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 Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Mushroom was smelly, with a sepia print of Reynolds’ “Age of Innocence” above the chalkboard, and several rows of clumsy-looking pupil desks. At one of these, my Lolita was reading the chapter on “Dialogue” in Baker’s Dramatic Technique , and all was very quiet, and there was another girl with a very naked, porcelain-white neck and wonderful platinum hair, who sat in front reading too, absolutely lost to the world and interminably winding a soft curl around one finger, and I sat beside Dolly just behind that neck and that hair, and unbuttoned my overcoat and for sixty-five cents plus the permission to participate in the school play, had Dolly put her inky, chalky, red-knuckled hand under the desk. Oh, stupid and reckless of me, no doubt, but after the torture I had been subjected to, I simply had to take advantage of a combination that I knew would never occur again. 12 Around Christmas she caught a bad chill and was examined by a friend of Miss Lester, a Dr. Ilse Tristramson (hi, Ilse, you were a dear, uninquisitive soul, and you touched my dove very gently). She diagnosed bronchitis, patted Lo on the back (all its bloom erect because of the fever) and put her to bed for a week or longer. At first she “ran a temperature” in American parlance, and I could not resist the exquisite caloricity of unexpected delights— Venus febriculosa—though it was a very languid Lolita that moaned and coughed and shivered in my embrace. And as soon as she was well again, I threw a Party with Boys. Perhaps I had drunk a little too much in preparation for the ordeal. Perhaps I made a fool of myself. The girls had decorated and plugged in a small fir tree—German custom, except that colored bulbs had superseded wax candles. Records were chosen and fed into my landlord’s phonograph.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  A lesser man would have fled, but not the duke; he understood the dynamic of vanity and desire. Neither woman wanted to feel that he preferred the other. And so he managed to arrange a little menage a trois, knowing that now they would struggle between themselves to be the favorite. When people's vani- ty is at risk, you can make them do whatever you want. According to Stendhal, if there is a woman you are interested in, pay attention to her sis- ter. That will stir a triangular desire. Your reputation—your illustrious past as a seducer—is an effective way same way, in the presence of your other female friends. This will greatly delight her, and you need not be surprised if she testifies her admiration of your character by throwing her arms around your neck on the spot. —LOLA MONTEZ, THE ARTS AND SECRETS OF BEAUTY, WITH HINTS TO GENTLEMEN ON THE ART OF FASCINATING [René] Girard's mimetic desire occurs when an individual subject desires an object because it is desired by another subject, here designated as the rival: desire is modeled on the wishes or actions of another. Philippe Lacoue- Labarthe says that "the basic hypothesis upon which rests Girard's famous analysis [is that] every desire is the desire of the other (and not immediately desire of an object), every structure of desire is triangular (including the other—mediator or model—whose desire desire imitates), every desire is thus from its inception tapped by hatred and rivalry; in short, the origin of desire is mimesis— mimeticism—and no desire is ever forged which does not desire forthwith the death or disappearance of the model or exemplary character which gave rise to it. —JAMES MANDRELL, DON JUAN AND THE POINT OF HONOR Appear to Be an Object of Desire—Create Triangles • 201 of creating an aura of desirability. Women threw themselves at Errol Flynn's feet, not because of his handsome face, and certainly not because of his acting skills, but because of his reputation. They knew that other women had found him irresistible. Once he had established that reputation, he did not have to chase women anymore; they came to him. Men who believe that a rakish reputation will make women fear or distrust them, and should be played down, are quite wrong. On the contrary, it makes them more at- tractive. The virtuous Duchess de Montpensier, the Grande Mademoiselle of seventeenth-century France, began by enjoying a friendship with the rake Lauzun, but a troubling thought soon occurred to her: if a man with Lauzun's past did not see her as a possible lover, something had to be wrong with her. This anxiety eventually pushed her into his arms.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  He covered her mouth with kisses, and she eventually and happily relented. Richelieu had decided to make his bold move then for several reasons. First, the duchess had come to like him, and even to harbor a secret desire for him. She would never act upon it or admit it, but he was certain it existed. Second, she had seen him naked, and could not help but be impressed. Third, she would feel a touch of pity for his predicament, and for the joke played on him. Richelieu, a consummate seducer, would find no more perfect moment. The bold move should come as a pleasant surprise, but not too much of a surprise. Learn to read the signs that the target is falling for you. His or her manner toward you will have changed—it will be more pliant, with more words and gestures mirroring yours—yet there will still be a touch of nervousness and uncertainty. Inwardly they have given in to you, but they do not expect a bold move. This is the time to strike. If you wait too long, to the point where they consciously desire and expect you to make a move, it loses the piquancy of coming as a surprise. You want a degree of tension and ambivalence, so that the move represents a great release. Their surren- der will relieve tension like a long-awaited summer storm. Don't plan your bold move in advance; it cannot seem calculated. Wait for the opportune moment, as Richelieu did. Be attentive to favorable circumstances. This will give you room to improvise and go with the moment, which will