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 Art of Seduction (2001)

  she enjoyed herself so much and was so unrestrained that none of that mat- Otero had been the tered. Jurgens also could not help but notice the men in the cabaret watch- headliner there for several weeks and although I ing her, their mouths agape. knew who she was I had After the show, Jurgens went backstage to introduce himself. Otero's never seen her before on eyes came alive as he spoke of his job and of New York. He felt a heat, a stage or off • "I was scurrying along, head bent, twitching, in his body as she looked him up and down. Her voice was deep thinking of something or and raspy, the tongue constantly in play as she rolled her Rs. Closing the other, when I looked up. door, Otero ignored the knocks and pleas of the admirers dying to speak to There was La Belle, in the her. She said that her way of dancing was natural—her mother was a gypsy, company of another woman, walking in my Soon she asked Jurgens to be her escort that evening, and as he helped her direction. Otero was then with her coat, she leaned back toward him slightly, as if she had lost her nearly forty and I was not balance. As they walked around the city, her arm in his, she would occa- yet out of my teens but— ah! —s he was so beautiful! sionally whisper in his ear. Jurgens felt his usual reserve melt away. He held • "She was tall, dark-her tighter. He was a family man, had never considered cheating on his haired, with a magnificent wife, but without thinking, he brought Otero back to his hotel room. She body, like the bodies of the began to take off some of her clothes—coat, gloves, hat—a perfectly nor- women of those days, not like the lightweight ones of mal thing to do, but the way she did it made him lose all restraint. The nor- today." • Chevalier smiled. mally timid Jurgens went on the attack. • "Of course I like modern The next morning Jurgens signed Otero to a lucrative contract—a great women, too, but there was something of a fatal charm risk, considering that she was an amateur at best. He brought her to Paris about Otero. We three and assigned a top theatrical coach to her. Hurrying back to New York, he stood there for a moment or fed the newspapers with reports of this mysterious Spanish beauty poised to two, not saying a word, I staring at La Belle, not so conquer the city. Soon rival papers were claiming she was an Andalusian young as she once was and countess, an escaped harem girl, the widow of a sheik, on and on. He maybe not so beautiful, but 395 396 • The Art of Seduction still quite a woman. • made frequent trips to Paris to be with her, forgetting about his family, lav- "She looked right at me,

