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 The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  As we teach them what pleases us, we learn, too. When I first wanted to explore strap-on sex, my girlfriend barely knew harness from dildo. It really forced me to get past my shyness and vocalize my desires. What at first may seem like an accommodation may prove to be revelatory. Not all of us were born knowing our kinks. Not all of us played bondage games with the neighborhood kids. That’s how I came to be such a dirty S/M pervert. It was a critical part of a partner’s sexuality, and I stretched myself to do more of the things that didn’t necessarily come naturally to me. I’m grateful to her for the learning experience. I have a richer and fuller sex life now because of experimenting with her. Same with my current partner and her love of anal sex. Circumstances may force you to be inventive—and what you invent you may find you like. My girlfriend and I share a room in a women-only university dorm, and the walls are paper-thin, so we’ve learned how to be quiet while still letting each other hear breathy moans. The combination of our silence-enforced sex and virtually no free time means that we try to use every free day as a holiday, and sometimes check ourselves into a hotel for a night or two, just so we can be noisy and wild. A common symptom of my chronic health problem is loss of desire, so I have been working really hard to not have that be a symptom of mine. Also, it helps that I went five years without good sex and now I’m making up for lost time. My girlfriends have always responded really well to the fact that I take the TIME to plan something special for them regardless of whether it was a romantic, sensual or hot, rip-off-the-clothes-in-the-hallway kind of affair. Preparation has really kept my sexual relationships alive. I’m a feast-or-famine lover. I tend to gorge myself on sex for a week or so and then a couple of weeks can go by with little sexual activity. I’m distracted and temporarily sated. Then I start feeling deprived and the marathon begins again. I think my partner would like sex more consistently. She teases when I go into feast mode because then I can do it anytime, anywhere…. Sometimes, I like a time-limited self-imposed famine. We can only kiss or hug platonically. Then, we want each other like we did when we first got together. I have a disability due to arthritis and trauma, and I find that I am not as flexible as I once was. I have adapted, use more pillows in different ways, so it is not much of a barrier. I got a sling to hold my legs up because that is my preferred position.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I learn quickly about myself that I am a sucker for doctors, which is no surprise – I’ve always loved their authority and in truth, I’ve had crushes on many of them throughout my life, even convincing myself that some have been in love with me too (the most devastating being the doctor who joked that my allergic reaction to my wedding band was perhaps an allergic reaction to my husband, which I took as a veiled suggestion that I should consider him instead, until Jessica broke it to me that this doctor was gay and often spotted around the Village with a parrot on his shoulder). Ditto for firemen – if you’re part of the FDNY, I’ve probably clicked on your profile first out of respect and second because you’re probably young and hot. I also confirm that I am, true to being my mother’s daughter, an educational snob: if you have an Ivy League School attached to your bio, I am definitely pretending those close-mouthed smiles are you being coy and not having some strange tooth situation. And finally, I have to face that I am more shallow than I thought: a defined six-pack lets me forgive any man who posts a bathing suit shot of himself – unless he is visibly erect, in which case even the six-pack can’t save him. Conversational flirtations begin in earnest. There is a middle-school English teacher with a degree from Penn who seems funny and wry, with a close-cropped beard and friendly eyes. He asks me what kind of freelance work I do (thanks a lot, Karen) and when I reply that I am really a stay-home PTA mom, he writes back, “PTA! That’s hot.” This should give me pause but does not until later, when during an otherwise pleasant conversation, he asks me what I’m wearing and if I could dress up for him as a PTA mom. I ask with befuddlement why I would dress up as something that I in fact already am and when he replies, “Because I’ve been a very bad boy,” I promptly learn how to unmatch with someone. The kind and considerate businessman who raced home from work to coach his daughter’s soccer team? We are trying to nail down a date to get together when he tells me he needs to run something by me before we meet in person and that he hopes it won’t scare me away. “I’m intrigued,” I write back to him, code for “I’m terrified.” He responds that he had been married for many years to a woman who did not enjoy oral sex and that he needs to know not only that I am open to it but also that I will allow him to spend uninterrupted hours exploring my pussy with his tongue.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  Luther King Jr., said that Clinton was “every bit as black as Barack.” How strange was that: the son of a Kenyan was less black than a Bubba from Arkansas? Young was treating blackness as a cultural identity, and Obama’s childhood in Hawaii and Jakarta lacked Dixie roots. Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post, a southerner, saw confusion in figurative language, writing that all one had to do was to replace the sax with a banjo and Clinton became a pastiche of “white-trash tropes.” Journalist Joe Klein pushed the trope further in Primary Colors (1996), his thinly veiled novel about Clinton, who is called Jack Stanton in the book. Stanton violates the sexual taboo, sleeping with an underage black female, fathering an illegitimate child. In the Mike Nichols film based on Klein’s book, President Bubba was played by the unpolished John Travolta, instead of someone like the squeaky clean Tom Hanks. Was this fellow Stanton a symbol of blackness, or was he trailer trash? 