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.

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• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  AnnaI’m thirty-six years old. I’ve been in banking for the past fifteen years. I realize that the first thing some people may think of us “bankers” is “stuffy”… but I can assure them all bankers are probably a lot less stuffy than may be realized. We have to be professional and civilized and composed at all times during the day… thus we need to let go and release when we are not at work! Let me tell you, too, that there are some days after being yelled at for service charges and overdrafts all day long that I need to release my frustrations! I usually let them go in my sexual fantasies. I am a lesbian, so most of my fantasies are about women. However, I do have some about watching a man fuck my lover or partner. I’m not a lesbian who hates men. I do find some men quite attractive. I just don’t get turned on by them sexually, although, I do believe I’ve been guilty of having “penis envy.” There, I said it! I admit it! However, I love the gentleness of a woman. Making love with a woman is like “endless foreplay”… and I know how women like foreplay! Plus, I just absolutely love the taste of pussy! I find it delicious! A lot of my fantasies are about famous women, as I’m quite a moviegoer. My most recurring sexual fantasy is about Uma Thurman. I fantasize that she is making a lesbian movie. She needs someone to teach her how to be a lesbian. I usually work as a trainer for actresses, getting them in shape for roles. However, my agent calls me and asks if I’d assist Uma with this role. I, of course, gladly accept. We become friends as she observes me in my day-to-day life for her role in the movie. We go out to the bars, go dancing, and go on adventure trips together. We hike the Grand Canyon, go horseback riding, etc. The movie finishes and it becomes a big hit.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  I am captured by a group of lesbians, all tall and very pretty. Most of them are very authoritarian and aggressive. I am stripped of all my clothes and strapped to a table in the middle of what seems to be some sort of display arena. A large machine with a phallic probe is above me. A beautiful dark haired woman comes in and tells me that they will be performing a demonstration on me and that if I do not cooperate that my stay there will be very difficult. Soon the seats above the arena are filled with the women of the “village.” The woman starts to explain what they will do to me. Soon the machine is turned on and placed into position. There seems to be a spotlight on me. Another woman begins to fondle my breasts and tells me that I must hold off my orgasm as long as possible to give a good show, and if I do not then I will become the personal slave of the leader who is a terrible, ruthless woman. The machine is difficult to fight and soon I am coming. The leader is not pleased and demands that I be taken back to her quarters immediately. By this point, I have usually masturbated myself to orgasm and don’t need to continue. This is not the only fantasy I have. Others include men or my best friend, but this seems to be my favorite lately. Thank you for giving the women of the world a sense that they are normal for having sexual fantasies. I can’t imagine what I’d think of myself without you. RebeccaI am eighteen years old and am an exceptionally active, horny young woman. The amount of time in a day I spend thinking about sex, I think is equivalent to that of a man. Before I continue, I feel I must tell you two things. First, I am straight. I have never had a lesbian experience, but I’m dying to! Second, I was molested for a number of years as a young child. I was eventually the one who put an end to it, but I feel it has greatly affected my sex life. For a long time I became totally withdrawn sexually (I have been active since fourteen!), and only recently did I begin to open up again. My most recent boyfriend made me very comfortable with sex. He encouraged me to talk about my fantasies and even act them out! One of my favorites, especially during masturbation, is the thought of another woman. I am fascinated by breasts, and constantly imagine what it would be like to have another woman perform cunnilingus on me. I have even gone as far as trying to find another woman to experiment with. I never follow through with this, however, because I don’t want to lose the intensity I often experience.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  The bed is one of those wrought-iron antique beds you see in Italy. The Italians hang religious medals and ornaments on them, and they make a chiming noise with the up and back motion of fucking. The bed is painted red and there are gold balls all along the spikes at the head and foot. The bed is in this girl’s room, in her apartment. I can see the apartment just from Sam’s description of it, complete with the little dog, small, with long gray and brown hair. The dog is on the bed with us, licking the asshole of the girl, who is between my legs. I can’t see the dog but I know it’s there, that the girl has trained the dog to do this. I feel the girl’s long hair on my thighs and against my lower stomach, as she slowly kisses me, parting my lips with her fingers, her tongue going straight to that delicate spot, touching it gently, and then her lips, full and lingering against me, pressing warm against me, and then the tongue, slowly, very slowly at first—and not just the tip of the tongue, which would be too hard, but the whole length and breadth of it, soft, warm, licking me in slow, great, warm, repeated kisses. The blunt feel of her teeth as her mouth presses against me. Sam is there, standing across the room, watching us, watching me, my face. He is leaning against the wall, cool, detached, interested, knowing how I am. He is wearing his old khakis, the red Banlon shirt, the old blue sneakers. His eyes never leave my face, he is fascinated, he waits for the flush to start in my cheeks, as he knows it will, as I know his cool look of detachment will change. My lips part, and as my breathing becomes heavier, faster, so does his. I can see the bulge in his trousers growing larger and larger and his hand moves to it. Something in me fights letting this girl give me pleasure, any pleasure, but she is so good at it, she knows every little trick, just the rhythm, the right rhythm, slowly at first, with the full tongue spread warm and lingering against me. Now the idea of her hair, of all that long silky hair—the idea that she is a girl, the idea that she is Rosie, Sam’s old girlfriend, excites me. I watch Sam unzip his fly, still standing there, still watching my face, but needing my excitement now for his own. He takes out his cock and his long thin hand begins to stroke it, the foreskin slipping, slipping slowly up and down over the pink smooth end. His rhythm is slow at first, like the girl with me. I watch his cock, I know it so well, I watch it, the veins in it strained like the veins in his hand, and I gear myself, pace myself to him. My hands feel for the girl’s hair, the beautiful soft feel of it—Christ! is it another woman doing this to me?