Desire

Passages

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

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• From The Pisces (2018)

  “So cryptic,” I said. “Are you aware of death?” Asking that, I felt kind of creepy in a good way. He had a lot of power in not revealing too much of himself. Just that lack of willingness to disclose—that’s all it took for me to perceive rejection. So this gave me a little edge. Also, his observation about me and death could have been a bit scary if he wasn’t so matter-of-fact. I mean, he was a stranger, male, and likely stronger than me. He could easily pull me off a rock into the water and drown me. But I trusted him completely—at least in terms of my physical safety. And now that he had complimented me about my proximity to death and I had owned it, and thrown it right back at him, I felt cool. We had both decided now that death was my territory. I was the Professor of Death. Much more than a middle-aged woman who was beginning to get serious crushy feelings for a young stranger in the water. “I know about death,” he said. “Have you ever seen someone die?” I asked. “Like up close and one-on-one?” “Yes,” he said. “I have watched a number of people die.” “Scary, right? The dying process. I don’t feel scared about death but dying freaks me the fuck out.” “I’m not scared of dying,” he said. “You’re not?” Now he was the professor and I was the pussy. “I would say I’m less scared of dying than I am of life.” Actually, I maybe agreed with him. “I think I’m equally scared of both,” I said. This was the truth. It felt good to say it. “What is it about dying that scares you the most? Are you afraid of having regrets?” “No,” I said. “I think it’s literally the physical process. Like, the suffocation. I’m so scared to be suffocating and panicking. I get panicked even when I go to the dentist. I am not good with discomfort. So I think I’m more scared of the discomfort—my own fear around it—than anything else.” “It might be scary for a moment,” he said. “Maybe for a few minutes. But then, from what I’ve seen, you are very free.” “Maybe,” I said. “But it’s the fear before the freedom that I’m scared of. If I could just go to sleep—just like that, go to sleep and never wake up—I would do that anytime. I would do it tonight. But I’m scared to be conscious while it’s happening.” “I had that feeling about you. That you would be happy to just go to sleep.” “Why? Because I’m so boring?” “Not at all,” he said. “The opposite. But I can feel you’ve suffered.” He was so dramatic. “Yeah, well, life is the dumbest,” I said, standing up. “I’ve suffered too,” he said. “I’ve been sick.” This piqued my interest. “Yeah?”

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Craving the fake light was a completely real feeling, even if those around you could see that you were just another junkie. I think this is what was most frightening: me and my Theo haze and Claire and her druglike need were the same thing. I didn’t want to look at it; I didn’t want to look at her. To look at her would be to see the danger that I was facing on the other side of Theo’s visit, the darkness that inevitably fell when you spent too much time basking in the sun of a man. To look at her was to know that I was inevitably the cause of my own darkness, my own nothingness. The more you went for the ephemeral light, the more the void opened on the other side. It was waiting for me right there. I set my alarm for five. I wanted time to try to look beautiful, even though the wind and salt air always washed away anything I did to my hair or face. Dominic, never an early riser, was still asleep—sprawled in the bed where I had been, one ear above the sheets. I picked him up, carried him to the little white loveseat in the bedroom, and covered him with a blanket. He didn’t stir. Then I changed the sheets on the bed so they would smell clean and not like wet dog. I got in the deep tub and soaked. It was cold out and the hot water felt good to my bones. I brushed my teeth, then drenched myself in one of my sister’s expensive body oils: something called Exotic Seduction made with jasmine, ylang-ylang, vanilla, and lavender oils. I dabbed two extra drops on my nipples and one in my belly button. I applied spearmint lip gloss and rubbed some honey wax in my hair. Then I put on a knee-length gray cotton sundress and a wool sweater. I brought two large blankets outside and placed them in the wagon, unlocked the gate, and started dragging it across the sand. It was quiet. No one was out. If anyone saw me they would have thought I was using the wagon to carry my beach stuff out for the day. I was simply having a beach day.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But a close examination of her knees in the bath, revealed them to be flawless except for old scars and a crisp, brown scab from a recent tumble—this, of course, was very disappointing. She picked off the scab, and that hurt her a little, but not, she felt sure, like a real housemaid’s knee. However, she decided to continue in prayer, and not to be too easily downhearted. For more than three weeks she sweated and prayed, and pestered poor Collins with endless daily questions: ‘Is your knee better yet?’ ‘Don’t you think my knee’s swollen?’ ‘Have you faith? ’Cause I have—’ ‘Does it hurt you less, Collins?’ But Collins would always reply in the same way: ‘It’s no better, thank you, Miss Stephen.’ At the end of the fourth week Stephen suddenly stopped praying, and she said to Our Lord: ‘You don’t love Collins, Jesus, but I do, and I’m going to get housemaid’s knee. You see if I don’t!’ Then she felt rather frightened, and added more humbly: ‘I mean, I do want to—You don’t mind, do You, Lord Jesus?’ The nursery floor was covered with carpet, which was obviously rather unfortunate for Stephen; had it only been parquet like the drawing- room and study, she felt it would better have served her purpose. All the same it was hard if she knelt long enough—it was so hard, indeed, that she had to grit her teeth if she stayed on her knees for more than twenty minutes. This was much worse than barking one’s shins in the garden; it was much worse even than picking off a scab! Nelson helped her a little. She would think: ‘Now I’m Nelson. I’m in the middle of the Battle of Trafalgar—I’ve got shots in my knees!’ But then she would remember that Nelson had been spared such torment. However, it was really rather fine to be suffering—it certainly seemed to bring Collins much nearer; it seemed to make Stephen feel that she owned her by right of this diligent pain. There were endless spots on the old nursery carpet, and these spots Stephen could pretend to be cleaning; always careful to copy Collins’ movements, rubbing backwards and forwards while groaning a little. When she got up at last, she must hold her left leg and limp, still groaning a little. Enormous new holes appeared in her stockings, through which she could examine her aching knees, and this led to rebuke: ‘Stop your nonsense, Miss Stephen! It’s scandalous the way you’re tearing your stockings!’ But Stephen smiled grimly and went on with the nonsense, spurred by love to an open defiance. On the eighth day, however, it dawned upon Stephen that Collins should be shown the proof of her devotion. Her knees were particularly scarified that morning, so she limped off in search of the unsuspecting housemaid. Collins stared: ‘Good gracious, whatever’s the matter?