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Take the direct route, saying exactly what you want, and your honesty may make you feel good but you are probably not getting anywhere. People have their own sets of ideas, which are hardened into stone by habit; your words, entering their minds, com- a letter, for fear of the dangers that this might entail. But having perceived that he was on very friendly terms with a certain priest, a rotund, uncouth, individual who was nevertheless regarded as an outstandingly able friar on account of his very saintly way of life, she calculated that this fellow would serve as an ideal go- between for her and the man she loved. And so, after reflecting on the strategy she would adopt, she paid a visit, at an appropriate hour of the day, to the church where he was to be found, and having sought him out, she asked him whether he would agree to confess her. • Since he could tell at a glance that she was a lady of quality, the friar gladly heard her confession, and when she had got to the end of it, she continued as follows: • "Father, as I shall explain to you presently, there is a certain matter about which I am compelled to seek your advice and assistance. Having already told you my name, I feel sure you will know my family and my husband. He loves me more dearly than life itself, and since he is enormously rich, he never has the slightest difficulty or hesitation in supplying me with every single object for which I display a yearning. Consequently, my love for him is quite unbounded, and if my mere thoughts, to say nothing of my actual behavior, were to run contrary to his wishes and his honor, I would be more deserving of hellfire than the wickedest woman who ever lived. • "Now, there is a certain person, of respectable outward 216 • The Art of Seduction pete with the thousands of preconceived notions that are already there, and get nowhere. Besides, people resent your attempt to persuade them, as if they were incapable of deciding by themselves—as if you knew better. Consider instead the power of insinuation and suggestion. It requires some patience and art, but the results are more than worth it. The way insinuation works is simple: disguised in a banal remark or en- counter, a hint is dropped. It is about some emotional issue—a possible pleasure not yet attained, a lack of excitement in a person's life.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Her ability to go on surprising him kept her always in his mind, deepening her spell and blotting Caterina out. Each surprise was carefully calculated for the effect it would produce. The first unexpected letter piqued his curiosity, as did that first sight of her in the waiting room; suddenly seeing her dressed as an elegant woman stirred intense desire; then seeing her dressed as a man intensified the excitingly transgressive nature of their liaison. The surprises put him off balance, yet left him quivering with anticipation of the next one. Even an unpleasant surprise, such as the encounter with Caterina that Mathilde had set up, kept him emotional and weak. Meeting the somewhat bland Caterina at that moment only made him long that much more for Mathilde. In seduction, you need to create constant tension and suspense, a feel- ing that with you nothing is predictable. Do not think of this as a painful challenge. You are creating drama in real life, so pour your creative energies into it, have some fun. There are all kinds of calculated surprises you can spring on your victims—sending a letter from out of the blue, showing up unexpectedly, taking them to a place they have never been. But best of all are surprises that reveal something new about your character. This needs to be set up. In those first few weeks, your targets will tend to make certain snap judgments about you, based on appearances. Perhaps they see you as a bit shy, practical, puritanical. You know that this is not the real you, but it is how you act in social situations. Let them, however, have these impres- sions, and in fact accentuate them a little, without overacting: for instance, Shahzaman related to [his brother King Shahriyar] all that he had seen in the king's garden that day. . . . • Upon this Shahriyar announced his intention to set forth on another expedition. The troops went out of the city with the tents, and King Shahriyar followed them. And after he had stayed a while in the camp, he gave orders to his slaves that no one was to be admitted to the king's tent. He then disguised himself and returned unnoticed to the palace, where his brother was waiting for him. They both sat at one of the windows overlooking the garden; and when they had been there a short time, the queen and her women appeared with the black slaves, and behaved as Shahzaman had described. . . . • As soon as they entered the palace, King Shahriyar put his wife to death, together with her women and the black slaves.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Caesar, in the mood for a little fun, gave the merchant permission to enter. But now the breeze The man came in, carrying on his shoulders a large rolled-up carpet. He dropped, some power lulled undid the rope around the bundle and with a snap of his wrists unfurled the waves, and a breathless calm set in. Rising from it—revealing the young Cleopatra, who had been hidden inside, and who their seats my men drew rose up half clothed before Caesar and his guests, like Venus emerging from in the sail and threw it into the waves. the hold, then sat down at the oars and churned the Everyone was dazzled at the sight of the beautiful young queen (only water white with their twenty-one at the time) appearing before them suddenly as if in a dream. blades of polished pine. They were astounded at her daring and theatricality—smuggled into the Meanwhile I took a large harbor at night with only one man to protect her, risking everything on a round of wax, cut it up small with my sword, and bold move. No one was more enchanted than Caesar. According to the kneaded the pieces with all Roman writer Dio Cassius, "Cleopatra was in the prime of life. She had a the strength of my fingers. delightful voice which could not fail to cast a spell over all who heard it. The wax soon yielded to my vigorous treatment and Such was the charm of her person and her speech that they drew the cold- grew warm, for I had the est and most determined misogynist into her toils. Caesar was spellbound as rays of my Lord the Sun to soon as he set eyes on her and she opened her mouth to speak." That same help me. I took each of my men in turn and plugged evening Cleopatra became Caesar s lover. their ears with it. They Caesar had had numerous mistresses before, to divert him from the rig- then made me a prisoner ors of his campaigns. But he had always disposed of them quickly to return on my ship by binding me hand and foot, standing to what really thrilled him—political intrigue, the challenges of warfare, me up by the step of the the Roman theater. Caesar had seen women try anything to keep him un- mast and tying the rope's der their spell. Yet nothing prepared him for Cleopatra. One night she ends to the mast itself. would tell him how together they could revive the glory of Alexander the This done, they sat down once more and struck the Great, and rule the world like gods. The next she would entertain him grey water with their oars. dressed as the goddess Isis, surrounded by the opulence of her court. • We made good progress Cleopatra initiated Caesar in the most decadent revelries, presenting herself and had just come within call of the shore when the

• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  147 was a hallmark of the Enlightenment. Europeans of the 18th century believed that Europe was freeing itself from the shackles of the wars of religion and the Middle Ages. Enlightenment thinkers believed that the man was a rational creature, and reason was key to man’s advance. The idea of progress was the hallmark of the Enlightenment. The era was an age of enlightened despots, such as Maria Theresa of Austria. A well-intentioned absolute ruler, it was believed, could give his or her subjects the greatest benefi ts and ensure true freedom for individuals to live their lives as they chose. The spirit of the Enlightenment is embodied in the U.S. Constitution, which is a rational document and does not mention God. Many thinkers of the Enlightenment believed that God had made the world, but men and women made their own destinies. Goethe became the supreme representative of the Enlightenment. He was a notable and in fl uential civil servant of the duke of Weimar. He was a scientist who conducted original research into the theory of color. He was traveler, who wrote his observations, for example, on Italy. He was also a poet of supreme lyrical ability, as well as a playwright. He was the most admired intellectual of his day, in an era that lionized intellectuals. Throughout his life, Goethe grappled with the story of Dr. Faustus. Dr. Faustus was a real person who lived in Germany at the time of Martin Luther, probably between 1480 and 1540. Dr. Faustus had a reputation for not just wisdom but magical wisdom. A legend grew that he had sold his soul to the devil to acquire knowledge. He was portrayed in Punch-and-Judy–type shows that featured him in fi ghts with the devil. These shows also dealt with the theme of ambition and the desire for knowledge. The fi rst part of Goethe’s Faust, the subject of this lecture, was published in 1808. Like the biblical Book of Job, Faust begins in heaven with God and the devil. The devil is an erudite man of the world who pays reverence to God. God tells the devil that he has given humanity free will, which enables people to make choices. The devil questions this freedom and gains God’s permission to take possession of Faust’s soul if he succeeds in tempting Goethe became the supreme representative of the Enlightenment.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  and there about other people in the victim's life, making the victim feel glance that she was a lady vulnerable. Slight physical contact insinuates desire, as does a fleeting but of quality, the friar gladly memorable look, or an unusually warm tone of voice, both for the briefest heard her confession, and when she had got to the of moments. A passing comment suggests that something about the victim end of it, she continued as interests you; but keep it subtle, your words revealing a possibility, creating a follows: • "Father, as I doubt. You are planting seeds that will take root in the weeks to come. shall explain to you presently, there is a certain When you are not there, your targets will fantasize about the ideas you have matter about which I am stirred up, and brood upon the doubts. They are slowly being led into your compelled to seek your web, unaware that you are in control. How can they resist or become de- advice and assistance. fensive if they cannot even see what is happening? Having already told you my name, I feel sure you will know my family and What distinguishes a suggestion from other kinds of psy-my husband. He loves me chical influence, such as a command or the giving of a piece more dearly than life itself, and since he is enormously of information or instruction, is that in the case of a sug-rich, he never has the gestion an idea is aroused in another person's brain which slightest difficulty or is not examined in regard to its origin but is accepted just hesitation in supplying me as though it had arisen spontaneously in that brain. with every single object for which I display a yearning. —SIGMUND FREUD Consequently, my love for him is quite unbounded, and if my mere thoughts, to say nothing of my actual Keys to Seduction behavior, were to run contrary to his wishes and his honor, I would be more You cannot pass through life without in one way or another trying to deserving of hellfire than persuade people of something. Take the direct route, saying exactly the wickedest woman who what you want, and your honesty may make you feel good but you are ever lived. • "Now, there is probably not getting anywhere. People have their own sets of ideas, which a certain person, of respectable outward are hardened into stone by habit; your words, entering their minds, com- 216 • The Art of Seduction appearance, who unless I pete with the thousands of preconceived notions that are already there, and am mistaken is a close get nowhere. Besides, people resent your attempt to persuade them, as if acquaintance of yours. I they were incapable of deciding by themselves—as if you knew better. really couldn't say what his name is, but he is tall and