—and with the slightest pressure I keep her head, the movement of her tongue, paced to Sam and me. I don’t have to guide her though, she knows; she has always wanted me. We don’t need Sam. Now Sam needs us. I relax; I give myself to her. Push myself against her mouth so that her lips are pressed against her teeth and her tongue slips into me, wanting me. My face is hot, my cunt aches with wanting her. I watch Sam’s hand moving faster, faster, he is bent over, his body barely able to hold him up, his mouth open, his hand moving up and down, up and down the way he has taught me to jerk him off, his eyes glued to mine, pleading, begging me not to stop. The girl moans, her tongue moves faster and faster. She is ready to come, but she holds it back, waiting for me. The scream is in Sam’s throat, I am almost there, but I poise at the height, not wanting it to end, wait Sam, wait, not yet, not just yet? The little dog is on his back now, under the girl, so that he can lick her cunt which drips, but still she waits, her sucking lips pleading, her tongue never stopping until now! [Written down on request]

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  Lecia and I had unfolded the map from the Esso station to plot our course. We’d drawn red lines in Magic Marker between the black dots of Western towns to make a broad red lightning bolt across the U.S.A. clear to Seattle. I wanted to hit the Space Needle gift shop so I could send Peggy Fontenot a postcard. I’d worked on a draft in my cherry-red diary with the flimsy key that Mother had bought me at the drugstore before we left: Dear Peggy, doesn’t this just beat your old Vacation Bible School with a rubber hose? Daddy was occupied with whether to stay or go as he cranked the ignition, so the car bumped onto blacktop, and the chinablue sky started rushing across our windshield again. He finally winked at me in the rearview and announced that he wanted to keep heading west too. But Mother didn’t. She argued, politely at first, and then in terms to make Lecia and me stopper our ears. In no time, the whole tone in that car had shifted away from whether we’d stop or not to more general terms—who always did this and who never did that. Finally, Mother threw a matchbook at Daddy, and he swerved off the road into a little town I’ll call Cascade, where we wound up buying a house. The stone lodge Mother bought hung off the side of a mountain like something from a Road Runner cartoon. Pictures confirm this. It looks like a good-working car jack or even a serious nudge with a crowbar on the far side of that house would send it toppling off its log stilts and rolling ass-end-over-elbows down the sharp dirt road into town. The house proved how Grandma’s money was fixing to boost our overall comfort level. Back in Texas, we’d had hints. Before leaving, Daddy braced air-conditioners in the window of every bedroom. When we donated our black-bladed fans to the Salvation Army, we moved into the county’s upper echelon socially. Plus in Houston, Mother bought herself a real leopardskin coat with a matching hat like the Cossack on the vodka bottle wore. (Maybe that coat—a torture to wear in our tropical climate—proved Mother never intended to come back to Texas from that trip, though she denied any such plan.) But our trip west itself drew the boldest line between our family and the neighbors. Daddy only had three weeks off. He planned to fly back—yes, fly, by plane, Mrs. Fontenot must have whispered across her apron lap of green shelling peas to the other ladies—leaving us without a man to squire us around. That was scandal enough, living in a distant town without your husband. Perhaps more damning was to travel so far in the first place. In fact, I’d never known a family to set off for points farther west than the Alamo or farther east than the crayfish festival in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  The young man agrees, and in ten or fifteen minutes he finds himself sitting dressed only in his stiff shirt, black tie, and shoes. The rest is naked. Sometimes I imagine that he immediately develops an erection, other times I vary it a bit by having him so embarrassed he is unable to have one until I “carelessly” make some revealing gestures with my body. Or touch him. Then I suggest that we play for higher stakes. He asks what this means. I tell him we should play for more imaginative forfeits, and the penalty period should be increased from five to fifteen minutes or even a half hour. He becomes even more excited, and I see a gleam in his eye. He agrees. But of course I win again. “What do you want me to do?” he asks. I tell him to lie down on the bed, half undressed as he is, and then I proceed to tie his hands and feet to the bed. When I feel he really can’t move, I go into my act. In my mind, I become the kind of sexy woman I’ve always wanted to be. While he’s lying there, tied hand and foot, I go into the sexiest striptease you can imagine. This is the real part of the fantasy. All the rest has been a buildup. But when I get to this part, I can feel almost a flush of heat. My stomach muscles begin to cramp—but not with pain—with the feeling of approaching orgasm. I come and sit on him, but only for a second, so that before he can have an orgasm of his own I’m off him again, leaving him all the wilder, his face redder, his erection hard as a rock. I talk to him, asking him wouldn’t he like to put it in me? Sometimes I pretend I’m angry with him, and say that I’d rather stick a candle up myself than him. Sometimes I imagine that I do, and I can see myself, naked, with a large red Christmas candle sticking half out of me, dancing around this beautiful young boy. I tell him that if he’ll push the candle all the way in with his teeth, I may untie him and let him make love to me. Or I use that stiff erection like a ramrod, kneeling over him so that his own erection—it’s now so hard he couldn’t make it soft if he tried—pushes the candle all the way in for me. And all the time I’m having these thoughts, I can feel the lovely warm water touching me, stroking me, bringing my own rush of blood there. Then suddenly my muscles do cramp, and I have an orgasm right there in the nice clean bathtub. Then I just have a real bath and get into bed and have the most refreshing nap you can imagine. [Taped interview]

