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 The Principle of Desire (2013)

  Ivan had said many incomprehensible things to Ed earlier that evening, before the game started. One was that Beth was a tough sub and “suffered beautifully.” Now, Ed got it. This was beautiful, the way she looked, and also the fact that she was giving this suffering to him like a gift. He hadn’t ever thought of himself as particularly dominant before, but he got the power exchange part now. He appreciated the meaning in Beth’s submission. As a bonus, he also found it hot beyond belief to see her submit to this, to take this pain because he’d told her to. Her trust was an aphrodisiac, and the more evil stuff he did, the more trust she had to employ. It was a self-perpetuating cycle of hotness. He hadn’t been this hard since...well, since Beth had tied him to the chair and fucked him silly. Taking his clothes off, he speculated aloud. “I really don’t know about this D/s stuff. I’m not either one, and I love doing this with you but I don’t know that I’m really a switch either. I think I’m just generally kinky as fuck. I like it all. Is that a thing?” “Purists would say no, I suspect. But it’s like you gluing your Lego. You have to do what works for you.” “You’re slurring a little. You’re not shocky, are you?” “Don’t think so. I just want you to touch me again. Please?” As if he could resist that entreaty. He took up his place on the bed and stroked like he had before, with one attentive finger. This time he used the other hand to advantage, spreading her slick juices up and down the opening he’d exposed, teasing his fingertips in and out. Finally he gave her the length of one finger, working it in slowly and pressing more firmly on her clit. Beth gasped and came, cursing softly as she trembled her way back down. “Fuck, I needed that.” “I need you.” He could only do so much without the clothespins poking him or springing free, so he teased the first inch or so of his cock inside her and held himself there for a long moment. “You’re fixing to yank that fucker off, aren’t you? Bastard.” “I am. Try not to wake the whole street up, wench.” He gathered the string that ran through the clips, testing the tension until he was sure he could do this in one quick move. “On one. Then I’ll fuck your brains out.” They counted down together. “Five...four...three...two...” “Fuuuuck!” “One.” Ed tossed the string of clips away and thrust his cock as deep as he could go, until his belly brushed against the clips on Beth’s abdomen and he was forced to shift his angle.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The German Bible of Luther was saluted with the greatest enthusiasm, and became the most powerful help to the Reformation. Duke George of Saxony, Duke William of Bavaria, and Archduke Ferdinand of Austria strictly prohibited the sale in their dominions, but could not stay the current. Hans Lufft at Wittenberg printed and sold in forty years (between 1534 and 1574) about a hundred thousand copies,—an enormous number for that age,—and these were read by millions. The number of copies from reprints is beyond estimate. Cochlaeus, the champion of Romanism, paid the translation the greatest compliment when he complained that "Luther’s New Testament was so much multiplied and spread by printers that even tailors and shoemakers, yea, even women and ignorant persons who had accepted this new Lutheran gospel, and could read a little German, studied it with the greatest avidity as the fountain of all truth. Some committed it to memory, and carried it about in their bosom. In a few months such people deemed themselves so learned that they were not ashamed to dispute about faith and the gospel not only with Catholic laymen, but even with priests and monks and doctors of divinity."441 The Romanists were forced in self-defense to issue rival translations. Such were made by Emser (1527), Dietenberger (1534), and Eck (1537), and accompanied with annotations. They are more correct in a number of passages, but slavishly conformed to the Vulgate, stiff and heavy, and they frequently copy the very language of Luther, so that he could say with truth, "The Papists steal my German of which they knew little before, and they do not thank me for it, but rather use it against me." These versions have long since gone out of use even in the Roman Church, while Luther’s still lives.442 NOTE. the pre-lutheran german bible. According to the latest investigations, fourteen printed editions of the whole Bible in the Middle High German dialect, and three in the Low German, have been identified. Panzer already knew fourteen; see his Gesch. der nürnbergischen Ausgaben der Bibel, Nürnberg, 1778, p. 74.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  These works are distributed over fifty different cities of Germany. Of all the works printed between 1518 and 1523 no less than six hundred appeared in Wittenberg; the others mostly in Nürnberg, Leipzig, Cologne, Strassburg, Hagenau, Augsburg, Basel, Halberstadt, and Magdeburg. Luther created the book-trade in Northern Germany, and made the little town of Wittenberg one of the principal book-marts, and a successful rival of neighboring Leipzig as long as this remained Catholic. In the year 1523 more than four-fifths of all the books published were on the side of the Reformation, while only about twenty books were decidedly Roman Catholic. Erasmus, hitherto the undisputed monarch in the realm of letters, complained that the people would read and buy no other books than Luther’s. He prevailed upon Froben not to publish any more of them. "Here in Basel," he wrote to King Henry VIII., "nobody dares to print a word against Luther, but you may write as much as you please against the pope." Romish authors, as we learn from Cochlaeus and Wizel, could scarcely find a publisher, except at their own expense; and the Leipzig publishers complained that their books were unsalable. The strongest impulse was given to the book trade by Luther’s German New Testament. Of the first edition, Sept. 22, 1522, five thousand copies were printed and sold before December of the same year, at the high price of one guilder and a half per copy (about twenty-five marks of the present value). Hans Luft printed a hundred thousand copies on his press in Wittenberg. Adam Petri in Basel published seven editions between 1522 and 1525; Thomas Wolf of the same city, five editions between 1523 and 1525. Duke George commanded that all copies should be delivered up at cost, but few were returned. The precious little volume, which contains the wisdom of the whole world, made its way with lightning speed into the palaces of princes, the castles of knights, the convents of monks, the studies of priests, the houses of citizens, the huts of peasants. Mechanics, peasants, and women carried the New Testament in their pockets, and dared to dispute with priests and doctors of theology about the gospel.748

