Desire

Passages

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

Page 48 of 344 · 20 per page

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  debasing himself without him, they let him turn their lives upside down, even ruin them. They pre-affecting his social prestige. ferred that fate to the safe confines of marriage. Nothing can replace this In some ways, the situation of women in the early nineteenth century bizarre and powerful has become generalized in the early twenty-first. The outlets for male bad pleasure of being able to say everything, do behavior—war, dirty politics, the institution of mistresses and courtesans— everything, profane and have faded away; today, not just women but men are supposed to be emi-parody without any fear of nently civilized and reasonable. And many have a hard time living up to retribution, remorse, or responsibility. It is a this. As children we are able to vent the darker side of our characters, a side complete revolt against that all of us have. But under pressure from society (at first in the form organized society, his of our parents), we slowly repress the naughty, rebellious, perverse streaks organized, educated self and especially his in our characters. To get along, we learn to repress our dark sides, which religion." Monsieur become a kind of lost self, a part of our psyche buried beneath our polite Mauclair hears the call of appearance. the Devil in this dark As adults, we secretly want to recapture that lost self—the more adven-passion poetized by Baudelaire. "The turous, less respectful, childhood part of us. We are drawn to those who prostitute represents the live out their lost selves as adults, even if it involves some evil or destruc-unconscious which enables tion. Like Byron, you can become the lightning rod for such desires. You us to put aside our responsibilities." must learn, however, to keep this potential under control, and to use it — N I N A EPTON, strategically. As the aura of the forbidden around you is drawing targets into LOVE AND THE FRENCH your web, do not overplay your dangerousness, or they will be frightened away. Once you feel them falling under your spell, you have freer rein. If they begin to imitate you, as Lady Caroline imitated Byron, then take it further—mix in some cruelty, involve them in sin, crime, taboo activity, Hearts and eye go traveling along the paths that have whatever it takes. Unleash the lost self within them; the more they act it always brought them joy; out, the deeper your hold over them. Going halfway will break the spell and if anyone attempts to and create self-consciousness. Take it as far as you can. spoil their game, he only makes them the more passionate about it, God Baseness attracts everybody. knows. . . . so it was with —JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE Tristan and Isolde. As soon as they were forbidden their desires, and prevented from enjoying one another Keys to Seduction by spies and guards, they began to suffer intensely. Desire now seriously tormented them by its

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  proves himself by being patient. On what he pretends is his last visit to her, follows, \ Deserve to lose however, he can sense she is ready—weak, confused, more afraid of losing all they've gained. How the addictive feeling of being desired than of suffering the consequences of short were you \ Of the adultery. He deliberately makes her emotional, dramatically displays her let- ultimate goal after all your kissing? That was \ ters, creates some tension by playing a game of push-and-pull, and when Gaucheness, not modesty, she takes his arm, he knows it is the time to strike. Now he moves quickly, I'm afraid . . . allowing her no time for doubts or second thoughts. But his move seems to — O V I D , THE ART OF LOVE, arise out of love, not lust. After so much resistance and tension, what a TRANSLATED BY PETER GREEN pleasure to finally surrender. The climax now comes as a great release. Never underestimate the role of vanity in love and seduction. If you seem impatient, champing at the bit for sex, you signal that it is all about I have tested all manner of pleasures, and known every libido, and that it has little to do with the target's own charms. That is variety of joy; and I have why you must defer the climax. A lengthier courtship will feed the target's found that neither intimacy vanity, and will make the effect of your bold move all the more powerful with princes, nor wealth and enduring. Wait too long, though—showing desire, but then proving acquired, nor finding after lacking, nor returning after too timid to make your move—and you will stir up a different kind of inse- long absence, nor security curity: "You found me desirable, but you are not acting on your desires; after fear and repose in a maybe you're not so interested." Doubts like these affront your target's safe refuge— none of these things so powerfully affects vanity (if you're not interested, maybe I'm not so interesting), and are fatal the soul as union with the in the latter stages of seduction; awkwardness and misunderstandings will beloved, especially if it spring up everywhere. Once you read in your targets' gestures that they are come after long denial and continual banishment. For ready and open—a look in the eye, mirroring behavior, a strange nervous- then the flame of passion ness in your presence—you must go on the offensive, make them feel that waxes exceeding hot, and their charms have unhinged you and pushed you into the bold move. They the furnace of yearning will then have the ultimate pleasure: physical surrender and a psychological blazes up, and the fire of eager hope rages ever more boost to their vanity. fiercely. — I B N H A Z M , THE RING OF The more timidity a lover shows with us the more it con-THE DOVE: A TREATISE ON THE

