Disgust

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 Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "At first I felt a deep sense of disgust at seeing the old catamite pass by me again, and lift, with utmost modesty, his arm from his breast, thrust his bony finger between his lips, and move it in the same fashion as the workman had done his arm, but trying to give all his movements a maidenly coyness. He was—as I learnt later—a pompeur de dard, or as I might call him, a 'sperm-sucker'; this was his speciality. He did the work for the love of the thing, and an experience of many years had made him a master of his trade. He, it appears, lived in every other respect like a hermit, and only indulged himself in one thing—fine lawn handkerchiefs, either with lace or embroidery, to wipe the amateur's instrument when he had done with it. "The old man went down towards the river's edge, apparently inviting me for a midnight stroll in the mist, under the arches of the bridge, or in some out-of-the-way nook or other corner. "Another man came up from there; this one was adjusting his dress, and scratching his hind part like an ape. Notwithstanding the creepy feeling these men gave me, the scene was so entirely new that I must say it rather interested me." "And Teleny?" "I had been so taken up with all these midnight wanderers that I lost sight both of him and of Briancourt, when all at once I saw them re-appear. "With them there was a young Zouave sub-lieutenant and a dapper and dashing fellow, and a slim and swarthy youth, apparently an Arab. "The meeting did not seem to have been a carnal one. Anyhow, the soldier was entertaining his friends with his lively talk, and by the few words which my ear caught I understood that the topic was an interesting one. Moreover, as they passed by each bench, the couples seated thereon nudged each other as if they were acquainted with them. "As I passed them I shrugged up my shoulders, and buried my head in my collar. I even put up my handkerchief to my face. Still, notwithstanding all my precautions, Teleny seemed to have recognized me, although I had walked on without taking the slightest notice of him. "I heard their merry laugh as I passed; an echo of loathsome words was still ringing in my ears; sickening faces of effete, womanish men traversed the street, trying to beguile me by all that is nauseous. "I hurried on, sick at heart, disappointed, hating myself and my fellow-creatures, musing whether I was any better than all these worshippers of Priapus who were inured to vice. I was pining for the love of one man who did not care more for me than for any of these sodomites.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  With your approval, Madame, said the beautiful Therese, I shall limit myself to a foreshortened account of the first month I spent in that monastery, that is, I will confine myself to the period's principal anecdotes; the rest would be pure repetition; the monotony of that sojourn would make my recital tedious; immediately afterward, I should, it seems to me, move on to the events which finally produced my emergence from this ghastly sewer. I did not attend supper that first day; I had simply been selected to pass the night with Dom Clement. In accordance with custom, I was outside his cell some few minutes before he was expected to return to it; the jailer opened the door, then locked it when I had gone in. Clement arrives as warm with wine as lust, he is followed by the twenty-six year-old girl who, at the time was officiating as his watch; previously informed of what I am to do, I fall to my knees as soon as I hear him coming; he nears me, considers me in my humbled posture, then commands me to rise and kiss him upon the mouth; he savors the kiss for several moments and imparts to it all the expression... all the amplitude one could possibly conceive. Meanwhile, Armande, as his thrall was named, undresses me by stages; when the lower part of the loins, with which she had begun, is exposed, she bids me turn around and display to her uncle the area his tastes cherish. Clement examines it, feels it, then, reposing himself in an armchair, orders me to bring it close so that he can kiss it; Armande is upon her knees, rousing him with her mouth, Clement places his at the sanctuary of the temple I present to him and his tongue strays into the path situate at its center; his hands fasten upon the corresponding altar in Armande but, as the clothing the girl is still wearing impedes him, he commands her to be rid of it, this is soon done, and the docile creature returns to her uncle to take up a position in which, while exciting him with only the hand, she finds herself better within reach of Clement's. The impure monk uninterruptedly occupied with me in like fashion, then tells me to give the largest possible vent to whatever winds may be hovering in my bowels, and these I am to direct into his mouth; this eccentricity struck me as revolting, but I was at the time far from perfect acquaintance with all the irregularities of debauch: I obey and straightway feel the effect of this intemperance.

