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 Erotic Mind (1995)

  LUSTY ATTRACTIONSDictionary definitions of lust mirror our mixed feelings about it, running the gamut from surprisingly positive to strongly negative. At one pole lust is simply pleasurable delight in our sensual appetites. It can also connote a strong enthusiasm, as in the phrase “lust for life.” Most people see this kind of lust as admirable. Similarly, Webster’s defines “lusty” as “vigorous, robust, and hearty”—nothing negative at all. At the opposite extreme, lust is defined as unrestrained, wanton surrender to carnal urges. From this point of view, a lustful person is often considered lascivious, lecherous, unsavory, and a potential menace. Sexual lust is decidedly unpopular these days, firmly linked with disease, pregnant teenagers, sexual abuse, harassment, sexual addiction, and even lust murders. Given such unappealing associations, it may be difficult to think of it in a positive light. Thus the emphasis has shifted to relationships and monogamy. There’s been quite a change since the 1960s and 1970s, when sexual experimentation was widely celebrated. AIDS, of course, changed all that, but other factors also played a part. If you participated in that era’s “sexual revolution” you got a pretty good look at lust in action and probably weren’t completely comfortable with everything you saw. Many people, especially women, found that casual sex wasn’t particularly satisfying. Although lust has perhaps inevitably fallen into disfavor, we make a terrible mistake if we reject it completely. Our erotic health requires that we make room for lust, for it provides much of the zest that makes sex fun and self-affirming. Socially, it is also very important not to reject lust, no matter how relentless the antisexual clamoring may become. When lust falls victim to the forces of repression, its negative potentials increase dramatically. At the heart of lusty attraction lies the desire for sexual excitation and orgasmic release, pure and simple. It can be profound, utterly meaningless, playful, loving, or hostile. In its most intense forms lust has an animalistic quality that can be exhilarating, frightening, or both. When you’re feeling lusty your attention is focused primarily on whatever it is you want that produces and intensifies sensations of arousal, especially in the genitals. LUST’S OBJECTWhen you see someone who looks sexy, it seems as if that person is making you feel aroused, even though the source of arousal is your own mind and body. The sexy other is simply a stimulus and, at least to a degree, an object. The nature of lust is to objectify, a reality that can be troublesome for many people. According to one popular line of thinking, to see a person as an object is to do him or her a grave injustice. People must always be regarded in their entirety, not merely “used” for selfish gratification. Focusing on just a part of someone for sexual kicks—voluptuous breasts, bulging biceps, or genitals, for instance—may even be considered a form of victimization.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  "If we analyze the propensity of storing, we find that it consists of three impulses: First, an impulse to pick up the nutritious object, due to perception; second, an impulse to carry it off into the dwelling-place due to the idea of this latter; and third, an impulse to lay it down there , due to the sight of the place. It lies in the nature of the hamster that it should never see a full ear of corn without feeling a desire to strip it; it lieu in its nature to feel, as soon as its cheek-pouches are filled, an irresistible desire to hurry to its home; and finally, it lies in its nature that the sight of the storehouse should awaken the impulse to empty the cheeks" (p. 208). In certain animals of a low order the feeling of having executed one impulsive step is such an indispensable part of the stimulus of the next one, that the animal cannot make any variation in the order of its performance.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  The older writings on instinct are ineffectual wastes of words, because their authors never came down to this definite and simple point of view, but smothered everything in vague wonder at the clairvoyant and prophetic power of the animals—so superior to anything in man—and at the beneficence of God in endowing them with such a gift. But God's beneficence endows them, first of all, with a nervous system; and, turning our attention to this, makes instinct immediately appear neither more nor less wonderful than all the other facts of life. Every instinct is an impulse. Whether we shall call such impulses as blushing, sneezing, coughing, smiling, or dodging, or keeping time to music, instincts or not, is a mere matter of terminology. The process is the same through-out. In his delightfully fresh and interesting work, Der Thierische Wille, Herr G. H. Schneider subdivides impulses (Triebe) into sensation-impulses, perception-impulses, and idea-impulses. To crouch from cold is a sensation- impulse; to turn and follow, if we see people running one way, is a perception-impulse; to cast about for cover, if it begins to blow and rain, is an imagination-impulse. A single complex instinctive action may involve successively the awakening of impulses of all three classes. Thus a hungry lion starts to seek prey by the awakening in him of imagination coupled with desire; he begins to stalk it when, on eye, ear, or nostril, he gets an impression of its presence at a certain distance; he springs upon it, either when the booty takes alarm and sees, or when the distance is sufficiently reduced; he proceeds to tear and devour it the moment he gets a sensation of its contact with his claws and fangs. Seeking, stalking, springing, and devouring are just so many different kinds of muscular contraction, and neither kind is called forth by the stimulus appropriate to the other. Schneider says of the hamster, which stores corn in its hole: "If we analyze the propensity of storing, we find that it consists of three impulses: First, an impulse to pick up the nutritious object, due to perception; second, an impulse to carry it off into the dwelling-place due to the idea of this latter; and third, an impulse to lay it down there , due to the sight of the place. It lies in the nature of the hamster that it should never see a full ear of corn without feeling a desire to strip it; it lieu in its nature to feel, as soon as its cheek-pouches are filled, an irresistible desire to hurry to its home; and finally, it lies in its nature that the sight of the storehouse should awaken the impulse to empty the cheeks" (p. 208). In certain animals of a low order the feeling of having executed one impulsive step is such an indispensable part of the stimulus of the next one, that the animal cannot make any variation in the order of its performance.