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 Mud Vein (2014)

  If you formed a woman’s soul out of black graphite, bathed it in blood, and then rolled it around in the softest rose petals, you still wouldn’t have touched on the complication that was my match. I met her on the last day of summer. It felt appropriate that I would meet a daughter of winter as the last of the Washington sunshine sieved through the sky. Next week there would be rain, rain and more rain. But today, there was sun, and she stood underneath it, squinting even beneath her sunglasses as if she were allergic to the light. I was walking my dog through a busy park on Lake Washington. We’d just turned around to head home when I stopped to look at her. She was lean—a runner, probably. And she was wearing one of those things that’s longer than a sweater and shorter than a dress. A sweater dress? I followed the line of her legs to camo boots. You could tell she loved those shoes by the worn creases and the way she stood so comfortably in them. I loved those boots for her. And on her. I wanted to be in her. A rough manly thought I’d be too ashamed to admit out loud. The straps of a messenger bag crossed over her chest and hung at her left thigh. Now, I consider myself a bold man, but not quite bold enough to approach a woman whose every body movement said she wanted to be left alone. I did that day. And the closer I got, the stranger she became. She didn’t see me; she was too busy looking at the water. Lost in it a little. How can a man be jealous of water? That’s exactly what I wanted to explore. “Hi,” I said, when I was standing in front of her. She didn’t raise her eyes right away. When she did, her look was a little indolent. I jumped right in. “I’m a writer, and when I saw you standing here, I was compelled to start putting words down on paper. Which makes me think you’re my muse. Which makes me think I need to talk to you.” She smiled at me. It looked like it took effort, that perhaps maybe she didn’t smile very often and her facial muscles were stiff. “That’s the best pickup line I’ve ever heard,” she mused. I wasn’t sure if it was a pickup line. It was embarrassingly truthful. Just saying it made my lips pucker like I was holding in a mouthful of lemon pulp. I eyed the worn leather messenger bag at her hip. “What’s in the bag?” I asked. I was starting to get a feeling about her. Like I knew what she was before she told me. “A computer.” I didn’t peg her as a college student. She had too much attitude to be a professional.

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

  Her legs were perfectly well shaped and her thighs, which she kept pretty close, shewed so white, so round, so substantial and abounding in firm flesh, that nothing could afford a stronger recommendation to the luxury of the touch, which he accordingly did not fail to indulge in. Then gently removing her hand, which in the first emotion of natural modesty, she had carried thither, he gave us rather a glimpse than a view of that soft narrow chink running its little length downwards, and hiding the remains of it between her thighs; but plain was to be seen the fringe of light-brown curls, in beauteous growth over it, that with their silk gloss created a pleasing variety from the surrounding white, whose lustre too, their gentle embrowning shade, considerably raised. Her spark then endeavoured, as she stood, by disclosing her thighs, to gain us a completer sight of that central charm of attraction, but not obtaining it so conveniently in that attitude, he led her to the foot of the couch, and bringing it to one of the pillows gently inclined her head down, so that as she leaned with it over her crossed hands, straddling with her thighs wide spread, and jutting her body out, she presented a full back view of her person, naked to her waist. Her posteriors, plump, smooth, and prominent, formed luxuriant tracts of animated snow, that splendidly filled the eye, till it was commanded down the parting or separation of those exquisitely white cliffs, by their narrow vale, and was there stopt, and attracted by the embowered bottom-savity, that terminated this delightful vista and stood moderately gaping from the influence of her bended posture, so that the agreeable interior red of the sides of the orifice came into view, and with respect to the white that dazzled round it, gave somewhat the idea of a pink slash in the glossiest white satin.

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

  I was scarce twelve years old, before that part which she wanted so much to keep out of harm’s way, made me feel its impatience to be taken notice of, and come into play; already had it put forth the signs of forwardness in the sprout of a soft down over it, which had often fluttered, and I might also say, grown under my constant touch and visitation, so pleased was I with what I took to be a kind of title to womanhood, that state I pined to be entered of, for the pleasures I conceived were annexed to it; and now the growing importance of that part to me, and the new sensations in it, demolished at once all my girlish play-things and amusements. Nature now pointed me strongly to more solid diversions, while all the stings of desire settled so fiercely in that little centre of them, that I could not mistake the spot I wanted a playfellow in. “I now shunned all company in which there was no hopes of coming at the object of my longings, and used to shut myself up, to indulge in solitude some tender meditation on the pleasure I strongly perceived the overture of, in feeling and examining what nature assured me must be the chosen avenue, the gates for unknown bliss to enter at, that I panted after. “But these meditations only increased my disorder, and blew the fire that consumed me. I was yet worse when, yielding at length to the insupportable irritations of the little fairy charm that tormented me, I seized it with my fingers, teazing it to no end. Sometimes, in the furious excitations of desire, I threw myself on the bed, spread my thighs abroad, and lay as it were expecting the longed-for relief, till finding my illusion, I shut and squeezed them together again, burning and fretting.

