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 Vagina Monologues (1998)

  I began to feel bad about moaning. I got quiet and polite. I made noise into a pillow. I learned to choke my moan, hold it back like a sneeze. I began to get headaches and stress-related disorders. I was becoming hopeless when I discovered women. I discovered that most women loved my moaning—but, more important, I discovered how deeply excited I got when other women moaned, when I could make other women moan. It became a kind of passion. Discovering the key, unlocking the vagina’s mouth, unlocking this voice, this wild song. I made love to quiet women and I found this place inside them and they shocked themselves in their moaning. I made love to moaners and they found a deeper, more penetrating moan. I became obsessed. I longed to make women moan, to be in charge, like a conductor, maybe, or a bandleader. It was a kind of surgery, a kind of delicate science, finding the tempo, the exact location or home of the moan. That’s what I called it. Sometimes I found it over a woman’s jeans. Sometimes I sneaked up on it, off the record, quietly disarming the surrounding alarms and moving in. Sometimes I used force, but not violent, oppressing force, more like dominating, “I’m going to take you someplace; don’t worry, lie back, enjoy the ride” kind of force. Sometimes it was simply mundane. I found the moan before things even started, while we were eating salad or chicken just casually right there, with my fingers, “Here it is like that,” real simple, in the kitchen, all mixed in with the balsamic vinegar. Sometimes I used props—I loved props—sometimes I made the woman find her own moan in front of me. I waited, stuck it out until she opened herself. I wasn’t fooled by the minor, more obvious moans. No, I pushed her further, all the way into her power moan. There’s the clit moan (a soft, in-the-mouth sound), the vaginal moan (a deep, in-the-throat sound), the combo clit-vaginal moan. There’s the pre-moan (a hint of sound), the almost moan (a circling sound), the right-on-it moan (a deeper, definite sound), the elegant moan (a sophisticated laughing sound), the Grace Slick moan (a rock-singing sound), the WASP moan (no sound), the semireligious moan (a Muslim chanting sound), the mountaintop moan (a yodeling sound), the baby moan (a googie-googie-googie-goo sound), the doggy moan (a panting sound), the southern moan (southern accent—“yeah! yeah”), the uninhibited militant bisexual moan (a deep, aggressive, pounding sound), the machine-gun moan, the tortured Zen moan (a twisted, hungry sound), the diva moan (a high, operatic note), the twisted-toe-orgasm moan, and, finally, the surprise triple orgasm moan. I WAS THERE IN THE ROOMFor Shiva and CocoI was there when her vagina opened. We were all there: her mother, her husband, and I, and the nurse from the Ukraine with her whole hand up there in her vagina feeling and turning with her rubber

• From The Principle of Desire (2013)

  Ed flicked one of the clips on her boob, pulling her back to the surface. “Talk to me, wench. I’m almost done with these. You know where I’m headed, right?” There was really only one logical destination. “Pretty sure I do, yep.” “What do you think? More yellow? Or kick it up to orange? I’m thinking orange.” “I’m thinking you should consider whether you want those orange clips near your testicles some time.” “Pfft. They can’t be all that bad.” He spread his finger and thumb and blithely opened one of the orange pins. “See, it’s just a clothespin, owwwwww, ouch, fuck!” He flung the offending clip across the room and eyed Beth with new respect. “Yellow it is.” But Ed was a sneaky fucker. When he finished the clips on her belly, he reached under the bed again and brought up a batch of yellow clips already strung together. He was going to run a zipper of clips along her cunt. “I fucking hate you, man.” “But not spearmint hate.” “Not quite. Dammit!” These felt tighter, stiffer than the other yellow clips, although Beth knew location was everything. The first pair of clips pinning her outer labia open tugged at her clit hood, too, making her wet even as the pain brought tears to her eyes. “You need a second?” Beth nodded, trying to breathe into it some more. That effort was shot to hell when Ed stroked her clit gently with his forefinger, massaging until she couldn’t help but squirm despite the way it made her feel the clips even more keenly. She couldn’t come like this, but she could get close enough to drive her insane. Lust goggles firmly in place, she looked up at Ed—her torturer, her potential savior—and saw a sex god. Ed the sex god nearly lost his sole worshiper when he started clipping her pussy open again. * * * Once the last clip was in place, Ed slid off the bed and stood up to admire his handiwork. Beth was splayed out on his bed like a kinky wet dream he’d never dared to dream. The brightly colored clothespins highlighted her shape, the subtle arc of her small breasts and the taut beauty of her stomach. The delicate pinks and dusky roses of her pussy and the glistening arousal she couldn’t even attempt to hide from him. Her face was flushed almost as pink, and the blush extended down to her chest. Her lips parted as she tried to manage the pain with breathing, and her eyes had grown glassy and vague.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  Claude told me to read Histoire d’O and there were three ways in which I identified with the heroine: I was always ready; my cunt certainly wasn’t barred with a chain, but I was sodomised as often as I was taken from the front; and finally, I would have loved her reclusive life in a house isolated from the rest of the world. Instead, I was already very active in my professional life. But the convivial atmosphere of the artistic world, the facility with which – despite my fears – I formed connections with people, and the fact that these connections could so easily take a physical turn led me to believe that the space in which this sort of activity was carried out was a well regulated closed world. I have already used the word ‘family’ several times. Sometimes this metaphor has not been a metaphor. For a long time I kept the adolescent trait of exerting my sexual attraction within a family circle, when a boy or a girl goes out with a girl or boy and drops them to go out with their brother or sister, or a cousin. I even had dealings with two brothers along with their uncle. I was a friend of the uncle and he often brought along his two nephews scarcely younger than myself. Unlike the times when this same man would take me to meet friends of his, on these occasions there was no preamble or stage management. The uncle would get me going and the two brothers would give me a good shafting. I would relax afterwards listening to their man’s talk about some DIY gadget or some new software.