• From The Pisces (2018)

  That made me pause for a moment. Was it a sign that being with Theo was deeply misguided? My knee hurt and there was sand in the cut. But all I wanted was for him to take care of my knee. I wanted to show it to him and be babied. When I got back to the house I didn’t wash or bandage the cut. I wanted him to see what happened—to know that I hurt myself and needed to be taken care of. Even though he was entering my world, it wasn’t all easy for me. I was making sacrifices and taking risks too. He wasn’t the only one for whom this was difficult. I’ve always felt that injuries are a bit romantic, in the sense that you’re forced to be vulnerable and have someone else take care of you. I wanted to stay vulnerable. I wondered if he would suck the blood out of the wound like a vampire, the same way he wanted to lick my menstrual blood. Of course, he wasn’t a vampire, he was some other kind of mythic creature, but it didn’t matter. Even if he had legs, no tail, and was a real vampire, I wouldn’t care. I would put my knee to his mouth and say, “Drink, please. I hope you enjoy it.” I wanted him to help heal and soothe me, even if it meant consuming me away. I realized I was tired. I couldn’t be more tired. Dominic was already whimpering. I guess he could smell Theo on me. “It’s time to take a nap now,” I said, and got the tranquilizers from the cupboard. I didn’t know how I would explain to my sister where all of the tranquilizers had gone. Maybe she wouldn’t notice or maybe she would think that I had taken them. Perhaps I could score some more tranquilizers to give to him, or go to the vet and get more. Maybe a different vet so that no one would know what was happening. I gave him the tranquilizers in a pill pocket and put his head on my lap. “Nothing is beautiful and everything is nothing,” I said to him. “Everything is nothing and everything is beautiful.” I had no idea what I was talking about but I felt hypnotized with joy and potentiality. When his sighs deepened, I closed the pantry door and tiptoed away. Walking back across the beach with the wagon, I was limping. This is how we get injured for love, I thought. This is how love can hurt us. I felt great and noble, like a woman coming to claim her man in battle, or perhaps a man who was coming to rescue his woman. I had to be the rescuer, because he was more handicapped than I was. His legs were in worse shape than mine. At least mine could move on earth.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I rubbed my hands in a circular motion over the front of the sash and felt his penis under there, strong, semi-hard, like a thick trunk. His balls felt weighty like peaches. “Oh,” I said. “I wondered what you had.” “Yes,” he said. “And an ass too. The tail starts below all that, not like human myths where the tail starts at the stomach.” “Where did you get the sash? Do all of you wear sashes?” “Shipwreck, obviously,” he said. “Oh, yes, obviously.” I laughed. “And a loincloth does make it easier. Sand, jellyfish, it can all be very abrasive.” “Do you know a lot about Greek myths?” I asked. “Some,” he said. “Is that how you know about Sappho? Did you, like, date her or something?” “I’m not that old.” He laughed. What did dating even mean for a merman? Tinder under the fucking sea? Swiping right on a starfish? “Have you…been with any other women who live on land?” I asked. “Some,” he said. “Recently?” I asked. “Not in a while. I’m trying to change that,” he said, and touched my arm. I liked that it had been some time, because I wanted to be the only one. I didn’t care what the reason was, even if he simply hadn’t been near land. Of course, the inability to be with someone else on land did not mean he loved me in a special way. And his having been with other women who had feet did not necessarily equal lack of love. But it still made me feel safe to be the only one in a long time. These thoughts, themselves, were madness. He lived in the ocean and I lived in the desert. This wasn’t going to last. Maybe there could be some magic bend in our time together, the way I felt when he was going down on me. That had felt so eternal—as though if it were happening in one moment it was happening forever. But no one could live inside a moment. It was already over. And yet, here he was, still with me. We were sitting beside each other and he had his hand on my thigh, my hand tracing his knuckles. He is still here, I kept repeating to myself. “I have to go,” he said, as if he could read my mind. “It’s not a great idea for me to be out of the water like this with the light coming up.” I hadn’t realized that it was dawn. The sun was rising over the Santa Monica Mountains, turning the water silver. I could see that a few surfers had made their way to the Venice pier, laughing with one another. “Are you like a vampire?” I asked. “Are we in one of those teen vampire movies, only you’re a mermaid?” “Ha, no, nothing like that,” he said. “It’s just not a great idea for anyone to see me out here. I’ve gotten harassed before. I’ve gotten hurt.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I washed my face and realized that I hadn’t eaten either, but was too tired to make anything. I thought of that song, I didn’t know the music, just the words, something like “When you’re in love you’re never hungry.” Was I in love with this swimmer boy? Or was I just completely crazy? It didn’t make sense that something could feel so good, holy, and spiritual—like the gods themselves had put it there—and still not be right. It must be right, a gift for all of my suffering. But what if Theo just wanted sex? I thought about whether he was an “unavailable” man, and it seemed unlikely. I mean, I had never spent time with him out of the water. But even if he was available, I was not available—not for long anyway. What would happen when I went back to Phoenix? I fell asleep spooning Dominic and felt the kind of love I felt the first night I’d arrived in Venice. Only this was deeper, more tinged with dependency, like a heroin vibe, and I knew it wasn’t Dominic but Theo I was feeling. 29.The next morning I awoke to find a long string of texts from Jamie. He must have been drunk and stayed up all night, because the texts were in varying stages of “I want you.” He could probably smell Theo from thousands of miles away, how absorbed I was becoming. Men could smell an opening and they could smell a closing. He said he wanted to see me when I got back to Phoenix. He asked what I thought about giving things another try. I figured you got a restraining order, I wrote. I miss you Lucy. I didn’t ask him about the scientist. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I didn’t want to burst the double bubble of dopamine I now had coursing through me, first from Theo and now from Jamie. I lay around in bed for an hour, high on the potentiality of both of them, texting languidly. Jamie’s texts seemed more urgent than they had ever been, asking me questions about my return date, if I needed anything financially, if I wanted him to come pick me up and we could drive back to the desert together. I enjoyed being coy now, the elusive one for once. The independent one. That’s ok, I wrote, really, but thank you. I will see you when I get back. Then I got another text. This one from Claire. how shall I kill myself?

