Excitement

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.

Page 119 of 182 · 20 per page

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Shall I bring it out a little more? So we can tell?” She twisted the nipple a quarter-turn, crushed it. Alex grinned at her and judiciously applied exactly the same amount of pressure to the teat she held, then twisted it past that point. “Gonna tell me you don’t sweat, you glow?” she asked Tyre. “Looks like sweat to me. Looks good on you, like maybe you’re working hard for a change.” “I don’t mind working hard, and I don’t think you mind my being hard on you. You like this,” Tyre accused her, getting a grip on the other nipple and stretching them both out, until Alex saw tiny white stars. “I like this ,” Alex affirmed, and returned the hurt worse, until their hips slid past each other and their thighs interlocked, the long bone of the leg and the muscle over it pressed into the other woman’s mound, pushing the sensitive, swollen tissue back down until it flattened against the pubic bone. Hard and soft, hard and soft, their hands played on each other’s bodies, and they rocked in each other’s arms, seeking advantage, grappling. It was a kind of wrestling with no attempt to throw, but a quest for domination nonetheless. They both yelped at the same moment, but not from the pain of well-manipulated nipples. Their thighs separated momentarily, startled by the intensity of this pleasure, and its brevity. They groped for each other’s crotches. The sound of Tyre’s zipper was a long, continuous wail punctuated with a few sharp snaps as Alex’s studded crotch-piece was pulled off and dropped on the floor. “You’re wet,” Alex said. “Thirsty?” Tyre spit. “Empty, too,” Alex said, and fixed that. But Tyre had already thrust home between her legs, and they were both wet to the wrist. “You can’t keep that up,” Tyre said, fucking her, “you can’t keep it up while you—” “While I make you come? Is that what you were gonna say? Because it’s not gonna take me that long to—” “Lose it, give it up, you can’t help it—” “But I can help you, help you over the edge. Tell me you don’t want it.” Tyre’s entire free hand fell onto Alex’s breast and squeezed it, hard. “Show me how tough you are,” she hissed, “big leather stud, such a goddamn big girl, can you take it, can you?” They could not get away from each other, could barely keep on their feet. As Alex retaliated by flicking Tyre’s nipples, their mouths met and they swallowed the noise of a mutual surrender, predatory but also protective.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  I make the things you play on your itsy-bitsy obsolete tinkertoy tape machine.” “Go for it, champ.” “Yo,” EZ said sullenly. Kay smiled and shoved another can of Crisco under the electric can opener on the bar. She already had a small mountain of cans stacked up and ready for use. “I like that little swirl that’s always left on the top of the can after they fill it up,” she said, tucking a strand of blue-back hair behind her ear. “It’s the simple things in life, you know?” Tyre laughed. When she had first invited them to join in Alex’s scene, she had expected EX (who read like a lesbian to her) to jump at the offer. Instead, it was Kay who seemed eager and EZ who grumbled and held back. “Women don’t like the kind of shit we’re into,” EZ had said. “They’re just playing at it.” “So what?” Kay said. “You’re always tellin’ me I don’t know enough about how to get in your pants. Seems like a perfect opportunity for me to find out if there’s really any difference between the G-spot and a prostate gland.” “Aw, Kay, I’m gonna feel like a fuckin’ faggot.” “If you don’t feel like one now your’re dim, girl, just dim. I wanna see this. An all-girl version of the CMC Carnival. And if you don’t come with me I’m gonna leave you home all tied up with the TV turned to an empty channel.” Since Tyre had approached them and solicited their help with one of the Calyx’s fantasy scenarios, they had come back to the Calyx of Isis more often than any of the other dominatrices Tyre had enlisted. EZ alternated between eagerly helping Kay and getting underfoot until she got slapped down. Kay had acquired a following among the leather dykes, and EZ had acquired a nickname that nobody was going to say to her face unless they were ready to replace her. Kay flashed Tyre a grin as she went by juggling a stack of clean towels and cans of Crisco. “Never know when you might want some of this life-savin’ equipment right at hand,” she explained, and went around the room leaving trick-towels and grease in several strategic locations, singing, “Ur-gent, ur-gent, eee-mergency.” Tyre looked up to see Alex wiggling her eyebrows quizzically. “Shall we get poor Michael off the street before some cop asks her what’s in the body bag on the back seat?” she asked. “Absolutely.” They walked over to the bar together. While Tyre dialed the number, Alex went after another beer. “Where the fuck did you find a black refrigerator?” she wondered. “It was a hell of a lot harder than finding a sling, I can tell you that,” Tyre smiled. “Michael? We are ready. I’m going to send a couple of the thugs here outside to help drag the body in.