heighten the impression you want to create of being suddenly over- whelmed by desire. If you ever sense that the victim is expecting the bold move, take a step back, lull them into a false sense of security, then strike. Sometime in the fifteenth century, the writer Bandello relates, a young Venetian widow had a sudden lust for a handsome nobleman. She had her father invite him to their palace to discuss business, but during the meeting the father had to leave, and she offered to give the young man a tour of the place. His curiosity was piqued by her bedroom, which she described as the most splendid room in the palace, but which she also passed by without let- ting him enter. He begged to be shown the room, and she granted his wish. He was spellbound: the velvets, the rare objets, the suggestive paintings, the delicate white candles. A beguiling scent filled the room. The widow put out all of the candles but one, then led the man to the bed, which had been heated with a warming pan. He quickly succumbed to her caresses.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I learned, however, what they looked like, those lovely, maddening, thin-armed nymphets, when they grew up. I remember walking along an animated street on a gray spring afternoon somewhere near the Madeleine. A short slim girl passed me at a rapid, high-heeled, tripping step, we glanced back at the same moment, she stopped and I accosted her. She came hardly up to my chest hair and had the kind of dimpled round little face French girls so often have, and I liked her long lashes and tight-fitting tailored dress sheathing in pearl-gray her young body which still retained—and that was the nymphic echo, the chill of delight, the leap in my loins—a childish something mingling with the professional frétillement of her small agile rump. I asked her price, and she promptly replied with melodious silvery precision (a bird, a very bird!) “Cent.” I tried to haggle but she saw the awful lone longing in my lowered eyes, directed so far down at her round forehead and rudimentary hat (a band, a posy); and with one beat of her lashes: “Tant pis,” she said, and made as if to move away. Perhaps only three years earlier I might have seen her coming home from school! That evocation settled the matter. She led me up the usual steep stairs, with the usual bell clearing the way for the monsieur who might not care to meet another monsieur, on the mournful climb to the abject room, all bed and bidet. As usual, she asked at once for her petit cadeau, and as usual I asked her name (Monique) and her age (eighteen). I was pretty well acquainted with the banal way of streetwalkers. They all answer “dix-huit”—a trim twitter, a note of finality and wistful deceit which they emit up to ten times per day, the poor little creatures. But in Monique’s case there could be no doubt she was, if anything, adding one or two years to her age. This I deduced from many details of her compact, neat, curiously immature body. Having shed her clothes with fascinating rapidity, she stood for a moment partly wrapped in the dingy gauze of the window curtain listening with infantile pleasure, as pat as pat could be, to an organ-grinder in the dust-brimming courtyard below. When I examined her small hands and drew her attention to their grubby fingernails, she said with a naïve frown “Oui, ce n’est pas bien,” and went to the washbasin, but I said it did not matter, did not matter at all.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I lost myself in the pungent but healthy heat which like summer haze hung about little Haze. Let her stay, let her stay … As she strained to chuck the core of her abolished apple into the fender, her young weight, her shameless innocent shanks and round bottom, shifted in my tense, tortured, surreptitiously laboring lap; and all of a sudden a mysterious change came over my senses. I entered a plane of being where nothing mattered, save the infusion of joy brewed within my body. What had begun as a delicious distension of my innermost roots became a glowing tingle which now had reached that state of absolute security, confidence and reliance not found elsewhere in conscious life. With the deep hot sweetness thus established and well on its way to the ultimate convulsion, I felt I could slow down in order to prolong the glow. Lolita had been safely solipsized. The implied sun pulsated in the supplied poplars; we were fantastically and divinely alone; I watched her, rosy, gold-dusted, beyond the veil of my controlled delight, unaware of it, alien to it, and the sun was on her lips, and her lips were apparently still forming the words of the Carmenbarmen ditty that no longer reached my consciousness. Everything was now ready. The nerves of pleasure had been laid bare. The corpuscles of Krause were entering the phase of frenzy. The least pressure would suffice to set all paradise loose. I had ceased to be Humbert the Hound, the sad-eyed degenerate cur clasping the boot that would presently kick him away.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  But then as she squeezed her eyes against these soft and slow tears, she looked down at her swelling breasts and the tiny hard nipples and felt that same awareness of herself there too, just as if he'd slapped her breasts which he hadn't done in a great while, and she felt softly bewildered. My life, she struggled to understand. And she remembered that in the afternoon in the warm forest when she had been walking before his horse, she had felt her own long hair on her buttocks, brushing them as she walked ahead of him, and she had wondered if she looked beautiful to him, and she had wished that he would pick her up then, and kiss her and caress her. Of course she had not dared to look back. She couldn't imagine what he would have done had she been so foolish as to do that, but the sun had thrown their shadows ahead of them and she had seen the shadow of his profile, and felt such a pleasure that she was ashamed of it, and her legs had felt weak and there had been the oddest feeling in her, something she had never