• From Sexual Politics (1970)

  …he named various parts of her body and described what he would do to them, how he would tear this and squeeze that, eat here and spit there, butcher rough and slice fine, slash, macerate, pillage, all in an unrecognizable voice which must have issued between clenched teeth, until his appetite satisfied, I could see him squatting beside the carcass, his mouth wiped carefully with the back of his hand. With that, he sighed, as much as to say, “A good piece of ass, by God.”27 Now the beguiling youth D. J. Jethroe, is introduced to tell us of the Alaskan bear hunt which has introduced him to “animal murder…and murder of the soldierest sort,”28 describing his initiation into the company of men in a Hip-Pop diction whose metaphor is sexual-military: “Now remember!” he instructs the reader before the killing begins, “Think of cunt and ass—so it’s all clear.”29 To convince us that sex and violence are inextricable in the culture into which he is being welcomed as an adult, D.J. offers us the evidence of his senses: “ever notice how blood smells like cunt and ass all mix in one?”30 Already perfectly at ease among the “sexual peculiarities of redblooded men,” at home with the hero “who can’t come unless he’s squinting down a gunsight,” D.J. renders the intercourse of his parents in terms of an explosion. Using a “dynamite stick for a phallus,” Big Daddy himself (“he don’t come, he explodes, he’s a geyser of love, hot piss, shit…he’s Texas willpower”) mother Alice is scattered over the southern states, “they found her vagina in North Carolina and part of her gashole in hometown.”31 Just as D.J. fancies his penis a gun to “those Dallas debutantes and just plain common fucks who are lucky to get drilled by him,”32 he first gives in to the fever of the hunt when he catches sight of a great wounded bear splattering her death’s blood into the forest. The transition from hunting and sex to war itself is Mailer’s interest in the novel. Corrupt as that “High Grade Asshole,” his plastic executive father, whose propulsion to kill is a means of “getting it Up,”33 D.J. now yearns after slaughter, inspired by an “itchy-dick memory of electric red.”34

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Mother Brown had in the meantime agreed the terms with this loquorice old goat, which I afterwards understood were to be fifty guineas peremptory, for the liberty of attempting me, and a hundred more at the complete gratification of his desires, in the triumph over my virginity: and as for me, I was to be left entirely at the discretion of his liking and generosity. This unrighteous contract being thus settled, he was so eager to be put in possession, that he insisted on being introduced to drink tea with me that afternoon, when we were to be left alone; nor would he hearken to the procuress’s remonstrances, that I was not sufficiently prepared, and ripened for such an attack; that I was too green and untamed, having been scarce twenty-four hours in the house: it is the character of lust to be impatient, and his vanity arming him against any supposition of other than the common resistance of a maid on those occasions, made him reject all proposals of a delay, and my dreadful trial was thus fixed, unknown to me, for that very evening. At dinner, Mrs. Brown and Phœbe did nothing but run riot in praise of this wonderful cousin, and how happy that woman would be that he would favour with his addresses; in short my two gossips exhausted all their rhetoric to persuade me to accept them: “that the gentleman was violently smitten with me at first sight; that he would make my fortune if I would be a good girl and not stand in my own light; that I should trust his honour; that I should be made for ever, and have a chariot to go abroad in,” with all such stuff as was fit to turn the head of such a silly ignorant girl as I then was: but luckily here my aversion had taken already such deep root in me, my heart was so strongly defended from him by my senses, that wanting the art to mask my sentiments, I gave them no hopes of their employer succeeding, at least very easily, with me. The glass too marched pretty quick, with a view, I suppose, to make a friend of the warmth of my constitution, in the minutes of the imminent attack. Thus they kept me pretty long at table, and about six in the evening, after I had retired to my apartment, and the tea board was set, enters my venerable mistress, followed close by that satyr, who came in grinning in a way peculiar to him, and by his odious presence, confirmed me in all the sentiments of detestation which his first appearance had given birth to. He sat down fronting me, and all tea time kept ogling me in a manner that gave me the utmost pain and confusion, all the mark of which he still explained to be my bashfulness, and not being used to see company.

• From Sexual Politics (1970)

  This night, however, he waited up for her and when she came sailing in, chipper, perky, a little lit up and cold as usual he pulled up short with a “where were you tonight’?” She tried pulling her usual yam, of course. “Cut that,” he said. “I want you to get your things off and tumble into bed.” That made her sore. She mentioned in her roundabout way that she didn’t want any of that business. “You don’t feel in the mood for it, I suppose,” says he, and then he adds: “that’s fine because now I’m going to warm you up a bit.” With that he up and ties her to the bedstead, gags her, and then goes for the razor strop. On the way to the bathroom. he grabs a bottle of mustard from the kitchen. He comes back with the razor strop and he belts the piss out of her. And after that he rubs the mustard into the raw welts. “That ought to keep you warm for to-night,” he says. And so saying he makes her bend over and spread her legs apart. “Now,” he says, “I’m going to pay you as usual,” and taking a bill out of his pocket he crumples it and then shoves it up her quim.15 Miller concludes the saga of Ida and Bill with a last joke at the cuckold’s expense, for Bill is still a cuckold, and a maxim for the reader in capital letters, is put forward as “the purpose of all this”—merely “To prove that THE GREAT ARTIST IS HE WHO CONQUERS THE ROMANTIC IN HIMSELF.”16 Miller’s educational intentions in the passage are abundantly clear. Females who are frigid, e.g., not sexually compliant, should be beaten. Females who break the laws of marital fidelity should also be beaten, for the barter system of marriage (sex in return for security) must not be violated by outside commerce. Rather more informative than this sober doctrine of the cave is the insight it provides into Miller’s sexual/literary motives and their undeniably sadistic overtones. They are closer to the vicarious politic of the cock-pit than of the boudoir, but the former often casts considerable light on the latter. II “I have nothing in me,” she said. “Do we go ahead?” ‘Who knows,” I said, “keep quiet.”