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

  I asked in surprise. “You have not yet signed the papers.” “Papers—what papers?” “Oh, I see, you want to give it up,” she said, “well then, we will let it go.” “But Wanda,” I said, “you know that nothing gives me greater happiness than to serve you, to be your slave. I would give everything for the sake of feeling myself wholly in your power, even unto death—” “How beautiful you are,” she whispered, “when you speak so enthusiastically, so passionately. I am more in love with you than ever and you want me to be dominant, stern, and cruel. I am afraid, it will be impossible for me to be so.” “I am not afraid,” I replied smiling, “where are the papers?’” “So that you may know what it means to be absolutely in my power, I have drafted a second agreement in which you declare that you have decided to kill yourself. In that way I can even kill you, if I so desire.” “Give them to me.” While I was unfolding the documents and reading them, Wanda got pen and ink. She then sat down beside me with her arm about my neck, and looked over my shoulder at the paper. The first one read: AGREEMENT BETWEEN MME. VON DUNAJEW AND SEVERIN VON KUSIEMSKI “Severin von Kusiemski ceases with the present day being the affianced of Mme. Wanda von Dunajew, and renounces all the rights appertaining thereunto; he on the contrary binds himself on his word of honor as a man and nobleman, that hereafter he will be her slave until such time that she herself sets him at liberty again. “As the slave of Mme. von Dunajew he is to bear the name Gregor, and he is unconditionally to comply with every one of her wishes, and to obey every one of her commands; he is always to be submissive to his mistress, and is to consider her every sign of favor as an extraordinary mercy. “Mme. von Dunajew is entitled not only to punish her slave as she deems best, even for the slightest inadvertence or fault, but also is herewith given the right to torture him as the mood may seize her or merely for the sake of whiling away the time. Should she so desire, she may kill him whenever she wishes; in short, he is her unrestricted property. “Should Mme. von Dunajew ever set her slave at liberty, Severin von Kusiemski agrees to forget everything that he has experienced or suffered as her slave, and promises never under any circumstances and in no wise to think of vengeance or retaliation. “Mme. von Dunajew on her behalf agrees as his mistress to appear as often as possible in her furs, especially when she purposes some cruelty toward her slave.” Appended at the bottom of the agreement was the date of the present day.

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

  The pretext, however, passed, and my mother, with much reluctance, prevailed with herself to go without me; but took particular care to see me safe home, where she consigned me into the hands of an old trusty maidservants, who served in the shop, for we had not a male creature in the house. “As soon as she was gone, I told the maid I would go up and lie down on our lodger’s bed, mine not being made, with a charge to her at the same time not to disturb me, as it was only rest I wanted. This injunction probably proved of eminent service to me. As soon as I was got into the bedchamber, I unlaced my stays, and threw myself on the outside of the bedclothes, in all the loosest undress. Here I gave myself up to the old insipid privy shifts of my self-viewing, self-touching self-enjoying, in fine, to all the means of self knowledge I could devise, in search of the pleasure that fled before me, and tantalized with that unknown something that was out of my reach; thus all only served to enflame myself, and to provoke violently my desires, whilst the one thing needful to their satisfaction was not at hand, and I could have bit my finger for representing it so ill.