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  desiring woman and the innocent gamine. suggest now that you tour Greece with my son Eros Your next encounter will be with the Sirens, who bewitch as your guide. Once you every man that approaches them. . . . For with the music reach Sparta, he and I will see that Helen falls head of their song the Sirens cast their spell upon him, as they over heels in love with sit there in a meadow piled high with the moldering skele-you." • "Would you swear tons of men, whose withered skin still hangs upon their to that?" Paris ashed bones. excitedly. • Aphrodite uttered a solemn oath, and —CIRCE TO ODYSSEUS, THE ODYSSEY, BOOK XII Paris, without a second thought, awarded her the golden apple. Keys to the Character — R O B E R T GRAVES, THE GREEK MYTHS, VOLUME I The Siren is the most ancient seductress of them all. Her prototype is the goddess Aphrodite—it is her nature to have a mythic quality about her—but do not imagine she is a thing of the past, or of legend and history: she represents a powerful male fantasy of a highly sexual, supremely confident, alluring female offering endless pleasure and a bit of danger. In today's world this fantasy can only appeal the more strongly to the male psyche, for now more than ever he lives in a world that circumscribes his aggressive instincts by making everything safe and secure, a world that offers less chance for adventure and risk than ever before. In the past, a man had some outlets for these drives—warfare, the high seas, political intrigue. In the sexual realm, courtesans and mistresses were practically a social institu- 12 • The Art of Seduction To whom aw I compare tion, and offered him the variety and the chase that he craved. Without any the lovely girl, so blessed by outlets, his drives turn inward and gnaw at him, becoming all the more fortune, if not to the volatile for being repressed. Sometimes a powerful man will do the most ir-Sirens, who with their lodestone draw the ships rational things, have an affair when it is least called for, just for a thrill, the towards them? Thus, I danger of it all. The irrational can prove immensely seductive, even more imagine, did Isolde attract so for men, who must always seem so reasonable. many thoughts and hearts that deemed themselves If it is seductive power you are after, the Siren is the most potent of all. safe from love's She operates on a man's most basic emotions, and if she plays her role prop-disquietude. And indeed erly, she can transform a normally strong and responsible male into a child-these two— anchorless ish slave. The Siren operates well on the rigid masculine type—the soldier ships and stray thoughts— provide a good comparison. or hero—just as Cleopatra overwhelmed Mark Antony and Marilyn Mon-They are both so seldom

• From Middlesex (2002)