known in her earlier life, though perhaps in her dreams. She was awakened now, at the foot of his bed, by his low but firm command. "Come here, my darling." He motioned for her to kneel before him. "This shirt is to be opened down the front, and you will learn to do so with your lips and teeth, and I will be patient with you," he said. She had thought it would be the paddle. And, very relieved, she went almost too quickly to obey, pulling the thick tie that closed the shirt at his throat. His flesh felt warm and smooth to her. Men's flesh. So different, she thought. And she quickly pulled loose the second tie and the tired. She had a struggle with the fourth which was at his waist, but he didn't move, and then when she was finished, she bowed her head, her hands as before on the back of her neck and waited. "Open my breeches," he said to her. Her cheeks flamed; she could feel it. But again she didn't hesitate. She pulled the fabric forward over the hook until the hook slipped out and let it go. And now she could see his sex, bulging there, painfully twisted. She wanted suddenly to kiss it, but she didn't dare and was shocked at her impulse. He had lifted it free. It was hard.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  A few scattered old ladies, two clergymen, and a man in a sports coat were finishing their meals in silence. The dining room closed at nine, and the green-clad, poker-faced serving girls were, happily, in a desperate hurry to get rid of us. “Does not he look exactly, but exactly, like Quilty?” said Lo in a soft voice, her sharp brown elbow not pointing, but visibly burning to point, at the lone diner in the loud checks, in the far corner of the room. “Like our fat Ramsdale dentist?” Lo arrested the mouthful of water she had just taken, and put down her dancing glass. “Course not,” she said with a splutter of mirth. “I meant the writer fellow in the Dromes ad.” Oh, Fame! Oh, Femina! When the dessert was plunked down—a huge wedge of cherry pie for the young lady and vanilla ice cream for her protector, most of which she expeditiously added to her pie—I produced a small vial containing Papa’s Purple Pills. As I look back at those seasick murals, at that strange and monstrous moment, I can only explain my behavior then by the mechanism of that dream vacuum wherein revolves a deranged mind; but at the time, it all seemed quite simple and inevitable to me. I glanced around, satisfied myself that the last diner had left, removed the stopper, and with the utmost deliberation tipped the philter into my palm. I had carefully rehearsed before a mirror the gesture of clapping my empty hand to my open mouth and swallowing a (fictitious) pill. As I expected, she pounced upon the vial with its plump, beautifully colored capsules loaded with Beauty’s Sleep. “Blue!” she exclaimed. “Violet blue. What are they made of?” “Summer skies,” I said, “and plums and figs, and the grape-blood of emperors.” “No, seriously—please.” “Oh, just Purpills. Vitamin X. Makes one strong as an ox or an ax. Want to try one?” Lolita stretched out her hand, nodding vigorously. I had hoped the drug would work fast. It certainly did. She had had a long long day, she had gone rowing in the morning with Barbara whose sister was Waterfront Director, as the adorable accessible nymphet now started to tell me in between suppressed palate-humping yawns, growing in volume—oh, how fast the magic potion worked!—and had been active in other ways too. The movie that had vaguely loomed in her mind was, of course, by the time we watertreaded out of the dining room, forgotten. As we stood in the elevator, she leaned against me, faintly smiling—wouldn’t you like me to tell you?—half closing her dark-lidded eyes. “Sleepy, huh?” said Uncle Tom who was bringing up the quiet Franco-Irish gentleman and his daughter as well as two withered women, experts in roses.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The only thing I have retained is that she had on a green cloak, that is all—one could call it capturing the cloud instead of Juno; she has escaped me . . .and left only her cloak behind. . . . The girl made an impression on me. • The sixteenth • . . . I feel no impatience, for she must live here in the city, and at this moment that is enough for me. This possibility is the condition for the proper appearance of her image— everything will be enjoyed in slow drafts. . . . • The nineteenth • Cordelia, then, is her name! Cordelia! It is a beautiful name, and that, too, is important, since it can often be very disturbing to have to name an ugly name together with the most tender adjectives. —SØREN KIERKEGAARD, THE SEDUCER'S DIARY, TRANSLATED BY HOWARD V. HONG AND EDNA H. HONG Love as understood by Don Juan is a feeling akin to a taste for hunting. It is a craving for an activity which needs an incessant diversity of stimuli to challenge skill. —STENDHAL, LOVE, TRANSLATED BY GILBERT AND SUZANNE SALE It is not the quality of the desired object that gives us pleasure, but rather the energy of our appetites. —CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, THE END OF DON JUAN Choose the Right Victim • 171 are vulnerable to the attractions of other people, and we take precautions against unwanted lapses. Madame de Tourvel takes none. Once Valmont has tested her at the ditch, and has seen she is physically vulnerable, he knows that eventually she will fall. Life is short, and should not be wasted pursuing and seducing the wrong people. The choice of target is critical; it is the set up of the seduc- tion and it will determine everything else that follows. The perfect victim does not have certain facial features, or the same taste in music, or similar goals in life. That is how a banal seducer chooses his or her targets. The perfect victim is the person who stirs you in a way that cannot be explained in words, whose effect on you has nothing to do with superficialities. He or she often has a quality that you yourself lack, and may even secretly envy— the Présidente, for example, has an innocence that Valmont long ago lost or never had. There should be a little bit of tension—the victim may fear you a little, even slightly dislike you. Such tension is full of erotic potential and will make the seduction much livelier. Be more creative in choosing your prey and you will be rewarded with a more exciting seduction. Of course, it means nothing if the potential victim is not open to your influence. Test the person first. Once you feel that he or she is also vulnerable to you then the hunting can begin. It is a stroke of good fortune to find one who is worth se- ducing. . . .