33 • • • Clinton’s embarrassing second term evidently wasn’t read as a cautionary tale among Republicans, who plunged ahead with their own (effectively) white trash candidate in 2008, Alaska governor Sarah Palin. The devastatingly direct Frank Rich of the New York Times referred to the Republican ticket as “Palin and McCain’s Shotgun Marriage.” Did the venerable John McCain of Arizona, ordinarily a savvy politician, have a lapse in judgment here? Slate produced an online video of Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, painting it as a forgettable wasteland, a place “to get gas and pee” before getting back on the road. Wasilla was elsewhere described as the “punch line for most redneck jokes told in Anchorage.” Erica Jong wrote in the Huffington Post, “White trash America certainly has allure for voters,” which explained the photoshopped image of Palin that appeared on the Internet days after her nomination. In a stars-and- stripes bikini, holding an assault rifle and wearing her signature black-rimmed glasses, Palin was one-half hockey mom and one-half hot militia babe. 34 News of the pregnancy of Palin’s teenage daughter Bristol led to a shotgun engagement to Levi Johnston, which was arranged in time for the Republican National Convention. Us Weekly featured Palin on the cover, with the provocative title, “Babies, Lies, and Scandal.” Maureen Dowd compared Palin to Eliza Doolittle of My Fair Lady fame, in getting prepped for her first off-script television interview. Could there be any more direct allusion to her questionable class origins? The Palin melodrama led one journalist to associate the Alaska

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I’ve got to have a new one every day; if I don’t I get morbid. I think too much. Sometimes I’m amazed at myself, how quick I pull it off—and how little it really means. I do it automatically like. Sometimes I’m not thinking about a woman at all, but suddenly I notice a woman looking at me and then, bango! it starts all over again. Before I know what I’m doing I’ve got her up to the room. I don’t even remember what I say to them. I bring them up to the room, give them a pat on the ass, and before I know what it’s all about it’s over. It’s like a dream. … Do you know what I mean?” He hasn’t much use for the French girls. Can’t stand them. “Either they want money or they want you to marry them. At bottom they’re all whores. I’d rather wrestle with a virgin,” he says. “They give you a little illusion. They put up a fight at least.” Just the same, as we glance over the terrasse there is hardly a whore in sight whom he hasn’t fucked at some time or other. Standing at the bar he points them out to me, one by one, goes over them anatomically, describes their good points and their bad. “They’re all frigid,” he says. And then begins to mold his hands, thinking of the nice, juicy virgins who are just dying for it. In the midst of his reveries he suddenly arrests himself, and grabbing my arm excitedly, he points to a whale of a woman who is just lowering herself into a seat. “There’s my Danish cunt,” he grunts. “See that ass? Danish . How that woman loves it! She just begs me for it. Come over here… look at her now, from the side! Look at that ass, will you? It’s enormous. I tell you, when she climbs over me I can hardly get my arms around it. It blots out the whole world. She makes me feel like a little bug crawling inside her. I don’t know why I fall for her—I suppose it’s that ass. It’s so incongruous like. And the creases in it! You can’t forget an ass like that. It’s a fact… a solid fact. The others, they may bore you, or they may give you a moment’s illusion, but this one—with her ass!—zowie, you can’t obliterate her… it’s like going to bed with a monument on top of you.” The Danish cunt seems to have electrified him. He’s lost all his sluggishness now. His eyes are popping out of his head. And of course one thing reminds him of another. He wants to get out of the fucking hotel because the noise bothers him. He wants to write a book too so as to have something to occupy his mind. But then the goddamned job stands in the way. “It takes it out of you, that fucking job!

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I don’t want to write about Montparnasse. … I want to write my life, my thoughts. I want to get the dirt out of my belly. … Listen, get that one over there! I had her a long time ago. She used to be down near Les Halles. A funny bitch. She lay on the edge of the bed and pulled her dress up. Ever try it that way? Not bad. She didn’t hurry me either. She just lay back and played with her hat while I slugged away at her. And when I come she says sort of bored like—‘Are you through?’ Like it didn’t make any difference at all. Of course, it doesn’t make any difference, I know that goddamn well… but the cold-blooded way she had… I sort of liked it… it was fascinating, you know? When she goes to wipe herself she begins to sing. Going out of the hotel she was still singing. Didn’t even say Au revoir! Walks off swinging her hat and humming to herself like. That’s a whore for you! A good lay though. I think I liked her better than my virgin. There’s something depraved about screwing a woman who doesn’t give a fuck about it. It heats your blood. …” And then, after a moment’s meditation—“Can you imagine what she’d be like if she had any feelings?” “Listen,” he says, “I want you to come to the Club with me tomorrow afternoon… there’s a dance on.” “I can’t tomorrow, Joe. I promised to help Carl out. …” “Listen, forget that prick! I want you to do me a favor. It’s like this”—he commences to mold his hands again. “I’ve got a cunt lined up… she promised to stay with me on my night off. But I’m not positive about her yet. She’s got a mother, you see… some shit of a painter, she chews my ear off every time I see her. I think the truth is, the mother’s jealous. I don’t think she’d mind so much if I gave her a lay first. You know how it is. … Anyway, I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind taking the mother… she’s not so bad… if I hadn’t seen the daughter I might have considered her myself. The daughter’s nice and young, fresh like, you know what I mean? There’s a clean smell to her. …” “Listen, Joe, you’d better find somebody else. …” “Aw, don’t take it like that! I know how you feel about it. It’s only a little favor I’m asking you to do for me. I don’t know to get rid of the old hen. I thought first I’d get drunk and ditch her—but I don’t think the young one’d like that. They’re sentimental like. They come from Minnesota or somewhere. Anyway, come around tomorrow and wake me up, will you? Otherwise I’ll oversleep. And besides, I want you to help me find a room. You know I’m helpless.