  He prayed for five minutes. Then came out, replaced his hat on his head, and rattled the change in his pockets. He climbed back up the sloping streets and, this time (his heart unburdened), stopped at all the places he'd resisted on his way down. He stepped into a kiosk for coffee and a smoke. He went to a cafe for a glass of ouzo. The backgammon players shouted, "Hey, Valentino, how about a game?" He let himself get cajoled into playing, just one, then lost and had to go double or nothing. (The calculations Desdemona found in Lefty's pants pockets were gambling debts.) The night wore on. The ouzo kept flowing. The musicians arrived and the rebetika began. They 31 played songs about lust, death, prison, and life on the street. "At the hash den on the seashore, where Pd go every day," Lefty sang along, "Every morning, bright and early, to chase the blues away; I ran into two harem girls sitting on the sand; Quite stoned the poor things were, and they were really looking grand." Meanwhile, the hookah was being filled. By midnight, Lefty came floating back onto the streets. An alley descends, turns, dead-ends. A door opens. A face smiles, beckoning. The next thing Lefty knows, he's sharing a sofa with three Greek soldiers, looking across at seven plump, perfumed women sharing two sofas opposite. (A phonograph plays the hit song that's . .") And now his playing everywhere: "Ev'ry morning, eVry evening . recent prayer is forgotten completely because as the madam says, "Anyone you like, sweetheart," Lefty's eyes pass over the blond, blue- eyed Circassian, and the Armenian girl suggestively eating a peach, and the Mongolian with the bangs; his eyes keep scanning to fix on a quiet girl at the end of the far couch, a sad-eyed girl with perfect skin and black hair in braids. ("There's a scabbard for every dagger," the madam says in Turkish as the whores laugh.) Unconscious of the workings of his attraction, Lefty stands up, smooths his jacket, holds . and only as she leads him up the out his hand toward his choice . stairs does a voice in his head point out how this girl comes up to ex- . but now they've acdy where . reached the room with its unclean sheets, its blood-colored oil lamp, its smell of rose water and dirty feet. In the intoxication of his young . and isn't her profile just like . . . . senses Lefty doesn't pay attention to the growing similarities the

• From What Are Biblical Values? (2019)

  The primeval human being was round, his back and sides forming a circle; he had four hands and four feet and a head with two faces looking opposite ways. These fearsome primeval beings mounted an attack on the gods. To subdue them, Zeus cut them in two and made them walk upright on two legs. This division of the original human being is the origin of desire: Each of us when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a man, and he is always looking for his other half. Men who are a section of that double nature which was once called androgynous are lovers of women . . . the women who are a section of the woman do not care for men, but have female attachments . . . But they who are a section of the male follow the male, and while they are young, being slices of the original man, they hang about men and embrace them, and they are themselves the best of boys and youths, because they have the most manly nature. Aristophanes defends such people against the charge of shamelessness and waxes rhapsodic about their love: And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and will not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another.18 Plato’s categories do not correspond to the modern distinction between heterosexuals and homosexuals. They distinguish love between men from love between women and treat pederasty, the love of boys by adult men, as a special category.19 Nonetheless, they suggest that sexual orientation is inborn, determined by a person’s makeup. Such theorizing about sexuality was exceptional in antiquity, however, and is not attested at all in the Bible. THE EVIDENCE OF THE HEBREW BIBLE Only a few passages in the Hebrew Bible address the question of same-sex relations. Some are narratives. A story about Lot in the city of Sodom in Genesis 19 gave rise to the name “sodomy” for male homosexual intercourse. Lot, nephew of Abraham, sees two strangers in the city gate. (They turn out to be angels.) He insists that they come into his house and not spend the night in the public square.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  Sometimes when I climbed on top of the Object she would al- most wake up. She would move to accommodate me, spreading her legs or throwing an arm around my back. She swam up to the surface of consciousness before diving again. Her eyelids fluttered. A respon- siveness entered her body, a flex of abdomen in rhythm with mine, her head thrown back to offer up her throat. I waited for more. I wanted her to acknowledge what we were doing, but I was scared, too. So the sleek dolphin rose, leapt through the ring of my legs, and disappeared again, leaving me bobbing, trying to keep my balance. Everything was wet down there. From me or her I didn't know. I laid my head on her chest beneath the bunched-up T-shirt. Her under- arms smelled like overripe fruit. The hair there was very sparse. "You luck," I would have said, back in our daytime life. "You don't even have to shave." But the nighttime Calliope only stroked the hair, or tasted it. One night, as I was doing this and other things, I noticed a shadow on the wall. I thought it was a moth. But, looking closer, I saw that it was the Object's hand, raised behind my head. Her hand was completely awake. It clenched and unclenched, siphoning all the ecstasy from her body into its secret flowerings. What the Object and I did together was played out under these loose rules. We weren't too scrupulous about the details. What pressed on our attention was that it was happening, sex was happen- ing. That was the great fact. How it happened exacdy, what went where, was secondary. Plus, we didn't have much to compare it to. Nothing but our night in the shack with Rex and Jerome. As far as the crocus was concerned, it wasn't so much a piece of 386 me as something we discovered and enjoyed together. Dr. Luce will tell you that female monkeys exhibit mounting behavior when ad- ministered male hormones. They seize, they thrust. Not me. Or at least not at first. The blooming of the crocus was an impersonal phe- nomenon. It was a kind of hook that fastened us together, more a stimulant to the Object's outer parts than a penetration of her inner. But, apparendy, effective enough. Because after the first few nights, she was eager for it. Eager, that is, while ostensibly remaining uncon- scious. As I hugged her, as we languorously shifted and knotted, the Object's attitudes of insensibility included favorable positioning. Nothing was made ready or caressed. Nothing was aimed. But prac- tice brought about a fluid gymnastics to our sleep couplings. The Object's eyes remained closed throughout; her head was often turned slightly away. She moved under me as a sleeping girl might while be- ing ravished by an incubus. She was like somebody having a dirty dream, confusing her pillow for a lover.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "This has all been verified. Under the microscope. The male sperms are faster." "I bet they're stupider, too." "Go on. Malign the male sperms all you want. Feel free. We don't want a male sperm. What we want is a good old, slow, reliable female sperm." "Even if it's true, it's still ridiculous. I can't just do it like clock- work, Milt." "It'll be harder on me than you." "I don't want to hear it." "I thought you wanted a daughter." "I do." "Well," said my father, "this is how we can get one." Tessie laughed the suggestion off. But behind her sarcasm was a serious moral reservation. To tamper with something as mysterious and miraculous as the birth of a child was an act of hubris. In the first place, Tessie didn't believe you could do it. Even if you could, she didn't believe you should try. Of course, a narrator in my position (prefetal at the time) can't be en- tirely sure about any of this. I can only explain the scientific mania that overtook my father during that spring of '59 as a symptom of the belief in progress that was infecting everyone back then. Remem- ber, Sputnik had been launched only two years earlier. Polio, which had kept my parents quarantined indoors during the summers of their childhood, had been conquered by the Salk vaccine. People had no idea that viruses were cleverer than human beings, and thought they'd soon be a thing of the past. In that optimistic, postwar Amer- ica, which I caught the tail end of, everybody was the master of his own destiny, so it only followed that my father would try to be the master of his. A few days after he had broached his plan to Tessie, Milton came home one evening with a present. It was a jewelry box tied with a ribbon. "What's this for?" Tessie asked suspiciously. "What do you mean, what is it for?" "It's not my birthday. It's not our anniversary. So why are you giv- ing me a present?" "Do I have to have a reason to give you a present? Go on. Open it." Tessie crumpled up one corner of her mouth, unconvinced. But it was difficult to hold a jewelry box in your hand without opening it. So finally she slipped off the ribbon and snapped the box open. Inside, on black velvet, was a thermometer. "A thermometer," said my mother. "That's not just any thermometer," said Milton. "I had to go to three different pharmacies to find one of these." "A luxury model, huh?" "That's right," said Milton. "That's what you call a basal ther- mometer. It reads the temperature down to a tenth of a degree." He raised his eyebrows. "Normal thermometers only read every two tenths. This one does it every tenth. Try it out. Put it in your mouth."

