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 Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She seemed to take pleasure from seeing me eat - as last night she had liked to watch me stand, undress, light cigarettes; but, still, there was that disconcerting thoughtfulness about her, that made me long for her honest, cruel kisses of the night before.When we had drained the coffee-pot between us, and I had finished all the rolls, she spoke; and her voice was graver than I had yet heard it. She said: ‘Last night, upon the street, I invited you to drive with me and you hesitated. Why was that?’‘I was afraid,’ I answered honestly.She nodded. ‘You are not afraid now?’‘No.’‘You are glad that I brought you here.’It was not a question, but as she said it she raised a hand to my throat, and stoked me there until I reddened and swallowed; and I could not help but answer: ‘Yes.’Then the hand was removed. She grew thoughtful again, and smiled. She said: ‘There is a Persian story I read as a girl, about a princess and a beggar, and a djinn. The beggar sets the djinn free from a bottle, and is rewarded with a wish; but the wish - they always do, alas! - comes with conditions. The man may live in ordinary comfort for seventy years; or he may live in pleasure - with a princess for a wife, and servants to bathe him, and robes of gold - he may live in pleasure, for five hundred days.’ She paused; then said: ‘Which would you choose, if you were that beggar?’I hesitated. ‘Those stories are silly,’ I said at last. ‘Nobody is ever asked -’‘Which would you choose? The comfort; or the pleasure?’ She put her hand to my cheek.‘I suppose then, the pleasure.’She nodded: ‘Of course; and so did the beggar. I should be very sorry, if you had said the other thing.’‘Why?’‘Can you not guess?’ She smiled again. ‘You say that there is no one you must answer to. Have you no - sweetheart, even?’ I shook my head, and perhaps looked bitter, for she sighed with a kind of satisfaction. ‘Tell me, then: will you stay with me, here? - and be pleasured, and pleasure me, in your turn?’For a second I only gazed stupidly at her. ‘Stay with you?’ I said. ‘Stay as what? Your guest, your servant -?’‘My tart.’‘Your tart!’ I blinked; then heard my voice grow a little hard. ‘And how should I be paid for that? Rather handsomely, I should think ...’‘My dear, I have said: you should have pleasure for your wages! You should live with me here, and enjoy my privileges. You should eat from my table, and ride in my brougham, and wear the clothes I will pick out for you - and remove them, too, when I should ask it.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She’ll think you’ve never been kissed before, at all!’ When I raised my hands to her, however, I found that she was shaking just as badly; and when, after a moment, I moved my fingers from her throat to the swell of her breasts, she twitched like a fish - then smiled, and leaned closer to me. ‘Press me harder!’ she said. We fell back together upon the bed, then - it shifted another inch across the carpet, on its wheels - and I undid the buttons of her shirt and pressed my face to her bosom, and sucked at one of her nipples, through the cotton of her chemise, till the nipple grew hard and she began to stiffen and pant. She put her hands to my head again, and lifted me to where she could kiss me; I lay and moved upon her, and felt her move beneath me, felt her breasts against my own, till I knew I should come, or faint - but then she turned me, and raised my skirt, and put her hand between my legs, and stroked so slowly, so lightly, so teasingly, I hoped I might never come at all... At last, I felt her hand settle at the very wettest part of me, and she breathed against my ear. ‘Do you care for it,’ she murmured then, ‘inside?’ The question was such a gentle, such a gallant one, I almost wept. ‘Oh!’ I said, and again she kissed me; and after a moment I felt her move within me, first with one finger, then with two, I guessed, then three... At last, after a second’s pressure, she had her hand in me up to the wrist. I think I called out - I think I shivered and panted and called out, to feel the subtle twisting of her fist, the curling and uncurling of her sweet fingers, beneath my womb... When I reached my crisis I felt a gush, and found that I had wet her arm, with my spendings, from fingertip to elbow - and that she had come, out of a kind of sympathy, and lay weak and heavy against me, with her own skirts damp. She drew her hand free - making me shiver anew - and I seized it and held it, and pulled her face to me and kissed her; and then we lay very quietly with our limbs pressed hard together until, like cooling engines, we ceased our pulsings and grew still. When she rose at last, she cracked her head upon the supper-table: we had jerked the truckle-bed from one side of the parlour to the other, and not noticed.