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  “That’s right,” he said, as if he could read her mind. “I know a good cocksucker from a lousy one. So tuck your teeth in and take a deep breath, because I want to fuck your throat, honey.” He held her head still and bucked his hips, rolling the tip of his hard penis back and forth across the spot in the back of her throat that made her gag. Tears came to her eyes, her nose ran, and her mouth streamed with saliva and coughed-up mucus. Every now and then he let her up for air, but as soon as she had taken a deep breath, he seized her again, and filled her throat and pummeled it. It was deeply and perversely thrilling to be used this way, with just the right amount of cruelty. She found herself wishing she could taste his cock instead of the bland skin of the condom. And she was proud that she had made it hard, not one of the city cops in the front seat. These were dangerous thoughts, but she could not relinquish them. After a while, he let go of her, but she stayed on his dick, slowing down a little and taking it more shallowly, licking the shaft rather than simply swallowing and sucking. He let her, hissing every now and then with pleasure, until he couldn’t stand it anymore, then he grabbed both side of her head and fucked her face again, deeper and deeper until she thought she would strangle. “You’re fighting it,” he said, his dick invading her, provoking her reflexes, shaming and exciting her. “You ought to open your throat and just let it in. I can tell you love it, I can tell you want to do me real good, so just let it happen. Let me use your throat like a pussy. You don’t have to choke like that. You can breathe around it. Of course, it you want to choke—” And he held her extra tight for an especially vicious bout of sword-swallowing.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Tyre rubbed a yellowing bruise high up on her left buttock. “She poses her own models. And there’s Kay and EZ, two women who usually hang out at men’s bars. Bikers.” “Are they into women?” “They’re into each other. When they heard about this, they jumped at the chance. They haven’t met many women who dig their scene. They usually pick on cute little faggots. They get these boys totally wasted and then drag them home and make them earn their red hankies. Think Roxanne will look good in red?” There was a long silence. “Alex? You there?” “Yeah, just counting. So that makes five, with me. I really would like to round up a few more. To make it genuinely scary, you know?” “Oh, I haven’t given you the whole list yet. Do you know Chris— um, Chris what-is-it, yeah, McPherson? She plays drums for Mutilation.” “Great. Then all we need is one more top, and we’re set.” Tyre’s throat was very dry. She took a big swallow of cold tea, gagged, and blurted, “No, we don’t. There’s me.” The laughter she dreaded did not materialize. “No shit?” Alex finally said. “Does that mean you’re not pissed off at my any more?” “There’s no reason to be pissed at you, and I think maybe I owe you an apology.” “Naw. If I let you apologize you’ll be pissed for sure. I’m real glad to hear you’re going to be there. I was planning to keep on saying ‘We need one more top’ until you included yourself in.” “You cocksucker,” Tyre sputtered, laughing. “You should be so lucky. So is this why this whole thing pulled itself together so quickly, ’cause the madam wants to see my girlfriend get thrown to the lions?” “Well, to be truthful, yes. The idea of it excites me tremendously.” And it means I get to see you again, she told herself silently. “Great, great, fabulous. God, I don’t know how I would have come up with another excuse to see you again.” Damn the woman and her ingenuous honesty. But Alex was still talking. “I am so jazzed, I can barely stand still. Best news I’ve had all year. Well, okay, let’s schedule this deal. What about next Saturday? That give you enough time to round everybody up, hey?” “Well, it would be, but Mama Kali, the Denver bike club, has scheduled a run for that weekend. I don’t think you want to string Roxanne up in the middle of that crew.” “Maybe for our first anniversary. If we ever have one. So when is the space available?” Tyre checked her desk calendar. “The first weekend of next month. And after that it isn’t free again until June.” “Okay. That’s it, then.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  Experience showed that no one paid his subscription for the mere asking. It was impossible to call frequently on members outside Durban. The enthusiasm of one moment seemed to wear away the next. Even the members in Durban had to be considerably dunned before they would pay in their subscriptions. The task of collecting subscriptions lay with me. I being the secretary. And we came to a stage when I had to keep my clerk engaged all day long in the work of collection. The man got tired of the job, and I felt that, if the situation was to be improved, the subscriptions should be made payable annually and not monthly, and that too strictly in advance. So I called a meeting of the Congress. Everyone welcomed the proposal for making the subscription annual instead of monthly and for fixing the minimum at £ 3. Thus the work of collection was considerably facilitated. I had learnt at the outset not to carry on public work with borrowed money. One could rely on people’s promises in most matters except in respect of money. I had never found people quick to pay the amounts they had undertaken to subscribe, and the Natal Indians were no exception to the rule. As, therefore, no work was done unless there were funds on hand, the Natal Indian Congress has never been in debt. My co-workers evinced extraordinary enthusiasm in canvassing members. It was work which interested them and was at the same time an invaluable experience. Large numbers of people gladly came forward with cash subscriptions. Work in the distant villages of the interior was rather difficult. People did not know the nature of public work. And yet we had invitations to visit far away places, leading merchants of every place extending their hospitality. On one occasion during this tour the situation was rather difficult. We expected our host to contribute £ 6, but he refused to give anything more than £ 3. If we