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  “And when I hear people talk of the gilded youth, of the officers, of the Parisians, and all these gentlemen, and myself, living wild lives at the age of thirty, and who have on our consciences hundreds of crimes toward women, terrible and varied, when we enter a parlor or a ball-room, washed, shaven, and perfumed, with very white linen, in dress coats or in uniform, as emblems of purity, oh, the disgust! There will surely come a time, an epoch, when all these lives and all this cowardice will be unveiled! “So, nevertheless, I lived, until the age of thirty, without abandoning for a minute my intention of marrying, and building an elevated conjugal life; and with this in view I watched all young girls who might suit me. I was buried in rottenness, and at the same time I looked for virgins, whose purity was worthy of me! Many of them were rejected: they did not seem to me pure enough! “Finally I found one that I considered on a level with myself. She was one of two daughters of a landed proprietor of Penza, formerly very rich and since ruined. To tell the truth, without false modesty, they pursued me and finally captured me. The mother (the father was away) laid all sorts of traps, and one of these, a trip in a boat, decided my future. “I made up my mind at the end of the aforesaid trip one night, by moonlight, on our way home, while I was sitting beside her. I admired her slender body, whose charming shape was moulded by a jersey, and her curling hair, and I suddenly concluded that this was she. It seemed to me on that beautiful evening that she understood all that I thought and felt, and I thought and felt the most elevating things. “Really, it was only the jersey that was so becoming to her, and her curly hair, and also the fact that I had spent the day beside her, and that I desired a more intimate relation. “I returned home enthusiastic, and I persuaded myself that she realized the highest perfection, and that for that reason she was worthy to be my wife, and the next day I made to her a proposal of marriage. “No, say what you will, we live in such an abyss of falsehood, that, unless some event strikes us a blow on the head, as in my case, we cannot awaken. What confusion! Out of the thousands of men who marry, not only among us, but also among the people, scarcely will you find a single one who has not previously married at least ten times. (It is true that there now exist, at least so I have heard, pure young people who feel and know that this is not a joke, but a serious matter. May God come to their aid! But in my time there was not to be found one such in a thousand.)

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  “So we lived in the city. In the city the wretched feel less sad. One can live there a hundred years without being noticed, and be dead a long time before anybody will notice it. People have no time to inquire into your life. All are absorbed. Business, social relations, art, the health of children, their education. And there are visits that must be received and made; it is necessary to see this one, it is necessary to hear that one or the other one. In the city there are always one, two, or three celebrities that it is indispensable that one should visit. “Now one must care for himself, or care for such or such a little one, now it is the professor, the private tutor, the governesses, . . . and life is absolutely empty. In this activity we were less conscious of the sufferings of our cohabitation. Moreover, in the first of it, we had a superb occupation,—the arrangement of the new dwelling, and then, too, the moving from the city to the country, and from the country to the city. “Thus we spent a winter. The following winter an incident happened to us which passed unnoticed, but which was the fundamental cause of all that happened later. My wife was suffering, and the rascals (the doctors) would not permit her to conceive a child, and taught her how to avoid it. I was profoundly disgusted. I struggled vainly against it, but she insisted frivolously and obstinately, and I surrendered. The last justification of our life as wretches was thereby suppressed, and life became baser than ever. “The peasant and the workingman need children, and hence their conjugal relations have a justification. But we, when we have a few children, have no need of any more. They make a superfluous confusion of expenses and joint heirs, and are an embarrassment. Consequently we have no excuses for our existence as wretches, but we are so deeply degraded that we do not see the necessity of a justification. The majority of people in contemporary society give themselves up to this debauchery without the slightest remorse. We have no conscience left, except, so to speak, the conscience of public opinion and of the criminal code. But in this matter neither of these consciences is struck. There is not a being in society who blushes at it. Each one practices it,—X, Y, Z, etc. What is the use of multiplying beggars, and depriving ourselves of the joys of social life? There is no necessity of having conscience before the criminal code, or of fearing it: low girls, soldiers’ wives who throw their children into ponds or wells, these certainly must be put in prison. But with us the suppression is effected opportunely and properly.