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  The chief interest of the objects, in the collector's eyes, is that they are a collection, and that they are his. Rivalry, to be sure, inflames this, as it does every other passion, yet the objects of a collector's mania need not be necessarily such as are generally in demand. Boys will collect anything that they see another boy collect, from pieces of chalk and peach-pits up to books and photographs. Out of a hundred students whom I questioned, only four or five had never collected anything. [399] The associationist psychology denies that there is any blind primitive instinct to appropriate, and would explain all acquisitiveness, in the first instance, as a desire to secure the pleasures' which the objects possessed may yield; and, secondly, as the association of the idea of pleasantness with the holding of the thing, even though the pleasure originally got by it was only gained through its expense or destruction. Thus the miser is shown to us as one who has transferred to the gold by which he may buy the goods of this life all the emotions which the goods themselves would yield; and who thereafter loves the gold for its own sake, preferring the means of pleasure to the pleasure itself. There can be little doubt that much of this analysis a broader view of the facts would have dispelled. 'The miser' is an abstraction. There are all kinds of misers. The common sort, the excessively niggardly man, simply exhibits the psychological law that the potential has often a far greater influence over our mind than the actual. A man will not marry now, because to do so puts an end to his indefinite potentialities of choice of a partner. He prefers the latter. He will not use open fires or wear his good clothes, because the day may come when he will have to use the furnace or dress in a worn-out coat, 'and then where will he be? For him, better the actual evil than the fear of it; and so it is with the common lot of misers. Better to live poor now, with the power of living rich, than to live rich at the risk of losing the power. These men value their gold, not for its own sake, but for its powers. Demonetize it, and see how quickly they will get rid of it! The associationist theory is, as regards them, entirely at fault: they care nothing for the gold in se. With other misers there combines itself with this preference of the power over the act the far more instinctive element of the simple collecting propensity. Every one collects money, and when a man of petty ways is smitten with the collecting mania for this object he necessarily becomes a miser. Here again the associationist psychology is wholly at fault.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I had already planned this visit, fully, in my head. I wanted to have sex with him on a bed. I didn’t even care if he slept over or not. I just wanted a place to be with him where we could relax that wasn’t freezing and where we weren’t looking around for people to catch us. The way I felt when we kissed or when he went down on me—I wanted to create that feeling and live in that for as long as I could. I wanted to build a tent of it in the warmth of my sister’s house: a container where I could bottle the feeling, like a little ship, and hold the glow. Here was a bit of magic that could happen in my life. After all the nothingness, maybe this fantasy was worth living for. I suppose that whenever you’re addicted to something, this is what they mean when they say you forget about the consequences and don’t care about the other side. All I cared about was my plan. 33.Theo was waiting by the rocks, hanging on to the side of them. I ran across the beach and climbed up, feeling like Catherine running to Heathcliff across the moors, in my long skirt. I imagined that I looked like a child. I knew that I wasn’t, but I felt time to be slowing as I ran—or at least, I wasn’t getting any older anymore. I was alive and that was it. “Hi,” I said, and crouched down to kiss him. “I’m coming up,” he said, and twisted himself up onto the rock. For a second I was shocked to see his black tail, the sash still around his pelvis. He kissed me hard and laid me down onto the rock. Then he pulled himself on top of me and I could feel his cock, my skirt and his sash between us. It was all so natural. My legs spread and his pelvis and tail were between them, just where his legs would be if he were a regular man. As we kissed I imagined eating his tail with garlic butter. I wanted to suck his cock and also to see it. I rolled us over and sat up on top of him, kissing my way down his torso, my skirt fanned out around both of us, covered in ocean water and seaweed and black slime from his tail. I felt like an octopus or an anemone. I sucked on his neck, his nipples, the insides of his arms. I licked his meaty rib cage, kissed my way down his belly, sucked on his belly button. My head hovered over his sash. I teased him, kissing the outside of it, licking it. Like a salt lick, the sash had accreted so much salt. I wondered how many sashes he had, if he ever changed them.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  I can assure you, I’m not so set on a bourgeois life as Mother and Margot. I’d like to spend a year in Paris and London learning the languages and studying art history. Compare that with Margot, who wants to nurse newborns in Palestine. I still have visions of gorgeous dresses and fascinating people. As I’ve told you many times before, I want to see the world and do all kinds of exciting things, and a little money won’t hurt! This morning Miep told us about her cousin’s engagement party, which she went to on Saturday. The cousin’s parents are rich, and the groom’s are even richer. Miep made our mouths water telling us about the food that was served: vegetable soup with meatballs, cheese, rolls with sliced meat, hors d’oeuvres made with eggs and roast beef, rolls with cheese, genoise, wine and cigarettes, and you could eat as much as you wanted. Miep drank ten schnapps and smoked three cigarettes -- could this be our temperance advocate? If Miep drank all those, I wonder how many her spouse managed to toss down? Everyone at the party was a little tipsy, of course. There were also two officers from the Homicide Squad, who took photographs of the wedding couple. You can see we’re never far from Miep’s thoughts, since she promptly noted their names and addresses in case anything should happen and we needed contacts with good Dutch people. Our mouths were watering so much. We, who’d had nothing but two spoonfuls of hot cereal for breakfast and were absolutely famished; we, who get nothing but half-cooked spinach (for the vitamins!) and rotten pota- toes day after day; we, who fill our empty stomachs with nothing but boiled lettuce, raw lettuce, spinach, spinach and more spinach. Maybe we’ll end up being as strong as Popeye, though up to now I’ve seen no sign of it! If Miep had taken us along to the party, there wouldn’t have been any rolls left over for the other guests. If we’d been there, we’d have snatched up everything in sight, including the furniture. I tell you, we were practically pulling the words right out of her mouth. We were gathered around her as if we’d never in all our lives heard of ” delicious food or elegant people! And these are the granddaughters of the distinguished millionaire. The world is a crazy place! Yours, Anne M. Frank DTUESDAY, MAY 9, 1944 Dearest Kitty, I’ve finished my story about Ellen, the fairy. I’ve copied it out on nice notepaper, decorated it with red ink and sewn the pages together. The whole thing looks quite pretty, but I don’t know if it’s enough of a birthday present. Margot and Mother have both written poems. Mr. Kugler came upstairs this afternoon with the news that starting Monday, Mrs. Broks would like to spend two hours in the office every afternoon. Just imagine!