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  Sexual fantasy can be cloven into two layers. Each fantasy has a subtext, a ground upon which conscious details can be laid. This is the fundament of desire that rises at a very early age, the basic elements of sexual response that won’t go away and can’t be changed. If my sexual ground is seduction and courtly romance, all my fantasies will follow that road one way or the other, whatever details are added. If my ground is submission with a hint of leather, every story will contain that. Atop this ground is the texture—the endlessly varying details of plot, context, outcome, and point of view. So I might end up with courtly romances with a hint of leather, seduction scenes built on dominance—round and round the merry-go-round I go. To some extent we can control and manipulate sexual fantasies; most especially we can try to control ourselves in the fantasy so that the “I” in the fantasy behaves and feels as required for satisfaction. The fantasy world is guilt-free and distraction-free and odor-free (unless you want odors) and sweat-free (unless you like sweat) and discomfort-free (except as you like discomfort). All you have to know is what you want. Who knows when our fantasies first get seeded? Secret glances, misunderstood phrases, odd encounters that have the flavor of the unspoken or the forbidden, gradually dreamed into sexual images, the occult of the wandering ego. The archetypes of fantasy are those of one’s psychological environment. Perhaps for one person they follow themes of intimacy and separation; for another, power and surrender. These are the symbolic relationships we explore in all our meetings, and they withstand tremendous attention. The point of fantasy, if there is any point besides the fantasy itself, is not merely exaggeration or freedom from social constructs, but a kind of comfort with the dissonance of sexual desire. (And life.) Most powerful fantasies of all kinds, and particularly sexual fantasies, have an element of dissonance, surprising or shocking combinations, confusions of all boundaries from gender on out, blurring and blending, breaking the rules. This is something the Japanese understand very well; Ian Buruma notes that brothels and hostess bars in Japan feature stewardesses, nurses, bank clerks, cheerleaders, “American” disco dancers, Jane in the jungle waiting for Tarzan, Catholic nuns, Indian maidens, and more, all ensconced in settings ranging from science-fiction futures to medieval castles to faux Shinto shrines. Americans have Nancy Friday and her collections of sexual fantasies. Her female correspondents relish the chance to break rules. “… I wake him up and ask him to accompany me to the bathroom, where I proceed to teach him how to shave all the hair off his legs …” “… I have saved my best one till last. It involves picking up a stranded priest and nun at a bus stop. As we move down the highway, my beautiful blond girlfriend takes out her pistol and makes them handcuff each other …” And so on, and on.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  Yet another fantasy is that I would like a man to get on top of me, both of us naked, then gently lower himself until his enormous erect penis was resting in between my breasts. I would like to watch it as he moves up and down, then when it is getting near his time I would like him to lower himself and push it into me in the right place. I must tell you that whenever I have sex with a man, all the time I am pretending to myself that I am wearing long knickers, bending over in the headmistress’ study, and getting soundly caned on my bottom. I can only think of two possible causes of my fantasies. The first happened when I was about six or seven. I had an elder sister who was then about fourteen, and for probably a series of misdemeanors, my stepmother said she would cane her. My sister was ordered out of her frock, in front of me, and then Stepmother pushed her over the settee arm. My sister Jean was wearing the usual school Directoire knickers at the time, much longer than those worn today, of course, and with her bottom in the air and her feet off the ground, the knickers tightened around her buttocks.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  …when sex got a bit mundane, I found myself imagining one night that I was “Jane” in a jungle hut being made love to. I screamed out “Tarzan!” and tore at my lover’s hair. The fantasy ended miserably when some of hubby’s last strands came away in my hands. …I am being made love to in a huge, dimpled, whiskey bottle, hung from top to bottom in tiger skins. My lover is dressed as an executioner, with eyes glittering through his mask, and when he takes me, the tiger skins slither down to reveal my entire family gazing in shock, horror, and bewilderment. Please don’t print my name or my family really will be shocked! …I have only one romantic fantasy about men, and that is that I would love to walk out dressed to kill with my three children looking like TV model children. As I pass, every man looks at me and desires me, thinking how beautiful I keep myself for a woman with three children. …my fantasy always takes place on a deserted beach. I am taking an evening stroll when I meet my heartthrob. I have had this fantasy ever since I was a teenager. Of course, the heartthrob changes from time to time. …although I am over sixty, I am still a romantic at heart, and a very happily married woman. I must confess I often look at an attractive man at a social “do,” or while waiting for the bus, and wonder what sort of partner he would make on a stolen weekend. I suspect not all the virile types make the best lovers! It is an exciting fantasy, and I’m thankful no one can read my thoughts, most of all my dear husband. …I’m tall, elegant, and intelligent. I am always at a masked ball where I am made love to by every man I desire. I never take off the mask. Of course, in reality I’m short, thin, not very intelligent, and middle-aged. But I’m happily married. …killing my daily traveling boredom, my mind always drifts to the jungle. Tarzan has me prisoner in his treetop home. He is wild, passionate, making love like the primitive man that he is. But how I enjoy every rough, clawing moment, so different from civilized delicacies. I’ve lost count of the times Tarzan has forced me to indulge in his animal sexual pleasures, but they keep getting better. I’m the seventh wife of Henry Tudor, Each night he comes to my boudoir. By day I am Olde Englande’s Queen, But by night it’s a different scene. There’s love, there’s passion, and there’s lust, On Saturdays an orgy’s a must. I know I shan’t go to the Tower, For through my sex I have great power. Of all his wives from one to seven I only transport him to seventh heaven.

