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 Delta of Venus (1977)

  “Not so very cold,” he said. I closed my legs tightly against him, he could not even touch me. But then he slipped in quickly from behind and caressed me. “Not so cold,” he said. On the bed he pushed his knee between my legs and forced them open. “When you are angry,” he said, “I feel that I am raping you. I feel then that you love me so much you cannot resist me, I see that you are wet, and I like your resistance and your defeat too.” “John, you will make me so angry that I will leave you.” Then he was frightened. He kissed me. He promised not to repeat this. What I could not understand was that, despite our quarrels, being made love to by John made me only more sensitive. He had awakened my body. Now I had even a greater desire to abandon myself to all whims. He must have known this, because the more he caressed me, awakened me, the more he feared that I would return to posing. Slowly, I did return. I had too much time to myself, I was too much alone with my thoughts of John. MILLARD particularly was happy to see me. He must have spoiled the statuette again, purposely I knew now, so he could keep me in the pose he liked. The night before, he had smoked marijuana with friends. He said, “Did you know that very often it gives people the feeling that they are transformed into animals? Last night there was a woman who was completely taken by this transformation. She fell on her hands and knees and walked around like a dog. We took her clothes off. She wanted to give milk. She wanted us to act like puppies, sprawl on the floor and suckle at her breasts. She kept on her hands and knees and offered her breasts to all of us. She wanted us to walk like dogs—after her. She insisted on our taking her in this position, from behind, and I did, but then I was terribly tempted to bite her as I crouched over her. I bit into her shoulder harder than I have ever bitten anyone. The woman did not get frightened. I did. It sobered me. I stood up and then I saw that a friend of mine was following her on his hands and knees, not caressing her or taking her, but merely smelling exactly as a dog would do, and this reminded me so much of my first sexual impression that it gave me a painful hard-on.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  Among the various matrices of power that produce sexuality between Herculine and h/er partners are, clearly, the conventions of female homosexuality both encouraged and condemned by the convent and its supporting religious ideology. One thing about Herculine we know is that s/he reads, and reads a good deal, that h/er nineteenth-century French education involved schooling in the classics as well as French Romanticism, and that h/er own narrative takes place within an established set of literary conventions. Indeed, these conventions produce and interpret for us this sexuality that both Foucault and Herculine take to be outside of all convention. Romantic and sentimental narratives of impossible loves seem also to produce all manner of desire and suffering in this text, and so do Christian legends about ill-fated saints, Greek myths about suicidal androgynes, and, obviously, the Christ figure itself. Whether “before” the law as a multiplicitous sexuality or “outside” the law as an unnatural transgression, those positionings are invariably “inside” a discourse which produces sexuality and then conceals that production through a configuring of a courageous and rebellious sexuality “outside” of the text itself. The effort to explain Herculine’s sexual relations with young girls through recourse to the masculine component of h/er biological doubleness is, of course, the constant temptation of the text. If Herculine desires a girl, then perhaps there is evidence in hormonal or chromosomal structures or in the anatomical presence of the imperforate penis to suggest a more discrete, masculine sex that subsequently generates heterosexual capacity and desire. The pleasures, the desires, the acts—do they not in some sense emanate from the biological body, and is there not some way of understanding that emanation as both causally necessitated by that body and expressive of its sex-specificity? Perhaps because Herculine’s body is hermaphroditic, the struggle to separate conceptually the description of h/er primary sexual characteristics from h/er gender identity (h/er sense of h/er own gender which, by the way, is ever-shifting and far from clear) and the directionality and objects of h/er desire is especially difficult. S/he herself presumes at various points that h/er body is the cause of h/er gender confusion and h/er transgressive pleasures, as if they were both result and manifestation of an essence which somehow falls outside the natural/metaphysical order of things. But rather than understand h/er anomalous body as the cause of h/er desire, h/er trouble, h/er affairs and confession, we might read this body, here fully textualized, as a sign of an irresolvable ambivalence produced by the juridical discourse on univocal sex. In the place of univocity, we fail to discover multiplicity, as Foucault would have us do; instead, we confront a fatal ambivalence, produced by the prohibitive law, which for all its effects of happy dispersal nevertheless culminates in Herculine’s suicide.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  A materialist feminist approach shows that what we take for the cause or origin of oppression is in fact only the mark imposed by the oppressor; the “myth of woman,” plus its material effects and manifestations in the appropriated consciousness and bodies of women. Thus, this mark does not preexist oppression … sex is taken as an “immediate given,” a “sensible given,” “physical features,” belonging to a natural order. But what we believe to be a physical and direct perception is only a sophisticated and mythic construction, an “imaginary formation.”40 Because this production of “nature” operates in accord with the dictates of compulsory heterosexuality, the emergence of homosexual desire, in her view, transcends the categories of sex: “If desire could liberate itself, it would have nothing to do with the preliminary marking by sexes.”41 Wittig refers to “sex” as a mark that is somehow applied by an institutionalized heterosexuality, a mark that can be erased or obfuscated through practices that effectively contest that institution. Her view, of course, differs radically from Irigaray’s. The latter would understand the “mark” of gender to be part of the hegemonic signifying economy of the masculine that operates through the self-elaborating mechanisms of specularization that have virtually determined the field of ontology within the Western philosophical tradition. For Wittig, language is an instrument or tool that is in no way misogynist in its structures, but only in its applications.42 For Irigaray, the possibility of another language or signifying economy is the only chance at escaping the “mark” of gender which, for the feminine, is nothing but the phallogocentric erasure of the female sex. Whereas Irigaray seeks to expose the ostensible “binary” relation between the sexes as a masculinist ruse that excludes the feminine altogether, Wittig argues that positions like Irigaray’s reconsolidate the binary between masculine and feminine and recirculate a mythic notion of the feminine. Clearly drawing on Beauvoir’s critique of the myth of the feminine in The Second Sex, Wittig asserts, “there is no ‘feminine writing.’ ”43