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  'Tis the ridiculous value we attach to this life which eternally makes us speak drivel about the kind of deed to which a man resorts in order to disencumber himself of a fellow creature. Believing that existence is the greatest of all goods, we stupidly fancy we are doing something criminal when we convey someone away from its enjoyment; but the cessation of this existence, or at least what follows it, is no more an evil than life is a good; or rather, if nothing dies, if nothing is destroyed, if nothing is lost to Nature, if all the decomposed parts of any body whatsoever merely await.dissolution to reappear immediately under new forms, how indifferent is this act of murder! and how dare one find any evil in it? In this connection I ought to act according to nothing but my own whim; I ought to regard the thing as very simple indeed, especially so when it becomes necessary to an act of such vital importance to mankind... when it can furnish such a wealth of knowledge: henceforth it is an evil no longer, my friend, it is no longer a crime, no, not a petty misdemeanor, it is the best, the wisest, the most useful of all actions, and crime would exist only in refusing oneself the pleasure of committing it." "Ha!" said Rombeau, full of enthusiasm for these appalling maxims, "I applaud you, my dear fellow, your wisdom enchants me, but your indifference is astonishing; I thought you were amorous -" "I? in love with a girl?... Ah, Rombeau! I supposed you knew me better; I employ those creatures when I have nothing better to hand: the extreme penchant I have for pleasures of the variety you have watched me taste makes very precious to me all the temples at which this sort of incense can be offered, and to multiply my devotions, I sometimes assimilate a little girl into a pretty little boy; but should one of these female personages unhappily nourish my illusion for too long, my disgust becomes energetically manifest, and I have never found but one means to satisfy it deliciously... you understand me, Rombeau; Chilperic, the most voluptuous of France's kings, held the same views.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "Having seen that her charms, and all her little endearments, had no effect upon me, she tried to rouse my sluggish senses by more desperate means. "As I said before, I was sitting upon the low divan; she thereupon stood in front of me and pulled her dress up to her waist, thus exhibiting all her hitherto hidden attractions. It was the first time I had seen a naked woman, and this one was positively loathsome. And yet, now that I think of it, her beauty might well be compared with that of the Shulamite, for her neck was like the tower of David, her navel resembled a round goblet, her belly a huge heap of blighted wheat. Her hair, beginning from her waist and falling down to her knees, was not exactly like a flock of goats—as the hair of Solomon's bride—but in quantity it surely was like that of a good-sized black sheep-skin. "Her legs—similar to those described in the biblical song—were two massive columns straight up and down, without any sign of calf or ankle about them. Her whole body, in fact, was one bulky mass of quivering fat. If her smell was not quite that of Lebanon it was surely of musk, patchouli, stale fish and perspiration; but as my nose came in closer contact with the fleece, the smell of stale fish predominated. "She stood for a minute in front of me; then, coming nearer by a step or two, put one foot on the divan, and opening her legs as she did so, she took my head between her fat, clammy hands. "'Viens mon cheri, fais minette a ton petit chat.' "As she said this I saw the black mass of hair part itself; two huge dark lips first appeared, then opened, and within those bulgy lips—which inside had the colour and the look of stale butcher's meat—I saw something like the tip of a dog's penis when in a state of erection, protrude itself towards my lips. "All my schoolfellows burst out laughing—why, I did not exactly understand; for I had not the slightest idea of what minette was, or what the old whore wanted of me; nor could I see that anything so loathsome could be turned into a joke." "Well, and how did that jolly evening come to an end?" "Drinks had been ordered—beer, spirits, and some bottles of frothy stuff, yclept champagne, which surely was not the produce of the sunny vines of France, but of which the women imbibed copiously. "After this, not wishing us to leave the house without having been entertained in some way or other, and to get a few more francs out of our pockets, they proposed to shew us some tricks that they could do amongst themselves.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  The third bade me mount upon and straddle two somewhat separated chairs and, seating himself betwixt them, excited by Dubois, lying in his arms, he had me bend until his mouth was directly below the temple of Nature; never will you imagine, Madame, what this obscene mortal took it into his head to do; willy-nilly, I was obliged to satisfy his every need.... Just Heaven! what man, no matter how depraved, can taste an instant of pleasure in such things.... I did what he wished, inundated him, and my complete submission procured this foul man an intoxication of which he was incapable without this infamy. The fourth attached strings to all parts of me to which it was possible to tie them, he held the ends in his hands and sat down seven or eight feet from my body; Dubois' touches and kisses excited him prodigiously; I was standing erect: 'twas by sharp tugs now on this string, now on some other that the savage irritated his pleasures; I swayed, I lost balance again and again, he flew into an ecstasy each time tottered; finally, he pulled all the cords at once, I fell to the floor in front of him: such was his design: and my fore-head, my breast, my cheeks received the proofs of a delirium he owed to none but this mania.