• From Naked Ambition

  ♪ Really love me I said, "Well, I get off at six." She says, "No, I go to work at six, the only time is now." ♪ Did you ever really miss me So what the audience heard was, "Ladies and gentlemen, I have a real treat for you tonight." You're gonna hear the entire Harry Belafonte and Carnegie Hall album," which took 23 minutes, which is all the time I needed. ♪ Down the way where the nights are gay ♪ ♪ And the sun shines - I put the record on, zoomed over to the house. I open up the door, there's this lady, I never saw her clear, white negligee sitting on the couch, opens her arms, I jump into her arms. My right cheek is against her right cheek, Belafonte is on the radio, and I hear ♪ Down the way where the knights ♪ ♪ Where the knights The record gets stuck. I place her back on the couch, go to my car, Jewish masochism, I leave the radio on. We enter the station, all the lights are ringing, the phones. I'm picking them up, I'm apologizing to people. I'm sweating, the last phone call was an older Jewish man and I said, "Hello." And he said, "Where the nights, where the nights." "I'm going crazy with where the nights." So I said to him, "Why didn't you just change the station?" And he said, "I'm an invalid, and I'm in bed all night and a nurse takes care of me." "And when she leaves, she sets the radio on top of the wardrobe set to your station, I can't get up and change it." [pleasant music] I said, "I deeply apologize. Can I do anything for you?" He said, "Yeah, play Hava Nagila." [upbeat music] There was nothing like Miami Beach, nothing like it. It was hard in Miami, Miami Beach, to take anything really seriously. [pleasant jazz music] People got married, got divorced, nothing was forever. [pleasant jazz music] It was a loose, by a loose town, I mean it was a very sexually liberated city. [pleasant jazz music] - [Ed] Bunny Met Sammy Davis Jr. in 1955. Imagine, this is segregated Miami. Sammy couldn't even stay on Miami Beach past six o'clock at night. - Bunny tells this great story about how she picked Sammy up in the car and Sammy said, "I have to get in the back seat." I don't know if Bunny was naive at the time, but that was just absurd to her because Sammy was such a huge celebrity. He still wasn't comfortable riding in the front seat with a blonde white woman in Miami at the time. - He would go off during the day with Bunny and photograph models, both of them taking a risk at that time. - They would photograph pictures of my grandmother, Maria, together. - They hit it off and she gave him lessons on how to pose models.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  …once every three or four months my husband trims off all my pubic hairs. He first uses scissors and then a small lady’s electric razor. I always like him to be naked when he performs this task. Throughout the exercise I hold his penis in my hand, and with gentle movement ensure he maintains an erection. When I know he is nearly finished, I can feel in my mind a mounting impression of wanting to turn his penis like the throttle of a motorbike to make the noise of the shaver louder. This gets me so aroused that I almost climax, and so I turn the throttle even more to increase the noise of the motorbike in order that my husband will not be overwhelmed by my cries of passion. …showering together, we occasionally have intercourse standing face to face. I like to lean back and watch as he puts just the tip of his penis into me. Then, as the water cascades down between our bodies, I imagine that I can feel an enormous quantity of his semen flowing out of the shower and into my stomach and pubic area, it heightens my sensations so much that I actually feel he is pumping gallons of semen into me and I always have a prolonged orgasm, even without there being any mutual motion between our bodies. I only experience this fantasy when he holds just the head of his penis inside me. I have to be able to look down and see some part of his penis between our bodies… if he is in too far and I can’t see it, I can’t have the fantasy. …having sex with two men who are going down on me simultaneously. Or having sex with the television on inspires the fantasy that the TV performers are watching. Or masturbating in front of a crowd and turning them all on. Or fantasy of reaching down a man’s pants on a crowded bus and masturbating him. Or being raped by a strong, handsome stranger, with constant profanity: “My cock is in your cunt and it’s on fire,” “I want to come all over you, in your eyes and your ass, etc.,” plus assorted “Fuck me’s.” [image file=image_rsrc2SA.jpg] AFTERWORD“In Defense of Nancy Friday”by Martin Shepard, M.D., psychiatrist, author of The Games Analysts Play and A Psychiatrist’s Head IFrequently when we condemn, criticize, poke fun at or derogate traits in others, we are refusing to accept the same traits in ourselves. “I can’t stand her being so dependent” often means “I’m ashamed of my own dependent feelings.” “I think his rudeness is terrible” can be translated as “I won’t accept my own rude moments.” Similarly, “I think her fantasies are the products of a diseased mind” means “I would never allow such thoughts to enter my mind—for if I did I would be either sick or disgusting.”