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Opal was a bashful, formless, bespectacled, bepimpled creature who doted on Dolly who bullied her. With Linda Hall the school tennis champion, Dolly played singles at least twice a week: I suspect Linda was a true nymphet, but for some unknown reason she did not come—was perhaps not allowed to come —to our house; so I recall her only as a flash of natural sunshine on an indoor court. Of the rest, none had any claims to nymphetry except Eva Rosen. Avis was a plump lateral child with hairy legs, while Mona, though handsome in a coarse sensual way and only a year older than my aging mistress, had obviously long ceased to be a nymphet, if she ever had been one. Eva Rosen, a displaced little person from France, was on the other hand a good example of a not strikingly beautiful child revealing to the perspicacious amateur some of the basic elements of nymphet charm, such as a perfect pubescent figure and lingering eyes and high cheekbones. Her glossy copper hair had Lolita’s silkiness, and the features of her delicate milky-white face with pink lips and silverfish eyelashes were less foxy than those of her likes—the great clan of intra-racial redheads; nor did she sport their green uniform but wore, as I remember her, a lot of black or cherry dark—a very smart black pullover, for instance, and high-heeled black shoes, and garnet-red fingernail polish. I spoke French to her (much to Lo’s disgust). The child’s tonalities were still admirably pure, but for school words and play words she resorted to current American and then a slight Brooklyn accent would crop up in her speech, which was amusing in a little Parisian who went to a select New England school with phoney British aspirations. Unfortunately, despite “that French kid’s uncle” being “a millionaire,” Lo dropped Eva for some reason before I had had time to enjoy in my modest way her fragrant presence in the Humbert open house. The reader knows what importance I attached to having a bevy of page girls, consolation prize nymphets, around my Lolita. For a while, I endeavored to interest my senses in Mona Dahl who was a good deal around, especially during the spring term when Lo and she got so enthusiastic about dramatics. I have often wondered what secrets outrageously treacherous Dolores Haze had imparted to Mona while blurting out to me by urgent and well-paid request various really incredible details concerning an affair that Mona had had with a marine at the seaside.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Her talk of the countess made him confused and guilty; but then she hinted that his lover was unfaithful, planting a different seed in his mind: anger, and the desire for revenge. Then she asked him to forget what she had said and forgive her for saying it, a key insinuating tactic: "I am asking you to forget what I have said, but I know you cannot; the thought will remain in your mind." Pro- voked this way, it was inevitable he would grab her in the pavilion. She sev- eral times mentioned the room in the château—of course he insisted on going there. She enveloped the evening in an air of ambiguity. Even her words "If you promise to be good" could be read several ways. The young man's head and heart were inflamed with all of the feelings—discontent, confusion, desire—that she had indirectly instilled in him. Particularly in the early phases of a seduction, learn to make everything you say and do a kind of insinuation. Insinuate doubt with a comment here and there about other people in the victim's life, making the victim feel vulnerable. Slight physical contact insinuates desire, as does a fleeting but memorable look, or an unusually warm tone of voice, both for the briefest of moments. A passing comment suggests that something about the victim interests you; but keep it subtle, your words revealing a possibility, creating a doubt. You are planting seeds that will take root in the weeks to come. When you are not there, your targets will fantasize about the ideas you have stirred up, and brood upon the doubts. They are slowly being led into your web, unaware that you are in control. How can they resist or become de- fensive if they cannot even see what is happening? What distinguishes a suggestion from other kinds of psy- chical influence, such as a command or the giving of a piece of information or instruction, is that in the case of a sug- gestion an idea is aroused in another person's brain which is not examined in regard to its origin but is accepted just as though it had arisen spontaneously in that brain. —SIGMUND FREUD Keys to Seduction Y ou cannot pass through life without in one way or another trying to persuade people of something.