Embarrassment

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 Incendiaries (2018)

  Each guest hovered on his own rising pedestal of late-afternoon shade. The men, in full suits, swabbed napkins across damp faces. Wives swayed in high heels. Thin bracelets tinkled. I listened to a woman cavil about the last trip she’d taken, to a Thai island. Since I’m, as you can tell, Asian, she said, while Matt, he’s white, Thai people kept mistaking me for a bargirl. It’s, well, a kind of prostitute. So, one night, the hotel night clerk tried to prohibit me from going in. He shouted at me in Thai. You should have heard Matt yell. It was hilarious. She laughed, uncertain, then inhaled from a cigarette. Its lit end flared. The tale had fallen flat. If I’d been Phoebe, I’d have replied with tactful questions to help the conversation along. With a light joke, a quick grace note, I’d put this woman, plus all the listeners, at ease. I lacked such skill; instead, I smiled, polite. I excused myself to find a cocktail. It was childish, but I started revising the night. The next time I talked to Phoebe, I’d retell it as the kind of outsize frolic she’d wish she hadn’t missed. I’d gild the event, adding the six-piece jazz band, a hired waltzing troupe. Pop champagne to spout, like liquid mirth, from jeroboam bottles. Twirl the partiers. Set them to dance beneath the jasmine, florets dangling like bells from white-limbed pergolas. The Phelps’ house was also in Shichahai, less than a mile from my apartment. I left the party on foot, but I hadn’t walked much in Beijing. Within minutes, I was lost. I kept walking. It was a dense, hot night again, the slight wind blood-temperature. Girls on bicycles spun past, black triangle seats wedged between taut buttocks. No one knew where I was in the old, ill-lit alleys, the zigzag streets of the hutong, and not a soul could find me. It seemed the quiet the hermit seeks in the wild or the stylite on his post might be realized here, like this, amid Beijing’s chaos. I felt free, blameless: I’d have liked to be lost all night. Too soon, I happened upon the stalls of street-food hawkers. Steam coiled up in a haze from grills and open pots. I asked for directions at the last cart in my college Mandarin. The peddler replied, but I didn’t understand him. The couple waiting in line heard the exchange, and, laughing, said they’d help. While they sketched a map, I noticed a girl who stopped to purchase food. In the occult light of the hawker’s cart, I saw the upturned stub of a nose, a flat bob streaked peacock-blue. She held a translucent plastic backpack with nothing inside. Despite the childish bag, she looked about my age. She had excess baby fat, the kind of flesh a person can grab. Upon receiving the change for a scallion pancake, she inspected the coins, slanting them to the light.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "Don't you cry then!" she said, bending in front of the child. "See what I've got for you!" Sobs, snuffles, a fist taken from a blubbered face, and a black shrewd eye cast for a second on the sixpence. Then more sobs, but subduing. "There, tell me what's the matter, tell me!" said Connie, putting the coin into the child's chubby hand, which closed over it. "It's the ... it's the ... pussy!" Shudders of subsiding sobs. "What pussy, dear?" After a silence the shy fist, clenching on sixpence, pointed into the bramble brake. "There!" Connie looked, and there, sure enough, was a big black cat, stretched out grimly, with a bit of blood on it. "Oh!" she said in repulsion. "A poacher, your Ladyship," said the man satirically. She glanced at him angrily. "No wonder the child cried," she said, "if you shot it when she was there. No wonder she cried!" He looked into Connie's eyes, laconic, contemptuous, not hiding his feelings. And again Connie flushed; she felt she had been making a scene, the man did not respect her. "What is your name?" she said playfully to the child. "Won't you tell me your name?" Sniffs; then very affectedly in a piping voice; "Connie Mellors!" "Connie Mellors! Well, that's a nice name! And did you come out with your Daddy, and he shot a pussy? But it was a bad pussy!" The child looked at her, with bold, dark eyes of scrutiny, sizing her up, and her condolence. "I wanted to stop with my Gran," said the little girl. "Did you? But where is your Gran?" The child lifted an arm, pointing down the drive. "At th' cottidge." "At the cottage! And would you like to go back to her?" Sudden, shuddering quivers of reminiscent sobs. "Yes!" "Come then, shall I take you? Shall I take you to your Gran? Then your Daddy can do what he has to do." She turned to the man. "It is your little girl, isn't it?" He saluted, and made a slight movement of the head in affirmation. "I suppose I can take her to the cottage?" asked Connie. "If your Ladyship wishes." Again he looked into her eyes, with that calm, searching detached glance. A man very much alone, and on his own. "Would you like to come with me to the cottage, to your Gran, dear?" The child peeped up again. "Yes!" she simpered. Connie disliked her; the spoilt, false little female. Nevertheless she wiped her face, and took her hand. The keeper saluted in silence. "Good morning!" said Connie. It was nearly a mile to the cottage, and Connie senior was well bored by Connie junior by the time the gamekeeper's picturesque little home was in sight. The child was already as full to the brim with tricks as a little monkey, and so self-assured.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  [Footnote 20: _Filostrato_, Greek [Greek: philos], loving, and [Greek: stratos], army, _met._ strife, war, _i.e._ one who loves strife. This name appears to be a reminiscence of Boccaccio's poem (_Il Filostrato_, well known through its translation by Chaucer and the Senechal d'Anjou) upon the subject of the loves of Troilus and Cressida and to be in this instance used by him as a synonym for an unhappy lover, whom no rebuffs, no treachery can divert from his ill-starred passion. Such a lover may well be said to be in love with strife, and that the Filostrato of the Decameron sufficiently answers to this description we learn later on from his own lips.] [Footnote 21: _Dioneo_, a name probably coined from the Greek [Greek: Diônê], one of the _agnomina_ of Venus (properly her mother's name) and intended to denote the amorous temperament of his personage, to which, indeed, the erotic character of most of the stories told by him bears sufficient witness.] No sooner had their eyes fallen on the ladies than they were themselves espied of them; whereupon quoth Pampinea, smiling, "See, fortune is favourable to our beginnings and hath thrown in our way young men of worth and discretion, who will gladly be to us both guides and servitors, an we disdain not to accept of them in that capacity." But Neifile, whose face was grown all vermeil for shamefastness, for that it was she who was beloved of one of the young men, said, "For God's sake, Pampinea, look what thou sayest! I acknowledge most frankly that there can be nought but all good said of which one soever of them and I hold them sufficient unto a much greater thing than this, even as I opine that they would bear, not only ourselves, but far fairer and nobler dames than we, good and honourable company. But, for that it is a very manifest thing that they are enamoured of certain of us who are here, I fear lest, without our fault or theirs, scandal and blame ensue thereof, if we carry them with us." Quoth Filomena, "That skilleth nought; so but I live honestly and conscience prick me not of aught, let who will speak to the contrary; God and the truth will take up arms for me. Wherefore, if they be disposed to come, verily we may say with Pampinea that fortune is favourable to our going."

