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 Little Birds (1979)

  Donald had left. He waited in the bathroom and looked into the mirror of the door. He saw Dorothy standing by John, her breasts in her hands. The fur had opened to reveal her whole body, glowing, luminous, rich in the fur, like some jeweled animal. Donald was stirred. John did not touch the body, he suckled at the breasts, sometimes stopping to feel the fur with his mouth, as if he were kissing a beautiful animal. The odor of her sex—pungent shell and sea odors, as if woman came out of the sea as Venus did—mixed with the odor of the fur, and John’s suckling grew more violent. Seeing Dorothy in the mirror, seeing the hair of her sex like the hair of the fur, Donald felt that if John touched her between the legs he would strike him. He came out of the bathroom, his penis exposed and erect, and walked towards Dorothy. This was so much like the first scene of her passion for Robert that she moaned with joy, tore herself from John and turned fully upon Donald, saying: “Take me, take me!” Closing her eyes, she imagined Robert crouching over her, tigerlike, tearing open the fur, and caressing her with many hands and mouths and tongues, touching every part of her, parting her legs, kissing her, biting her, licking her. She incited the two men to a frenzy. Nothing was heard but the breathing, the little suckling sounds, the sound of the penis swimming in her moisture. Leaving them both drowsy, she dressed and went so quickly that they barely were aware of it. Donald cursed: “She couldn’t wait. She couldn’t wait, she had to go back to him just as before. All wet and juicy from other men’s lovemaking.” It was true that Dorothy did not wash. When Robert arrived home a few moments after her, she was filled with rich odors, open, vibrating still. Her eyes, her gestures, her languid pose on the couch invited him. Robert knew her moods. He was quick to respond to them. He was so happy that she was as she had been long ago. She would be moist between the legs now, responsive. He plunged into her. Robert was never quite certain of when she was coming. The penis is rarely aware of this spasm in woman, this little palpitation. The penis can feel only its own ejaculation. This time Robert wanted to feel the spasm in Dorothy, the wild little clutching. He withheld his orgasm. She was convulsed. The moment seemed to have come. He forgot his watching in his own wave of pleasure. And Dorothy carried off her deception, unable to reach the orgasm that she had had only an hour before while closing her eyes and pretending it was Robert who was taking her.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  “Somehow or other even the hair of a whore seems impregnated with sex. This woman’s hair . . . it was the most sensual hair I have ever seen. Medusa must have had hair like this and with it seduced the men who fell under her spell. It was full of life, heavy, and as pungent as if it had been bathed in sperm. To me it always felt as if it had been wrapped around a penis and soaked in secretions. It was the kind of hair I wanted to wrap around my own sex. It was warm and musky, oily, strong. It was the hair of an animal. It bristled when it was touched. Merely to pass my fingers through it could give me an erection. I would have been content just touching her hair. “But it was not her hair alone. Her skin was erotic, too. She would lie for hours letting me stroke her, lie like an animal, absolutely quiet, languid . . . The transparence of her skin showed turquoise-blue threads interlacing her body, and I felt that I was not only touching satin but living veins, veins so alive that when I touched her skin I could feel the movement underneath. I used to like lying against her buttocks and caressing her, to feel the contractions of the muscles, which betrayed her responsiveness. “Her skin was dry like some dessert sand. When we first lay in bed it was cool, and then it would become warm and feverish. Her eyes—it is impossible to describe her eyes except by saying that they were the eyes of an orgasm. What constantly happened in her eyes was something so feverish, so incendiary, so intense that at times when I looked straight at her and felt my penis rising and palpitating, I also felt as if something were palpitating in her eyes. With her eyes alone she could give this response, this absolutely erotic response, as if febrile waves were trembling there, pools of madness . . . something devouring that could lick a man all over like a flame, annihilate him, with a pleasure never known before.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  Lena made a wry face. “How can you do it?” she asked him. “Such old women, how can you possibly get an erection? If I saw a woman like that lying on my bed, I would run away.” The young man smiled. “There are so many ways of doing it. One is to close my eyes and to imagine it is not an old woman but a woman I like, and then when my eyes are closed I begin to think how pleasant it will be to be able to pay my rent the next day or to buy a new suit or silk shirts. And as I do this, I keep stroking the woman’s sex without looking, and, you know, if your eyes are closed, they feel about the same, more or less. Sometimes, though, when I have difficulty I take drugs. Of course, I know that at this rate my career will last about five years and that at the end of that time I will not be of any use even to a young woman. But by then I will be glad never to see a woman again. “I certainly envy my Argentine friend, my roommate. He is a handsome, aristocratic man, absolutely effete. Women would love him. When I leave the apartment, do you know what he does? He gets up out of bed, pulls out a small electric iron and an ironing board, takes his pants and begins to press them. As he presses them he imagines how he will come out of the building so impeccably dressed, how he will walk down Fifth Avenue, how somewhere he will spy a beautiful woman, follow the scent of her perfume for many blocks, follow her into crowded elevators, almost touching her. The woman will be wearing a veil and a fur around her neck. Her dress will outline her figure. “After following her thus through the shops, he will finally speak to her. She will see his handsome face smiling at her and the chivalrous way he has of carrying himself. They will go off together and sit having tea somewhere, then go to the hotel where she is staying. She will invite him to come up with her. They will get into the room and then pull down the shades and lie in the darkness making love.