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  I’m ready to give up even Morton. But I can’t go on lying about you to Ralph, I want him to know how much I adore you—I want the whole world to know how I adore you. Ralph doesn’t understand the first rudiments of loving, he’s a nagging, mean-minded cur of a man, but there’s one thing that even he has a right to, and that’s the truth. I’m done with these lies—I shall tell him the truth and so will you, Angela; and after we’ve told him we’ll go away, and we’ll live quite openly together, you and I, which is what we owe to ourselves and our love.’ Angela stared at her, white and aghast: ‘You are mad,’ she said slowly, ‘you’re raving mad. Tell him what? Have I let you become my lover? You know that I’ve always been faithful to Ralph; you know perfectly well that there’s nothing to tell him beyond a few rather schoolgirlish kisses. Can I help it if you’re—what you obviously are? Oh, no, my dear, you’re not going to tell Ralph. You’re not going to let all hell loose around me just because you want to save your own pride by pretending to Ralph that you’ve been my lover. If you’re willing to give up your home I’m not willing to sacrifice mine, understand that, please. Ralph’s not much of a man but he’s better than nothing, and I’ve managed him so far without any trouble. The great thing with him is to blaze a false trail, that distracts his mind, it works like a charm. He’ll follow any trail that I want him to follow—you leave him to me, I know my own husband a darned sight better than you do, Stephen, and I won’t have you interfering in my home.’ She was terribly frightened, too frightened to choose her words, to consider their effect upon Stephen, to consider anyone but Angela Crossby who stood in such dire and imminent peril. So she said yet again, only now she spoke loudly: ‘I won’t have you interfering in my home!’ Then Stephen turned on her, white with passion: ‘You—you—’ she stuttered, ‘you’re unspeakably cruel. You know how you make me suffer and suffer because I love you the way I do; and because you like the way I love you, you drag the love out of me day after day—Can’t you understand that I love you so much that I’d give up Morton? Anything I’d give up—I’d give up the whole world. Angela, listen; I’d take care of you always. Angela, I’m rich—I’d take care of you always. Why won’t you trust me? Answer me—why?