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  n.f. desirableness, precious-‏ [חַמוּדַה]1 Ezr 8%;‏ חמודת ;*9 Dn‏ חמוּדות ness—P1. abs.‏ nian 2 Ch 20*+ 4 1 noon Gn 2415; estr.‏ Dn 11* | choice things 6.‏ חמדות אבן||) ®11 ef. Dn‏ ; (בגדים ||) ”27 garments Gn‏ things‏ ולטשק = (BND NINN);‏ 11% (יקרה pnp‏ חי ;20% Ch‏ 2 כלי ח" Ezr 87 (as gold);‏ Dn 10% and,‏ איש"ח? Dn 10°; of man only‏ Dag™ thou art a precious‏ ח" TAN‏ , איש without‏ treasure (on construction v. Dr'™?; v. Bev‏ Is 53”).‏ חמד and cf. neg.‏ Tyan n.pr.m. an Edomite Gn 36° ₪ Apada = [1120 1 Ch 1% (G Epepov, GL Apadap), Taam n.m. desire, desirable thing— abs. son Ho 9°; estr. 20. 1 K 20°43 t. Hz; pl. מחמדּים‎ Ct 5%; estr. "WOM La 2* Hog”; מחמד sf. מחמדי‎ Jo 4*; VION Is 64"; מחַמדָיהָ‎ 2 Ch 36” Lar; DDN La r™ Qr (v. also (מחמד‎ —desirable, precious things ‘n™53 2Ch36™; se. coll. Ho 9°; pl. Jo 4° Is 64% La 1", O32 מ‎ Ho 9"; v. esp. pl. intens. DY VM 13 Ct 5" all of him is delightfulnesses (\|D°PN22); elsewh. מחמד עינים‎ desire of the eyes, i.e. that in which the eyes take delight 1 K 20° Ez 24"*(of proph.’s wife), v7", pl. La 2% [m.] desirable, precious‏ .2 [מחמד]1 La r™ Kt‏ מחְמוּרִיהֶם ,ג La‏ מתמדיה--; שמגת+ to be read in both;‏ מחמד' (Qr D779). Perh.‏ cf. Sta$?5*,‏ Pao a (V of foll.; 6% Ar. ue protect,‏ ו guard, RS ERS ap 2; DP] FF 815 BAS ii. 43 comp.‏ an As. émé, surround, guard, cf. Mod. Syr.‏ means contract‏ 1 .דד td. Eth. chav@;‏ ,.בצ[ affinity, be joined by affinity, prob. denom.)‏ [on] n.m. husband's father (N i ads,‏ מך of husband’s or wife’s father, so Aram. SON;‏ Ar. <5 husband’ s male relation (father, brother, paternal uncle), but also wife's father, etc.; Eth. aT: As. émi, Zim™*);—only sf. 70 Gn 38", of Judah as Tamar’s father-in-law ; 7190 ד‎ ₪ 4"**! of Eli, father-in-law of Phinehas’ wife. Timon] n.f. husband’s mother (NH ,חָמוּת‎ Aram. NNON; ב \3.יצ\.‎ husband's mother ; As.émétu,Zim™ *; Eth. dh??T;)—only sf. 007 Bala” 317. Anion Ru 1**+ ל‎ >.; "nen Mi 7°;— of Naomi Ru 4 g11.18.19.19.23 pe Oe TON map na mniona כַּלָה‎ Mi 7°. main 133 2-£. wall (as protection; estr. חמת‎ MI"*")—abs. ’n Ly 25*+ 59 t. (incl. mpingp ‘Ne 12%); MN Ex 14%+8t.; estr. NOM Jos 6° +28t.; sf. ANDIN Na 2° 38; pl. abs. חומות‎ 2 Ch 8° Is 26'; חמות‎ 6% ₪7; cstr. חומות‎ y 51%; חומת‎ 2K 25+ ot.; sf. חומתי‎ Is 56°; NIN Dt 28” Ts 2% חומותיף‎ Ez 26102 2 חומתיףּ‎ Is 49° > +2 6; חמתיף‎ Is 60"; חמותְיף‎ Ez 26°; חוּמוּתֶיףָ‎ Je 50"; MNDIN ש‎ 55% 16 1”; du. חומתים‎ Is 221. א 2 חמתים‎ 2-0 2 yn Je 39% (on form v. O15"*) ;—1. usu. term for wall of

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  youngest (4th) son of Aaron Ex 6” 28' 38” Ly לולס‎ Nu 3% 423% 78 26% (all P) 1 Ch 5” Re Ezr 82, 7[Ms] vb. incline, desire (cf. Stem 2). Pi. Pfs ץ‎ 132"; TDN Mi 7+, etc.; Lmpf. 3 fs. TARM Dt 12%+4 4 t.—desire subj. usually W532, obj. fruit Mi 7! (in metaph.); flesh (to eat) 182", cf. Dt 12” (sq. inf. Wa (לְאָכל‎ ; food & drink Dt 14”; of king desiring rule, boa ADDN WWI MNATWS 2S 37 1 K ;"זז‎ obj. evil (רע)‎ Br 7 once obj. Os 26" nba JNMS נפשי‎ ; of God Wys ANN ונפשו‎ Tb 233; as desiring Fon for dwelling-place (late, only cases without (נפש‎ 132°"; Hithp. Pf WSN Pro; הַתְאוּיתִי‎ egy; Sn %*ננטא‎ on” Tain) 1Nu34"; Impf. MANNY Ec 67; TSN 2 S23”; apoe. 18D" vas", IW 1 Ch rt, ‘etc.—Pt. fs. MSM Pr 13*; mpl. puxnd Am ₪ 18 Nu 11 desire, long for, lust after,of aly appetites; for dainty 1000 Nur1* (EK; sq. ace. cogn.) = W106", Nu "זז‎ AE) Pr 23**cf. Ec 67(sq.acc.), v. slaves 13° (abs., 5 (כפש‎ ; abs. of extreme thirst 2823 ==1 00 11%; of king desiring the beauty ('פ')‎ of princess 45" (sq. ace.) ; of covetous man Pr 21” (sq. gate CO: ( ; obj. בִּית רעך‎ Dt 5% (|| (חמד‎ ; sq. inf. ל‎ ‘(of desiring evil companionship) ; obj. pi Am 538 (ace. of presumptuous, reckless longing) cf. Je 17", (Nu 3475 for -תִתָאוּ‎ 1. 4 גכ - -תאה‎ prop. ISDH, & queries whether this & DNS vy? are not ‘fe. אוה‎ == 0008176 for your- selves.) [sy] n.m. cstr. ,אל‎ Kt Pr 31‘ desire, so Thes MY; but <QrS q. v. tims] n.f. desire—cstr, M38 Dt 12” + 5t.; sf. ‘N38 Ho 10"—desire, will, usually sq. V2; of natural huinan desire (morally indiff.), for meat Dt 12°°*!; of longing for sanctuary 18°; of royal good ea 1 8 23”; without נש‎ of wild-ass Je 27; of divine will 110 אות Tos n.pr.m. (desire?) one of five chiefs of Midian Nu 31° Jos 13”. +[ N72] ג‎ n.{m.] desire pl. 6. YY מאוי'‎ W140%. תאוהז‎ n.f. desire—abs. Gn 3"+ ; estr. MISA ש‎ 10 + etc.; desire, wish Pr 13%" 181; of physical appetite, longing for dainty food DIN ת'‎ Jb 33°; distinctly good sense y 10” 38” Pr 1119” (2 cf. infr.) Is 268 (WEIN FINI (לשמף‎ ; be sense, lust, appetite, covetousness ת') 10° ?ו‎ ד ד(כפ שי‎ 2%; Pr 218 (as ace. cogn.); particularly of longing or dainties of Egypt Nurr* y106" (both ace. cogn.) 78” & in n.pr. given to place where it occurred MNAT קְבָרוּת‎ 6 v.) ames atl DE ores thing desired, in good sense Pr 10% bad sense y 78” so ת' לבו‎ 21% thing desirable (to senses) Gn 3° לַעִיניִם)‎ ‘D); perhaps also Pr 19” the ornament of a man is his kind- ness (Ra Ki, etc. but cf. supr.)