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  Often he stood at dark corners of the streets, naked under an overcoat, and if a woman passed he opened his coat and shook his penis at her. But this was dangerous and the police punished such behavior rather severely. Oftener still he liked to get into an empty compartment of a train, unbutton two of the buttons, and sit back as if he were drunk or asleep, his penis showing a little through the opening. People would come in at other stations. If he were in luck it might be a woman who would sit across from him and stare at him. As he looked drunk, usually no one tried to wake him. Sometimes one of the men would rouse him angrily and tell him to button himself. Women did not protest. If a woman came in with little schoolgirls, then he was in paradise. He would have an erection, and finally the situation would become so intolerable, the woman and her little girls would leave the compartment. One day Manuel found his twin in this form of enjoyment. He had taken his seat in a compartment, alone, and was pretending to fall asleep when a woman came in and sat opposite him. She was a rather mature prostitute as he could see from the heavily painted eyes, the thickly powdered face, the rings under her eyes, the overcurled hair, the worn-down shoes, the coquettish dress and hat. Through half-closed eyes he observed her. She took a glance at his partly opened pants and then looked again. She too sat back and appeared to fall asleep, with her legs wide apart. When the train started she raised her skirt completely. She was naked underneath. She stretched open her legs and exposed herself while looking at Manuel’s penis, which was hardening and showing through the pants and which finally protruded completely. They sat in front of each other, staring. Manuel was afraid the woman would move and try to get hold of his penis, which was not what he wanted at all. But no, she was addicted to the same passive pleasure. She knew he was looking at her sex, under the very black and bushy hair, and finally they opened their eyes and smiled at each other. He was entering his ecstatic state, but he had time to notice that she was in a state of pleasure herself. He could see the shining moisture appearing at the mouth of the sex. She moved almost imperceptibly to and fro, as if rocking herself to sleep. His body began to tremble with voluptuous pleasure. She then masturbated in front of him, smiling all the time. Manuel married this woman, who never tried to possess him in the way of other women.

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  Everywhere he became the center of attraction for women. Like the most versatile of actors, he passed from one role to another to please the taste of each of them. He was the most elegant dancer, the most vivacious dinner partner, the most decadent of entertainers in tête-à-têtes; he could sail a boat, ride, drive. He knew each city as though he had lived there all his life. He knew everyone in society. He was indispensable. When he needed money he married a rich woman, plundered her and left for another country. Most of the time the women did not rebel or complain to the police. The few weeks or months they had enjoyed him as a husband left a sensation that was stronger than the shock of losing their money. For a moment they had known what it was to live with strong wings, to fly above the heads of mediocrity. He took them so high, whirled them so fast in his series of enchantments, that his departure still had something of the flight. It seemed almost natural—no partner could follow his great eagle sweeps. The free, uncapturable adventurer, jumping thus from one golden branch to another, almost fell into a trap, a trap of human love, when one night he met the Brazilian dancer Anita at a Peruvian theatre. Her elongated eyes did not close as other women’s eyes did, but like the eyes of tigers, pumas and leopards, the two lids meeting lazily and slowly; and they seemed slightly sewn together towards the nose, making them narrow, with a lascivious, oblique glance falling from them like the glance of a woman who does not want to see what is being done to her body. All this gave her an air of being made love to, which aroused the Baron as soon as he met her. When he went backstage to see her, she was dressing among a profusion of flowers; and for the delight of her admirers who sat around her, she was rouging her sex with her lipstick without permitting them to make a single gesture towards her. When the Baron came in she merely lifted her head and smiled at him. She had one foot on a little table, her elaborate Brazilian dress was lifted, and with her jeweled hands she took up rouging her sex again, laughing at the excitement of the men around her. Her sex was like a giant hothouse flower, larger than any the Baron had seen, and the hair around it abundant and curled, glossy black. It was these lips that she rouged as if they were a mouth, very elaborately so that they became like blood-red camellias, opened by force, showing the closed interior bud, a paler, fine-skinned core of the flower.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Eso está bien, ¿verdad? Es normal encontrar a otras personas atractivas. Eso sucede. Quiero decir, Scarlett Johansson es atractiva. Eso no quiere decir que esté interesada en ella. Mordisqueo de nuevo mi dona, mi mirada yendo a un lado de nuevo, observando sus brazos y los múltiples tatuajes. Engranajes y pernos, como el armazón de un robot, un trabajo tribal que definitivamente dice que fue un chico de los 90, y apenas puedo ver lo que creo es un reloj de bolsillo que parece que está tratando de romper su piel. Es como una mezcla sin ningún tema discernible, pero es un trabajo hermoso. Me pregunto cuál es la historia tras ellos. Tomo otro bocado, el glaseado rosa y las chispas arcoíris envían descargas eléctricas al fondo de mi boca, haciéndome querer meter toda la cosa en mi boca. —Sabes, de verdad me gustaría tener abdominales —comento, masticando—, pero estas están muy buenas. Suelta una carcajada, mirándome y riéndose. —¿Qué? —Nada. Simplemente eres... —Aparta la mirada como si buscara las palabras—. Eres solo, como, interesante o... ¿algo? —Sacude la cabeza—. Lo siento, no sé qué quiero decir. —Y entonces de la nada dice—: Linda. —Como si acabara de recordarlo—. Quiero decir que eres linda. Mi estómago da un vuelco, y el calor inunda mis mejillas como si estuviera de nuevo en quinto año, cuando era un halago tremendo que el chico que te gustaba te dijera que eras linda. Sé que habla de mi personalidad y no de mi apariencia, pero me gusta. Termina la dona y toma un sorbo de su soda. —Entonces, ¿qué edad tienes? —pregunta—. ¿Unos veintitrés, veinticuatro? —Claro, en un tiempo. Suelta una risa. —Diecinueve —respondo finalmente. Toma aire y suspira, hay algo extraño en su mirada. —¿Qué? —Tomo el último mordisco y rozo mis manos entre sí, apoyando e inclinando mi cabeza contra la silla. —Ser tan joven de nuevo —reflexiona—. Parece que fue ayer. Bueno, ¿qué edad podría tener? Diecinueve no pudo haber sido hace tanto para él. ¿Diez años? ¿Tal vez doce?