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The election of a successor to the emperor Maximilian, who died Jan., 1519, put Leo’s diplomacy to the severest test. Ferdinand the Catholic, who had seen the Moorish domination in Spain come to an end and the Americas annexed to his crown, and had been invested by Julius II. in 1510 with the kingdom of Naples, died in 1516, leaving his grandson, Charles, heir to his dominions. Now, by the death of his paternal grandfather Maximilian, Charles was heir of the Netherlands and the lands of the Hapsburgs and natural claimant of the imperial crown. Leo preferred Francis, but Charles had the right of lineage and the support of the German people. To prevent Charles’ election, and to avoid the ill-will of Francis, he agitated through his legate, Cajetan, the election of either Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, or the elector of Brandenburg. Secretly he entered into the plans of Francis and allowed the archbishops of Treves and Cologne to be assured of their promotion to the sacred college, provided they would cast their electoral vote for the French king. But to be sure of his ground, no matter who might be elected, Leo entered also into a secret agreement with Charles. Both candidates had equal reason for believing they had the pope on their side.852 Finally, when it became evident that Francis was out of the race, and after the electors had already assembled in Frankfurt, Leo wrote to Cajetan that it was no use beating one’s head against the wall and that he should fall in with the election of Charles. Leo had stipulated 100,000 ducats as the price of his support of Charles.853 He sent a belated letter of congratulation to the emperor-elect, which was full of tropical phrases, and in 1521, at the Diet of Worms, the assembly before which Luther appeared, he concluded with Charles an alliance against his former ally, Francis. The agreement included the reduction of Milan, Parma and Piacenza. The news of the success of Charles’ troops in taking these cities reached Leo only a short time before his death, Dec. 1, 1521. For the cause of Protestantism, the papal alliance with the emperor against France proved to be highly favorable, for it necessitated the emperor’s absence from Germany. In his administration of the papacy, Leo X. was not unmindful of the interests of his family. Julian, his younger brother, was made gonfalonier of the Church, and was married to the sister of Francis I.’s mother. For a time he was in possession of Parma, Piacenza and Reggio. Death terminated his career, 1516. His only child, the illegitimate Hippolytus, d. 1535, was afterwards made cardinal.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Then we started kissing and I felt his cock get hard against me. “I want you so much,” he whispered in my ear. “You are my earth girl.” “I want you too,” I said. “We shouldn’t do it here,” he said. “Not on the beach at daylight.” “What do you want to do?” “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.” But he began to finger me, first tickling my clit just a little, then teasing my hole. I was already soaking wet. “Come on,” I said into his mouth. “Okay,” he said, fingering me harder. “You’re finger fucking me on the beach and you’re a very young man. This is your first time fingering a girl. What do you have to say about that?” Of course it was not his first time. But I wanted it to be. “I’m finger fucking your beautiful vagina and it’s my first time. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I get to finger you.” He intuitively knew exactly what to say to have me writhing. Or perhaps I planted the words in him, as so much of what our lovers do and say is imagined. We turn them into who we want them to be. We fill in their bodies and words for them. He pulled out his finger and sucked it, then put it in my mouth. “Taste yourself,” he said. “You are delicious.” “I am?” I asked. I nibbled his finger a little. “You are,” he said. “But it’s not safe here like this.” “What should we do? Do you want to go back in the ocean?” “Not particularly.” “So then let’s try again.” I rolled over, out from under the blanket, and stood up. Then I brought the wagon over to him. “Okay, hold it very still,” he said, and hoisted himself on backward. I covered him up in the blanket. This time he stayed on. As I pulled him across the beach, there were just a few stray joggers and assorted weirdos nearby. His blanketed tail jutted off the wagon, but it wasn’t the strangest thing to happen in Venice. No one seemed to notice or care. It wasn’t like I was smuggling a dead body. 37. I read somewhere that it takes women one and a half fucks to get attached—that it happens in the middle of the second fuck.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  After his drink and my toast we decided to take a walk. I wondered if this would be the make-out walk, since he had pretty much ignored that line of my Tinder bio and gone straight to the idea of fucking. Downtown L.A. wasn’t pretty, but it was sexy in the dark—all empty space, cooling air, and warehouses. Sexy dirt. He pointed across the street at a neon blue lit sign and said, “That’s my office.” The sign said GO ALL NIGHT. I thought the sign was stupid, but somehow, in the context of his jaw, it seemed hot. The jaw knew what it was doing, and so the sign did too. The jaw, and now the sign over this cool and modern office, made him seem like he had something creative and successful going on in his life. I wished he would just kiss me and wondered why he wasn’t doing anything. I felt ashamed. Maybe he didn’t think I was cute. Then the shame turned to anger, and I poked him in the chest. Then I pushed him into a wall. I don’t know whether I was trying to get him to kiss me or to wrestle him. But he didn’t seem to notice. He was too wrapped up in telling me about his new “health goth”–style fitness client. He was designing their online catalog, only the catalog wouldn’t be like a regular catalog. It would be a space that had 3-D printing elements and holographic models. Finally I said to him, “Can I kiss you?” “Yeah,” he said. He pulled me to him gently and we kissed in a really sweet way, very soft. That was kind of confusing. He kissed me like someone who definitely didn’t have a girlfriend. Like it was more of a loving kiss than a lusty kiss. Or maybe it wasn’t loving, but just dispassionate. Then he stopped, looked at me, and started talking about the project again. “Shhhhhh,” I said. I kissed him again. I felt strangely high. I was still a little drunk, but there was definitely something narcotic about kissing him—just being around him—that made me feel like I wanted to keep doing it over and over. I traced his jaw with my hand and let out a little sigh. He stopped kissing me and said, “So where did you park?” I told him that I took an Uber, and I would take one back. “I’m going to get a car now. Maybe we can kiss until it gets here?” I got higher and higher off the kisses. I just needed more and more of them. I felt that if I stopped getting them I would not be okay, but while I was close to his face everything was humming. I might have been looking at him funny. Maybe too lovingly? Could he smell my strange attachment already? What the fuck was wrong with me?