• From The Principle of Desire (2013)

  Glancing around once to make sure the street was still deserted, Beth gave into another impulse and crouched down to slip her lips over his wonderful thick cock, ready to taste the climax she knew would happen any second. Ed’s hands on her hair, stroking gently despite his wretched state, made Beth almost as hot as he seemed to be. She pumped her hand around him, ran her tongue under the tip of his swollen head, and he came with a gratifying groan. Salty, earthy, oyster-slick down her throat. After a second Beth rose on legs that shook as badly as his had a moment before, and slipped herself over his thigh again. Running her fingers into his curly brown mop of hair, she yanked his head back and pressed her mouth to his scruffy neck, nipping hard. “What do you say, big boy?” “Thank you, Mistress. Oh my God, Beth.” His hands sought her ass, pulling her closer and harder against his leg. Her dress rode up, and the skimpy, soaked lace of her thong provided only more tantalizing friction against her already throbbing clit. I’m making a mess here. She didn’t care, she rubbed herself against his jeans-clad leg anyway, shamelessly riding him in pursuit of her own climax. When it came, hard and keen and sweet, Beth pretended not to notice that Ed had to hold her up until the trembling passed. And there they were. That happened. Now what? Beth was certain she’d figure it out as soon as her brain started functioning properly again. In the meantime, she slumped against Ed’s comfortable chest, resting her chin over his shoulder, her hands still clamped in his hair. “Did...did you just come from humping my leg?” She examined the weathered roof of her car, perusing it for guidance. It offered none. His hands felt warm and cozy, wrapping the sides of her butt, thumbs stroking her hipbones. “Maybe.” “If so, that’s easily the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me.” “Oh. Then yes. Yes I did.” “But we ought to get out of the street here, before we get mugged or something.” “Oh. Yeah.” She didn’t want to move, and had to force herself to push away and straighten up. Ed hitched his pants back into place while Beth assessed the damage to her own wardrobe. Her silky dress was twisted around, nearly exposing one breast. She settled it back into place, then searched the ground near her feet until she found her keys. Her car had locked itself again, and she had to cheep it to get the door open. “So.” “So. I guess I’ll see you over there.” “I guess so. Strawberry rhubarb or pecan, right?” “Right. But only if the pecan is—”

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  Now it felt like Laura was my friend. We chatted at work. A couple of weeks later, she invited me out to dinner. She chose the restaurant, a new tapas place in Berkeley that I read about in the newspaper. I must have driven to meet Laura at her apartment and then she drove us to dinner, because I remember being in the passenger seat of somebody else’s car. The brand-new Sade album Lovers Rock spun in the CD player. I wondered if this was a date. It was still daylight when we got to the restaurant. Laura knew someone there, and they put us at the bar. We must have talked, had things to talk about. I pushed my shins against the patchwork tile in front of our chairs. My palm was sticky on the lip of the bar, and I pressed my sternum into my knuckles. I watched Laura as she talked to the bartender. Her voice was gentle but gravelly, like extra-fine sandpaper. She had a late-summer tan, and her eyes were opaque as a pot of brown shoe polish. She didn’t seem to care that she looked like a boy, like a lesbian. Her mouth smirked a little, even when it was relaxed. It was a good smirk. Who is she? A weird feeling rose in me. I wanted to put my face close to her, close enough to smell her. I wasn’t sure if I thought she was cute or hot or any word I could find, but I wanted to touch my cheek to her cheek, graze the fine blond hairs on her earlobe. I wanted to glide my nose like a cat along the line where her T-shirt met her neck. I was aware that Laura was a woman, and that this made her different to me, in that moment, from a man. I was aware enough to be scared of what I felt. I was aware that I wanted to kiss her and that I could not imagine getting involved with her vagina.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  The woman in the men's suit has an accent, something approximately southern. I can't put my finger on it. I wonder how she wound up in Seattle. I wonder where in the city she lives. She's got a trustworthy haircut, what an insurance salesman might get in a midwestern barbershop. It's a lesbian haircut, I think. Her suit is the gray of spent charcoal, and the fabric swings loose around her legs when she walks. From my seat I can see her profile, the nose a little too large for its face, a pair of broken-in black cowboy boots under the table. I watch her wrists. They're slim, elegant, the bones delicate as songbirds. I could loop my fingers around her wrist and make the tips touch. On the day that her client gives testimony, she stands up to question him and walks toward the jury box, stops a few feet from me. She rests her yellow lined pad on the half-wall that separates the jury from the courtroom, folds her hands, and rests them on top. Her wrists. I watch how the tendons move, taut as a cable-stayed bridge. Sweat prickles my palms. I'm relieved when she sits back down. What is this? Am I attracted to her? I've never been with a woman, had only considered it once, and then only briefly. Why am I looking at her? The next day she's not doing anything special, just sitting beside her client at the table, and I notice that I'm watching her again. This time she turns in her seat and looks at me. It's just for a second, and then we both look away, but not before something cold crackles up the back of my neck. I can hear my pulse in my ear. She's caught me. She knows I was watching her. Everyone must know it. A second later: Of course not. Don't be crazy. It would be stupid to think she's noticed me at all. This is her job. To her, I'm a juror. Of course I would look at her. But she's got to have noticed. I'm not looking; I'm watching. She's got to have noticed. […] She's probably seen my wedding ring. If she has, she's read me. I see it now: a satin sash across my chest with the whole story embroidered on it. I'm straight, married for nearly a decade, with a house in the suburbs, a not-quite-three-year-old, a family dog, and two restaurants that I own with my husband. Shame creeps along my cheek like a spider.