• From Middlesex (2002)

  175 "Where's my sister?" "4-H." Tessie looked at the black case he was holding. "That your clarinet?" "Yeah." "Play something for me." Milton set his instrument case down on the sofa. As he opened it and took out his clarinet, he remained aware of the nakedness of Tessie's legs. He inserted the mouthpiece and limbered up his fingers, running them up and down the keys. And then, at the mercy of an overwhelming impulse, he bent forward, pressing the flaring end of the clarinet to Tessie's bare knee, and blew a long note. She squealed, moving her knee away. "That was a D flat," Milton said. "You want to hear a D sharp?" Tessie still had her hand over her buzzing knee. The vibration of the clarinet had sent a shiver all the way up her thigh. She felt funny, as though she were about to laugh, but she didn't laugh. She was staring at her cousin, thinking, "Will you just look at him smiling away? Still got pimples but thinks he's the cat's meow. Where does he get it?" "All right," she answered at last. "Okay," said Milton. "D sharp. Here goes." That first day it was Tessie's knees. The following Sunday, Milton came up from behind and played his clarinet against the back of Tessie's neck. The sound was muffled. Wisps of her hair flew up. Tessie screamed, but not long. "Yeah, dad," said Milton, standing be- hind her. And so it began. He played "Begin the Beguine" against Tessie's collarbone. He played "Moonface" against her smooth cheeks. Press- ing the clarinet right up against the red toenails that had so dazzled him, he played "It Goes to Your Feet." With a secrecy they didn't ac- knowledge, Milton and Tessie drifted off to quiet parts of the house, and there, lifting her skirt a little, or removing a sock, or once, when nobody was home, pulling up her blouse to expose her lower back, Tessie allowed Milton to press his clarinet to her skin and fill her body with music. At first it only tickled her. But after a while the notes spread deeper into her body. She felt the vibrations penetrate her muscles, pulsing in waves, until they rattled her bones and made her inner organs hum. 176 Milton played his instrument with the same fingers he used for the Boy Scout salute, but his thoughts were anything but whole- some. Breathing hard, bent over Tessie with trembling concentra- tion, he moved the clarinet in circles, like a snake charmer. And Tessie was a cobra, mesmerized, tamed, ravished by the sound. Finally, one afternoon when they were all alone, Tessie, his proper cousin, lay down on her back. She crossed one arm over her face. "Where should I play?" whispered Milton, his mouth feeling too dry to play any- thing. Tessie undid a button on her blouse and in a strangled voice said, "My stomach."