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "Ah, he does not confine himself to that," she said, "there is not a single spot on my wretched person whence he does not love to see blood flow." And she allowed me to see her feet, her neck, the lower part of her breasts and several other fleshy areas equally speckled with healed punctures. That first day I limited myself to murmuring a few sympathetic words and we retired for the night. The morrow was the Countess' fatal day. Monsieur de Gernande, who only performed the operation after his dinner Ä which he always took before his wife ate hers Ä had me join him at table; it was then, Madame, I beheld that ogre fall to in a manner so terrifying that I could hardly believe my eyes. Four domestics, amongst them the pair who had led me to the chateau, served this amazing feast. It deserves a thorough description: I shall give it you without exaggeration. The meal was certainly not intended simply to overawe me. What I witnessed then was an everyday affair. Two soups were brought on, one a consomme flavored with saffron, the other a ham bisque; then a sirloin of English roast beef, eight hors d'oeuvres, five substantial entrees, five others only apparently lighter, a boar's head in the midst of eight braised dishes which were relieved by two services of entremets, then sixteen plates of fruit; ices, six brands of wine, four varieties of liqueur and coffee. Monsieur de Gernande attacked every dish, and several were polished off to the last scrap; he drank a round dozen bottles of wine, four, to begin with, of Burgundy, four of Champagne with the roasts; Tokay, Mulseau, Hermitage and Madeira were downed with the fruit. He finished with two bottles of West Indies rum and ten cups of coffee. As fresh after this performance as he might have been had he just waked from sleep, Monsieur de Gernande said: "Off we go to bleed your mistress; I trust you will let me know if I manage as nicely with her as I did with you." Two young boys I had not hitherto seen, and who were of the same age as the others, were awaiting at the door of the Countess' apartment; it was then the Count informed me he had twelve minions and renewed them every year. These seemed yet prettier than the ones I had seen hitherto; they were livelier... we went in.... All the ceremonies I am going to describe now, Madame, were part of a ritual from which the Count never deviated, they were scrupulously observed upon each occasion, and nothing ever changed except the place where the incisions were made. The Countess, dressed only in a loose-floating muslin robe, fell to her knees instantly the Count entered. "Are you ready?" her husband inquired.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  The narrow road leading to that shrine is as plainly offered to your eyes as mine; the hallucinatory virtues you have preferred to it, have they consoled you for your sacrifices? 'Tis too late, luckless one, 'tis too late, weep for your sins, suffer, and strive to find in the depths of the phantoms you worship, if any finding there is to be done, what the reverence you have shown them has caused you to lose." With these words, the cruel Roland leaps upon me and I am again forced to serve the unworthy pleasures of a monster I had such good reason to abhor; this time I thought he would strangle me; when his passions were satisfied, he caught up the bull's pizzle and with it smote me above a hundred blows all over my body, the while assuring me I was fortunate he lacked the time to do more. Chapter 36On the morrow, before setting out, the wretch presented us with a new scene of cruelty and of barbarity whereof no example is furnished by the annals of Andronicus, Nero, Tiberius, or Wenceslaus. Everyone at the chateau supposed Roland's sister would leave with him, and he had indeed told her to dress and ready herself for the journey; at the moment of mounting his horse, he leads her toward us. "There's your post, vile creature," says he, ordering her to take off her clothes, "I want my comrades to remember me by leaving them as a token the woman for whom they thought I had a fancy; but as we need only a certain number and as I am going to follow a dangerous road upon which my weapons will perhaps be useful, I must try my pistols upon one of these rascals." Whereupon he loads one of his guns, aims it at each of our breasts, and comes at last to his sister.

• From Sexual Politics (1970)

  So the case may be with Wasps and Texans. Mailer is neither of these. There is a man in The Naked and The Dead whose name is Goldstein. He is not much of a soldier, he probably never killed anyone, but he does have the courage of fortitude and proves himself in an ordeal while carrying a friend’s body through intolerable jungle miles of heat, thirst, and exhaustion. Oddly enough, this character never reappears in Mailer’s fiction,35 as hero after hero embody and then romanticize the Wasp viciousness of Croft or a mindless brutality presented as Irish, while Mailer grows more and more like a pillar of the American Legion, rhapsodizing in bellicose euphoria over the “sport,” the “sensuousness of combat,” the “soft lift and awe and pleasure”36 of it; dilating upon the “sweetness” of war.37 “Trust the authority of your senses,” he admonishes with a veteran’s nostalgia, conjuring by Hemingway through a busy career of aping the master’s stolid martial airs—“If it made you feel good, it was good.”38 Perhaps, as an antidote to this enthusiasm, we may be permitted to quote another source: You Who have no channels for tears when you weep No lips through which words can issue when you howl No skin for your fingers to grip with when you writhe in torment