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  After a moment or so, I say, You really need an agent. The problem that comes up over and over again is that these people want to be published. They kind of want to write, but they really want to be published. You’ll never get to where you want to be that way, I tell them. There is a door we all want to walk through, and writing can help you find it and open it. Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you soften, can wake you up. But publishing won’t do any of those things; you’ll never get in that way. My son, Sam, at three and a half, had these keys to a set of plastic handcuffs, and one morning he intentionally locked himself out of the house. I was sitting on the couch reading the newspaper when I heard him stick his plastic keys into the doorknob and try to open the door. Then I heard him say, “Oh, shit.” My whole face widened, like the guy in Edvard Munch’s Scream . After a moment I got up and opened the front door. “Honey,” I said, “what’d you just say?” “I said, ‘Oh, shit,’ ” he said. “But, honey, that’s a naughty word. Both of us have absolutely got to stop using it. Okay?” He hung his head for a moment, nodded, and said, “Okay, Mom.” Then he leaned forward and said confidentially, “But I’ll tell you why I said ‘shit.’ ” I said Okay, and he said, “Because of the fucking keys!” Fantasy keys won’t get you in. Almost every single thing you hope publication will do for you is a fantasy, a hologram—it’s the eagle on your credit card that only seems to soar. What’s real is that if you do your scales every day, if you slowly try harder and harder pieces, if you listen to great musicians play music you love, you’ll get better. At times when you’re working, you’ll sit there feeling hung over and bored, and you may or may not be able to pull yourself up out of it that day. But it is fantasy to think that successful writers do not have these bored, defeated hours, these hours of deep insecurity when one feels as small and jumpy as a water bug. They do. But they also often feel a great sense of amazement that they get to write, and they know that this is what they want to do for the rest of their lives. And so if one of your heart’s deepest longings is to write , there are ways to get your work done, and a number of reasons why it is important to do so.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Now. Do you remember Absolon, the love-struck parish clerk? On that Monday he was paying a visit to Osney Abbey, in the company of some other young clerics in festive mood. Quite by chance he came across the resident chorister there, and started to ask him about the old carpenter. He was always interested in that household. They were walking out of the church, when the chorister said to him, ‘I really don’t know what has happened to him. I haven’t seen him here since last Saturday. I imagine he has gone for timber somewhere. The abbot probably sent him. He often spends a day or two on one of the outlying farms, bargaining for the wood. Or else he is back at home. To tell you the truth, I don’t really know. Why do you ask?’ ‘No reason. Just curious.’ Absolon was delighted. ‘Now is the time,’ he said to himself, ‘when I must stay awake all night. I don’t think he’s at home at all. I did not see him stirring this morning. And the door was closed. Just before dawn I will creep up to the house and knock softly upon the low window of his bedroom beside the orchard wall. Then I will whisper sweet love nothings to darling Alison; the least I will be offered is a kiss. My lips have been itching all day, which is a good sign. And last night I dreamed that I was at a feast. What can that mean but satisfaction? I will have a nap now, and then get myself ready for the game of the night.’ So when the first cock crowed, up sprung Absolon. He dressed himself in lover’s guise, all pert and polished, and he combed his hair. He sucked on some liquorice and cardamon seeds to sweeten his breath; cardamon is known as the grain of paradise. And paradise is what Absolon wanted. Then he popped under his tongue a four-leaved sprig of herb-paris, signifying the knot of true love, so that he might attract Alison by secret influence. Then he made his way to the house of the carpenter, and stood beneath the bedroom window. It was so low that it barely reached his chest. He leaned forward and gave a little cough. ‘Alison,’ he whispered, ‘my darling. My little honeycomb. My lovely bird. My sweet stick of cinnamon. Wake up, my sweetheart, and speak to me. You never think of my unhappiness, do you? I sweat for love of you. I really do. I faint. I repine. And, as I say, I sweat. Look at me. I am as famished as a lamb looking for its mother’s tits, if you’ll pardon the expression. I am lovelorn like the turtle. I eat less than a girl. Kiss me quick.’