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  Mostly we talked about Italy, and she told me briefly about the village where she and a lover had spent six months “trying out the idea of being married.” They had decided against it. She was enthusiastic to hear about my years in Rome, and my own ideas on marriage. A few nights later, I saw Caroline’s name on a theater poster on Shaftesbury Avenue, and on impulse bought seats for that night. Her role required her to spend the entire evening onstage almost totally nude, and the first curtain fell on a protracted, tumultuous scene in which she was required to have (just barely simulated?) sexual intercourse on stage, front and center. The audience loved it, and her. It made me curious about a girl who was so reticent to speak about herself privately, but was so uninhibited otherwise as to be able to perform this role on stage. We went backstage afterward, and a group of us went on to dinner, during which the subject of this book came up. She told me she would like to contribute. Hers wasn’t a typical fantasy, she said, but I might find it interesting. » Ever since I had to do this love scene in the play you saw—it’s been running now for six months—I’ve needed to feel that the same audience is there when I’m making love at home or anywhere else off-stage. I suppose having to be, or at least to appear to be, so excited on the stage every night in front of so many people has really affected me. At first I tried to tell myself that it was just another role… you have to act so many emotions in the theater, and there’s all that “Method” business of feeling yourself into the part…. But as I said, in the beginning I tried to keep a little “distance” between the personal me, and me, the actress, making love in front of all those people. But I couldn’t: As I got more and more used to the role, more comfortable in it, I found that instead of dreading the moment when I had to begin, I was looking forward to it. My nipples would become tight and erect. It was a surprisingly seductive feeling, one I enjoyed. I began wearing tighter and tighter blouses, filmier ones, more see-through, so that the audience could see my excitement, could see the excitement I felt right down—or up—to my nipples. I needed the audience’s excitement for my own… a form of complicity was set up between them and me, a sexual conspiracy which heightened my ability, or rather, desire to play the part.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  NathalieYou are so right that one tends to feel one’s sexual fantasies are too “odd” to admit to or discuss. I have never heard another woman mention the topic, although I’m sure we all have some fantasy or another. I have finally been able to mention my two fantasies to my current lover, amidst much “fear and trembling” and aided by the effects of several martinis. The feeling of relief I have from just getting this out into the open has made me feel free enough to broach the subject to several of my closest women friends, who agree that we all have weird notions, but who are too reticent to share theirs with me! I don’t know if you want background or not—I’m assuming you do. I’m twenty-nine years old, swinging and single. I consider myself to be liberal and liberated sexually. I’ve had more than twenty semi-serious affairs since I was relieved of my virginity seven years ago. I adore sex and will try anything to enhance my lover’s pleasure. I masturbate regularly, and climax within minutes, especially if I fantasize, although I don’t need to. I’ve always loved the whole sex thing, from the first touch to the last kiss, even though I never climaxed with a man until about three years ago. I enjoy being sexually aggressive at times, and at times I crave to be dominated. I think about sex a lot and can get turned on easily by erotic reading material. Now, for my fantasies, neither of which has been fulfilled—yet. The thought that my lover is now aware of them and is planning our next encounter around them is driving me wild. My first fantasy is that of being spanked: I have always provoked the spanking, it’s never unjustified. My innate female bitchiness causes my lover to say very quietly, “All right, that’s enough!” I say, “Don’t order me around.” He says, “You’re asking for a good spanking.” I say, “I’d like to see you try it,” in a very taunting manner.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  VickiVicki is thirty-two and single, just out of her second divorce. Her exotic good looks appeal to a variety of men, but Vicki’s own preference has always been limited to the rat bastards. She’s already set her sights on her next conquest (I mean victimizer) and is the first one to laugh at the hard knocks that lie ahead for her. “That’s how I am,” is how she puts it, adjusting the fall of a tight little T-shirt over her boyish figure, before sailing forth to meet her Waterloo. When she’s not being knocked, Vicki’s generally to be found in the archives of some far-flung museum; she is a well-established art historian, appears regularly on TV, and writes for art publications in half a dozen countries. You would think she’d seen enough suffering on the cross without adding her own. » Interesting you should ask, my dear, because I’m sure I’ve got you to thank—or blame—for these strange new thoughts that have entered my sex life ever since we talked about this book of yours last year. That’s how long they’ve been going on. No, wrong, I’m sure they were there all along, but it was our talking about fantasies that brought them to the surface. Nowadays I can’t seem to go to bed with a man without having this image that he is my doctor. I can’t really say whether this focused fantasy has really heightened sex for me or not. All I know is that there he is, cap and mask, bearing just the slightest resemblance to my real doctor. Or is it just the cap and mask? You know the old line about doctors: They all look alike when you’ve got your feet in the stirrups. Not that I’ve had one of those examinations for years. Okay, I know it’s dumb when you’re over twenty-five not to, but I’ve always hated those check-ups. Remember how you screamed at me in college for not seeing a doctor when I hadn’t had a period for six months? And me still a virgin. Well, that turned out all right, didn’t it?

