Desire

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  Understanding male libidoA healthy and active libido is as integral to a satisfying sex life for a man as it is for a woman. Lifestyle factors such as stress, sleep, nutrition, and exercise affect his sex drive as they do yours. His libido is also a direct result of the emotional bond between you, so taking care of your sex life will reflect positively on other aspects of his life, including his career, relationship, and self-esteem. Emotional obstaclesIf you and your partner are having relationship woes, don’t be surprised if the tension transfers to the bedroom. We may think men are superheroes who don’t cry, but they, too, are affected by perceived slights and relationship difficulties. Don’t ignore conflicts at home, which can lead to feelings of low self-esteem or inadequacy that inevitably affect his—and your—libido. If you strive to resolve emotional difficulties quickly, your sex life and relationship will benefit. Lifestyle obstaclesMale libido, like female libido, is also subject to the effects of stress. Not surprisingly, too much stress makes a man feel run down and uninterested in sex. Quite often, stress also causes men to sleep less and to eat fatty, libido-killing foods, which may lead to weight gain and a diminished sex drive. Medication can affect a man’s sex drive, just as it affects a woman’s. Sedatives, antidepressants, antihistamines, antihypertensives, and cancer-fighting medication can all have an effect. Fortunately, there are prescriptions available that won’t have as much of an impact on his libido. Libido should not have to be sacrificed for good health—the two should go hand-in-hand. Supplements and herbal remediesAnother way for your partner to keep his libido on track is with supplements and herbal remedies. Zinc is beneficial to his fertility, and L-arginine is said to increase blood flow to the genital region, which might help to improve his erectile ability. Epimedium (nicknamed “horny goat weed”) can help regulate cortisol levels and boost libido in men and women alike. Gingko can help increase blood flow, which helps erectile difficulties, while ginseng enhances stamina and well-being. Before beginning any herbal regimen, your partner should consult his doctor. Intimate relaxationYou don’t have to be in bed to enhance your emotional connection. You can be at the gym, at the movies, in a restaurant. Spend time together at home, being close and intimate. Often, it is when you are both relaxed that he is most interested in sex. These are the times when he can connect with you, and that connection will strengthen his libido.

• From Cultish (2021)