• From Middlesex (2002)

  This morning I took the train to work as usual. The U-Bahn car- ried me gentiy west from Kleistpark to Berliner Strasse and then, af- ter a switch, northward toward Zoologischer Garten. Stations of the former West Berlin passed one after another. Most were last remod- eled in the seventies and have the colors of suburban kitchens from my childhood: avocado, cinnamon, sunflower yellow. At Spichern- strasse the train halted to conduct an exchange of bodies. Out on the platform a street musician played a teary Slavic melody on an accordion. Wing tips gleaming, my hair still damp, I was flipping through the Frankfurter Allgemcim when she rolled her unthinkable bicycle in. You used to be able to tell a person's nationality by the face. Immigration ended that. Next you discerned nationality via the footwear. Globalization ended that. Those Finnish seal puppies, those German flounders—you don't see them much anymore. Only Nikes, on Basque, on Dutch, on Siberian feet. 40 The bicyclist was Asian, at least genetically. Her black hair was cut in a shag. She was wearing a short olive green windbreaker, flared black ski pants, and a pair of maroon Campers resembling bowling shoes. The basket of her bike contained a camera bag. I had a hunch she was American. It was the retro bike. Chrome and turquoise, it had fenders as wide as a Chevrolet's, tires as thick as a wheelbarrow's, and appeared to weigh at least a hundred pounds. An expatriate's whim, that bike. I was about to use it as a pretext for starting a conversation when the train stopped again. The bicyclist looked up. Her hair fell away from her beautiful, hooded face and, for a moment, our eyes met. The placidity of her countenance along with the smoothness of her skin made her face appear like a mask, with living, human eyes behind it. These eyes now darted away from mine as she grasped the handlebars of her bike and pushed her great two-wheeler off the train and toward the elevators. The U-Bahn re- sumed, but I was no longer reading. I sat in my seat, in a state of voluptuous agitation, of agitated voluptuousness, until my stop. Then I staggered out. Unbuttoning my suit jacket, I took a cigar from the inner pocket of my coat. From a still smaller pocket I took out my cigar cutter and matches. Though it wasn't after dinner, I lit the cigar— a Davidoff Grand Cru No. 3— and stood smoking, trying to calm myself. The ci- gars, the double-breasted suits— they're a little too much. I'm well aware of that. But I need them. They make me feel better. After what I've been through, some overcompensation is to be expected. In my bespoke suit, my checked shirt, I smoked my medium-fat cigar until the fire in my blood subsided. Something you should understand: I'm not androgynous in the least. 5-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome allows for normal

• From Middlesex (2002)

  Meanwhile she remained slumped sideways in her desk, her legs with the blue knee socks shoved out, revealing the worn heels of her shoes. Because she hadn't done the reading she was exempt from be- ing called on, but Mr. da Silva sent concerned looks her way. The new girl didn't notice. She sprawled in her orange light and sleepily opened and closed her eyes. At one point she yawned and, halfway through, cut the yawn off, as though it hadn't gone right. She swal- lowed something back and pounded a fist against her breastbone. She burped quietly and whispered to herself, "Ay, camrnba." As soon as class was over she was gone. Who was she? Where had she come from? Why had I never noticed her in school before? She was obviously not new at Baker & Inglis. Her oxfords were stamped down at the heels so that she could slip into them like clogs. This was something the Charm Bracelets did. Also, she had an antique ring on her finger, witii real rubies in it. Her lips were thin, austere, Protestant. Her nose was not really a nose at all. It was only a beginning. She came to class every day wearing the same distant, bored ex- pression. She shuffled in her oxford-clogs, witii a gliding or skating motion, her knees bent and her weight thrust forward. It added to the overall desultory impression. I would be watering Mr. da Silva's plants when she entered. He asked me to do this before class. So every day began like that, me at one end of the crystal room, engulfed by geranium blooms, and this answering burst of red coming through the door. The way she dragged her feet made it clear how she felt about the weird, old, dead poem we were reading. She wasn't interested. She never did the homework. She tried to bluff her way through class. She hacked up the quizzes and tests. If she'd had a fellow Charm Bracelet with her, they could have formed a faction of uninterested note-passers. Alone, she could only mope. Mr. da Silva gave up try- ing to teach her anything and called on her as little as possible. I watched her in class and I watched her outside it, too. As soon 324

