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 306 of 344 · 20 per page

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

  “Now you understand the supersensual fool! Under the lash of a beautiful woman my senses first realized the meaning of woman. In her fur-jacket she seemed to me like a wrathful queen, and from then on my aunt became the most desirable woman on God’s earth. “My Cato-like austerity, my shyness before woman, was nothing but an excessive feeling for beauty. In my imagination sensuality became a sort of cult. I took an oath to myself that I would not squander its holy wealth upon any ordinary person, but I would reserve it for an ideal woman, if possible for the goddess of love herself. “I went to the university at a very early age. It was in the capital where my aunt lived. My room looked at that time like Doctor Faustus’s. Everything in it was in a wild confusion. There were huge closets stuffed full of books, which I bought for a song from a Jewish dealer on the Servanica;3 there were globes, atlases, flasks, charts of the heavens, skeletons of animals, skulls, the busts of eminent men. It looked as though Mephistopheles might have stepped out from behind the huge green store as a wandering scholiast at any moment. [Footnote 3: The street of the Jews in Lemberg.] “I studied everything in a jumble without system, without selection: chemistry, alchemy, history, astronomy, philosophy, law, anatomy, and literature; I read Homer, Virgil, Ossian, Schiller, Goethe, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Voltaire, Molière, the Koran, the Kosmos, Casanova’s Memoirs. I grew more confused each day, more fantastical, more supersensual. All the time a beautiful ideal woman hovered in my imagination. Every so and so often she appeared before me like a vision among my leather-bound books and dead bones, lying on a bed of roses, surrounded by cupids. Sometimes she appeared gowned like the Olympians with the stern white face of the plaster Venus; sometimes in braids of a rich brown, blue-eyes, in my aunt’s red velvet kazabaika, trimmed with ermine. “One morning when she had again risen out of the golden mist of my imagination in all her smiling beauty, I went to see Countess Sobol, who received me in a friendly, even cordial manner. She gave me a kiss of welcome, which put all my senses in a turmoil. She was probably about forty years old, but like most well-preserved women of the world, still very attractive. She wore as always her fur-edged jacket. This time it was one of green velvet with brown marten. But nothing of the sternness which had so delighted me the other time was now discernable. “On the contrary, there was so little of cruelty in her that without any more ado she let me adore her.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Soon there came the roars and stamps that meant the end of Gully’s set; and after a moment Alice appeared, still fanning herself with her bonnet, and blowing at the dampened curls which clung to her pink cheeks. She gave me a wink: ‘Let’s call on Tony.’ I followed her to his little room, and sat and idly twisted in the chair behind his desk, while he stood with his arm about her waist. There was a bit of chat about Mr Sutherland and his spotted handkerchief; then, ‘What about that Kitty Butler, eh?’ said Tony. ‘Ain’t she a smasher? If she carries on tickling the crowd like she did tonight, I tell you, Uncle’ll be extending her contract till Christmas.’ At that I stopped my twirling. ‘She’s the best turn I ever saw,’ I said, ‘here or anywhere! Tricky would be a fool to let her go: you tell him from me.’ Tony laughed, and said he would be sure to; but as he said it I saw him wink at Alice, then let his gaze dally, rather spoonily, over her lovely face. I looked away, and sighed, and said quite guilelessly: ‘Oh, I do wish that I might see Miss Butler again!’ ‘And so you shall,’ said Alice, ‘on Saturday.’ We had all planned to come to the Palace - Father, Mother, Davy, Fred, everyone - on Saturday night. I plucked at my glove. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘But Saturday seems so very far away ...’ Tony laughed again. ‘Well, Nance, and who said you had to wait so long? You can come tomorrow night if you like - and any other night you please, so far as I’m concerned. And if there ain’t a seat for you in the gallery, why, we’ll put you in a box at the side of the stage, and you can gaze at Miss Butler to your heart’s content from there!’ He spoke, I’m sure, to impress my sister; but my heart gave a strange kind of twist at his words. I said, ‘Oh, Tony, do you really mean it?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘And really in a box?’ ‘Why not? Between you and me, the only customers we ever get for those seats are the Wood family and the Plushes. You sit in a box, and make sure the audience gets a look at you: it might give them ideas above their station.’ ‘It might give Nancy ideas above her station,’ said Alice. ‘We couldn’t have that.’ Then she laughed, as Tony tightened his grip about her waist and leaned to kiss her. It would not have been quite the thing, I suppose, for city girls to go to music halls unchaperoned; but people weren’t so very prim about things like that in Whitstable.