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  Let’s go to the Smoking Hole.” She shuffled her feet to kick up dry orange dirt on the road to the bridge, seeming not to walk so much as cross-country ski. As we followed the almost- trail down from the bridge to the Hole, she turned around and looked back at me, stopping. “I wonder how one would go about acquiring industrial-strength blue dye,” she said, and then held a tree branch back for me. forty-nine days before TWO DAYS LATER—Monday, the first real day of vacation—I spent the morning working on my religion final and went to Alaska’s room in the afternoon. She was reading in bed. “Auden,” she announced. “What were his last words?” “Don’t know. Never heard of him.” “Never heard of him? You poor, illiterate boy. Here, read this line.” I walked over and looked down at her index finger. “You shall love your crooked neighbour / With your crooked heart,” I read aloud. “Yeah. That’s pretty good,” I said. “Pretty good? Sure, and bufriedos are pretty good. Sex is pretty fun. The sun is pretty hot. Jesus, it says so much about love and brokenness—it’s perfect.” “Mm-hmm.” I nodded unenthusiastically. “You’re hopeless. Wanna go porn hunting?” “Huh?” “We can’t love our neighbors till we know how crooked their hearts are. Don’t you like porn?” she asked, smiling. “Um,” I answered. The truth was that I hadn’t seen much porn, but the idea of looking at porn with Alaska had a certain appeal. We started with the 50s wing of dorms and made our way backward around the hexagon—she pushed open the back windows while I looked out and made sure no one was walking by. I’d never been in most people’s rooms. After three months, I knew most people, but I regularly talked to very few—just the Colonel and Alaska and Takumi, really. But in a few hours, I got to know my classmates quite well. Wilson Carbod, the center for the Culver Creek Nothings, had hemorrhoids, or at least he kept hemorrhoidal cream secreted away in the bottom drawer of his desk. Chandra Kilers, a cute girl who loved math a little too much, and who Alaska believed was the Colonel’s future girlfriend, collected Cabbage Patch Kids. I don’t mean that she collected Cabbage Patch Kids when she was, like, five. She collected them now—dozens of them—black, white, Latino, and Asian, boys and girls, babies dressed like farmhands and budding businessmen. A senior Weekday Warrior named Holly Moser sketched nude self-portraits in charcoal pencil, portraying her rotund form in all its girth. I was stunned by how many people had booze. Even the Weekday Warriors, who got to go home every weekend, had beer and liquor stashed everywhere from toilet tanks to the bottoms of dirty-clothes hampers. “God, I could have ratted out anyone,” Alaska said softly as she unearthed a forty-ounce bottle of Magnum malt liquor from Longwell Chase’s closet.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  He must have thought it very unlikely that he would become the ruling faqih . In both Islamic Government and “The Greater Jihad,” Khomeini was trying to see how the mythology and mysticism of the Shiah could be adapted to break centuries of sacred tradition and allow a cleric to rule Iran. He had yet to see how this mythos would work out in practice. I N I SRAEL , a new form of Jewish fundamentalism had already started to translate myth into hard political fact. It had its roots in the religious Zionism which had grown up in the shadow of secular Zionism in the pre-state days in Palestine. These religious Zionists were modern Orthodox, and from an early date, they had started to found their own observant settlements alongside the socialist kibbutzim. Unlike the Haredim, this small group of religious Jews did not see Zionism as incompatible with Orthodoxy. They interpreted the Bible literally: in the Torah, God promised the Land to the descendants of Abraham, and thus gave Jews a legal title to Palestine. Moreover, in Eretz Israel, Jews would be able to observe the Law more fully than had been possible in the Diaspora. In the ghetto, it was obviously not feasible to observe many commandments relating to the farming and settlement of the Land, or the laws regarding politics and government. As a result, Diaspora Judaism had perforce been fragmented and compartmentalized. Now at last in their own land, Jews would be able to observe the whole of the Torah once again. As Pinchas Rosenbluth, one of the pioneers of Zionist Orthodoxy, explained: We accept upon ourselves the entire Torah, its commandments and ideas. The [old] Orthodoxy made do in fact with a small part of the Torah … observed in synagogue or the family … or certain areas of life. We want to carry out the Torah all the time and in every area, to grant [Torah] and its laws sovereignty in the life of the individual and the public. 77 Far from being incompatible with modernity, the Law would complete it. The world would see that Jews could create a new social order that was truly progressive because it had been planned by God. 78 There was a desire for wholeness that would always characterize religious Zionism; it was a way of finding healing and a more holistic vision after the trauma and constrictions of exile. But it was also a rebellion against the rationalist vision of the secular Zionists, who did not take these religious settlers seriously and who saw their ambition to create a Torah state in Eretz Israel as not only anachronistic but repellent. The religious Zionists were very conscious of being rebels.

• From Action (2014)

  The sexiest conversations I’ve ever had were thanks to people with the knack for getting me off on statements that could sound weird coming from someone else, but are perfectly natural as uttered by the person saying them. Compare two different occasions on which I deliquesced in my chair upon receiving these incontestably dissimilar raunch-missives: • “I don’t really have the time or focus to write you a proper letter, but I feel like I should send you a note because it would be almost dishonest not to, since you’ve been in my mind so often today, and have generally improved my disposition, apart from whatever I might have been specifically thinking about you. It would be enough to me to keep my affections for you alive, since after all they are more or less unlimited. Still, I think of studying your pussy with the respect and mineral hard-on it’s due.” (—An email, or “filthy mash note,” as he called it, by an august writer I dated for a few months) • “ugh. i wannnnna lick your ass before the super bowwllll” (—A gchat from a sports-obsessed bro with a great dick with whom I was sleeping for a moment and a half, around the same time as I was seeing Mineral Hard-On) Both of the wishes expressed above were honored. They straightforwardly got me thinking about each of these partners’ merits, respectively, and I couldn’t wait to continue the discourse in person. I recognize the places in which these notes are corny, and that makes me even more into them! Everyone is corny, and I am most willing to be undressed by people who don’t let that stop them from perving out on/with/in me. How you phrase your own FILTHY MASH NOTES is up to you, but here’s a helpful script: While “What are you wearing?” serves as a time-honored workhorse of an introduction, I typically lead by talking about what part of a person’s body my brain is obsessively posing in compromising positions, or by dissecting my most longed-for ideas about what I want to do together.