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  Seven years after I saw the pictures of those doors, I received my first adult passport. I wish I had come to it sooner. I wish, when I was back in that French class, that I had connected the conjugations, verbs, and gendered nouns to something grander. I wish someone had told me what that class really was—a gate to some other blue world. I wanted to see that world myself, to see the doors and everything behind them. The day of my departure, I sat in a restaurant with your mother, who’d shown me so much. I told her, “I am afraid.” I didn’t really speak the language. I did not know the customs. I would be alone. She just listened and held my hand. And that night, I boarded a starship. The starship punched out into the dark, punched through the sky, punched out past West Baltimore, punched out past The Mecca, past New York, past any language and every spectrum known to me. My ticket took me to Geneva first. Everything happened very fast. I had to change money. I needed to find a train from the airport into the city and after that find another train to Paris. Some months earlier, I had begun a halting study of the French language. Now I was in a storm of French, drenched really, and only equipped to catch drops of the language—“who,” “euros,” “you,” “to the right.” I was still very afraid. I surveyed the railway schedule and became aware that I was one wrong ticket from Vienna, Milan, or some Alpine village that no one I knew had ever heard of. It happened right then. The realization of being far gone, the fear, the unknowable possibilities, all of it—the horror, the wonder, the joy—fused into an erotic thrill. The thrill was not wholly alien. It was close to the wave that came over me in Moorland. It was kin to the narcotic shot I’d gotten watching the people with their wineglasses spill out onto West Broadway. It was all that I’d felt looking at those Parisian doors. And at that moment I realized that those changes, with all their agony, awkwardness, and confusion, were the defining fact of my life, and for the first time I knew not only that I really was alive, that I really was studying and observing, but that I had long been alive—even back in Baltimore. I had always been alive. I was always translating.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  What time should I bring her by?” “Why don’t I send my driver, Michael, around for you at nine o’clock? Put Roxanne in a hood and manacles. If you like, I’ve got a mummy bag you can zip her into. Or you can just throw a cloak around her and stuff her into the back seat of the limo. Michael will give you enough lead time to get here on your bike. That way, Roxanne won’t know where she’s going or whether or not you are going with her. When Michael arrives, she can call me on the car phone. There’s a back entrance to the basement so we won’t have to carry her in through the main floor. The disco bunnies would pass out en masse.” “Aw, c’mon. It would be so good for them.” “Look, they have a right to their own version of a good time. Leather and vanilla don’t mix real well. I’m not very fond of 69 myself—“ “Yeah?” Alex said dryly. “Except in the context of dominance and submission, you bitch, and if I was about to come in my girlfriend’s sweet little mouth, I wouldn’t want to be interrupted by a series of harrowing screams or the sound of a belt hitting a bare butt. Look, don’t worry, this is going to be notorious, all right? The rumors are already circulating. We’re going to have to post Simba at the head of the stairs with a cattle prod to keep the voyeurs from using a battering ram on the dungeon door.” “The first weekend of next month, huh? How am I going to keep myself busy in between now and then?” “Well, I know what I’m going to be doing. I’m going to be taking each of the dominatrices on a tour of the dungeon we’ll be using, showing them how all the bondage equipment works. It wouldn’t hurt for you to get more familiar with the premises, either.” Alex’s voice went shy. “Oh. Yeah. Well, I been already. Last weekend. You, uh, you weren’t there I don’t think. So you wouldn’t know. That I was there. You know?” “Oh, ah, no, I didn’t, shit, um, know you were here. Well, god-dammit, why didn’t you tell me? I would have brought you down some champagne.” “For some reason the security guards didn’t seem to be too fond of me, and I didn’t think any of them would do me the favor of taking you a personal message.” “Oh. Of course not. Damn. Well, I guess I’ll see you for sure anyway the first weekend of—” “Next month. Yeah. Story of my life. But be still my heart, it should be a good one. Get lotsa beauty sleep.” “I promise.”