  They filled women’s ears with promises of financial independence, the sort that wouldn’t threaten their traditionally feminine, wifely image. To this day, unemployed women, especially those living in blue-collar towns, continue to make up the majority of MLM recruits. Quickly, the direct selling industry figured out how to target other communities locked out of the dignified labor market. Immigrant Spanish speakers, inexperienced college students, and economically marginalized Black folks became additional targets. The industry takes advantage of the trust that already exists within tight-knit groups like churches, military bases, and college campuses. Their ideal recruit is one who is striving for financial stability and has a proven track record of faith and optimism, whether it’s hope for a fresh start in a new country, youthful enthusiasm for the future, or belief in a higher power. The typical MLM joinee isn’t some greedy jerk looking to get rich quick; they’re an everyday person looking to pay their basic bills. A blend of monetary struggle, close community, and idealism is the jackpot for any upline. Christian communities wind up being a hotbed for MLMs, many of which actively identify themselves as “faith-based”: Mary & Martha, Christian Bling, Younique, Thirty-One Gifts, and Mary Kay are just a few of the many MLMs that lead with an explicitly religious credo. In dozens of American neighborhoods, you’ll find salt-of-the-earth people holding the Bible in one hand and pricey lotion samples in the other. It’s why the state of Utah is home to more MLM headquarters than anywhere else in the world—Mormons, as direct sales leaders have discovered, are an ideal sales forc e. “Latter-day Saints are born and bred to be missionaries . . . so preaching the gospel to friends often naturally flows with selling MLM products to their friends,” a source told the investigative podcast The Dream . “When your uncle comes to you and says, ‘I have this great life-changing opportunity,’ sometimes it sounds a lot like a message you would hear at church.” Religion has been intertwined with MLMs—and with American labor culture in general—since before the United States even existed. The marriage of godly blessings and monetary “blessings” goes back half a millennium to the Protestant Reformation. Sociologists attribute the dawn of modern capitalism to this sixteenth-century movement, which gave birth to so many of our contemporary American workplace values, like the basic idea of “a good day’s work,” “keeping your nose to the grindstone,”* and “the good paymaster is lord of another man’s purse.” Protestant Reformers, especially French theologian John Calvin, conceived of the idea that God plays a role not just in human beings’ spiritual successes and failures but also in our financial ones. This idea helped create the “Protestant ethic,” marked by diligent work, individual effort, and accumulation of wealth, which aligned perfectly with Europe’s emerging capitalist economy. Soon, everyone began aspiring to the new ideal of a pious, self-reliant entrepreneur.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  Ain’t that just delightful.” We ran with it to the TV room, closed the blinds, locked the door, and watched the movie. It opened with a woman standing on a bridge with her legs spread while a guy knelt in front of her, giving her oral sex. No time for dialogue, I suppose. By the time they started doing it, Alaska commenced with her righteous indignation. “They just don’t make sex look fun for women. The girl is just an object. Look! Look at that!” I was already looking, needless to say. A woman crouched on her hands and knees while a guy knelt behind her. She kept saying “Give it to me” and moaning, and though her eyes, brown and blank, betrayed her lack of interest, I couldn’t help but take mental notes. Hands on her shoulders , I noted. Fast, but not too fast or it’s going to be over, fast. Keep your grunting to a minimum. As if reading my mind, she said, “God, Pudge. Never do it that hard. That would hurt. That looks like torture. And all she can do is just sit there and take it? This is not a man and a woman . It’s a penis and a vagina. What’s erotic about that? Where’s the kissing?” “Given their position, I don’t think they can kiss right now,” I noted. “That’s my point. Just by virtue of how they’re doing it, it’s objectification. He can’t even see her face! This is what can happen to women, Pudge. That woman is someone’s daughter. This is what you make us do for money.” “Well, not me ,” I said defensively. “I mean, not technically. I don’t, like, produce porn movies.” “Look me in the eye and tell me this doesn’t turn you on, Pudge.” I couldn’t. She laughed. It was fine, she said. Healthy. And then she got up, stopped the tape, lay down on her stomach across the couch, and mumbled something. “What did you say?” I asked, walking to her, putting my hand on the small of her back. “Shhhh,” she said. “I’m sleeping.” Just like that. From a hundred miles an hour to asleep in a nanosecond. I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane. forty-seven days before ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, I woke up with a stuffy nose to an entirely new Alabama, a crisp and cold one.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  From early on, she had been one of her mother’s most trusted readers. She gave Judy book ideas, pointed out errors, and corrected her dialogue if it missed the mark, especially when the junior high slang came off as inauthentic. They’d started that routine with Then Again, Maybe I Won’t. An elementary school–aged Randy had insisted on reading an early draft and Judy let her, even though she worried that the subject matter might be too advanced. But much to Judy’s amusement, the puberty stuff went right over Randy’s head. She thought Tony carried the raincoat to cover his face if he got embarrassed and interpreted his nocturnal emissions as him peeing. As Randy approached her teenage years, she started reading novels that were circulating among kids her age, including 1967’s Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones and 1969’s My Darling, My Hamburger . In both books, starlit high school romances give way to teen pregnancies—with disastrous consequences. One young woman marries the baby’s father, miscarries, and then her future dissolves into a heavy haze of responsibility and grief. Another girl has an illegal abortion and nearly hemorrhages to death, missing her graduation. The alternative to these stories were Maureen Daly’s 1942 classic Seventeenth Summer and Beverly Cleary’s Fifteen from 1956, which veered too far in the other direction, filled with aww shucks soda fountain dates and gee whiz sentimentality. Randy suspected that there was more to teenage relationships than what she read in these page-turners-cum-morality-tales. In passing, she told her mother that she wanted a book where a young couple has sex—but nobody dies and their lives aren’t ruined. She also told Judy that she hated the way the male and female characters were being stereotyped. “In these books, the boys had absolutely no feelings, and the girl ‘did it’ not because she was excited sexually, but because she was mad at her parents,” Blume said in Presenting Judy Blume . “And she was always punished for it.” Judy agreed that the classic teen romance was ripe for an update and got to work. She dug into the emotional nuances that would lead a pair of lovestruck high schoolers to have sex. Forever , about seventeen-year-olds Michael Wagner and Katherine Danziger, emerged from there. “I set out to teach very few things in my books,” Blume explained. “But I did set out in Forever to show that boys can love just as hard, feel just as much pain.” Are You There God? , Deenie, and Forever form a triptych, with eleven-year-old Margaret, thirteen-year-old Deenie, and seventeen-year-old Katherine creating a progressive portrait of the new American girl. All three are smart, spunky, and in touch with their bodies. They’re all white, middle class, and from the suburbs—Judy wrote what she knew—but together, they embody an ideal for Blume that transcended race or class. The trio offers a vision of how the up-and-coming generation could digest the feminist and sexual revolutions.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  “With the right person, it’s a sexual experience purely focused on pleasure. I know we’d like to say all sex should be focused on pleasure—it should be, but sometimes it’s not, and relationship dynamics are being worked out, or you are, like, mad about the dishes so it’s interrupting your flow. Casual sex is a space where you don’t confuse emotional intimacy with the desire to get off.”