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  Had he understood that it was involuntary, not truly in her? Whether he had or not, he was blindly determined to break her. Over and over again they met, undressed, lay side by side, kissed and caressed themselves to a frenzy, and each time he pushed his penis downwards and hid it away. Over and over again she lay passive, showing no desire, no impatience. She was in a state of excitement, which exacerbated all her sensibilities. It was as if she had taken new drugs that made the entire body more alive to caresses, to a touch, to the very air. She felt her dress on her skin like a hand. It seemed to her that everything was touching her like a hand, teasing her breasts, her thighs continuously. She had discovered a new realm, a realm of suspense and watchfulness, of erotic wakefulness such as she had never known. One day when she was walking with him, she lost the heel of one shoe. He had to carry her. That night he took her, in the candlelight. He was like a demon crouching over her, his hair wild, his charcoal-black eyes burning into hers, his strong penis pounding into her, into the woman whose submission he first demanded, submission to his desire, his hour. The ChanchiquitoWhen Laura was about sixteen, she remembered, she was told endless stories of life in Brazil by an uncle who had lived there many years before. He laughed at the inhibitions of Europeans. He said that in Brazil people made love like monkeys, frequently and easily; women were accessible and willing; everybody acknowledged his sensual appetite. He told laughingly of the advice he had given to a friend who was going to Brazil. He had said, “You must take two hats.” “Why?” asked the friend. “I do not want to be loaded with baggage.” “Nevertheless,” said Laura’s uncle, “you must take two hats with you. The wind may carry one of them off.” “But I can pick it up, can’t I?” asked the friend. “In Brazil,” said Laura’s uncle, “you cannot lean over or . . .” He also claimed that in Brazil there existed an animal called the chanchiquito. It looked like a very small pig with an overdeveloped snout. The chanchiquito had a passion for running up the skirts of women and inserting his snout between their legs. One day, according to her uncle, a very pompous and aristocratic lady arranged a meeting with her lawyer about a will. He was a white-haired, distinguished old man she had known for many years. She was a widow, a very reserved, imposing woman, sumptuously dressed in full satin skirts, with lace collar and cuffs neatly starched and a veil over her face. She sat stiffly like some personage out of an old painting, resting one hand on her parasol, the other on the arm of a chair. They had a quiet and methodical talk together about details of the will.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  In the cart he offered her wine and they smoked. And he kissed her again. He raised himself to close the little curtain. And then he undressed her, slowly, taking off the stockings delicately, his big brown hands handling them as if they were gauze, invisible. He stopped to look at her garters. He kissed her feet. He smiled at her. His face was strangely pure, illumined with a youthful joy, and he undressed her as if she were his first woman. He was awkward with her skirt but finally unhooked it, with a curiosity about the way it fastened. More adeptly he raised her sweater above her head, and she was left with only her panties on. He fell on her, kissing her mouth over and over again. Then he took off his own clothes, and fell on her again. As they kissed, his hand gripped her panties and pulled them, and he whispered, “You are so delicate, so small, I cannot believe that you have a sex.” He parted her legs only to kiss her. She felt his penis hard against her belly, but he took it and pushed it downwards. Hilda was amazed to see him do this, push his penis down between his legs, cruelly, thrusting away his desire. It was as if he enjoyed denying himself, while at the same time arousing them both to a breaking point with kissing. Hilda moaned with the pleasure and the pain of expectancy. He moved over her body, now kissing her mouth, now her sex, so that the shell-like flavor of the sex was brought to her mouth and they mingled together, in his mouth and breath. But he continued to push away his penis, and when they had worn themselves out with unfulfilled excitement he lay over her and fell asleep like a child, his fists closed, his head on her breast. Now and then he caressed her, mumbling, “It is not possible that you have a sex. You are too delicate and small . . . You are unreal . . .” He kept his hand between her legs. She rested against his body, which was twice the size of hers. She was vibrating so much that she could not sleep. His body smelled like a precious-wood forest; his hair, like sandalwood, his skin, like cedar. It was as if he had always lived among trees and plants. Lying at his side, deprived of her fulfillment, Hilda felt that the female in her was being taught to submit to the male, to obey his wishes. She felt that he was still punishing her for the gesture she had made, for her impatience, for her first act of leadership. He would rouse her and deprive her until he had broken this willfulness in her.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  Has The Battle for God changed the way you understand the role of religion in defining and encouraging morality in public and private life? Has religion played a positive or a negative role in shaping the world we live in today? 14. Does The Battle for God change how you feel about fundamentalism in religion? In what way? Are you more or less sympathetic toward fundamentalists than you were when you first picked up the book? About the Author Karen Armstrong, one of the foremost commentators on religious affairs, is the bestselling author of A History of God (1993), The Battle for God (2000), Islam: A Short History (2000), and Buddha (2001), among many other books. Having spent seven years as a Roman Catholic nun, she left her order in 1969 and took a B. Litt. at Oxford, taught modern literature at the University of London, and headed the English department of a public girls’ school. She became a freelance writer and broadcaster in 1982, and in 1983 she worked in the Middle East on a six-part documentary television series on the life and works of St. Paul. Her other television work has included “Varieties of Religious Experience” (1984) and “Tongues of Fire” (1985); the latter resulted in an anthology by that name on religious and poetic expression. In 