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Appropriation or Acquisitiveness. The beginnings of acquisitiveness are seen in the impulse which very young children display, to snatch at, or beg for, any object which pleases their attention. Later, when they begin to speak, among the first words they emphasize are 'me ' and 'mine.'[398] Their earliest quarrels with each other are about questions of ownership; and parents of twins soon learn that it conduces to a quiet house to buy all presents in impartial duplicate. Of the later evolution of the proprietary instinct I need not speak. Everyone knows how difficult a thing it is not to covet whatever pleasing thing we see, and how the sweetness of the thing often is as gall to us so long as it is another's. Then another is in possession, the impulse to appropriate the thing often turns into the impulse to harm him—what is called envy, or jealousy, ensues. In civilized life the impulse to own is usually checked by a variety of considerations, and only passes over into action under circumstances legitimated by habit and common consent, an additional example of the way in which one instinctive tendency may be inhibited by others. A variety of the proprietary instinct is the impulse to form collections of the same sort of thing. It differs much in individuals, and shows in a striking way how instinct and habit interact. For, although a collection of any given thing—like postage-stamps—need not be begun by any given person, yet the chances are that if accidentally it be begun by a person with the collecting instinct, it will probably be continued. The chief interest of the objects, in the collector's eyes, is that they are a collection, and that they are his. Rivalry, to be sure, inflames this, as it does every other passion, yet the objects of a collector's mania need not be necessarily such as are generally in demand. Boys will collect anything that they see another boy collect, from pieces of chalk and peach-pits up to books and photographs. Out of a hundred students whom I questioned, only four or five had never collected anything.[399]