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  It was not a quim or a cunt she had between her legs - indeed, in all our nights together, I don’t believe we ever gave a name to it all ... Only let her see me now, I thought, as I lay beside Diana, making the necklace of pearls more secure about the dildo; and Diana herself would reach to stroke her box again, and then lean and stroke me. ‘Only see what I’m mistress of!’ she would say with a sigh. ‘Only see - only see what I own!’ I would draw on the cigarette till the bed seemed to tilt; then I’d lie and laugh, while she clambered upon me. Once I let a fag fall on the silken counterpane, and smiled to see it smoulder as we fucked. Once I smoked so much I was sick. Diana rang for Blake and, when she came, cried: ‘Look at my tart, Blake, resplendent even in her squalor! Did you ever see a brute so handsome? Did you?’ Blake said that she had not; then dipped a cloth in water, and wiped my mouth. It was Diana’s vanity, at last, that broke the spell of my confinement. I had passed a month with her - had left the house only to stroll about the garden, had set not so much as the toe of my boot upon a London street in all that time - when she declared one night at supper that I ought to be barbered. I looked up from my plate, thinking she meant to take me into Soho for it; in fact, she only rang for the servants: I had to sit in a chair with a towel about me, while Blake held the comb and the housekeeper plied the scissors. ‘Gently with her, gently!’ called Diana, looking on. Mrs Hooper came close to trim the hair above my brow, and I felt her breath, quick and hot, upon my cheek. But the hair-cut turned out to be only the prelude to something better. Next morning I woke in Diana’s bed to find her dressed, and gazing at me with her old enigmatic smile. She said, ‘You must get up. I have a treat for you today. Two treats, indeed. The first is in your bedroom.’ ‘A treat?’ I yawned; the word had lost its charge for me, rather. ‘What is it, Diana?’ ‘It’s a suit.’ ‘What kind of suit?’ ‘A coming-out suit.’ ‘Coming-out -?’

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  I used to have lines in the sand, places of judgment. These would usually form in my mouth like, “Oh I would never (insert activity I simply hadn’t tried yet here).” But I have been opening up, learning that the realm of desire is actually one of the most honest territories that can exist in the relationship with myself or anyone else. “Haven’t tried yet” allows so much more eroticism than “never!” Believe me. Having curiosity, wanting to know what I desire and why and what effect it has on me to follow the desire, has led to an erotic reimagining of my life. This curiosity in my body and my pleasure has helped me to clarify what kind of life work I enjoy and don’t enjoy. Just as obligation is not a great motivator for intimacy and pleasure, I find I can’t live my life doing work that feels like I am obligated to do it because of other people’s expectations. I thrive when the work has elements of pleasure, titillation, total presence. That work might itself appear mundane or tedious to others—it includes housework, exercise, cooking, shoveling my car out of snow, honest conversations, facilitation, family visits. As long as I can see the glimmer of life in it. Sometimes the glimmer is so bright, and I feel utterly alive. I realize that in the present moment I am free, I am a body of sensations and memories and dreams, energies and spirits and ancestors, totally complex and utterly free. Erotic awareness, for me, is coming into an aliveness in your senses that is quite beyond the material world. 5. Talk about sex. Blush and fumble, ask questions, let the words fall out of my mouth. One of my favorite aspects of the Beyoncé album is how it has led to really beautiful, powerful, nuanced, honest sex conversations with people in my life of all different ages, backgrounds, politics, and sexualities. Sex is the most common behavior among humans after birth, breathing, sleeping, and death, and too often we still feel shame or bite our tongues when it comes up. Now some degree of secrecy increases the heat, for me at least, though I don’t know if that is just the last wisp of some demure Virgo dynamic. I won’t tell you of my lover then, the specific things she does with me. But I will say I am having the best sex of my life, and it isn’t an accident. It is because of years of practice and hard work. It is because of friends who saw me having the most unhealthy sex of my life in my twenties and said “Honey girl, no.” It is because I have been blessed with lovers who were tender and taught me things and let us explore together. It is because of periods of intentional celibacy in my life. And it is because of each practice above.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  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. Really, Nance, sometimes - sometimes I think you must’ve been born quite grown - like Venus in the sea-shell, in the painting ...’ She put a finger to the side of her glass, to catch a trickle of sugary rum; then put the finger to her lip. I felt my throat grow even thicker, and my heart give a strange kind of lurch. Then I sniffed, and gazed again at the trousered toms beside the billiard-table. ‘To think,’ I said after a second, ‘that I might have worn my moleskins, after all ...’ Florence laughed. We sat sipping at our rums a little longer; more women arrived, and the room became hotter and noisier and thick with smoke. I went to the bar to have our glasses re-filled, and when I walked with them back to our stall I found Annie there, with Ruth and Nora and another girl, a fair-haired, pretty girl, who was introduced to me as Miss Raymond. ‘Miss Raymond works in a print-shop,’ said Annie, and I had to pretend surprise to hear it. When, after half-an-hour or so, she went off to find the lavatory, Annie made us rearrange our places so that she might sit next to her. ‘Quick, quick!’ she cried. ‘She’ll be back in a moment! Nancy, over there!’ I found myself placed between Florence and the wall; and for lovely long moments at a time I let the other women talk, and savoured the press of her damson thigh against my own more sober, more slender one.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Soon, piqued by her new, queer, self-conscious air, I began to think that she might, at least, come and put her lips to my hand. There was a low, respectful knock on the outer door of the adjoining room. At her call the door was opened; I heard footsteps, and the rattle of china. To my amazement the rattle grew louder, the footsteps approached: the servant - who I thought would deposit her burden in the room next door, and discreetly take her leave - appeared in the doorway of ours. I pulled the sheet to my throat and lay quite still; neither the mistress nor the maid, however, appeared in any way discomfited by my presence there. The latter - not the pale-faced woman I had seen the night before, but a girl a little younger than myself - gave a bob and, with her eyes lowered, made space for a tray on the dressing-table. When she had finished with the china she paused with her head bent and her hands folded over her apron. ‘Very good, Blake, that will be all for now,’ said the lady. ‘But have a bath ready for Miss King by half-past twelve. And tell Mrs Hooper I shall speak to her about luncheon, later.’ Her tone was quite polite, yet colourless; I had heard ladies and gentlemen use that tone on cabmen and shopgirls and porters a thousand times. The girl gave another little duck to her head - ‘Yes m’m’ - and withdrew. She had not looked towards the bed, at all. With the breakfast things to busy ourselves over, the next few minutes passed easily. I raised myself into a sitting position - wincing all the time, for my body ached as if it had been pummelled, or stretched on a rack - and the lady fed me coffee, and warm rolls spread with butter and honey. She herself only drank and, later, smoked. 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.’

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  And then you understand the terrible truth of the picture. This is not the minotaur’s game. The mask can never be removed. It is fixed to his head forever, like a kind of cage. He is a slave, wanted only for his virility. He is but another implement in the room... and the servant girl with the voluptuous ass and tender other mouth of young female succulence ... she is what has been used to entice him .. . to bring up the blood and thicken his root. She is the one he wants ... and can never have... All this of course, has been taken in very quickly in real time. Meanwhile, I have been fixated on a picture myself. Perched_on the tall ladder, your skirt falls in such a way, that by standing behind the ladder I can not only glimpse, but luxuriantly examine, the curve of your ass. If I move forward, slipping between the ladder and the shelf, I can look up and see your pussy just above me ... and more than that. Stopped still in mid air above me, I am close enough to catch your scent... Take Italy: ‘The way the canals and markets of Venice smelled to me when I came down out of the chalk-blue frigid-faced passport thumbing police-ridden Balkans, broke and hungry, so sick with fever and bronchitis I saw huge candelabra before my eyes at midday and all the pigeons in St Mark’s Square were like angels ... and people I didn’t know offered me food and wine instead of clubs and jails. Like the mirror tidepools of Apollo Bay, each volcanic indentation of seawater a miniature miracle world of writhing, watchful life. Like slivers of spring onions hissing in a pan of Spanish olive oil in a Chelsea flat at 2 a.m., the police still mopping up the murder down on the street below. Like saltwater taffy and ozone when the thunder rolled in over the roller coaster in Santa Cruz long ago when I thought it was cool to carry a switchblade, and I drove a Dodge Charger with baby shoes hanging from the mirror, the same baby blue as another girl’s eyes, that ’d bought with money working in the lettuce fields. where no one spoke English. Like summer. The kind you never really have, but only dream about, and later, pretend that you remember — that you can hold on to. _ And then it occurs to me — having often wanted to own just such a ladder, and a huge climbing matrix of books — and always having dreamed of such a vantage point — that the trick to these kinds of ladders is that they can be readjusted. From the ground, even with 294 Kris Saknussemm