1996 she participated in Bill Moyers’s television series “Genesis.” She teaches at the Leo Baeck College for the Study of Judaism and the Training of Rabbis and Teachers and was awarded the 1999 Muslim Public Affairs Council Media Award. She regularly contributes reviews and articles to newspapers and journals. Read on for an excerpt from Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong Wish for a Better World In November 2007, I heard that I had won a prize. Each year TED (the acronym for Technology, Entertainment, Design), a private nonprofit organization best known for its superb conferences on “ideas worth spreading,” gives awards to people whom they think have made a difference but who, with their help, could make even more of an impact. Other winners have included former U.S. president Bill Clinton, the scientist E. O. Wilson, and the British chef Jamie Oliver. The recipient is given $100,000 but, more important, is granted a wish for a better world. I knew immediately what I wanted. One of the chief tasks of our time must surely be to build a global community in which all peoples can live together in mutual respect; yet religion, which should be making a major contribution, is seen as part of the problem. All faiths insist that compassion is the test of true spirituality and that it brings us into relation with the transcendence we call God, Brahman, Nirvana, or Dao.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  “Instead of going into the kitchen when you leave us, will you go into the bathroom for a while, and look at the mirror?” Donald consented. His friend, John, arrived. He was a magnificent man physically, but in his face there was a strange quality of decadence, a laxity about the eyes and mouth, something on the verge of perverseness, which fascinated Dorothy. It was as if none of the ordinary pleasures of love could satisfy him. In his face there was a peculiar insatiability, curiosity—he had something of the animal. His lips bared his teeth. He seemed startled at the sight of Dorothy. “I like women of fine breed,” he said immediately and looked gratefully at Donald for the gift, the surprise of her presence. Dorothy was all in fur from head to toe—hat, muff, gloves, even fur on her shoes. Her perfume had already filled the room. John stood above her, smiling. His gestures were growing more festive. Suddenly he bent forward like some stage director and said: “I have something to ask you. You are so beautiful. I hate the clothes which conceal a woman. Yet I hate to take them off. Will you do something for me, something exceptionally wonderful? Please take your clothes off in the other room and come back here in only your furs. Will you? I’ll tell you why I ask you this. Only thoroughbred women look beautiful in furs, and you are a thoroughbred.” Dorothy went into the bathroom, slipped out of her clothes and returned in her furs, keeping on only her stockings and little fur-trimmed shoes. John’s eyes glittered with pleasure. He could only sit and look at her. His excitement was so strong and contagious that Dorothy began to feel her breasts growing sensitive at the tips. She had a feeling that she wanted to expose them, that she wanted to open the fur and watch John’s pleasure. Usually the warmth and stirring of the nipples occurred together with the warmth and stirring of the sex mouth. Today she could feel only her breasts, the compulsion to expose them, to raise them with her hands, to offer them. John leaned over and put his mouth to them.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  For ten days we worked out in the open, lying in the sun. The sun would warm my body, as Reynolds waited for me to close my eyes. Sometimes I pretended I wanted him to do more to me. I thought that if I closed my eyes he would take me. I liked the way he would walk up to me, like a hunter, making no sound and lying at my side. Sometimes he lifted my dress first and looked at me for a long time. Then he would touch me lightly, as if he did not want to awaken me, until the moisture came. His fingers would quicken. We kept our mouths together, our tongues caressing. I learned to take his penis in my mouth. This excited him terribly. He would lose all his gentleness, push his penis into my mouth, and I was afraid of choking. Once I bit him, hurt him, but he did not mind. I swallowed the white foam. When he kissed me, our faces were covered with it. The marvelous smell of sex impregnated my fingers. I did not want to wash my hands. I felt that we shared a magnetic current, but at the same time nothing else bound us together. Reynolds had promised to drive me back to New York. He could not stay in the country much longer. I had to find work. During the drive back Reynolds stopped the car and we lay on a blanket in the woods, resting. We caressed. He said, “Are you happy?” “Yes.” “Can you continue to be happy, this way? As we are?” “Why, Reynolds, what is it?” “Listen, I love you. You know that, but I can’t take you. I did that to a girl once, and she got pregnant and had an abortion. She bled to death. Since then I haven’t been able to take a woman. I’m afraid. If that should happen to you, I would kill myself.” I had never thought of things like this. I was silent. We kissed for a long time. For the first time he kissed me between the legs instead of caressing me, kissed me until I felt the orgasm. We were happy. He said, “This little wound women have . . . it frightens me.” In New York it was hot and all the artists were still away. I found myself without work. I took up modeling in dress shops. I could easily get work, but when they asked me to go out in the evenings with the buyers I would refuse and lose the job. Finally I was taken into a big place near Thirty-fourth Street where they employed six models. This place was frightening and gray. There were long rows of clothes and a few benches for us to sit on. We waited in our slips, to be ready for quick changes. When our numbers were called, we helped one another dress.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  “At five o’clock in the afternoon it becomes unbearable. There is love and desire in the air. Everybody is in the streets. The cafés are full. In the movies there are little boxes that are completely dark and curtained off so that you can make love on the floor while the movie is going on and not be seen. It is all so open, so easy. No police to interfere. A woman friend of mine who was followed and annoyed by a man complained to the policeman at the corner. He laughed and said, ‘You’ll be sorrier the day no man wants to annoy you, won’t you? After all, you should be thankful instead of getting angry.’ And he would not help her.” Then my admirer said in a lower voice, “Will you come and have dinner with me and go to the theatre?” He became my first real lover. I forgot Reynolds and Stephen. They now seemed like children to me. The QueenThe painter sat beside his model mixing colors while he talked about the whores that had stirred him. His shirt was open, showing a strong, smooth neck and a tuft of dark hair; his belt was loosened for comfort, a button was missing from his pants, and his sleeves were turned up for freedom. He was saying, “I like a whore best of all because I feel she will never cling to me, never get entangled with me. It makes me feel free. I do not have to make love to her. The only woman who ever gave me the same pleasure was a woman who was incapable of falling in love, who gave herself like a whore, who despised the men she gave herself to. This woman had been a whore and was colder than a statue. The painters had discovered her and used her as a model. She was a magnificent model. She was the very essence of the whore. Somehow in the whore the cold womb, constantly subjected to desire, produces a phenomenon. All the eroticism comes to the surface. The constant living with a penis inside of one does something fascinating to a woman. The womb seems to be exposed, to be present in every aspect of her.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  She was walking towards the ocean. He followed her. They walked in the snowlike dunes for a long while. At the ocean’s edge, she flung off her clothes and stood naked in the summer night. She ran into the surf. And Louis, in imitation, discarded his clothes and ran into the water also. Only then did she see him. At first she was still. But when she saw his young body clearly in the moonlight, his fine head, his smile, she was not frightened. He swam towards her. They smiled at each other. His smile, even at night, was dazzling; hers, too. They could scarcely distinguish anything but the brilliant smiles and the outlines of their perfect bodies. He came closer to her. She let him. Suddenly he swam deftly and gracefully over her body, touching it, and passing on. She continued to swim, and he repeated his passage over her. Then she stood up, and he dove down and passed between her legs. They laughed. They both moved with ease in the water. He was deeply excited. He swam with his sex hard. Then they approached each other with a crouching motion, as if for a battle. He brought her body against his, and she felt the tautness of his penis. He placed it between her legs. She touched it. His hands searched her, caressed her everywhere. Then again she moved away, and he had to swim to catch her. Again his penis lay lightly between her legs, then he pressed her more firmly against him and sought to penetrate her. She broke loose and ran out of the water, into the sand dunes. Dripping, shining, laughing, he ran after her. The warmth of the running set him on fire again. She fell on the sand, and he over her. Then at the moment when he most desired her, his power suddenly failed him. She lay waiting for him, smiling and moist, and his desire wilted. Louis was baffled. He had been in a state of desire for days. He wanted to take this woman and he couldn’t. He was deeply humiliated. Strangely enough, her voice grew tender. “There is plenty of time,” she said. “Don’t move away. It’s lovely.” Her warmth passed into him. His desire did not return, but it was sweet to feel her. Their bodies lay together, his belly against hers, his sexual hair brushing against hers, her breasts pointed against his chest, her mouth glued to his. Then slowly he slipped off to look at her—her long, slender, polished legs, her rich pubic hair, her lovely pale glowing skin, her full breasts very high, her long hair, her wide smiling mouth. He was sitting like a Buddha. She leaned over and took his small wilted penis in her mouth. She licked it softly, tenderly, lingering over the tip of it. It stirred.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  I did not know how I could pose for him. But he was thinking of another picture. He said, “It will be easy. I want you to fall asleep. But you will be wrapped in white sheets. I saw something in Morocco once that I always wanted to paint. A woman had fallen asleep among her silk spools, holding the silk weaving frame with her hennaed feet. You have beautiful eyes, but they’ll have to be closed.” He went into the cabin and brought out sheets which he draped around me like a robe. He propped me against a wooden box, arranged my body and hands as he wanted them and began to sketch immediately. It was a very hot day. The sheets made me warm, and the pose was so lazy that I actually fell asleep, I don’t know for how long. I felt languid and unreal. And then I felt a soft hand between my legs, very soft, caressing me so lightly I had to awaken to make sure I had been touched. Reynolds was bending over me, but with such an expression of delighted gentleness that I did not move. His eyes were tender, his mouth half open. “Only a caress,” he said, “just a caress.” I did not move. I had never felt anything like this hand softly, softly caressing the skin between my legs without touching my sex. He only touched the tips of my pubic hair. Then his hand slipped down to the little valley around the sex. I was growing lax and soft. He leaned over and put his mouth on mine, lightly touching my lips, until my own mouth responded, and only then did he touch the tip of my tongue with his. His hand was moving, exploring, but so softly, it was tantalizing. I was wet, and I knew if he moved just a little more he would feel this. The languor spread all through my body. Each time his tongue touched mine I felt as if there were another little tongue inside of me, flicking out, wanting to be touched too. His hand moved only around my sex, and then around my ass, and it was as if he magnetized the blood to follow the movements of his hands. His finger touched the clitoris so gently, then slipped between the lips of the vulva. He felt the wetness. He touched this with delight, kissing me, lying over me now, and I did not move. The warmth, the smells of plants around me, his mouth over mine affected me like a drug. “Only a caress,” he repeated gently, his finger moving around my clitoris until the little mound swelled and hardened. Then I felt as if a seed were bursting in me, a joy that made me palpitate under his fingers. I kissed him with gratitude. He was smiling. He said, “Do you want to caress me?”