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She looked me over.‘You must take your drawers off,’ she said quietly - the door was shut fast, but Walter was audibly pacing the little parlour beyond it - ‘or else they’ll bunch, beneath the trousers.’I blushed, then slid the drawers down my thighs and kicked them off, so that I stood clad only in the shirt and a pair of stockings, gartered at the knee. I had once, as a girl, worn a suit of my brother’s to a masquerade at a party. That, however, had been many years before; it was quite different, now, to pull Kitty’s handsome trousers up my naked hips, and button them over that delicate place that Kitty herself had so recently set smarting. I took a step, and blushed still harder. I felt as though I had never had legs before - or, rather, that I had never known, quite, what it really felt like to have two legs, joined at the top.I reached for Kitty, and pulled her to me. ‘I wish Walter were not waiting for us,’ I whispered - though, in truth, there was something rather thrilling about embracing her, in such a costume, with Walter so near and so unknowing.That thought - and the soundless kiss which followed it - made the trousers feel still stranger. When Kitty stepped away to see to her own suit, I looked at her a little wonderingly. I said, ‘How can you dress like this, before a hall of strangers, every night, and not feel queer?’She fastened the clip of her braces, and shrugged. ‘I have worn sillier costumes.’‘I didn’t mean that it was silly. I meant - well, if I were to be beside you, in these’ - I took another couple of steps - ‘oh Kitty, I don’t think I should be able to keep from kissing you!’She put a finger to her lips; then pushed at the fringe of her hair. She said, ‘You will have to get used to it, for Walter’s plan to work. Otherwise - well, what a show that would be!’I laughed; but the words Walter’s plan had made my stomach lurch in sudden panic, and the laughter sounded rather hollow. I gazed down at my own two legs. The trousers, after all, were far too short for me, and showed my stockings at the ankle. I said, ‘It won’t do, will it, Kitty? He won’t really think that it will do - will he?’ He did. ‘Oh yes!’ he cried when we emerged at last together, all dressed up. ‘Oh yes, but what a team you make!’ He was more excited than I had ever seen him.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Later I would think it marvellous that there had ever been a time I hadn’t known it.Now, when Kitty said it, she flinched. ‘Toms. They make a - a career- out of kissing girls. We’re not like that!’‘Aren’t we?’ I said. ‘Oh, if someone would only pay me for it, I’d be very glad to make a career out of kissing you. Do you think there is someone who would pay me for that? I’d give up the stage in a flash.’ I tried to pull her to me again, but she knocked my hand away.‘You would have to give up the stage,’ she said seriously, ‘and so would I, if there was talk about us, if people thought we were — like that.’But what were we like? I still didn’t know. When I pressed her, however, she grew fretful.‘We’re not like anything! We’re just - ourselves.’‘But if we’re just ourselves, why do we have to hide it?’‘Because no one would know the difference between us and - women like that!’I laughed. ‘Is there a difference?’ I asked again.She continued grave and cross. ‘I have told you,’ she said. ‘You don’t understand. You don’t know what’s wrong or right, or good ...’‘I know that this ain’t wrong, what we do. Only that the world says it is.’She shook her head. ‘It’s the same thing,’ she said. Then she fell back upon her pillow and closed her eyes, and turned her face away.I was sorry that I had teased her - but also, I am ashamed to say, rather warmed by her distress. I touched her cheek, and moved a little closer to her; then I took my hand from her face and passed it, hesitantly, down her night-dress, over her breasts and belly. She moved away, and I slowed - but did not stop - my searching fingers; and soon, as if despite itself, I felt her body slacken in assent. I moved lower, and seized the hem of her shift and drew it high - then did the same with my own, and gently slid my hips over hers. We fitted together like the two halves of an oyster-shell - you couldn’t have passed so much as the blade of a knife between us. I said, ‘Oh Kitty, how can this be wrong?’ But she did not answer, only moved her lips to mine at last, and when I felt the tug of her kiss I let my weight fall heavily upon her, and gave a sigh.I might have been Narcissus, embracing the pond in which I was about to drown.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  A brother - or, perhaps, a beau ... ?’ Her fingers trembled slightly, and I felt the chillest of whispers of sapphire and gold upon my throat.I said, ‘I work in a laundry, and a soldier brought this in. I thought he wouldn’t notice if I borrowed it.’ I smoothed out the creases around my crotch, where the slippery cravat still rudely bulged. ‘I liked the cut,’ I added, ‘of the trousers.’After the briefest of pauses her hand - as I knew it must - moved to my knee, then crept to the top of my thigh, where she let it rest. Her palm felt extraordinarily hot. It was an age since anyone had touched me there; indeed, I had kept such a close guard over my own lap lately, I had to fight back the urge to brush her fingers away.Perhaps she felt me stiffen, for she removed the hand herself and said, ‘I’m rather afraid that you are something of a tease.’‘Oh,’ I said, recovering, ‘I can tease all right - if that’s what you care for ...’‘Ah.’‘And besides,’ I added pertly, ‘it’s you who’s the tease: I saw you in St James’s Square, watching me. Why didn’t you stop me then, if you wanted - company - so badly?’‘And spoil the fun with hastening it? Why, the wait was half the pleasure!’ As she said it she raised the fingers of her other hand - her left hand - to my cheek. The gloves, I thought, were rather damp about the tips; and they were scented with a scent that made me draw back in confusion and surprise.She laughed. ‘But how prim you have turned! You are never so dainty, I’m sure, with the gentlemen of Soho.’There was a knowingness to the remark. I said, ‘You have watched me before - before tonight!’She answered: ‘Well, it is rather marvellous what one may catch, from one’s carriage, if one is quick and keen and patient. One may follow one’s quarry like a hound with a fox - and all the time the fox not know itself pursued - might think itself only about its little private business: lifting its tail, arching its eye, wiping its lips ... I might have had you, dear, a dozen times: but oh! as I said, why spoil the chase! Tonight - what was it, decided me at last? Perhaps it was the uniform; perhaps the moon ...’