• From Action (2014)

  [image file=image_568.jpg] My condom policy is thus: It’s not one person’s “responsibility” to provide foils. With a reasonable margin for forgetfulness, the occasional lean times between paychex, and extenuating circumstances like “the store’s closed and I’m rolling up to your spot at 3 a.m. after agreeing to meet a whim that you just texted me you’d had,” every person anticipating imminent coitus is obligated to furnish protection, unless you’re a couple with a shared econo-dom-box in your co-owned nightstand. Discovering you’re out of stock, condom-wise, just as you’re reaching to use one can lead to a ruthless urgency to throw on pants and procure some at the store across the street that I find very hot. More often, it’s tedious and mood-slackening to have to wait on a person’s bed all like, It’s been five minutes and I’m getting restless—can I reach for my phone without sacrificing the mood entirely? Plus, not everyone makes their home opposite a bodega… which, how do you even survive without one? I can’t fathom having to prepare for life before it happens, you upstanding models of organization. My solution, when my bedroom became a naked waiting room one too many times, was to treat condoms like other parts of my grocery list: paper towels, dish soap, condoms, toothpaste. Like everything else accounted for here, condoms are necessary maintainers of your upkeep that you will never overstock, since you’ll need them in perpetuity. If this kills a certain spirit for you, if you are besotted with the sheer intentionality of going to the store and buying prophylactics before meeting someone you think is super-sexy, go forth with your ritual. That errand feels mad nice. (Just please remember to make it.) Now that you have a bounty of condoms and aren’t afraid to use them, let’s talk about a situation that reverses the latter idea. Did your condom just break?! Don’t panic. Yes, a teeny fissure in a thin disc of rubber instantly set off a chain of headaches with which you’ll have to contend, and that’s unfortunate. If you need to freak all the way out about it, I exhort you to wait, because you have more immediate priorities, and zeroing in on the pragmatic ways to make this situation suck less, instead of lamenting its misfortune, works formidably in your favor—as it would in any luckless scenario, latex-based or nah. Did the person with the penis ejaculate before this wrenching discovery was made? If yes: Do not try to flush the offending substance out with water. There’s no way to “wash” come out once it’s made genital contact, and you need to focus on more productive steps away from accidental parenthood.

• From Action (2014)

  There are all kinds of variants on this informal model for demonstrating sincere curiosity about a person, too. I’m reluctant to link attraction and career work, because that assigns sexual value to something that can be pretty mechanical and/or bureaucratic, but if you’re not as precious about this, another version of the aforementioned question is, “What are you working on lately?” You can—and should—specify that you don’t necessarily mean within a profession: I do this by leading, “Man, it’s so nice to be out of the house tonight—I’ve been so focused on this one heroic couplet [insert your own less revolting priorities here!].” Then fire off the above question, having left room that can be filled by your interest’s non-vocational pursuits. Also useful: “How do you know the host?” “Are you familiar with this band/artist/whatever?” “How did you get involved with [whatever you’re both doing]?” As long as your prompt cannot be successfully met with the word “yes” or “no,” you’re doing a valiant job at this. Kid around about a person’s answers whenever you can—being funny or at least playful works muscularly in the favor of getting you laid—but most important is taking in what a person is saying to you in response instead of inwardly composing the witticisms you’re about to lob back. What is even the point of talking to others if you’re just concerned about what comes out of you next? Conversation should be allowed to race along directionlessly, and that’s unlikely to happen if anybody’s overthinking it. Stick to general questions with personalized answers, then ditch the script. Act under the thought that you do want to hear what the person has to say, without expectation. And mean it, as much for your sake as for theirs! They might, after all, say something that changes your mind about their boneability. But let’s continue as though this is a negligible potential outcome. (If it is: Treat yourself with the same regard, affection, and attention you would someone else, and respect your feelings—just because you established this flirtation-station doesn’t mean you have to see it through.) After you charm in your singular, polite way, disappear for a moment. Dip to the bar, bathroom, or another conversation to allow your intentioned brain/body-latcher the pleasure of seeking you. You know how when you have a crush, it’s your captor? When you like or want to get with somebody, you feel this churning happy bereft desperation: THAT PERSON EXISTS, AND I NEED THEM NEAR ME SO I CAN AFFIX MYSELF TO THEM EITHER PHYSICALLY OR BY LATCHING BRAINS. That feeling is what life is for. At its core, it’s ambition, which is borne of a lack of something—or someone. Let the other person cultivate the insistent lack of your knowing each other, whether the capacity in which that’ll be is to be “casual” (read: orgasm-related) or more sustained, in tandem with you.

• From Action (2014)

