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.

Page 290 of 344 · 20 per page

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  For a moment - my fingers tugging at hooks and ribbons, her own tearing at the pins which kept her plait of hair in place - we might have been at the side of a stage, making a lightning change between numbers.At last she was naked, all except for the pearl and chain about her neck; she turned in my hands, stiff and pimpled with cold, and I felt the brush of her nipples, and of the hair between her thighs. Then she moved away, and the bed-springs creaked; and at that, I didn’t wait to pull the rest of my own clothes off but followed her to the bed and found her shivering there, beneath the sheets. Here we kissed more leisurely, but also more fiercely, than we had before; at last the chill - though not the trembling - subsided.Once her naked limbs began to strain against my own, however, I felt suddenly shy, suddenly awed. I leaned away from her. ‘May I really - touch you?’ I whispered. She gave again a nervous laugh, and tilted her face against her pillow.‘Oh Nan,’ she said, ‘I think I shall die if you don’t!’Tentatively, then, I raised my hand, and dipped my fingers into her hair. I touched her face - her brow, that curved; her cheek, that was freckled; her lip, her chin, her throat, her collar-bone, her shoulder ... Here, shy again, I let my hand linger - until, with her face still tilted from my own and her eyes hard shut, she took my wrist and gently led my fingers to her breasts. When I touched her here she sighed, and turned; and after a minute or two she seized my wrist again, and moved it lower.Here she was wet, and smooth as velvet. I had never, of course, touched anyone like this before - except, sometimes, myself; but it was as if I touched myself now, for the slippery hand which stroked her seemed to stroke me: I felt my drawers grow damp and warm, my own hips jerk as hers did. Soon I ceased my gentle strokings and began to rub her, rather hard. ‘Oh!’ she said very softly; then, as I rubbed faster, she said ‘Oh!’ again. Then, ‘Oh, oh, oh!’: a volley of ‘Oh!’s, low and fast and breathy.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  What I thought was, fuck you, Mingo. How many books have you written, big sexy looking guy? You’ve got a problem with reading? You can kiss my ass. Miraculously, I got the job. Every day I saw him in the graduate writing workshop Andy stared so hard at me I thought my skull might fracture. Or something in me, anyway. After that eventful phone call from Paris that led to my carefully calculated drunk on and drive episode, Andy sauntered into my office and brought me a novel manuscript. A good one. And he offered to let me borrow one of his cars. Mine, was totaled. Like my life. I borrowed the car. When I drove his car around I could smell him and feel him. In the seat and on the steering wheel. In the holder thing between seats where I found cassette tapes he listened to. Bob Dylan and The Cure and Sublime. In the glove compartment where I found a lighter and rolling papers. On the car floor he’d so obviously worked hard to vacuum. The engine ran hot. The kind of teacher I was, I’d meet the grad students to go over their writing anyplace but my office. I’ve never believed in institutional authority. So I’d let the grad student choose where we’d meet - let them name a place where they felt like themselves - and I would go there to talk with them about writing. With Andy, it was a Mediterranean coffee shop off the beaten track with an outdoor area where we sat under bougainvillea and orange blossoms and spoke of writing. That sentence cracked me up. Immediately it was not about writing. Man-lust fucks a girl up. We both wore sunglasses. Since neither of us took them off, I took it as a draw. We both threw out a few mock barbs. Neither flinched. We both executed a couple of low-level sexual innuendos. Dead even. And when I asked him about the references to Italy in his novel, he began to narrate his lifestory - so I came back at him with a bit of mine. Andy grew up in Reno. And what was coming out of his mouth, well, it was a worthy backstory. “My mother was a single mother. She taught math. I’ve always hated math. I grew up with a series of father stand-ins… guys with names like ‘Pidge.’ ” I countered with “My mother was an alcoholic pathological liar. On the other hand, she was a great storyteller.” “I was once a bouncer at Paul Revere’s ‘Kicks’ nightclub when I was 19.” “Paul Revere and the Raiders?” I asked, thinking about how when I was 19 I was in Monte’s basement. “The same,” he said. “I’ve been swimming with Kathy Acker,” I said, trying quite hard to impress him. “Who is Kathy Acker?” Goose egg. Why had I said that?