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —¿Qué ves en mí, pequeña? —pregunto, sacudiendo la cabeza. No pude mantener feliz a una mujer de diecinueve años cuando yo tenía diecinueve. ¿Cree que puedo hacerlo ahora? —No tienes ni idea, ¿cierto? —Toma mi rostro, besándome—. Cuando nos conocimos y vimos esa película juntos en el teatro, me sentí tan culpable. —Me besa de nuevo—. Porque cuando mencionaste que pasaríanPoltergeist, yo... me sentí tentada, porque quería verte de nuevo —confiesa—. Había algo allí incluso entonces. Me hundo en su boca, besándola larga y profundamente, mientras paso un brazo alrededor de su cuerpo y la presiono contra mí. Curvando mis dedos alrededor de la seda en su cadera, siento la necesidad de enterrarme dentro de ella en este momento. Pero no. Para ella terminaré siendo una aventura, pero me aseguraré de que sea la mejor que haya tenido. Le beso el cuello, chupando y mordisqueando todo el camino hasta su barbilla y deslizando mis pulgares sobre sus pequeños y duros pezones. —Pike —suplica—. Por favor dime que tienes condones. Asiento, volviendo a su boca. —En mi cuarto. —Más de uno, ¿verdad? Sonrío. —Sí. —Ve a buscarlos. La rodeo con mis brazos y me levanto, llevándola conmigo. —Tengo una mejor idea. Une sus tobillos detrás de mi espalda, y la llevo fuera de su habitación y por el pasillo hacia la mía. Necesitamos una cama más grande. No deja de besarme todo el tiempo, y casi cierro los ojos de placer, porque no creo que alguna vez me haya sentido tan bien. Me va a arruinar tanto que nadie más lo hará nunca más. Entramos a mi habitación, pateo la puerta detrás de nosotros, y la dejo en la cama. Pero cuando me alejo de ella y me levanto, protesta. —No...

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  He let go of her abruptly, cleared his throat, chugalugged some beer. “How old are you now?” he asked. “Seventeen.” Her voice came out a whisper. “Seventeen this month.” “Seventeen,” he repeated. “And my name is Victoria.” She couldn’t believe she’d said that. Never once had she called herself Victoria. “Victoria,” he said. “How old are you?” she asked. He found this funny. “How old do you think?” “I don’t know ... maybe twenty ...” “Twenty-one in September.” “You were or you’ll be?” He looked at her and shook his head. “You worried about me being legal?” No, that wasn’t what was worrying her. She reached into her bag again, determined to find her T-shirt. This time she came up with it. “Cold?” he asked, as she began to pull it over her head. “No.” “Then don’t ...” So she didn’t. His hand was on her shoulder again. She tried to swallow, as if by swallowing she could make her thoughts go away. Her skin was burning. All she could hear was her heartbeat and Pat Benatar warning her— Heartbreaker ... love taker ... Finally he said, “You’re not scared of me, are you, Victoria?” “Scared?” she said, too loud, as if she were some parrot who could only mimic words. She shrugged, wishing she could say, No, I’m not scared of you. I’m scared of these feelings. “Don’t be scared.” And he gave her that slow smile, the one she’d first seen at mini golf the night she’d celebrated her thirteenth birthday. Later, during the famous Menemsha sunset, Bru leaned back against a rock with his legs outstretched. She fit into the space between and relaxed into him, her back against his chest, his arms around her, although by then she was wearing a sweatshirt and wasn’t really cold. There were no official fireworks up island but someone with a yacht delivered an impressive show, lighting up the sky for fifteen minutes. When the display ended Bru walked her back to Caitlin’s truck, stroked the side of her face with the back of his hand, then kissed her good night, a warm kiss, but quick, as if he didn’t want to get started. She felt dizzy, weak, the crotch of her bathing suit was damp. She didn’t want it to end yet. “You’re not scared of me, are you?” she teased in a husky voice, a voice she didn’t recognize as her own. “Yeah, I am ...” And from the way he said it she was almost sure it was true.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘I grant you that. I have no quarrel with virgins. If they want to remain pure, in body and soul, I will not stop them. I can’t criticize and, in any case, I make no great claims for myself. But let me put it this way. Not all the vessels in a house are necessarily made of gold. The wooden ones are good for certain purposes. A man can put his lips to wood as well as gold. Although it may not glitter, it serves its function. God calls men and women to different vocations. All of us have different talents - some can do this, others can do that. I can do that. ‘I know that virginity is a form of perfection. Chastity is close to holiness. Christ Himself is perfection. But He did not tell people to surrender everything for the sake of the poor. He did not order them to give up their worldly goods and follow His footsteps. That was reserved for perfectionists, as I said. But, my lords, I am not one of those. I have a few years left in me yet, and I am going to devote them to the arts of married life. I will couple and thrive. ‘And tell me this. Why does God give us those parts between our legs? Cunts are not made for nothing, are they? They are not unnecessary. Some will say that they have been created so that we can urinate. Others will say that they are just the marks to distinguish female from male. You know that isn’t true. All experience tells us otherwise. I hope that none of you priests and nuns will be angry with me, but I must say this. We have been given our private parts for pleasure as well as necessity. We must procreate as well as pee, within the limits set by God. Why else is there the ruling that a wife must freely render her body to her husband? How is he going to receive it without using his you-know-what? I’ll say it once again. Our parts are there for two purposes, for purging piss and for propagation.