  Your own encomiums don’t have to hinge on a person’s appearance (cf. that sexy vocal register), or any other of their empirical features, for that matter. I don’t usually select potential sex partners based on how they look because I am a morally flawless person. (It’s because I have face blindness, meaning that it’s hard for me to discern the whole picture of someone’s appearance even if I know them—rather than poor self-image, that’s the deal with the pizza-dough dysphoria I mentioned above, also.) When I let someone know that I think they’re the mad note, I focus on how to translate that opinion into something that might turn them on to hear about, which is interesting to do with non-aesthetic qualities. All told, the crasser you can be, the better, but if you’re taciturn or easily embarrassed by nature, it can feel simpler to say, “Touch me like that,” or, “Put your mouth there,” or “Hold my wrists down.” That dialogue wouldn’t even be censored on television. You’re basically not even talking about sex, you chasteoid! Except you are, and it’s soooooo hot, and your partner is thinking about/looking at you like TWO cartoon roast chickens on a desert island instead of just one. Romantic Attachments Sending links to porn, if a person has indicated that they like to watch it and would be down to do so with you, establishes you as a great listener and a hot fuck. Since many full-length porn videos are drawn-out productions in which we are treated to long, staredown-laden striptease intros during which viewers are asked to make note of an underwear company the actors are shilling for called something akin to “www.skinclothezzz.xxx.com,” I find it preferable, and more direct, to link to .GIFs in medias res. Think any activity that could be described by the word “guzzling,” or whatever filthy analogue you’re indicating that you’d like to imitate with the recipient. Five seconds is all you need to get your point across. BLUE MOVIES [image file=image_839.jpg] I have a running page in every journal I keep where I take note of a specific phenomenon whenever I notice it crop up. The “Equal Parts Love and Hate List” comprises all the elements of this life that can provoke an equilibrium of repulsion and enthusiasm in me, depending on my mood and the context in which it’s getting under my skin (for better or for worse). The top entries on these lists: • Frozen yogurt (love: delicious, creamy, low-cal, toppings; hate: the clear demarcation of a neighborhood being swallowed and prevailed over by a ruling upper class) • Male attention (love: noticing subtle glances and thinking, Why, hello and thank you, sir; hate: being noticed by a stranger who is then compelled to scream at me about the right and wrong ways in which my body is shaped)

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  And then I give the Colonel his vodka, and he puts it wherever he puts it, and I take mine and bury it.” “Because you’re a pirate,” I said. “Aye, matey. Precisely. Although wine consumption has risen a bit this semester, so we’ll need to take a trip tomorrow. This is the last bottle.” She unscrewed the cap—no corks here—sipped, and handed it to me. “Don’t worry about the Eagle tonight,” she said. “He’s just happy most everyone’s gone. He’s probably masturbating for the first time in a month.” I worried about it for a moment as I held the bottle by the neck, but I wanted to trust her, and so I did. I took a minor sip, and as soon as I swallowed, I felt my body rejecting the stinging syrup of it. It washed back up my esophagus, but I swallowed hard, and there, yes, I did it. I was drinking on campus. So we lay in the tall grass between the soccer field and the woods, passing the bottle back and forth and tilting our heads up to sip the wince-inducing wine. As promised in the list, she brought a Kurt Vonnegut book, Cat’s Cradle, and she read aloud to me, her soft voice mingling with the frogs’ croaking and the grasshoppers landing softly around us. I did not hear her words so much as the cadence of her voice. She’d obviously read the book many times before, and so she read flawlessly and confidently, and I could hear her smile in the reading of it, and the sound of that smile made me think that maybe I would like novels better if Alaska Young read them to me. After a while, she put down the book, and I felt warm but not drunk with the bottle resting between us—my chest touching the bottle and her chest touching the bottle but us not touching each other, and then she placed her hand on my leg. Her hand just above my knee, the palm flat and soft against my jeans and her index finger making slow, lazy circles that crept toward the inside of my thigh, and with one layer between us, God I wanted her.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  The next week was Easter holidays, and I spent part of each afternoon or evening at Eudora’s house, reading poetry, learning to play the guitar, talking. I told her about Ginger, and about Bea, and she talked about her and Franz’s life together. We even had a game of dirty-word Scrabble, and although I warned her I was a declared champion, Eudora won, thereby increasing my vocabulary no end. She showed me the column she was finishing about the Olmec stone heads, and we talked about the research she was planning to do on African and Asian influences in Mexican art. Her eyes twinkled and her long graceful hands flashed as she talked, and by midweek, when we were not together, I could feel the curves of her cheekbone under my lips as I gave her a quick goodbye kiss. I thought about making love to her, and ruined a whole pot of curry in my confusion. This was not what I had come to Mexico to do. There was an air about Eudora when she moved that was both delicate and sturdy, fragile and tough, like the snapdragon she resembled when she stood up, flung back her head, and brushed her hair back with the palms of her hands. I was besotted. Eudora often made fun of what she called my prudishness, and there was nothing she wouldn’t talk about. But there was a reserve about her own person, a force-field around her that I did not know how to pass, a sadness surrounding her that I could not breach. And besides, a woman of her years and experience—how presumptuous of me! We sat talking in her house later and later, over endless cups of coffee, half my mind on our conversation and half of it hunting for some opening, some graceful, safe way of getting closer to this woman whose smell made my earlobes burn. Who, despite her openness about everything else, turned away from me when she changed her shirt. On Thursday night we rehung some of her bark paintings from Tehuantepec. The overhead fan hummed faintly; there was a little pool of sweat sitting in one wing of her collarbone. I almost reached over to kiss it. “Goddammit!” Eudora had narrowly missed her finger with the hammer. “You’re very beautiful,” I said suddenly, embarrassed at my own daring. There was a moment of silence as Eudora put down her hammer. “So are you, Chica,” she said, quietly, “more beautiful than you know.” Her eyes held mine for a minute so I could not turn away. No one had ever said that to me before. It was after 2:00 A.M. when I left Eudora’s house, walking across the grass to my place in the clear moonlight. Once inside I could not sleep. I tried to read.