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  My landlady says to thank you for the oysters...’ It was very cosy on the sofa, with everyone about me so gay; but at half-past ten or so Kitty yawned - and at that I gave a jump, and rose, and said it was my bedtime. I paid a hasty visit to the privy out the back, then ran upstairs and changed into my nightgown double-quick - you might have thought I had been kept from sleeping for a week and was about to die of tiredness. But I was not sleepy at all; it was only that I wanted to be safely abed before Kitty appeared - safely still and calm and ready for that moment that must shortly come, when she would be beside me in the dark, and there would be nothing but the two flimsy lengths of our cotton nightgowns to separate her own warm limbs from mine.She came about a half-hour later. I didn’t look at her or say her name, and she didn’t greet me, only moved very quietly about the room - assuming, I suppose, I was asleep, for I was lying very straight on my side and had my eyes hard shut. There was a little noise from the rest of the house - a laugh, and the closing of a door, and the rushing of water through distant pipes. But then all was calm again; and soon there were only the gentle sounds of her undressing: the tiny volley of thuds as she pulled at the buttons on her bodice; the rustle of her skirt, and then of her petticoat; the sighing of the laces through the eyes of her stays. At last there came the slap of her feet on the floorboards, and I guessed that she must be quite naked.I had turned the gas down, but left a candle burning for her. I knew that if I opened my eyes now, and tilted my face, I should see her clad in nothing but shadows and the candle-flame’s amber glow.But I did not turn; and soon there was another rustling, that meant she had pulled on her nightgown. In a moment the light was extinguished; the bed creaked and heaved; and she was lying beside me, very warm and horribly real.She sighed. I felt her breath upon my neck and knew that she was gazing at me. Her breath came a second time, and then a third, then: ‘Are you asleep?’ she whispered.‘No,’ I said, for I could pretend no longer. I rolled on to my back. The movement brought us even closer together - it really was an extremely narrow bed - so I shifted, rather hurriedly, to my left, until I could not have shifted any further without falling out. Now her breath was upon my cheek, and warmer than before.She said, ‘Do you miss your home, and Alice?’ I shook my head. ‘Not just a little?’‘Well...’I felt her smile.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  I went instantaneously deaf. I mean I didn’t hear one word of her famous hour long photographer talk. It was like being underwater. Occasionally I was able to wrestle my eyes away from her to look at the stream of photos behind her, but not often. My breathing began to go wrong in my lungs. Sweat formed in lines underneath my tits and between my legs. My face got hot. My scalp felt as if it was leaving my head. My mouth filled with spit. I wished everyone in the room dead. By the time her talk was over and I’d made my way down and through the idiotic academic sycophantic throngs, by the time I penetrated the clone army and reached my hand out to shake hers, to introduce myself, to look at what my body was begging for, I already knew. She was the same age as my mother. A few hands before mine I noticed that she wiped her hand off vigorously enough on her pant leg to create the beginning of what would be a stain when she got back to her hotel for the night. A stain on the thigh of her pants from the multitudes of greedy hands. I felt a tinge of shame. I gripped her hand a little too tightly, as I recall. Desperately thinking inside my skull don’t be desperate don’t be desperate don’t be fucking desperate. When she looked at me she had that glazed look of a speaker handling the hands and faces of adoring morons. When she let go my hand I thought, that’s that, I’m an adoring moron. Probably I’m drooling. Her hand in mine was wet. Wet from the effort it takes to speak to a desiring crowd when you are meant to be off gloriously and unapologetically alone in the world with your only beloved: a camera. Point and shoot. Wet with all of our slobbering projections of who we wanted her to be dripping from her hands. Wet with the sweat of hundreds of numskulls just like me. I don’t know why I did it, I just know I couldn’t not. While I was holding her hand I leaned in close to her face and said my name is Lidia. I am a writer. Which I said exactly to the scar underneath her eye, letting my eyes and voice travel down her skin. I saw stars as I let go. Her hair smelled like rain. I remember leaving the campus feeling like I was exactly like anyone. But it would not be the last time I touched her. I didn’t know yet that desire comes and goes wherever it wants. I didn’t know yet that sexuality is an entire continent. I didn’t know yet how many times a person can be born. Mother.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  She stood over it, pulling up on her pubic hair so that she could see her clit, and she said to the dildo, “You ready to fuck this nice clean cunt? Because I sure am ready for you. I bet you are. Are you big and stiff enough to fill this hungry cunt?” She bent her knees until its rubber head found her, and then she sat down hard on it. She fucked it bouncingly for a little while and then got off of it and went to get a mirror and propped it up so she could watch her rubberman going in and out. She fucked it some more. In the haze of the shirt of hers that I was wearing I watched her finger orbit her clit-folds until I was ready to weep at the lyricism of it. Was Michelle this nasty on a regular basis? Maybe not. She’d really had to grope to find the dildo in her dresser in the first place. This was not an everyday sort of autofuck for her, I didn’t think. My UPS truck might have had something to do with it. I kept perfectly still, hardly breathing, while she came closer and