• From The Journals of Sylvia Plath (1982)

  Dan Huws being very pale, frightfully pale and freckled, and me at last saying my immortal line of introduction which has been with me ever since his clever precocious slanted review‖ : “Is this the better or worse half?” and he looking incredibly young to even think hard yet.… By this time I had spilled one drink, partly into my mouth, partly over my hands and the floor, and the jazz was beginning to get under my skin, and I started dancing with Luke and knew I was very bad, having crossed the river and banged into the trees, yelling about the poems, and he only smiling with that far-off look.… He wrote those things, and he was slobbing around. Well, I was slobbing around, “blub, maundering,” and I didn’t even have the excuse of having written those things; I suppose if you can write sestinas which bam crash through lines and rules after having raped them to the purpose, then you can [omission] … smile like a … beelzebub. Then the worst thing happened, that big, dark, hunky boy, the only one there huge enough for me, who had been hunching around over women, and whose name I had asked the minute I had come into the room, but no one told me, came over and was looking hard in my eyes and it was Ted Hughes. I started yelling again about his poems and quoting: “most dear unscratchable diamond” and he yelled back, colossal, in a voice that should have come from a Pole, “You like?” and asking me if I wanted brandy, and me yelling yes and backing into the next room past the smug shining bulb face of dear Bert, looking as if he had delivered at least nine or ten babies, and bang the door was shut and he was sloshing brandy into a glass and I was sloshing it at the place where my mouth was when I last knew about it. We shouted as if in a high wind, about the review, and he saying Dan knew I was beautiful, he wouldn’t have written it about a cripple, and my yelling protest in which the words “sleep with the editor” occurred with startling frequency. And then it came to the fact that I was all there, wasn’t I, and I stamped and screamed yes, and he had obligations in the next room, and he was working in London, earning ten pounds a week so he could later earn twelve pounds a week, and I was stamping and he was stamping on the floor, and then he kissed me bang smash on the mouth [omission]…. And when he kissed my neck I bit him long and hard on the cheek, and when we came out of the room, blood was running down his face. [Omission.] And I screamed in myself, thinking: oh, to give myself crashing, fighting, to you. The one man since I’ve lived who could blast Richard.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  The first time I took all my clothes off in front of several pairs of eyes, I was in the middle of a garden surrounded by a mesh fence. You already know about this. I have also referred to that other garden which was in a particularly interesting site overlooking the sea. The garden stretched out in front of the house and, even though we were in the Midi, there was very little shade. Right at the front, an area of paving served as a sun terrace. We fucked there endlessly even in the heat of the day. Anyone flying overhead would have been amused, as you can be from an aeroplane, by the juxtaposition of contrasting scenes. It is always funny seeing the frantic streams of traffic on the outskirts of the city you have just left but also, in the same glance, seeing the emptiness of the surrounding countryside. It isn’t just that there is an abrupt join between these two images, running along the seam of a motorway, but that they represent two conflicting things which know nothing of each other in an almost hostile way; the speeding cars drawn magnetically to the city centre seem to look down on the solitary vehicle fleeing to the countryside. Up above Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat you could have seen a little agglomeration of human bodies a little way away from a big house – abandoned for enigmatic reasons – but very close to a road where the cars heading for the cape and those returning from it passed each other continuously. It would have been difficult to make out the boundary which produced the mutual indifference between this group of people and these cars. The very low grey stone wall at the bottom of the garden threw very little shadow and it would not have been obvious from the air that the road was several metres below the level of the garden. That particular summer I had two acolytes: a lesbian girlfriend and one of those girls met by chance on an outing and who, because we liked her, became part of the group for the holidays. We spent very little time in the villa, except to sleep and to prepare meals, and our assiduous sunbathing had turned the terrace end of the garden into one of those focal meeting places that all households elect even when they are not necessarily the most convenient spots! New visitors arrived every day. With some, although of course not all, a bit of sunbathing or an afternoon siesta would see some developments. It was a sort of casual summer activity, like going out in a boat. Judith, who preferred women, still accepted anyone of either sex who showed willing with slightly detached good humour. She was a big girl, with the sort of body that is seen as beautiful because it is – as they say – all in proportion, fashioned by a pantograph that simply amplified the blueprint of a slim girl.