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  He unlocked the door and preceded them into the warm but bare little room. The fire burned low and red in the grate. The table was set with two plates and two glasses, on a proper white tablecloth for once. Hilda shook her hair and looked round the bare, cheerless room. Then she summoned her courage and looked at the man. He was moderately tall, and thin, and she thought him good-looking. He kept a quiet distance of his own, and seemed absolutely unwilling to speak. "Do sit down, Hilda," said Connie. "Do!" he said. "Can I make you tea or anything, or will you drink a glass of beer? It's moderately cool." "Beer!" said Connie. "Beer for me, please!" said Hilda, with a mock sort of shyness. He looked at her and blinked. He took a blue jug and tramped to the scullery. When he came back with the beer, his face had changed again. Connie sat down by the door, and Hilda sat in his seat, with the back to the wall, against the window corner. "That is his chair," said Connie softly. And Hilda rose as if it had burnt her. "Sit yer still, sit yer still! Ta'e ony cheer as yo'n a mind to, none of us is th' big bear," he said, with complete equanimity. And he brought Hilda a glass, and poured her beer first from the blue jug. "As for cigarettes," he said, "I've got none, but 'appen you've got your own. I dunna smoke, mysen. Shall y' eat summat?" He turned direct to Connie. "Shall t'eat a smite o' summat, if I bring it thee? Tha can usually do wi' a bite." He spoke the vernacular with a curious calm assurance, as if he were the landlord of the inn. "What is there?" asked Connie, flushing. "Boiled ham, cheese, pickled wa'nuts, if yer like. Nowt much." "Yes," said Connie. "Won't you, Hilda?" Hilda looked up at him. "Why do you speak Yorkshire?" she said softly. "That! That's non Yorkshire, that's Derby." He looked back at her with that faint, distant grin. "Derby, then! Why do you speak Derby? You spoke natural English at first." "Did Ah though? An' canna Ah change if Ah'n a mind to 't? Nay nay, let me talk Derby if it suits me. If yo'n nowt against it." "It sounds a little affected," said Hilda. "Ay, 'appen so! An' up i' Tevershall yo'd sound affected." He looked again at her, with a queer calculating distance, along his cheek-bones: as if to say: Yi, an' who are you? He tramped away to the pantry for the food. The sisters sat in silence. He brought another plate, and knife and fork. Then he said: "An if it's the same to you, I s'll ta'e my coat off, like I allers do." And he took off his coat, and hung it on the peg, then sat down to table in his shirtsleeves: a shirt of thin, cream-coloured flannel.