You Your squirming limbs all smeared with blood and shining sweat and lymph Between your closed lids the glaring eyeballs show only a thread of white. In scorched and raw Hiroshima Out of dark shuddering flames You no longer the human creatures you had been Scrambled and crawled one after the other Dragged yourselves along as far as this open ground To bury in the dusts of agony Your shriveled hair on scalps bald as the brows of Buddhist saints39 Mailer is at pains to convince us that the violence endemic in his novels and essays is in fact endemic in humanity, or at least that portion of it which merits his attention, since children, queers, and women fail to qualify and pacifists are “unmanly.”40 It follows that by definition the male is violent and for those blessed with this higher condition, “the message in the labyrinth of the genes would insist that violence was locked with creativity”;41 since it is “ineradicable,” one stifles it “at one’s peril” for it gives the holder “sufficient stature to claim he is a man.”42

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  This they effected, as I learnt, with a precipitation nobody could account for, until, when come to myself, and composed enough to speak, I acquainted those of the house with the whole transaction I had been evidence to. When I came home again, and told Mrs. Cole this adventure, she very sensibly observed to me, that “there was no doubt of the due vengeance one time or other overtaking these miscreants, however they might escape for the present; and that, had I been the temporal instrument of it, I should have been put to a great deal more trouble and confusion than I imagined; that, as to the thing itself, the less said of it was the better; but that though she might be suspected of partiality, from its being the common cause of womankind, out of whose mouths this practice tended to take something more than bread, yet she protested against any mixture of passion, with a declaration extorted from her by pure regard to truth; which was, that whatever effect this infamous passion had in other ages and other countries, it seemed a peculiar blessing on our air and climate, that there was a plaguespot visibly imprinted on all that are tainted with it, in this nation at least, for that among numbers of that stamp whom she had known, or at least were universally under the scandalous suspicion of it, she would not name an exception hardly to one of them, whose character was not, in all other respects, the most worthless and despicable that could be; stript of all the manly virtues of their own sex, and filled up with only the worst vices and follies of ours; that, in fine, they were scarce less execrable than ridiculous in their monstrous inconsistence, of loathing and contemning women, and at the same time apeing all their manners, airs, lisps, scuttle, and, in general, all their little modes of affectation, which become them at least better, than they do these unsexed, male misses.” But here, washing my hands of them, I re-plunge into the stream of my history, which I may very properly ingraft a terrible sally of Louisa’s, since I had some share in it myself, and have besides engaged myself to relate it, in point of countenance to poor Emily.

• From Naked Lunch (1959)

  J. strolls through the Market in black cape with a vulture perched on one shoulder. He stands by a table of agents. "This you gotta hear. Boy in Los Angeles fifteen year old. Father decide it is time the boy have his first piece of ass. Boy is lying on the lawn reading comic books, father go out and say: 'Son, here's twenty dollars; I want you to go to a good whore and get a piece of ass off her.' "So they drive to this plush jump joint, and the father say, 'All right, son. You're on your own. So ring the bell and when the woman come give her the twenty dollars and tell her you want a piece of ass.' " 'Solid, pop.' "So about fifteen minutes later the boy comes out: " 'Well, son, did you get a piece of ass?' " 'Yeah. This gash comes to the door, and I say I want a piece of ass and lay the double sawski on her. We go up to her trap, and she remove the dry goods. So I switch my blade and cut a big hunk off her ass, she raise a beef like I am reduce to pull off one shoe and beat her brains out. Then I hump her for kicks." Only the laughing bones remain, flesh over the hills and far away with the dawn wind and a train whistle. We are not unaware of the problem, and the needs of our constituents are never out of our mind being their place of residence and who can break a ninety-nine year synapses lease? Another installment in the adventures of Clem Snide the Private Ass Hole: "So I walk in the joint, and this female hustler sit at the bar, and I think, 'Oh God you're poule de luxe already.' I mean it's like I see the gash before. So I don't pay her no mind at first, then I dig she is rubbing her legs together and working her feet up behind her head shoves it down to give herself a douche job with a gadget sticks out of her nose the way a body can't help but notice." Iris -- half Chinese and half Negro -- addicted to dihydro-oxy-heroin -- takes a shot every fifteen minutes to which end she leaves droppers and needles sticking out all over her. The needles rust in her dry flesh, which, here and there, has grown completely over a joint to form a smooth green brown wen. On the table in front of her is a samovar of tea and a twenty-pound hamper of brown sugar. No one has ever seen her eat anything else. It is only just before a shot that she hears what anyone says or talks herself. Then she makes some flat, factual statement relative to her own person. "My asshole is occluding."