closer to coming. She would stop suddenlyjust before she came, fucking slowly up and down on the dildo some more, then frigging for a while. She started making some incredible clenched-teeth noises, followed by pheasanty sounds so superb that I was surprised I had been able to live without them. Her little finger went into her asshole and she squinted, cleared for takeoff. She started saying, “Oh fuck this cunt, baby, fuck it, fuck this cunt,” over and over. Then her face wrenched itself into a squinting accelerated grimace and I pushed up on my glasses, stopping her right in the middle of her dildorgasm. I climbed out of the hamper, very slowly because I was stiff. I studied her climax-face from every angle, trying to record its transient extremity in my memory. I held her perky little finger, which was still hooked in her ane. I rested my ear on the edge of the tub about three inches from her open boat and stared at the finger that was bestirring itself around her bright-pink pumped-up nerve; and beyond it at the very soft inner skin stretched tight around my fellow American, my fellow rubber hider-in-her-house. I loved what I saw.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  Look I’m trying to say I didn’t have little girl crushes like you are imagining. And I didn’t have the cliché swimmers are all dykes deal - though lots of swimmer girls regularly spanked twinkies, I was to learn later - no, it was much more serious. I mean I was in pain. Whatever blue balls were, I was pretty sure I had them. Every day at practice, in the showers, with all that girl stuff right in front of my face. All the soaped up torsos and boobs, all the uninhibited washing of you know whats, the bubbles sliding down their asses and legs. If a kid could coronary from want, I’d be a dead woman. No, I didn’t want to have a slumber party. I didn’t want to go to the mall. I wanted to use my hair brush and rubberbands and make someone ... whimper. I did consider girls my age. Evie Kosenkranius had a kid sister my age. Tina Kosenkranius. I … christ. Will you look at those names? I can’t even look at those names today without going all porno in my head - hey, Evie Kosenkranius has a sister. I mean my god, why couldn’t I just be a 16 year old blond boy with raging hormones and a spanky new flagpole that everyone wants to sit on? But I wasn’t. I was me, a painfully shy girl kid with a hidden girl bomb in her panties not knowing what the hell to do with it who really, really wanted to … eat someone. OF COURSE I tried the neighborhood girls my age. I’d invite them into my room to play doctor and they’d just lie there, letting me do anything, sometimes giggling, until they clamped their legs shut. The best I could get out of the deal was to put a blanket over us so the smell would intensify. Something like hay and apples. Then they’d get dressed and want to go do something dumb that girls do. Like ice skating or talking on the phone or mall bullshit. What I needed was a girl who was older than me. Bigger. Sienna Torres was a troublemaker young woman from a troubled household making trouble wherever she went. She broke the rules at school, she broke them at home, she broke them at Albertson’s and Nordstrom and 7-Eleven, and she broke them at swim practice. She came late, she skipped laps, she got swatted with a kickboard in what was perversely known as “licks” for her rebelliousness. I was terrified of her. The missing ingredient.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  It is their randomness and, often, their very lack of overt sexiness that makes these instants so erotically precious. My sense of sight is infinitely and lovingly promiscuous, and each time I Drop I get another chance to love a chosen body as it really is: to see a woman’s ass, for example, when its owner-operator is talking at a pay-phone and thinking about other things than the fact that she has an ass, and her ass can therefore be completely itself. (For example, once I noticed a woman washing the long stretch of glass in front of the freezer-counter in the ice cream place where she worked, in a mall—she worked the cloth so vigorously over the glass that her ass circled unrestrainedly clockwise to counterbalance her hard work. She was wearing extremely tight stretchy jeans of a sort I can’t fully understand but can forgive, and I wrote out the equation I used back then to get into the Fold—an equation adapted from one I saw in a journal of mathematics—and I pulled her pants down and came into a sugar cone staring at the cleavage of her ass. But I see now that this isn’t in fact a good example of my appreciating an ass while it is unselfconsciously itself, since the reason I was attracted to her was that I had been observing her for a few minutes beforehand, as she served a customer, and I had sensed how relatively unproud of her face and upper body she was, and how certain she was that her ass was her best feature, and how much therefore she had wanted to wash the glass boldly in front of her store, though it was quite clean, with her back to all the mall-boys. As their representative, on their behalf, I came.) The point is, in any case, that I could never get interested in a woman who was passed out drunk, or was sedated, in a coma, or dead; for then she is unconscious of me, and what I want is to be with her when she would be conscious of me but for the fact that I have interjected myself into a chink of her day so infinitesimally brief that she can’t know that I have come and gone. The way the discussion came up with Rhody was that she announced, on the plane, apropos of tiny Latino swimsuits, that more and more she was interested in seeing naked men and their penises. She said she liked the idea of semis —by which she meant penises that weren’t totally hard, since a hard straight line was unbeautiful against the human body, nor totally soft and wrinkly either, but rather loungingly, curvingly full and interested and ready to be teased straight—like (she explained) Jimmy Cliff’s penis in The Harder They Come .