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  Once when I was spending the night at Jacque’s, I could no longer restrain my curiosity about her body, which she’d always hidden from me and which I’d never seen. I asked her whether, as proof of our friendiship, we could touch each other’s breasts. Jacque refused. I also had a terrible desire to kiss her, which I did. Every time I see a female nude, such as the Venus in my art history book, I go into ecstasy. Sometimes I find them so exquisite I have to struggle to hold back my tears. If only I had a girlfriend! THURSDAY, JANUARY 6, 1944 Dearest Kitty, My longing for someone to talk to has become so unbearable that I somehow took it into my head to select Peter for this role. On the few occasions when I have gone to Peter’s room during the day, I’ve always thought it was nice and cozy. But Peter’s too polite to show someone the door when they’re bothering him, so I’ve never dared to stay long. I’ve always been afraid he’d think I was a pest. I’ve been looking for an excuse to linger in his room and get him talking without his noticing, and yesterday I got my chance. Peter, you see, is currently going through a crossword-puzzle craze, and he doesn’t do anything else all day. I was helping him, and we soon wound up sitting across from each other at his table, Peter on the chair and me on the divan. It gave me a wonderful feeling when I looked into his dark blue eyes and saw how bashful my unexpected visit had made him. I could read his innermost thoughts, and in his face I saw a look of helplessness and uncertainty as to how to behave, and at the same time a flicker of awareness of his masculinity. I saw his shyness, and I melted. I wanted to say, “Tell me about yourself. Look beneath my chatty exterior.” But I found that it was easier to think up questions than to ask them. The evening came to a close, and nothing happened, except that I told him about the article on blushing. Not what I wrote you, of course, just that he would grow more secure as he got older. That night I lay in bed and cried my eyes out, all the i while making sure no one could hear me. The idea that I had to beg Peter for favors was simply revolting. But people will do almost anything to satisfy their longings; take me, for example, I’ve made up my mind to visit Peter more often and, somehow, get him to talk to me. You mustn’t think I’m in love with Peter, because I’m not. If the van Daans had had a daughter instead of a son, I’d have tried to make friends with her. This morning I woke up just before seven and immediately remembered what I’d been dreaming about.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Things were definitely looking good. All I had to do was sit there, his hands firm on my breasts, his breath and tongue hot in my ear, and his fine dick ramming me with beautiful precision. I knew this would be the first of many a hot afternoon getting my brains fucked out. Denise ignores her better judgment and forges ahead. The violation of her own values, not to mention her common sense, inevitably produces some guilt. Yet if she’s seriously troubled by what happens, she’s keeping that to herself. It appears as if Denise mentions the inappropriateness of her behavior only to set up the forbidden circumstances of this encounter, which, of course, also includes ambivalent feelings toward her boss. Hers is a tale of ambivalence and guilt transformed into desire, of reluctance converted to the purposes of passion, of restraint replaced with freedom. But how is guilt, the great inhibitor, so thoroughly transformed? The first principle is that when guilt is in the forefront of a sexual situation, it almost always gets in the way. After all, the purpose of guilt is to inhibit. If, however, it can be held in the background, called up only to be overpowered by arousal, it will usually produce a sense of liberation, as it does for Denise. However, when our sexual behavior involves serious violations of our own values, after orgasm guilt will probably return with a vengeance in the form of remorse. The cycle of attraction, guilt, excitement, remorse, attraction is what makes many illicit affairs seem irresistible. For those who place some value on sexual exclusivity, yet have an affair anyway, it is logical to assume that they proceed despite their guilt. But I believe that guilt creates a type of resistance all but impossible within a committed relationship, and thereby provides a significant portion of the erotic fuel that helps make affairs so alluring. June, a church secretary in her early fifties, offers a case in point: I hate to admit it, but I had my most exciting sex during a two-month affair I had with a handsome man who worked with me on a fund-raising event. Most of our meetings were spent in intimate conversation, with very little real work accomplished. We were both unhappy in our marriages and found solace in each other. At first we just hugged and kissed which for me was more than enough to bring on torrents of guilt. Many times we vowed to keep our relationship platonic. But each time we broke our vow our passion grew more reckless. In contrast to my husband who no longer found me attractive anymore (I’m not sure he ever did), “Bill” was excited by me. He was sensuous, romantic, and passionate—everything my husband wasn’t. These reasons explain what I did, but for me they can never justify it. My affair was wrong but neither of us was willing to stop it.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  In other instances, time is a memorability factor for the opposite reason: because there’s so little of it. Stolen moments with a secret lover, a hurried outdoor tryst, a passionate embrace in an elevator, a “quickie” before running off to work—all stand out because time is scarce. A desire so intense that it demands expression, even when there is insufficient time for it, demonstrates its compelling urgency. Norman recalls with enthusiasm one evening when he and his girlfriend were rushing to get ready for a concert: Tammy and I often disagree about who should initiate sex, when, how often, and how long it should last. Sometimes it can be such a pain in the butt I’d rather avoid the whole thing. But there have been several times when all that crap goes out the window. This usually happens when we’re running late for something. Knowing that nothing will come of it I find it easier to be passionate, like one night when Tammy was dressing for the symphony. I rubbed her shoulders and she tried to push me away. But I wouldn’t quit. I enjoyed turning her on even though she whined, “Norrrrman, we’re going to be late.” Next thing you know I was kissing her neck and reaching in her panties. All of a sudden she became like an animal. She grabbed me and kissed me deep and hard while I rubbed her clit and brought her to an orgasm in a minute or two—much faster than usual. Just a few strokes of my cock and I came too. Then we went flying out the door, laughing like lunatics. At the concert she told me there was lipstick smeared on my face. We couldn’t stop laughing. Now why can’t it be like this all the time? Dr. Maslow noticed a curious phenomenon, difficult to explain or even describe, in his research on all kinds of peak experiences: pleasurable distortions of time and space. He made this observation: Not only does time pass in their ecstasies with a frightening rapidity so that a day may pass as if it were a minute, but also a minute so intensely lived may feel like a day or a year. It’s as if they had, in a way, some place in another world in which time simultaneously stood still and moved with great rapidity.6 Although this sounds rather “cosmic,” if you’ve ever had any kind of peak experience, you probably sense what Maslow’s getting at. PRACTICAL USES OF EROTIC MEMORABILITYJust because peak experiences can’t be ordered on demand, you need not wait passively. Knowledge of which memorability factors have contributed to your arousal in the past can help you cultivate conditions for more fulfilling sex now and in the future.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  on the outside! Who will be the first to discover the chink in my armor? It’s just as well that the van Daans don’t have a daughter. My conquest could never be so challenging, so beautiful and so nice with someone of the same sex! Yours, Anne M. Frank PS. You know I’m always honest with you, so I think I should tell you that I live from one encounter to the next. I keep hoping to discover that he’s dying to see me, and I’m in raptures when I notice his bashful attempts. I think he’d like to be able to express himself as easily as I do; little does he know it’s his awkwardness that I find so touching. TUESDAY, MARCH 7,1944 Dearest Kitty, When I think back to my life in 1942, it all seems so unreal. The Anne Frank who enjoyed that heavenly existence was completely different from the one who has grown wise within these walls. Yes, it was heavenly. Five admirers on every street corner, twenty or so friends, the favorite of most of my teachers, spoiled rotten by Father and Mother, bags full of candy and a big allowance. What more could anyone ask for? You’re probably wondering how I could have charmed all those people. Peter says It s ecause I m “attractive,” but that isn’t it entirely. The teachers were amused and entertained by my clever answers, my witty remarks, my smthng face and my critical mind. That’s all I was: a terrible flirt, coquettish and amusing. I had a few plus points, which kept me in everybody’s good graces: I was hardworking, honest and generous. I would never have refused anyone who wanted to peek at my answers, I was magnanimous with my candy, and I wasn’t stuck-up. Would all that admiration eventually have made me overconfident? It’s a good thing that, at the height of my glory, I was suddenly plunged into reality. It took