• From The Principle of Desire (2013)

  Cheeky smile from the boy. Beth studied his face, wondering what she liked about it, trying to be objective. His nose wasn’t distinctive at all. His eyes were nice and kind of soulful but nothing to swoon over except when they were, because of the things they said. His mouth was nice enough to look at, he had no cheekbones to speak of, and though his jawline was strong he was about one slice of pie away from a double chin. The stubble he usually sported didn’t hide that. He did have fabulous hair, she had to admit. Thick and curly, light brown, just long enough to really get a grip on. But all in all, he ought to be no more than the sum of his mostly unremarkable parts. Instead...so hot, the way he looked at her. As if he actually saw her. “There’s more to you than meets the eye.” She tightened around him, squeezing as she rose then sank again. Watching his eyes, his mouth. Cataloging every reaction, each sound and shiver. “Look who’s talking.” “Does it scare you that I really want to use the whip on you again some time? With you naked, preferably.” Up. Down. His eyes fluttered shut, and she discovered another remarkable feature. He had eyelashes to die for. “Yes. I’d still let you do it, though.” She ran her hands down his chest, enjoying the spring of coarse hair under her fingertips. Pinching his nipple lightly brought a grunt, and Ed writhed under her before he could stop himself. She squeezed harder, until his eyes flew open and he regarded her with pain and trepidation. She released him and mirrored her action on the other side. “Don’t move.” Up, down. Beth was as turned on as Ed seemed to be. He shuddered each time she came to rest on his lap. “What else would you let me do to you? Nipple clamps? Cock harness? Clothespins?” “Oh, fuck. Maybe, yeah. Probably. A little pain is really hot. As long as the clothespins aren’t on my balls.” “Where’s the fun in that, then? Let’s see...how about pegging?” “Yes.” He hadn’t even paused. “You do know what pegging is, right?” Ed’s chuckle set up a sympathetic motion between them, tugging Beth so close to a climax she could feel her body blushing in anticipation. “Yeah. I never minded prostate exams all that much, though. Okay, that’s a lie, I’ve gotten a huge boner every time I’ve had one. So I figure, if anyone ever wanted to try that on me I’d say yes. At least once. And maybe I’d get to reciprocate. You’d be the first.” “I thought you were so grumpy and obstinate. Where is that guy?” “I’m only that guy when people are being dumbasses. You’re not a dumbass. Now please let me move?” Beth laughed. “Nobody’s stopping you. You’re not tied that tightly.”

• From The Principle of Desire (2013)

  “You poor, poor baby. I do apologize for that. I never expected you to react that way.” She sounded smug as Aaron to herself. She was wet all over again, looking at the effect she had on Ed. She wanted to rub her hand over his cock, test its dimensions. Take it out and lick it. She felt possessive toward Ed’s penis. Proprietary. Which was weird. “Me either.” His voice matched the denim over his erection, taut and strained. “But if I crank the A/C as cold as it’ll go, maybe I can chill out enough between here and the pie place to actually...enjoy eating some pie.” It’s like he’s a double entendre savant. She was incapable of letting that one go. “Any pie in particular you have in mind?” “Strawberry rhubarb, or maybe pecan if it’s fresh, but...oh. Fuck. Pie.” He hissed, and Beth could see his cock move even through the denim, even in the dimly lit street between two warehouses, where they really shouldn’t be hanging out this long. Her hand moved before she could stop it, with an iron will of its own. Warm, stretched denim over a harder core. Ed inhaled so hard as he leaned into her touch that she thought he might pass out. Beth’s fingers wrapped around his shaft, cupping toward the base, defining its contours by touch. Not enough. Not tonight. She dropped her keys on the ground and moved her other hand only long enough to grab Ed’s shoulders and spin them both around, pushing him back against her car and nearly losing her balance in the process. His hands flew out to her hips to steady her, and her hand flew right back to where it had been the second before. “I could make it better,” she offered, not believing herself. This wasn’t her, she wasn’t a trashy stand-up public hand-job kind of girl. This simply wasn’t how one proceeded in these matters. She had never met this guy before today. “Somebody’s gonna have to or I’ll never be able to drive. Oh, God.” Fuck common sense, that was the theme for tonight. She shifted her weight forward, straddling one of Ed’s thighs. “Well then, whip it out, boy.” “Could you at least make that big boy?” “That remains to be seen.” She had no idea where all this was coming from, but she decided not to care. Ed yanked his T-shirt up and unsnapped his jeans, nearly harming himself in his haste to get the zipper down. Shoving his boxers down too, he freed his cock and she forgot everything else. Big boy. At least when he was hard. She could feel it, tension coiled like a spring, running through him and between them as she encircled his shaft and stroked down hard. His body shook, abdomen vibrating against her arm with the strength of his impending orgasm. How long had he been hard like this? Since the beginning of the scene? Since he’d walked into the club?