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  As such, it had always courted the danger of an undisciplined entry into the unconscious world and the perils that always attend an abdication of reason. But early Pentecostalism at its best had been characterized by inclusion and a compassionate breaking down of racial and class barriers. Swaggart, however, preached a religion of hatred. He had become famous for his foulmouthed attacks on homosexuals, an obsession that almost certainly revealed buried anxieties about his own sexual proclivities. He had also turned viciously on other ministers and rival televangelists, and joined the judgmental crusade of Moral Majority. By casting off the restraints imposed by the discipline of charity as well as those of reason, Swaggart had embraced a religiosity that was, in its way, as self-destructive and nihilistic as some of the other movements we have considered. American journalist Lawrence Wright found himself attracted to Swaggart’s emotional preaching style. He sensed that Swaggart was rebelling against the strictures of rational modernity; it was “defiantly emotional,” light-years away from the “arid intellectual refinements” of Wright’s own childhood religion. He found that a part of himself craved Swaggart’s “ecstatic abandonment of my own busy, judgmental, ironic mentality.” 117 And so did Swaggart’s audience, who responded ecstatically to his orgasmic preaching: He would sink deeper and deeper into his subconscious, he would journey past reason and conscious meaning into the slashing emotions and buried fears and unnamed desires that bubble below. His voice would rise and tremble, his grammar would fall away, but still he stumbled toward that cowering raw nerve of longing. He knew where it was. One watched him with both dread and desire, because this is the nerve that is attached to faith. Longing to be loved and saved—it is when he finally touches this nerve that the tears flow and the audience stands with its hands upraised, laughing, wailing, praising the Lord, speaking in unknown languages and quivering with the pain and pleasure of this thrilling public exposure. 118 The best premodern spirituality, such as that of John of the Cross, Isaac Luria, or Mulla Sadra, had eschewed such emotional excess, claiming that it had nothing to do with religion; they had insisted that the interior journey was calm, disciplined, and complemented by reason. No one was initiated into the Kabbalah until he was at least forty years old and married, and had achieved sexual equilibrium. The modern world, which had neglected the more intuitive paths to knowledge, had for the most part lost this mystical lore. Swaggart’s success shows that people longed for ecstasy in an over-rationalized world, but also shows that such a quest can become unbalanced. Swaggart’s frenzy seemed to have more to do with the sexual needs that drove him (to use Wright’s words in a different context) to the “thrilling public exposure” in the Baton Rouge motel than with spirituality. Yet the failure of fundamentalist faith is most plainly demonstrated in the rage and hatred that the televangelists displayed toward one another during the scandal.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  talked the matter over presenting yourself as a masculine woman or a feminine man. For others between themselves, they at you play the Lolita, or the daddd—someone they are not supposed to have, first decided to report the the dark side of their personality. Keep the connection vague—you want pair to the abbess. But then them to reach for something elusive, something that comes out of their they changed their minds, and by common agreement own mind. with the other two, they In London in 1769, Casanova met a young woman named Charpillon. took up shares in Masetto 's She was much younger than he, as beautiful a woman as he had ever holding. And because of various indiscretions, these known, and with a reputation for destroying men. In one of their first enfive were subsequently counters she told him straight out that he would fall for her and she would joined by the remaining ruin him. To everyone's disbelief, Casanova pursued her. In each encounter three, one after the other. • Finally, the abbess, who she hinted she might give in—perhaps the next time, if he was nice to her. was still unaware of all She inflamed his curiosity—what pleasure she would yield; he would be this, was taking a stroll one the first, he would tame her. "The venom of desire penetrated my whole very hot day in the garden, all by herself when she being so completely," he later wrote, "that had she so wished it, she could came across Masetto have despoiled me of everything I possessed. I would have beggared myself stretched out fast asleep in for one little kiss." This "affair" indeed proved his ruin; she humiliated him. the shade of an almond Charpillon had rightly gauged that Casanova's primary weakness was his Create Temptation • 237 need for conquest, to overcome challenge, to taste what no other man had tree. Too much riding by tasted. Beneath this was a kind of masochism, a pleasure in the pain a night had left him with very little strength for the woman could give him. Playing the impossible woman, enticing and then day's labors, and so there frustrating him, she offered the ultimate temptation. What will often do the he lay, with his clothes trick is to give the target the sense that you are a challenge, a prize to be ruffled up in front by the won. In possessing you they will get what no other has had. They may even wind, leaving him all exposed. Finding herself get pain; but pain is close to pleasure, and offers its own temptations. alone, the lady stood with In the Old Testament we read that "David arose from his couch and her eyes riveted to this was walking upon the roof of the king's house . . . [and] he saw from the spectacle, and she was seized by the same craving

