapes.’ She said, ‘That’s just it. Is it a classic that she may well have seen, or will it be something she probably hasn’t seen? Will it be new to you or not? These little distinctions are crucial. ’ And she said, ‘And also—if you specify a certain tape, then, you see, she reads the ad and she rents the tape and while she’s watching it, the ad may become more and more interesting to her.’ So I said, ‘Golly, you’re absolutely right. I do have to say which tape.’ But I said, ‘But I don’t know which it should be. I know what tapes I like, but I don’t know which particular tape would potentially be interesting to her.’ And much to my surprise, she had a suggestion. She said, ‘Let me make a suggestion. A dubbed tape. A foreign dubbed tape.’ And she explained why. She said it’s because you’ve got more layers—you’ve got the graphic stuff going on, but you’ve got mouths saying Italian sex words or French sex words, and then American actors going ooh and ah, and usually the American actors who do the dubbing are somewhat better than the American actors who’ve got to both have sex and act. And no L.A. boudoir interiors, no L.A. fireplaces reflected in L.A. wineglasses, no Ron Jeremy. Again, that’s not exactly what she said, but that was what she was getting at. And then she said, still in a very pragmatic way, she said, ‘For instance, Atom Home Video distributes a few good dubbed ones.’ So I clanked down my coffee and I said, ‘Okay. I accept everything you say. I’ll specify the couch size, I’ll specify high-end dubbed Italian-import porno, but still I just don’t trust myself to buy the right blanket . That’s what worries me. And I see now that I really need the right blanket to complete this.

• From Vox (1992)