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She blinked, and seemed to shiver; and then I shivered, too. And then I said, simply, ‘Oh, Flo...’And then, as if through some occult power of its own, the space between our lips seemed to grow small, and then to vanish; and we were kissing. She lifted her hand to touch the corner of my mouth; and then her fingers came between our pressing lips - they tasted, still, of sugar. And then I began to shake so hard I had to clench my fists and say to myself, ‘Stop shaking, can’t you? She’ll think you’ve never been kissed before, at all!’When I raised my hands to her, however, I found that she was shaking just as badly; and when, after a moment, I moved my fingers from her throat to the swell of her breasts, she twitched like a fish - then smiled, and leaned closer to me. ‘Press me harder!’ she said.We fell back together upon the bed, then - it shifted another inch across the carpet, on its wheels - and I undid the buttons of her shirt and pressed my face to her bosom, and sucked at one of her nipples, through the cotton of her chemise, till the nipple grew hard and she began to stiffen and pant. She put her hands to my head again, and lifted me to where she could kiss me; I lay and moved upon her, and felt her move beneath me, felt her breasts against my own, till I knew I should come, or faint - but then she turned me, and raised my skirt, and put her hand between my legs, and stroked so slowly, so lightly, so teasingly, I hoped I might never come at all...At last, I felt her hand settle at the very wettest part of me, and she breathed against my ear. ‘Do you care for it,’ she murmured then, ‘inside?’ The question was such a gentle, such a gallant one, I almost wept. ‘Oh!’ I said, and again she kissed me; and after a moment I felt her move within me, first with one finger, then with two, I guessed, then three...

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  The boxes at the Palace were very close to the stage: all the time she sang, she was less than twenty feet away from me. I could make out all the lovely details of her costume - the watch-chain, looped across the buttons of her waistcoat, the silver links that fastened her cuffs - that I had missed from my old place up in the gallery.I saw her features, too, more clearly. I saw her ears, which were rather small and unpierced. I saw her lips - saw, now, that they were not naturally rosy, but had of course been carmined for the footlights. I saw that her teeth were creamy-white ; and that her eyes were brown as chocolate, like her hair.Because I knew what to expect from her set - and because I spent so much time watching her, rather than listening to her songs - it seemed over in a moment. She was called back, once again, for two encores, and she finished, as before, with the sentimental ballad and the tossing of the rose. This time I saw who caught it: a girl in the third row, a girl in a straw hat with feathers on it, and a dress of yellow satin that was cut at the shoulders and showing her arms. A lovely girl I had never seen before but felt ready at that moment to despise!I looked back to Kitty Butler. She had her topper raised and was making her final, sweeping salute. Notice me, I thought. Notice me! I spelled the words in my head in scarlet letters, as the husband of the mentalist had advised, and sent them burning into her forehead like a brand. Notice me!She turned. Her eyes flicked once my way, as if to note only that the box, empty last night, was occupied now; and then she ducked beneath the dropping crimson of the curtain and was gone.Tricky blew out his candle. ‘Well,’ said Alice a little later, as I stepped into our parlour - our real parlour, not the oyster-house downstairs - ‘and how was Kitty Butler tonight?’‘Just the same as last night, I should think, said Father.‘Not at all,’ I said, pulling off my gloves. ‘She was even better.’‘Even better, my word! If she carries on like that, just think how good she’ll be by Saturday!’Alice gazed at me, her lip twitching. ‘D’you think you can wait till then, Nancy?’ she asked.‘I can,’ I said with a show of carelessness, ‘but I’m not sure that I shall.’ I turned to my mother, who sat sewing by the empty grate. ‘You won’t mind, will you,’ I said lightly, ‘if I go back again tomorrow night?’‘Back again?’ said everyone in amusement.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I said, ‘Tipped the velvet: what does that mean? It sounds like something you might do in a theatre...’Florence blushed. ‘You might try it,’ she said; ‘but I think the chairman would chuck you out...’ Then, while I still frowned, she parted her lips and showed me the tip of her tongue; and glanced, very quickly, at my lap. I had never known her do such a thing before, and I found myself terribly startled by it, and terribly stirred. It might just as well have been her lips that she had dipped to me: I felt my drawers grow damp, and my cheeks flush scarlet; and had to look away from her own warm gaze, to hide my confusion.I looked at Mrs Swindles at the bar, and at the pewter mugs that hung, in one long gleaming row, above her; and then I looked at the group of figures at the billiard table. And then, after a moment or two, I studied them a little harder. I said to Florence, ‘I thought you said it was to be all toms here? There are blokes over there.’‘Blokes? Are you sure?’ She turned to where I pointed, and gazed with me at the billiard players. They were rather rowdy, and half of them were clad in trousers and waistcoats, and sported prison crops. But as Florence studied them, she laughed. ‘Blokes? she said again. ‘Those are not blokes! Nancy, how could you think it?’I blinked, and looked again. I began to see... They were not men, but girls; they were girls - and they were rather like myself...I swallowed. I said, ‘Do they live as men, those girls?’Florence shrugged, not noticing the thickness in my voice. ‘Some do, I believe. Most dress as they please, and live as others care to find them.’ She caught my gaze. ‘I had rather thought, you know, that you must’ve done the same sort of thing, yourself...’‘Would you think me very foolish,’ I answered, ‘if I said that I had thought I was the only one... ?’Her gaze grew gentle, then. ‘How queer you are!’ she said mildly. ‘You have never tipped the velvet -’‘I didn’t say that I had never done it, you know; only that I never called it that.’‘Well. You use all sorts of peculiar phrases, then. You seem never to have seen a tom in a pair of trousers.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  It worsened. When I was six I tried to sleep every night with my arms folded behind my back like wings. This didn’t last long, because it is very hard to sleep with your arms folded behind your back like wings . Later , when I saw pictures of the ancient Egyptian falcon-headed god Horus, all faience and turquoise and with a perfect moustachial stripe below his wide, haunting eyes, I was stricken with a strange religious awe. This was my god, not the one we prayed to at school: he was an old man with a white beard and drapes. For weeks, in secret heresy, I whispered Dear Horus instead of Our Father when we recited the Lord’s Prayer at school assemblies. It was a suitably formal address, I thought, having learned it from writing birthday thank-you notes. Hawk habits, hawk species, hawk scientific names; I learned them all, stuck pictures of raptors on my bedroom walls, and drew them, over and over again, on the edges of newspapers , on scraps of notepaper , on the margins of my school exercise books, as if by so doing I could conjure them into existence. I remember a teacher showing us photographs of the cave paintings at Lascaux and explaining that no one knew why prehistoric people drew these animals. I was indignant. I knew exactly why, but at that age was at a loss to put my intuition into words that made sense even to me. When I discovered there was still such a thing as falconry things became less amorphously religious. I told my long-suffering parents that I was going to be a falconer when I grew up and set about learning as much as I could about this miraculous art. Dad and I hunted for falconry books on family days out, and one by one the great works came home with us, second-hand trophies in paper bags from bookshops long since gone: Falconry by Gilbert Blaine; Falconry by Freeman and Salvin; Falcons and Falconry by Frank Illingworth; the gloriously titled Harting’s Hints on Hawks . All the boys’ books. I read them over and over, committed great swathes of nineteenth-century prose to memory. Being in the company of these authors was like being dropped into an exclusive public school, for they were almost entirely written a long time ago by bluff, aristocratic sportsmen who dressed in tweed, shot Big Game in Africa, and had Strong Opinions. What I was doing wasn’t just educating myself in the nuts and bolts of hawk-training: I was unconsciously soaking up the assumptions of an imperial elite. I lived in a world where English peregrines always outflew foreign hawks, whose landscapes were grouse moors and manor houses, where women didn’t exist. These men were kindred spirits.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I had cleaned all the panes except the one before my face; and when I wiped at this I jumped, for Florence was standing on the other side of it, very still. She was clad in her coat and hat, and had her satchel over her arm; but she was gazing at me as if - well, I had had too many admiring glances come my way, in the years since I had first walked before Kitty Butler in a party-gown and not known why it was she flushed to look at me, not to know why it was that Florence, studying me in my moleskins and my crop, flushed now.But, like Kitty, her desire seemed almost as painful to her as it was pleasant. When she caught my eye, she lowered her head and walked into the house; and all that she would say was: ‘Why, what a shine you have put upon the glass!’ And while it was glorious to know that - at last, and all unwittingly! — I had made her look at me and want me; while I had felt, for the second that her gaze had met mine, the leaping of my own new passion, and an answering passion in her; and while that passion had left me giddy, and aching, and hot, it was as much with nervousness as with lust that I trembled and grew weak.Anyway, when I met her later her eyes were dim and she kept them turned from me; and I thought, again, Why would she ever care for me, while she still grieved for somebody like Lilian? And so we went on, and the year grew colder. When Christmas came I spent it not at Quilter Street, but at Freemantle House, where Florence had organised a dinner for her girls and needed extra hands to baste the goose and wash the dishes. At New Year we drank a toast to 1895, and. another to ‘absent friends’ - she meant Lilian, of course; I’d never told her about all the friends that I had lost. In January there was Ralph’s birthday to celebrate.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I asked her. She coloured. ‘Well, I have lain with one or two ...’ The thought that she had lain with different girls - with so many girls that she could put them into categories, like breeds of fish - was wonderfully astonishing and stirring. I put my hand upon her - we were lying together, naked despite the cold, because we had bathed in a steaming tub and were still warm and prickling from it - and stroked her, from the hollow at her throat to the hollow of her groin; then I stroked her again, and felt her shiver. ‘Who would ever have thought that I should touch you so, and talk to you so!’ I asked her - whispering, because Cyril lay beside us, asleep in his crib. ‘I was sure you would prove prim and awkward. I was sure you would be shy. Indeed, I didn’t see how you could fail to be, being so political and good as you are!’ She laughed. ‘It ain’t the Salvation Army, you know,’ she answered, ‘socialism.’ ‘Well, maybe ...’ We said nothing more, then; only kissed and murmured. But the next night she produced a book, and had me read it. It was Towards Democracy, the poem by Edward Carpenter; and as I turned the pages, with Florence warm beside me, I found myself growing damp. ‘Did you used to look at this with Lilian?’ I asked her. She nodded. ‘She used to like to have me read it to her, as we lay in bed. She couldn’t have known, I suppose, that it was sometimes hard to do it ... Perhaps she did know, I thought - and the idea made me damper. I handed the book to her. ‘Read it to me, now,’ I said. ‘You have already read it.’ ‘Read me the bits you used to read to her ...’ She hesitated, then did so; and as she murmured, I put my hand between her legs and touched her, and her voice grew less steady, the more firmly I stroked. ‘There are books written especially for this sort of thing,’ I said to her, thinking back to the many times I had lain doing something similar with Diana - on the very same nights, probably, that Florence had lain squirming next to Lilian. ‘Wouldn’t you rather I bought you a book like that? I can’t believe Mr Carpenter really intended his poem to be enjoyed in such a way.’ She put her lips against my throat. ‘Oh, I think Mr Carpenter would approve all right.’ She had let the book fall on to her breast.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I lit two cigarettes, and left one smouldering. Then I poured myself a glass of wine and, in between gulps, began to retrieve my stockings, my trousers and my boots from the pile of clothes that lay strewn across the carpet.The lady reappeared, and seized her fag. She had changed into a dressing-gown of heavy green silk, and her feet were bare; she had that long second toe that you sometimes see on the statues done by the Greeks. Her hair had been properly unfastened, combed out, and rebound into a long, loose plait, and she had at last removed her white kid gloves. The flesh of her hands was almost as pale.‘Do leave all that,’ she said, nodding towards the trousers over my arm. ‘The maid will deal with it in the morning.’ Then she saw the dildo, and caught it up by one of its straps. ‘I should, however, remove this.’I was not sure that I had heard her properly. ‘The morning?’ I said. ‘Do you mean that I should stay?’‘Why, of course.’ She looked genuinely surprised. ‘Are you not able? Will you be missed?’ I felt light-headed suddenly. I told her that I lodged with a lady who, though she would wonder at my absence, wouldn’t worry over it. Then she asked if I had an employer - perhaps at the laundry I had mentioned ? - who would expect me on the morrow. I laughed at that, and shook my head: ‘There is no one at all to miss me. I’ve only myself to think of and please.’As I said it, the toy at her thigh began to swing.She said, ‘You did, before tonight. Now, however, you have me ...’Her words, her expression, made a mockery of my efforts with the handkerchief: I was wet for her anew. I reunited my trousers with her discarded petticoats, and added my jacket to the pile. Next door, the silken counterpane had been turned back, and the sheets beneath looked very white and cool. The chest kept its still, enigmatic place at the foot of the bed. The clock on the mantel showed half-past two. It was four, or thereabouts, before we slumbered; and perhaps eleven when I woke. I remembered stumbling to the commode some time in the early morning, and recalled the brief renewal of passion which had followed my return to her arms; but my sleep since then had been a heavy, dreamless one, and when next I knew the bed I was alone in it: she had donned her dressing-gown and stood at the half-opened window, smoking, and gazing thoughtfully at the view beyond. I stirred, and she turned and smiled.‘You sleep like a child,’ she said. ‘I have been up this half-hour, making a fearful row, and still you’ve slumbered on.’‘I was so very weary.’ I yawned - then I recalled all that had wearied me. A slight awkwardness seemed to fall between us.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  The very word erotic comes from the Greek eros, the personification of love in all its aspects—born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.68 However, some black feminists have chosen to map a binary and heteronormative read onto Lorde’s erotic that implies that the erotic can only be achieved by a transcendence of mere sex, or by eschewing sex that isn’t regulated to the realms of romantic love or the spiritual. For example, in Black Sexual Politics, Patricia Hill Collins challenges my critique of how young women in hip-hop culture use both sex and sexuality as a type of currency that is commonly interpreted as “erotic power.” Casting it as my “misread” of Lorde (whom I deliberately do not engage in the context of hip-hop and hood sexual politics), Collins goes on to contrast “erotic” with “sex/fucking.” The former, she writes, requires an engagement with “the honest body.” Rebelling against the rules and reclaiming the erotic means that Black straight and gay people alike can support one another in claiming honest bodies that are characterized by sexual autonomy. Using one’s honest body engages all forms of sexual expression that bring pleasure and joy. Overall, soul, expressiveness, spirituality, sensuality, sexuality, and an expanded notion of the erotic as a life force that may include all of these ideas seem to be tightly bundled together within this notion of an honest body that is not alienated from itself and where each individual has the freedom to pursue his or her sense of the erotic.69 Rather than the embrace the pairing Hill Collins suggests, my hope is for a pleasure politics that actively, adamantly resists it. My interest is in a capacious casting of the erotic that includes black women’s variegated sexual and non-sexual engagements with deeply internal sites of power and pleasure—among them expressions of sex and sexuality that deliberately resists binaries. Like L. H. Stallings, I am interested in erotic space that: looks at the constructions of Black female subjectivities cognizant of autonomous sexual desires. (And ask) how do Black women use culture to explore sexual desire that is spiritual, intellectual, physical, emotional, and fluid so as to avoid splits or binaries that can freeze Black women’s radical sexual subjectivities? It is not easy.70 In other words, I want an erotic that demands space be made for honest bodies that like to also fuck.