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  There was the trashy girl in six-inch heels and crotchless wonders—“Lick my shoes! Lick them clean!” And then there was the virgin in Victorian white cotton whose rich father pays the “healer” to give her her first orgasm: it is the only way to save her life, for she is, of course, mortally ill. She resists mightily, feigning sleep and frigidity, and comes like a rolling avalanche—brought back from the brink of death by the anonymous roving tongue. The whore fantasies were prolific and my fee enormous. I found it fascinating that the man who materialized in these heated encounters was more often than not almost physically repugnant to me—a beast-man. Being a sucker for beauty in general, I gave this unexpected scenario a great deal of thought. I concluded that every woman must have a man—real or imaginary—to whom she is a whore, for whom she is a whore. I have always wanted, alas, to be some man’s bimbo. I don’t mean just acting like a slut or being desired for sex alone, although these are both excellent goals. I mean that the sex is for profit—be it financial or otherwise—more than for physical desire. If a woman is driven by a physical craving, she is vulnerable; with a beast-man, obviously, she retains her power. But that is not the most interesting part . I also discovered that imaginary sex with a man for gain is incredibly sexy. One’s inner whore gets a real workout, so to speak. Selling one’s sexuality, by choice, frees a woman’s desires from the incriminations, restrictions, and suppressions of good-girlness that proliferate when one is “in love.” And thus the paradoxical surprise: love is released as gratitude in great gushes of incredible uncensored sexual energy. With my fantasy beast-men I achieved orgasms that were, finally, entirely guiltless; they were, after all, my job. You see, I have an impeccable work ethic, whereas in matters of the heart I have no idea of my rights, much less their application. When sex becomes my work, I’m home free—cash in hand. I found that if I allowed these various fantasies to rove uncensored, they would uncover parts of myself that were otherwise entirely hidden. I became particularly interested in the fraction of time that preceded the moment of orgasmic inevitability. What thought, what dynamic, what image would cause that final, magical, loss of control? That was the pivotal moment that seemed to join consciousness to the divine—and more often than not, I found this lofty pathway to be inspired by completely slutty activities (see above—and below).

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  It’s very soon; it’s sooner than you think.’ “I make a face and he knows that I think Wednesday is years from now and that I will have so many feelings and thoughts that he won’t be a part of until Wednesday, and he says, ‘I’m on our app. I’m here, even if I’m not physically with you.’” She puts on her sunglasses. “This is usually when I stop feeling anything and leave the car.” I see that she becomes disconnected in order to leave him, and that she does it again right before my eyes as she tells me about it. I lose her to a long silence before she leaves. MANY OF MY patients come to see me because of my professional writing and teaching on the subject of sexuality. I see men and women who feel destroyed by a partner’s affair, others who had or are having affairs, and those who are lovers of married people. Their stories are different and their motivations are diverse, but all these people reveal themselves to be tortured as they struggle with their own secrets or with the secrets of the people in their lives. While I am aware of the transactional aspect of every relationship, I also believe in love. I believe in the power of attachment between two people, in loyalty as one of the basic foundations of trust, and I consider destructive and creative forces to be part of every relationship. We love and at times we also hate the people we love; we trust them but are also afraid of the injuries and hurt they might cause us. One of the goals associated with growth is the ability to integrate positive and negative feelings: to hate lovingly, to love while recognizing moments of disappointment and anger. The more we can know and own our destructive urges, the more able we become to love fully. Life, to some degree, is always about that tension between the wish to destroy—ruin the love, goodness, and life itself—and Eros, which represents not only sex, but also the urge to survive, create, produce, and love. That tension exists in every aspect of our lives, including in our relationships. Psychological awareness helps us to identify and bring those urges and wishes into consciousness, and to question our choices and the choices of the people who came before us. When it comes to affairs, that work is multilayered, and the distinction between destruction and death, and survival and life isn’t always obvious. One significant reason why people come to therapy is to search for unknown truths about themselves. That investigation starts with a wish to know who we truly are and who our parents were, and it always includes the dread of knowing. Why does Eve have this relationship with Josh? Why now?