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  For a moment he just sits there, taking me all in. I murmur in my sleep and shift position slightly, separating my thighs somewhat, which angles my slit upwards. His erection grows enormous; he slips out of his shorts and then kneels over me with one knee on each side of my thighs. Although I don’t even open my eyes, I glide one hand out to his penis and caress it gently, and then glide it, to his surprise, right into my cunt. He then fucks the bejesus out of me and I rock along with him. But I never open my eyes, just murmur as if I were sleeping and enjoying a good dream. [Taped interview] MarieMarie has the scrubbed good looks of the other young women who live in the suburban area where she and her husband moved following the birth of their second child. She told me that she was a virgin when she and Phil married, that she’s been tempted once or twice to continue one of the idle flirtations that started up at the country club or at some neighbor’s party, but that she was always scared off by the consequences. » I don’t think I could look Phil in the eye if I ever really went to bed with another man. I’d really like to be able to do it, because I’ve had so little sex, and I feel so out of things, so inexperienced… so dull. But I just haven’t got the nerve. I really envy girls a few years younger than me who’ve been able to cash in on all this sexual freedom. I even feel guilty about having this fantasy, but I can’t keep it from popping into my mind every time we do have sex now. It makes it so much more exciting, and I try to tell myself I deserve it… just the fantasy, if not the reality. Who knows? If it ever happened in reality, as it does in my mind, I just might go through with it. I even find myself thinking about it if I’m standing around at someone’s party outdoors. I stand there holding my gin and tonic, wishing he knew what was on my mind, the man I’m talking to.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  We’ve been married two and a half years and enjoy a good sex life. But I’ve invariably found that re-creating these scenes with my husband (in my mind) leads to a more erotic session, which in turn gives me new material for the next time. For me, my fantasies are money in the bank, if you know what I mean. [Taped interview] BellindaWhile I was putting this book together, I met and talked with Dr. Robert Chartham, psychologist and author of The Sensuous Couple. He showed me a letter he’d received from a woman we’ll call Bellinda, in which she complained that her sex life was dreary, that her mind wandered to the day’s trivia during sex, and that she felt guilty that the only sexually exciting thoughts she seemed to have were of tennis star John Harrison’s thighs: “Last year,” she wrote, “I went to the Albert Hall to watch John Harrison in person play indoor tennis. I was sitting on purpose near the umpire’s chair so I could be near his legs. I just could not take my eyes off him, and when he was toweling down, he stared back for a lovely long moment, our eyes were really locked. He may have been wondering what this stupid woman (me) was looking at, but I prefer to think that my message got through, which was, ‘My God, I’d like you to thrust yourself inside me.’ If it’s possible for a woman to say that with her eyes, then I said it.” Dr. Chartham’s advice to her and her subsequent reply follow. Dear Bellinda: By believing yourself to be, as you put it, a “sexual dud,” you are making yourself one. You have quite the wrong attitude toward lovemaking, and your husband seems no better. You have got yourself all worked up about sexual responses and the quality of them, when you ought to be fully relaxed, and letting things just happen to your body. Instead of thinking about next day’s lunch while you are being made love to, why don’t you think of John Harrison’s thighs, or better still imagine that those are John Harrison’s hands and mouth caressing you, and John Harrison’s cock that is up you. Try it and see what happens. Let me know. We call it fantasizing, and nearly all of us, men and women, have our sexual fantasies—at least from time to time. It’s quite a legitimate way of awakening our sexual senses. The only thing is, don’t let on to your husband that you are imagining that he’s John Harrison; he might be hurt. Best wishes, Robert Chartham Dear Dr. Chartham,

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  But back to my mise en scène. Suddenly the mean old whipmaster realizes that my guy has slowed down on the job. By that, I mean that he’s giving it too much valuable time, that he’s really into what he’s doing, giving the client more than is required. He gives my guy a smart flick of the whip, but my boy doesn’t even turn around. He’s groaning and pressed into my cunt as though there’s no tomorrow, and his cock is enormous now, his hand stroking it, bringing himself to climax as he brings me closer. The whipmaster gives him a terrible blow, but the guy is lost to everything but me… we’re getting closer and closer, together now, and I suddenly start praying that the ogre whipmaster won’t drag him away just as we’re about to reach the most glorious climax of our lives. The whipmaster grabs him by the shoulder—my heart almost sinks—he can’t understand it. He’s never seen one of these gorgeous flunkies behaving like this, getting turned on by a client, by a client’s cunt! Then, just at the crucial point, the whipmaster, dumbfounded, loses his professional cool, our excitement communicates to him. Like when the cynical stage manager hears little Judy Garland audition “Over the Rainbow” and realizes a star is born. “I’ve never seen this happen before!” the whip guy yells. “Why this man is so delirious with pleasure he refuses to be paid!” (I don’t know