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I could not see the shine upon her pink lips, without wanting to step to her and press my mouth to it; I couldn’t look at her hand as it lay limp upon some table-top, or held a pen, or carried a cup, or did any kind of ordinary business, without longing to take it in my own and kiss the knuckles or put my tongue to the palm, or press it to the fork at my trousers. I would stand beside her in a crowded room and feel the hairs lift on my arms - and see her own flesh pimple, and her cheeks grow warm, and know she ached for me, to match my aching; but she would take a dreadful satisfaction, too, in lengthening the visits of her friends — in handing out a second cup of tea, and then a third-and all while I looked on, tortured and damp.‘You made me wait, for two years and a half,’ she said to me once; I had followed her into the kitchen, and put my shaking arms about her as she lifted a kettle to the stove. ‘It won’t hurt you, to wait an hour till the parlour clears ...’ But when she said a similar thing another night, I touched her through the folds of her skirt until her voice grew weak - and then she led me into the pantry, and put a broom across the door, and we caressed amongst the packets of flour and tins of treacle while the kettle whistled and the kitchen grew woolly with steam, and Annie called out from the parlour, What were we doing?The fact was, we had both gone kissless for so long that, having once begun to kiss again, we could not stop.Our boldness made us marvel.‘I had you down for one of those terrible grudging girls,’ she said to me one night, a week or two after our visit to the Boy. ‘One of those dry-rub-it-on-the-hip-don’t-touch-me sorts . . .’‘Are there such girls?’ I asked her.She coloured. ‘Well, I have lain with one or two ...’The thought that she had lain with different girls - with so many girls that she could put them into categories, like breeds of fish - was wonderfully astonishing and stirring.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  On our porch, one of the floorboards splits open and shakes off its scab of moss. Light spits from it and we flock to the crack like moths. Underneath the porch is a finger of gold, bedazzled with flies and reclined on a sheet of butcher paper. Ma dances on the kitchen table for a whole hour, her feet forgoing gravity. She stacks the gold on the not-altar, directly to the left of the photo so flat and dull in its frame. The gold is too exposed, like looking directly at someone’s bones. We are all looking at it now, the gold and the photo, our eyes alternating between the glow and its shadow, the payment and the cost. DAUGHTERHu Gu Po (I) [image file=image_rsrc1SC.jpg] California, a generation laterMothers ago, there was a tiger spirit who wanted to live inside a woman. One night when the moon was as brown as a nipple, the tiger spirit braided itself into a rope of light and lowered itself into a woman’s mouth, rappeling down her throat and taking the name of Hu Gu Po. But the price of having a body is hunger. Hu Gu Po could remain a tenant in the woman’s body as long as she hunted. When she smelled the sweat-seasoned toes of children, her belly hardened into a beetle of need and scuttled out of her throat, a scout in search of salt. Craving their toes, she climbed into the children’s bedrooms at night. With her teeth, she unscrewed the toes of sleeping daughters and sucked the knuckles clean of meat, renaming them peanuts. Every morning, Hu Gu Po walked through the market and appraised the fish dragged in from the river, their bodies like oiled opals. A fisherman’s wife, smelling something that scarred the air with its smoke, turned to Hu Gu Po and asked what she was eating. Peanuts, Hu Gu Po said, shucking nut-bones with her teeth. The fisherman’s wife asked if Hu Gu Po might be willing to share. Hu Gu Po laughed. How much would you pay for one? The fisherman’s wife named a price. Slipping the skin off another nut, Hu Gu Po said, That’s not enough for me to make a living. She laughed, her black braid unraveling to ash, charring the air. The next morning, every child in the village woke with a toe subtracted from each foot. On each of their pillows was a five-cent coin, rusted dark as a blood spot. The fisherman’s wife had no children, but when she heard what had happened, she remembered the woman in the market cleaving peanut shells with her teeth. When she opened her door, there was a skin pouch lying in her doorway. She slit open the pouch and it spilled dozens of toes, deboned and dusted with salt. _

• From Bestiary (2020)