• From Vox (1992)

  “No, in the end that seemed like too much trouble. I called from the living-room floor. First I worked myself up to a creditable state of engorgement, then I dialed the 800 number.” “All right …” “A woman answered and said something like ‘Hello and welcome to Deliques Intimates, this is Clititia speaking, how may we help you today?’ She had a young high voice, exactly the sort of voice I’d imagined. Well, my fourteen-and-a-half-inch sperm-dowel instantly shrank to less than three inches. Which is the opposite of what was supposed to happen. I told her what I wanted to order, and she said the computer was down, but she would take the order ‘by hand,’ right? Why wasn’t I enough of a leerer to come back with something insinuating? Just something basic, like ‘Heh heh, honey, I hope you do take it all by hand.’ But instead I just said, ‘Boy oh boy, that must be a lot of trouble for you.’ I gave her my address, my card number, and she said, ‘I’ve got that, sir, now, is there anything else you would like to order this evening?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m torn, there is one other thing I’d like to get this person, just a pair of very simple panties, but I’m torn.’ I said, ‘Now you see the so-called Deliques minimes on page thirty-eight? You see those? Do you have the catalog there right in front of you?’ She said she did. I said, ‘Okay. I’m not sure I can tell the difference between these minimes and the so-called nadja pants on page, ah, forty-six. To the naked eye they seem identical.’ She said, ‘Just one moment,’ and I heard her flipping through the catalog, and I made a last valiant attempt to stroke myself off, because the idea of her looking carefully at those pictures of women in those tiny weightless panties, with the darkness of pubic hair visible right there through the material, at the very same time I was looking at those same cuppable curves of pubic hair on my end, should have been enough to make me shoot instantly, but I don’t know, she sounded so well-meaning, and I knew that there was a very good chance that she would not like to know that I was there trying to … I mean, she didn’t want to work at a job where men called her and ordered a few items of merchandise just so they could … right? That wasn’t what she’d had in mind at all in taking the job, or possibly wasn’t, at least, so even when she said, finally, ‘Well, the nadja pants ride a little lower on the hip, which is a statement that any normal jacker-offer should be able to come to easily, because what does it imply? It implies her own hip, it implies that the nadja panties have ridden her own hip . But even then I could not achieve and maintain. So I said, ‘Oh well, no, thanks, I’ll see how the tights go over and then order the minimes later.’ And a week afterward, I was the owner of a pair of tights. I still have them, unopened. Give me your address and I’ll be glad to forward them to you.”

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "No! But he doesn't really want it. He only loves me to be near him, but not to touch him." "My God, what a generation!" "He would like me most of all to be a model for him to paint from. Only I never wanted to." "God help him! But he looks down-trodden enough for anything." "Still, you wouldn't mind so much the talk about him?" "My God, Connie, all the bloody contriving!" "I know! It's sickening! But what can I do?" "Contriving, conniving; conniving, contriving! Makes a man think he's lived too long." "Come, Father, if you haven't done a good deal of contriving and conniving in your time, you may talk." "But it was different, I assure you." "It's _always_ different." Hilda arrived, also furious, when she heard of the new developments. And she also simply could not stand the thought of a public scandal about her sister and a gamekeeper. Too, too humiliating! "Why should we not just disappear, separately, to British Columbia, and have no scandal?" said Connie. But that was no good. The scandal would come out just the same. And if Connie was going with the man, she'd better be able to marry him. This was Hilda's opinion. Sir Malcolm wasn't sure. The affair might still blow over. "But will you see him, Father?" Poor Sir Malcolm! he was by no means keen on it. And poor Mellors, he was still less keen. Yet the meeting took place: a lunch in a private room at the club, the two men alone, looking one another up and down. Sir Malcolm drank a fair amount of whiskey, Mellors also drank. And they talked all the while about India, on which the young man was well informed. This lasted during the meal. Only when coffee was served, and the waiter had gone, Sir Malcolm lit a cigar and said, heartily: "Well, young man, and what about my daughter?" The grin flickered on Mellors's face. "Well, Sir, and what about her?" "You've got a baby in her all right." "I have that honour!" grinned Mellors. "Honour, by God!" Sir Malcolm gave a little squirting laugh, and became Scotch and lewd. "Honour! How was the going, eh? Good, my boy, what!?" "Good!"