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  As a founding member of Samois, the first lesbian s/m support group, a columnist for the Advocate , and probably the best known sado-masochist in the world, Califia is known for being on the leading edge of lesbian erotica, and this book lives up to her reputation as a sex pioneer. Macho Sluts will undoubtably shock some and mesmerize others. As Califia says in her introduction, “When you are dealing with an area as permeated with ignorance and superstition as sexuality, it is more important to be honest than it is to be correct.” The eight stories in the book date from “Jessie,” 1977, to the newest, “The Spoiler,” from 1985. The latter is one of two stories which introduce male sexual actors. Califia argues well that lesbians should be able to write about and use men, gay or straight, in their erotic writing. “Jessie,” the notorious first chapter, has been a dyke j/o favorite since it first appeared in Coming to Power . The story is as hot as ever, and only adds to the unpredictability of the book as a whole. Aficionados of classic, old-fashioned B&D will swoon over “Finishing School,” an elegant tale of training, torture, and reward. The ending is a shocker: the first, but not the last, point in Macho Sluts where the reader gasps, “Oh my god, I can’t get turned on by this!” “The Calyx of Isis,” the book’s only major disappointment, is a dense story of tag-team s/m set in a mythical San Francisco women’s bathhouse. The story trots the reader through a varied s/m repertoire which leaves one exhausted rather than aroused by the end. Perhaps in smaller doses, divided into chapters, one for each set of the story’s dominatrices, “Calyx” would be a little easier to swallow. However, there is something for just about everyone: whipping, fisting, (genital and anal), piercing, heavy bondage, dyke cocksucking, and lots of sensimilla, sushi, and sake. Throughout Macho Sluts , Califia challenges dykes who write pornography, dykes who hate pornography, and everyone in between. “The Hustler” is a profoundly cynical but funny tale of a woman-dominated future in which expressions of sex are piously regulated. The outlawed individual (the Hustler) is oppressed by the “cud-chewing” (boring) majority. This is Califia’s revenge on the Dworkinite forces in the women’s movement. “The Hustler” will definitely piss off a lot of radical feminists, but then, they probably wouldn’t have gotten this far in the book anyhow. If any radical feminist were to read this far, she’d run screaming for the nearest copy of Gyn/Ecology by the time she got two pages into “The Surprise Party.” Califia lets fly with a right-on-target challenge to the idea that lesbian sexual fantasies should only have women characters. This story is not easy to read, and whatever a reader feels at the end, she will not be bored. Disgusted, maybe, turned-on, maybe—or fascinated, horrified, angry, or amused. Read this story.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  He began to read again his technical works on the coal-mining industry, he studied the Government reports, and he read with care the latest things on mining and the chemistry of coal and of shale which were written in German. Of course the most valuable discoveries were kept secret as far as possible. But once you started a sort of research in the field of coal-mining, a study of methods and means, a study of by-products and the chemical possibilities of coal, it was astounding, the ingenuity and the almost uncanny cleverness of the modern technical mind, as if really the devil himself had lent fiend's wits to the technical scientists of industry. It was far more interesting than art, than literature, poor emotional half-witted stuff, was this technical science of industry. In this field, men were like gods, or demons, inspired to discoveries, and fighting to carry them out. In this activity, men were beyond any mental age calculable. But Clifford knew that when it did come to the emotional and human life, these self-made men were of a mental age of about thirteen, feeble boys. The discrepancy was enormous and appalling. But let that be. Let man slide down to general idiocy in the emotional and "human" mind, Clifford did not care. Let all that go hang. He was interested in the technicalities of modern coal-mining, and in pulling Tevershall out of the hole. He went down to the pit day after day, he studied, he put the general manager, and the overhead manager, and the underground manager, and the engineers through a mill they had never dreamed of. Power! He felt a new sense of power flowing through him: power over all these men, over the hundreds and hundreds of colliers. He was finding out: and he was getting things into his grip. And he seemed verily to be reborn. _Now_ life came into him! He had been gradually dying, with Connie, in the isolated private life of the artist and the conscious being. Now let all that go. Let it sleep. He simply felt life rush into him out of the coal, out of the pit. The very stale air of the colliery was better than oxygen to him. It gave him a sense of power, power. He was doing something: and he was _going_ to do something. He was going to win, to win: not as he had won with his stories, mere publicity, amid a whole sapping of energy and malice. But a man's victory. At first he thought the solution lay in electricity: convert the coal into electric power. Then a new idea came. The Germans invented a new locomotive engine with a self-feeder, that did not need a fireman. And it was to be fed with a new fuel, that burnt in small quantities at a great heat, under peculiar conditions.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Perhaps it was the guided tours of the dungeons, which kept turning into auditions or dress rehearsals for Alex’s scene, which made it easy for Tyre to keep her promise. She slept very well during the interregnum. In fact, she got so used to standing around in the dungeon, wearing full leather, waiting for someone to show up, that she barely registered the fact that this was it, the big night, the main event, until Alex strode in—an immaculate black knight in her racing jacket, codpiece pants, and engineer boots—counted heads, and said, “Who the fuck is missing? What did they do, call in sick?” Kay and EZ came swaggering in right behind her. They were dressed the same way they had been when Tyre tracked them down on Folsom Street. EZ wore black-leather chaps over 501s that had faded and faded until they were nearly white. Her motorcycle jacket was off the rack, no customization, and she wore a plain white T-shirt underneath it. Her black hair was very short, spiked out, and had platinum stripes bleached into it above and just behind her ears. She was thin and butch enough to look like a young, very cute, boy-punk. This made her a perfect piece of bait for Kay to throw into the shark-bars South of Market. Kay was a little older and more feminine. The blue jeans under her chaps were a bit newer than EZ’s, a pale blue instead of white. She had put a navy-blue rinse over her long, dark hair, and it showed in certain angles of the light. She wore a lot of tooled silver rings, hippie-looking things, which she loved to take off one at a time while a prospective victim stared at her hands in dread and fascination. Her jacket was virtually identical to EZ’s, but she had tied a red bandana around her left upper arm, whereas EZ wore a chain dog collar threaded under her left epaulet. Her T-shirt was made out of black ciré, and her boots had high heels instead of a plain cowboy walking heel. She made up for that by wearing Mexican spurs with long rowels. “Sorry we’re late,” EZ snickered. “We hadda see a man about a horse.” Alex kicked the door closed behind them. Her countenance was stormy. Of course, the telephone picked that moment to ring. Tyre intercepted Alex, who was headed for Kay and EZ with her hand upraised, and dragged her over to the phone. She kept an arm around her while she talked. Alex rubbed her face and velvety scalp all over the front of Tyre’s jacket, trying to calm down.