• From Action (2014)

  Kissing isn’t just about your lips, anyway. Pay attention to where your hands go—to shoulders, the sides and/or back of necks (this area is flush with nerve endings, and it’s nice to imagine them racing around under your fingers), hips, waists, and the smalls of backs. Eyes-wise, some people are uneasy when the person they’re frenching keeps the shutters open, but, as I have thought since first hearing this as a kid: How would you know if someone was both open-eyed and–mouthed unless you were? Those people are full of it!!! If they weren’t, they literally wouldn’t see the difference. ORAL MYSTERIES [image file=image_705.jpg] Squished somewhere between “breakfast lasagna” (regular lasagna eaten before 12 p.m.), Buffy Sainte-Marie, and the fact that “fostering kittens” is defined as getting to hang with three tiny cat-cubs until they mature into sullen jerks, oral sex occupies a top spot on the list of all that’s worth spending time on. Giving blow jobs and eating pussy are my sexual pay dirt: I’m most turned on by other people’s sexual pleasure, so my personal taste is that tasting other persons, a horrible euphemism for going down on people, has the highest value of any tendered sexual act. This doesn’t have to be true in your case, but for me, it means not that I am expecting something in return, but it’s usually the simplest way to knock off somebody’s socks. (I ask you to reconsider your judgment if you are having sex with a person who hasn’t already removed them.) Its recipient can’t replicate what I’m doing by themselves, so if you shred at giving head, you become a specific kind of sexual asset. This goes doubly if you serve them a baked Italian pasta dish in the morning should they stay over. I had to learn to love going down on people the not-always-good old-fashioned way: trial and error. There was so much error, in my early years: “watch your teeth” = the heavily reprised prayer flung at this halfway-feral teenage seraphim of the third base. The archaic practice of blindly hoping you’re doing something right—of ascertaining whether that’s the case only by interpreting moans—isn’t as worthwhile when you realize that you can open your mouth for one of its other uses: talking about it. HOW TO FINGER [image file=image_713.jpg] Fingering someone can mean more than simply putting two digits inside the vagina in question. Some people love being stroked through their underwear, or their clits touched with just a finger or two, or having a person fuck them with part (or all) of their hand. The feminine handjob can be its own pet—more than a stopgap during the approach to lingual or genital… jobs. If you’re involved in sex of the latter case, fingering can efficaciously ready a person with a vagina for penetrative sex. So: You can shuffle fingering in with other acts, but it feels impeccable on its own.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  to act and dance; she was schooled in literature and history as if she were a but the commissioning of a portrait by Warhol was a boy. The playwright Crébillon instructed her in the art of conversation. 34 • The Art of Seduction sure indication that the On top of it all, Jeanne was beautiful, and had a charm and grace that set sitter intended to secure a her apart early on. In 1741, she married a man of the lower nobility. Now posthumous fame as well. known as Madame d'Etioles, she could realize a great ambition: she opened Warhol's portraits were not so much realistic documents a literary salon. All of the great writers and philosophers of the time fre-of contemporary faces as quented the salon, many because they were enamored of the hostess. One they were designer icons of these was Voltaire, who became a lifelong friend. awaiting future devotions. Through all Jeanne's success, she never forgot the fortune-teller's pre- — D A V I D B O U R D O N , WARHOL diction, and still believed that she would one day conquer the king's heart. It happened that one of her husband's country estates bordered on King Louis's favorite hunting grounds. She would spy on him through the fence, Women have served all or find ways to cross his path, always while she happened to be wearing an these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic elegant, yet fetching outfit. Soon the king was sending her gifts of game. and delicious power of When his official mistress died, in 1744, all of the court beauties vied to reflecting the figure of a take her place; but he began to spend more and more time with Madame man at twice its natural size. d'Etioles, dazzled by her beauty and charm. To the astonishment of the — V I R G I N I A WOOLF, A ROOM court, that same year he made this middle-class woman his official mistress, OF ONE'S OWN ennobling her with the title of the Marquise de Pompadour. The king's need for novelty was notorious: a mistress would beguile him with her looks, but he would soon grow bored with her and find someone else. After the shock of his choice of Jeanne Poisson wore off, the courtiers reassured themselves that it could not last—that he had only chosen her for the novelty of having a middle-class mistress. Little did they know that Jeanne s first seduction of the king was not the last seduction she had in mind.

• From Action (2014)

  Look at your partner’s vagina—the positioning of her labia (outer lips), clitoris (small, circular, nerve-ending-packed area at the top of the orifice), vulva (inner lips), and so on. You can make someone’s day without being able to define just what it is you’re touching, but I find that degree of talent rare… and if you’re a man who is totally 100 percent positive there’s no need to bother knowing what the parts of a vagina are because you know intrinsically that you’ve got it all figured out, you are very likely wrong about yourself, I’m sorry to say. Knowing how to label an anatomical diagram is just the beginning of fingering someone. Here are some more stravagems: There are preparatory concerns that shouldn’t be overlooked. Rather than trying to cram a dry hand into your partner, make sure your fingers are wet. Put your fingers in your mouth or use some lube to make it feel natural instead of weird and arid. Why do some people think that pummeling you with their dry knuckles, as though you’re scrapping in the street over some sports misunderstanding or something, is exactly what provokes orgasms? I want nothing to do with those kind of fisticuffs. What’s up with your nails? If they’re long, don’t put them on a very sensitive part of your partner. This is the vaginal equivalent of toothy head, so invest in some nail clippers and come back later. (But not too much later, please.) The sensitivity of most clitorises is tough to adequately understand unless you have one yourself. You know how being tickled is pleasant enough if someone does it lightly, but almost hurts your insides when it feels like too much? It’s like that, kind of, but even more intense. I like getting fingered most when people start outside of my panties. The subdued friction gets me acclimated and makes me want to rip the person’s clothing to tatters with my teeth. Underneath that: With two non-parched fingertips (you can also put them in your partner’s mouth, if you’re super hot) pass over your partner’s clitoris quickly back and forth, skating on it carefully. If you’ve settled that they should talk about what they like, they’ll tell you if they’d like to be handled with less fragility. If you keep going, start by easing one finger inside unless you’re directed differently. Slowly push your index finger in until it can’t go farther, then remove it slowly and methodically, as though withdrawal were the entire point of this. Do that a few more times, quickening the time signature as you go. If you haven’t yet, move to two fingers if you’re being met with audible gratitude. Listen for what she likes, or have her tell you. On the Spot

• From Action (2014)