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

  In fact, in no music is the sensuous element so powerful as in that of the Tsiganes. You see, from a minor scale—" "Oh! please no technical terms, for I hardly know one note from another." "Anyhow, if you have ever heard a tsardas, you must have felt that, although the Hungarian music is replete with rare rhythmical effects, still, as it quite differs from our set rules of harmony, it jars upon our ears. These melodies begin by shocking us, then by degrees subdue, until at last they enthrall us. The gorgeous fioriture, for instance, with which they abound are of a decided luxurious Arabic character, and——" "Well, never mind about the fioriture of the Hungarian music, and do go on with your story." "That is just the difficult point, for you cannot disconnect him from the music of his country; nay, to understand him you must begin by feeling the latent spell which pervades every song of Tsigane. A nervous organization—having once been impressed by the charm of a tsardas—ever thrills in response to those magic numbers. Those strains usually begin with a soft and low andante, something like the plaintive wail of forlorn hope, then the ever changing rhythm—increasing in swiftness—becomes "wild as the accents of lovers' farewell," and without losing any of its sweetness, but always acquiring new vigour and solemnity, the prestissimo—syncopated by sighs—reaches a paroxysm of mysterious passion, now melting into a mournful dirge, then bursting out into the brazen blast of a fiery and warlike anthem. "He, in beauty, as well as in character, was the very personification of this entrancing music. "As I listened to his playing I was spell-bound; yet I could hardly tell whether it was with the composition, the execution, or the player himself. At the same time the strangest visions began to float before my eyes. First I saw the Alhambra in all the luxuriant loveliness of its Moorish masonry—those sumptuous symphonies of stones and bricks—so like the flourishes of those quaint Gipsy melodies. Then a smouldering unknown fire began to kindle itself within my breast. I longed to feel that mighty love which maddens one to crime, to feel the blasting lust of men who live beneath the scorching sun, to drink down deep from the cup of some satyrion philtre. "The vision changed; instead of Spain, I saw a barren land, the sun-lit sands of Egypt, wet by the sluggish Nile; where Adrian stood wailing, forlorn, disconsolate for he had lost for ever the lad he loved so well. Spell bound by that soft music, which sharpened every sense, I now began to understand things hitherto so strange, the love the mighty monarch felt for his fair Grecian slave, Antinöus, who—like unto Christ—died for his master's sake.

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

  I felt about the bed as if I sought for something that I grasped in my waking dream, and not finding it, could have cried for vexation; every part of me plowing with simulated fires. At length, I resorted to the only present remedy, that of vain attempts at digitation, where the smallness of the theatre did not yet afford room enough for action, and where the pain my fingers gave me, in striving for admission, though they procured me a slight satisfaction for the present, started an apprehension which I could not be easy till I had communicated to Phœbe and received her explanations upon it. The opportunity, however, did not offer till next morning, for Phœbe did not come to bed till long after I was gone to sleep. As soon then as we were both awake, it was but in course to bring our ly-a-bed chat to hand, on the subject of my uneasiness: to which a recital of the love scene I had thus, by chance, been spectatress of, served for a preface.