• From What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (2013)

  "The results didn't mean that women secretly want to have sex with bonobos, she began, laughing. And it might not be right to label most women as bi, even if lots of women, like her, did wish to have sex with women or would if they permitted themselves to know it. 'It's hard to find the right words,' she said. 'The phrase that keeps coming into my head is that it's like a pregnancy of wanting. Pregnancy's not a good word — because it means pregnancy. It's that it's always there. Or always ready. And so much can set it off. Things you actually want and things you don't. Pregnant. Full. The pregnancy of women's desire. That's the best I can do.'"

• From What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (2013)

  "The problem was that she wanted to fulfill them all, though his taste in clothes was not hers. What was she collapsing into? she had berated herself. Yet it didn't feel like collapse. There was strength in sliding on the lace thong that matched the bra, in pulling on the jeans or skirt, the boots. He would be riveted. She had that power. An alertness spread through her body as she dressed for him. An awareness suffused her skin. … 'If you don't touch me right now, I'm going to scream,' she would plead silently. 'Please, God, touch me right now. Please, God, something's got to be done here.'"

• From What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (2013)

  "Sometimes, she said, she wished he would 'take more of the marauder approach' — her shoulders pinned to bed or wall, her nipples bitten hard, her thong pulled harshly aside, torn. But she told herself not to ask for this. 'Because he would feel badly and because his gestures would be empty, a parody of what I want. The whole thing is that it should be instinctual. The idea that I would have to request it . . .' Her voice trailed off."

• From What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (2013)

  "My grammar school principal. I'm in a skirt. Eleven or twelve years old. He has silver hair; he's overweight; he's wearing a blazer. He finds a way to call me into his office. He's married. He has a million reasons not to do this. It's not that perversely I think he's attractive; it's that I'm attracted to the fact that he's so attracted to me. He's risking that someone might walk into this office; he's risking his job to be with me."

• From What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (2013)

  "Earlier in my life it was wooing: parks and lots of looking at the moon. The violent aspect did not develop until later when the malaise of my first marriage settled in. I remarried and here's the deal: I'm super competent. I run the house, do ninety-nine percent of the kid care, have a PhD and a successful career. I am absolutely in control all the time. In bed, fantasy allows me to feel out of control while being in control. I don't give myself away, but I imagine giving myself away. 'A sordid boon,' Wordsworth would say. No, I imagine myself taken away. I would like my life to have more of that: I'd like my husband to take control. But he's not able to. I don't know if it's the no-means-no message he's gotten since health class in middle school. So I create a world in my head."