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

  And it was when I moved away from the centre of the spiral that I discovered something: my pleasure was never more intense than when it was the first time, not the first time that I made love with someone, but the first time we kissed; even the first embrace was enough. Obviously there were exceptions. Be that as it may, in most cases, even if what followed was not unpleasant, it was a bit like biting into the cone when you no longer have a mouthful of icecream to melt on your tongue, it had all the attraction of a painting that you admire but on which you are feasting your eyes for the fifteenth time. If I was taken by surprise, the pleasure was overwhelming. It is these situations which provide some of my clearest recollections of orgasms. I can cite them: late at night, crossing the huge lobby of an Intercontinental hotel; the elegant and distinguished assistant who has been travelling across the country with me for two weeks catches hold of my arm when we have just said goodnight to each other, pulls me to him and kisses me on the mouth. ‘In the morning, I’ll come and see you in your room.’ I can feel the spasm rising right up to my stomach and I set off towards the tiny little receptionists in the distance, twisting my ankle as I go. Another time, I dive down onto the carpet next to the master of the house who, slightly drunk, has crashed out on the floor next to some other guests, and who pulls me towards him by tugging under the neck of my sweater, and kisses me slowly with one of those cinema kisses that makes your head roll from side to side; this was not an evening destined to turn into an orgy, his wife was holding a conversation in the next room, one of his friends who was sitting on the floor like us and whose face happened to be on a level with ours, watched us in amazement. I go completely limp. And more: going to see the ‘Dernier Picasso’ exhibition at the Pompidou Centre with Bruno, with him there is always an element of chance. As he goes out of my field of vision while I go up to one of the paintings, his presence becomes all the more vivid and I am caught unawares by a brief but very distinct secretory discharge. As I carry on looking at the exhibition, I can feel the slimy patch on my tights shifting as I walk first against the lips of my vagina, then against the swell of my inner thigh. Now, whereas in an early period of my life I didn’t really care whether I experienced these feelings in more extensive contact, or during penetration, later on, when I had come to understand how singularly limited it was, I started to hope that that faraway tensing of an indefinable part of my lower abdomen and the famous wave that dissipated it could be repeated again and again as a relationship continued.