• From Little Birds (1979)

  “The women who are unabashedly sexual, with the womb written all over their faces, who arouse in a man the desire to fling his penis at them immediately; the women for whom clothes are only a means of making certain fragments of the body more prominent, like the women who wore bustles to exaggerate their asses, and the women who wore corsets that thrust their breasts out of their clothes; the women who throw their sex out at us, from the hair, the eyes, the noses, the mouth, the whole body—these are the women I love. “The others . . . how you have to search for the animal in them. They have diluted it, disguised it, perfumed it, so it will smell like something else—like what? angels? “Let me tell you what happened to me once with Bijou. Bijou was naturally faithless. She asked me to paint her up for the Art Ball. It was a year when the painters and models were supposed to go dressed as African savages. So Bijou asked me to paint her up artistically, and for this purpose she came to my studio a few hours before the ball. “I set about decorating her body with African designs of my own invention. She stood stark naked before me, and at first I stood up and began to paint her shoulders and breasts, and then I crouched to paint the belly and back, then I kneeled and began to paint the lower part of the body and legs . . . I painted her lovingly, adoringly, like an act of worship. “Her back was broad, strong, like the back of a circus horse. I could have mounted her and she would not have bent under the burden. I could have sat on this back and slid down and given it to her from behind, like a whip. I wanted to. Even more, perhaps, I wanted to squeeze her breasts until all the paint came off, caressed them clean so that I could kiss them . . . But I restrained myself and continued to paint her into a savage. “When she moved, the bright designs now moved with her, like an oily sea with undercurrents. Her nipples were hard like berries under the touch of the brush. Every curve gave me a delight. I unfastened my pants. I let my penis free. She never looked at me. She stood there without moving. As I painted the hips and then the valley leading to the pubic hair, she realized I would not be able to finish my task and said, “You will spoil the whole thing if you touch me. You can’t touch me. After it is dry, you will be the first. I will wait for you at the ball. But not now.” And she smiled at me.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  Before her astonished face, he took hold of his erect penis and caressed it, giving himself all the pleasure he could extract, sometimes using only two fingers around the tip of it, sometimes the whole hand, and Jeanette could see every contraction and expansion. It was as if he held a palpitating bird in his hand, a captive bird that tried to leap at her but that Pierre kept for his own pleasure. She gazed at Pierre’s penis, fascinated. She drew her face nearer. But his anger at her for darting out of the room to Jean was still fresh in him. She knelt in front of him. Although she was throbbing between the legs, she felt if she could at least kiss his penis she might satisfy her desire. Pierre let her kneel. He seemed about to offer his penis to her mouth, but he did not. He continued to massage it, angrily enjoying his own motions, as if to say, “I don’t need you.” Jeanette threw herself on the bed and became hysterical. Her wild gestures, the way she pressed her head back into the pillow so she could no longer see Pierre caressing himself, the way her body lay arched upwards—all of this stirred Pierre. But still he did not give her his penis. Instead, he buried his face between her legs. Jeanette fell back and grew quieter. She murmured softly. Pierre’s mouth gathered the fresh foam between her legs, but he would not let her reach her pleasure. He teased her. As soon as he felt the rhythm of her pleasure starting he stopped. He held her legs apart. His hair fell on her belly and caressed her. His left hand reached for one of her breasts. Jeanette lay almost swooning. He knew now that Jean could come in and she would not notice him. Jean could even make love to her, and she would not notice him. She was completely under the spell of Pierre’s fingers, awaiting pleasure from him. When finally his erect penis touched her soft body, it was as if he had burned her; she trembled. He had never seen her body so abandoned, so unconscious of all but the desire to be taken and satisfied. She bloomed under his caresses, no longer the girl but the woman already being born. [image file=image_rsrcWZ.jpg] About the AuthorANAÏS NIN (1903–1977) was born in Paris and aspired at an early age to be a writer. An influential artist and thinker, she was the author of several novels, short stories, critical studies, a collection of essays, two volumes of erotica, and nine published volumes of her Diary. Connect with HMH on Social MediaFollow us for book news, reviews, author updates, exclusive content, giveaways, and more. [image "HMH on Twitter" file=image_rsrcX0.jpg] [image "HMH on Facebook" file=image_rsrcX1.jpg] [image "HMH on Tumblr" file=image_rsrcX2.jpg] [image "HMH on Pinterest" file=image_rsrcX3.jpg] [image "HMH on Instagram" file=image_rsrcX4.jpg] [image "HMH on YouTube" file=image_rsrcX5.jpg] [image "Houghton Mifflin Harcourt" file=image_rsrcX6.jpg] Footnotes*Adapted from the introduction to the story published as “Marianne” in Delta of Venus. [back]