  So he gnarled around the cold-water tap and he gnarled around the hot-water tap and he circled fiercely around the clitty thing that controls the drain, and then when the whole rest of the tub was absolutely gleaming , he went to the drain itself—he set aside the filter thing, and he reached two fingers way in, and he pulled out this revolting slime locket and splapped it against the side of the tub, and then he really went to work on that drain, around and around the rim of chrome, and deeper, right down to those dark crossbars, that I’d never gotten to, he worked the scrubber sponge in there, grrr , more Ajax, more circling, more hot water. I mean I was in a transport!” “I bet.” “Then I held out the trash can, and he threw out the drain slime and the Rescue pad, and he rinsed his hands, and he stood, and in the midst of this newly cleaned tub he started to rinse off his cock and his legs, where a little oil had fallen, and I watched the water go over him, I watched the way the even spray of the showerhead in his hand made all the hairs on his legs into these perfect perfect rows, like some ideal crop, and he was quite hairy, and so I slipped off my shorts and unders and sat on the far end of the bathtub and propped my left foot against a washcloth handle and I hung my right leg out over the edge of the bathtub, so I was wide open, and I said, ‘I’m a bit rank, too, do me,’ so he started playing the water over my legs and then directly on my … femalia, and I held my lips open so that he could see my inner wishbone, and the drops of water exploding on it, and as he sprayed me, he began to get hard again. But I can’t come with just water, so I started strumming myself, while he sprayed my hand, which was a lovely feeling, and I held out my left hand and he maneuvered closer to me and I took hold of his cock and tried to begin to jerk it off, but I didn’t do very well, because my own finger on my clit felt so good, and I couldn’t seem to keep the two kinds of masturbating motion going with my left and right hand independently, I was making big odd circles with his cock, so instead I took the showerhead from him and I said, ‘You’re on your own,’ and I sprayed his cock and some of his Danger Mouse T-shirt, that is, my Danger Mouse T-shirt, while he began stroking away, staring at my legs and my pussy, and I liked spraying him quite a lot, I liked aiming the water at his fist, I liked the sight of his wet T-shirt, and he had, this is rather bad of me to say, but he had a kind of gruesome-looking cock, a real monster, and the relief of not having that girth in me was itself almost enough to put me over the top, and it looked quite a bit more distinguished through the glint of the spray. But I also wanted the water on me—I wanted to spray him, but I wanted the water flowing on me as well—and suddenly it seemed like the most natural thing in the world, I remembered the elephant woman lifting her knee, and so I reached forward and pulled his hips toward me so that his legs straddled my left leg, and I lifted my knee, and he clamped his thighs around it, and I let my other leg sprawl so that I was absolutely wide open, and now, when I sprayed his cock and his hand the water streamed down his thighs and then down my thigh and on me.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The king came at the appointed time and was received by the lady with great honour and rejoicing. When he beheld her, she seemed to him fair and noble and well-bred beyond that which he had conceived from the courtier's words, whereat he marvelled exceedingly and commended her amain, waxing so much the hotter in his desire as he found the lady overpassing his foregone conceit of her. After he had taken somewhat of rest in chambers adorned to the utmost with all that pertaineth to the entertainment of such a king, the dinner hour being come, the king and the marchioness seated themselves at one table, whilst the rest, according to their quality, were honourably entertained at others. The king, being served with many dishes in succession, as well as with wines of the best and costliest, and to boot gazing with delight the while upon the lovely marchioness, was mightily pleased with his entertainment; but, after awhile, as the viands followed one upon another, he began somewhat to marvel, perceiving that, for all the diversity of the dishes, they were nevertheless of nought other than hens, and this although he knew the part where he was to be such as should abound in game of various kinds and although he had, by advising the lady in advance of his coming, given her time to send a-hunting. However, much as he might marvel at this, he chose not to take occasion of engaging her in parley thereof, otherwise than in the matter of her hens, and accordingly, turning to her with a merry air, 'Madam,' quoth he, 'are hens only born in these parts, without ever a cock?' The marchioness, who understood the king's question excellent well, herseeming God had vouchsafed her, according to her wish, an opportune occasion of discovering her mind, turned to him and answered boldly, 'Nay, my lord; but women, albeit in apparel and dignities they may differ somewhat from others, are natheless all of the same fashion here as elsewhere.' The King, hearing this, right well apprehended the meaning of the banquet of hens and the virtue hidden in her speech and perceived that words would be wasted upon such a lady and that violence was out of the question; wherefore, even as he had ill-advisedly taken fire for her, so now it behoved him sagely, for his own honour's sake, stifle his ill-conceived passion. Accordingly, without making any more words with her, for fear of her replies, he dined, out of all hope; and the meal ended, thanking her for the honourable entertainment he had received from her and commending her to God, he set out for Genoa, so by his prompt departure he might make amends for his unseemly visit." THE SIXTH STORY [Day the First] AN HONEST MAN, WITH A CHANCE PLEASANTRY, PUTTETH TO SHAME THE PERVERSE HYPOCRISY OF THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Accordingly, she came ofttimes to Rustico and said to him, 'Father mine, I came here to serve God and not to abide idle; let us go put the devil in hell.' Which doing, she said whiles, 'Rustico, I know not why the devil fleeth away from hell; for, an he abode there as willingly as hell receiveth him and holdeth him, he would never come forth therefrom.' The girl, then, on this wise often inviting Rustico and exhorting him to the service of God, so took the bombast out of his doublet that he felt cold what time another had sweated; wherefore he fell to telling her that the devil was not to be chastised nor put into hell, save whenas he should lift up his head for pride; 'and we,' added he, 'by God's grace, have so baffled him that he prayeth our Lord to suffer him abide in peace;' and on this wise he for awhile imposed silence on her. However, when she saw that he required her not of putting the devil in hell, she said to him one day, 'Rustico, an thy devil be chastened and give thee no more annoy, my hell letteth me not be; wherefore thou wilt do well to aid me with thy devil in abating the raging of my hell, even as with my hell I have helped thee take the conceit out of thy devil.' Rustico, who lived on roots and water, could ill avail to answer her calls and told her that it would need overmany devils to appease hell, but he would do what he might thereof. Accordingly he satisfied her bytimes, but so seldom it was but casting a bean into the lion's mouth; whereas the girl, herseeming she served not God as diligently as she would fain have done, murmured somewhat. But, whilst this debate was toward between Rustico his devil and Alibech her hell, for overmuch desire on the one part and lack of power on the other, it befell that a fire broke out in Capsa and burnt Alibech's father in his own house, with as many children and other family as he had; by reason whereof she abode heir to all his good. Thereupon, a young man called Neerbale, who had spent all his substance in gallantry, hearing that she was alive, set out in search of her and finding her, before the court[204] had laid hands upon her father's estate, as that of a man dying without heir, to Rustico's great satisfaction, but against her own will, brought her back to Capsa, where he took her to wife and succeeded, in her right, to the ample inheritance of her father. [Footnote 204: _i.e._ the government (_corte_).]