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

  The other case proves that the sharpest of our sensual experiences can forge a path for itself even through our least sensitive points of access. Even though I have no ear at all, and I only ever go to the opera for reasons that have nothing to do with the art of music, it is thanks to his voice that Jacques first appeared on the horizons of the vast plain of my desire. And yet his does not correspond to the stereotype of a sexy voice, it is neither velvet nor cracked. Someone had recorded him reading a text and then played the tape to me over the telephone. I can still feel the echo it set up within me, radiating out to the most highly receptive point on my body. I gave myself up entirely to this voice which itself seemed to give up entirely every detail of its speaker, a voice with the clarity and the calm rhythm of its brief inflexions, as firm and assured as a hand turning up its palm to mean ‘there you have it’. Some time later I heard it on the telephone again, live this time, pointing out a typo in a catalogue in which Jacques had been involved and on which I was working. Jacques offered to come and help me correct the copies. We spent hours on the work, just inches away from each other in a tiny office, with me very embarrassed by my mistake while he just got on with correcting it. He was attentive without being especially friendly. After one of these tedious sessions, he asked whether I would like to join him for dinner at the home of a close friend of his. After dinner, when several of us were squeezed next to each other on a bed serving as a sofa (which meant adopting an uncomfortable, semi-prone position), he stroked my wrist with the back of his index finger. It was an unexpected, unusual and quite delicious gesture, and it still moves me now, even when it is addressed to someone else’s skin. I followed Jacques to the studio he was living in at the time. In the morning he asked me who I was sleeping with. ‘With lots of people,’ I replied. ‘Damn,’ he said, ‘I’m beginning to fall in love with a girl who’s sleeping with lots of people.’

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

  He is tall and dark with pale eyes, quite impressive in the darkness. He apologises amicably, he can see that I’m eating, begs me not to stop just because of him… I am ashamed of the crumbs in the corners of my mouth. I say no, no, I’m not really hungry, and I chuck the sandwich away furtively. He takes me away. He drives his convertible along the Grande Corniche above Nice. He takes one hand off the steering wheel to reply to mine rubbing against the rough surface of bulge in his jeans. That swelling impeded by the tight, stiff fabric is an efficient stimulant for me every time. Do I want to go and eat somewhere? No. I think he’s driving a bit further than he needs to, taking detours before getting home. He keeps his eyes on the road as I undo his belt. I recognise that little forward movement of the hips that a driver has to make to make it easier to undo the zip. Then there is the laborious process of extricating the member which has grown too big to slip straight out of the double envelope of cotton. You yourself have to have a wide enough hand to gather up all the parts in one smooth gesture. I am always afraid of hurting. He has to help me. At last I can get on with my conscientious hand job. I never start too quickly, I really prefer following all its length, feeling the elasticity of the fine sheath of flesh. I put my mouth to it. I try to hold my body as far aside as possible so as not to be in his way when he changes gear. I keep to a moderate rhythm. I am conscious of the danger that driving in these conditions could represent, and, as a result, have no inclination to court it. As far as I can remember, it was a very pleasant encounter. Even so, I didn’t want to stay the night with him and he had to take me back to the villa before the gang got back. It is not that I had forbidden myself sleeping out, but that I wanted the time I had spent with him to stay as it was (like when your thoughts wander off into a daydream half way through a conversation), a private place to which the others, for once, would not have access.

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

  Image and language are in cahoots. It is so stimulating to look in a mirror and measure – to the nearest centimetre – the amount of flesh that your own flesh can swallow, and this is because the show gives rise to words. ‘Oh my! It’s going in so smoothly, so deep! – Hang on, I’m going to leave it there so that you can really see it, I’ll do the business later…’ One kind of dialogue that Jacques and I adopted willingly can be characterised by its purely factual being. If the vocabulary is crude and limited, this is less to do with a desire to provoke each other by upping the obscenity stakes than a need to be accurate in our descriptions. ‘Can you feel how wet I am? Even my thighs are soaked, and my little clit’s all swollen.’ ‘God, you move your arse well! Does it want my prick? Does it?’ ‘Yes, but I want to feel your knob on my clit again first, can I rub you against it?’ ‘Yes, and afterwards we’re going to give the arse a good ramming!’ ‘That’s good. How about you, does your dick like it?’ ‘Yes, he likes it.’ ‘Is it pulling on your balls too?’ ‘Yes, it’s pumping them really well. But, hey, we’re going to give this cunt another really good thrust, aren’t we?’ And so the exchange goes on in a tone of voice which remains, even as we approach the conclusion, fairly measured. In so far as we don’t see or feel the same thing at the same time, each speaks to the other with the intention of adding to their knowledge. You could also say that we were like two dubbing actors, their eyes riveted on the screen where they watch the actions of the characters to whom they give their voices: with our words we relay the actions of the protagonists in the porn film we are watching, and whose names are Arse, Cunt, Balls and Prick.