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  I am married to Batricio, everybody knows it. How can the marriage be annulled, even if he abandons me? • Don Juan: When the marriage is not consummated, whether by malice or deceit, it can be annulled. . . . • Arminta: You are right. But, God help me, won't you desert me the moment you have separated me from my husband? . . . • Don Juan: Arminta, light of my eyes, tomorrow your beautiful feet will slip into polished silver slippers with buttons of the purest gold. And your alabaster throat will be imprisoned in beautiful necklaces; on your fingers, rings set with amethysts will shine like stars, and from your ears will da ngle orien tal pearls. • Arminta: I am yours. —TIRSO DE MOLINA, THE PLAYBOY OF SEVILLE, TRANSLATED BY ADRIENNE M. SCHIZZANO AND OSCAR MANDLL, IN MANDEL, ED., THE THEATRE OF DON JUAN Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the LORD GOD had made. He said to the woman, "Did God say, 'You shall not cat of Create Temptation • 233 She was not married, she had no child. Months after he had left her, she had realized that she had been the victim of a consummate seducer. She still loved Don Juan, but she was determined to turn the tables. Finding out through a mutual friend that he had returned to Madrid, she took the five thousand pesetas he had sent her and bought expensive clothes. She bor- rowed a neighbor's child, asked the neighbor's cousin to play the child's nursemaid, and rented a coach—all to create an elaborate fantasy that ex- isted only in his mind. Cristeta did not even have to lie: she never actually said she was married or had a child. She knew that being unable to have her would make him want her more than ever. It was the only way to seduce a man like him. Overwhelmed by the lengths she had gone to, and by the emotions she had so skillfully stirred in him, Don Juan forgave Cristeta and offered to marry her. To his surprise, and perhaps to his relief, she politely declined. The moment they married, she said, his eyes would wander elsewhere. Only if they stayed as they were could she maintain the upper hand. Don Juan had no choice but to agree. Interpretation. Cristeta and Don Juan are characters in the novel Dulce y Sabrosa (Sweet and Savory, 1891), by the Spanish writer Jacinto Octavio Picon. Most of Picon's work deals with male seducers and their feminine victims, a subject he studied and knew much about. Abandoned by Don Juan, and reflecting on his nature, Cristeta decided to kill two birds with one stone: she would get revenge and get him back. But how could she lure such a man? The fruit once tasted, he no longer wanted it.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Paris asked Hermes, "or should they he naked?" • "The rules of the contest are for you to decide," Hermes answered with a discreet smile. • "In that case, will they kindly disrobe?" • Hermes told the goddesses to do so, and politely turned his back. • Aphrodite was soon ready, but Athene insisted that she should remove the famous magic girdle, which gave her an unfair advantage by making everyone fall in love withthe wearer. "Very well" said Aphrodite spitefully. "I will, on condition that you remove your helmet—you look hideous without it. " • "Now, if you please, 1 must judge you one at a time" announced Paris. . . . Come here, Divine Hera! Will you other two goddesses be good enough to leave us for a while?" • "Examine me conscientiously," said Hera, turning slowly around, and displaying her magnificent figure, "and remember that if you judge me the fairest, 1 will make you lord of all Asia, and the richest man alive. " • "I am not to be bribed my Lady . . . Very well, thank you. Now I have seen all that I need to see. Come, Divine Athene!" • "Here I am," said Athene, striding purposefully forward. "Listen, Paris, if you have enough common sense to award me the prize, I will make you victorious in all your battles, as well as the handsomest and wisest man in the world." • "I am a humble The Siren • 11 had deprived her of something critical: affection. Her deepest need was to feel loved and desired, which made her seem constantly vulnerable, like a little girl craving protection. She emanated this need for love before the camera; it was effortless, coming from somewhere real and deep inside. A look or gesture that she did not intend to arouse desire would do so doubly powerfully just because it was unintended—its innocence was precisely what excited a man. The Sex Siren has a more urgent and immediate effect than the Spec- tacular Siren does. The incarnation of sex and desire, she does not bother to appeal to extraneous senses, or to create a theatrical buildup. Her time never seems to be taken up by work or chores; she gives the impression that she lives for pleasure and is always available. What separates the Sex Siren from the courtesan or whore is her touch of innocence and vulnerability. The mix is perversely satisfying: it gives the male the critical illusion that he is a protector, the father figure, although it is actually the Sex Siren who controls the dynamic. A woman doesn't have to be born with the attributes of a Marilyn Monroe to fill the role of the Sex Siren.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The woman was exceptionally beautiful, and was desired by one and all, but she was far too virtuous to take a lover, although she this great lady, who for the time being was keeping her bed, each did withdraw apart for to entertain his mistress. The one did converse with the high-born dame with every possible respect and humble saluta- tion and kissing of hands, with words of honor and stately compliment, without making ever an attempt to come near and try to force the place. The other brother, without any ceremony of words or fine phrases, did take his fair one to a recessed window, and incontinently making free with her (for he was very strong), he did soon show her 'twas not his way to love à l'espagnole, with eyes and tricks of face and words, but in the genuine fashion and proper mode every true lover should desire. Presently having finished his task, he doth quit the chamber; but as he goes, saith to his brother, loud enough for his lady to hear the words: "Do you as I have done, brother mine; else you do naught at all. Be you as brave and hardy as you will else- where, yet if you show not your hardihood here and now, you are disgraced; for here is no place of cere- mony and respect, but one where you do see your lady before you, which doth but wait your attack." So with this he did leave his brother, which yet for that while did refrain him and put it off to another time. But for this the lady did by no means esteem him more highly, whether it was she did put it down to an overchilliness in love, or a lack of courage, or a defect of bodily vigor. —SEIGNEUR DE BRANTÔME, LIVES OF FAIR & GALLANT LADIES, TRANSLATED BY A. R. ALLINSON Master the Art of the Bold Move • 411 could be quite coquettish. Richelieu bided his time. He befriended her, charming her with the wit that had made him the favorite of the ladies. One night a group of such women, including the duchess, decided to play a practical joke on him, in which he was to be forced naked out of his room at the palace of Versailles. The joke worked to perfection, the ladies all got to see him in his native glory, and had a good chuckle watching him run away. There were many places Richelieu could have hidden; the place he chose was the duchess's bedroom. Minutes later he watched her enter and undress, and once the candles were extinguished, he crept into bed with her. She protested, tried to scream.