• From Emotional Beats: How to Easily Convert your Writing into Palpable Feelings (2018)

  Its warm, soft prickliness evoked a fantasy of snuggling against his strong chest but the aura she sought was too faint.His scent on the pillow seduced her into staying the night in his flat.An egg of unknown vintage but that still smelled fresh, and milk from an unfinished liter that had passed its pull date, went into making buttered pancakes for her supper.She had fantasies of lingering lovemaking upon scented sheets bathed in magic moonlight.He was aware of her warm body in his arms, her soft, scented cheek against his own and her husky laughter in his ear.Thick tobacco smoke had sullied the air by the time she re-entered the house.The reek of urine and rotting rubbish on a damp December night surrounded her.To protect his eyes, he pressed his face against her soft flesh, where he breathed deeply of the scent of her skin – and for one mad moment, it was the fragrance of heaven.That first intimate moment was intoxicating: the clean, wet smell of his skin, the softness of his damp chest hair against her cheek, the feeling of him in her arms, his living, breathing, heart pounding under her lips—and she could no longer fight her desire for him.The air was filled with the scents and sounds of the early spring night: damp earth, frogs’ peeping serenade, a tinkling bell in some faraway sheepfold, the whiff of peat smoke; all so achingly beautiful.His last day there was gusty, good for drying bedclothes, and his final task was to remake the four-poster bed with wind-freshened sheets and duvet cover.A filthy calf had once stepped inside, and the everlasting stench of manure now gave her a migraine. More Professional ExamplesThe following examples show how some other authors have used this technique in their fiction. The room smelled like stale smoke and Italian salad dressing. (Michael Connelly: The Poet)I took a couple of deep breaths, smelled rain, diesel and the pungent dead-fish-and-salt stench off the river. (Devon Monk: Magic to the Bone)The place smelt of damp and decay. (Jonathan Stroud: The Amulet of Samarkand)A rare south wind had brought the smell of Tyre to last night’s landfall: cinnamon and pepper in the cedar-laced pine smoke, sharp young wine and close-packed sweating humanity, smouldering hemp and horse piss. (Mathew Woodring Stover: Iron Dawn)The smell hit her first: rotting flesh, ancient blood. (Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Sins of the Blood)The air reeked of hot metal, overheated electronic components, scorched insulation – and gasoline. (D. Koontz: The Bad Place)The air held the warm odours of honey and earth, of pine resin and goat sweat, mingled with the scents of frying oil and spice.

• From Vox (1992)