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  He shifted his mind back to the cards she was shuffling. “What?” “ight-up, five-cards. If I win, you let me go.” “And if I win?” “You get to do ... whatever you like.” He paused and breathed in through his nose, feeling the air warm as it drifted into his lungs. “Agreed.” She cut the deck and motioned for him to restack it for her to then deal, revealing a ten of hearts for the deck between them. Picking up her cards, she fiddled with a nearby chip and bit it in her mouth, then leaned forward and pulled the gown away, tossing it over to the side. He felt all his clothes getting tighter, and he thought about her on the chair, whether she was wet, whether her legs stretched out like long stems ready to wrap around him. When he picked up the ten and put down an ace of spades, she reached for his hand and brought it to her lips. She sucked on his index finger and felt the blood rush to her neck. He pulled his finger away and traced the outline of her cheekbone. He felt her fingers inch down his hand, letting her creep up to his wrist and feel a pulse both strong and fast. He pulled his hand back slowly and tapped on the cards sternly “Your turn.” The track moved to another song. She bit her lower lip in concentration: “I’m raising the stakes.” She put her cards face down and leaned over the table like a panther prowling in a cage. Holding his gaze, she reached for his cards and put them face down too. Then she reached for his shirt collar and undid the top button. His eyes shifted to the inset of her neck, the line like a swan’s where her face met the rest of her exquisite body. His mind flashed with thoughts of slipping his hand in that space and tilting her head so he could feel her warmth on his lips. To thaw out just one time. While his gaze was shifted, she rolled over the table and on to the edge so her breasts were two inches away from his face, but her legs were crossed. She felt the warm air from his breath tickle her and again she closed her eyes for what she was about to do. She knew she had to be slow, or else he would stop and that would be her last chance. Every move she made had to be plotted like a chess move. She began by throwing her head back so that her ribs stuck out from beneath her skin and her hard nipples pointed to the ceiling. She could hear his eyelashes fluttering like he was in a deep sleep with his senses overawed. Her hands pressed hard against her body, flexing her muscles so that he could see her strength even after this The Escape 203

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  Lips on my cunt, lapping, tongue poking and provoking. Everywhere jolts and gushes. My knees rise to show my surrender more to him and he pushes them down. We are musicians reading each other. I feel him down there working at me, listening and feeling for my response and I moan for him. He works harder, good boy! Do! Do! I listen to him too, with my bones and skin. This is not as before. It is not about feeding anymore. This is how men and women make love. I had been a virgin until now. We had had pleasure, but it was about the evil, we did not make love like this. My clit is in his lips and I have never felt him do these things before. He has been given his taste of freedom too, and he chose me. Is he now then mine? Is it not so? He teases my clit with his tongue and I press my cunt at him. A fog of gratitude. I’m afraid to move or distract or frighten him. Is this what women feel? Does Ruby’s husband do this for her? He pauses and stops. Just when I’m about to ask what is wrong he pokes his tongue deep into me and I shriek with a sudden thrill of pleasure. He is breathing from the nostrils, puffing from the mouth, tickling the short hairs of my cunt, my thighs tense and rise and he presses them down again, running the flat of his tongue over my clit. “Unh!” My voice, pushing hard against his lips, wanting what he is doing. I grunt. I ripple. I am a pig wallowing against his lips, vibrating in the pleasure. “What are you doing?” I whisper. A deep shudder and a wild gathering thrill as if bees are flying under my skin. “Daniel!” A shout, as though he were breaking something. “What are you doing to me!” Squeezing his face with my thighs, rising, pressing my thighs down again, my belly down. He is in command. There is a huge pink ocean inside my loins. I feel huge and swollen and soaked and in his thrall. I could feel the excitement coming together inside me, gathering like rain. It was not only the sex, I wanted him. I had never felt this way. It was not about feeding. I wanted all of him, his devotion forever. I wanted to belong to him, like his shoes belonged to him. I want him to be vulnerable to me and for us to own each other again. My body is moving by itself and there is a wall inside me I want to pass. I am struggling with myself to let go, to surrender, to truly The Lady and the Unicorn 519

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.24 The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.25 It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.26 This internal requirement toward excellence which we learn from the erotic must not be misconstrued as demanding the impossible from ourselves nor from others. Such a demand incapacitates everyone in the process. For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness. The aim of each thing which we do is to make our lives and the lives of our children richer and more possible. Within the celebration of the erotic in all our endeavors, my work becomes a conscious decision—a longed-for bed which I enter gratefully and from which I rise up empowered. Of course, women so empowered are dangerous. So we are taught to separate the erotic demand from most vital areas of our lives other than sex. And the lack of concern for the erotic root and satisfactions of our work is felt in our disaffection from so much of what we do. For instance, how often do we truly love our work even at its most difficult?