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (1984)

  In Plato this link, contrived and natural at the same time, is sustained by the longing for self-perpetuation and immortality, which characterizes every perishable creature.22 In the Symposium, Diotima points out that such a longing exists in animals which, seized by the urge to procreate, “fall prey to a violent love-sickness,” and they are “ready to die if need be in order to secure the survival of their progeny.”23 It also exists in the human animal who, once his life is over, does not want to lie in a grave uncelebrated and “nameless.”24 This is why, according to the Laws, he should marry and provide himself with descendants in the best possible circumstances. But it is this same desire that makes some individuals who love boys eager, not to sow their seed in the body, but to engender in the soul and to give birth to that which is, of itself, beautiful.25 In Aristotle, in certain early texts like the treatise On the Soul, sexual activity’s connection with death and immortality is still expressed in the somewhat “Platonizing” form of a desire for participation in the eternal;26 in later texts such as the treatise On Generation and Corruption, or Generation of Animals, it is conceived in the form of a differentiation and distribution of beings in the natural order, according to a set of ontological principles concerning being, nonbeing, and the better. Proposing to explain in terms of final causes why there is procreation of animals and separate existence of the sexes, the second book of the Generation of Animals invokes a few basic principles governing the relationships of the myriads of beings to being per se. First, some things are eternal and divine, while others can be or not be; second, the beautiful and divine is always the better and what is not eternal can participate in the better and the worse; third, it is better to be than not to be, to live than not to live, to be animate than inanimate. And, observing that beings who are subject to becoming can be eternal only within the limits of their capability, he concludes that this is why there is generation of animals, and that the latter, excluded from eternity as individuals, can be eternal as a species: “numerically,” an animal “cannot be eternal, for the substance of things that are is particular; and if it were such, it would be eternal—but it is possible for it as a species.”27

• From The Principle of Desire (2013)

  “When you mentioned this yesterday I got curious and did some research. I think I’ll start with these sort of cobalt blue ones.” Cobalt blue on her breasts, it turned out. Ed nipped the first one on near her armpit, then frowned when it popped off. She was seconds from advising him how to get it to stay when he figured it out for himself, pinching a fold of skin between his fingers and pressing the clip around as much flesh as it would hold. His gaze flicked toward her face, unsure, and Beth held her breath until he continued. He placed the clips in two horribly ironic smile-shaped arcs, armpit to breastbone on each side, skirting just under her nipples which were painfully hard before he even got started. By the time he clipped the last blue pin to the skin of her left breast, Beth was pretty sure gentle, vanilla Ed had a heretofore unexplored sadistic streak. He watched her face closely as he added each new piece of pain to the mix, and when she cried out or cursed, he smiled as if he’d just discovered something wonderful. The same charming, boyish Ed smile, but in this context it was the evil smile of a child who’d just discovered the sick fascination of frying ants with a magnifying glass. He selected the bright green clips for her abdomen, ranking them in two rows from her ribs to her groin. She wanted to be stoic, to suffer in silence as long as possible the way she had always done, but that didn’t last long. The clips were wicked, and she started whimpering once he reached the skin next to her navel. “Go ahead and make noise. I like it. Tell me to go to hell if you want.” Oh, dear God. She experimented, her voice a squeaky rasp. “Okay. Go to hell.” “There, see? Nothing bad happened. Well, except for this.” He fastened another clip. “Oh, fuck you for that. Ow!” “Hehe. There’s a reason I chained you to the bed before I pulled out the bag. For the record, I can’t believe you’re letting me do this to you. This is awesome.” “Did Ivan explain to you about power exch—gaah, motherfucker!” Ed held up a yellow clip, grinning. “I ran out of the green ones. Yeah, he did. He just called it power exchange, though, without the motherfucker part. I didn’t really get it until now, though.” She breathed out all the way and forced herself to relax, to find the pure sensation within the pain. That was the magic, the trick to it all, taking the pain and turning into pleasure. Banter was fun, but it wasn’t what she was used to and it kept her from finding her way into warm, fuzzy subspace where pain became an abstract concept.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  You went in through the bar – I don’t remember ever actually being taken in there (even though feeling my pussy against the moleskin of a barstool with my flattened buttocks lending themselves to furtive fondling belongs to my very oldest fantasies). I’m not sure I even paid much attention to what was going on around me, to the few women perched by the bar whose buttocks and thatches passers-by certainly did play with. My place was in one of the back rooms, lying – as I have said – on a table. The walls were bare, there was no seating, there was nothing in these rooms except for the rough-hewn tables and ceilings lights. So I could stay there two or three hours. Always the same configuration: hands running over my body, me grabbing at cocks, turning my head from left to right to suck, while other cocks rammed my belly. Twenty could take it in turns in an evening. That position, the woman on her back with her pubis on a level with the man’s as he stands squarely on the ground, is one of the most comfortable I know. The vulva is well opened, the man in just the right place to thrust horizontally and strike deeply without stopping. It makes for vigorous and precise fucks. I was sometimes set upon so violently that I had to hold onto the ends of the table with both my hands and for a long time I bore the scar of a little gash above my coccyx, where my spine had rubbed against the rough wood. In the end Aimé closed. We went one last time; the place was deserted and Aimé himself, his bulk hovering behind the bar, was quietly getting at his wife. He had been summoned by the police. He was angry with her because she had persuaded us not to come back later.