how he’s managed to communicate this, with his mouth full.) But that does it: The whipmaster is so whipped up himself, he takes out his cock and works feverishly to our pitch, so that when we come, he comes… and oh boy, it’s quite a day in the old hair store! [Taped interview] PamelaI am on an absolutely deserted beach, lying on my back, sound asleep. I am wearing only a bikini, the bottom part fastened on each side with only a tiny bow, and the top fastened in front only with a bow, too, between my enormous breasts, which are already almost overwhelming the little bit of cloth that is the bra. I breathe deeply and evenly, shifting positions lightly as I sleep. A man’s shadow falls across me; he stands looking down at me as I sleep. He’s very tanned and wears only swimming trunks. He watches, and as he watches me sleeping he gets excited. He kneels beside me, very softly and gently so as not to awaken me, and very carefully unties the bow at one of my hips, then reaches over me to untie the other side. He lays the bikini back, exposing me to his gaze.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  While I intend this book to be an introduction to the idea that female sexual fantasies exist and can be talked about, I do not pretend that my research can in any way be called complete. Nevertheless it is extensive, and so I think some meaningful conclusions can be drawn from the fact that Faith’s is the only fetishist fantasy among all that I’ve collected. This correlates closely with standard psychoanalytic findings that female fetishism is rare. I do not know why this should be so, except for a notion I’ve talked about earlier: that since women were traditionally put into the passive role sexually, they never have had to have doubts about their ability. Inhibited or frigid, perhaps—but there is no word in the immense English vocabulary which is the exact female equivalent of impotent. On the other hand, the sexual distortions of society often force men to see every erotic encounter as a contest, in which the poor guy has to compete, at least physically, with all the woman’s previous lovers and those still to come—to say nothing of the imagined demands he may feel she herself is putting on him; perhaps it is to avoid these pressures that the fetishist sighs with relief when he can substitute the symbol for the substance, and settle down with a nice pair of fluffy, scuffed mules on a cold winter’s night. Are they so different from Hollywood’s favorite image of our soldiers and sailors as “regular guys,” who randily kiss their dream movie star good night, when it is only her photo that is present on the wall above the bed, but who would be paralyzed with embarrassment if that star should appear in the flesh in that bed? FaithI am what is known as a urologenic. Through books and materials I have been able to more fully understand my sexual feelings, although it’s rather difficult for me to explain in words just how I feel. I derive pleasure by seeing, thinking, or hearing about uncontrollable urination. Every time I think about someone (especially a man) trying to “hold back” just a little bit longer and then not being able to make it to the bathroom, I get very excited. Although I detest violence extremely, I usually center my thoughts around “tormenting to the point of urination,” but because of my dislike for violence and cruelty, I always end the scene with the tormentor having pity on the victim just as urination begins. I try not to think of things that would really hurt, because I get no pleasure out of pain.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  All the foregoing reinforces the idea that much of our most potent sexual imagery does go back to that time in our lives when we didn’t even know what it—the stimulus—was all about. Born of the innocence and ignorance of our childhood, fantasies retain their mysterious powers into our adult years of sexual exploration (even satiety). They never lose their glamour. Bluebeard’s wives had all the beautiful rooms of his house to roam in, but they never could resist the one locked door. But don’t despair if you’re over twelve and think you haven’t had a fantasy. The most erotic fantasies I know of are ones that first came to grown women on hearing just the right word, seeing the wrong face. Sexual fantasy material is everywhere and anything, but the spark that makes it a fantasy is inside, not outside the fantasist. It’s not a matter of deciding “Okay, now I’m going to make up a great sexual fantasy,” and then concentrating on the two young men delivering the new TV set, on the neighbor’s Great Dane, or even on your husband’s best friend. There are no universal fantasy symbols; what works for one woman may do nothing for another. Just as one woman may go for the classic tall, dark, and handsome type, so may another like cute blond cheerleaders. Flash a black man on the screen of one woman’s mind and it will begin clicking its own rear projection, while another woman’s inner voice may say “So what?” You don’t will a sexual fantasy to take form and turn you on. Nevertheless, I do think a lot of women are likely to begin fantasizing after reading this book. Or rather, become aware that they have been fantasizing all along, and that those sudden odd ideas or notions they have up to now forgotten, or repressed, are indeed fantasies. Much of the material in this book came through this kind of setting up of associations, giving a woman not a direct request for a fantasy, but giving her an idea to get her started. For example, if I simply said to a woman, “Do you have sexual fantasies?” she would usually reply “I don’t know,” or “What is a sexual fantasy?” or “No.” But if I said, “I’ve found that most women’s sexual fantasies have this element of anonymity, that when she’s thinking about being fucked by another man, or men, that they’re faceless, or strangers…” then the dialogue is on between me and the woman, between her and her own imagery. She has a recognizable starting point from which to take off. I don’t know whether this freedom of the imagination takes place because mentioning other women’s fantasies has set up a kind of competition, or because that mention freed my interviewee from isolation and guilt, or whether it was only because her up to now dormant sexual imagination simply needed that association as a springboard. I think all three contribute.