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  The women parked the TV at the bottom of our porch and climbed the steps.“Mama, Mama, come quick.”Our mother opened the door before they could knock and there stood Rita, a long, inky black line, and Queenie, round as a butterscotch with skin the color to match.“Mrs. Johnson? We talked to you on the phone t’other day, about your ad? These must be the children.”Cars slowed to a crawl as they passed our house that day and the long, white-stemmed necks in them turned like lazy Susans. It was 1963 and people of color did not live in, work in, or visit our bluecollar, all-white neighborhood. We should have seen those cars as a sign, a warning of what was to come, but Gary and I were too young to parse their meaning and our mother too naïve or too desperate to figure out what must have been common knowledge for most people.We were not blind to Queenie’s and Rita’s skin color, but it surprised my brother and me far less than their leopard spots and television. I had sat with black women under the tent, hugged their necks, and draped white cotton cloths over their stout legs when they fell out in the spirit after a long shout. But those were holiness women, and they dressed like the white holiness women we knew. Plain, shapeless dresses. Dull, flat shoes chosen because they were on sale and good for navigating the uneven ground under the tent. Queenie and Rita were a different species. From their furs to their candy-colored lips (how did they get so red?) and the scent of Topaz and stale smoke that followed them into our house, they reeked glamour, youth, and sensuality. But even they could not compete with the lure of their television. Gary and I fidgeted our way through introductions, anxious to slip past the women and ponder the big box of sin left at the bottom of our steps.Mama called TV “hellevision” and said she wouldn’t have one in her house, which worked out well since we usually did not have a house. Brother Terrell had said television was a tool of the devil, another way the world would seduce us.“First, you need Walter Cronkite to tell you what’s going on in the world. Next thing you know you’re missing church to watch Bonanza and Ed Sullivan. If God spoke to you, you couldn’t hear him. You’re too busy watching television.”He must have been right, because when Gary and I played in our neighbor Nila’s living room, we could not take our eyes off her TV. Furtive glances lengthened into glazed stares, and when the other kids wandered outside to play, we stayed put, hypnotized by flickering images of the Lone Ranger, Tonto, and Hercules.While Queenie and Rita sat inside drinking iced tea with our mother, we perched on the porch steps for what seemed an eternity, trying to figure out what it meant to have a TV right outside our door.Please, God.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  She was looking at me, low-lidded. Her eyes in the brightness of day with heat currents rising over the baking grass looked very green, even if they were only slits, crescents. Her head was bent forward against the arm of the swing; she had to look up to see me. This gave her a vixenish attitude. Without taking her eyes off mine, she ad- justed her legs, spreading them slighdy. "You have the most amazing eyes," she said. 389 "Your eyes are really green. They almost look fake." "They are fake." "You've got glass eyes?" "Yeah, I'm blind. Pm Tiresias." This was a new way to do it. We'd just discovered it. Staring into each other's eyes was another way of keeping them closed, or off the details at hand, anyway. We locked onto each other. Meanwhile the Object was very subtiy flexing her legs. I was aware of the mound be- neath her cutoffs rising toward me, just a little, rising and suggesting itself. I put my hand on the Object's thigh, palm down. And as we continued to swing, looking at each other while crickets played their fiddles in the grass, I slid my hand sideways up toward the place where the Object's legs joined. My thumb went under her cutoffs. Her face showed no reaction. Her green eyes under the heavy lids re- mained fastened on mine. I felt the fluffiness of her underpants and pressed down, sliding under the elastic. And then with our eyes wide open but confined in that way my thumb slipped inside her. She blinked, her eyes closed, her hips rose higher, and I did it again. And again after that. The boats in the bay were part of it, and the string section of crickets in the baking grass, and the ice melting in our lemonade glasses. The swing moved back and forth, creaking on its rusted chain, and it was like that old nursery rhyme, Little Jack Horner sat in the corner eating his Christmas pie. He stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum . . After the first roll of her eyes the Object resettled her gaze on mine, and then what she was feeling showed only there, in the green depths her eyes revealed. Otherwise she was motionless. Only my hand moved, and my feet on the rail, pushing the swing. This went on for three minutes, or five, or fifteen. I have no idea. Time disappeared. Somehow we were still not quite conscious of what we were doing. Sensation dissolved straight into . forgetting.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  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. And lying there, amid the tall, still grass and beneath the star-drunk sky, listening to the just-this-side-of-inaudible sound of her rhythmic breathing and the noisy silence of the bullfrogs, the grasshoppers, the distant cars rushing endlessly on I-65, I thought it might be a fine time to say the Three Little Words. And I steeled myself to say them as I stared up at that starriest night, convinced myself that she felt it, too, that her hand so alive and vivid against my leg was more than playful, and fuck Lara and fuck Jake because I do, Alaska Young, I do love you and what else matters but that and my lips parted to speak and before I could even begin to breathe out the words, she said, “It’s not life or death, the labyrinth.” “Um, okay. So what is it?” “Suffering,” she said. “Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That’s the problem. Bolívar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?” “What’s wrong?” I asked. And I felt the absence of her hand on me. “Nothing’s wrong. But there’s always suffering, Pudge. Homework or malaria or having a boyfriend who lives far away when there’s a good-looking boy lying next to you. Suffering is universal. It’s the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about.” I turned to her. “Oh, so maybe Dr.