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  In these pages, I am intentionally bringing academics into conversation with experiential experts, to show the patterns of aligned interest and learning happening across the language barriers that exist between us. I am bringing together a lot of different styles of expression in order to weave this tale. I asked contributors to share themselves as whole people, in the spirit of the Combahee River Collective, who taught me that “from the personal, the striving toward wholeness individually and within the community, comes the political, the struggle against those forces that render individuals and communities unwhole. The personal is political, especially for Black women.”11 Each person in this text is whole, complex, and brave in how they are shaping the world around them. We are in a time of fertile ground for learning how we align our pleasures with our values, decolonizing our bodies and longings, and getting into a practice of saying an orgasmic yes together, deriving our collective power from our felt sense of pleasure. I think a result of sourcing power in our longing and pleasure is abundant justice—that we can stop competing with each other, demanding scarce justice from our oppressors. That we can instead generate power from the overlapping space of desire and aliveness, tapping into an abundance that has enough attention, liberation, and justice for all of us to have plenty. We’re going to keep learning together. These pages are a space to ask shameless questions, to love what we love and explore why we love it, to increase the pleasure we feel when we are doing things that are good for the species and the planet, to cultivate our interest in radical love and pleasure, and to nourish the orgasmic yes in each of us. What Is Pleasure Activism? Pleasure is a feeling of happy satisfaction and enjoyment. Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, or direct social, political, economic, or environmental reform or stasis with the desire to make improvements in society. Pleasure activism is the work we do to reclaim our whole, happy, and satisfiable selves from the impacts, delusions, and limitations of oppression and/or supremacy. Pleasure activism asserts that we all need and deserve pleasure and that our social structures must reflect this. In this moment, we must prioritize the pleasure of those most impacted by oppression. Pleasure activists seek to understand and learn from the politics and power dynamics inside of everything that makes us feel good. This includes sex and the erotic, drugs, fashion, humor, passion work, connection, reading, cooking and/or eating, music and other arts, and so much more. Pleasure activists believe that by tapping into the potential goodness in each of us we can generate justice and liberation, growing a healing abundance where we have been socialized to believe only scarcity exists.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  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.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  These gendered fantasies shape our very sense of self. How do I fit in this world? Am I desirable? How do I become desirable? What role must I play? Do I take or give? So few people make it to this question: what do I really want? From our first moments, we should be encouraged to focus on how our bodies feel, what sensations and interactions awaken us, what feels wrong, what kind of touch feels right, and how to communicate a spectrum of boundaries and consent. Instead, many of us spend our formative years in our heads, learning to be something we are not, unlearning the skills of truth we’re all born with. Eventually our desires are woven so thoroughly with these social norm fantasies that we think that we desire our own disempowerment or someone else’s. I have been intentionally working on developing new fantasies. Fantasy is where I first explored the impossible idea that I am desirable. The improbable idea that fat bodies, brown and Black bodies, scarred and dimpled bodies, bodies that hurt and lurch and roll, bodies with hair and acne, bodies that sweat and make sounds and messes—that all of our bodies are desirable. This work has shifted my reality of lovers and my reality of how I see myself and let myself be treated. And, and, and … even as I write this, I won’t tell you all of my fantasies. Some of them are rooted so deeply in my system that I’m not sure I’ll ever let them go—I’m not even sure I want to. But I do want to be able to recognize what is mine and what isn’t, what should stay in fantasy and what is aligned with the world I’m generating—one in which gender is not an indication of power in or out of the bedroom. Hot and Heavy Homework Examine your fantasies! What initiates your desire? What sustains and builds your desire? What makes you cum? Are you, or people who look like you, included in your fantasies? Do your fantasies primarily focus on having unjust power over another person? If yes, does this show up in your life? Do your fantasies primarily focus on having someone else have unjust power over you? If yes, does this show up in your life? What do you want to be turned on by? Can you even imagine it? Try. Again. Again. Keep trying until you feel something. 