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  These writers aimed at the dissolution of the self within the divine, and at a powerful inward-looking style of devotion; such mysticism was taken up by monks and nuns across German lands as well as by laypeople. Staupitz could therefore write in an explicit manner of the revelation of Christ, the eternal bridegroom, “now with kisses, now with embraces, now with advancing of the naked to the naked”—but all chastely revealed. 62 He wrote of different “stages” of union of the soul, the first being that of “young maids in faith,” the second that of the “concubine,” the third, the “queens”: “They are naked and copulate with the naked one. They taste that outside Christ there is nothing sweet and they enjoy [his] continuous sweetness. For the naked Christ cannot deny himself to these naked,” while in the fourth stage, which Mary alone experienced, Jesus “sleeps naked with her naked and he shows other signs of such love.” Highly sensual language is also applied to Christ’s suffering—the naked Christ is the suffering Christ, and Staupitz had referred in his earlier sermons at Salzburg to Christ’s “little bed of enjoyment” ( lustpetel ), by which he meant the Cross. 63 These Salzburg sermons, preached to the townspeople, were transcribed by the Benedictine nuns of St. Peter’s convent next door to the church, and one wonders what they made of this fairly explicit eroticism. Staupitz defended himself against the objection that human love cannot be a model for divine love because it springs from concupiscence, by arguing (in line with tradition) that what matters is not “the contact of bodies but…the perversion of the [natural] order, that is when temporal enjoyment is given preference to eternal ones.” 64 But this hardly obliterated the powerful sexual charge of his language. Erotic mysticism was not unusual in the late Middle Ages, dwelling on sweetness, pleasure, melting, and union, but in Staupitz’s hands it has a saccharine literalness that exploited its potential for eroticizing suffering. 65 Eroticism of this variety, characterized by displaced desire, can readily be twinned with suspicion of the other sex.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  Wrinkling his brow, Jan looked intently to find the outline, but he did not see it. He began to draw at random, following rough ragged edges and confused lines, and what began to take form was a dog who was climbing over the woman, and, with one last ironic stroke of the charcoal, he drew in the dog’s knifelike sex almost touching the woman’s pubic hair. Laura said, “I see another dog.” “I don’t see it,” said Jan, and he lay back fully on the bed to admire his drawing, while Laura stood up and began to draw a dog that was climbing over Jan’s dog from behind, in the most classical of poses, his shaggy head of hair buried in the other’s back as if he were devouring it. Then with the charcoal Laura began to search for a man. At all cost she wanted a man in this picture. She wanted a man to look at while Jan was looking at the woman with her skirt raised. She began to draw, cautiously, for the lines could not be invented, and if they wavered too much and too faithfully and according to the contours of the plaster, she would have a tree, or a bush, or a monkey. But slowly the man’s torso emerged. True, he was legless, and his head was small, but all this was amply compensated for by the largeness of his sex, which was quite obviously in an aggressive mood as he watched the dogs coupling almost on top of the reclining woman. And then Laura was satisfied and lay back. They both looked at the drawing, laughing, and as they did so, Jan with his big hands still full of drying paint, began to explore under her skirt as if he were drawing, molding the contours with a pencil, touching each line amorously, very gradually traveling up the legs, making sure of having caressed every region and of having gone around every curve. Laura’s legs were half pressed together like the legs of the woman on the ceiling, toes pointed like a ballet dancer’s, so when Jan’s hand reached her thighs and wanted to be allowed between them, he had to part them with a little force. Laura was nervously resisting, as if she did not want to be anything but the woman on the ceiling, merely exposed, the sex closed, the legs rigid. Jan labored to melt this rigidity, this firmness, and he set about doing it with utmost gentleness and persistence, making magic circles with his fingers on the flesh, as if he could make the blood turn in eddies a little faster, and then yet a little faster.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  Rango stood above Hilda and stared at her. Then he said, “Do you want to walk?” Hilda said yes. Rango walked with his hands in his pockets, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He was sober now, his head as clear as the night. He was walking towards the outskirts of the city. They came to the ragpickers’ shacks, little shacks built unevenly, crazily, with sloping roofs and no windows—enough air came through the cracked boards and badly built doors. The paths were made of earth. A little farther on stood a row of gypsy carts. It was four in the morning, and people were asleep. Hilda did not talk. She walked in the shadow of Rango with a great feeling of being taken out of herself, of having no will and no knowledge of what was happening to her, merely a pervading sense of flow. Rango’s arms were bare. Hilda was aware of only one thing, that she wanted these bare arms to grip her. He bowed to enter his cart. He lit a candle. He was too tall for the low ceiling, but she was smaller and could stand straight. The candles made huge shadows. His bed was open, merely a blanket thrown back. His clothes were strewn around. There were two guitars. He took one up and began to play, sitting