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  If Saint-Florent's ecstasy was of briefer duration, it was no less intense, less noisy, less criminal than Cardoville's; the one shouted, roared out everything that came to his mouth, the other restricted his transports' scope without their being the less energetic for that; Saint-Florent chose his words with care, but they were simply yet filthier and more impure: distraction and rage, to select precise terms, seemed to characterize the delirium of the one, wickedness and ferocity were the eminent qualities announced in the other's. "To work, Therese, revive us," says Cardoville; "you see the lamps are extinguished, they've got to be lit again." While Julien enjoyed Cardoville and La Rose Saint-Florent, the two libertines inclined over me and one after the other inserted their languishing instruments into my mouth; while I pumped one, I was obliged to go to the rescue of the other and pollute it with my hands, then I had to anoint the member itself and the adjacent parts with an alcoholic liquid I had been given; but I was not to limit myself to sucking, I had to revolve my tongue about the heads and I was required to nibble them with my teeth while my lips squeezed tightly about them. However, our two patients were being vigorously thumped and jolted; Julien and La Rose shifted in order to increase the sensations produced by entrances and exits. When at length two or three homages had flowed into those impure temples I began to perceive a degree of firmness; although the elder of the two, Cardoville's was the first to manifest solidity; he swung his hand and with all the strength at his command slapped one of my titties: that was my reward. Saint-Florent was not far behind him; he repaid my efforts by nearly tearing one of my ears from my head. They backed away, reviewed the situation, and then warned me to prepare to receive the treatment I richly deserved. An analysis of these libertines' appalling language allowed to me to conclude that vexations were about to descend like a hailstorm upon me. To have besought mercy in the state to which they had just reduced me would have been to have further aroused them: and so they placed me, completely naked as I was, in the center of the circle they formed by all four drawing up chairs. I was obliged to parade from one to the next and to receive the penance each in his turn chose to order me to do; I had no more compassion from the youths than from the older men, but 'twas above all Cardoville who distinguished himself by refined teasings which Saint-Florent, cruel as he was, was unable to duplicate without an effort.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  [image file=image_rsrcDZA.jpg] With the transformation of manufacturing came one particularly portentous technological development: the creation of modern weaponry. The new guns and shells developed by William Armstrong, Claude Minié, and Henry Shrapnel made it easy for Europeans to keep their colonial subjects in line. They were initially unwilling to use these new machine guns against their fellow Europeans, but by 1851 Minié ball—firing rifles had been issued to British troops overseas. When they were used the following year against Bantu tribesmen, marksmen found that they could pick off the Bantu at a distance of thirteen hundred yards without having to see the devastating consequences of their action. This distance led to a dulling of the innate reluctance to kill at close quarters. In the early 1890s, during an encounter between the German East Africa Company and the Hehe tribesmen, an officer and a soldier killed around a thousand natives with two machine guns.108 In 1898 at the Battle of Omdurman in the Sudan, a mere six Maxim guns firing at six hundred shots a minute mowed down thousands of the Mahdi’s followers. “It was not a battle, but an execution,” an onlooker reported. “The bodies were not in heaps … but … spread evenly over acres and acres.”109 The new secular ethos was quickly able to adapt to this horrific violence. It certainly did not share the universalist outlook promoted by some religious traditions that had helped people cultivate a reverence for the sanctity of all human beings. At a conference in The Hague that debated the legality of these weapons the following year, Sir John Armagh explained that “civilized man is much more susceptible to injury than savages.… The savage, like the tiger, is not so impressionable, and will go on fighting even when desperately wounded.”110 As late as 1927, U.S. Army Captain Elbridge Colby could argue that “the real essence of the matter is that devastation and annihilation is the principal method of warfare that savage tribes know.” It was a mistake to allow “excessive humanitarian ideas” to inhibit the use of superior firepower. A commander who gives in to this misplaced compassion “is simply being unkind to his own people.” If a few “non-combatants” were killed, “the loss of life is probably far less than might have been sustained in prolonged operations of a more polite character. The inhuman act thus becomes actually humane.”111 The pervasive view that ethnic difference rendered other groups not quite human had resulted in a casual acceptance of the mass slaughter that mechanized arms had made possible. An age of unimagined violence was dawning.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  People were called out by name and asked, “What crimes have you committed against David Miscavige?” One after another, people approached the microphone and confessed to ways in which they were suppressing the dissemination of Scientology or thinking taboo thoughts. De Vocht was disgusted by the orgy of self-abasement. One night, he simply took over the meeting and brought some semblance of order to it. That night, Shelly Miscavige asked him to be the Commanding Officer of the Commodore’s Messengers Org, which essentially put him in charge of the entire base. “It’s out of control,” she pleaded, saying that her husband counted on him and had no one else to turn to. In 2004, De Vocht finished reconstructing the 45,000-square-foot Building 50, which wound up costing $70 million. “ You’re the biggest spender in the history of Scientology,” Miscavige told him. “You should be shot.” EVEN THOUGH MEMBERSHIP in the church has been declining for years, according to polls and census figures, money continues to pour into Scientology coffers in fantastic sums. Donors are accorded higher status depending on the size of their gifts to the International Association of Scientologists—Patron Maximus for a $25 million pledge, for instance. Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, became a Patron Laureate for her $10 million gift to the association in 2007. The IAS now holds more than $1 billion, mostly in offshore accounts, according to former executives of the church. Scientology coursework alone can be very pricey—as much as $400,000 to reach the level of OT VIII. That doesn’t count the books and materials or the latest-model E-Meter, which is priced at $4,650. Then there is the auditing, which ranges in price from $5,000 to $8,000 for a twelve-hour “intensive,” depending on the location and the level of the auditor. Services sold in Clearwater alone amount to $100 million a year. Despite the frequent cost overruns on construction, Scientology undertook a worldwide building campaign, kicked off by Miscavige’s decision to use the occasion of 9/11 to issue a call for a massive expansion of the church. “ Bluntly, we are the only people of Earth who can reverse the decline,” he announced. “The way to do better is to get big.” In some cases, the building projects have become significant moneymakers for the church. Across the street from Scientology’s Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater is the Super Power Building, intended to be a training facility to enhance the perceptions of upper-level thetans. The fund-raising kicked off with a $1 million gift from the Feshbach brothers. Despite years-long construction delays and fines imposed by the City of Clearwater, the 380,000-square-foot Super Power Building has proven to be a bonanza for the church, which has taken in at least $145 million in donations to complete the project—$120 million more than it was projected to cost when first proposed, in 1993. The church explains that the plan has been enlarged from its original goals, which has created delays and additional expenses.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "'Now it is my turn,' said the cantinière , and stretching herself on the low couch, she opened her legs widely so that the two thick dark lips gaped widely, and disclosed a clitoris which in its erection was of such a size, that in my ignorance I concluded this woman to be an hermaphrodite. "Her friend the other gougnotte ,—this was the first time I had heard the expression—though hardly recovered, went and placed her head between the cantinière's legs, lips against lips, and her tongue on the stiff, red, moist, and wagging clitoris, she too being in such a position that her own middle parts were in the reach of the other whore's mouth. "They wriggled and moved, they rubbed and bumped each other, and their dishevelled hair spread itself not only on the couch but also on the floor; they clasped each other, thrust their fingers into the holes of the other's backside, squeezed the nipples of their breasts, and dug their nails into the fleshy parts of their bodies, for in their erotic fury they were like two wild Mænads, and only smothered their cries in the fury of their kisses. "Though their lust seemed to grow ever stronger, still it did not overcome them, and the fat and tough old strumpet in her eagerness to enjoy was now pressing down her lover's head with both her hands and with all her might, as if she were actually trying to get it all in her womb. "The sight was really loathsome, and I turned my head aside so as not to see it, but the view that offered itself all around was, if anything, more disgusting. "The whores had unbuttoned all the young men's trousers, some were handling their organs, caressing their testicles or licking their backsides; one was kneeling before a young student and greedily sucking his huge and fleshy phallus, another girl was sitting a-straddle on a young man's knees, springing up and coming down again as if she had been in a baby-jumper—evidently running a Paphian race, and (perhaps there were not enough prostitutes, or it was done for the fun of the thing) one woman was being had by two men at the same time, one in front, the other behind. There were also other enormities, but I had not time enough to see everything. "Moreover, many of the young men who were already tipsy when they came here, having drunk champagne, absinthe and beer, began now to feel squeamish, to be quite sick, to hiccough, and finally to throw up.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  God! the crime of it!... So many beauties, such chaste freshness, so much innocence and daintiness Ä all to become prey to these barbarians! Covered with shame, Octavie knows not where to fly to hide her charms, she finds naught but hungering eyes everywhere about, nothing but brutal hands which sully those treasures; the circle closes around her, and, as did I, she rushes hither and thither; the savage Antonin lacks the strength to resist; a cruel attack determines the homage, and the incense smokes at the goddess' feet. Jerome compares her to our young colleague of sixteen, doubtless the seraglio's prettiest; he places the two altars of his devotion one next to the other. "Ha! what whiteness! what grace!" says he as he fingers Octavie, "but what gentility and freshness may be discerned in this other one: indeed," continues the monk all afire, "I am uncertain"; then imprinting his mouth upon the charms his eyes behold, "Octavie," he cries, "to you the apple, it belongs to none but you, give me the precious fruit of this tree my heart adores.... Ah, yes! yes, one of you, give it me, and I will forever assure beauty's prize to who serves me sooner." Severino observes the time has come to meditate on more serious matters; absolutely in no condition to be kept waiting, he lays hands upon the unlucky child, places her as he desires her to be; not yet being able to have full confidence in Octavie's aid, he calls for Clement to lend him a hand. Octavie weeps and weeps unheeded; fire gleams in the impudicious monk's glance; master of the terrain, one might say he casts about a roving eye only to consider the avenues whereby he may launch the fiercest assault; no ruses, no preparations are employed; will he be able to gather these so charming roses? will he be able to battle past the thorns? Whatever the enormous disproportion between the conquest and the assailant, the latter is not the less in a sweat to give fight; a piercing cry announces victory, but nothing mollifies the enemy's chilly heart; the more the captive implores mercy, the less quarter is granted her, the more vigorously she is pressed; the ill-starred one fences in vain: she is soon transpierced. "Never was laurel with greater difficulty won," says Severino, retreating, "I thought indeed that for the first time in my life I would fall before the gate... ah! 'twas never so narrow, that way, nor so hot; 'tis the God's own Ganymede." "I had better bring her round to the sex you have just soiled," cries Antonin, seizing Octavie where she is, and not wishing to let her stand up; "there's more than one breach to a rampart," says he, and proudly, boldly marching up, he carries the day and is within the sanctuary in no time at all.