• From What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (2013)

  "'We never stop admiring each other. I'll say, "You got your hair cut; it looks great." And he still tells me all the time how good I look, even after the kids.' … 'Jeter is the ultimate Yankee. Tall, all-American, everyone loves him — he's it. He comes home to me after winning the World Series. He's still in his uniform, and he throws me onto the bed and kisses me in a frenzy all over and thrusts right into me without me being really prepared for it. He just ravages me.' Yet even when she enlisted another man, she said, she felt little distance from her husband. It wasn't something they had ever talked about. 'We've never asked each other. I don't think your partner needs to know. The fantasy is only a device.'"

• From What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (2013)

  "'I hate the term "rape fantasies,"' she said quickly. The phrase was paradoxical, she stressed; it had no meaning. 'In fantasy we control the stimuli. In rape we have no control.' The two ideas couldn't coexist. 'They're really fantasies of submission,' she continued. She elaborated on the pleasure of being wanted so much that the aggressor is willing to overpower, to take. 'But "aggression," "dominance,"' she sifted through the terms that came to her as she tried to express the wish. 'I have to find better words. "Submission" isn't even a good word.'"

• From What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (2013)

  "Then she went home and lay down and let the scene unfold — differently, from the moment of his demand, from her inability to unbolt the door — as she touched herself, let it unfold until she came, let it splinter her mind, obliterate her, obliterate her again the next morning, again the next night, again on more mornings and nights than she could count."

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Later, when she and Jack were in his room, on his bed, kissing, she knew this would be the night. Not that she’d planned it. She just didn’t try to stop it this time. On the bedside radio Tony Bennett was singing “Because of You.” The volume was turned down so as not to disturb Mrs. O’Malley or the boarders. Between Tony Bennett’s sexy voice, and Jack’s warm breath as he nibbled her earlobe, she was lost in another world. Somewhere a cat was purring, which struck her as odd because Jack didn’t have a cat, but who cared? Who cared about anything? He unbuttoned her blouse, not for the first time, reached around and unhooked her bra, something she’d let him do before, even though she knew what that could lead to, she knew very well. He groaned when her breasts spilled out of her full B cups. I dreamed I was bewitching in my Maidenform bra. Moonlight streamed through the window. His hands were warm as he gently stroked her breasts, his fingers passing over her nipples, pausing just long enough to make them hard, then his breath was on them, as he kissed one, then the other. He pulled off his shirt so he could feel them against his naked chest. She closed her eyes, giving in to the rush between her legs. When he reached under her skirt, he hesitated for a second. She wasn’t wearing a panty girdle tonight, just a garter belt, stockings and nylon undies. This was where she always stopped him, whispering, No, Jack, we can’t. But she didn’t stop him tonight. If he was surprised she couldn’t tell. Her undies slipped off, then he was getting out of his trousers. She kept her eyes closed. He was naked next to her and she was naked, though she didn’t remember stepping out of her skirt or pulling down her half-slip—what did it matter…sweet Jesus, nobody told her it would feel this good to have his hands stroking her there. Someone else was singing now and the cat was purring louder, the cat was moaning, or wait—was it her? Yes, those sounds were coming from her. She felt something pushing against her, then slipping inside her. And she wanted it, she wanted it. Then a short, quick pain—did she cry out? Maybe, but she didn’t say stop. She didn’t say no. Her body tensed…what if, what if… But soon he stopped moving and let out one deep groan, and something warm was on her belly. Warm, like a dollop of thick sauce. He wiped it up with his underwear then kissed the spot where it landed as if it were sacred ground.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Dr. O turned off the jukebox and switched on the radio for the countdown to midnight. Corinne handed out party hats and noisemakers, and as the clock struck midnight corks popped, the guests cheered and everyone started kissing. Miri watched Steve Osner kissing Kathy Stein, his hands on her naked back. When she and Mason kissed they were almost always wearing winter coats. She tried to imagine how it would feel to have his hands on her naked back. Just that thought was enough to make her legs so weak she had to sit down. She was grateful her mother wasn’t kissing Cousin Tewky or anyone else. “You don’t have to worry,” Natalie said. “Who’s worrying?” “It’s written all over your face.” “What is?” “He’s not interested in getting married.” “Suppose he falls for Rusty?” “I’m telling you, that’s not going to happen. So you can relax and wish me a Happy New Year.”