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  In an effort to affirm the psychoanalytic insight into unconscious incestuous fantasy, Lévi-Strauss refers to the “magic of this dream, its power to mould men’s thoughts unbeknown to them … the acts it evokes have never been committed, because culture opposes them at all times and all places.”12 This rather astonishing statement provides insight not only into Lévi-Strauss’s apparent powers of denial (acts of incest “have never been committed”!), but the central difficulty with assuming the efficacy of that prohibition. That the prohibition exists in no way suggests that it works. Rather, its existence appears to suggest that desires, actions, indeed, pervasive social practices of incest are generated precisely in virtue of the eroticization of that taboo. That incestuous desires are phantasmatic in no way implies that they are not also “social facts.” The question is, rather, how do such phantasms become generated and, indeed, instituted as a consequence of their prohibition? Further, how does the social conviction, here symptomatically articulated through Lévi-Strauss, that the prohibition is efficacious disavow and, hence, clear a social space in which incestuous practices are free to reproduce themselves without proscription? For Lévi-Strauss, the taboo against the act of heterosexual incest between son and mother as well as that incestuous fantasy are instated as universal truths of culture. How is incestuous heterosexuality constituted as the ostensibly natural and preartificial matrix for desire, and how is desire established as a heterosexual male prerogative? The naturalization of both heterosexuality and masculine sexual agency are discursive constructions nowhere accounted for but everywhere assumed within this founding structuralist frame. The Lacanian appropriation of Lévi-Strauss focuses on the prohibition against incest and the rule of exogamy in the reproduction of culture, where culture is understood primarily as a set of linguistic structures and significations. For Lacan, the Law which forbids the incestuous union between boy and mother initiates the structures of kinship, a series of highly regulated libidinal displacements that take place through language. Although the structures of language, collectively understood as the Symbolic, maintain an ontological integrity apart from the various speaking agents through whom they work, the Law reasserts and individuates itself within the terms of every infantile entrance into culture. Speech emerges only upon the condition of dissatisfaction, where dissatisfaction is instituted through incestuous prohibition; the original jouissance is lost through the primary repression that founds the subject. In its place emerges the sign which is similarly barred from the signifier and which seeks in what it signifies a recovery of that irrecoverable pleasure. Founded through that prohibition, the subject speaks only to displace desire onto the metonymic substitutions for that irretrievable pleasure. Language is the residue and alternative accomplishment of dissatisfied desire, the variegated cultural production of a sublimation that never really satisfies. That language inevitably fails to signify is the necessary consequence of the prohibition which grounds the possibility of language and marks the vanity of its referential gestures.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  Within lesbian contexts, the “identification” with masculinity that appears as butch identity is not a simple assimilation of lesbianism back into the terms of heterosexuality. As one lesbian femme explained, she likes her boys to be girls, meaning that “being a girl” contextualizes and resignifies “masculinity” in a butch identity. As a result, that masculinity, if that it can be called, is always brought into relief against a culturally intelligible “female body.” It is precisely this dissonant juxtaposition and the sexual tension that its transgression generates that constitute the object of desire. In other words, the object [and clearly, there is not just one] of lesbian-femme desire is neither some decontextualized female body nor a discrete yet superimposed masculine identity, but the destabilization of both terms as they come into erotic interplay. Similarly, some heterosexual or bisexual women may well prefer that the relation of “figure” to “ground” work in the opposite direction—that is, they may prefer that their girls be boys. In that case, the perception of “feminine” identity would be juxtaposed on the “male body” as ground, but both terms would, through the juxtaposition, lose their internal stability and distinctness from each other. Clearly, this way of thinking about gendered exchanges of desire admits of much greater complexity, for the play of masculine and feminine, as well as the inversion of ground to figure can constitute a highly complex and structured production of desire. Significantly, both the sexed body as “ground” and the butch or femme identity as “figure” can shift, invert, and create erotic havoc of various sorts. Neither can lay claim to “the real,” although either can qualify as an object of belief, depending on the dynamic of the sexual exchange. The idea that butch and femme are in some sense “replicas” or “copies” of heterosexual exchange underestimates the erotic significance of these identities as internally