  Most about revenge: stories the boy who grows his foot back twice as large & clawed & your father never made love to the shadow-girl tried once but the girl was cave rock it hurt to enter her one week a rockslide down the mountain he crawled toward the cave saw its mouth gated by boulders he tackled each stone by the time light broke in morning & no one inside when he spoke her name what he thought was her name: his echo never noticed that before. He danced his shadows along the walls she never answered his hands with her own: When your father told me this story I revised the ending one day the shadow-girl waiting with an oil lamp. She threw it at the entrance to enter the cave he must walk through burn the body that brought him to me when your father met me he shadowed me for days heeled like a bitch broke an umbrella in my fist I said make me a new one he folded it from newspaper oiled so the water leapt off it handle carved from the body of his warpistol he kissed me beneath my skin wasn’t even raining the sun a bullet through us both * WHAT IF YOUR TAIL IS SOME KIND OF REGROWN UMBILICAL CORD? WHAT IF YOU’RE BEING FED THROUGH IT? I KNOW CORDS DON’T USUALLY GROW OUT OF THE ASS, BUT IF I WERE AN UMBILICAL CORD, I’D WANT TO COME BACK AND AVENGE BEING CUT. WHAT ARE UMBILICAL CORDS FOR, ANYWAY? THEY HYPHENATE TWO BODIES. DO YOU SPEAK THROUGH IT LIKE A TELEPHONE CORD? DOES IT CARRY MEMORY FROM THE MOTHER TO THE BABY? —BEN GRANDMOTHER Letter [ ]: In which I am the driver Dear [ ] daughter, Jiejie, girl I gave to this country, Today the crotch of my underwear is a landscape painting. The landscape is mud for miles cleft-ass mountains cloudturds. The zhongyi says loose anal sphincter says it’s age but I suspect it’s because your father liked to do dirty things to me. He must have knocked loose a beam in my bowels I let him put it in wherever I couldn’t grow another daughter the zhongyi says I’m beginning to lose motor skills I say I never knew how to drive anyway.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  The more you tell me about that woman, the less I care for her. To think she kept you cramped and guilty for so long, when you might have been off, having your bit of fun as a real gay tom ...’ ‘I wouldn’t have been a tom at all,’ I said, more hurt by her words than I was willing to show, ‘if it hadn’t been for Kitty Butler.’ She looked me over: I had my trousers on. ‘Now that,’ she said, ‘I cannot believe. You would have met some woman, sooner or later.’ ‘When I was married to Freddy, probably, and had a dozen kids. I should certainly never have met you.’ ‘Well, then I suppose I have something to thank Kitty Butler for.’ The name, when spoken aloud like that, still grated on my nerves a little and set them tingling; I think she knew it. But now I said lightly, ‘You do. Be sure you remember it. In fact, I have something that will remind you ...’ I went to the pocket of my coat, and drew out the photograph of Kitty and me, that I had got from Jenny, at the Boy in the Boat; and I carried it to the bookcase and set it there, beneath the other portraits. ‘Your Lilian,’ I said, ‘may have got a thrill from gazing at Eleanor Marx. Sensible girls used to put pictures of me on their bedroom walls, five years ago.’ ‘Stop boasting,’ she answered. ‘All this talk about the music hall. I’ve never heard you sing a song to me.’ She had taken my place in the armchair, and now I went and nudged at her knees with my own. ‘Tommy,’ I sang - it was an old song of W. B. Fair’s - ‘Tommy, make room for your uncle.’ She laughed. ‘Is that a song you used to sing with Kitty?’ ‘I should say not! Kitty would have been too afraid, in case there was a real torn in the crowd who got the joke and thought we meant it.’ ‘Sing me one of the ones you sang with Kitty, then.’ ‘Well...’ I was not sure I liked the idea; but I sang her a few lines of our song about the sovereigns - strolling about the parlour as I did so, and kicking my moleskinned legs. When I finished, she shook her head. ‘How proud she should have been of you!’ she said softly. ‘If I’d been her -’ She didn’t finish. She only rose, and came to me, and drew back the shirt where it flapped beneath my throat, and kissed the flesh that showed there, until I trembled.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  How many of them were like the gentleman whose parts I had just fingered? Even as I wondered it I saw one fellow gaze my way, deliberately - and then another.Perhaps there had been many such looks since I had returned to the world as a boy; but I had never noticed them or grasped their import. Now, however, I grasped it very well - and I trembled again, as I did so, with satisfaction and spite. I had first donned trousers to avoid men’s eyes; to feel myself the object of these men’s gazes, however, these men who thought I was like them, like that — well, that was not to be pestered; it was to be, in some queer way, revenged.For a week or two I continued to wander, and to watch, and to learn the ways and gestures of the world into which I had stumbled. Walking and watching, indeed, are that world’s keynotes: you walk, and let yourself be looked at; you watch, until you find a face or a figure that you fancy; there is a nod, a wink, a shake of the head, a purposeful stepping to an alley or a rooming-house ... At first, as I have said, I took no part in these exchanges, but only studied others at them, and received a thousand questing glances on my own account — some of which I held, rather teasingly, but most of which I turned aside, after a second, with a show of carelessness. But then, one afternoon, I was approached once again by a gentleman who, it seemed to me, bore some slight resemblance to Walter. He wanted my hand upon him, merely, and to have a string of lewd endearments whispered in his ears as I dubbed him off - it didn’t seem like much. If I hesitated, I don’t believe he saw. I named my terms - a sovereign, again - and led him to the nook where I had served his predecessor. His cock seemed rather small; again, however, I said how thick and fine it was.‘You’re a beautiful boy,’ he whispered to me afterwards. There was no trouble over the coin.Thus easily - as easily, and fatefully, as I had first begun my music-hall career - thus easily did I refine my new impersonations, and become a renter. Chapter 9 [image "013" file=wate_9781101078198_oeb_013_r1.jpg] It might seem a curious kind of leap to make, from music-hall masher to renter. In fact, the world of actors and artistes, and the gay world in which I now found myself working, are not so very different. Both have London as their proper country, the West End as their capital. Both are a curious mix of magic and necessity, glamour and sweat.