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

  For some indiscernible reason, then, the ‘couple culture’ I am describing played out its adventures mainly in bucolic settings. It’s true that fucking in sunken tracks is less risky than in the porches of buildings. That is not to say that, with other lovers, both Jacques and I did not use urban locations. But Métro station corridors (where an employee uses the jostle of the crowd to brush imperceptibly over my buttocks – a tacit invitation to join him in a box-room cluttered with pails and brooms) and little cafés in the suburbs (where joyless men take me in turns on a bench seat in the back room) are places I have visited with Jacques only in my imagination. And even then was I taking him there? I have stopped doing it now, but there was a time when I liked to redecorate the room with my elaborate fantasies, gradually detailing the settings and the positions I adopted, in an almost questioning tone of voice because I would wait for Jacques’ acquiescence, which he would grant in a neutral voice and with the indifferent spontaneity of someone who’s thinking about something else (but he was probably only feigning indifference), while his tool filed sweetly and steadily. I draw two conclusions from these points. The first is that, within a couple, each person brings with them their own fantasies and desires, and that these combine into shared habits which then modulate and adjust to each other and, depending on the extent to which each partner wants them to be realised, cross the barrier between dream and reality without losing any of their intensity. My obsession with numbers found its realisation when I practised group sex with Claude and with Éric, because that was how their own desires fused with mine. On the other hand, I did not feel any frustration at never taking part in group sex with Jacques (even when he told me he had done so without me); it must simply be that that was not the way of our shared sexuality. It was enough for me to tell him about my adventures and to intuit that they found some resonance in his fantasies, just as it was enough for him that I was a willing accomplice for his photographic reportages in those variously polluted landscapes, and an exhibitionist ready to expose herself for his lens – even if my narcissism would have preferred more flattering backgrounds and more stylised portraits …

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  We demand in it a character for which our emotions and active propensities shall be a match. Small as we are, minute as is the point by which the Cosmos impinges upon each one of us, each one desires to feel that his reaction at that point is congruous with the demands of the vast whole, that balances the latter, so to speak, and is able to do what it expects of him. But as his abilities to 'do' lie wholly in the line of his natural propensities; as he enjoys reaction with such emotions as fortitude, hope, rapture, admiration, earnestness, and the like; and as he very unwillingly reacts with fear, disgust, despair, or doubt,—a philosophy which should legitimate only emotions of the latter sort would be sure to leave the mind a prey to discontent and craving. "It is far too little recognized how entirely the intellect is built up of practical interests. The theory of Evolution is beginning to do very good service by its reduction of all mentality to the type of reflex action. Cognition, in this view, is but a fleeting moment, a cross-section at a certain point of what in its totality Is a motor phenomenon. In the lower forms of life no one will pretend that cognition is anything more than a guide to appropriate action. The germinal question concerning things brought for the first time before consciousness is not the theoretic 'What is that?' but the practical 'Who goes there?' or rather, as Horwicz has admirably put it, 'What is to be done?'—'Was fang' ich an?' In all our discussions about the intelligence of lower animals the only test we use is that of their acting as if for a purpose. Cognition, in short, is incomplete until discharged in act. And although it is true that the later mental development, which attains its maximum through the hypertrophied cerebrum of man, gives birth to a vast amount of theoretic activity over and above that which is immediately ministerial to practice, Set the earlier claim is only postponed, not effaced, and the active nature asserts its rights to the end. "If there be any truth at all in this view, it follows that however vaguely a philosopher may define the ultimate universal datum, he cannot be said to leave it unknown to us so long as he in the slightest degree pretends that our emotional or active attitude towards it should be of one sort rather than another.

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

  I was amused by the architecture of the place because it was similar to the dècor of a then very fashionable boutique on the boulevard Saint-Germain, called the ‘Gaminerie’. It was, on a larger scale than the boutique, a cave, with its attendant cells, fashioned in white stucco. This ‘grotto’ was underground and its only source of light came from the bottom of a swimming pool on the floor above. Through a pane of glass which formed a sort of vast television screen, we could see the succession of bodies diving in from the upper floor. I am describing a place in which I have never moved through a great deal. The scale of things had changed around me, but my situation was not very different from what it had been the first time, with my friends in Lyon. Éric would settle me on a bed or a sofa in one of the alcoves, respecting some vague custom by taking the initiative to undress me and put me on display. He might start to rub me and to kiss me but then would immediately hand me over to others. I would almost always stay on my back, perhaps because the other most common position, in which the woman actively straddles the man’s pelvis, is less adapted to intervention from several participants and, anyway, implies a more personal relationship between the partners. On my back, I could be stroked by several men while one of them, rearing up to make room and see what he was doing, would get going in my vagina. I was tugged and nibbled in several places at once; one hand rubbing insistently round the available part of my pubis, another one skimming broadly across my entire torso or choosing to provoke my nipples… More than the penetrations, I took pleasure in this caressing, and in particular when it was a penis that was trailed over the entire surface of my face or a glans that rubbed against my breasts. I liked to catch one in my mouth as it passed by, running my lips up and down it while another came and begged attention on the other side of my outstretched neck, before turning my head to take the newcomer. Or having one in my mouth and one in my hand. My body opened up more under the effects of this kind of stroking, which was relatively brief and could be renewed again and again, than in penetration itself. On that subject, what I remember most is the stiffness between my legs after being pinioned sometimes for four hours, especially as many men tend to keep the woman’s thighs spread well apart, to make the most of the view and to penetrate further. When I was left to rest, I would become aware that my vagina was gorged. It was a pleasure feeling its walls stiffened, heavy, slightly painful, in their own way bearing the imprint of all the members that had touched base there.