60 This essay first appeared as adrienne maree brown, “Liberating Desire: It’s Time to Shift Your Fantasies,” February 21, 2018, Bitch Media (blog), https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/liberating-desire/its-time-shift-your-fantasies. There were a few people who felt that this piece was about policing the realm of fantasy and that it was not feminist. I include this piece here because it feels important to examine what we are training our bodies to find pleasurable and to be as intentional as possible about it—that feels very feminist to me. And I hope to stay in complex conversations around it.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  We passed one doorway that led, I knew, to the stage itself: I caught a glimpse of ladders and ropes and trailing gas-pipes; of boys in caps and aprons, wheeling baskets, manœuvring lights. I had the sensation then - and I felt it again in the years that followed, every time I made a similar trip back stage - that I had stepped into the workings of a giant clock, stepped through the elegant casing to the dusty, greasy, restless machinery that lay, all hidden from the common eye, behind it.Tony led me down a passageway that stopped at a metal staircase, and here he paused to let three men go by. They wore hats and carried overcoats and bags; they were sallow-faced and poor-looking, with a patina of flashness - I thought they might be salesmen carrying sample-cases. Only when they had moved on, and I heard them sharing a joke with the stage door-keeper, did I realise that they were the trio of tumblers taking their leave for the night, and that their bags contained their spangles. I had a sudden fear that Kitty Butler might after all be just like them: plain, unremarkable, almost unrecognisable as the handsome girl I had seen swaggering in the glow of the footlights. I very nearly called to Tony to take me back; but he had descended the staircase, and when I caught up with him in the passageway below he was at a door, and had already turned its handle.The door was one of a row of others, indistinguishable from its neighbours but for a brass figure 7, very old and scratched, that was screwed at eye level upon its centre panel, and a hand-written card that had been tacked below. Miss Kitty Butler, it said.I found her seated at a little table before a looking-glass; she had half-turned - to reply, I suppose, to Tony’s knock - but at my approach she rose, and reached to shake my hand. She was a little shorter than me, even in her heels, and younger than I had imagined - perhaps my sister’s age, of one- or two-and-twenty.‘Aha,’ she said, when Tony had left us - there was a hint, still, of her footlight manner in her voice - ‘my mystery admirer! I was sure it must be Gully you came to see; then someone said you never stay beyond the interval. Is it really me you stay for? I never had a fan before!’ As she spoke she leaned quite comfortably against the table - it was cluttered, I now saw, with jars of cream and sticks of grease-paint, with playing cards and half-smoked cigarettes and filthy tea-cups - and crossed her legs at the ankle, and folded her arms.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  The bird between us was missing feathers, blood moating around it, its heart lying beside its body. I looked for a wound in the crow’s breast, a hole from which the heart had popped out like a button, but there was none. The heart in the sand was the size of my thumb and beating itself blue. I didn’t know a heart could beat outside of its body, but Ben didn’t seem surprised. We watched it pump nothing, its skin crimping, the force of each beat rolling the heart farther away from the body. Ben kneeled close. I thought she might lick it up from the sand and swallow it. Instead she said, We have to put it back inside. I asked her how: There wasn’t any hole to nudge it into. She said, We’ll feed it back to her. Her fingers were already unhinging the beak. Plucking the heart with my thumb and forefinger, I rolled it between my fingers, a berry of blood, sun-spoiled. Ben told me to hurry up, the bird was open, so I wedged the berry-heart between the blades of its beak. We waited for it to wake. The crow jerked in the sand, gagging once before the heart descended into its dark. Ben cupped it in her hands and walked to the sycamore in front of the trailers where we sat for class. But the bird was trying to open its wings like switchblades, lashing at her hands, and she had to let go before we reached the tree. The crow flew backward, tailfirst instead of headfirst: Ben must have been rewinding the sky like a TV screen, playing its flight in reverse. That was the first day we walked home together. Ben lived on the other limb of the city where there was no landfill, where there were still empty lots and fields for sale. Our city was in a permanent state of puberty, new buildings and schools and parks and landfills peaking like pimples before fading flat again, the streets scarred by their shadows. I didn’t tell her I was south of where I was supposed to be. I was supposed to be home and not on the sidewalk where our shadows touched shoulder-bones. Around her neck, the pendant swung loose and she tucked it back inside her shirt. While she walked, I thought about stealing it, jerking the pendant off its string and sucking it till my mouth silvered. I wanted to own something the same temperature as her skin, a talisman of her touch. Every block I stopped to look at her. She wore the cityscape like a crown, the buildings sprung from her skull.