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

  Our hands, indeed, mechanically carried towards the most interesting part of us, screened, at first, all from the tufted cliff downwards, till we took them away at their desire, and employed them in doing them the same office, of helping off with their clothes; in the process of which, there passed all the little wantonnesses and frolics that you may easily imagine. As for my spark, he was presently undressed, all to his shirt, the fore-lappet of which as he leaned languishingly on me, he smilingly pointed to me to observe, as it bellied out, or rose and fell, according to the unruly starts of the motion behind it; but it was soon fixed, for now taking off his shirt, and naked as a Cupid, he shewed it me at so upright a stand, as prepared me indeed for his application to me for instant ease; but, though the sight of its fine size was fit enough to fire me, the cooling air, as I stood in this state of nature, joined to the desire I had of bathing-first, enabled me to put him off, and tranquillize him, with the remark, that a little suspense would only set a keener edge on the pleasure. Leading them the way, and shewing our friends an example of continency, which they were giving signs of losing respect to, we went hand in hand into the stream, till it took us up to our necks, where the no more than grateful coolness of the water gave my senses a delicious refreshment from the sultriness of the season, and made more alive, more happy in myself, and, in course, more alert, and open to voluptuous impressions. Here I laved and wantoned with the water, or sportively played with my companion, leaving Emily to deal with hers at discretion.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  Then there came out of the temple the whole of the High Priest's train. Amongst them walked a very beautiful page, about sixteen years old, so lovely that I thought I had never seen such charm and elegance even in the flowering capital. I was indeed surprised to see so beautiful a page in such a remote district as the Western Province of Higo. I was greatly troubled by him. Formerly I had become very weary of the luxurious and artificial life of our capital; but at that moment, in this distant country, I felt a temptation which disturbed all the peace of my spirit. My soul was quite thrown into confusion, and my heart began, to beat violently with desire. When the High Priest left the temple after his prayer, I watched the page from behind a screen, and my love grew with each minute. I asked my friend who this beautiful page was, and he told me that he was the second son of a noble family, whose parents had entrusted him to the High Priest because he wished to become a priest and to renounce the pleasures of this world. My love became so violent that it seemed to me that my soul was breaking into a thousand pieces; and it was, indeed, torn. I lost my calm, and in vain gravely reproached myself. I could not forget this beautiful young man. At last in despair, without caring what my friend thought, I wrote the page a love-letter, pleading the cause of my despairing soul. I hoped to gain a little peace if he should only know of my love, without going nearly so far as to return it. This is what I wrote:' DEAR AND ROYAL LORD, I saw you yesterday evening when you were crossing the garden in the High Priest's train, and was moved by your beauty. You are so lovely that the most famous beauties of China, such as Taitjio and Token, the fairest young men there, or Hi or the Empress Yo cannot excel you. I am a priest, but, alas! I have also the passions of a man, and I confess that I love you with all my being. Lord, I am a humble and insignificant priest, passing through this Province: you are of a noble family. To aspire to your love is, for me, as impossible and unfeasible as to climb up a ladder to heaven. I admit that it is impudent of me even to love you; but I write to you because I hope to win some satisfaction and contentment by simply letting you know that I do so. I am like a fly in a spider's web, I am helpless. I bring you my heart in these clumsy words.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  10 Letter from a Buddhist Priest telling his Friend that his Lover comes to him D EAR FRIEND IN THE TEACHING OF BUDDHA: The cherry trees in flower at Kyoto so troubled me that I left the capital last spring. I send you this letter by a man who is going to visit the city. I hope that you are zealous in our religion at your temple, and without disturbance. My hut must have become the resort of mice and rats since it has been unoccupied; though there is not a single piece of fish left there for such guests to enjoy. You may laugh at my poverty, dear friend. No one will regret the chrysanthemums when they fade in my garden. But if by chance you should be passing near my hut, enter, and, since I have given you the key, let the weary passers-by come in. I buried some nuts and potatoes under the north door: use them, for otherwise they will be spoiled. Takenaka sent me these provisions, and I do not like to waste them. And now I shall speak to you of myself. As you know, my eternal and incurable weakness is to fall in love with some pretty boy; and I confess to you that I have an affair here with an entrancing lad, and I hesitate to return to Kyoto. Last year, on leaving the capital, I went to my friend at Okayama in the Province of Bizen. He received me very hospitably, but I quickly grew weary there; so I went by boat to the Province of Higo, where I have a friend who is a poet and a priest of the temple of Kiyomasa, and I lived with him. One evening I was in his wonderful garden, enjoying the fresh breeze after a hot day. An artificial Stream flowed between fanciful rocks and grass-covered hillocks which had been built up there. The effect was as the dwelling of some mountain hermit, delighting in spiritual beauty and the pure pleasures of the soul. The faint song of a cuckoo rose from the density of the mighty pines behind the temple, so poignantly pure that I thought I had never heard such beautiful song in Kyoto. I thought that a cuckoo, singing in the evening in so sacred a place as the temple of Kiyomasa, would make a fitting subject for a poem. I began to compose a poem in my head, and was thinking out the rhymes and the arrangement of the syllables. Then there came out of the temple the whole of the High Priest's train. Amongst them walked a very beautiful page, about sixteen years old, so lovely that I thought I had never seen such charm and elegance even in the flowering capital. I was indeed surprised to see so beautiful a page in such a remote district as the Western Province of Higo. I was greatly troubled by him.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  A constant stream of aspiring young actors, writers, and directors came to Hollywood with common dreams, trying to leverage whatever ability or looks they might have in a market already overwhelmed by beautiful and talented and chronically unemployed young people. Many of them were rather poorly educated—they had left school to gamble on stardom—but they were smart, talented, and desperately ambitious. Scientology promised these neophytes an entry into the gated community of celebrity. The church claimed to have a method for getting ahead; just as enticing was the whispered assertion that a network of Scientologists existed at the upper levels of the entertainment industry eager to advance like-minded believers—a claim that never had much to support it, but was not entirely untrue. Scientology was a small but growing subculture in the Hollywood studios. Kirstie Alley was an aspiring actress from Wichita who left the University of Kansas in her sophomore year, then struggled with an addiction to cocaine. She says that a single auditing session cured her habit. “Without Scientology, I would be dead,” she declared. The testimonials of such celebrities would lead many curious seekers to follow their example. Posters with the faces of television and movie stars were placed outside Scientology churches and missions, saying, “I AM A SCIENTOLOGIST ... COME IN AND FIND OUT WHY.” In the Hollywood trade magazine Variety, Scientology offered courses promising to help neophyte actors “increase your self-confidence” and “make it in the industry.” Scientologists stood outside Central Casting, where actors sign up for roles as extras, passing out flyers for workshops on how to find an agent or get into the Screen Actors Guild. Courses at the Celebrity Centre focused on communication and self-presentation skills, which were especially prized in the entertainment industry. The drills and training routines would have felt somewhat familiar to anyone who had done scene work in an acting class. Many actors, at once insecure but competitive by nature, were looking for an advantage, which Scientology promised to give them. The fact that anyone was interested in them at all must have come as a welcome surprise. Others who passed through Scientology at the same time as Paul Haggis were actors Tom Berenger, Christopher Reeve, and Anne Francis; and musicians Lou Rawls, Leonard Cohen, Sonny Bono, and Gordon Lightfoot. None stayed long. Jerry Seinfeld took a communication course, which he still credits with helping him as a comedian. Elvis Presley bought some books as well as some services he never actually availed himself of.