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  NATAL INDIAN CONGRESS Practice as a lawyer was and remained for me a subordinate occupation. It was necessary that I should concentrate on public work to justify my stay in Natal. The despatch of the petition regarding the disfranchising bill was not sufficient in itself. Sustained agitation was essential for making an impression on the Secretary of State for the Colonies. For this purpose it was thought necessary to bring into being a permanent organization. So I consulted Sheth Abdulla and other friends, and we all decided to have a public organization of a permanent character. To find out a name to be given to the new organization perplexed me sorely. It was not to identify itself with any particular party. The name ‘Congress’, I knew, was in bad odour with the Conservatives in England, and yet the Congress was the very life of India. I wanted to popularize it in Natal. It savoured of cowardice to hesitate to adopt the name. Therefore, with full explanation of my reasons, I recommended that the organization should be called the Natal Indian Congress, and on the 22nd May the Natal Indian Congress came into being. Dada Abdulla’s spacious room was packed to the full on that day. The Congress received the enthusiastic approval of all present. Its constitution was simple, the subscription was heavy. Only he who paid five shillings monthly could be a member. The well-to-do classes were persuaded to subscribe as much as they could. Abdulla Sheth also put the list with £ 2 per month. Two other friends also put down the same. I thought I should not stint my subscription, and put down a pound per month. This was for me beyond my means, if at all I was to pay my way. And God helped me. We thus got a considerable number of members who subscribed £ 1 per month. The number of those who put down 10s. was even larger. Besides this, there were donations which were gratefully accepted.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  They’re in a rack over the horse. Study of the classics is the best course for the improvement of young minds.” “I couldn’t agree with you more, although I come from a slightly different tradition,” Alex allowed. “An icon is an icon is an icon,” said Anne-Marie. “Your Roxanne is an archetype in her own right. Please, Tyre, what are the names of our other compatriots?” ”Hello, Alex, I’m Chris,” the next woman drawled. They enjoyed a hearty handshake. Chris didn’t have Alex’s height or bulk, but her rangy body looked hard, strong, and fast. She wore leather pants tucked into her boots. Each boot carried a throwing knife. At first it looked as if she was wearing a chest harness, until you looked closer and realized they were crossed bandoliers full of Chinese throwing stars. Alex couldn’t recall a single type of shuriken that wasn’t displayed there. Every inch of Chris’s torso, except for the traditional thin line down the middle of her chest where a kimono could fall open, was covered with tattoos. Tyre eyed the swirling water, fighting carp, Japanese chrysanthemums, and exotic goddesses with nostalgia, recalling the way the body suit ended at Chris’s buttocks, the two scalloped halves of it framing the crack between her white buns. Alex, unaware of the full extent of Chris’s tattoos, was still impressed by them, by the thirteen fish hooks she wore in her ears, and by her five-inch-long, purple Mohawk. It was enough to make one overlook the eight-foot-long bullwhip coiled in her hand. “What’s about to happen here is truly tribal, man,” she said, still shaking Alex’s hand. “I’ve been fasting for the success of your ritual. We have to bring the sun dance back into the century, or we’ll suffer spiritual extinction.” Alex was finally getting behind the sinsemilla and the beer, and started to dig what was happening. So everybody was a little loony-tunes. She herself was a grown woman who had sex in the skins of dead animals. Her intuition was that all of these women were solid. Let it rock and roll. “And this is Joyous Day,” Tyre said, giving the photographer a big hug. “If she likes you, you can call her Joy. How have you been?” “I’ve been doin’ fine, Tyre, but I’m doin’ even better now. Alex! You got a dirty mind in a healthy body, that means you’re definitely my kind of woman.” She had a Jamaican accent, a voice that made you want to keep talking. Alex grinned and took her hand. “Somebody been talking about me?” It would be hard to say which of the two, Chris or Joyous Day, was the most outrageous. Joy was an inch or so taller than Chris, and had long dreads. One of the dreads had been bleached. She also had facial cicatrices, like deep scratches from a tiger’s paw, on each cheek.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  And a woman had to yield. A man was like a child with his appetites. A woman had to yield him what he wanted, or like a child he would probably turn nasty and flounce away and spoil what was a very pleasant connection. But a woman could yield to a man without yielding her inner, free self. That the poets and talkers about sex did not seem to have taken sufficiently into account. A woman could take a man without really giving herself away. Certainly she could take him without giving herself into his power. Rather she could use this sex thing to have power over him. For she only had to hold herself back in sexual intercourse, and let him finish and expend himself without herself coming to the crisis: and then she could prolong the connection and achieve her orgasm and her crisis while he was merely her tool. Both sisters had had their love experience by the time the war came, and they were hurried home. Neither was ever in love with a young man unless he and she were verbally very near: that is unless they were profoundly interested, TALKING to one another. The amazing, the profound, the unbelievable thrill there was in passionately talking to some really clever young man by the hour, resuming day after day for months ... this they had never realised till it happened! The paradisal promise: Thou shalt have men to talk to!