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Every true progress in church history is conditioned by a new and deeper study of the Scriptures, which has "first, second, third, infinite draughts." While the Humanists went back to the ancient classics and revived the spirit of Greek and Roman paganism, the Reformers went back to the sacred Scriptures in the original languages and revived the spirit of apostolic Christianity. They were fired by an enthusiasm for the gospel, such as had never been known since the days of Paul. Christ rose from the tomb of human traditions and preached again his words of life and power. The Bible, heretofore a book of priests only, was now translated anew and better than ever into the vernacular tongues of Europe, and made a book of the people. Every Christian man could henceforth go to the fountain-head of inspiration, and sit at the feet of the Divine Teacher, without priestly permission and intervention. This achievement of the Reformation was a source of incalculable blessings for all time to come. In a few years Luther’s version had more readers among the laity than ever the Latin Vulgate had among priests; and the Protestant Bible societies circulate more Bibles in one year than were copied during the fifteen centuries before the Reformation. We must remember, however, that this wonderful progress was only made possible by the previous invention of the art of printing and by the subsequent education of the people. The Catholic Church had preserved the sacred Scriptures through ages of ignorance and barbarism; the Latin Bible was the first gift of the printing press to the world; fourteen or more editions of a German version were printed before 1518; the first two editions of the Greek Testament we owe to the liberality of a Spanish cardinal (Ximenes), and the enterprise of a Dutch scholar in Basel (Erasmus); and the latter furnished the text from which, with the aid of Jerome’s Vulgate, the translations of Luther and Tyndale were made.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  The loonies would be breaking out of the padded cells, breaking out onto the shuffleboard courts to conduct silent competitions with one another, they would be breaking into the medicine cabinets looking for opiates and tranquilizers, huddling with one another to give loony reassurances; they would be going out for booze, raiding adjacent homes for scotch and rye and gin and vodka and bourbon or Lavoris or Skin Bracer or Old Spice or Hai Karate. It was the perfect time to sneak in. So he did. He passed the Hoods’ house, without so much as a look—he was denying himself—and then he snuck onto the grounds. It was a cinch, as usual. It was so easy that when he came to the Silver Meadow bowling alley, Mike tested the door. Impulsively. It opened! These guys were ridiculously casual! In the glow of emergency lighting he surveyed the two lanes. Since they were automated, the reset button obviously wasn’t gonna work. And there were no balls to be found. Mike violated the first rule of bowling—proper foot attire—as he paced up and down the lanes. He had always wanted to walk right down to the pins. With a deft kick he tipped them over. And then set them up again. Knocked them over, set them up. It was too easy. Then he heard voices, the voices of authority, and took off. He slipped back out onto the grounds. This went on for a long while, this trespassing. He imagined himself and Wendy in a wood-paneled station wagon with two children in the way back, puking from motion sickness. He walked from building to building, was chased off by a security guard—waving an impressive flashlight—and returned to trespass some more. Everywhere New Canaan was sheathed in this ice, in this coating that seemed to render the stuff of his everyday life beautiful again—magic, dangerous, and new. He recognized trees in a way he never had, recognized the vast, arterial movement of roads in his neighborhood, recognized the gallant and stalwart quality of telephone poles, recognized even the warm support, in the occasional candlelit window, of community. Man against the elements, man. Everything was repackaged, sealed into a cellophane wrap that assured singularity and quality control. Mike was happy. And then he saw his first live wire. It was in the middle of the night, the very center of night, in the darkest part before dawn. The sound of a maple coming down was familiar enough now. Mike laughed as the branch tumbled to earth and with it the telephone pole, the wires, a couple of shrubs. These things fell across Valley Road in a considerable impasse. He roared with laughter, coyote of the suburbs. The severed wire was anything but still. It hissed, of course, and there was the gold-dusting of electrical sparks. And it danced. The jig of the dervish, of delirious and religious mad persons, of hyperactive children and their weary parents. The dance of the charmed snake.