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  I waited ten or so minutes, just to be safe. Then, as though toss- ing in my sleep, I rolled over so that I was looking at the Object. The moon was gibbous and filled the room with blue light. There upon the wicker bed the Obscure Object slept. The top of her Groton T-shirt was visible. It was an old one of her father's, with a few holes. She had one arm crossed over her face, like a slash on a sign that meant "No Touching." So I looked instead. Over the pillow her hair was spread out. Her lips were parted. Something glinted inside her ear, grains of sand from the beach maybe. Beyond, the atomizers glowed on the dresser. The ceiling was up above somewhere. I could feel the spiders working in the corners. The sheets were cool. The fat duvet rolled up at our feet was leaking feathers. I'd grown up around the smell of new carpeting, of polyester shirts hot from the dryer. Here the Egyptian sheets smelled like hedges, the pillows like water fowl. Thirteen inches away, the Object was part of all this. Her colors seemed to agree with the American landscape, her pumpkin hair, her apple cider skin. She made a sound and went still again. 382 Gently, I pulled the covers off her. In the dimness her oudine ap- peared, the rise of her breasts beneath the T-shirt, the soft hill of her belly, and then the brightness of her underpants, converging in their V shape. She didn't stir at all. Her chest rose and fell with her breath. Slowly, trying not to make a sound, I moved closer to her. Tiny mus- cles in my flank, muscles I hadn't known I possessed, suddenly made themselves available. They propelled me millimeter by millimeter across the sheets. The old bedsprings gave me trouble. As I tried non- chalantiy to advance, they called out ribald encouragement. They cheered, they sang. I kept stopping and starting. It was hard work. I breathed through my mouth, quieter that way. Over the course of ten minutes I slid nearer and nearer to her. Fi- nally I felt the heat of her body along my entire length. We were still not touching, only radiating against each other. She was breathing deeply. So was I. We breathed together. Finally, gathering courage, I flung my arm across her waist. Then nothing more for a long while. Having achieved this much, I was scared to go further. So I remained frozen, half hugging her. My arm grew stiff. It began to throb and finally went numb. The Ob- ject might have been drugged or comatose. Still, I sensed an alertness in her skin, in her muscles. After another long while I plunged ahead.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  The corset seemed to possess its own sets of hands. One was softly rubbing her between the legs. Two more cupped her breasts, one, two, three hands pressing and caressing her; and in the lingerie Desdemona saw herself through new eyes, her thin waist, her plump thighs; she felt beautiful, desirable, most of all: not herself. She lifted her feet, rested her calves on the oarlocks. She spread her legs. She opened her arms for Lefty, who twisted around, chafing his knees and elbows, dislodging oars, nearly setting off a flare, until finally he fell into her softness, swooning. For the first time Desdemona tasted the flavor of his mouth, and the only sisterly thing she did during their lovemaking was to come up for air, once, to say, "Bad boy. You've done this before." But Lefty only kept repeating, "Not like this, not like this . ." . And I was wrong before, I take it back. Underneath Desdemona, beating time against the boards and lifting her up: a pair of wings. "Lefty!" Desdemona now, breathlessly. "I think I felt it." "Felt what?" "You know. That feeling? 70 "Newlyweds," Captain Kontoulis said, watching the lifeboat rock. "Oh, to be young again." After Princess Si Ling-chi— whom I find myself picturing as the im- perial version of the bicyclist I saw on the U-Bahn the other day; I can't stop thinking about her for some reason, I keep looking for her every morning— after Princess Si Ling-chi discovered silk, her nation kept it a secret for three thousand one hundred and ninety years. Anyone who attempted to smuggle silkworm eggs out of China faced punishment of death. My family might never have become silk farmers if it hadn't been for the Emperor Justinian, who, according to Procopius, persuaded two missionaries to risk it. In a.d. 550, the missionaries snuck silkworm eggs out of China in the swallowed con- dom of the time: a hollow staff. They also brought the seeds of the mulberry tree. As a result, Byzantium became a center for sericulture. Mulberry trees flourished on Turkish hillsides. Silkworms ate the leaves. Fourteen hundred years later, the descendants of those first stolen eggs filled my grandmother's silkworm box on the Giulia.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  didn't have to be so vigilant about keeping your knees together or your skirt tugged down. The Object's knees were spread apart and her legs, which were somewhat heavy in the thigh, were bare high up. Without moving, she said, "I forgot my book." Mr. da Silva compressed his lips. "You can look on with Callie." The only sign of agreement she gave was to sweep her hair off her face. She placed a hand to her forehead and ran it back like a plow though her hair, her fingers leaving furrows. At the end of the stroke came a little flick of the head, a flourish. There was her cheek, per- mitting approach. I scooted over. I slid my book onto the crack be- tween our desks. The Object leaned over it. "From where?" "Top of page one hundred and twelve. The description of the shield of Achilles." I'd never been this close to the Obscure Object before. It was hard on my organism. My nervous system launched into "Flight of the Bumblebee." The violins were sawing away in my spine. The timpani were banging in my chest. At the same time, trying to conceal all this, I didn't move a muscle. I hardly breathed. That was the deal basi- cally: catatonia without; frenzy within. I could smell her cinnamon gum. It was still in the back of her mouth somewhere. I didn't look directiy at her. I kept my eyes on the book. A strand of her red-gold hair fell onto the desk between us. Where the sun hit the hair, there was a prismatic effect. But while I was witnessing the half-inch rainbow she began to read. I expected a nasal monotone, riddled with mispronunciations. I expected bumps, swerves, screeching brakes, head-on collisions. But the Obscure Object had a good reading voice. It was clear, strong, supple in its rhythms. It was a voice she'd picked up at home, from poetry-reciting uncles who drank too much. Her expression changed, too. A concentrated dignity, previously absent, marked her features. Her head rose on a proud neck. Her chin was lifted. She sounded twenty-four instead of fourteen. I wonder which was stranger, the Eartha Kitt voice that came out of my mouth or the Katharine Hep- burn that came out of hers. 326 When she was finished there was silence. "Thank you," said Mr. da Silva, as surprised as die rest of us. "That was very nicely done." The bell rang. Immediately the Object leaned away from me. She ran a hand through her hair again, as tiiough rinsing it in the shower. She slipped out of the desk and left the room.