--had never been uttered. It was fulfilled before they knew what a promise it was. And if after the roused intimacy of these vivid and soul-enlightened discussions the sex thing became more or less inevitable, then let it. It marked the end of a chapter. It had a thrill of its own too: a queer vibrating thrill inside the body, a final spasm of self-assertion, like the last word, exciting, and very like the row of asterisks that can be put to show the end of a paragraph, and a break in the theme. When the girls came home for the summer holidays of 1913, when Hilda was twenty and Connie eighteen, their father could see plainly that they had had the love experience.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Push yourself. Read all the way to the end and before your mind tells you how you should feel, slip a finger between your labia and let your cunt tell you how you do feel. Finally, “A Dash of Vanilla” underscores Califia’s introductory remarks that power is not exclusive to s/m. The story is vanilla, but Califia makes obvious something we’ve all experienced at some point in our sexual lives. Where there is an orgasm, or the promise of one, or the lack of one, there is power, and it comes from all sides, whether top or bottom or right or left. This story didn’t so much pass a wet test as made my jaws ache, but that’s just as much a part of lesbian sex as getting off. Macho Sluts “Macho Sluts and Little Sister’s: The Court Case” Joseph Arvay The case of Little Sister’s Book and Art Emporium v. Canada Customs — otherwise billed as Little Sister’s v. Big Brother—might never have come about but for Macho Sluts by Pat (now Patrick) Califia. Macho Sluts had historically been treated as “public enemy number one” by Canada Customs, having been detained at the border and prohibited from entering the country a number of times. It represented a genre of books—sado-masochistic or S/M—that Customs, and for that matter the Courts, had determined was per se obscene and beyond any possibility of having any redeeming value. That said, it is unlikely that anyone at Customs had ever actually read the book. The evidence in the trial revealed that very few, if any, of the prohibited books had been read cover to cover by Customs officials. The normal practice was simply to scan a few pages, and any sentences that appeared to involve sex with bondage (or other taboos such as “sex with pain” or “sex with degradation”) were sufficient to condemn the entire book. I suspect that, with Macho Sluts , it was the title alone that doomed it to the burning bin. But, of course, for Little Sister’s, Macho Sluts was an extremely important book and one that had acquired iconic status in the gay and especially the lesbian community. It was also, for Little Sister’s, the last straw. According to Jim Deva (one of the store’s owners), the book was akin, in terms of its importance to their community, to what the Bible was to the religious community. Canada Customs had simply gone too far, and it was time to fight back. And fight we did.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  All Cimon's lost spirit was requickened in him by these words and he replied, without overmuch consideration, 'Lysimachus, thou canst have no stouter or trustier comrade than myself in such an enterprise, an that be to ensue thereof for me which thou avouchest; wherefore do thou command me that which thou deemest should be done of me, and thou shalt find thyself wonder-puissantly seconded.' Then said Lysimachus, 'On the third day from this the new-married wives will for the first time enter their husbands' houses, whereinto thou with thy companions armed and I with certain of my friends, in whom I put great trust, will make our way towards nightfall and snatching up our mistresses out of the midst of the guests, will carry them off to a ship, which I have caused secretly equip, slaying whosoever shall presume to offer opposition.' The devise pleased Cimon and he abode quiet in prison until the appointed time. The wedding-day being come, great and magnificent was the pomp of the festival and every part of the two brothers' house was full of mirth and merrymaking; whereupon Lysimachus, having made ready everything needful, divided Cimon and his companions, together with his own friends, all armed under their clothes, into three parties and having first kindled them to his purpose with many words, secretly despatched one party to the harbour, so none might hinder their going aboard the ship, whenas need should be. Then, coming with the other twain, whenas it seemed to him time, to Pasimondas his house, he left one party of them at the door, so as none might shut them up therewithin or forbid them the issue, and with Cimon and the rest went up by the stairs. Coming to the saloon where the new-wedded brides were seated orderly at meat with many other ladies, they rushed in upon them and overthrowing the tables, took each his mistress and putting them in the hands of their comrades, bade straightway carry them to the ship that was in waiting. The brides fell a-weeping and shrieking, as did likewise the other ladies and the servants, and the whole house was of a sudden full of clamour and lamentation.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  They are all in the drawing-room, and you can go by the back stairs. And if anyone does see you, and asks, you can say you are fetching it for me. Which is true.’‘Well...’‘Go on! Take your candle!’ I rose, then took hold of her hands and pulled her to her feet; and she - infected at last by my new recklessness - gave another giggle, put her fingers to her lips, then tip-toed from the room. While she was gone I lit a lamp, but kept it turned very low. She had left her cap upon the bed: I picked it up and set it on my own head, and when she returned five minutes later and saw me wearing it she laughed out loud.She carried a dewy bottle and a glass. ‘Did you see any ladies?’ I asked her.‘I saw a couple, but they never saw me. They were at the scullery door and - oh! they was kissing the guts out of each other!’I imagined her standing in the shadows, watching them. I went to her and took the bottle, then peeled away the lead wrapper from its neck. ‘You’ve shaken it up,’ I said. ‘It’ll go off with a real bang!’ She put her hands over her ears, and shut her eyes. I felt the cork squirm in the glass for a second; then it leapt from my fingers, and I gave a yell: ‘Quick! Quick! Bring a glass!’ A creamy fountain of foam had risen from the neck of the bottle, and now drenched my fingers and soaked my legs - I was still, of course, clad in the little white toga. Zena seized the glass from the tray and held it, giggling again, beneath the spurting wine.We went and sat upon the bed, Zena with the glass in her hands, me sipping from the frothing bottle. When she drank, she coughed; but I filled her glass again and said: ‘Drink up! Just like those cows downstairs.’ And she drank, and drank again, until her cheeks were red. I felt my own head grow giddier with every sip I took, and the pulse at my swollen face grow thicker. At last I said, ‘Oh! How it hurts!’, and Zena set down her glass to put her fingers, very gently, upon my cheek. When she had held them there for a second or two, I took her hand in my own, and leaned and kissed her.She didn’t draw away until I made to lie upon the bed and pull her with me. Then she said: ‘Oh, we cannot!