• From The Principle of Desire (2013)

  She could see it on his face, the thought of making a “Hey, while you’re down there,” remark, and when she caught his eyes they both laughed. “Bad,” she admonished him. “I didn’t say anything.” “You didn’t have to.” “Freakin’ psychologists with their mad mind-reading skills.” “I didn’t need any special skills for that one.” Finishing off the knots, she stood and admired her handiwork. “There. That should work nicely.” Ed wiggled his feet, finding them just as fastly secured as his hands. “You better not be about to walk out with all my stuff.” Snickering, Beth leaned over and made an O with her thumb and third finger, letting Ed see the tension in the fingertip braced against the pad of her thumb before she lowered that hand to his lap and took aim. “No. No, don’t do that. No no no—” She flicked her finger hard at the underside of his stiff cock, and Ed’s last ‘no’ disintegrated into incoherence as his erection sprang away, then swayed gently back into place just in time to catch another flick. He stayed hard throughout this process, she couldn’t help but notice. “I’m not going to walk off with your stuff. I’m going to do this.” She took off her clothes slowly, relishing the way Ed strained to free his hands. Delighting in the unsatisfied longing on his face. Reveling in the knowledge that he would push his limits to please her, as long as it meant he could have her in the end. By the end of her impromptu striptease, Ed was making needy little sounds in the back of his throat, and she was as wet with need as she could ever remember being. To her chagrin, Ed proved himself more sensible in that moment. “Oh. Do I need a condom? They’re upstairs in my bathroom. I mean I don’t need one for any reason in particular. I’m not...you know. Nothing nasty going on. I’ve never even done it without a condom, actually.” “I’m on the Pill. And I have no nasty diseases or livestock going on down there, so that’s not an issue.” Aaron had been scrupulous about having them both tested regularly, even though she was never lent to any of his Dom friends, so she could only have caught things from Aaron. She’d viewed it as responsible and romantic in the early, halcyon days of their relationship. A sign of his concern for her well-being. Later she’d come to resent it, because it implied either that he was having unprotected sex and not telling her, or that he didn’t trust her fidelity. And she knew Aaron’s ego was too big for it to be the latter. He would never have imagined her cheating; he couldn’t even believe she’d left him. Fucker. “Beth? Everything okay?” “Everything’s awesome.”

• From The Principle of Desire (2013)

  He sounded like he was starting to buy her line of patter. Either that, or his acting skills were on a par with Aaron’s. His body wasn’t. With his arms stretched over his head, Ed looked trimmer, but his back lacked chiseling and Beth knew there was no six-pack on the other side. Just a fully unshaven, unwaxed, non-metrosexual and non-ripped torso. She wondered what it would feel like to rest her cheek on Ed’s chest or belly. Softer and furrier than she was used to, no doubt. Ed looked comfortable. Too comfortable. Time to change all that. “No more baggy-ass gym shorts outside your apartment.” She swung the mop flogger behind him, flicking it a few inches from his back to warn him of what was coming. Ed flinched, then chuckled when no blow fell. “No more gym shorts. Got it. Mistress.” Make me proud, boy. His jeans were still on, so her options were limited. She aimed for one shoulder blade, then the other, observing Ed’s reaction as the heavy, thudding blows fell. One, two strikes, then she swung her arm back to regroup. One, two, pause. One, two, pause. Again. After several cycles, Ed relaxed, no longer jumping at each fresh touch of the falls. As his shoulders and back turned a lovely shade of rose, slick sweat began to rise there too, dampening the flogger’s tips. The wet leather was heavier, and stung more, as Beth knew from experience. She expected him to safe out at any moment, but he kept pace with her increasingly severe strikes. Then she heard him grunting softly after each blow, and realized his hips were moving to the same rhythm, grinding against the beam he was shackled to. Small things. Small things that made her wet, made her legs shiver with envy for the column he was sort of dry-humping. There was a moment when all these elements came together, and everything disappeared but the two of them, and Beth thought she might go on forever in an endless loop of his pain and her anticipation. A sharper cry from Ed pulled her out of it. She’d gone longer and harder than she ever meant to, and as her arm tired her aim suffered. Her last stroke had left a sharp stripe across the pink background. She lowered the whip and stepped closer, examining Ed’s back. Tiny red dots dappled his skin, but those broken capillary marks were clustered more closely where the single heavier blow had landed. Fascinated with what she’d wrought, Beth pressed her fingers over the swelling welt, savoring Ed’s wince. He’d done it. Taken everything she’d dished out. He’d let her whip him almost bloody. Was she really worthy of that much trust? “Good boy. You’ve earned that date.” “Thank you, Mistress.” God, his voice. He sounded absolutely wrecked. She’d done that to him. He’d given that much of himself, and they were only casual acquaintances.