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  AdairSometimes when I masturbate there is this lovely person, who is, of course, my lover, and he gathers together a bunch of darling gentlemen who want very much to fuck me… seems there are always these guys in my fantasies just dying to get at me. Anyway, they all have wonderful members with remarkable proportions and they tell him that they think I’m swell, and I’m really having a bit of a ball myself. But the funny thing is that my gentleman friend who has gone to the trouble of finding me all these screws gets a little angry because I start liking it a bit too much when one of the fellows in the crowd gets to propositioning me for doing other things (which aren’t included in the package deal). I am tempted and my lover gets angry with both me and the other guy and gently tells us not to be so familiar. Does that sound crazy? I suppose so, but you asked for it. [Taped interview] Mary BethOn the rare occasions I masturbate, I use the engraved silver handle of a hairbrush, and think about my former lover, who used to let me fellatiate him… an act I love to do, but which my husband doesn’t permit. I visualize my lover’s prick getting hard in my mouth, the veins coming out on it, and then, just as I’m about to come, I love to look down and see my own juices caught between my husband’s engraved initials…. [Letter] ElizabethI imagine a variety of things when I masturbate. Sometimes it’s that a man has come to the door selling something and I invite him in. While he stands there displaying his Fuller brushes or whatever, I begin to caress myself. He watches, obviously aroused, and finding it harder and harder to continue his sales spiel. Then I remove my clothes and begin to masturbate, all the while watching his efforts to control himself. He’s in a real state, and of course I’m very cool—in one sense, but I’m also getting very worked up. Sometimes at this point I’ll invite him to penetrate me, much to his surprise and delight. He can barely get his trousers off, his erection is so enormous. And he breaks half of whatever it is he’s selling—steps all over it—in his haste to get at me. While imagining this I will insert a carrot or some similar object into my anus while I stimulate my clitoris manually or with a vibrator to enhance the fantasy.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  She suddenly becomes the guy in the motorcycle leather, and I’m just a cunt, just a simple cunt, being fucked by some motorcycle guy, and I love it. I love it that Lilly is so excited that she’s changed roles. Changed positions, so that suddenly I’m not the guy anymore, but she is. Then I put my finger inside her cunt, and when I feel her stomach muscles begin to heave, that terrific contraction, spasm after spasm, I find myself almost screaming. I’m coming myself. [Taped interview] JeanneJeanne was born in Belgium, but has lived most of her twenty-five years in the USA. She had her first lesbian experience with her cousin Renee, who was a year older, and with whom she was sharing a summer at their uncle’s farm. Jeanne considers herself a lesbian still, “by choice, rather than the result of ‘unhappy home-life,’ economic conditions, socioeconomic factors, etc….” At one time she felt ashamed of her desires, but now “a lover who really cares brought me to the realization that I’m not mentally ill simply because my sexual preference is for another woman.” Jeanne has been living with this lover, Paula, for the past two years. The incident that became imbedded in Jeanne’s mind, and forms the seed from which her very elaborate fantasy grew, took place in the hayloft of her uncle’s farm, where she and her cousin Renee were lying in each other’s arms. The two girls were interrupted in their love play by the sight of Anjou, the cousin’s young dog, mounting a bitch on the floor below. Both girls were intrigued by Anjou’s “bevel-pointed maleness” entering into the bitch, and took turns describing to each other what an experience with Anjou might be like. Today, those descriptions have become ritualized into sexual fantasy, extremely detailed and lovingly elaborated. As with any work of art, it is this exactness of detail which makes the emotion of the fantasizer so real to the reader.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  A typical example: We are at a party, all nice attractive people standing around talking. I am talking to two men. I am wearing a dress just long enough to cover my crotch, with nothing else. They each put an arm around me and play with my breasts. One puts his hand between my legs. The other people carry on as before while I am led over to a settee where I am laid down, my dress pushed up, my legs spread and I am entered by one, then the other, and then by all the other men in the room, last of all my husband. At this point where the fantasy is returning to fact, my husband and I will work up to a wonderful climax. I would like to say that we do not use the expression “making love” as we feel that love is the feeling we have for each other all the time, and the enjoyment of sex is something else, so that while we love each other while we are having sex, which includes me thinking of