• From The Fermata (1994)

  If she were in a certain mood? An intensity in my gaze may have unsettled her slightly. The more her enthusiasm for the whole idea appeared to diminish, the eagerer I was to convince her that it had to be attractive to her. Any tiny Latino swimsuit was fair game, I said. Any penis-bulge in the world that she wanted to inquire into and even heft was hers to inquire into and heft. Right? But despite her having clearly said at the beginning of the plane ride that the idea of seeing naked beautiful men held more and more appeal, she now began to contend that really the sight of a penis per se didn’t do all that much for her. Yes, possibly, she would investigate a crotch or two hands-on, if the crotch-context was truly extraordinary, but what she really needed was the possibility that a given penis could become aware of her and could grow and develop with the help of this knowledge. She needed to be in some sort of unfolding dramatic relationship with a specific penis for it to become a full-blown sex-object. “But you’re such a voyeur,” I countered. “When we go for walks, you’re always trying to get a look in the windows.” “It’s foyerism, not voyeurism,” she replied. “I want to look in windows because I like to see how people arrange their rooms, how they have decided to live. If I had a magical Tristan chord on tape that stopped time, I probably would wander through people’s houses, if they were unlocked.” “Ah! Okay!” I said wildly. “Now we’re getting somewhere. And if in your wandering you came across a paused couple having Sunday-afternoon sex, wouldn’t you at least walk up and touch the man’s flexed butt-muscle between her parted legs as he drives that dick home? Or if you happened upon a guy doing himself up right, pumping his fluke with two fists, his eyes closed, his face all slack from the pleasure, wouldn’t you pull his hands away and give that fucking girder of a dick a suck or two, if it looked extra good and suckable? You would!” Rhody thought. “I’m not ruling it out. But I need movement. What you’re talking about is so static. I need to be seduced. That’s what I really want. I want to be seduced .” She said this with such conviction that I dropped the whole subject. It was obvious to her that if the universe were stopped, any form of seduction would be impossible. I resisted the temptation to itemize the manifold ways in which a Fold-effect could make certain kinds of seduction possible, because I didn’t want to seem to have given it a lifetime’s thought.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  The whole room belonged to Melissa — the pitiful dressing-table full of empty powder-boxes and photos: the graceful curtain breathing softly in that breathless afternoon air like the sail of a ship. How often had we not lain in one another’s arms watching the slow intake and recoil of that transparent piece of bright linen? Across all this, the image of someone dearly loved, held in the magnification of a gigantic tear moved the brown harsh body of Justine naked. It would have been blind of me not to notice how deeply her resolution was mixed with sadness. We lay eye to eye for a long time, our bodies touching, hardly communicating more than the animal lassitude of that vanishing afternoon. I could not help thinking then as I held her tightly in the crook of an arm how little we own our bodies. I thought of the words of Arnauti when he says: ‘It dawned on me then that in some fearful way this girl had shorn me of all my force morale. I felt as if I had had my head shaved.’ But the French, I thought, with their endless gravitation between bonheur and chagrin must inevitably suffer when they come up against something which does not admit of préjugés; born for tactics and virtuosity, not for staying-power, they lack the little touch of crassness which armours the Anglo-Saxon mind. And I thought: ‘Good. Let her lead me where she will. She will find me a match for her. And there’ll be no talk of chagrin at the end.’ Then I thought of Nessim, who was watching us (though I did not know) as if through the wrong end of an enormous telescope: seeing our small figures away on the skyline of his own hopes and plans. I was anxious that he should not be hurt. But she had closed her eyes — so soft and lustrous now, as if polished by the silence which lay so densely all around us. Her trembling fingers had become steady and at ease upon my shoulder. We turned to each other, closing like the two leaves of a door upon the past, shutting out everything, and I felt her happy spontaneous kisses begin to compose the darkness around us like successive washes of a colour. When we had made love and lay once more awake she said: ‘I am always so bad the first time, why is it?’ ‘Nerves perhaps. So am I.’ ‘You are a little afraid of me.’