• From Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

  The professed structure of the writers’ conference is that of an epistemological dispensary. But the structure of desire beneath it that actually holds it stable and facilitates whatever dispersion of knowledge that takes place is that of a lottery with a very small chance of winning. Just as with the social practice described by my grandmother of tenant and landlord at the table over coffee, the social practices and friendly interchanges that not only appear to, but do, fill the writers’ conference reception halls, work to stabilize, retard, and mitigate the forces of the class war. In no way, however, can they halt or resolve that war. At best they allow that war to proceed in a more humane manner that keeps “war” merely a metaphor. In such situations, stabilization militates for less change in the power relations at the infrastructural level than might happen in a less concentrated and less competitive situation, even while existing social relations, happenstance, and yes, sometimes even merit might appear to be producing the odd “star” or lucky social “winner.” §3.4. Having said all the above, let me say that I attend writers’ conferences regularly, and science fiction conventions (science fiction is one of my particular writing interests) even more so. The clear and explicable reasons for my attendance are networking’s epistemological benefits. Those benefits result from the particularly dense field produced by the networking situation in which knowledge—not social favors—moves with particular speed. (The desire for social favor is the fuel—or the form—that propels that information through the social field.) At both formal sessions and informal gatherings, I find out about new writers and interesting books, as well as new publishing programs and changes in the business, much more quickly than I would without their benefits. By the same token, people find out about what I’m doing and get a clearer picture of my work. Because I’m comparatively comfortable appearing in public and discussing a range of topics from behind a podium or a panel table, people can get a taste of the sort of analysis I do and can decide whether or not they want to pursue these thoughts in my nonfiction critical work. Since I am a formal academic critic as well as a fiction writer—and a fiction writer who works in several genres—this is particularly important and promotes among a small group of concerned readers, at least, a more informed sense of my enterprise. I feel that my career benefits regularly from the results of my networking. My ultimate take on networking is, however, this: No single event in the course of my career that I can cite has been directly caused by networking. Nevertheless, the results of networking have regularly smoothed, stabilized, and supported my career and made it more pleasant (there is that term again) than it would have been without it.

• From The Principle of Desire (2013)

  “Practice. And you need to be addressing me properly, boy. Just for that, I’m going to make the other side match.” So she could switch hands, really. Before she did, though, she smoothed her palm over the heated patch she’d created, and dug in hard with her fingers until Ed whimpered and his foot started tapping again. “Mistress,” he conceded. “Uncle.” Oh, Ed. Beth released her new favorite piece of flesh, and let fly on the other side. Not too hard, not too long. Ed was a lightweight, not a pain slut, and she was working a tender area, close to the crease between butt and thigh. Slow and steady would win the race. When the red seemed to match the other side, she relented and stroked the spot she’d been spanking. “Good boy. See? That wasn’t so bad.” “I liked the flogger better. Just sayin’.” “But this way I get to feel your ass. Just sayin’.” She demonstrated, squeezing gently then moving her hand down to tease the tops of his thighs. “Your legs are shaking. Want to sit down?” “Sure, I guess. What—oh.” Beth slid the chair behind him, pressing the seat into the backs of his knees so he had to sit or step away. “From the other night I’m assuming you’re okay with bondage. Are ropes all right with you?” “I think anything you do right now is okay with me, to be honest.” He was so knee-shakingly erect she believed him. His cock was slightly purple toward the tip, and stood up straight from his lap. Taunting her. Daring her to mess with it. The temptation to show him some pictures of extreme ball torture and fuck with his head a little was achingly hard to resist, but somehow Beth managed. She didn’t want to scare the pretty hard-on away before she could make use of it. “I’m just planning to tie you to the chair, for now. So you can’t escape my evil clutches.” “And you like to be in control when you’re nervous. Mistress.” “You don’t have to call me that,” she blurted, not sure why. It suddenly sounded wrong, false, not like what they were doing at all. “Thanks. I would have forgotten anyway.” Rope in hand, she walked behind the chair and secured his hands behind it, binding his wrists to one another then securing the rope to one of the chair rungs. Ed balled his hands into fists, flexed them out again, testing the strength of the knots. Beth was confident in her rope work, though. He wouldn’t get out of it unless she wanted him to. The chest was next, a few loops around, more to create the sense of more restraint than to serve any functional purpose. Anticipating the scratch of the rope against her chest had Beth shivering. Another two loops over his meaty thighs, for psychology, and then Beth moved to the other two important knots at his ankles.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  Faced with my lack of aptitude, he let it alone and I don’t know whether, with other women, his masochism drove him to more demanding exploits. For me, these slapping sequences were just another delay in relationships dictated by infrequent and unscheduled rendezvous. They would prolong, even if not for very long, my wait for cock. As I have described, I would come to a rendezvous already in a state of exacerbated desire. From the very first full-on kisses, from the first moment when his arms crept up under my clothes, the pleasure was violent. Next, the unquenchable sucking rekindled my desire to an almost unbearable level. But when the moment of penetration finally came, my little internal thread had broken; I had waited too long. I should probably have looked at the cycle of my desire differently, considered his licking as a prelude, chosen to forego copulation, accepted the intervals between two rendezvous as a delicious echo of his guesses, and faced the facts: the high point was that moment when, having opened the door to me, without saying hello and while we were still muffled up in our coats, he would crush me roughly against him. In that case, the perfectionist that I am would not have seen the slaps as something that like a schoolgirl you learn but rather I would have just got on with them like the other preliminaries, smooches and simperings, that you just do.