among his clothes. Hilda had the feeling that she was dreaming, that she must keep her eyes on his bare arms, on his throat showing through the open shirt, so that he would feel what she felt, the same magnetism. At the same moment that she felt she was falling into darkness, into his golden-brown flesh, he fell towards her, covered her with kisses, very hot, quick kisses, into which his breath passed. He kissed her behind her ears, on her eyelids, her throat, her shoulders. She was blinded, deafened, made senseless. Every kiss, like a gulp of wine, added to the warmth of her body. Every kiss increased the heat of his lips. But he made no gesture to raise her dress or to undress her. They lay there for a long time. The candle was finished. It sputtered and went out. In the darkness she felt his burning dryness, like desert sand, enveloping her. Then in this darkness, the Hilda who had made this gesture so many times before was impelled to make it once more, out of her dream and drunkenness of kisses. Her hand fumbled for his belt with the cold silver buckle, felt below the belt at the buttons of his pants, felt his desire. Suddenly he pushed her away as if she had wounded him. He stood up, reeling a little, and lit another candle. She could not understand what had happened. She saw that he was angry. His eyes had grown fierce. His high cheeks, which seemed always to be smiling, no longer smiled. His mouth was compressed. “What have I done?” she asked.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  She is as opulent as a burlesque queen. As she stands on her toes to lean towards the mirror and paint her eyelashes more carefully, I am again affected by her body. I come up behind her and watch her. I feel a little timid. She isn’t as inviting as Mary. She is, in fact, sexless, like the women at the beach or at the Turkish bath, who think nothing of their nakedness. I try a light kiss on her shoulder. She smiles at me and says, “I wish Paul were not so irritable. I would have liked to try the bathing suit on you. I would love to see you wearing it.” She returns my kiss, on the mouth, taking care not to disturb her lipstick outline. I do not know what to do next. I want to take hold of her. I stay near her. Then Paul comes into the bathroom without knocking and says, “Miriam, how can you walk around like this? You mustn’t mind, Mandra. It is a habit with her. She is possessed with the need to go around without clothes. Get dressed, Miriam.” Miriam goes into her room and slips on a dress, with nothing underneath, then a fox cape, and says, “I’m ready.” In the car she places her hand over mine. Then she draws my hand under the fur, into a pocket of the dress, and I find myself touching her sex. We drive on in the dark. Miriam says she wants to drive through the park first. She wants air. Paul wants to go directly to the nightclub, but he gives in and we drive through the park, I with my hand on Miriam’s sex, fondling it and feeling my own excitement gaining so that I can hardly talk. Miriam talks, wittily, continuously. I think to myself, “You won’t be able to go on talking in a little while.” But she does, all the time that I am caressing her in the dark, beneath the satin and the fur. I can feel her moving upwards to my touch, opening her legs a little so I can fit my entire hand between her legs. Then she grows tense under my fingers, stretching herself, and I know she is taking her pleasure. It is contagious. I feel my own orgasm without even being touched. I am so wet that I am afraid it will show through my dress. And it must show through Miriam’s dress, too. We both keep our coats on as we go into the nightclub. Miriam’s eyes are brilliant, deep. Paul leaves us for a while and we go into the ladies’ room. This time Miriam kisses my mouth fully, boldly. We arrange ourselves and return to the table. RunawayPierre was sharing an apartment with a much younger man, Jean. One day Jean brought home a young girl he had found wandering in the streets. He had seen that she was not a prostitute.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  “I was enjoying myself,” said Jeanette, startled. “Of course I was. I was only afraid of Jean’s coming and of his hearing me. I thought, if he comes and finds me here, at least if he does not hear me he may think you took me against my will. But if he hears me, he will know I enjoy it and be hurt, for he is the one who keeps saying to me, ‘So you like it, so you like it, say so then, go on, speak, cry out, you like it, eh? It gets you, you enjoy it, enjoy it then, say so, speak, how does it feel?’ I can’t tell him how it feels, but it makes me cry out and then he is happy and that excites him.” Jean should have known what would happen between Jeanette and Pierre while he was out, but he did not believe Pierre could take a real interest in her; she was too much of a child. He was immensely surprised when he returned and found that Jeanette had stayed on and that Pierre was perfectly willing to console her, to take her out. Pierre took pleasure in buying her clothes. For this purpose he accompanied her to the shops and waited as she tried on clothes inside the little booths provided for this. He delighted in seeing through a slit of the hastily drawn curtains not only Jeanette, her girlish body slipping in and out of dresses, but other women too. He would sit quietly in a chair facing the dressing rooms, smoking. He could see portions of shoulders, bare backs, legs, flitting behind the curtains. And Jeanette’s gratitude for the clothes he gave her took the form of a coquetry comparable only to the mannerisms of stripteasers. She could hardly wait to be out of the shop to glue herself to him as they walked, saying, “Look at me. Isn’t it beautiful?” And she would thrust her breasts out provocatively. As soon as they got into a taxi she wanted him to touch the material, to approve the buttons, to straighten the neckline. She stretched her body voluptuously, to see how closely the dress fit her; she caressed the material as if it were her own skin. As eager as she had been to wear the dress, she now seemed eager to take it off, to have it handled by Pierre, to have it wrinkled, to have it baptized by his desire.