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Carefully putting down the open book where she had sat (it attempted to send forth a rotation of waves, but an inserted pencil stopped the pages), I checked the hiding place of the key: rather self-consciously it lay under the old expensive safety razor I had used before she bought me a much better and cheaper one. Was it the perfect hiding place—there, under that razor, in the groove of its velvet-lined case? The case lay in a small trunk where I kept various business papers. Could I improve upon this? Remarkable how difficult it is to conceal things—especially when one’s wife keeps monkeying with the furniture. 22 I think it was exactly a week after our last swim that the noon mail brought a reply from the second Miss Phalen. The lady wrote she had just returned to St. Algebra from her sister’s funeral. “ Euphemia had never been the same after breaking that hip.” As to the matter of Mrs. Humbert’s daughter, she wished to report that it was too late to enroll her this year; but that she, the surviving Phalen, was practically certain that if Mr. and Mrs. Humbert brought Dolores over in January, her admittance might be arranged. Next day, after lunch, I went to see “our” doctor, a friendly fellow whose perfect bedside manner and complete reliance on a few patented drugs adequately masked his ignorance of, and indifference to, medical science. The fact that Lo would have to come back to Ramsdale was a treasure of anticipation. For this event I wanted to be fully prepared. I had in fact begun my campaign earlier, before Charlotte made that cruel decision of hers. I had to be sure when my lovely child arrived, that very night, and then night after night, until St. Algebra took her away from me, I would possess the means of putting two creatures to sleep so thoroughly that neither sound nor touch should rouse them. Throughout most of July I had been experimenting with various sleeping powders, trying them out on Charlotte, a great taker of pills. The last dose I had given her (she thought it was a tablet of mild bromides—to anoint her nerves) had knocked her out for four solid hours. I had put the radio at full blast. I had blazed in her face an olisbos-like flashlight. I had pushed her, pinched her, prodded her—and nothing had disturbed the rhythm of her calm and powerful breathing. However, when I had done such a simple thing as kiss her, she had awakened at once, as fresh and strong as an octopus (I barely escaped). This would not do, I thought; had to get something still safer.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Braddock, because if so, Miss Beard had been looking for me. “What a name for a woman,” I said and strolled away. In and out of my heart flowed my rainbow blood. I would give her till half-past-nine. Going back to the lobby, I found there a change: a number of people in floral dresses or black cloth had formed little groups here and there, and some elfish chance offered me the sight of a delightful child of Lolita’s age, in Lolita’s type of frock, but pure white, and there was a white ribbon in her black hair. She was not pretty, but she was a nymphet, and her ivory pale legs and lily neck formed for one memorable moment a most pleasurable antiphony (in terms of spinal music) to my desire for Lolita, brown and pink, flushed and fouled. The pale child noticed my gaze (which was really quite casual and debonair), and being ridiculously self-conscious, lost countenance completely, rolling her eyes and putting the back of her hand to her cheek, and pulling at the hem of her skirt, and finally turning her thin mobile shoulder blades to me in specious chat with her cow-like mother. I left the loud lobby and stood outside, on the white steps, looking at the hundreds of powdered bugs wheeling around the lamps in the soggy black night, full of ripple and stir. All I would do—all I would dare to do—would amount to such a trifle… Suddenly I was aware that in the darkness next to me there was somebody sitting in a chair on the pillared porch. I could not really see him but what gave him away was the rasp of a screwing off, then a discreet gurgle, then the final note of a placid screwing on. I was about to move away when his voice addressed me : “Where the devil did you get her?” “I beg your pardon?” “I said: the weather is getting better.” “Seems so.” “Who’s the lassie?” “My daughter.” “You lie—she’s not.” “I beg your pardon?” “I said: July was hot. Where’s her mother?” “Dead.” “I see. Sorry. By the way, why don’t you two lunch with me tomorrow. That dreadful crowd will be gone by then.” “We’ll be gone too. Good night.” “Sorry. I’m pretty drunk. Good night. That child of yours needs a lot of sleep. Sleep is a rose, as the Persians say. Smoke?” “Not now.” He struck a light, but because he was drunk, or because the wind was, the flame illumined not him but another person, a very old man, one of those permanent guests of old hotels—and his white rocker. Nobody said anything and the darkness returned to its initial place. Then I heard the old-timer cough and deliver himself of some sepulchral mucus. I left the porch.