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I kissed him on the lips. His breath tasted less fresh than usual, a bit like wet leather. “I like how you taste,” I said. “I like tasting you in this state, no saltwater to cleanse your mouth. It’s so primal. I feel like I’m getting another part of you.” “You really do?” he asked. We kissed deeper, our tongues in each other’s mouths. I could feel his cock hard now against me. I pressed my body against his with pure want. I felt that I had a hole, not just my pussy itself but an existential hole, and that for the first time it was on the verge of being filled: the inertia of our mingled desire caulked it up. It was stuffed with anticipation. My anticipation of his cock was solid, its own entity, as though my desire were a second cock. He too seemed to exude complete want and devotion, which made me feel confident in my own wanting—as though, in his mirror, my lust was good and pure. He made me feel innocent and part of something bigger, like nothing had ever been my fault. I did not say “I love you,” or even whisper it, but somehow I felt that I was praying it into his mouth without speaking. I was saying it with my breath, my chest, the magnetism between our pelvises. It was a swimming into each other. I also felt that he had a hole, or holes, and in some strange way my cock—an existential one, really—was filling him. I felt that we were moving in and out of one another’s holes, nursing each other, symbiotic and magnetic. I felt the Earth rotating around us, or that we were the planet—spinning on its axis. In my head came a deep buzz of the Earth again and I didn’t know if I was actually humming out loud or if it was all inside me. This is how you exist in the world, I thought. This is how you are alive. “I want you so much,” he said. Under the blanket, so we would stay warm, he lifted my dress up over my head. I was naked except for my undies. He put his face between my small breasts, cradling and then sucking on them. He kissed and licked my stomach, then down the front of my underwear over my clit. He teased around my underwear, the crevices of my thighs, the crease where my lips met. Then, caressing my ass, he slid my underwear down and put his face between my thighs. He inhaled deeply like there was oxygen in there. “God, you smell so good,” he said.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Adam and I decided we would meet two nights later and try our street make-out. It was now 1:57 a.m. I realized I had been swiping on profiles and checking messages all night. I forgot to take Dominic out and it had been eight hours. I rubbed his belly and apologized, then walked him all the way to the Venice canals. Adam, Adam, I thought, and imagined wanting him. More so, I imagined him wanting me. Him lusting for me. I fell asleep masturbating to the thought of this person, as of yet still basically imaginary. I woke up with my hand inside my underwear. My pubic hair felt bristly and bushy, like a steel-wool sponge. Sometimes I used to put conditioner on it but I hadn’t in a while. I wondered what Adam was used to, if any of the girls his age had pubic hair at all. Then I felt my real hair on my head. It was like a bad cloud. I could feel all the gray seeping out, making me nauseated, probably Adam too. I wanted to be perfect for Adam. I walked Dominic and gave him his breakfast, then went over to Abbot Kinney. There was a salon there called Trim and it looked pretty empty. I spoke with a cute brunette woman with caramel highlights named Allison. “I have a date,” I blurted. “Nice,” she said. “So what are you looking to do?” “I need to color it. Nothing too crazy. Like an auburn is what I usually do.” I showed her some pictures of myself on my phone, what I looked like prior to falling apart. “So where are you going on this date?” she said. “Anywhere cool?” I didn’t want to say I would be slobbering on someone like dogs in the street. Or that it was with someone I had never met and that he was over ten years younger than me. I mean, the age difference in itself was kind of cool, but I still felt weird. So I lied and said that it was an older tech executive who I had been seeing. I said we were going away for a few days to a bed-and-breakfast in Santa Barbara. “Oh, that should be great,” said Allison enthusiastically. It felt fun to be having girl talk like this. I never had girl talk—not since Rochelle turned from ally to rat. This felt hopeful, like there was something to be excited about—both for Allison and me. She was probably just pretending to care. But even if it was all a lie, I preferred the lie to real life.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  “I like how you taste,” I said. “I like tasting you in this state, no saltwater to cleanse your mouth. It’s so primal. I feel like I’m getting another part of you.” “You really do?” he asked. We kissed deeper, our tongues in each other’s mouths. I could feel his cock hard now against me. I pressed my body against his with pure want. I felt that I had a hole, not just my pussy itself but an existential hole, and that for the first time it was on the verge of being filled: the inertia of our mingled desire caulked it up. It was stuffed with anticipation. My anticipation of his cock was solid, its own entity, as though my desire were a second cock. He too seemed to exude complete want and devotion, which made me feel confident in my own wanting—as though, in his mirror, my lust was good and pure. He made me feel innocent and part of something bigger, like nothing had ever been my fault. I did not say “I love you,” or even whisper it, but somehow I felt that I was praying it into his mouth without speaking. I was saying it with my breath, my chest, the magnetism between our pelvises. It was a swimming into each other. I also felt that he had a hole, or holes, and in some strange way my cock—an existential one, really—was filling him. I felt that we were moving in and out of one another’s holes, nursing each other, symbiotic and magnetic. I felt the Earth rotating around us, or that we were the planet—spinning on its axis. In my head came a deep buzz of the Earth again and I didn’t know if I was actually humming out loud or if it was all inside me. This is how you exist in the world, I thought. This is how you are alive. “I want you so much,” he said. Under the blanket, so we would stay warm, he lifted my dress up over my head. I was naked except for my undies. He put his face between my small breasts, cradling and then sucking on them. He kissed and licked my stomach, then down the front of my underwear over my clit. He teased around my underwear, the crevices of my thighs, the crease where my lips met. Then, caressing my ass, he slid my underwear down and put his face between my thighs. He inhaled deeply like there was oxygen in there. “God, you smell so good,” he said. He peeled my underpants down my legs. “And your vagina is so gorgeous. I just want to put my face in it all the time and live there.” “You should,” I said nervously, and giggled.