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

  "'This will be our oath and our act of possession,' added he. "Thereupon he put his arms around me and clasped me to his breast. I entwined my arms round him. By the glimmering, dim light of the cab-lamps I saw his eyes kindle with the fire of madness. His lips—parched with the thirst of long-suppressed desire, with the pent-up craving of possession—pouted towards mine with a painful expression of dull suffering. We were again sucking up each other's being in a kiss—a kiss more intense, if possible, than the former one. What a kiss that was! "The flesh, the blood, the brain, and that undefined subtler part of our being seemed all to melt together in an ineffable embrace. "A kiss is something more than the first sensual contact of two bodies; it is the breathing forth of two enamoured souls. "But a criminal kiss long withstood and fought against, and therefore long yearned after, is beyond this; it is as luscious as forbidden fruit; it is a glowing coal set upon the lips; a fiery brand that burns deep, and changes the blood into molten lead or scalding quicksilver. "Teleny's kiss was really galvanic, for I could taste its sapidity upon my palate. Was an oath needed, when we had given ourselves to one another with such a kiss? An oath is a lip-promise which can be, and is, often forgotten. Such a kiss follows you to the grave. "Whilst our lips clung together, his hand slowly, imperceptibly, unbuttoned my trousers, and stealthily slipped within the aperture, turning every obstacle in its way instinctively aside, then it lay hold of my hard, stiff, and aching phallus which was glowing like a burning coal. "This grasp was as soft as a child's, as expert as a whore's, as strong as a fencer's. He had hardly touched me than I remembered the countess's words. "Some people, as we all know, are more magnetic than others. Moreover, whilst some attract, others repel us. Teleny had—for me, at least—a supple, mesmeric, pleasure-giving fluid in his fingers. Nay, the simple contact of his skin thrilled me with delight. "My own hand hesitatingly followed the lead his had given, and I must confess the pleasure I felt in paddling him was really delightful. "Our fingers hardly moved the skin of the penis; but our nerves were so strained, our excitement had reached such a pitch, and the seminal ducts were so full, that we felt them overflowing. There was, for a moment, an intense pain, somewhere about the root of the penis—or rather, within the very core and centre of the reins, after which the sap of life began to move slowly, slowly, from within the seminal glands; it mounted up the bulb of the urethra, and up the narrow column, somewhat like mercury within the tube of a thermometer—or rather, like the scalding and scathing lava within the crater of a volcano.

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

  His face, in the confusion I was in, I could not well distinguish the lineamints of, any farther than that there was a great deal of youth and freshness in it. The frolic and various play of all his fine polished limbs, as they appeared above the surface, in the course of his swimming or wantoning with the water, amused and insensibly delighted me; sometimes he lay motionless, on his back, waterborne, and dragging after him a fine head of hair, that, floating, swept the stream in a bush of black curls. Then the overflowing water would make a separation between his breast and glossy white belly; at the bottom of which I could not escape observing so remarkable a distinction, as a black mossy tuft, out of which appeared to emerge a round, softish, limber, white something, that played every way, with ever the least motion or whirling eddy. I cannot say but that part chiefly, by a kind of natural instinct, attracted, detained, captivated my attention: it was out of the power of all my modesty to command my eye away from it; and seeing nothing so very dreadful in its appearance, I insensibly looked away all my fears: but as fast as they gave way, new desires and strange wishes took place, and I melted as I gazed. The fire of nature, that had so long lain dormant or concealed, began to break out, and made me feel my sex for the first time. He had now changed his posture, and swam prone on his belly, striking out with his legs and arms; finer modeled than which could not have been cast, whilst his floating locks played over a neck and shoulders whose whiteness they delightfully set off. Then the luxuriant swell of flesh that rose from the small of his back, and terminates its double cope at where the thighs are set off, perfectly dazzled one with its watery glistening gloss. “By this time I was so affected by this inward involution of sentiments, so softened by this sight, that now, betrayed into a sudden transition from extreme fears to extreme desires, I found these last so strong upon me, the heat of the weather too perhaps conspiring to exalt their rage, that nature almost fainted under them. Not that I so much as knew precisely what was wanting to me: my only thought was, that so sweet a creature, as this youth seemed to me, could only make me happy; but then, the little likelihood there was of compassing an acquaintance with him, or perhaps of ever seeing him again, dashed my desires, and turned them into torments.