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

  4. DetailsI really like sucking a man off. I was initiated in this virtually at the same time as I learned to direct the exposed glans towards the other, subterranean, entrance. In my naivety I initially thought that a blow-job was a deviant sexual practice. I can still hear myself describing the thing to a dubious and slightly disgusted girl friend; I tried to affect indifference when I was actually rather proud of my discovery and my aptitude for coping. This aptitude is very difficult to explain because, over and above whatever vestiges there may be of the oral stage, and before the challenge put into accomplishing an act which you believe to be abnormal, there is an obscure identification with the member you appropriate. During an exploration carried out simultaneously with fingers and tongue you come to know every last detail of its topography and even its tiniest reactions – perhaps better than its very owner. As a result there is a feeling of ineffable mastery: a tiny quivering of the end of the tongue, and you unleash a disproportionate response. Added to this is the fact that taking something right into your mouth gives you a more thorough feeling of being filled than when it is the vagina that is occupied. The feeling in the vagina is diffuse, radiating outwards, the occupant seems to melt there, whereas you can perfectly distinguish the gentle proddings of the glans with the inside or the outside of the lips, on the tongue, the palate and even in the throat. Not to mention the fact that, in the final phase, you taste the sperm. In short, you are touched as subtly as you yourself touch. But for me there still remains the mystery of the transmission of sensation from one orifice to the other. How is it that the effects of suction can be felt the other end of the body, that the way the lips squeeze around the penis causes a rigid bracelet to form round the mouth of the vagina? When I perform fellatio really well, taking my time, at leisure to adjust my position and vary my rhythm, I can feel an impatience rising from some source within my body, flowing and concentrating enormous muscular energy in that place of which I have only a vague image, on the edge of this abyss which opens me up so overwhelmingly. The aperture of a barrel ringed with steel. When the ring is forged by contamination from arousal of the nearby clitoris I can understand it. But when the order comes from the mouth! The explanation undoubtedly lies in some detour via the mind. Even though I may have my eyes closed most of the time, they are so close to this meticulous work that I see all the same, and the image I have of it is a powerful activator of my desire.

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

  In the officeI feel a need to suture the cut between the interior and the exterior of my body, and, without going so far as a frank anality, a facility for finding appeasement in filth: some of the traits of my sexual personality support slight regressive tendencies. I would add to that my habit of completing the sexual act in a maximum number of places of my familiar space. Some of these places allow a couple to express the urgency of their desire and, at the same time, to experiment with unusual positions, between the lift and the door to the apartment, in the bath or on the kitchen table. Some of the most exciting locations are in the work place. Here intimate space and public space meet. One friend whom I used to meet in his office overlooking the rue de Rennes, would happily let himself be sucked off in front of the floor to ceiling window, and the euphoric activity in that part of Paris which bubbled up to me from the street as I knelt silhouetted against this window must have contributed to my pleasure. In cities, deprived of distant horizons, I like being able to look out from a window or balcony while I keep a languorous dick captive in a secret place. At home, my gaze roams over the narrow courtyard and the neighbour’s windows; from an office I once worked in on the boulevard Saint-Germain I contemplated the vast facade of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I have also mentioned some of these places when I spoke of the exquisite fear of exposing oneself to involuntary witnesses. To this exhibitionist temptation, I could add the impulse to mark one’s territory as an animal would. Like a lemur which marks out its chosen space with a few jets of urine, you leave a few drops of cum on a staircase or the office carpet, you impregnate the store-room where everyone hangs up their coats. By inscribing this terrain with the act in which a body exceeds its limits, you appropriate it for yourself by osmosis. And you take it from others. There is without doubt a degree of provocation or even of indirect aggression towards others in this operation. Our freedom seems all the greater when we claim it in a place where professional cohabitation usually imposes rules and limitations, even if you share that place with the most discreet and tolerant people. Not to mention the fact that we can to some extent embroil them without their knowledge by annexing their belongings into our most private spheres: a sweater they forgot which you park your buttocks on, or the hand towel in the office toilets which you use to wipe between your legs. There are some places that I have occupied in this way, and I have felt more at home in them than those who spent the best part of their active time there, because I had left the damp outline of my buttocks in the place devoted to their work and their files. This didn’t stop me from entertaining the idea that they too might have subverted the role of their work space, and that we were fucking in each other’s wake.