• From Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

  Although I did not know it at the time, writers’ conferences often develop “stars” among the attendant writers—one or a few aspiring writers who, for one reason or another, are singled out (“discovered”) and, for the duration of the conference, are the envy of the other participants. They are the people or person on whom all the good things and tangible benefits of the conference appear to heap themselves, one after the other. On the second day at Bread Loaf, to my surprise, I became such a “star.” It was a discovery of precisely the sort I and, indeed, thousands of fledgling writers have dreamed about at thousands of writers’ conferences, before and since. Among the three-hundred-odd attendees at Bread Loaf that year, I had submitted a novel for the novel writing workshop. (There were some thirty people in the workshop, who met in a country style meeting house.) William Sloan, of the publishing house William Sloan Associates, began the opening session by saying that, after looking over all thirty-odd submissions in the novel category, the only one that “seemed to have any novelistic life whatsoever” was one that he was going to read a passage from. From my seat in the third row, I heard him begin to read out a section from the third “chapter” of my “novel”:2 Visiting a community center where a black band has just finished rehearsing, a young white man sits at an unused set of drums to begin playing an impassioned jazz percussion improvisation. When Mr. Sloan finished reading (he read it very well), he made the point from the podium that such writing could only come from someone who loved this sort of music. Then he asked if the author were in the room and could confirm this. Sheepishly I stood up and confessed that, actually, I disliked jazz as a musical form. My father had an extensive jazz collection, however, and for a brief while (two or three weeks) had played cornet with Cab Calloway’s band back in the early days of the Cotton Club. Yes, I had heard jazz all my life; for better or worse, I knew a fair amount about it. With one or two exceptions, however, I found it really distasteful—and the character who played it so well in my novel was a psychotically manipulative young white fellow, the villain of the piece, who subsequently maneuvered one after the other of the main black characters to their doom. Immediately, Mr. Sloan revised his statement: Such writing, then, could only come from strong feeling, one way or the other. People laughed. Things proceeded. But from having been singled out at the conference on the first day, soon I was being invited to the professional parties with the faculty. I remember several of the young writers around me telling me, “You’ve got it made.”

• From Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again (2021)

  The perception of women as suffering particularly from low desire may stem from a failure to distinguish between two different kinds of desire: spontaneous desire and responsive desire, with the latter – the desire featured on AskMen at the opening of this chapter – more common in women. The highly influential Rosemary Basson, director of the Centre for Sexual Medicine at the University of British Columbia, has put forward this view in the last two decades, on the basis of her work with patients. Spontaneous desire – the experience of a spontaneous yearning for and looking forward to sexual experiences – is less reliable for a woman, who may not be thinking ‘I want to have sex’, but may be open to it. Her desire may emerge, if the conditions are right. In this situation, a woman is experiencing first arousal, and then desire – not the other way around. This is a circular process, not a linear one. The conditions, however, are crucial; the current sexual context – the relationship, the power dynamics, the safety and trust, the reasons sex is occurring, the eroticism available, her own relationship to her body and pleasure, the presence or absence of stimuli that she finds arousing – are all critical in enabling or impeding the virtuous circle of arousal and desire. Context is everything, and context determines whether desire feels more spontaneous or more responsive. In one context – say, that of a couple familiar with one another, in a long-term relationship – sex might not be particularly on a woman’s mind (she might be in a ‘neutral state’, as Basson puts it), but a partner’s touch, in the right conditions, can elicit a reaction of curiosity and pleasantness, even if not active or urgent desire. Eventually, desire can build. In a different context, one of novelty, infatuation, and expectation – the build-up to seeing a partner after time apart, for example, or the giddy early stages of a new relationship – desire, on reunion, can feel utterly spontaneous, as if it comes out of nowhere. But it doesn’t come out of nowhere; the desire a woman experiences in this situation is no less responsive for this feeling of urgency and spontaneity; she is simply responding to a context of excitement and anticipation – a positive feedback loop. It too is arousal in context – and the context has been priming her for pleasure. No sexual desire is purely autonomous of context; desire is rarely not responsive – it’s just that we forget to think of certain conditions as context.