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  They looked with sympathy at my frail, tanned, tottering, dazed rosedarling. I had almost to carry her into our room. There, she sat down on the edge of the bed, swaying a little, speaking in dove-dull, long-drawn tones . “If I tell you—if I tell you, will you promise [sleepy, so sleepy—head lolling, eyes going out], promise you won’t make complaints?” “Later, Lo. Now go to bed. I’ll leave you here, and you go to bed. Give you ten minutes.” “Oh, I’ve been such a disgusting girl,” she went on, shaking her hair, removing with slow fingers a velvet hair ribbon. “Lemme tell you—” “Tomorrow, Lo. Go to bed, go to bed—for goodness sake, to bed.” I pocketed the key and walked downstairs. 28 Gentlewomen of the jury! Bear with me! Allow me to take just a tiny bit of your precious time! So this was le grand moment . I had left my Lolita still sitting on the edge of the abysmal bed, drowsily raising her foot, fumbling at the shoelaces and showing as she did so the nether side of her thigh up to the crotch of her panties—she had always been singularly absent-minded, or shameless, or both, in matters of legshow. This, then, was the hermetic vision of her which I had locked in—after satisfying myself that the door carried no inside bolt. The key, with its numbered dangler of carved wood, became forthwith the weighty sesame to a rapturous and formidable future. It was mine, it was part of my hot hairy fist. In a few minutes—say, twenty, say half-an-hour, sicher ist sicher as my uncle Gustave used to say—I would let myself into that “342” and find my nymphet, my beauty and bride, emprisoned in her crystal sleep. Jurors! If my happiness could have talked, it would have filled that genteel hotel with a deafening roar. And my only regret today is that I did not quietly deposit key “342” at the office, and leave the town, the country, the continent, the hemisphere,—indeed, the globe—that very same night. Let me explain. I was not unduly disturbed by her self accusatory innuendoes. I was still firmly resolved to pursue my policy of sparing her purity by operating only in the stealth of night, only upon a completely anesthetized little nude. Restraint and reverence were still my motto—even if that “purity” (incidentally, thoroughly debunked by modern science) had been slightly damaged through some juvenile erotic experience, no doubt homosexual, at that accursed camp of hers.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  It was by reputation that Lord Byron attracted his willing victims. A woman may feel ambivalent about President Clinton's reputation, but beneath that ambiva- lence is an underlying interest. Do not leave your reputation to chance or gossip; it is your life's artwork, and you must craft it, hone it, and display it with the care of an artist. Symbol: Fire. The Rake burns with a desire that enflames the woman he is seducing. It is extreme, uncontrollable, and dangerous. The Rake may end in hell, but the flames surrounding him often make him seem that much more desirable to women. 28 • The Art of Seduction Dangers L ike the Siren, the Rake faces the most danger from members of his own sex, who are far less indulgent than women are of his constant skirt chasing. In the old days, a Rake was often an aristocrat, and no matter how many people he offended or even killed, in the end he would go un- punished. Today, only stars and the very wealthy can play the Rake with impunity; the rest of us need to be careful. Elvis Presley had been a shy young man. Attaining early stardom, and seeing the power it gave him over women, he went berserk, becoming a Rake almost overnight. Like many Rakes, Elvis had a predilection for women who were already taken. He found himself cornered by an angry husband or boyfriend on numerous occasions, and came away with a few cuts and bruises. This might seem to suggest that you should step lightly around husbands and boyfriends, especially early on in your career. But the charm of the Rake is that such dangers don't matter to them. You cannot be a Rake by being fearful and prudent; the occasional pummeling is part of the game. Later on, in any case, at the height of Elvis's fame, no husband would dare touch him. The greater danger for the Rake comes not from the violently offended husband but from those insecure men who feel threatened by the Don Juan figure. Although they will not admit it, they envy the Rake's life of plea- sure, and like everyone envious, they will attack in hidden ways, often masking their persecutions as morality. The Rake may find his career en- dangered by such men (or by the occasional woman who is equally inse- cure, and who feels hurt because the Rake does not want her). There is little the Rake can do to avoid envy; if everyone was as successful in seduc- tion, society would not function. So accept envy as a badge of honor. Don't be naive, be aware.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Religious ecstasy is about intensity, not temporal extensity. Giovanni Casanova used many spiritual lures in his seductions—the oc- cult, anything that would inspire lofty sentiments. For the time that he was involved with a woman, she would feel that he would do anything for her, that he was not just using her only to abandon her. But she also knew that when it became convenient to end the affair, he would cry, give her a mag- nificent gift, then quietly leave. This was just what many young women wanted—a temporary diversion from marriage or an oppressive family. Sometimes pleasure is best when we know it is fleeting. that you learn to put the devil back in Hell, for it is greatly to His liking and pleasurable to the parties concerned, and a great deal of good can arise and flow in the process. —GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO, THE DECAMERON, TRANSLATED BY G. H. MCWILLIAM Mix Pleasure with Pain The greatest mistake in seduction is being too nice. At first, perhaps, your kindness is charming, but it soon grows monotonous; you are trying too hard to please, and seem insecure. Instead of overwhelming your targets with niceness, try inflicting some pain. Lure them in with focused attention, then change direction, appearing suddenly uninterested. Make them feel guilty and insecure. Even instigate a breakup, subjecting