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  A huge full-face photograph, retouched, with copy beneath. Hood remembered his own, from 1969, with both pride and embarrassment. “Benjamin Paul Hood, Dartmouth College, ’57. First Boston, ’58–’65. Shackley and Schwimmer, ’65–. Specialty: Media and Entertainment Businesses. Outlook: Bullish.” And then the company’s bold proclamation beneath. Shackley and Schwimmer—The Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong. In the days following the advertisement, no one in the supermarket or at the country club mentioned it at all. It was as if the advertisement had fallen out of the paper altogether. As if its page had been excised or printed badly. No one mentioned it. Well, maybe the barber mentioned it, and the cleaning woman, but no one else. Hood wondered if it was the picture, of course. They had tried to whip his mottled, puffy features into an inoffensive and jolly paste. His beady eyes protruded from this pudding like some garnish, like unwanted raisins. They had clamped him into a tight shirt: he felt he would gag or asphyxiate during the photo session. And yet, his neck hung over that tightened collar, that tightened tie knot, like a precarious rock formation. Even Elena offered no encouragement about the advertisement. With the picture began the problems at the office. George Clair arrived not long after, in 1969, at the age of twenty-four. Harvard B.A. and M.B.A. Though he arrived at the office unaware of the so-called Woodstock generation and the Summer of Love, Clair grew his hair when he arrived at Shackley and Schwimmer. He purchased a tweed jacket with patches already sewn on the elbows. Clair gave new meaning to the idea of borrowed culture. He was full of clichés about Latin American debt and the ridiculousness of the Wage-Price Freeze, but he was more concerned with appropriating certain simplistic messages about film, music, and sports, and transporting them into the offices of his superiors. Ya gotta believe! Clair had remarked volubly throughout the autumn as the Mets scrambled for the pennant. Ya gotta believe! he would tell the secretary whose car had been towed. Ya gotta believe! he would say affably to Shackley about that weekend’s yacht club race or to Schwimmer about Nixon’s role in the conspiracy or the cover-up. And there had been Last Tango in Paris. Most erotic film ever made, Clair had said to his secretary with that earnest and sheepish expression. Most erotic film, he said, while cleaning an ear with his pinkie. Then he would go down the hall to remind one of the institutional sales representatives. —Shachter, he would say, have you seen Last Tango? What about that butter, huh? That crumbly butter? Most erotic film ever made! Shachter would look up from the phone, wave, and then shout it into the phone at the Fireman’s Fund. —Clair says see Last Tango. Most erotic film ever. Hood began to be isolated within Shackley and Schwimmer not long after Clair arrived.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  I blush to avow it, for that I cannot say aught against other women but I say it against myself; these women that are so laced and purfled and painted and parti-coloured abide either mute and senseless, like marble statues, or, an they be questioned, answer after such a fashion that it were far better to have kept silence. And they would have you believe that their unableness to converse among ladies and men of parts proceedeth from purity of mind, and to their witlessness they give the name of modesty, as if forsooth no woman were modest but she who talketh with her chamberwoman or her laundress or her bake-wench; the which had Nature willed, as they would have it believed, she had assuredly limited unto them their prattle on other wise. It is true that in this, as in other things, it behoveth to have regard to time and place and with whom one talketh; for that it chanceth bytimes that women or men, thinking with some pleasantry or other to put another to the blush and not having well measured their own powers with those of the latter, find that confusion, which they thought to cast upon another, recoil upon themselves. Wherefore, so you may know how to keep yourselves and that, to boot, you may not serve as a text for the proverb which is current everywhere, to wit, that women in everything still take the worst, I would have you learn a lesson from the last of to-day's stories, which falleth to me to tell, to the intent that, even as you are by nobility of mind distinguished from other women, so likewise you may show yourselves no less removed from them by excellence of manners.

• From Vox (1992)

  86 "Good. Where were we?" "You were just about to tell me the exact thing that was in your mind when you came in the shower yester day evening." "Right, but do you mean the image that made me come, or do you mean the image that I had in my head when I came?" "I—don't know." "There's a big difference," she said. "I mean, the ac tual images that I have when I'm coming are things like, I don't know, elephant seals dozing on rocks, a carousel selection of greeting cards, a painting tightly wrapped in canvas, porch furniture—my brain is going so wild that there's no way to predict what sort of oddment will be there when all the flashbulbs go off. They're almost never sexual images. But before that, when I'm getting close, you mean, right?" "I guess, yes." "Yesterday I think there were two ideas, combined. I'm embarrassed." "You're embarrassed, after just telling me about a triple-cock blowout?" "But that's nothing, that's just a picture. The thing that made me come, I've acted on, to a degree, indi rectly." "I told you about buying the romance novel, didn't I?" he said. "I even told you about making obscene finger ings on the roof of my car. I've let my hair down!" 87 "Tell me what you look like erect. " "You mean from memory?" "No." "You mean undo my bathrobe etcetera?" "Yes." There was a pause. "Welp. Urn. What can I tell you?" "Is it hard?" "Yes." "Was it already hard, or did you just make it hard?" "It was somewhat hard, I just made it somewhat harder." "Talk to me about it. Look at it and talk to me about it." "Well, it's this thing. I don't know. Gee." "Are you stroking it?" "I'm—truthfully?" "Yes." "I'm pinching the underpeening skin in the fingers of my right hand, and I'm jostling my balls nervously with my left hand. " "Stroke it now, slowly," she said. "All right. God, each time I pull on it, its muscle clenches. I mean, of course it's always done that, but now, with you telling me to look at it, this seems the most noteworthy feature, this clench." "Go faster." "Just for a second, though, right?"