dissonant and complex in their resignification of the hegemonic categories by which they are enabled. Lesbian femmes may recall the heterosexual scene, as it were, but also displace it at the same time. In both butch and femme identities, the very notion of an original or natural identity is put into question; indeed, it is precisely that question as it is embodied in these identities that becomes one source of their erotic significance. Although Wittig does not discuss the meaning of butch/femme identities, her notion of fictive sex suggests a similar dissimulation of a natural or original notion of gendered coherence assumed to exist among sexed bodies, gender identities, and sexualities. Implicit in Wittig’s description of sex as a fictive category is the notion that the various components of “sex” may well disaggregate. In such a break-down of bodily coherence, the category of sex could no longer operate descriptively in any given cultural domain. If the category of “sex” is established through repeated acts, then conversely, the social action of bodies within the cultural field can withdraw the very power of reality that they themselves invested in the category.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Ovid, my master, you know the truth of human life. You have said that there is no subtlety, no deception, that lovers will not pursue for the sake of their passion. Nothing is too arduous. Nothing is too complicated for them. There was the case of Pyramus and Thisbe who, strictly watched and supervised, managed to hold converse through a wall. No man could have discovered their method. Back to the story. On the morning of 7 June (I am not sure of the year), January, urged by his wife, conceived a great desire for some sportive tricks in the garden. He wanted to play with her. So on that morning he cooed to May, ‘Rise up, my dearest, my lovely baby. The voice of the turtle-dove can be heard in the land, my dove, and the winter storms have gone. Rise up now. Open your dove-like eyes. Come forth with me. Oh, your breasts are sweeter than wine. The garden is walled. No one can see us. Walk out with me, white and fair as you are. You have captured my heart with your spotless beauty and virtue. Come. Let us go to play. I have chosen you for my pleasure.’ These were the lecherous words of the old man. May, meanwhile, had made a sign to Damian that he should go before them through the wicket-gate. So Damian took the counterfeit key, opened the gate, and silently made his way into the garden. No one saw or heard him. Once inside, he sat quietly beneath a bush. January, as blind as a stone, now entered the garden; he was holding May’s hand. As soon as he had closed the gate behind him, with a great clatter, he turned to her. ‘Now, wife,’ he said, ‘only the two of us are here. You are the creature I love best in all the world. As God is my witness I would rather cut my own throat than offend you. Do you remember how I chose you? Not out of greed, dear heart, but out of love for you. I may be old and blind, but I will explain to you the blessings of fidelity. It is a debt you owe to Jesus Christ, and to your own honour. And of course you will inherit everything - palace, money, everything. I will sign a contract to that effect before tomorrow evening. Now in return I will ask you for a little kiss. Your lips will seal the bargain. Don’t blame me for being jealous, by the way. You are so deeply imprinted on my heart that, when I consider your beauty in contrast to my old age, I cannot bear to be out of your company. I must always have you beside me, precious one, for the love I feel for you. Now kiss me, dearest. Let’s go for a stroll.’

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  “Oh yeah …” Von said. “We know them.” Bru just stood there gulping Coke from a can. After an uncomfortable silence, Von asked, “So … where’ve you two been hiding?” “You’re the ones who’ve been hiding,” Caitlin said. “How would you know unless you’ve been looking?” Von asked. Caitlin punched him in the arm, like in the old days. But this time he grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder like a sack of dirty laundry. She was laughing as she whacked his naked back. “Put me down, you idiot!” Max clapped his hands and started singing “Upside Down,” a three-year-old Diana Ross impersonator. Vix could feel Bru watching her as she watched them. “Okay, that’s enough,” Tim said, the expression on his face changing. “It’s time for Max’s lunch.” Von returned Caitlin to the ground. She was glowing. “See you around,” she said to him. “Not if I see you first,” he answered. “Yeah … see you around,” Bru said to Vix. “Not if I see you first,” she answered, playing their game. Oh, she was glad she’d given her sweatshirt to Caitlin. Glad she was wearing just shorts over her yellow suit. Glad she was tan and her long dark hair swung from side to side, that her skin was clear that day, and most of all, that she filled out the top of her suit, that she filled it out really well. They went to see My Brilliant Career , about a young Australian woman who’s determined to have a career as a writer, and the man who loves her. Afterward they had a heated discussion. “She made the right decision,” Caitlin said. “He was an asshole. She’d have been miserable the rest of her life with him.” “Not necessarily,” Vix said. “She could have had him and her career.” “Please!” “Well, maybe not back then. But now …” “Now? You think things are different now?” “Look at Tim and Loren. They both have brilliant careers.” “Oh, sure … but which one is pregnant?” “So … she’ll have the baby and then she’ll go back to work.” “I suppose you want a dozen screaming brats. I suppose your brilliant career is going to be mother.” “I really hate it when you tell me what I want! Just because I like kids doesn’t mean I’m going to have them. For your information I haven’t made that decision yet.” Tim asked if they could baby-sit one night during his last week of vacation so he and Loren could take Kitty out to dinner. Max was already in his pajamas when they got there, ready for bed. Loren looked pretty in a loose white dress, funky earrings, her hair French braided. Tim made a big thing out of admiring her. “Do I have the most beautiful wife in the western world … or what?” he asked, kissing Loren in front of them while Max danced in a circle, hugging their legs. They got back just before eleven.