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  If I can believe her, it was the first time she’d paid for objectification. I wonder if she’ll ever go out looking for it again. Sometimes it’s easier to fake orgasms with somebody who loves you than it is to cruise the derelict parks and ripped-up, trash-clogged streets. After all, you don’t find real pleasure all that often there, either—just the possibility. I do not hustle out of bars. You have to pay off the bartenders, and all your janes will be drunk—if they aren’t piss, uh, peace officers. Anyway, I don’t want to bring any official attention down on the Labrys. They might not know what goes on there yet, and if that bar gets closed down, a lot of my friends are going to go crazy or just leave town. All I wanted was a drink and a night of raunchy storytelling with one of my pals. I had just settled down with Lefty, this malechick who has only one ball. (Guess which one.) Lefty’s specialty is TVs—janes who want to wear “women’s clothes” or “men’s clothes.” Sometimes (especially if they are beginners, who tend to be shy) they want to watch him dress up instead. I could tell Lefty was ready to party because he-she was wearing a cherry-red corset with a jockstrap underneath it, a black bowler hat, one elbow-length black silk glove, and one biker’s leather glove with the fingers cut off. He-she had worn a big trench coat to cover all this finery up on his way to and from the Labrys. Lefty doesn’t mix up his drag this way when he-she’s on the stroll—it confuses the fish. We were on our first drink and it hadn’t gotten drunk under the table yet, but Lefty had enough money to keep our party going all night long, so I was feeling quite encouraged. Then this woman walked in, white-skinned, medium height, with big tits starting to go a little soft. She had dark hair and a nice-sized ass, the kind you can really work on. Everything she had on was new—a new denim skirt, new T-shirt, a new jacket so shiny it was probably plastic. And she had locked a collar around her neck, but it was the wrong kind of chain, one of those flimsy things with large links that they use to hide electrical cords. The lock was way too big; it looked clumsy. The whole effect was amateurish and too obvious. Still, I had to admire her guts, making it so clear what she was looking for. She stared around the room, obviously frightened and on the brink of leaving.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Hey, we could have peace in our time.” “Don’t be silly,” Tyre said. “Do you know what time it is?” She thought, by now the place upstairs is probably almost empty. I could check with Simba and have her give them the key to one of the smaller dungeons. But then I’ll have to check on them before I leave, and see if they need a lift home. Or I guess the cleaning crews can let them out tomorrow. What a drag. “Kay,” EZ said. They could barely hear her. “Please, don’t make us go. I won’t be dis—disruptive no more. Lemme see Roxanne get her rings. I’d never forgive myself if I fucked this up for you. We can talk tomorrow. Or you can talk and I can listen, anyways. Please?” “Well … ” “Put a collar on her and see if she means it,” Tyre advised. “If she can bounce back this fast after the lesson you taught her, I don’t think there’s any hope. All of us would really regret it if you didn’t stay.” Out at the bar, Joy was checking the spines of tape-boxes. “You and I think it be time for Brian Eno now,” she said. “Well, well. They got Jarre doin’ Oxygène. A golden oldie. Outer space is here to stay, children.” The leftover sushi disappeared in minutes. So did two pots of coffee and a fifth of cognac. Kay was up on the stool at the far end of the bar, drumming her spurs against its legs. She plied a little pair of scissors, manicuring the biggest bud sensemilla Tyre had ever seen. “This one got horny enough to drown itself,” she grinned. “Figure this is just what we need to float through the final frontier.” EZ sat peacefully at her feet, naked except for a collar and a terry-cloth bathrobe. Kay lit up her pipe, then EZ carried it to everybody who wanted a hit and held a lit match over the dope for them while they toked up. “It takes about two hits of this shit to get real high,” Kay said, sucking smoke through her teeth. “That’s high as in Tibet.” Once she had gotten everybody on top of the Himalayas, Kay put her paraphernalia away and wrapped her legs around EZ, giving her a big thigh-hug, and played thoughtfully with her parti-colored hair. “Tyre, are those needles sterile?” Alex fretted. Tyre glanced at the timer light on the autoclave. “Jesus, yes, ‘Daddy,’ they’ve been cooking for hours.” “Well, take ’em out and let ’em cool, will you? I’m afraid to touch that damn machine. You put the rings in there, too?” “Whatever you had on the tray got sterilized, stud. I wasn’t the one who laid it out, remember?” “Oh, yeah, sorry, Tyre.” Roxanne pressed her face into Alex’s knee. Her eyes were shining. “Psst!” she said.