• From Vox (1992)

  Bye Jim.” “Bye Abby. Bye.” They hung up. “What are you wearing?” he asked. She said, “I’m wearing a white shirt with little stars, green and black stars, on it, and black pants, and socks the color of the green stars, and a pair of black sneakers I got for nine dollars.” “What are you doing?” “I’m lying on my bed, which is made. That’s an unusual thing. I made my bed this morning. A few months ago my mother gave me a chenille bedspread, exactly the kind we used to have, and I felt bad that it was still folded up unused and this morning I finally made the bed with it.” “I don’t know what chenille is,” he said. “It’s some kind of silky material?” “No, it’s cotton. Cotton chenille. It’s got those little tufts, in conventional patterns. Like in bed-and-breakfasts.” “Oh oh oh, the patterns of tufts . I’m relieved.” “Why?” she asked. “Silk is somehow … you think of ads for escort services where the type is set in fake-o eighteenth-century script— For the Discriminating Gentleman —that kind of thing. Or Deliques Intimates, you know that catalog?” “I get one about every week.” “Right, a deluge. Lace filigree, Aubrey Beardsley, no thank you. All I can think of is, ma’am, those silk tap pants you’ve got on are going to stain.” “You’re right about that,” she said. “Someone gave me this exotic chemisey thing, not from Deliques but the same idea, silk with lace. I get quite … I get very moist when I’m aroused, it’s almost embarrassing actually. So this chemisey thing got soaked. He said, the person who bought it for me said, ‘So what, throw it away, use it once.’ But I don’t know, I thought I might want to wear it again. It’s really nice to wear silk, you know. So I took it to the dry cleaners. I didn’t mention it specifically, I bunched it in with a lot of work clothes. It came back with a little tag on it, with a little dancing man with a tragic expression, wearing a hat, who says, you know, ‘Sorry! We did everything we could, we took extraordinary measures, but the stains on this garment could not come out!’ I took a look at it, and it was very odd, there were these five dot stains on it, little ovals, not down where I’d been wet, but higher up, on the front.” “Weird.” “And the guy who gave it to me had not come on me.

• From Vox (1992)

  So you bring me the phone, and I sit on the edge of a dining-room chair, and I call my answering machine, and I start telling it about the oil lights on my dashboard, I really have to have someone take care of it, I need the number of a cab company, etcetera, and then all of a sudden I stop, in midsentence, and I click off the phone and I say, ‘Nah, I can’t.’ ” “ ‘You can’t what?’ ” “ ‘I can’t do it. I can’t pretend.’ And I confess to you that I’ve lied, that my car is fine, that I was driving on the expressway, and I got this highly unusual, if not unique, reading on my Mmmm-Sensor, or Mmmm-Detector, whatever I’m calling it, and I pull it out of my pocket and open the finely scratched gold top and show it to you, and I explain, hesitantly, that it, urn, picks up the flux currents from intelligent, um, masturbating women, and I show you how it glows, and I point out the wavy flow lines as they move in your direction, and I say, ‘They’re somewhat fainter now, but they’re definitely still there, and they really look great. Now, let’s see what happens if I do this.’

• From Emotional Beats: How to Easily Convert your Writing into Palpable Feelings (2018)