• From The Fermata (1994)

  I was tempted to walk to a bookstore in the Fold and pick up some other Virago to show off to her, but I thought better of it: too aggressive a manufactured coincidence. Instead I erased the Inequality to end the time-transplantation and, once back in the swing, pulled out a turn-of-the-century biography of Edward FitzGerald by A. C. Benson that I had been halfheartedly reading; I held it open with the edge of my plate. The waiter came. I ordered dinner in a fairly loud, friendly voice in order to draw Rhody’s attention. When I had handed over the menu, I dropped my eyes immediately to my book as if I were impatient to get back to it, and then absent-mindedly began moving my watch up and down on my wrist. I knew “Rhoda E. Levering” was watching me. I turned a page, lifting the plate so that it would clear, and went back to playing with my watch. Suddenly I looked up, caught Rhody’s eye, and gave her a friendly hello-look. I felt bad about doing this, because I know how hard it is to go back to a book, no matter how engrossed you were in it, when you are alone at a table in a restaurant and you become aware of someone else who may or may not be lonely, and may or may not be curious about you—suddenly, whether you welcome it or not, there is a fiery transversity connecting the two of you, where before there had only been a narrow rectilinear green-carpeted Thai restaurant that tolerated solo readers. I returned to my book, deliberately making ugly lip-pursed faces to show that I was deeply caught up in Edward FitzGerald —and to release Rhody from the tyranny of the transversity if she wanted to return to Lady Audley’s Secret . Without lifting my eyes from the page (though I was still sure that her black-rimmed glasses were flashing in my direction), I raised my left hand and very slowly and teasingly pulled on the flap of my watchband until the tiny gold prong of its buckle hung free of the slightly elongated second hole. Like a stripper delaying a moment of conclusive disrobing, I held the unbuckled watch in place for a time, turning my wrist slowly within its loosened embrace; finally I slid the buckle off the strap and caught the face of the watch as it fell from my arm. I did everything as smoothly and unsuddenly and strokingly as I could, not as if I were aware of Rhody and trying to entice her, but as if I were reading with such intense concentration that my unconscious watch-removal movements were being slowed to a fraction of their normal speed by the rapture of my literary appreciation.

• From Wild (2012)

  “Thanks, but I can’t. My friends just got here and we’re all camped,” I said, gesturing to the rise beyond the road, behind which my tent and probably by now the tents of the Three Young Bucks were erected. As I did so, I had a precise image of what the Three Young Bucks were likely doing at that very moment, the way they’d be crouched beneath their raincoats in the rain, trying to eat their loathsome dinners, or sitting alone in their tents because there was simply no other place to be, and then I thought of that warm fire and the booze and how if the men went with me to drink with the ranger I could use them to help me dodge whatever else he had in mind. “But maybe,” I wavered, as the ranger drooled and then blotted his mouth. “I mean, as long as it’s okay to bring my friends.” I returned with the cake to our camp. The Three Young Bucks were all zipped into their tents. “I have cake!” I called, and they came and stood around me and ate it with their fingers out of my hands, splitting it among themselves in the easy, unspoken way they’d honed over months of endless deprivation and unity. In the nine days since I’d said goodbye to them, it seemed as if we’d grown closer, more familiar, as if we’d been together in that time instead of apart. They were still the Three Young Bucks to me, but they’d also begun to differentiate in my mind. Richie was hilarious and a little bit strange, with a dark edge of mystery I found compelling. Josh was sweet and smart, more reserved than the others. Rick was funny and incisive, kind and a great conversationalist. As I stood there with the three of them eating cake out of my hands, I realized that though I had a little crush on all of them, I had a bigger crush on Rick. It was an absurd crush, I knew. He was nearly four years younger than me and we were at an age when those nearly four years mattered, when the gap between what he had done and what I had done was large enough that I was more like a big sister than I was someone who should be thinking about being alone with him in his tent—so I didn’t think about it, but I couldn’t deny that to an increasing degree I got a little fluttery feeling inside me every time Rick’s eyes met mine, and I also couldn’t deny that I could see in his eyes that he got a little fluttery feeling too. “I’m sorry about dinner,” I said, after explaining what had happened. “Did you guys eat?” I asked, feeling guilty, and they all nodded, licking the frosting from their fingers. “Was it good?” asked Richie in his New Orleans accent, which only increased his appeal, in spite of my crush on Rick.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  And yet I, O my God, Thou lifter up of my humility, and rest of my labour, Who hearest my confessions, and forgivest my sins: seeing Thou commandest me to love my neighbour as myself, I cannot believe that Thou gavest a less gift unto Moses Thy faithful servant, than I would wish or desire Thee to have given me, had I been born in the time he was, and hadst Thou set me in that office, that by the service of my heart and tongue those books might be dispensed, which for so long after were to profit all nations, and through the whole world from such an eminence of authority, were to surmount all sayings of false and proud teachings. I should have desired verily, had I then been Moses (for we all come from the same lump, and what is man, saving that Thou art mindful of him?), I would then, had I been then what he was, and been enjoined by Thee to write the book of Genesis, have desired such a power of expression and such a style to be given me, that neither they who cannot yet understand how God created, might reject the sayings, as beyond their capacity; and they who had attained thereto, might find what true opinion soever they had by thought arrived at, not passed over in those few words of that Thy servant: and should another man by the light of truth have discovered another, neither should that fail of being discoverable in those same words.