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

  When I am with them, I call #6 at night, telling him he’s been replaced by Georgia in my bed, venting about an argument I had with one of the kids, missing him. I have a full private life now, separate from my fulfilling and busy life as a mother. It’s a delicate balancing act to keep myself aloft, but it’s not terribly complicated. My kids are my priority; when they’re doing their own thing, I am free to spend time with #6 or my beautiful gaggle of girlfriends or to write or occasionally, still, to wander. #6 is gracious about relinquishing me to my children, saying he is attracted to me in part because I am such a committed mother. He has yet to meet them beyond a quick hello and that’s my choice now. When I’m with them, I want to be wholly with them. I suggested to him recently that he would be better served by a girlfriend who has more time to spend with him, but he waved the suggestion away: quality over quantity. We know we have a good thing. We make each other laugh, we care about each other and we have great sex – this seems like enough. As for my wanderlust, that’s a part of me that I steadfastly refuse to let go. #6 gives me everything I want from a man except for one significant thing that is impossible for him to provide: newness. I still want to be noticed, desired, flirted with, seen in all my naked glory; I want to peel clothes off men and run my hands along their warm skin. I won’t demean myself by not being forthright with #6, and I have to safeguard this side of myself I only recently discovered. When I have the chance, which isn’t often anymore as there are only so many hours in a day, I have sex with other men and I tell #6 when I do. He is apprehensive, but I tell him I love him, and I do. I struggled with sharing my feelings for him, terrified to reveal myself so nakedly. Too timid to say the words out loud, I drew him a cartoon of a teddy bear holding a heart, in the style of the notes I make every morning for Georgia’s lunchbox that he admires, and tucked it into an envelope that I told him not to open until I had walked away, further instructing him not to feel obligated to return the stated feelings.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I wondered if perhaps they all looked the same and he’d eventually grown bored of them. Maybe that was why he wanted a land woman with calluses on her feet, plain as I was. I was nothing like Aphrodite. But maybe that was the point. “You’re not going to abandon me now that you know what you know,” he said. “Are you?” “Me? No!” I was delighted. Did it take a mythological deformity to find a gorgeous man who was as needy as I was? “Good,” he said. He put my chin in his hand and gave me a wet kiss. I could smell the difference between the top and bottom of him. His head, shoulders, and neck had a clean smell, a fleshy, wet-skin smell. He smelled human, but better. Once in a while, the scent of his bottom half would waft up and it smelled like a fish market—not exactly dead fish, the way my fish-tank emergency had smelled in my youth, but it smelled like blood, the ocean, shit, seaweed…a little like pussy, actually. I felt almost as though his bottom half were some sort of pussy, although it was phallic in shape. Maybe because he was insecure about it, and I had always felt insecure about my pussy. Maybe it was because in seeing it, this part of him, the part he had concealed, I was, in a way, entering him. I thought about dominance and submission—how in some ways he had been the submissive one in eating my pussy. Yet in other ways I was dependent on him emotionally now that I had let him see me like that: splayed, surrendered, thrusting in his face. I was attached to him more than before, because I had opened for him like that. Maybe he felt that of me. Maybe he needed that before he could show me his tail. I wondered what was underneath that sash around his pelvis. I wondered if he had a cock. Did fish have cocks? “May I touch you?” I asked. He nodded. We began kissing again and I ran my hands through his hair, tickling the back of his neck. I rubbed his chest, smooth as a sculpture, fingering each of the nipples. I wanted to tease him, treat him like a girl a little bit, because I still felt vulnerable and also because I knew, somehow, he would like it. His nipples hardened like pellets under my fingers and he gasped. I touched his stomach. It was so smooth, not cut or built, but not roly-poly either. A little soft, full, but also firm. It was existing. He existed. His arm muscles felt stronger than his abdominal muscles and I wondered if this had something to do with the way he swam. He had no hair on his stomach or pubic hair sticking out up over the sash.