  She licked her lips, as if savoring its sweetness.BlushingShe felt the heat of a blush on her cheeks.He felt the heat of shame.Scarlet heat caressed/warmed her cheeks.Her cheeks burned hot scarlet.The boy’s cheeks pinked up a nice deep shade.Her cheeks flushed.Her cheeks went hot with that scarlet burn.A lovely scarlet flush colored her chocolate complexion.Her cheeks flushed warm red.That familiar scarlet heat warmed her cheeks.His cheeks pinked up real nice, like a schoolgirl’s.A warm girlish blush pinked his cheeks. I caught his eye and his pink went full-on scarlet.EyesHe stopped abruptly, first looking at the ground, then letting his gaze drift up to her face.He was unable to peel his gaze off the woman.She did a double take as they passed.Her eyes bored into his.He wrenched his gaze away.All eyes shifted straight to her.He sighed, moving his blue gaze to blink up at the ceiling for a few silent moments.His eye caught on a sight that brought him up short.She closed her eyes and summoned a deep breath, holding it in, then looked blindly skyward.She stopped and faced him, holding him by the shoulders as her green eyes bored into his soul.…he said, his eyes rapt on her face.His gaze cut to hers.His gaze whipped to hers.She goggled him.He snapped his gaze away.His sharp gaze landed on her.He angled a glance down at her.He dragged his hawkish gaze.Her eyes caressed him.His gaze cruised her figure.His gaze dipped to her.Her gaze lingered over him.She lowered her eyes.His penetrating gaze probed her face.She perused the sea of faces [in hopes of…]He plugged his eyes back into their sockets.She pried her eyes off him.He studied her with piercing scrutiny.She gave him a subtle wink.She swung her restless gaze.She tracked the man’s gaze.She unglued her eyes from him.Her eyes strayed to his face.He watched until distance obscured her features.His gaze devoured her beauty.His eyes implored.She ignored his appraising glance.She cast him an astute gaze.She ignored his crudely insulting stare.His eyes held her hostage.His magnetic eyes were liquid pools of desire.He noticed the tears pooling in her eyes and he faltered.His gaze penetrated the mist in her eyes.His sharp gaze landed on her.He angled a glance down at her.Her gaze cut sideways.She slid a curious glance.He lifted his head, pinning her with a feral look.His eyes brimmed with warmth.The sparkle in his eyes spelled mischief.Her eyes tripped up on the sharp angles of his face.His dark liquid eyes swore to memorize every part of her.Hair*He played with the silky tendrils of her hair.She tossed her head. Her hair whipped wildly, sending droplets of cold water all over the place.She flattened down a tuft of his hair.He reached out a hand to brush a lock of long hair away from her face.

• From Vox (1992)

  Anyway, then I thought I would be embarrassed to order a pair of tights for myself—maybe the order-taker would assume that I was a transsexual, when in fact I am not a transsexual at all, I’m a telephone clitician.” “An obscene phone caller.” “Exactly. And I started to think of who I could order them for, and I thought of this woman at work, a very nice woman, some might say plain, but very nice, who once startled me and this other guy by telling a story out of the blue about some friends of hers who’d just had a large wedding at a museum during which some thieves backed a van up and loaded all the wedding gifts in and drove away.” “The wedding gifts were on display?” she asked. “Yes.” “Ah, well, that was their mistake.” “Well, they were punished for it. Anyway, one of the gifts, this woman from work told us, was one of those sex slings that I guess you bolt to a stud in the ceiling, so that the woman is …” “Yeah, I know,” she said. “And this woman from work had joked about the difficulty of trying to fence the stolen sex sling, and the memory of her talking about this oddball device came back to me and I wanted to order the tights for her, so she’d come home from work one day, and she’d go, ‘Hey, what’s this, a slim little package for me from Deliques?’ She’d open it up and slip out this plastic packet with tights in it, and there’s the order slip in her hand, and somehow I’ve convinced the order-taker that I don’t want my name on the slip.” “Sure, sure.” “So she knows she’s got a secret admirer.

• From Vox (1992)

  This male model rouses himself, smacks his lips sleepily, studies the slip of paper, gets in the forklift, and drives off, weaves off, toward the distant vault where they keep the pointelle tights.” “Yes?” “And he reaches the mountain of crates marked FAUN , and he slides the forklift into the highest pallet and lifts it off and, vvvvvvvv , brings it down, and he pries it open …” “Probably with his dick.” “No, no, with his powerful refined hands, ” she said. “The packing tape goes pap! pap! pap! as he tears the mighty box asunder. But now that you mention it, as he’s reaching in, deep into the box filled with … with one metric ton of cotton pointelle, his cock is pressing against the cardboard, pressing, pressing, and it starts to fight against the tethers of that codpiece. So he climbs back in the forklift, puts the pair of tights in his lap, and drives back. Well, while he was gone, Todd, Rod, Sod, and Wadd, the other male models, all heterosexual, of course, who’ve been standing in a row waiting for him, have been thinking about Jill Smith wearing those tights and by now their bobolinks have all gotten thoroughly hard, and even the sleepy forklift driver, perhaps because of the faun tights in his lap, is embarrassed to get out because there’s this frank erection that has now gotten so big and bone-hard that it’s angling right out of his codpiece. He takes his place in the row of male models, his cock swaying slightly, and he holds the tights to his face and exhales through them, then nods, takes a pencil with a surprisingly sharp point, and makes a check mark over the numeral one on the packing slip. He hands it to the next guy—by this time all the male models have abandoned their shame in each other’s presence and they are all standing there in a row with their various organs pronging at various angles out of their various robes and boxers and sex-briefs. So the forklift guy hands it to the next guy, who almost ritualistically takes the tights and winds them around and around his cock, pulls once hard, and then unwinds them and makes a check mark exactly superimposed over the first check mark on the numeral one on the packing slip. And he hands the tights to the next guy, who also winds the tights around his cock, many winds, it’s very long, and he pulls, and he makes a superimposing check mark, too, and so on down the row, wind unwind check, wind unwind check, and the final guy folds the tights up with neat agile movements that belie his enormous forearms and slides them into the sheer plastic envelope and puts the last check mark over the numeral one, so that it now looks as if only one blunt pencil check-marked over it, when really there were nine check marks.