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  And the way her mouth curled up on the right side all the time, like she was preparing to smirk, like she’d mastered the right half of the Mona Lisa ’s inimitable smile… — From my room, the student population seemed manageable, but it overwhelmed me in the classroom area, which was a single, long building just beyond the dorm circle. The building was split into fourteen rooms facing out toward the lake. Kids crammed the narrow sidewalks in front of the classrooms, and even though finding my classes wasn’t hard (even with my poor sense of direction, I could get from French in Room 3 to precalc in Room 12), I felt unsettled all day. I didn’t know anyone and couldn’t even figure out whom I should be trying to know, and the classes were hard, even on the first day. My dad had told me I’d have to study, and now I believed him. The teachers were serious and smart and a lot of them went by “Dr.,” and so when the time came for my last class before lunch, World Religions, I felt tremendous relief. A vestige from when Culver Creek was a Christian boys’ school, I figured the World Religions class, required of every junior and senior, might be an easy A. It was my only class all day where the desks weren’t arranged either in a square or a circle, so, not wanting to seem eager, I sat down in the third row at 11:03. I was seven minutes early, partly because I liked to be punctual, and partly because I didn’t have anyone to chat with out in the halls. Shortly thereafter, the Colonel came in with Takumi, and they sat down on opposite sides of me. “I heard about last night,” Takumi said. “Alaska’s pissed.” “That’s weird, since she was such a bitch last night,” I blurted out. Takumi just shook his head. “Yeah, well, she didn’t know the whole story. And people are moody, dude. You gotta get used to living with people. You could have worse friends than—” The Colonel cut him off. “Enough with the psychobabble, MC Dr. Phil. Let’s talk counterinsurgency.” People were starting to file into class, so the Colonel leaned in toward me and whispered, “If any of ’em are in this class, let me know, okay? Just, here, just put X ’s where they’re sitting,” and he ripped a sheet of paper out of his notebook and drew a square for each desk. As people filed in, I saw one of them—the tall one with immaculately spiky hair—Kevin. Kevin stared down the Colonel as he walked past, but in trying to stare, he forgot to watch his step and bumped his thigh against a desk. The Colonel laughed. One of the other guys, the one who was either a little fat or worked out too much, came in behind Kevin, sporting pleated khaki pants and a short-sleeve black polo shirt.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  She’s in ninth grade.” “Be careful,” Irene warned Miri. “All boys want the same thing.” So do girls, Miri thought. But she was never going to make the mistake her mother did. She wouldn’t go all the way until she was twenty-three or married, whichever came first. And they’d use protection. A funny little rubber circle called a diaphragm that you somehow had to shove up there, like Corinne used—Natalie had shown it to her in its circular container. “I’m not sure how well it works,” Natalie said, “because I think Fern was a mistake. Or maybe my mother got it after Fern was born.” Last year Robo had snitched one of her father’s rubbers from under his shirts in his dresser drawer. They’d stretched it over a cucumber. “Do they get that big?” Suzanne asked. “Because if they do, I’m never doing it.” “Maybe we should have used a carrot,” Robo said, and they all laughed. Now Irene told her, “Be a good girl. Promise me you’ll be a good girl.” “I am a good girl,” Miri said. “So stop worrying.” Rusty didn’t say anything. MasonIf he wanted to see her he had to meet her mother. And not just her mother but her uncle, maybe to prove there was a man around the house, and her grandmother, who looked like she’d swallowed a lemon when Miri introduced him and she’d heard his name. “McKittrick?” she’d said, like she’d never heard it before. He knew to shake hands with them. He knew to call the uncle sir. Jack had taught him all that. He had no idea who’d taught Jack. He knew to tell them exactly what their plans were and that he’d have her home by ten o’clock or else she’d call to explain. The mother didn’t ask the questions he was expecting, starting with, What do your parents do? She didn’t say, Maybe I know them, like some of the girls’ parents from the YMCA so he didn’t have to give his standard answer, I don’t think so. No, you wouldn’t know my parents. No, we’re not new in town. I was born here at St. Elizabeth’s. He might not have told the truth if she’d asked those questions, so he was glad she hadn’t. MiriIn the middle of vacation Miri had an appointment at Dr. O’s office for a checkup and to have her teeth cleaned. As Christina attached the bib around her neck, Miri said, “You know Mason McKittrick, right?” Christina was surprised. “He’s my boyfriend’s brother. Why?” Miri wasn’t sure how to answer. “No reason.” “Are you going with him?” Was she going with him? Did being in love for a week count? Christina didn’t wait for her to answer. “He’s a nice boy,” she said. “A hard worker. He wants to get out of Janet Memorial and as soon as Jack can move into a better place…” But Miri didn’t hear the rest of what Christina was saying.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  It won’t cause static.” She laid a size small on top of the medium to show Miri the difference. “My mother wears a medium,” Suzanne said quietly, as if she were giving away top-secret information. “And she’s bigger than your mom.” “Go with the small, then,” Athena advised Miri. “She can exchange it if it’s the wrong size. What color? We have it in white, pink and navy.” “She goes to business in New York,” Miri said. “She wears dark colors, especially in winter. So I think navy.” “An excellent choice,” Athena said. “Can I show you anything else?” “I need to get her something for Hanukkah, but—” “Hanukkah is like Christmas,” Suzanne told Athena. “Yes, of course,” Athena said. Miri gave Suzanne a look. Why would she bother to explain? Not that Suzanne didn’t pride herself on knowing all about the Jewish holidays, not that she didn’t love throwing around the Yiddish expressions she’d picked up from Miri’s grandmother. Suzanne knew way more about