  “It certainly is,” he said. “But it’s much more than that! Don’t laugh, really. No movie still is ever as good as a photograph. A photograph catches a woman at a point where her frans are at their perfect point of expressiveness—the soul of her frans is revealed, or rather the souls are revealed, because each has a separate personality. Nipples in still pictures are as varied and as communicative as women’s eyes, or almost.” “Frans?” “Yeah, sometimes I don’t like the word ‘breasts’ and all those slangish synonyms. I mean, just look at the drop in arousingness between Playboy magazine and the exact same women when they’re moving from pose to pose on the Playboy channel. It’s true that I don’t actually get the Playboy channel, so I see everything on it through those houndstooth and herringbone cycles of the scrambling circuit, and I keep flipping back and forth between it and the two channels on either side of it because sometimes for an instant the picture is startled into visibility just after you switch the channel, and you’ll catch this bright yellow torso and one full fran with a fire-engine-red nipple, and then it teeters, it falters, and collapses—and I’ve noticed that the scrambling works least well and you can see things best when nothing is moving in the TV image, i.e., when it’s a TV image of a magazine image, sort of as if the scrambling circuitry is overcome in the same way I am sometimes overcome by the power of fixed pictures. I once stayed up until two-thirty in the morning doing this, flipping.” “Anyway.” “Right. Anyway, I looked through my brand-new Juggs magazine with high hopes, but I don’t know—again, the sexiest woman was in a poolside setting, and I find poolside settings unerotic—that is to say, in general I find them unerotic, since God knows I’ve certainly come to an enormous number of poolside layouts in magazines, but there’s something about the publicness of its being outside, in the sun—it’s not as bad as a beach setting, which is a complete turnoff—I mean, again, if I were exiled to a desert island with nothing but some pages of a men’s magazine showing a nude woman on a desert island, with the arty kidney shapes of sand on the asscheeks and all that, I would probably break down and masturbate to it … what do you think of that word?” “ ‘Masturbate’? I don’t hate it. I don’t love it.” “Let’s get a new word for it,” he said. “To myself, I sometimes call it ‘dithering myself off.’ ” “Okay, a possibility. What about just ‘fiddle? Fiddlin’ yourself off? The dropped g is kind of racy. No, no. Strum .” “Strum.”

• From Vox (1992)

  “Another guy,” she said. “It wasn’t Ringling Brothers, it was some smaller-scale South American circus, with lots of elephants, and lots of women in spangles riding the elephants. It was incredibly hot in the tent, and everything had this reddish tint, because the sun was bright enough outside to make it through some of the tent seams, and I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt but I was soaked, and so was Lawrence, who was also wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and so was everyone around us, including the performers. There was some Venezuelan act in which a woman spun hard balls around very fast on long strings while two men played percussion behind her, and the balls smacked against the floorboards in interesting rhythms around her legs, and she was streaming with sweat, and quite beautiful, but in a way that I thought was vaguely like me, and suddenly the two men would stop hitting the drums and she would freeze and make this kind of trilling scream, a beautiful strange wild sound. She was just covered with sweat, she looked really wild, and the two men behind her were exceedingly good-looking, wearing wide-brimmed black hats with chin straps, and I momentarily wanted to be her, and while they were taking their bows I adapted my time-tested striptease fantasy, and I thought that I was this woman in the black spangles, and I was spinning these balls very fast, faster than she could, so they were a blur, so fast that somehow, like in a cartoon fight when it’s just a blur from which things, pieces of clothing, fly outward, somehow my whole outfit was torn in pieces from my body, and flung out into the audience, so that when the drumming stopped and I froze suddenly and made my trilling scream, I was totally naked, and all these pieces of my costume were still floating aloft in all directions, and each man who caught some damp shred of costume was overpowered and took his place in line to fuck me, and the two percussionists played the drums the whole time, and then they stopped drumming and naturally they fucked me too. But that’s just an aside. The elephant acts were what were interesting. I’ve ridden on an elephant once or twice in my life, when I was small, and I remember touching the big lobes of its head, and let me tell you, the skin is not smooth, it’s warm and dry and quite bristly—that’s how I remember it, anyway. And these were not little elephants, these were big old elephants, with big tusks. Well, these women were sliding down the side of the elephants, riding on the elephants heads, with their legs between the elephants’ eyes, and repeatedly pivoting around on their bottoms on the elephants’ backs, and they were wearing flesh-colored stockings, or tights, so it was not skin to skin, but even so, those little leotards are cut extremely high in the back, and I really started to be concerned about their bottoms, about whether they were more uncomfortable than their smiles let on, and I started thinking about whether if I were dressed in a very high-cut leotard I would like the sensation of the elephant’s dry living skin on my bottom, and then, during the beginning of the very last big elephant promenade, one of the women was riding on the elephant’s back with one leg in the air, and as the elephant turned I saw this woman’s bottom, and even through the tights I could see that it was in fact red! She was the main elephant woman, I think. Anyhow, for the big finale she rode around on this elephant’s tusks for a minute or two, sat on his trunk, fine fine, all gracefully executed but surprisingly suggestive, and then she did this thing that really shocked me. She took hold of one of the tusks and one of the ears, or somehow swung herself up, and then she lifted one of her knees so that it went right into the elephant’s mouth, and she waited for a second for the elephant to clamp on to it, and then she threw her head back, and arched her back, and spread her arms wide, so she was held in the air suppprted entirely by her knee, which was stuffed in the elephant’s mouth! I mean, think about the saliva! Think about those elephant molars that are gently but firmly taking hold of your upper calf and your mid-thigh, while this elephant tongue is there lounging with its giant taste-buds against your knee! The elephant did a full turn while she was swooning like this. Then she got down and took a bow and patted the elephant under his eye.”