• From Vox (1992)

  Ill containers of popcorn, because the popcorn stand, which normally was completely shut down, had been reopened in honor of this legit, name-star film, and the couple went through the opening so they could hear the bad electronic music, and they turned the corner, and then bang, they were in the darkness of the theater looking out over all those seats during the previews, which were of course previews of standard porn films, five or six of them, so on the screen there was this gigantic shot of somebody like Brigitte Monet sucking a huge horizon tal cock, with loud squelching noises, and electronic octaves thumping away, and I saw the woman stop and flinch and grab her date's arm and look at him pleadingly—Tou told me it wasn't going to be this kind of thing!'—and her date made this awful horrified 'I'm sorry' face, and behind them I went Tut tut tut' in re fined disapproval at what was on the screen, because I wanted both of them not to think they'd made a terrible mistake, I wanted her to still like him, I wanted women then, this was when I was maybe eighteen, to see why X-rated films were so wonderful, I still do in some ways, and it has happened, over the last fifteen years, with video, to a limited extent, though as you say you would still reach for the Victorian paperback if given the choice, and probably you are right—but I wanted to reassure this woman that it was okay, people like me were showing up at this theater, nonviolent normal intelligent men, it wasn't the end of civilization—I made the disapproving

• From Vox (1992)

  93 "You're kidding! Did somebody find them?" "No no. I plucked them back out just before I left. " "Ah, okay." "And I didn't send her any asterisk memos at all for about a month after that, which was highly unusual. She started giving me quizzical looks. Then one afternoon she came by and she asked me what was up. She said I wasn't my usual buoyant self. And I griped to her about a certain person at work, I lamented the fact that we were a second-rate company when we could be a first-rate company, the usual junk. And then I said, 'And there's something else.' She said, 'Well, what is it?' She knew it was about her. So, with this weird combination of re luctance and eagerness, I confessed to her that I'd made a copy of my cock and a cock tracing and that I'd put them in her in box late one night and then thought better of it. She said, 'Well, do you still have them?' I said, 'Gee, I think I do!' " "You'd kept them? In a little file of your own?" "Of course," he said. "After all that trouble? Plus this was in some way part of the whole thing, that I'd blurt out what I'd done and she'd ask to see and I'd have it on hand to show her." "What did she say?" "She said that the copied cock looked like a sono gram." "That's it?" "I'm telling you, she had it very bad for this Lee guy. I suggested that she could take the two pages if she

• From Vox (1992)

  80 the other two were doing the hall, where my lower body was. The painter I could see didn't seem to notice me. He was painting a wall with his back to me. The painters in the hall were using rollers, but they were those little detail rollers that you use for trim work, that are about three inches wide, the darlingest little rollers, that can go everywhere. Somehow I knew that one of these hall paint ers was mistakenly using the wrong color, it's a color I used in the living room, called Opulent Opal— apparently he'd taken the wrong can of paint from his truck. Very careless. The other one was more conscientious—he was using the glossy Paper Lantern on the trim. These are Sherwin Williams's paint names, not mine, by the way. Anyway I called out, 'Ah, people, sirs? Please be sure to use the right color! There is a potential for confusion!' But they were talking and they didn't hear me. I could hear their sticky little rollers moving over that wall, ssshp, ssshp, ssshp, and they were having an idle conversation about the chick they saw on the lake that weekend riding in the back of an inboard motorboat in a pair of overalls with no top, so her tits flopped around behind the fasteners on the top flap, and then they made reference to the time on one job when one of them evidently quote 'ate out' the woman whose house they were painting and then she jerked him off onto a cracked slate hearthstone because she was paranoid about hurting the finish on the antique pine floors, and again I called out, as nicely as I could, 'Guys, please, make

• From Vox (1992)