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

  I was therefore the only man she liked. Her cat-like grace, however, her slightly hoydenish ways, which gave her the appearance of a Ganymede, pleased me, and although I knew very well that I felt no love nor even the slightest attraction for her, still I believed that I might learn to like and perhaps be fond of her. Could I but have felt some sensuality towards her, I think I would even have gone so far as to marry her, rather than become a sodomite, and have an unfaithful man who did not care for me, as my lover. "Anyhow, I asked myself, might I not feel some slight pleasure with her, just enough to quiet my senses, to lull my maddened brain to rest? "And yet which was the greater evil of the two, the one of seducing a poor girl to ruin her, and making her the mother of a poor unhappy child, or that of yielding to the passion which was shattering my body and my mind? "Our honourable society winks at the first peccadillo, and shudders with horror at the second, and as our society is composed of honourable men, I suppose the honourable men which make up our virtuous society are right. "What private reasons they have to make them think in this way, I really do not know. "In the exasperated state in which I was, life was intolerable, I could not bear it any longer. "Weary and worn out by a sleepless night, with my blood parched by excitement and by absinthe, I returned home, took a cold bath, dressed, and called the girl into my room. "When she saw my jaded look, my pale face, my hollow eyes, she stared at me, then— "'Are you ill, sir?' she asked. "'Yes; I am not well.' "'And where were you last night?' "'Where?' I asked, scornfully. "'Yes; you did not come home,' said she, defiantly. "I answered her with a nervous laugh. "I understood that a nature like hers had to be mastered all of a sudden rather than tamed by degrees. I therefore caught her within my arms and pressed my lips upon hers. She tried to free herself, but rather like a defenceless bird fluttering with its wings than like a cat thrusting out its claws from inside its velvet paws. "She writhed within my arms, rubbing her breasts against my chest, her thighs against my legs.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  In August 1996 he issued his Declaration of War on the United States and Israel, the “Crusader-Zionist Alliance,” which he accused of “aggression, iniquity, and injustice” against Muslims.37 He condemned the American military presence in the Arabian Peninsula, equating it with the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and denounced American support for corrupt governments in the Muslim world and the sanctions led by Israel and the United States against Iraq, which, he claimed, had caused a million Iraqi deaths. In February 1998 he announced the World Islamic Front Against Zionists and Crusaders, stating that all Muslims had a religious obligation to attack the United States and its allies “in any country in which it is possible to do it” and to drive American troops from Arabia.38 Three entirely new themes were emerging in Bin Laden’s ideology.39 The first was his identification of the United States as the prime enemy rather than Russians, Serbs, or “apostate” Muslim rulers. Second was his call to attack the United States and its allies anywhere in the world, even in America itself—an unusual step, because terrorists usually avoided operations outside their own country, which cost them international support. Third, even though Bin Laden never wholly abandoned Qutb’s terminology, he drew chiefly on pan-Islamic themes, focusing particularly on the suffering that Muslims were enduring worldwide. This last was the core of Bin Laden’s message and enabled him to claim that his jihad was defensive.40 In his Declaration of War he exploited the culture of grievance that had been developing in the Muslim world, insisting that for centuries “the people of Islam have suffered from aggression, iniquity, and injustice imposed upon them by the Crusader-Zionist alliance.”41 In al-Qaeda’s propaganda videos, this verbal message is relayed against a collage of pain. They show Palestinian children harassed by Israeli soldiers; piles of corpses in Lebanon, Bosnia, and Chechnya; the shooting of a Palestinian child in Gaza; houses bombed and bulldozed; and blind, limbless patients lying inertly in hospital beds. A survey of men recruited by al-Qaeda after 1999 revealed that most of them were still primarily motivated by the desire to assuage such suffering. “I did not know exactly in what way I would help,” said a Saudi prisoner in Guantánamo, “but I went to help the people, not to fight.” Feisal al-Dukhayyil, who was not an observant Muslim, was so distressed by a television program on the plight of Chechen women and children that he enlisted immediately.42 Despite Bin Laden’s anti-American rhetoric, hatred of the United States was not a major preoccupation among his recruits; this seems to have developed only during their indoctrination in the al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan, where all, even those intending to fight in Chechnya, were diverted. Muslims from Buffalo, New York, known as the “Lackawanna Six,” later explained that they left their training camp in 2001 because they were shocked by its anti-Americanism.43