  If you want to use your fingers while you also give someone oral sex, they’d probably love that. When you’re using both your hands and mouth, it can feel like a lot to undertake at once. What, you are supposed to traverse this whole breathtaking (and neck-straining) landscape in a way that makes them moan like they’re being paid for footage of it, while ALSO trying not to let how turned on you are by them distract you from the matter at mouth… AND finger-fucking them? If you’d like to try this but are anxious that it’s all too balletic to do at once, use your fingers in a simple in-out motion and add movements as you go. Be mindful of your nose. If you’ve got a honker, I am 57 percent likelier to find you very cute, but that statistic corresponds also to how much warier I’m going to be of your putting it near certain parts of me. When people dip their heads to pay attention to some lower region, they sometimes end up grazing with their noses, which can feel very nice… or very intense and weird, depending on how endowed the head-giver is (size does matter, in this respect) and how heavily they’re breathing. Don’t poke your schnozz where it doesn’t belong. HOW TO GIVE A HAND JOB [image file=image_742.jpg] Place your non-dominant hand around the base of a penis, making a ring with your index finger and thumb. With your main hand, loosely make the “OK” symbol with your thumb and forefinger as you read this. That’s the grip you want to use, just with your other three fingers closed, too. Tighten your hold gradually as you go, but avoid a manual stranglehold. Shift your hand, and the firm-feeling subcutaneous part of your partner it’s closed around (you will be able to tell the difference—skin/dick are in two utterly separate tactile zones on both ends of this act), down just a few centimeters. Hold your hand taut—although not TOTALLY immobile. You don’t want to dead-hand anybody, so, be very gentle as you alleviate the pressure you use here, then increase it again. As you massage the top more vigorously with your other hand, with very minimal gestures and movements, stroke and massage the base with that non-dominant hand every so often. This might sound complicated, seeing as you’ll have swifter actions in motion with your other hand, but… you can type, right? Do you understand how much more complex and involved that is, comprehension-wise, and yet, you do it by memory every day? Hand jobs are functionally simpler, and, instead of boring-ass emails about the time of tomorrow’s meeting being rescheduled, you are making someone come. With your dominant hand closed, slowly massage the length. Once you’ve gone up and down a few times, focus on the top for a minute, keeping the movement consistent, but a little gentler, and over a shortened distance, where the shaft meets the head.

• From Action (2014)

  The bright side of online dating is that it makes those who are friendly and cool as they hit on people in the flesh seem brave and self-possessed for well-executed macking. This is not to say that online dating is abnormal. It’s rightfully accepted as the territory of sane, well-adjusted, and pleasant people, where once it held the stigma of the exclusive homeland of the interpersonally maladapted, which was as unfair (and mean, and reductive) back in the internet’s infancy as it is now. I hope it doesn’t feel like I’m contributing to that stigma! I do feel that the internet can be a wonderful conduit for getting in touch with like-minded horny people (who are not me). But if you have the means to meet those selfsame kinds of crush-inducers in person, I find it to be so much sexier when you’re able to get a feel for what their voices sound like, how they move across a room (especially from the back, heyyy), the purposeful gestures they conduct with their hands, the graceful shapes their mouths form as they talk… because I, as you can probably tell after that in-depth little daydream, am the perviest of them all!!! So you’re putting your shoes on and ready to head out the door to… Wait, where do sexually viable people even congregate? Your first guess is correct: If you’re not feeling creative when it comes to striking out into the world, I have met many paramours in bars. So many bars, a cavalcade of bars, a city-populating-if-you-amassed-their-clientele amount of bars bars bars bars bars. If you’re sober and avoiding those places, disinterested in hanging out lounge lizard–style, or just bored of the bar barrage: I am happy to report that THE WHOLE REST OF THE WORLD EXISTS. Context matters here. You can meet somebody anyplace, hence my advocating that you create your own palatial life to hang out inside. Just in case you need initial ideas on this tip, though, here’s a selection of unlikely-seeming places where I have scammed on, or been scammed on, to good success: • Bookstores. If you see a babe milling around, ask them for recommendations. Done and done. I have met two paramours between bookshelves—and was also introduced to Dylan Thomas’s short fiction by one of my book-marks, the greatest outcome of them all. I thought that dude only wrote poetry! And I got laid! • The ever-lovin’ sidewalk. I had the best sex of my life, easily, resplendently, world-and game-changingly, with a person whom I met loitering curbside.

• From Action (2014)

  [image file=image_424.jpg] There’s something sexy, in a highly sweet and even goofy way, about premeditated pubic-hair grooming. You kind of can’t beat making it with somebody for the first time and discovering that they were so eager and anticipatory that they trimmed their subequatorial zones into a discernible shape, or putting your hand down some gorgeous individual’s pants and feeling the one true manifestation of the word “intent”: a landing strip or other topiary that is a hair-oglyph translating to, “I am here to fuck you and I wanted you to know it.” I don’t care about how anybody’s pubic hair looks except my own (a frustrating/hot conundrum: I prefer not to intervene with my bush, but getting head feels better sans pubes). Some people prefer pubic hair styled one way or another—and pornography suggests that people don’t want to have sex with others of their kind whose genitals aren’t those poreless, hairless blanknesses you see on mannequins, except with deeper tans—but you don’t much have to worry about that unless you’d like to, which I sometimes do if I’m into somebody a lot in the aforementioned anticipatory way. The thing here is that nobody is going to jerk their head/hands/other appendages away from you if they notice that you do or don’t have hair on some recently unclothed part of you—and if they did, you’d be spared some similarly unimaginative sex, so you’d win anyway. The only exception to this rule is if you choose both not to depilate AND forgo a daily shower—scent clings to hair. (Even so: There are some people out there who are fetishistically into olfactory rankness. I love the smell of neglected armpits a ton, so I can relate to a lesser extent.) Don’t Be a Douche If you own douche, aka a type of vaginal hygiene product, trash it immediately. That snake oil does the opposite of what it advertises, plus is required by law to be packaged in the most offensively corny ways possible. My anatomy is not a season or weather event, and I’m not sure what’s breezy about giving yourself an increased risk of infection with the aid of pale slime that smells like rotted puberty. The powdery, chemical, and fundamentally shame-based odor of vaginal douche is almost as loathsome as its purported use. Not to sound like a zenergetic dipstick with morality-based dietary restrictions (even though I am), but vaginas are naturally self-cleaning, sister, and using special “washes” on your trim bungles that hygienic process. If you mess with the system, the system malfunctions, and although it sounds like I’m talking about a hard drive or something, this means, here, that you stop your body from working the only way it knows how to and leave it more vulnerable to bacterial contamination, which can lead to discomfort and infections. So springy and fresh!!! YOUR WEIGHT DOESN’T MATTER