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  I have a great urge to chime in with some information, but I hold off for propriety’s sake and because Otto would beat me up. Otto’s got a giant throbbing blue-veiner for Romaine Lewis’s little sister, Rayette. She is probably the most beautiful girl in town, and that includes Belle. Our critical view may be slightly clouded because Rayette is black and seems mysterious to us. But if she’s not at least as beautiful as Belle, I’ll eat her panties off. But then I’d like to do that, anyway. Rayette is one of those black girls like Leeland Wain’s wife, Joretta. Very delicately featured. A little turned-up nose, gigantic brown eyes, long thin bones, and tits like women in Marvel comics. The problem is she’s only fifteen. Otto takes her out sometimes, I know, because Romaine told me how nice Rayette said he was. Except for their both being tall, Romaine and Rayette look so different it’s hard to believe they’re brother and sister. Every place Rayette is delicate, Romaine is obtuse. Rayette, for example, has very thin lips. But Romaine has a nose almost exactly like a gorilla’s, and as Balldozer noted Tuesday before the match, he’s got lips “like the brim of a chamber pot.” “Hey!” Mike says to Otto and me. “Why don’t we get a few people together and have supper at my place after the dance?” “Great idea,” I say, “but what’ll I eat? I can see your mom trying to feed me all that good Japanese food. ‘Sorry, Mrs. Konigi. Just a bowl of spinach, please. A little on the rare side. And a can of Nutrament for dessert.’ Sure,” I continue seriously. “I think Carla and I could go for that.” I’ll have to check to see if Carla was thinking of anything special for after the dance. “Sounds great, Konig,” says Otto. “I’ll letcha know.” Mike struts back down the aisle and I turn back to the Lolo National Forest of eastern Montana. About two seconds later Mike’s little brother, Jerry, pops up beside us in an identical outfit. Jerry’s, however, is all wrinkled and covered in RyKrisp crumbs. “Was Mike telling you guys how he’s gonna give Keiko the big one after the dance?” Jerry asks. “Didn’t say a word about it to us, Jer,” I reply. “Don’t see how he could give her the big one,” Otto says, and turns. “I never promised to lend him my dick.” Jerry laughs and scurries back down the aisle. We hear him laughing and repeating Otto’s line until Mike bops him with a sleeping bag. We stay with families from the other schools, so we have to bring sleeping bags. We cross the Bitterroot River, which means it’s about time to get dressed. Coach is knotting his tie. We have a rule that says David Thompson athletes have to dress presentably on road trips. That used to mean a tie and a sport coat.

• From Satyricon (1)

  (Notwithstanding), however (these caprices of the third person of the trinity) I cannot see why pleasure should be regulated, or why a woman who has surveyed all the charms of a young girl of eighteen years should give herself up to the rude embraces of a man. What comparisons can be made between those red lips, that mouth which breathes pleasure for the first time, those snowy and purplous cheeks whose velvet smoothness is like the Venus flower, half in bloom, that new-born flesh which palpitates softly with desire and voluptuousness, that hand which you press so delicately, those round thighs, those plastic buttocks, that voice sweet and touching,--what comparison can be made between all this and pronounced features, rough beard, hard breast, hairy body, and the strong disagreeable voice of man? Juvenal has wonderfully expended all his bile in depicting, as hideous scenes, these mysteries of the Bona Dea, where the young and beautiful Roman women, far from the eyes of men, give themselves up to mutual caresses. Juvenal has painted the eyes of the Graces with colors which are proper to the Furies; his tableau, moreover, revolts one instead of doing good. The only work of Sappho’s which remains to us is an ode written to one of her loved ones and from it we may judge whether the poetess merited her reputation. It has been translated into all languages; Catullus put it into Latin and Boileau into French. Here follows an imitation of that of Catullus: Peer of a God meseemeth he, Nay passing Gods (and that can be!) Who all the while sits facing thee Sees thee and hears Thy low sweet laughs which (ah me!) daze Mine every sense, and as I gaze Upon thee (Lesbia!) o’er me strays My tongue is dulled, limbs adown Flows subtle flame; with sound its own Rings either ear, and o’er are strown Mine eyes with night. (LI. Burton, tr.) After that we should never again exhort the ministers and moralists to inveigh against love of women for women; never was the interest of men found to be so fully in accord with the precepts of divine law. Here I should like to speak of the brides of the Lord; but I remember “The Nun” of Diderot, and my pen falls from my hand. Oh, who would dare to touch a subject handled by Diderot? V. Giton venait de la deflorer, et de remporter une victoire sanglante. Giton the victor had won a not bloodless victory.