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  What if Mrs Lethaby should come?’‘She won’t. She is leaving me, as a kind of punishment.’ I touched her knee, and then her thigh, through the layers of her skirts.‘We cannot ...’ she said again; but this time, her voice was fainter. And when I tugged at her frock and said, ‘Come on, take this off — or shall I tear the buttons?’ she gave a drunken sort of laugh: ‘You shall do no such thing! Help me nicely, now.’Naked she was very thin, and strangely coloured: flaming crimson at the cheeks, a coarser red from her elbows to her fingertips, and palely white - almost bluish-white - on her torso, upper arms, and thighs. The hair between her legs - you can never guess at that kind of thing in advance - was quite ginger.When I dipped my lips to it, she gave a squeal: ‘Oh! What a thing to do!’ But then, after a moment, she held my head and pressed it. She didn’t seem to be at all sorry about my swollen nose, then. She only said: ‘Oh, turn around, turn around quick, that I might do it to you!’ After that, I pulled the counterpane over us, and we drank more champagne, taking turns to sip from the bottle. I put my hand upon her. I said: ‘Did you used to frig yourself in the reformat’ry?’ She gave me a slap, saying, ‘Oh, you are as bad as them downstairs! I nearly died!’ She pushed the blanket back, and squinted at her quim. ‘To think of me with a cock! What an idea!’‘What an idea? Oh, Zena, I should love to see you with one! I should love -’ I sat up. ‘Zena, I should love to see you in Diana’s dildo!’‘That thing? She’s made you filthy! I should die with shame, before I ever tried such a thing!’ Her lashes fluttered.I said, ‘You are blushing! You’ve fancied it, haven’t you? You’ve fancied a bit of that kind of sport - don’t tell me you haven’t!’‘Really, a girl like me!’ But she was redder than ever, and would not gaze at me. I caught hold of her hand, and pulled her up.‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You have got me all hot for it. Diana will never know.’‘Oh!’I pulled her to the door, then peered into the corridor outside. The music and laughter from downstairs was fainter, but still loud and rather furious.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Besides this there was an album of photographs of big-buttocked girls with hairless parts, bearing feathers; also a collection of erotic pamphlets and novels, all hymning the delights of what I would call tommistry but what they, like Diana, called Sapphic Passion. They were gross enough, I suppose, in their way; but I had never seen the like of them before, and would gaze at them, squirming, till Diana laughed. Then there were cords, and straps and switches - the kind of thing that might be found, I suppose, in a strict governess’s closet, certainly nothing heavier. Lastly, there were more of Diana’s rose-tipped cigarettes. They contained, as I guessed very early on, some fragrant French tobacco that was mixed with hashish; and they were, I thought, the pleasantest things of all, since, when used in combination with the other items, they rendered their interesting effects more interesting still.I might be weary or stupid; I might be nauseous with drink; I might be sore, at the hips, with the ache of my monthlies, but the opening of this box, as I have said, never ceased to stir me - I was like a dog twitching and slavering to hear his mistress call out Bone!And every jerk, every slaver, made Diana more complacent.‘How vain I am, of my little hoard!’ she would say, a we lay smoking in the soiled sheets of her bed. She might be clad in nothing but a corset and a pair of purple gloves; I would have the dildo about me, perhaps with a rope of pearls wound round it. She would reach to the foot of the bed, and run her hand across the gaping box, and laugh. ‘Of all the gifts I’ve given you,’ she said once, ‘this is the finest, isn’t it, isn’t it? Where in London would you find its like?’‘Nowhere!’ I answered. ‘You’re the boldest bitch in the city!’‘I am!’‘You’re the boldest bitch, with the cleverest quim. If fucking were a country - well, fuck me, you’d be its queen ... !’These were the words which, pricked on by my mistress, I used now - lewd words which shocked and stirred me even as I said them. I had never thought to use them with Kitty. I had not fucked her, we had not frigged; we had only ever kissed and trembled.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I lifted my hand to still it; and when she saw me do that she placed her own fingers over mine, and made them grasp the shaft and stroke it. Now the base’s insinuating nudges grew more insinuating still: it was not long before my legs began to tremble and she, sensing my rising pleasure, began to breathe more harshly. She took her hands away, and turned and lifted her hair from the nape of her neck, and gestured for me to undress her.I found the hooks of her gown, and then the laces of her corset: beneath this, I saw, she was mottled scarlet from the hundred tiny creases of her chemise. She stooped to remove her petticoats, but retained her drawers, her stockings and her boots and, still, her gloves. Very daring - for I had not touched her at all, yet - I slid a hand into the slit of her drawers; and with the other I caught hold of one of her nipples, and pressed it.At that, she put her mouth to mine. Our kisses were imperfect ones, as all new lovers’ kisses are, and tasted of tobacco; but - again, like all new lovers’ kisses - their very strangeness made them thrilling. The more I fingered her the harder she kissed me, and the hotter I grew between my legs, behind my sheath of leather. Finally she pulled away, and seized my wrists.‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Not yet, not yet!’With my hands still clasped in hers she led me to one of the straight-backed chairs and sat me on it, the dildo all the while straining from my lap, rude and rigid as a skittle. I guessed her purpose. With her hands close-pressed about my head and her legs straddling mine, she gently lowered herself upon me; then proceeded to rise and sink, rise and sink, with an ever speedier motion. At first I held her hips, to guide them; then I returned a hand to her drawers, and let the fingers of the other creep round her thigh to her buttocks. My mouth I fastened now on one nipple, now on the other, sometimes finding the salt of her flesh, sometimes the dampening cotton of her chemise.Soon her breaths became moans, then cries; soon my own voice joined hers, for the dildo that serviced her also pleasured me - her motions bring it with an ever faster, ever harder pressure against just that part of me that cared for pressure best.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  It was reassuring for them that it was a real friendship, and not just a schoolgirl mash, that had me travelling so often to the Palace, and spending all my savings on the train fare; and yet, I thought I heard them ask themselves, what manner of friendship could there be between a handsome, clever music-hall artiste, and the girl in the crowd that admired her? When I said that Kitty had no young man (for I had found this out, early on, amongst the pieces of her history) Davy said that I should bring her home, and introduce her to my handsome brother - though he only said it when Rhoda was near, to tease her. When I spoke of brewing her pans of tea and tidying her table, Mother narrowed her eyes: ‘She’s doing all right out of you by the sound of it. It’s a little more help with the tea and the tables we could do with, from you, home here ...’ It was true, I suppose, that I rather neglected my duties in the house for the sake of my trips to the Palace. They fell to my sister, though she rarely complained about it. I believe my parents thought her generous, allowing me my freedom at her own expense. The truth was, I think, that she was squeamish of mentioning Kitty now - and by that alone I knew that it was she, more than any of them, who was uneasy. I had said nothing more to her about my passion. I had said nothing of my new, strange, hot desire to anyone. But she saw me, of course, as I lay in my bed; and, as anyone will tell you who has been secretly in love, it is in bed that you do your dreaming - in bed, in the darkness, where you cannot see your own cheeks pink, that you ease back the mantle of restraint that keeps your passion dimmed throughout the day, and let it glow a little. How Kitty would have blushed, to know the part she played in my fierce dreamings - to know how shamelessly I took my memories of her, and turned them to my own improper advantage !

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Some of Napoleon’s predatory expeditions were completely unsuccessful. One evening the lecherous emperor entered a dimly lit drawing room, sat down on a sofa next to a fetching creature in an ornate gown, slipped his hand beneath the skirt to find a shapely leg within a silk stocking, and pinched it. The bishop of Nancy stood up bellowing in protest. The kinkiest sexual relationship on record between monarch and mistress was that of raven-haired Lola Montez and Ludwig I of Bavaria. Ludwig developed an obsession with the dancer’s feet. In her exile, he wrote her, “I take your feet into my mouth, where I have never had any others, that would have been repugnant to me, but with you, it’s just the opposite.”34 And another letter, “I want to take your feet in my mouth, at once, without giving you time to wash them after you’ve arrived from a trip.”35 Their letters indicated that Lola performed oral sex on Ludwig, and at other times he masturbated as he sucked on her feet. It is likely that these practices occurred in lieu of sexual intercourse, which Lola had with the king on only a handful of occasions. Perhaps she had little sexual attraction for a man thirty-four years her senior with a knob growing in the middle of his forehead. She often excused herself from intercourse on the grounds of menstruation, poor health, or the danger of pregnancy. In addition, during their fifteen-month relationship in Munich, Ludwig would ask her to wear pieces of flannel in two places next to her skin—we can only imagine which two places—and give them to him. Later, during her exile, he made the same request and she sent him the flannel she had worn. He particularly wanted to know which side of the flannel had been against her skin, as he would wear this side next to his. He insisted on knowing if she had worn the flannel in both places. During Lola’s exile, she sent Ludwig a letter with a little circle she had drawn to represent her mouth for him to kiss. Ludwig replied, “The drawing in your letter that is meant to represent your mouth (each time I give it a kiss), I took at first to represent your cuño [vagina], and my jarajo [penis] began to get erect. As much pleasure as your mouth has given me, your cuño would have pleased me greatly. I give kisses to one and to the other.”36

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  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. She had seemed chaste as a plaster saint to me, once; she had seemed plain. But she was not chaste now - she was marvellously bold and frank and ready; and the boldness made her bonny, made her gleam, like a kind of polish. I could not look at her and not want to touch her.