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I watched the top of his head as he ate me. Even though he had said before that he wanted to eat me all night I still felt nervous about how long it might take me to come. I made moaning sounds. My clit felt good but my mind stayed disconnected. I wanted him in me, wanted to fuck him, face-to-face. As if he knew how I was feeling, he put a finger inside me. I gasped. “I want your cock so bad,” I whined. “How much?” he said with his face still buried in my pussy. “So bad,” I said. I could see that he was stroking himself as he ate me. I could feel his cock, hard against my shin. “Give me your cock please,” I said. “Please can I have it?” He climbed back on me so his face was over my face and his chest on my chest, his cock nestled between my thighs, resting on my wet clit and lips. “I’m on the pill,” I said. “We don’t need to use anything.” Then I started laughing at the absurdity of everything. Was I really talking about birth control with a merman? It was true that I was on the pill, sort of. I wasn’t great about taking it. Sometimes I would forget for days at a time. Occasionally I would just go off it for a month. Jamie knew this, but in all our years together I never got knocked up. He would always pull out and come on my belly. He feared me getting pregnant, how that would impinge on his freedom—the emotional fallout from an abortion, or worse yet, a baby. He was afraid, but not enough to wear a condom. I couldn’t remember if I had taken my pill the day before, but could a merman really impregnate me? Would the child have legs or a tail? Perhaps it would have legs and a tail, or multiple legs, like an octopus. I couldn’t imagine Theo was riddled with disease either, considering he spent his life in saltwater. He was like a saline boy. I didn’t know how many others he had fucked, and now I didn’t really care. Let him give me his diseases, I thought. Let him give me some strange sea syphilis or whatever. I want it. I don’t care. Looking into my eyes, he rubbed the crease of my pussy with his cock. Then he slid his cock into me, so slowly. I gasped, he moaned, and I wanted to eat his moan. He was inside me. I couldn’t believe he was there. I had never thought of it like that before in the heat of things—about a person really being inside another person. “Entered,” like they say in romance novels. With every thrust he kissed me deeply and I gasped in his mouth. He was surprisingly dexterous given his tail.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  She sounded skeptical, and I wondered what right she had to be skeptical when she had just been in a bottomless pit. “Swimmer,” I said. “All we do is talk. Or all we did was talk until last night when he went down on me for forty-five minutes.” “Nooooo,” she said. “Yes. At least forty-five. What does it mean when a boy goes down on you for forty-five minutes? I feel like it has to be love. Like, I feel like he loves me.” “Either he loves you or he loves pussy. One of the two.” I laughed. “No, he doesn’t seem like that. He isn’t a pussy hound. Well, I can’t tell. I mean, I think he is gorgeous, but he isn’t typically gorgeous. But if I think he is gorgeous then probably a million others do too.” “Usually that’s the way it works,” she said. “Still, I’m glad you’re getting shagged properly. It’s important. I think it’s very important that you be well fucked.” “We haven’t fucked yet,” I said. “I haven’t even seen his dick.” “Oh really?” she said. “Then it could be love on his part.” “That’s what I think,” I said. “But what about you?” “I’m smitten,” I said. “Of course you are. It’s especially intoxicating when there is an expiration date. Aren’t you going back to Phoenix in a month?” “Six weeks,” I said. “Well, there you go. That makes it perfect! A summer romance.” “But what if it’s more? He doesn’t know I’m leaving,” I said. “But you do,” she said. I thought about this. All I imagined I wanted was the love of someone beautiful like Theo—the kind of love where it stayed young and glittery and never got old. One way to keep it shiny was to have an end date on it. I’d thought it was Jamie who didn’t want to commit. But the group was right—it was me who was really the unavailable one. I was picking people with whom I couldn’t have that ultimate intimacy: Jamie, who couldn’t make enough room for me in his life, and now these younger men. Their age made it safe to pine for them, to torture myself, because it ensured I would always be pushing against some sort of friction, an inability to really be together. And no matter what any of them felt for me, I would never have to see it grow old, because I would be returning to Phoenix. Even in the case of Theo, where he seemed to actually like me, I would be leaving. I was in control of the way things would end. 34. Buying the wagon wasn’t sexy like shopping for makeup and clothes. I wondered if real love always devolved into this: moments of non-sexiness.