• From Vox (1992)

  But that’s why talking to you seems like such a miraculous once-in-a-lifetime thing, because you are smart and funny and aroused and delightful—you are not representative. We’re actually talking! If you come on this phone with me, it will be, as far as I’m concerned, it will be the top item on Washington Week in Review , it will be bigger than anything your bearded friend who eats the meatball subs has ever experienced, it will be really something , because you get it, you understand, you have a complicated response to things, and, I mean, an orgasm in a complicated mind is always more interesting than one in a simple mind—maybe that’s not true, maybe sometimes a simple mind is made subtler and finer as it comes, since that’s the most mental activity that’s gone on in there for a while—but I mean an orgasm in an intelligent woman is like a volcano in a mountain with a city built on the slope—you feel the alternative opportunity cost of her orgasm, you feel the force of all the other perceptive things she could be thinking at that moment and is not thinking because she is coming, and they enrich it. You still there?” “I’m just trying to feel my wrist tendon,” she said, “to see what it might have felt like for you. Actually, you know, there is a little muscle high up on the outside of my forearm that is moving, almost at my elbow. That’s the one that’s more visible in my case. Feels kind of interesting.” “Ooh, don’t say that or I’ll shoot.” “Hah hah! I like a man who knows what he likes. Do you want to hear what I thought about when I came in the shower yesterday?” “Yes.” “I’ll tell you. No, I know what I’ll tell you. First I’m going to tell you something else. First I’m going to tell you about how I masturbated in front of somebody.

• From Vox (1992)

  Am I going too slow for you?” “No no, keep going, that’s fine.” “Oh, I love moving my hands over you under your loose shirt, I love that. I’d slide my hands around over your stomach, so that my fingertips met, and feel it pull in, and slide up slowly along your ribs, and when I got to where the curves of your breasts started, I would trace them around, out to the sides, back to the middle, and I would pass just my fingertips up between your breasts, up along your breastbone, pushing under the loose bra, and then one finger even higher, along your voice box, to where your chin starts, and you’d lean your head back and I would be able to smell your hair, and then I’d pull back down, deliberately avoiding your breasts.” “And I would stand up,” she said, “and turn around so I’m facing you, with my shins touching the armchair, and I’d undo the button of my pants.” “And I would reach out,” he said, “and take hold of your zipper and push it slowly down, so that I’m pushing against your mound with it, not at your clitoris, but above it, and I’d slide my fingers under your waistband and guide your pants off over your hips and ass, and when they fell to your knees I’d put my foot on the inside of the crotch so you could step out of them easily, and I’d smell how wet you are, and I’d slide my hands up your legs and slip my fingers under the waistband of your underpants, and pull them down a little, and then I’d roll them under my palms, so the fabric just rolled up, and they fell and you stepped easily out of them, too.