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  anything to do with what they were talking about. Yes, she’d been to Tulsa, but only once, when her grandmother, a grandmother she’d never known she had until then, lay dying. “Open your eyes, Darlene,” her mother had said to the stranger in the hospital bed. “Open your eyes and have a look at your grandchildren.” The three of them were lined up in front of their mother, while Nathan slept in his stroller. This grandmother person looked Vix, Lewis, and Lanie up and down without moving her head. Then she said, “Well, Tawny, I can see you’ve been busy.” And that was it. Tawny didn’t cry when Darlene died the next day. Vix got to help her clean out Darlene’s trailer, the trailer where Tawny had grown up. Tawny took some old photos, an unopened bottle of Scotch, and a couple of Indian baskets she thought could be worth something. It turned out they weren’t. She couldn’t sit still. She’d never wanted anything so badly in her life. And she was determined. One way or another she was going away with Caitlin Somers. “Stop squirming,” Tawny said, tossing Vix a towel. “Get Nathan dried and ready for supper. I’ve got to help Lewis with his homework.” “So, can I go?” Vix called as Tawny left the bathroom and headed down the hall. “Your father and I will discuss it, Victoria,” Tawny called back, letting her know it wasn’t a done deal. Tawny never called her Vix like everyone else. If I’d wanted to name my daughter after a cold remedy, I would have. You’d have thought a person named Tawny would have been more flexible. She’d been to Caitlin’s house, an old walled-in place on the Camino, just once, in March, when Caitlin had invited the whole class to her twelfth birthday party. They’d had live music and a pizza wagon with a dozen different toppings. Caitlin’s mother, Phoebe, dressed in faux Indian clothes—long skirt, western boots, ropes of turquoise around her neck. Her hair hung down her back in one glossy braid. Some of Phoebe’s friends were there, too, including her boyfriend of the moment, a guy

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Ha pasado maldito largo tiempo desde que cualquier ropa interior de mujer estuvo sobre mi cama. O en mi cama. Y ciertamente tampoco fue una tanga. Una imagen de la pequeña e inocente novia de mi hijo llevando esto aparece en mi mente, y pongo los ojos en blanco, retrocediendo un poco. —Maldición. Voy a ir al infierno. Regojo de nuevo toda la ropa, enterrando la tanga entre esta para esconderla, así puedo llevar la cesta de nuevo abajo. Simplemente lanzaré la ropa interior sobre la secadora o algo así y dejaré que ella la encuentre. Aunque, tomando la cesta, registro el suave estruendo de la cortadora de césped fuera y dejo caer la ropa, caminando hacia la ventana. Jordan está en el patio trasero, moviéndose por el césped con mi cortadora verde Crafstman. ¿Qué está…? Aprieto la mandíbula, el agravio asentándose. Le dije a Cole que cortara el maldito césped. Ayudar con el trabajo de jardinería es su responsabilidad. Observo mientras ella balancea la cabeza, y es entonces cuando noto el agudo zumbido de guitarras y golpes de batería. Debe estar escuchando música. Sonrío. ¿Qué horrible banda de los ochenta está escuchando hoy? El sudor oscurece su camiseta gris a mitad de su espalda e incluso desde aquí puedo ver su cabello, algunos mechones que se habían liberado de su coleta, pegándose a su cuello. Sus pequeños pantalones cortos blancos muestran los músculos de sus muslos y pantorrillas, flexionándose mientras empuja la máquina. Su piel brilla con sudor, y me centro en su espalda baja, viendo la pequeña porción de piel brillando al sol. El calor inunda mi estómago y mi sonrisa desaparece mientras la miro. Estoy congelado. No quiero apartar la mirada. Pero finalmente pestañeo, alejando mis ojos y tragando saliva a través de la sequedad de mi garganta. ¿No tiene un proyecto o algo en qué trabajar para su clase de verano? Mencionó eso hace unos días. Cole puede cortar el maldito césped. Estirando los brazos, abro la ventana y saco la cabeza, abriendo la boca para llamarla, pero de repente suelta el manillar, gira la cabeza hacia adelante y hacia atrás y hace que toca la guitarra. Me detengo y la observo, frunciendo el ceño pero también muy cerca de estallar en risas. —¡Pon algo de azúcar en mí! —Suena desde el altavoz Bluetooth—. ¡Ooooh, en nombre del amor! Mueve los labios en sincronía, inclinándose hacia atrás, y luego haciendo otros movimientos, bailando y dejándose llevar por la canción. Agarrando de nuevo el manillar, lo usa de apoyo y echa la cabeza de lado a lado, girando el cabello y moviendo las caderas. La goma en su coleta cae y los mechones giran, la hermosa perversión en los mechones que caen sobre su rostro la hacen verse absolutamente hermosa. Mis pulmones arden por aire mientras el deseo me recorre al observarla moviéndose. Dios, si ella es tuya, ¿cómo no la tocas a cada momento?