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco. He offered one to her. She shook her head. She’d tried it once and had almost choked to death. Almost vomited in front of everyone. But she liked the way he held the cigarette between his teeth. When he’d had enough he tossed it to the ground and stepped on it, crushing it like a bug. He kissed her then, outside the Y in the freezing-cold December night air, with neither of them wearing a coat. Her teeth were chattering but she wasn’t going to suggest they go back inside, not as long as he was holding her that way, not as long as he was kissing her that way and she was kissing him back. They kissed a second time and her legs turned to jelly. She’d heard that expression a million times, but until now she hadn’t understood it. She’d never been kissed by a boy like Mason. No sloppy tongue shoved halfway down her throat, no washing out her ear. Just perfect kisses. Two, three, four—she lost count. If she died then she was sure she’d die happy.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  But when Nat King Cole came on singing “Nature Boy” the mood shifted. Miri was wondering who she’d dance the first slow dance with, when out of nowhere a dark-haired boy, someone Miri had never seen before, came up to her, wrapped his arms around her and held her close, as if they’d been dancing together forever. Well, swaying was more like it, but even so…There was a boy, a very strange enchanted boy… She could feel the pack of Luckies in his shirt pocket. She didn’t know they were Luckies but she imagined they were. She wondered what he felt holding her that way and hoped it wasn’t her Hidden Treasure bra. Give a girl a Peter Pan and she will grow, grow, grow… Not likely Nat King Cole would record that one. She had to stop herself from talking, from asking questions the way she did when she was nervous, because she sensed this boy didn’t want to talk. She prayed the palms of her hands wouldn’t sweat, that her deodorant was working, that the faint scent of her mother’s Arpège would reach his nostrils. His breath was near her ear, making her tingle. Then the song ended and he was gone, like Cinderella racing from the ball, but without a shoe, glass or otherwise, left behind to help her find him. She didn’t even know his name. She doubted he knew hers, either. She hoped her blue angora sweater—the one she kept in a garment bag on the top shelf of the fridge—had shed just enough onto his flannel shirt to remind him of her.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  At the YMCA he’d have known all the girls, most of them, anyway. And they’d know him, dance with him, laugh with him, but none of them would feel the way Miri had in his arms. He couldn’t explain it. He half hoped she wouldn’t be there tonight. Because he sensed he was just looking for trouble. She was young. He had to be careful. Above the neck only. And only if she wanted him to kiss her. Only then. And there she was, in that red dress, and her mother’s shoes making her three inches taller, and when it came to kissing, it turned out she was more than willing.

• From Cultish (2021)

  Obedience like Tasha’s promised to yield great rewards. Just learn the right words, and they’d be hers: “There was a mantra to attract your soul mate, one to acquire lots of money, one to look better than ever, one to give birth to a more evolved, higher-vibration generation of children,” Tasha divulges. Disobey? You’d come back in the next life on a lower vibration.

• From Cultish (2021)

  Afraid of gaining the freshman fifteen, Alyssa decided to try joining a gym. She had always struggled with body image, and she was intimidated by LA’s formidable fitness scene. So, over holiday break, when she reunited with a family member who’d recently started a new workout program, dropped a ton of weight, and beamed with the honeymoon glow of fresh muscle tone, Alyssa thought, *Damn, I have to check that out*. The new workout was called CrossFit, and there was a location right near Alyssa’s dorm. Upon returning from break, she and her boyfriend signed up for a beginners workshop. The sweaty, sculpted instructors oozed masculine enthusiasm as they introduced Alyssa to a whole new world of terminology she’d never heard before: The gym wasn’t called a gym, it was a “box.” Instructors weren’t teachers or trainers, they were “coaches.” Their workouts consisted of “functional movements.” You had your WoD (workout of the day), which might consist of snatches and clean-and-jerks. You had your BPs (bench presses), your BSs (back squats), your C2Bs (chest-to-bars), and your inevitable DOMS (delayed-onset muscle soreness). Who doesn’t love a catchy acronym? Alyssa was captivated by how tight-knit all these CrossFitters seemed—they had such a culture.