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  One and Two appealed to me, certainly, but mostly I liked the idea of just her and just me on campus. “I’ll talk to my parents. Once they wake up,” I said. She coaxed me onto the couch, and we played Decapitation together until she abruptly dropped the controller. “I’m not flirting. I’m just tired,” she said, kicking off her flip-flops. She pulled her feet onto the foam couch, tucking them behind a cushion, and scooted up to put her head in my lap. My corduroys. My boxers. Two layers. I could feel the warmth of her cheek on my thigh. There are times when it is appropriate, even preferable, to get an erection when someone’s face is in close proximity to your penis. This was not one of those times. So I stopped thinking about the layers and the warmth, muted the TV, and focused on Decapitation. At 8:30, I turned off the game and scooted out from underneath Alaska. She turned onto her back, still asleep, the lines of my corduroy pants imprinted on her cheek. — I usually only called my parents on Sunday afternoons, so when my mom heard my voice, she instantly overreacted. “What’s wrong, Miles? Are you okay?” “I’m fine, Mom. I think—if it’s okay with you, I think I might stay here for Thanksgiving. A lot of my friends are staying”—lie—“and I have a lot of work to do”—double lie. “I had no idea how hard the classes would be, Mom”—truth. “Oh, sweetie. We miss you so much. And there’s a big Thanksgiving turkey waiting for you. And all the cranberry sauce you can eat.” I hated cranberry sauce, but for some reason my mom persisted in her lifelong belief that it was my very favorite food, even though every single Thanksgiving I politely declined to include it on my plate. “I know, Mom. I miss you guys, too. But I really want to do well here”— truth—“and plus it’s really nice to have, like, friends”—truth. I knew that playing the friend card would sell her on the idea, and it did. So I got her blessing to stay on campus after promising to hang out with them for every minute of Christmas break (as if I had other plans). I spent the morning at the computer, flipping back and forth between my religion and English papers. There were only two weeks of classes before exams —the coming one and the one after Thanksgiving—and so far, the best personal answer I had to “What happens to people after they die?” was “Well, something. Maybe.” The Colonel came in at noon, his thick übermath book cradled in his arms. “I just saw Sara,” he said. “How’d that work out for ya?” “Bad. She said she still loved me. God, ‘I love you’ really is the gateway drug of breaking up. Saying ‘I love you’ while walking across the dorm circle inevitably leads to saying ‘I love you’ while you’re doing it.

• From Action (2014)

  The other day, a somewhat mild person with whom I’m sleeping offered his philosophy on compelling coital conversation. “It’s always good to just say what’s happening, or what you want to happen.” He’s right! When all else fails, imitate a horny David Attenborough and state exactly what’s happening. (Draw the line, however, at imitating his accent.) In your fantasies, are you getting phenomenal head? Talk about what, exactly, they would be doing that’d make it feel so good. Are you bent over, or bending someone over, a couch with your clothes still on? Describe, in close detail, the extent to which you find that urgency sexy. Name specific body parts as smuttily as you can while still being earnest—“vagina” and “penis,” though more than welcome physically, are words best saved for your doctor. Even if someone in the room is wearing a slutty nurse uniform, be less anatomically correct. (Unless you have been specifically asked to do otherwise, in which case, go ahead and speak clinically, ya amateur Dr. Love.) Here is a pre-assembled sentence that even the most skittish amateur Attenboroughs can employ with ease, whether you’re saying it in person or in writing: “I love it when you [image file=image_826.jpg] .” Fill in the blank with the act in as much detail as you can: “I love it when you try to fit my cock all the way into the back of your throat.” “I love it when you pull my hair while you’re pinning me to the bed.” Et alia! Add adjectives at will. In EVERY guide to being a socialized person interacting with others within the labyrinthine confines of “speaking articulately and like a cool-type normal,” there’s one core tenet: When you’re unsure what to say, pay a genuine compliment to your fellow conversationalist. You’re having sex with this person for a reason, right? You decided you found their voice sonorous, or their wrists are so perfectly formed that you’re ITCHING to kiss them in their fine entirety, or they have a truly flawless butt-shape. You can and should expound on those observations. Whenever my co-bed-denizens have made me feel like I am the one person they’re most excited to be fucking in that moment, and exactly me only, that’s it, I put roughly 600 times more vigor into putting them into a blackout orgasm fog for the next few hours. How they’ve communicated this to me is by picking up on—and venerating—the peculiarities of the one body I’ll ever own. I see a lump of unleavened pizza dough in fake eyelashes staring at me from inside the mirror, so it was cool when one girl brought up my “beautiful cheekbones” (not a thing) when we were involved in a heated makeout. It also led me to notice what it was, exactly, that I found pointedly gorgeous about her, which were the freckles on her chest. In the easiest segue of all time, we both took our shirts off.