other men, of being fucked by other men, we prefer to use other words. I feel sure you agree. I have never felt there was anything unusual in fantasies. I cannot imagine masturbating without them, and my husband’s attitude during intercourse was a big help. No doubt you have given some thought to the connection between fantasy and fact, where one might try to make the fantasy come true. In many cases where perhaps unobtainable people are involved, this would not be possible: In my case, whereas the people are just ordinary, the circumstances are larger than life, so it would still be very difficult to do what I fantasize, impossible really to fuck with maybe ten men in full view of passersby. Even going around without panties can be risky, although I realize that a great many men, including my husband, are turned on by the idea of women doing this, so that when I do have intercourse with another man it is usually under fairly conventional circumstances, which I later enlarge on in fantasy. I have at times been able to have sex in some degree like my fantasies, but invariably it has been contrived to some extent, so that it is not quite the real thing.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  I do it all quite deliberately. I can tell, when I’m getting ready for bed, whether my husband is in the mood or not, and if he is I get myself all sexed up mentally, even before I get near the bed, while I’m brushing my hair and undressing and so forth. Sometimes I linger longer in the bathroom just so I can get to the right point in my fantasy. Then, when we’re having the same old version of sex, I’m having my old Arabian Nights. I mean it; it’s like the one thousand and one nights, with me as Scheherazade telling myself a different sex story each time. For the first dozen or so times, it was just me and a man; I’d describe all the different things we did. Then I went on to think of different settings, like doing it on the kitchen floor (maybe with a delivery boy) or in my neighbor’s garage when I went to borrow a tool (Freudian slip). Then I got involved for a long time with doing sixty-nine with people watching. Then I started thinking of myself with two men, and just lately I’ve been in a whole group, both men and women (but the women were involved with the other men, not touching me). I’ve never imagined myself with a woman, but other than that I’ll try anything—mentally. I’m able to pace the flow of my thoughts to what’s really going on, and this way it works for me almost every time. [Letter] DAYDREAMSYou could say that a woman’s life was made for fantasy. All those idle hours, the boring repetitive jobs that her hands do automatically, the endless opportunities to reflect, construct and reconstruct. In a sense we were born to dream, to stay at home… it is how most men dream of us. Even today’s superwomen who leave the house to go to work have at least as much opportunity for the odd idle fantasy as the guy at the next desk (and more natural talent and practice at it)—the tedious subway rides, the dull business conferences, hungover days when you just can’t concentrate on anything except the erotic possibilities of the boss’s moustache, the provocative way the new account executive dresses on the right, last night’s abandoned fuck with Harry, the prospect of tonight’s with George. Does the adage “The idle mind is the devil’s playground” indeed apply only to one sex? Why do advertisers consistently use a picture of a pretty girl with a faraway look in her eye to sell almost anything? Because it’s universally accepted that women, dreamers all, dream the good pure thoughts that hold us all together—especially material things connected with the home. (And homemaking.) Whereas men, those lusty scoundrels, will dream only of things that might make their naughty dreams come true. What are men in advertisements wistful for? Automobiles, whiskey, rugged pipe tobacco… anything that might lead them more successfully to sex.

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

  They assured me that I was so perfectly to their taste, as to have but one fault against me, which I might easily be cured of, and that was my modesty: this, they observed, might pass for a beauty the more with those who wanted it for a heightener; but their maxim was, that it was an impertinent mixture, and dashed the cup so as to spoil the sincere draught of pleasure; they considered it accordingly as their mortal enemy, and gave it no quarter wherever they met with it. This was a prologue not unworthy of the revels that ensued. In the midst of all the frolic and wantonness, which this joyous band had presently, and all naturally, run into, an elegant supper was served in, and we sat down to it, my spark elect placing himself next to me, and the other couples without order or ceremony. The delicate cheer and good wine soon banished all reserve; the conversation grew as lively as could be wished, without taking too loose a turn: these professors of pleasure knew too well, how to stale impressions of it, or evaporate the imagination of words, before the time of action. Kisses however were snatched at times, or where a handkerchief round the neck interposed its feeble barrier, it was not extremely respected: the hands of the men went to work with their usual petulance, till the provocation on both sides rose to such a pitch, that my particulars’s proposal for beginning the country dances was received with instant assent: for, as he laughingly added, he fancied the instruments were in tune. This was a signal for preparation, that the complaisant Mrs. Cole, who understood life, took for her cue of disappearing; no longer so fit for personal service herself, and content with having settled the order of battle, she left us the field, to fight it out at discretion.