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  The meeting started, and we had to stop. But my mind continued. I started compiling a list in my head of authors that I could try to use against her. I wasn’t about to lose this easily. I paid attention to nothing that was said during the meeting. A passing mention was made about my return, I think. But my mind was occupied. As soon as we got out into the hallway and started our walk together to our classes, I picked up again where we had left off. “D.H. Lawrence?” “Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I read that in high school because I thought it would be particularly scandalous. It wasn’t what I expected.” “E.M. Forster?” She actually stopped when I said his name. “Any person worth a damn has read Howard’s End. Fact.” I glanced around quickly to make sure no one was around to hear the damn. Thankfully, no one was on our end of the hallway. “Less casual swearing in the hallway, ma’am. You don’t want to get fired before you even get hired.” “Are you going to turn me in?” she asked, and I could have sworn she batted her eyes. “No, ma’am,” I said, knowing that even though I wasn’t a blusher, I was probably blushing now. She was sexy. “There you go with that ‘ma’am’ shit again,” she said, putting very clear emphasis on the word shit. She wasn’t going to back down. “Are you normally this defiant?” I asked, wanting to jump her right there in the hallway. She shook her head, slightly. “I guess you just bring out the best of me,” she said. With that, she turned and walked into her classroom, giving me a splendid look at her ass. God, when did I become an ass guy? Better yet, when did I become the kind of guy who had the hots for a married co-worker? Classes may have started but that didn’t keep us from communicating. I felt a little childish for basically texting her as soon as I sat down at my desk. Wharton... I figured I could judge by the amount of time it would take her to answer whether or not she was looking the author up. Even if she had read it, if she took a while I would just assume so and hold it against her. Her response was immediate. I thought we already discussed you asking me about Pulitzer winners? Dammit. Age of Innocence. I needed someone who hadn’t received any significant awards. Time for a curveball. Collins. Who? she asked. Then followed with, Jackie Collins? Do you take me for a reader of trashy novels? No, not Jackie. Suzanne. I’m not familiar with that name, she replied. This time I was shocked. If you tell the students that, they might lynch you. Why? What did she write? Oh, just this little series about games. And hunger. Huh? The Hunger Games! Oh god. I think I knew that. And you haven’t read the series??

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  “Okay. Well you have to read Dubliners then. Short stories, mostly depressing.” “Sounds like my kind of pleasure reading.” “Oh shut up. You’ll love them. He’s my favorite author.” “That’s a pretty bold statement coming from someone who has read so many different books.” “I can be a fairly bold person.” “I can see that,” I said, wondering why certain things she said gave me goose bumps—the good kind. “So you promise you’ll read it?” she asked as we neared the lunchroom. The sound of the students waiting in line was almost as offensive as the smell of fried food wafting through the halls. “I do. I’ll just have to hit up my local public library and find it. It’s probably covered in dust.” She jabbed me with her elbow. “I have two copies at the house. Come by after work sometime tonight and I’ll let you borrow one.” “Are you sure your husband won’t mind if I stopped by?” “He won’t be home.” And with that, she smiled and walked into the lunchroom.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I don’t know why the hell I asked for five pounds, but it sounded like a good idea at the time. “You have one of these,” I said, as we were cleaning the prawns together at my kitchen sink. I ran my finger laterally along its body, pointing out the dark line that needed to be cleaned out. She frowned, looking down at the prawn she was holding. “It’s called a mud vein.” “A mud vein,” she repeated. “Doesn’t sound like a compliment.” “Maybe not to some people.” She de-headed her shrimp with a flick of her knife and tossed it in the bowl. “It’s your darkness that pulls me in. Your mud vein. But sometimes having a mud vein will kill you.” She set down the knife and washed her hands, drying them on the back of her jeans. “I have to go.” “Sure,” I said. I didn’t move until I heard the screen door slam. I wasn’t upset that my words had run her off. She didn’t like to be found out. But she’d be back. Nick’s Book She didn’t come back. I tried to tell myself that I didn’t care. There were plenty of women. Plenty. There were women everywhere I looked. They all had skin and bones, and I’m sure some of them even had silver streaks in their hair. And if they didn’t have a silver streak in their hair I’m sure I could convince them to put it there. But there is something about the process of convincing yourself that you don’t care that just confirms even more that you do. Every time I passed the window in my kitchen I found myself looking up to see if she was standing in the rain, judging the weeds poking out of the driveway. I looked at those weeds so much that eventually I went out there in the rain and pulled them up one by one. It took me all afternoon and I got a nasty head cold. I was cleaning up my driveway for a woman. I wanted to go look for her, but she’d told me little to nothing about herself. I could hold the five things she’d said in the palm of my hand, and still find plenty of room. Her name was Brenna. She came from the desert. She liked to be on top. She ate bread by pulling off little pieces and placing them in the center of her tongue. I had asked her questions, and she had skillfully turned them back on me. I had been eager to give her answers—too eager—and in the process I’d forgotten to collect answers from her. She had played me like a narcissistic trombone. Tooting, tooting, tooting my own horn. She must have been thinking what a fool I was the entire time. Toot, toot. I went back to the park, hoping to run into her again.