the story of Hanukkah than Miri knew about Jesus. “I can’t spend as much this time,” Miri told Athena. Both she and Suzanne had saved their babysitting money for holiday shopping. They’d already chipped in to buy the little sisters they babysat a box of five finger puppets for $1.50. The girls were going to love them. But at this rate Miri wasn’t going to make it through her list. “How about stockings?” Athena said. “You can never have too many, especially when you go to business.” “But stockings are so boring.” Miri turned to Suzanne. “Don’t you think stockings are boring?” “I don’t know,” Suzanne said. “I was thinking of getting my mother stockings for Christmas.” Miri backtracked. “I didn’t mean they’re not a good idea.” Suzanne’s mother was a nurse. She wore white stockings with her uniform. But Suzanne chose the new seamless stockings by Lilly Daché, three pair in “Dubonnet Blonde,” nicely packaged and tied with a red ribbon. Miri was thinking of a less practical gift, something that would make her mother laugh. Something Rusty could show her friends at work, saying, My daughter gave me this for Hanukkah. My daughter is such a card! When she was little she’d always made something at school, a painted clay ashtray, a decorated coaster, a pin made of buttons. Rusty had saved every one of her handmade gifts. But now that she was a month from her fifteenth birthday, painted clay ashtrays were a thing of the past. Suzanne checked her mother’s name off her neat, alphabetized list. Miri’s list was in her head and was neither neat nor alphabetized. But at least she had a good birthday present for Rusty. At least she had that. “I hope you’ll shop with us again,” Athena said. “We will,” Miri told her.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  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.” “Happy New Year, Nat.” “Happy New Year, Mir.” They hugged. While the Champagne flowed, welcoming in 1952, the guests told one another it was going to be a great year. Miri hoped they were right. [image "Part Two P January 1952" file=Image00013.jpg] [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00014.jpg] [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00014.jpg] INVESTIGATIONStewardess Who Perished in Crash Warned SisterBy Henry AmmermanJAN. 8 — A highlight at the CAB hearing yesterday was a report that the stewardess on the C-46 that crashed on Dec. 16 had telephoned her sister just five minutes before the plane took off, telling her that the plane was “unfit to fly.” She said that passengers on the aircraft’s trip in from the West Coast suffered because cabin heaters had been inoperative. Joseph O. Fluet, heading the investigation for the CAB, dismissed this as conjecture. He focused attention on a graphic presentation showing the course and probable altitudes flown by the plane. This had been carefully compiled from eyewitness reports and the locations of parts from the plane that fell to the ground. Experts on the C-46 have been brought in to examine the wreckage, with particular attention to the right engine, which had been streaming smoke. 9 [image "image" file=Image00005.jpg] [image file=Image00005.jpg] KathyAt Syracuse, Kathy Stein told her roommate, Jane Krasner, that she’d met someone over the holidays. “And I think…well, I really liked him.” They were on their beds with the pink and red plaid spreads they’d bought during orientation week on sale at Dey Brothers. They’d become friends right away, decorating their tiny dorm room, figuring out how to share the only closet and the personal items they’d brought from home—Kathy’s clock radio, Jane’s foldable clothes dryer. Every night Jane diligently hand-washed her heavy wool socks in Woolite along with her bra and underpants and hung them on her wooden clothes dryer. Kathy collected her laundry for a week before using the washing machine in the basement of their dorm.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  Like maybe kids with autism.” She talked softly and thoughtfully, like she was telling me a secret, and I leaned in toward her, suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling that we must kiss, that we ought to kiss right now on the dusty orange couch with its cigarette burns and its decades of collected dust. And I would have: I would have kept leaning toward her until it became necessary to tilt my face so as to miss her ski-slope nose, and I would have felt the shock of her so-soft lips. I would have. But then she snapped out of it. “No,” she said, and I couldn’t tell at first whether she was reading my kiss-obsessed mind or responding to herself out loud. She turned away from me, and softly, maybe to herself, said, “Jesus, I’m not going to be one of those people who sits around talking about what they’re gonna do. I’m just going to do it. Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia.” “Huh?” I asked. “You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.” I guess that made sense. I had imagined that life at the Creek would be a bit more exciting than it was—in reality, there’d been more homework than adventure—but if I hadn’t imagined it, I would never have gotten to the Creek at all. She turned back to the TV, a commercial for a car now, and made a joke about Blue Citrus needing its own car commercial. Mimicking the deep-voiced passion of commercial voice-overs, she said, “It’s small, it’s slow, and it’s shitty, but it runs. Sometimes. Blue Citrus: See Your Local Used-Car Dealer.” But I wanted to talk more about her and Vine Station and the future. “Sometimes I don’t get you,” I said. She didn’t even glance at me. She just smiled toward the television and said, “You never get me. That’s the whole point.” ninety-nine days before I SPENT MOST of the next day lying in bed, immersed in the miserably uninteresting fictional world of Ethan Frome, while the Colonel sat at his desk, unraveling the secrets of differential equations or something. Although we tried to ration our smoke breaks amid the shower’s steam, we ran out of cigarettes before dark, necessitating a trip to Alaska’s room. She lay on the floor, holding a book over her head. “Let’s go smoke,” he said. “You’re out of cigarettes, aren’t you?” she asked without looking up. “Well. Yes.” “Got five bucks?” she asked. “Nope.” “Pudge?” she asked. “Yeah, all right.” I fished a five out of my pocket, and Alaska handed me a pack of twenty Marlboro Lights.