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

  “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. In short, this develish thing, with its impetuous girds and itching fires, led me such a life, that I could neither, night or day, be at peace with it or myself. In time, however, I thought I had gained a prodigious prize, when figuring to myself that my fingers were something of the shape of what I pined for, I worked my way in with one of them with great agitation and delight; yet not without pain too did I deflower myself as far as it could reach; proceeding with such a fury of passion, in this solitary and last shift of pleasure, as extended me at length breathless on the bed in an amorous melting trance. “But frequency of use dulling the sensation, I soon began to perceive that this work was but a paultry shallow expedient, that went but a little way to relieve me, and rather raised more flame than its dry and insignificant titillation could rightly appease.

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

  "With no little difficulty I put her on my bed, and managed to get my head under her skirts. "Women are silly creatures, full of absurd prejudices; and this unsophisticated country wench considered the compliment I was about to pay to her sexual organ as something like buggery. "She called me a dirty beast, a pig, and other such pleasing epithets. She began by writhing and wriggling, and trying to slip away from me, but she thus only added to the pleasure I was giving her. "Finally, she wedged my head between her thighs and pressed the nape of my neck with both her hands, so that even if I had wanted to take my tongue away from her burning lips, I could only have done so with an effort. "I, however, remained there, darting, licking, scraping the little clitoris, till it cried for mercy, and its tears convinced her that this was a pleasure not to be disdained, for this I have found is the only argument with which to convince a woman. "When all the inner parts were thoroughly lubricated by my tongue, and moistened by the soothing overflowings of unbearable pleasure; when she had tasted that ecstatic joy which one virgin can give to another without inflicting any pain or breaking the seal of her innocence, then the sight of her rapture made my own cock crow lustily. I therefore let it out of its dim dungeon, to drive it into the dark den. "My acorn went in merrily, and then it was stopped in its career. Another mighty thrust gave me more pain than pleasure, for the resistance was so great that my ramrod seemed sprained in the action; the narrow and firm walls of the vagina dilated, and my piston was jammed in as though in a tight glove, and yet the hymeneal tissue was not reached. "I asked myself why foolish nature has thus barred the way of pleasure? Is it to make the vain-glorious bridegroom believe that he is the pioneer of the unexplored regions, but does he not know that midwives are always artfully repairing the locks that adulterine keys have opened? Is it to make a religious ceremony out of it, and to give the plucking of this bud to some father confessor, this having long been among the many perquisites of the priestcraft? "The poor girl felt as if a knife was being plunged within her, still she did not scream, nor moan, although her eyes filled with tears. "Another thrust, one more effort, and the veil of the temple would be rent in twain. "I stopped in time, however. "'Can I, or can I not have you?' "'You have ruined me already,' she replied, quietly. "'I have not; you are still a virgin, simply because I am not a rascal. Only tell me, can I have you or not?'