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

  The platform of his snow white bosom, that was laid out in a manly proportion, presented, on the vermilion summit of each pap, the idea of a rose about to blow. Nor did his shirt hinder me from observing the symmetry of his limbs, that exactness of shape, in the fall of it towards the loins, where the waist ends and the rounding swell of the hips commences; where the skin, sleek, smooth, and dazzling white, burnishes on; the stretch-over firm, plump, ripe flesh, that crimped’ and ran into dimples at the least pressure, or that the touch could not rest upon, but slid over on the surface of the most polished ivory. His thighs, finely fashioned, and with a florid glossy roundness, gradually tapering away to the knees, seemed pillars worthy to support that beauteous frame at the bottom of which I could not, without some remains of terror, some tender emotions too, fix my eyes on that terrible machine, which had, not long before, with such fury broke into, torn, and almost ruined those soft, tender parts of mine, that had not yet done smarting with the effects of its rage; but behold it now! crest fallen, reclining its half-caped vermilion head over one of his thighs, quiet, pliant, and to all appearances incapable of the mischiefs and cruelty it had committed. Then the beautiful growth of the hair, in short and soft curls round its roots, its whiteness, branched veins, the supple softness of the shaft, as it lay foreshortened, rolled and shrunk up into a squat thickness, languid, and borne up from between his thighs, by its globular appendage, that wondrous treasure bag of nature’s sweets, which revelled round, and pursed up in the only wrinkles that are known to please, perfected the prospect, and altogether formed the most interesting moving picture in nature, and surely infinitely superior to those nudities furnished by the painters, statuaries, or any art, which are purchased at immense prices; whilst the sight of them in actual life is scarce sovereignly tasted by any but the few whom nature has endowed with a fire of imagination, warmly pointed by a truth of judgment to the spring-head, the originals of beauty, of nature’s unequalled composition, above all the imitations of art, or the reach of wealth to pay their price.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  In 563, the forty-second year of his age, Columba prompted by a passion for travelling and a zeal for the spread of Christianity,81 sailed with twelve fellow-apostles to the West of Scotland, possibly on invitation of the provincial king, to whom he was related by blood. He was presented with the island of Hy, commonly called Iona,82 near the Western coast of Scotland about fifty miles West from Oban. It is an inhospitable island, three miles and a half long and a mile and a half broad, partly cultivated, partly covered with hill pasture, retired dells, morass and rocks, now in possession of the Duke of Argyll, numbering about three hundred Protestant inhabitants, an Established Presbyterian Church, and a Free Church. The neighboring island of Staffa, though smaller and uninhabited, is more interesting to the ordinary tourist, and its Fingal’s Cave is one of the most wonderful specimens of the architectural skill of nature; it looks like a Gothic cathedral, 66 feet high, 42 feet broad, and 227 feet long, consisting of majestic basalt columns, an arched roof, and an open portal towards the ocean, which dashes in and out in a constant succession of waves, sounding solemn anthems in this unique temple of nature. Columba and his fellow-monks must have passed it on their missionary wanderings; but they were too much taken up with heaven to look upon the wonders of the earth, and the cave remained comparatively unknown to the world till 1772. Those islands wore the same aspect in the sixth century as now, with the exception of the woods, which have disappeared. Walter Scott (in the "Lord of the Isles") has thrown the charm of his poetry over the Hebridean archipelago, from which proceeded the Christianization of Scotland.83