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  Getting on your knees before your partner is a bold admission of desire. Whether or not you associate cocksucking with submission, you can’t miss the courage behind such a statement. You can feel your partner jump as you push the base of the dildo into her vulva. You can look up and watch her face as you lick the head of the dildo and slide it into your mouth. You’re up close and personal with the very part of her that will drive you wild when she penetrates you vaginally or anally. Having my cock sucked changed my whole consciousness about gender and power. For the lucky one receiving that blow job? It’s humbling to see your partner get on her knees for you. Having your partner worship your cock makes your gender fantasies come to life. There’s heat in holding her head and watching her take you inside her mouth. The pressure of her mouth and hands pushing the base of the dildo against your mons and clitoris may be enough stimulation to make you come. Many dildo-loving dykes name fellatio as their favorite way to reach orgasm. I really can’t explain the rush I get from a woman sucking my cock. It’s almost like it’s a real extension of me; and at times it has gotten me off. You can combine silicone cocksucking with other kinds of stimulation. Your partner can lick her way to your butt or insert a finger into your anus or vagina. You can wear a butt plug and nipple clamps while your partner gives you head. You can slip a small battery-operated vibrator under the harness to provide direct clitoral stimulation or hold a wand-style vibrator between your thighs. Sometimes while I’m getting sucked off, I’ll put a pocket rocket on my clit and visualize myself shooting down her throat. Some women combine fellatio with vaginal penetration. Vixen Creations, the San Francisco-based toy company, makes a double-headed dildo angled just right for cocksucking. You can insert one end of the double-headed dildo into your vagina and offer up the other to be sucked. (See chapter 17, Sex Toys and Accoutrements.) [image file=image_rsrc64A.jpg] Illustration 8. (Detachable) Cocksucking Vaginal penetration and cocksucking can be a confusing mix. Some who enjoy receiving fellatio with dildos don’t want attention paid to their vagina. How their female sexual anatomy fits with their gender identity is nuanced. Then again, your partner may like your fingers inside her vagina as you lean over to lick the tip of the dildo. Ask your partner what she likes. How to Suck (Detachable) Cock• Lick and nibble your partner’s thighs and belly. Show what a tease you can be. • Slip an unlubed condom into your mouth. Roll it onto your partner’s dildo. • Hold the base of her dildo in your hand; this will help you control your partner’s thrusts into your mouth. • Push the base of the dildo into her mons and clitoris.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  I’d never been religious, but he told us that religion is important whether or not we believed in one, in the same way that historical events are important whether or not you personally lived through them. And then he assigned us fifty pages of reading for the next day—from a book called Religious Studies. That afternoon, I had two classes and two free periods. We had nine fifty-minute class periods each day, which means that most everyone had three “study periods” (except for the Colonel, who had an extra independent-study math class on account of being an Extra Special Genius). The Colonel and I had biology together, where I pointed out the other guy who’d duct-taped me the night before. In the top corner of his notebook, the Colonel wrote, Longwell Chase. Senior W-day Warrior. Friends w/Sara. Weird. It took me a minute to remember who Sara was: the Colonel’s girlfriend. I spent my free periods in my room trying to read about religion. I learned that myth doesn’t mean a lie; it means a traditional story that tells you something about people and their worldview and what they hold sacred. Interesting. I also learned that after the events of the previous night, I was far too tired to care about myths or anything else, so I slept on top of the covers for most of the afternoon, until I awoke to Alaska singing, “WAKE UP, LITTLE PUHHHHHDGIE!” directly into my left ear canal. I held the religion book close up against my chest like a small paperback security blanket. “That was terrible,” I said. “What do I need to do to ensure that never happens to me again?” “Nothing you can do!” she said excitedly. “I’m unpredictable. God, don’t you hate Dr. Hyde? Don’t you? He’s so condescending.” I sat up and said, “I think he’s a genius,” partly because I thought it was true and partly because I just felt like disagreeing with her. She sat down on the bed. “Do you always sleep in your clothes?” “Yup.” “Funny,” she said. “You weren’t wearing much last night.” I just glared at her. “C’mon, Pudge. I’m teasing. You have to be tough here. I didn’t know how bad it was—and I’m sorry, and they’ll regret it—but you have to be tough.” And then she left. That was all she had to say on the subject. She’s cute , I thought, but you don’t need to like a girl who treats you like you’re ten: You’ve already got a mom . one hundred twenty-two days before AFTER MY LAST CLASS of my first week at Culver Creek, I entered Room 43 to an unlikely sight: the diminutive and shirtless Colonel, hunched over an ironing board, attacking a pink button-down shirt. Sweat trickled down his forehead and chest as he ironed with great enthusiasm, his right arm pushing the iron across the length of the shirt with such vigor that his breathing nearly duplicated Dr. Hyde’s.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  I have six brothers. Every one of us served overseas. I’m the youngest.” “I thought there was a rule about not allowing all the sons in a family to serve.” “Well, they took us. We wanted to serve. And we all came back.” He smiled at her. “What about you?” She didn’t feel like telling him she was a dancer. So she said, “My fiancé is in Miami. He was in the war, too. I’m going down for the holidays to stay with him and his family.” The look on his face said it all. Surprise and disappointment. After all, she wasn’t wearing a ring. She felt bad. He seemed like a nice boy but there was no point. “I’ll bet you’ll have a great time in Miami,” she said. “Do you have any single friends there?” he asked. “Maybe your fiancé has a sister?” “No, sorry. But I’m sure you won’t have any trouble meeting girls. You’re a very nice-looking young man.” “Not so young. I’ll be twenty-five on my next birthday.” “I never would have guessed.” “How about you?” “Twenty-two.” “Could have fooled me.” “Younger or older?” “Younger, of course.” She laughed. “Of course.” “I’m Paul Stefanelli, by the way,” he said, holding out his hand. “Ruby Granik,” she told him, letting him shake hers. “How’s the book, Ruby?” He nodded at the book on her lap. “Can’t put it down,” she said. “So if you’ll excuse me…” “Sure. I get it.” He got up and wandered away. LeahLeah Cohen was hoping Henry Ammerman would pop the question soon, maybe over the holidays. She was going to his house later today to celebrate his sister Rusty’s birthday. Henry’s mother sold Volupté compacts wholesale. A girl could never have too many Voluptés. She’d probably get a few from the mothers of the children in her second-grade class. Last year she did. They sure beat fruitcakes, which she gave away, or bad perfume, which she poured down the toilet. She knew in order to win Henry she’d have to win the rest of his family, and she felt she was doing a pretty good job of it, mainly by keeping her mouth shut. They thought she was shy, quiet, a nice girl from a nice Cleveland family. A teacher. And she was all that, wasn’t she? She’d been seeing Henry for almost eighteen months. She’d met him at a party given by one of the other teachers at her school after she’d moved to New Jersey to live with her aunt Alma. Her mother swore the only way she’d let Leah leave Cleveland was if she lived with family. Alma, her mother’s sister, liked the idea of Leah sharing her house and helping with the expenses. As far as Leah was concerned, anything was better than staying in Cleveland and living with her parents. Aunt Alma was a retired school secretary who’d never married.