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  I got the laughter. And, as a survivor of multiple experiences of discomfort, danger and harm, I appreciate what the signs attend to. But it made me think about what is encouraged, what is allowed, what is safe, what is forbidden—and how rarely what we really want is encouraged. We’re expected more and more often to find sexual and love connection through a screen, ceding the territory of real-life connections to those who transgress the rules of ignoring each other’s bodies, chemistry, and desire when face to face. Transgression has a whole industry—dark clubs with no windows, anonymous hotel rooms and phone lines, internet porn, apps for cheaters, et cetera. It’s hard to know how to balance between the absolute need for practicing consent and the unspeakable or forbidden energy that, for many of us, turns up the heat in pleasure land. Is it possible for the world to be as sexy if there’s consent and permission and openness about our deepest desires, if we truly bring our nakedness into the light? I don’t know. I still love touching into the forbidden places—partially because they are forbidden. I know for sure that part of this is conditioning, being raised in a culture of repression, sex shaming, patriarchy, and danger. But it’s also how my desire is wired, even after decades of therapy and somatics. We all need to be able to ask for what we want, say no to what we don’t want, and understand each other’s desires and forbidden places with as little judgment as possible. We develop this skill by practicing over and over, by being uncomfortable and honest, by taking the risk in real time to say what we really feel and want, by saying no when we feel no, by remembering that our way of doing things was learned, and that it isn’t right (or wrong). Perhaps the forbidden is even sexier when it’s an informed choice. This means we need to increase our attention on, and skill in, the things that happen before we get physical, the dynamics that continue to be important as we build trust and figure out relationships of love and/or sex. One of the largely uncharted boundaries in the world is between those with game and those without it. Those who can engage in flirtation or banter versus those who freeze or go quiet under the pressure of their desires.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Sometimes it is fun, there is laughter and maybe we were drinking a minute before. We are real human bodies here, not pornography, not Hollywood, not magazines, not fantasies—we are bodies in need.17 We kiss as we undress, we fumble out protection,18 we have music playing that didn’t know the sex was coming. The sheet tangles around your thigh when you try to roll on top of me, and we have to pause, unravel, focus. Or I am getting creative to find a way to ride you, learning to place a foot on the box spring to get leverage for my bad knee. We don’t necessarily love each other, but there is desire here, I enjoy your sexual company, your body in my hands, I enjoy what you do to me, and I tell you what I need. This is the realm of imperfection, where sometimes your tongue tries to fill my mouth19 and it makes me move away, but then you press up behind me and I open again, twerking a bit to find the angle that makes us both feel lucky. We may not come at the same time, but we come and it’s wet and breathless, the body is released.20 We don’t talk a lot, or we do, but it doesn’t change us much. This works, this sex between us. Sometimes we need it to be a million increments, slower than breath,21 a year spent with your hand moving up my thigh while my heart pounds. A feeling that my flesh is your favorite feeling and you want to linger in the contact. The appreciation of each layer and angle of this outfit, you unravel and undo me, open me like a cherished gift. Those times you want me to stand there while you look at my body through my clothing, reach under my skirt to ring your fingers along the top edge of my pantyhose, up higher to find the shiver of lace, the heat that waits for you, the heat you don’t plunge into but hover before, worshipful. Those times when you touch my nipples with the tips of you, fingers and tongue, until my back arches. Those times when I find the tips of you, fingers, clitoris, cock, with my tongue and lips, and stay still, letting you use my mouth. How slowly can you cover this territory, how much can I need this release?22 Sometimes I have had many releases in the erotic journey before you even see me naked, before you tell me your mouth is watering for me, before I get to feel you inside of me, slowly making me a sea.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  So we could say on the spectrum of pleasure, yes, I like to get touched, I like to get fucked, but also, what about for my community, for my people? What is pleasurable in finding a place of grace and well-being and transcending oppression? If we’re not imagining where we’re going, then it will constantly just be pushing back outside from inside of cages, as opposed to imagining what’s happening outside of cages. So I feel incredibly indebted to this essay in particular … wow, there are just so many good quotes. One in particular, “Giving into the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford. And the unintentional are those that do not wish to guide their own destinies.”36 And I wrote, as my live, ripe, twenty-one-year-old self, “Our lives have mapped our destinies for generations.” You know, I was writing a conversation with Audre Lorde. I was like, “Here, Audre. This is what I think about what you just said.” But how do we map our destiny and desire? By understanding where we’ve come from and where we want our generations to go? [Writing] our destinies and desires, that has been my life since the early nineties. I believed, I’m going to live like a writer. I’m going to be a writer. I desire to be, and I am a writer. I desired to say to my family, “I’m going be a writer,” even when, in the early nineties, many of us still didn’t choose that as a job. My whole life was filled with desire and destiny. I grew up around jazz musicians, and my mom raised me around theater and the folk festival scene. I also had queer family—three generations of Black queer family. So I was very used to a gender spectrum, a cultural reality that was very performative and queer, that was very full of life and desire. I was not devoid of that as a child. And yet, as a survivor and a bystander of family violence, desire was hard to trust. When I was young, before he was in recovery from violence, my father was—this term is limited—a batterer and caused great harm; my mom was a survivor, and I was a survivor/bystander. So all of my erotic self was wrapped in “how do I associate with pleasure and desire without fear, without losing control, without being harmed?” I really had to walk out of a space that allowed for me to unravel and unpack those things as separate so I could define my sexuality and my erotic self in relationship to something that did not have to be violent, to understand that the desire to be loved and to love your family wasn’t always mired with violent pasts but could begin again with new, healing destinies.