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "My dear, you speak as if you were ushering it all in! True, you are going away on a holiday: but don't please be quite so indecently elated about it. Believe me, whatever God there is is slowly eliminating the guts and alimentary system from the human being, to evolve a higher, more spiritual being." "Why should I believe you, Clifford, when I feel that whatever God there is has at last wakened up in my guts, as you call them, and is rippling so happily there, like dawn. Why should I believe you, when I feel so very much the contrary?" "Oh, exactly! And what has caused this extraordinary change in you? Running out stark naked in the rain, and playing Bacchante? Desire for sensation, or the anticipation of going to Venice?" "Both! Do you think it is horrid of me to be so thrilled at going off?" she said. "Rather horrid to show it so plainly." "Then I'll hide it." "Oh, don't trouble! You almost communicate a thrill to me. I almost feel that it is _I_ who am going off." "Well, why don't you come?" "We've gone over all that. And as a matter of fact, I suppose your greatest thrill comes from being able to say a temporary farewell to all this. Nothing so thrilling, for the moment, as Good-bye-to-it-all! But every parting means a meeting elsewhere. And every meeting is a new bondage." "I'm not going to enter any new bondages." "Don't boast, while the gods are listening," he said. She pulled up short. "No! I won't boast!" she said. But she was thrilled, none the less, to be going off: to feel bonds snap. She couldn't help it. Clifford, who couldn't sleep, gambled all night with Mrs. Bolton, till she was too sleepy almost to live. And the day came round for Hilda to arrive. Connie had arranged with Mellors that if everything promised well for their night together, she would hang a green shawl out of the window. If there were frustration, a red one. Mrs. Bolton helped Connie to pack. "It will be so good for your ladyship to have a change." "I think it will. You don't mind having Sir Clifford on your hands alone for a time, do you?" "Oh, no! I can manage him quite all right. I mean, I can do all he needs me to do. Don't you think he's better than he used to be?" "Oh much! You do wonders with him." "Do I though! But men are all alike: just babies, and you have to flatter them and wheedle them and let them think they're having their own way. Don't you find it so, my Lady!" "I'm afraid I haven't much experience." Connie paused in her occupation. "Even your husband, did you have to manage him, and wheedle him like a baby?" she asked, looking at the other woman. Mrs. Bolton paused too.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  That was why he did not speak to the boy or establish empathy with him. They had nothing to say to one another. Whatever agony or ecstasy fired the boy’s synapses were immaterial; no electricity would jump the gap between them. This performance was for the master, whose eyes were glazing over as he watched Curt’s fit, young body being painted with red streaks and welts. He did not have to imagine what it felt like. He could remember. More than that, he was experiencing a rare, intense pleasure from watching someone else work. Only at major tribal gatherings like Inferno did he get a chance to see tops whose working style pleased him. Even when he co-topped, he usually found respectful, unobtrusive ways to relegate his partner’s activities to his peripheral vision. Not only was he eagerly watching this sober, quiet dude cut the kid to ribbons, he had a roaring hard-on and thought that if it went much longer he was going to come in his pants like a teenager. Just before the master’s excitement built to that point, Curt broke. They untied the sobbing kid, threw a bucket of cold water on him, gave him his clothes and a Valium, and called a cab to take him home. The master was so put off by this display of cowardice and bad manners (and by his own frustrating sensation of coitus interruptus) that he did not notice that the boy said an effusive goodbye to the other man’s boots and ignored his own. This whipped-dog devotion saddened the spoiler, but he was relieved that the ex-novice was leaving. He might get what he really wanted now. It could not take place in front of a witness. Curt was too much of a beginner to realize he was being dismissed in disgrace. He felt giddy with joy, thrilled at his own daring, awed by the men who had taken him to this magical place. He told the cab driver to take him back to the bar. Before he walked in, he took off his shirt, and men bought him drinks all night long to hear the history of his stripes. Just before the bar closed, he was taken in tow by a black master who had an easy smile and a bullwhip. He was off on the long road that might lead him to become the kind of person the spoiler would take an interest in again. The master shut and locked the door after the boy, then turned to see the man he thought of as a junior S standing in his hallway with a friendly grin on his face and two beers in one big hand. The guy certainly made himself at home.