them to an emptiness and pain that will give you room to maneuver—now a rapprochement, an apology, a return to your earlier kindness, will turn them weak at the knees. The lower the lows you create, the greater the highs. To heighten the erotic charge, create the excitement of fear. The Emotional Roller Coaster O ne hot summer afternoon in 1894, Don Mateo Díaz, a thirty-eight- year-old resident of Seville, decided to visit a local tobacco factory Because of his connections Don Mateo was allowed to tour the place, but his interest was not in the business side. Don Mateo liked young girls, and hundreds of them worked in the factory. Just as he had expected, that day many of them were in a state of near undress because of the heat—it was quite a spectacle. He enjoyed the sights for a while, but the noise and the temperature soon got to him. As he was heading for the door, though, a worker of no more than sixteen called out to him: "Caballero, if you will give me a penny I will sing you a little song." The girl's name was Conchita Pérez, and she looked young and inno- cent, in fact beautiful, with a sparkle in her eye that suggested a taste for ad- venture. The perfect prey. He listened to her song (which seemed vaguely suggestive), tossed her a coin that was equal to a month's salary, tipped his hat, then left. It was never good to come on too strong too early.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  By this time I was in a state of excitement bordering on insanity; but I also had the cunning of the insane. Sitting there, on the sofa, I managed to attune, by a series of stealthy movements, my masked lust to her guileless limbs. It was no easy matter to divert the little maiden’s attention while I performed the obscure adjustments necessary for the success of the trick. Talking fast, lagging behind my own breath, catching up with it, mimicking a sudden toothache to explain the breaks in my patter—and all the while keeping a maniac’s inner eye on my distant golden goal, I cautiously increased the magic friction that was doing away, in an illusional, if not factual, sense, with the physically irremovable, but psychologically very friable texture of the material divide (pajamas and robe) between the weight of two sunburnt legs, resting athwart my lap, and the hidden tumor of an unspeakable passion. Having, in the course of my patter, hit upon something nicely mechanical, I recited, garbling them slightly, the words of a foolish song that was then popular—O my Carmen, my little Carmen, something, something, those something nights, and the stars, and the cars, and the bars, and the barmen; I kept repeating this automatic stuff and holding her under its special spell (spell because of the garbling), and all the while I was mortally afraid that some act of God might interrupt me, might remove the golden load in the sensation of which all my being seemed concentrated, and this anxiety forced me to work, for the first minute or so, more hastily than was consensual with deliberately modulated enjoyment. The stars that sparkled, and the cars that parkled, and the bars, and the barmen, were presently taken over by her; her voice stole and corrected the tune I had been mutilating. She was musical and apple-sweet. Her legs twitched a little as they lay across my live lap; I stroked them; there she lolled in the right-hand corner, almost asprawl, Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice, losing her slipper, rubbing the heel of her slipperless foot in its sloppy anklet, against the pile of old magazines heaped on my left on the sofa—and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty—between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I learned, however, what they looked like, those lovely, maddening, thin-armed nymphets, when they grew up. I remember walking along an animated street on a gray spring afternoon somewhere near the Madeleine. A short slim girl passed me at a rapid, high-heeled, tripping step, we glanced back at the same moment, she stopped and I accosted her. She came hardly up to my chest hair and had the kind of dimpled round little face French girls so often have, and I liked her long lashes and tight-fitting tailored dress sheathing in pearl-gray her young body which still retained—and that was the nymphic echo, the chill of delight, the leap in my loins—a childish something mingling with the professional frétillement of her small agile rump. I asked her price, and she promptly replied with melodious silvery precision (a bird, a very bird!) “ Cent .” I tried to haggle but she saw the awful lone longing in my lowered eyes, directed so far down at her round forehead and rudimentary hat (a band, a posy); and with one beat of her lashes: “ Tant pis ,” she said, and made as if to move away. Perhaps only three years earlier I might have seen her coming home from school! That evocation settled the matter. She led me up the usual steep stairs, with the usual bell clearing the way for the monsieur who might not care to meet another monsieur , on the mournful climb to the abject room, all bed and bidet . As usual, she asked at once for her petit cadeau , and as usual I asked her name (Monique) and her age (eighteen). I was pretty well acquainted with the banal way of streetwalkers. They all answer “ dix-huit ”—a trim twitter, a note of finality and wistful deceit which they emit up to ten times per day, the poor little creatures. But in Monique’s case there could be no doubt she was, if anything, adding one or two years to her age. This I deduced from many details of her compact, neat, curiously immature body. Having shed her clothes with fascinating rapidity, she stood for a moment partly wrapped in the dingy gauze of the window curtain listening with infantile pleasure, as pat as pat could be, to an organ-grinder in the dust-brimming courtyard below. When I examined her small hands and drew her attention to their grubby fingernails, she said with a naïve frown “ Oui, ce n’est pas bien ,” and went to the washbasin, but I said it did not matter, did not matter at all.