• From Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  Switching the pace Let your man alternate between different speeds and pressures, avoiding random flicks and licks. Some men prefer to move their tongue in a figure-eight motion, while others find that spelling out the alphabet with their tongue works as well. Find the motion you prefer together, then let him tease you a little. He should keep his tongue well-lubricated so that the strokes are pleasurable for you. Revel in the sensations before he sends you over the edge. The kiss of pleasure Get your lover to place his mouth around your clitoris to create suction around the entire area, and let him use his tongue to delicately stimulate your clitoris. The varying sensations of being sucked and licked will give you intense pleasure. He can also try kissing and mouthing the peri-urethral area. This is very sensitive for you and will get you aroused and ready for more sex play. FellatioMen love oral sex. The combination of your warm, wet mouth and lips and the texture of your tongue is enough to drive any man wild. Yet many couples find that oral sex falls by the wayside in their relationship and becomes something they do only on special occasions. This is not because women in long-term relationships regard oral sex as an activity belonging to their younger selves, but rather that when it’s already hard to find time for a quickie, oral sex seems to be a luxury. Intimate oralIt is easy to see how fellatio is something for special occasions, but engaging in it regularly is a sure way of keeping your relationship sexy and fresh. Performing fellatio on your man creates an instant and very intimate bond between the two of you. Oral sex demonstrates trust, love, and seductive power, while also telling your man that you think he is hot, and his genitals are sexy—vital to his self-esteem and body image. Plus, most men adore fellatio—even more, rumor has it, than “normal sex.” You may be worried about oral techniques, but with a few clever skills (and a wet tongue), it’s easy to give your man good head. In fact, most men would agree that there is no such thing as bad oral sex. What’s more, you don’t need any special accessories to enjoy it—you don’t even need to get undressed, making it great for a quickie. When you have more time, make oral sex part of foreplay to enhance your lovemaking sessions.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  and Zion. This conflict is presupposed in Psalm 2: “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain . . . against the L ORD and his anointed?” His fate is a variant of the myth of the inviolability of Zion. Gentile armies that come up against Jerusalem are routed (Ps 48:4-5). This myth had received some confirmation from the fact that Jerusalem survived the invasion of Sennacherib, but one would have expected that it would have been demolished by the Babylonian army. The prophecy does not, to be sure, speak specifically of Jerusalem, but the pattern is the same. Gog will be killed “on the mountains of Israel.” The expectation of victory over the nations by the power of YHWH had not materialized in the Babylonian invasion. The prophecy insists that it will be fulfilled, in a definitive way, in the future. It is not enough that Gog be defeated. His entire host must be annihilated. They are buried in the land of Israel, and the land is cleansed. Then there is a gruesome feast. The birds and wild animals are assembled to “eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth” (39:18). This is a sacrificial feast, as if Gog were a sacrificial victim. The drinking of blood, however, is extraordinary, especially in a book concerned with ritual purity to the degree that Ezekiel is. It is quite literally a bloodthirsty vision, which sets no limits to the destruction that is wished upon the nations. Here again Ezekiel has left his mark on later tradition. In Rev 20:8 the army of Satan in the final conflict is called Gog and Magog, while “the great supper of God” consists of the flesh of kings and the mighty, but also of all both small and great (Rev 19:17-19). The banquet brings ritual closure to the drama of the final battle. We shall meet the motif of a final banquet again in one of the additions to the book of Isaiah (Isa 25:6-10). This motif is sometimes called the messianic banquet, but neither Ezekiel 39 nor Isaiah 25 speaks of a messiah in this context. The banquet is, however, part of the pattern of the old combat myth in which the good god defeats his enemies. This myth provides a way of imagining a satisfactory future that is increasingly prominent in Second Temple Judaism, especially in the apocalyptic literature. The New Jerusalem