  "What are you wearing?" he asked. She said, "I'm wearing a white shirt with little stars, green and black stars, on it, and black pants, and socks the color of the green stars, and a pair of black sneakers I got for nine dollars." "What are you doing?" "I'm lying on my bed, which is made. That's an un usual thing. I made my bed this morning. A few months ago my mother gave me a chenille bedspread, exactly the kind we used to have, and I felt bad that it was still folded up unused and this morning I finally made the bed with it." "I don't know what chenille is," he said. "It's some kind of silky material?" "No, it's cotton. Cotton chenille. It's got those little tufts, in conventional patterns. Like in bed-and- breakfasts." "Oh oh oh, the patterns of tufts. I'm relieved." "Why?" she asked. "Silk is somehow . . . you think of ads for escort ser vices where the type is set in fake-o eighteenth-century script—For the Discriminating Gentleman—that kind of thing. Or Deliques Intimates, you know that catalog?" "I get one about every week." 4 "Right, a deluge. Lace filigree, Aubrey Beardsley, no thank you. All I can think of is, ma'am, those silk tap pants you've got on are going to stain." "You're right about that," she said. "Someone gave me this exotic chemisey thing, not from Deliques but the same idea, silk with lace. I get quite ... I get very moist when I'm aroused, it's almost embarrassing actually. So this chemisey thing got soaked. He said, the person who bought it for me said, 'So what, throw it away, use it once. ' But I don't know, I thought I might want to wear it again. It's really nice to wear silk, you know. So I took it to the dry cleaners. I didn't mention it specifically, I bunched it in with a lot of work clothes. It came back with a little tag on it, with a little dancing man with a tragic expression, wearing a hat, who says, you know, 'Sorry! We did everything we could, we took extraordi nary measures, but the stains on this garment could not come out!' I took a look at it, and it was very odd, there were these five dot stains on it, little ovals, not down where I'd been wet, but higher up, on the front. " "Weird." "And the guy who gave it to me had not come on me. He came elsewhere—that much I was sure of. So my theory is that someone at the dry cleaners ..." "No! Do you still give them your business?" "Well, they're convenient." "Where do you live?" "In an eastern city."

• From Vox (1992)

  77 tary swallowing. I said I'd like to . . . put my hands on your thighs, very high up, and hold them apart and cover your whole mound with my mouth and just breathe on you, through the fabric of your underpants." "Ooch." "Are your legs apart right now?" "They're crossed at the ankle on the coffee table. " "That will have to do," he said. "Tell me what was in your mind in the shower last night." "I honestly don't think I remember. And anyway the things I think of go by so fast. And it's not like all I do is come and come. Very often in the shower I remember some embarrassing moment, or some dumb thing I've said, and I curse it out, I say, 'Get away from me, stinker.' For instance, I might remember this time after I'd come back from a party when I was quite drunk, so drunk that I started to feel that I was going to be sick, but this person was in my bathroom, washing their face, brushing their teeth, humming happily away, and I moaned, I was leaning against the door, I knocked politely, I made these feeble scrabbling sounds, but this person had used the hook and eye on the inside because the latch didn't work on that door, and he was just too pleased with the world to hear me, or thought I was joking, saying hello by knocking, and so I was sick on my own bathroom door. " "Oh, terrible." "Sorry to be gross. Fortunately it was just the usual fruit punch. He was very nice, he cleaned me up, he

• From Vox (1992)

  And so together, humming ‘The Volga Boatman’ in unison, they seal the package up with Jill Smith’s address on it and send it off to her.” “Well, maybe that is what happened,” he said. “No, in reality, there wasn’t any strike at Deliques when I called. Their computer was down, though.” “Oh, so you really did call?” she said. “That’s very wicked of you. In the bath?” “No, in the end that seemed like too much trouble. I called from the living-room floor. First I worked myself up to a creditable state of engorgement, then I dialed the 800 number.” “All right …” “A woman answered and said something like ‘Hello and welcome to Deliques Intimates, this is Clititia speaking, how may we help you today?’ She had a young high voice, exactly the sort of voice I’d imagined. Well, my fourteen-and-a-half-inch sperm-dowel instantly shrank to less than three inches. Which is the opposite of what was supposed to happen. I told her what I wanted to order, and she said the computer was down, but she would take the order ‘by hand,’ right? Why wasn’t I enough of a leerer to come back with something insinuating? Just something basic, like ‘Heh heh, honey, I hope you do take it all by hand.’ But instead I just said, ‘Boy oh boy, that must be a lot of trouble for you.’ I gave her my address, my card number, and she said, ‘I’ve got that, sir, now, is there anything else you would like to order this evening?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m torn, there is one other thing I’d like to get this person, just a pair of very simple panties, but I’m torn.’ I said, ‘Now you see the so-called Deliques minimes on page thirty-eight? You see those? Do you have the catalog there right in front of you?’ She said she did. I said, ‘Okay. I’m not sure I can tell the difference between these minimes and the so-called nadja pants on page, ah, forty-six.