• From The Principle of Desire (2013)

  Resisting the urge to peek over her shoulder, she returned to the kitchen and slumped over the counter, pressing her face to the cool tile until her breathing began to slow. She needed a plan, a way to make this happen for her and for Ed that didn’t involve a mild nervous breakdown on her part. With determination, she pushed off from the soothing countertop and opened up her duffel bag, considering the contents. The ball gag she’d threatened Ed with earlier. A few coils of plain hemp rope, in a range of lengths. A short flogger that she almost dreaded using now that she’d played with one of Ivan’s incredible custom-made models. Duct tape, because you never knew when you might need that. And a stack of case studies and some freshman psych quizzes she needed to grade. None of it inspired her until she glanced through the archway to the dining room and spotted one of the ladderback chairs. It looked well-made, sturdy and solid. Perfect. Beth picked up the bag and grabbed a chair as she returned to the living room to see how Ed was progressing. He was already stripped, with his clothes tossed randomly around on the floor. Clearly it had taken him no time at all to shuck them. He stood with his back to her, just as she’d left him. His hands were on his hips and he was tapping one toe impatiently. To Beth’s vast surprise and delight, Ed’s ass was stunning. Rounded, perky, smooth-skinned and better muscled than she’d anticipated. It practically begged to be wrecked, by whipping and any other means she could get him to agree to. “We need to find you some better-fitting pants, boy. You should be showing off that ass, not hiding it under saggy sweats and jeans.” He reached down, clearly a reflex, twining his fingers behind him and partially concealing his newly revealed best feature. “I think I’ll pass. I got called Bubble Butt all through middle and high school, and I don’t care to relive that experience.” “Mouthy. Move your hands so I can smack you around a little.” When he obliged, shifting his hands to the top of his head, she wasted no time in lining herself up and slapping the meatiest part of one cheek. The sound rang through the small room, and a pink blush bloomed on Ed’s pale skin. Her hand stung, but it was worth it. “Fuck.” She’d even rendered Ed mostly inarticulate. And, she saw when she glanced around him, hard as a rock. She struck again and again, aiming for the same spot, until pink turned to red and her hand was singing in complaint nearly as loudly as Ed. “You look so harmless, how the hell are you doing that? Jesus.”

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  Sexual fantasies are far too personal for them ever really to be shared. Still, I had a powerful imagination and this gave me a well from which I could draw when, later, I started meeting talkers. In my experience, most men make do with a few expressions and catch phrases; you’re their ‘little sucker in chief’, you’re ‘good at chewing nuts’ before entering the ranks of the ‘little bitch who’s not too ashamed to stay like that all night’, and you will rarely be ‘rammed right up to the hilt’ or ‘fucked good and deep’ without the incident being announced out loud. You encourage them, admitting that you’re just a ‘spunk bag’, and as they reassure you that you’re going to be given a good ‘stuffing’, ‘rogering’ or ‘seeing to’, you gasp and say ‘it’s so big’, ‘it’s so hard’ and ‘it’s so good’ until you eventually ‘swallow the fountain’, like the cat that got the cream. But these are just accentuations, reiterations punctuated by the mantra of interjections, gruntings and all the inflexions of the usual cries. Because, paradoxically, these words need less reciprocation than caresses do, dirty words are always more stereotyped and perhaps some of their power derives from the very fact that they belong to the most immutable inheritance. So, in the end, even words – which should help to distinguish us from each other – serve to fuse us all together and to accelerate the annihilation of the senses that we are all trying to achieve in those moments. It is quite another story to construct a complete running commentary throughout the act, given by two voices, in counterpoint to the physical exchange. Another man immeasurably – and quite fantastically – widened my understanding of fornicatory communion. He started the conversation by saying that he was going to take me to a hotel, there was little point in specifying what sort. There would be men queuing up by the bed, all the way out to the corridor. How much did I think they would pay to off-load in my cunt? I suggested: ‘Fifty francs?’ The correct sum was whispered quietly in my ear: ‘That’s far too much. No, they’ll give twenty francs to fuck you from the front and thirty to give it to you up the arse. How much of it are you going to take?’ Knowing that I always under-estimate, I ask ‘Twenty?’ a hard thrust of his dick given as a warning shot: ‘Is that all – thirty!’ Another stab in my vagina: ‘You’ll take a hundred and you won’t wash.’ ‘There’ll be young boys who’ll shoot their load almost before they get inside me.’ ‘They’ll do it on your stomach and your tits too, you’ll be covered in it.’ ‘Yes, and there’ll be some who are very old and very dirty, they won’t have washed for so long that they’ll have scabs on their skin.’ ‘Yes, and how much would you take to let them piss on you?’