• From My People (2022)

  Probably the most dynamic speaker to come to 125th Street and Seventh Avenue in recent times was Malcolm X. One of the biggest rallies on The Corner was one that he held in 1960, when his purpose was to unify Negro leaders. According to his biographer Louis Lomax, fifteen “outstanding Negro leaders” were invited to participate but none came. Thirteen black nationalist groups took part, though, and for five hours thousands of people stood listening to various speakers, including Malcolm X himself, who then represented Elijah Muhammad’s Black Muslims. “They call us racial extremists,” Malcolm said that day. “They call Jomo Kenyatta [president of Kenya] also a racial extremist, and Tom Mboya a moderate. It is only the white man’s fear of men like Kenyatta that makes him listen to men like Mboya. If it were not for the extremists, the white man would ignore the moderates. To be called a ‘moderate’ in this awakening dark world today, that is crying for freedom, is to receive the kiss of death as spokesmen or leaders of the masses . . . for the masses are ready to burst the shackles of slavery whether the ‘moderates’ will stand up or not. We have many black leaders who are unafraid, especially when they know the black masses stand behind them. Many of them are qualified to represent us . . . in this United States government . . . if we are given one hundred percent citizenship and the opportunity for first-class participation . . . or else we can get behind these same leaders in setting up an independent government of our own.” Charles 37X Kenyatta told us one Saturday, before he began his speaking stint, that he and Malcolm X had been close friends since 1961, when they met in Detroit. Kenyatta, a handsome thirty-five-year-old North Carolinian with a neatly trimmed goatee, said he had wanted to be a lawyer but fate had been against him. “Malcolm made me realize what I could do,” he said. “He told me how hard it was to buck the forces opposed to revolution, but I decided that if Malcolm could, I could.” Kenyatta explained that people interested in forming a program often meet with him on Sunday nights in the Old Garvey Hall, on Eighth Avenue near 128th Street. On The Corner, Kenyatta, who stands on the top step of a ladder, is a fiery speaker and punctuates his words with a machete, slicing and jabbing the air with it when he is really fired up. Off The Corner, he is a quiet, gentle man who weighs every word. He speaks calmly of attempts that have been made on his life, and of “outside pressures” exerted to remove him from The Corner. “You’re good if you keep your mouth shut,” he said, smiling. “If not, you’re bad and have to be wiped out.” We asked Kenyatta how he happened to start speaking on The Corner. “Just took it,” he replied.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  I go back into the living room, but first I clear my throat and start talking so they will know I am coming. I walk through the room, telling them I’m going up to have a quick bath, telling Ben to fix Helen a drink and keep her company. But I don’t go upstairs. I stand just outside the door and wait, watching them. Ben sits on the sofa, shy as always, and it is Helen who moves in, kneels in front of him, unzips his fly and takes his penis in her hand, puts it into her mouth. Ben’s hands start to push her away. He looks quickly in the direction I’ve gone. But the pleasure is too much. He sees Helen, sees her lips round his penis, her mouth full of him, her lips bulging around it as though she’s going to swallow it. He reaches for her breasts again and fondles them; they seem to grow in his hands, to swell in size. Until they are as large as mine. Her blond head moves faster and faster, up and down on his penis, pushing her lips back so that Ben can see her teeth, small and white, moving as though she is eating some delicious piece of meat. The tip of it slips farther and farther down into her throat; Ben is practically paralyzed with ecstasy. He falls back against the sofa, his hands reaching for his trouser front, unfastening it altogether so that she can really get at him. He is no longer the Ben I know at all. Helen undoes her blouse, never letting his penis rest, sucking away on it. She takes her breasts in her own hands, and kneads them so that drops of milk gush from them onto Ben’s pubic hairs, soaking them. I move quietly into the room, knowing they won’t stop now, and wanting to watch them more closely. They have forgotten now that I am even in the house. Ben is about to come in her mouth, but he wants the milk even more and he lifts her, drags her onto the sofa, so that he can suck her breasts while his hands undress her, fondle her until she moans for him to put it into her, there on our sofa, their clothes half on, half off, in front of the huge picture window. I shake off my clothes and naked I go over to them. I get on the sofa behind Ben. I want so badly to join them, to give Ben even more pleasure in return for all the pleasure he is giving Helen—who is really part me and part Helen—and suddenly I have this warm wet thing to put into him, a penis, my penis. I press it into him slowly, but all the way in. Ben gasps with excitement, and I feel the same wild sensation as though it really was a part of me going into him, as if it really were my penis. Firmly, quickly, I move it in and out in rhythm with his fucking Helen, whose pleasure I can also feel. Having it both ways, having everything, it is overwhelming. I can’t stand it, it is too much, and I press deeper and deeper into my husband until it seems my penis goes through Ben and into Helen, into me myself, and I die with pleasure. [Conversation]