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

  I take off my sandals and dangle them from my fingers as I try to gracefully make my way over shells and shallow pools of water to the bar, which is shut down for the night. As I approach, I hear a long whistle come from the direction of a stretch of empty chairs on the beach. I amble over, feigning casualness as best I can. The chairs are more like round beds, half covered by a canopy, and it’s not until I get to the second one that I see Blaze tucked inside of it. “Hey beautiful,” he says quietly. I say hello shyly, still clutching my sandals in one hand and holding up the hem of my maxi dress in the other. I didn’t really expect him to be here and am surprised and nervous. He gestures to the enclosed seat. I drop my sandals and climb in, asking how he got to the beach since I can’t picture him in a car, which seems too ordinary for him. He takes a long inhale of the joint he is holding and passes it to me, but I shake my head. Now that I’m trying to see him as a real person and not just the demi-god of my dreams, I’m curious too to know his real name. He makes me promise that I won’t laugh at it. “Ephraim,” he says. “A Biblical name. Does anyone still call you that?” I ask. “My mother,” he says. “And how did you come to be known as Blaze?” I say. “How do you think, Mama?” he says laughing and before I can answer his lips are on mine, so soft and pillowy that I want to bite them. His breath is a combination of cigarettes and weed, and I can smell cologne on his skin, which I find touching – an indication that he put himself together for me. He lies me back and looks meaningfully at me as he pulls my dress down and throws it to the side, so that I am lying naked except for a pale pink thong, which he also pulls down and throws to the side of the chair. I watch him closely but don’t speak. He tells me that he’s been watching me for a long time and then his lips are all over my body, working their way from my nipples down my torso, resting on my still-hairless pubic triangle. “Mama, you have fat pussy lips!” he says, laughing. “I don’t know how to take that. Is that a compliment or an insult?” I ask. “I have no insults for you,” he says, burrowing his face between my legs.

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

  I lead the way inside, discreetly tucking the red rose alongside me so the doorman doesn’t see it. I know how these doormen gossip and I can only imagine what might be said about my having arrived home late at night in high heels with a red rose and a man who is not my husband. Inside my apartment, I lay the rose on the counter and offer him a glass of wine, though I’m strictly drinking water now, already feeling tipsy. We sit back on the deep couch in the den and soon he is moving closer to me and leaning over to kiss me. His mouth is warm and tastes smoky from the whiskey he had been drinking. I lie back and he presses against me. “I have a huge, lovely bed,” I say. “Shall we move over to it?” He follows me down the hall to my room. He lies back against the mountain of pillows on the made-up bed and I straddle him, opening the front fold of my dress to reveal a lace thong. He lifts my hips so that I’m kneeling and then scoots down the bed so that his head is under me, pulls my thong to the side and flicks his tongue against my clit. It’s been weeks since I’ve been touched and I sigh with the relief of being back in the game. After a few minutes of this, I ask if he has a condom and he replies that he does, yes, but that he would rather do this instead. “Oh,” I say. “Everything OK?” “Yes, I just ... it’s just our first date,” he says haltingly. “OK,” I say. “I mean, that’s never stopped me before but carry on.” After I come, he pulls his head back up against the pillows and smiles at me. I close the front of my dress and pull myself on top of him. I feel his stockinged feet with my bare feet, my knees against his knees, my pelvic bones pressed into his. “You know,” he says, “I can tell my friend that something has come up so you and I could spend the day together tomorrow.” I shake my head, telling him that I already have plans and admit that my plans include a date with someone else. He persists, suggesting instead that we get together on Sunday when he’s back in the city. I shake my head again, saying that by then Georgia will be home. “That’s OK, we can all do something together. My daughters would love your daughter, they love playing big sister,” he says. I rear my head up to look at him. “Oh God, no way! Noooooo! I’m sorry to react so strongly. Separation of church and state. My kids don’t even know that I’m dating,” I say. We lie quietly for a moment and then I add, “You probably need to get going, it’s late and your train leaves in a few hours.”

• From The Pisces (2018)

  We began kissing again and I ran my hands through his hair, tickling the back of his neck. I rubbed his chest, smooth as a sculpture, fingering each of the nipples. I wanted to tease him, treat him like a girl a little bit, because I still felt vulnerable and also because I knew, somehow, he would like it. His nipples hardened like pellets under my fingers and he gasped. I touched his stomach. It was so smooth, not cut or built, but not roly-poly either. A little soft, full, but also firm. It was existing. He existed. His arm muscles felt stronger than his abdominal muscles and I wondered if this had something to do with the way he swam. He had no hair on his stomach or pubic hair sticking out up over the sash. I rubbed my hands in a circular motion over the front of the sash and felt his penis under there, strong, semi-hard, like a thick trunk. His balls felt weighty like peaches. “Oh,” I said. “I wondered what you had.” “Yes,” he said. “And an ass too. The tail starts below all that, not like human myths where the tail starts at the stomach.” “Where did you get the sash? Do all of you wear sashes?” “Shipwreck, obviously,” he said. “Oh, yes, obviously.” I laughed. “And a loincloth does make it easier. Sand, jellyfish, it can all be very abrasive.” “Do you know a lot about Greek myths?” I asked. “Some,” he said. “Is that how you know about Sappho? Did you, like, date her or something?” “I’m not that old.” He laughed. What did dating even mean for a merman? Tinder under the fucking sea? Swiping right on a starfish? “Have you…been with any other women who live on land?” I asked. “Some,” he said. “Recently?” I asked. “Not in a while. I’m trying to change that,” he said, and touched my arm.