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  I took her to a bar owned by a friend. I wanted to make it all seem ordinary. I needed this to be ordinary. I’d texted the friend ahead of time with a forcefully matter-of-fact heads-up, told her I’d figured out that I wasn’t straight, la la la, that Brandon and I had opened our relationship, that if she saw me at the bar, looking datey with a woman, that was why. Our friend must have told the bartender, who was an acquaintance. When he saw me with Nora, he smiled and introduced himself to her, and then he bought us a round. He unfurled a semblance of normalcy over us, light as a blanket on sand. We ate tacos on the same side of the banquette. I put my feet up on a chair, and so did she. By unspoken agreement, we did not allow them to touch. We could have gone up in flames. Are you sure your husband is okay with this? she said. How does he feel about it? I reassured her. I said he’d gone out one night this week and had let himself flirt a bit. I didn’t want to talk about him. The street was empty as we walked to my car. We stopped on the sidewalk beside a brick house with expensively pruned hedges. Something wobbled in my stomach, went zinging up between my ears. Can I kiss you? I asked, and then I did. Her mouth was open just enough. My lips found her upper lip just right of center, and I kissed the ridge where it met the skin above. Her tongue moved gently, a polite suggestion. I felt her mouth close around my lower lip, and I drove myself against her, linked my hands at the small of her back. Her breasts pressed against my chest. They were bigger than mine, pliant the way a waterbed is, and they made a peculiar spacer between us. I’d never collided this way with familiar and foreign, like-me and not-me. I’d never been this close to another woman, not since I was an infant with my mother. Nora and I were not the same person, but she knew what it felt like to have breasts, to have a vagina, to live in a body like this, to move it through the world, to move it against another body. This was a new intimacy: the pleasure of sameness. Her thigh slid between my legs and offered itself to me. I pressed my pelvis against the firm pad of her muscle and gave her my own thigh in return. We fit, because she was made like me. She whispered into my mouth and I pulled in her words like air.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  A maiden aunt, Leah’s mother called her, but one who played canasta with her friends three afternoons a week, and volunteered at the hospital every Friday morning. Alma approved of Henry and had told Leah’s mother so. Well, who in her right mind wouldn’t approve of Henry, a reporter for the Elizabeth Daily Post ? Henry was smart, kind, funny and very attractive. When he’d first enlisted, right out of high school, he hoped to serve as a reporter for Stars and Stripes, since he’d been editor in chief of the Monticello Times, the school newspaper at Jefferson High. But after just three months of training he’d been sent into battle. He said he was lucky to get out alive. Most of his company didn’t. He was in the hospital for two months with a shot-up leg. After that he got his wish, a desk job with Stars and Stripes in London, until six months after the war ended. He said he learned more from those journalists than he ever did at college. As much as Aunt Alma said she liked Henry, lately she’d been warning Leah about men in general, and Henry, in particular. Why should he buy the cow if he can get the milk for free? Aunt Alma’s advice, when it came to romance, was so old-world. Besides, Henry never pushed her to go too far. She might not have minded a little push. It wasn’t like they were teenagers, after all. Henry had turned twenty-eight over the summer and she would be twenty-four on her next birthday. And guess what, Aunt Alma? He wasn’t getting much at all, never mind for free. Though, honestly, if she turned twenty-five and she still wasn’t engaged, she saw no point in saving it. She might as well enjoy it while she still could. She was pretty sure Aunt Alma had never enjoyed hers. When the notice had come around at school asking for volunteers, especially teachers who had experience with young children, to chaperone a holiday party at the Elks Club in Elizabeth, Leah thought her principal might be impressed to see what a community-minded young woman she was, willing to give her time on a Sunday afternoon the week before Christmas. Another teacher at her school, Harriet Makenna, also volunteered and, better yet, offered to drive Leah, saving her from waiting for the bus from Cranford to Elizabeth in this weather. When she told Henry, he said he’d be covering the event for the Daily Post and he’d have a photographer with him. So Leah chose a pretty dress in a deep winter blue, even though she knew the picture in the paper wouldn’t be in color. At the last minute she tied on an apron. You never knew when some child was going to be sick or fling something that would land on you. More than a hundred kids came to the holiday party.