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The gods have decreed, and by eternal oath confirmed, that you must be wedded to one of these two noble knights who have suffered so much on your behalf. I may not tell you which of them. But one of them will be your lawful husband. Farewell. I must leave you now. But I can tell you this. The fires now burning on my altar have been a sign to you. You have seen your destiny.’ Then the figure of Diana vanished, with the rattling of her arrows in the quiver. Emily was amazed at this sudden vision. ‘I do not know what the goddess meant,’ she said. ‘But, Diana, I put myself under your protection. Dispose of me as you will.’ Thereupon she left the holy place and returned to the palace. There I will leave her. The hour after this, in the planetary hour of Mars, Arcite walked to the temple of the god where he would make his sacrifice. He performed all of the sacred rites and then, with passion and devotion, he prayed to the god of battle. ‘Oh powerful god, who holds dominion in the freezing land of Thrace - who holds the outcome of all wars, in all countries and kingdoms, in your hands - oh lord of all the fortunes of war - accept my sacrifice and hear my plea. If my youth deserves your sympathy, and if my strength is sufficient to serve you as one of your followers, I entreat you to have pity on my pain. You suffered the same anguish, the same hot flame of desire, when you took as your paramour the fair, young and fresh Venus. You possessed her at your will. Of course there was the occasion when lame Vulcan caught you in his net, just as you were lying with his wife, but let that pass. For the sake of all the pain you suffered, have pity upon my agonies. I am young and ignorant, as you know, but I believe that I am wounded by love more sorely than any other man in the wide world. Emily, the cause of all my woe, does not care whether I sink or swim. I know well enough that I must win her in the tournament before she will have mercy on me; I know well, too, that I will need your help and grace before I assay my strength. So assist me, lord, in the battle tomorrow. For the sake of the fire that once burned you, and for the sake of the fire that now burns me, ordain that the victory tomorrow will be mine. Let my portion be the labour, so that yours may be the glory. I will honour your sacred temple before any other place on earth. I will strive for your delight in all the arts and crafts of war. I will hang my banners, and all the arms of my company, above this hallowed altar.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  Then I landed a job as a clerk-typist at a huge engineering and construction firm in the city, in the nuclear quality-assurance department, where I labored under a tsunami wave of triplicate forms and memos. It was very upsetting. It was also so boring that it made my eyes feel ringed with dark circles, like Lurch. I finally figured out that most of this paperwork could be tossed without there being any real … well … fallout, and this freed me up to write short stories instead. “Do it every day for a while,” my father kept saying. “Do it as you would do scales on the piano. Do it by prearrangement with yourself. Do it as a debt of honor. And make a commitment to finishing things.” So in addition to writing furtively at the office, I wrote every night for an hour or more, often in coffeehouses with a notepad and my pen, drinking great quantities of wine because this is what writers do; this was what my father and all his friends did. It worked for them, although there was now a new and disturbing trend—they had started committing suicide. This was very painful for my father, of course. But we both kept writing. I eventually moved out to Bolinas, where my father and younger brother had moved the year before when my parents split up. I began to teach tennis and clean houses for a living. Every day for a couple of years I wrote little snippets and vignettes, but mainly I concentrated on my magnum opus, a short story called “Arnold.” A bald, bearded psychiatrist named Arnold is hanging out one day with a slightly depressed young female writer and her slightly depressed younger brother. Arnold gives them all sorts of helpful psychological advice but then, at the end, gives up, gets down on his haunches, and waddles around quacking like a duck to amuse them. This is a theme I have always loved, where a couple of totally hopeless cases run into someone, like a clown or a foreigner, who gives them a little spin for a while and who says in effect, “I’m lost, too! But look—I know how to catch rabbits!” It was a terrible story. I wrote a lot of other things, too. I took notes on the people around me, in my town, in my family, in my memory. I took notes on my own state of mind, my grandiosity, the low self-esteem. I wrote down the funny stuff I overheard. I learned to be like a ship’s rat, veined ears trembling, and I learned to scribble it all down. But mostly I worked on my short story “Arnold.” Every few months I would send it to my father’s agent in New York, Elizabeth McKee. “Well,” she’d write back, “it’s really coming along now.” I did this for several years. I wanted to be published so badly.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  “I think about that a lot …” Vix wriggles away and sees that Bru and Caitlin have arrived. The Bride and Groom. The Happy Couple. Bru is looking directly at her. Damn! He looks good. She’s been hoping he’d turned flabby, that she’ll feel nothing, nothing but relief that she’s not the one marrying him tomorrow. But the old physical reflexes kick in, her knees go weak, her palms grow clammy. The moment of truth, Victoria. Don’t blow it! They make eye contact. He gives her his soulful look, that look that could melt her insides. You’re my girl, Victoria. You’ll always be my girl . She has no idea what he’s really thinking. Maybe it’s more like, Get a look at Victoria! Jeez … has she gained weight or is it just that stupid T-shirt? She grabs a glass of champagne as it’s passed on a tray, holds it up as if to toast him, then gulps it down. He smiles as she ducks out of Von’s reach. There, it’s over … they’ve acknowledged one another and she’s survived . She makes her way across the room to Sharkey. She hasn’t seen him since Lamb’s fiftieth. There’s a woman at his side with a small child clinging to her back like a koala. He introduces her to Vix as Wren, and the child as her daughter, Natasha. Wren has a hair wrap and wears a long Indian print skirt. Is this a romantic relationship? Does Sharkey have a woman in his life? You might as well marry into it, Victoria. What about the brother? She feels like laughing, either that or crying, but she’s her mother’s daughter. She doesn’t wash her linen in public. Sharkey hugs Vix carefully, bending his body so that nothing of importance touches her and vice versa. “Are you okay?” he asks, and she understands that his question has nothing to do with her health. “I’m fine, really …” she tells him, helping herself to a second glass of champagne. “Good. That’s good.” He moved back east after he got his Ph.D. and is a post doc in the artificial intelligence program at M.I.T. “Daniel and Gus are here,” he says, nodding in their direction. Vix follows his gaze and there they are. The Chicago Boys together again. She’s Alice, fallen down the rabbit hole. Her whole history is connected to the guests at this party. Daniel is tall and slim, with thinning hair, impeccably dressed in Polo Sport, and wearing that same bored expression as the day she met him. He practices law now, with his father’s firm in Chicago. Vix knows that Abby has some unspoken wish for the two of them to wind up together. She wonders if Daniel knows it, too. Gus is a big man with a thick neck, broad shoulders, dark hair. Vix hasn’t seen him since the summer she walked out on Caitlin, eight years ago.