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  If you come by your own hand (or vibrator), it still “counts.” I discovered this sexual truth while watching a gay porn video at a queer film festival. As the star was being anally penetrated by his well-hung partner, he stimulated his penis. I was struck by the similarity to lesbian sex and the practice of touching one’s clitoris while being penetrated by a woman partner. That the star brought himself to orgasm during partner sex was depicted as totally hot. The theater (packed to overflowing with gay men) was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop—or a zipper. Notice how generously you treat yourself. Do you bring as much creativity to your own arousal as you would to your partners’? If you masturbate once a week, is that OK? Once a day? Three times a day? How much pleasure are you worth? Suggested Web LinksBETTY DODSON’S HOME PAGE www.bettydodson.com VULVA UNIVERSITY MASTURBATION CLASS www.houseochicks.com/vulvauniversity/masturbate/masturbation.html SOURCE OF QUOTE Stephanie Dowrick, Intimacy and Solitude (W. W. Norton, 1995), 5. chapter seven Communication and Finding Sex Partners Where do I find sex partners? I go after them. WHERE CAN YOU FIND SEX PARTNERS? Well, just about anywhere. At school, in sessions of academic conferences, at work, at a bar, at a dance club, at the gym, on the subway, at a sex party, in a women’s studies class, in your queer youth group, at a 12-step meeting, at church or synagogue, while doing community activism, through introductions from friends, via ex-lovers (and even the occasional ex-husband), and of course on the Internet. Where did I find her? She responded to an ad I placed. We went out a couple of times, but the timing just wasn’t right. Four years later, she was working in my department. Soon we were flirting, teasing, and trading little notes. I felt like a teenager again. Finally, I left her a note that said, “I would really like to kiss you.” Gyms are good places to meet women…. Praise the lycra! More specifically, you can meet sex partners while shopping for sex toys, at a Dyke March planning meeting, in line at the queer film festival, at the women’s basketball playoffs, on parent/teacher night at your child’s preschool, while marching in your local Pride parade, at the International Ms. Leather competition, at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, at Novice Night at your local S/M group, in your neighborhood queer bookstore, through your polyamorous lovers, and in the park while walking your dog.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  When Bruno and I were out for a walk after dinner one night, some intuition drove us to an area of grass on the edges of the Bois de Vincennes. It was a half-hearted lawn, bordered by a strip of concrete rather like a pavement, and with sparse, dry grass. There was a bench there. We started pressing up against each other on it, not really caring that the place was lit by a street light and quite a way from the edge of the forest. It could have been a scene from a film in the late forties, when the camera pans out and isolates the characters in a halo of light. When Bruno lifted up my dress and started bring me off energetically, the trees were out of focus. Even though we weren’t really aware how unwise this might turn out to be, we didn’t talk and we did try to make the space we occupied smaller by making only brief movements and taking it in turns to attend to each other. While his fingers delved between my thighs, I stayed curled up against him with my legs folded up as tightly as the position of my arms would allow. I had kept my top on. When it was my turn to bend over the bulge in his jeans, he sat motionless with his head on the backrest of the bench, his body stiff as a board. I undertook a conscientious blow-job, avoiding any changes of rhythm so as to prevent any sudden reactions. Suddenly, a second, powerful light came on in the distance, aimed towards us. For a moment, we froze expectantly, unable to identify exactly what this light was or where it was coming from. One of Bruno’s characteristic responses was to let himself be sucked off passively, almost as if it was against his will, sometimes even interrupting, then starting the process up again without any warning by grabbing his prick and aiming it at my mouth, as if he would almost have preferred entering by force. That is what he did then, bringing my head down by pushing on the nape of my neck. My lips and hand resumed their repetitive movement. None of the things that this brutal illumination of our soldered forms implied actually happened. The light that shone on the side of my face was so bright that it dazzled me through closed eyelids. I saw the peaceful fellation through to its conclusion in the half-silence of our breathing and with the black and gold splashes of light dancing before my eyes. Then we went home, sharing an amused feeling of perplexity we barely discussed. Had we been in the headlights of a car? A police car or a voyeur’s? Had a faulty floodlight come back on by itself? I never found an explanation for that perfectly focused light.

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  7. Stop being lazy about sex.You’ve probably been getting each other off the same way for years. You touch her; she touches you. You lick her; she licks you. Your fist goes in her vagina; her dildo goes in your anus. Over and over, year after year. Even a great program loses something in reruns. Next time you hop in the sack, declare your usual sexual activities off-limits. Unplug that tired old toy—or get a new one. 8. Try something different. If your sex play is exclusively genitally focused, take turns giving each other full-body massages. Try this exercise: Sit facing each other on the bed. Breathe in synch. Run your fingers along her face and neck. Or caress her hands. When was the last time you attended to your partner’s body nonsexually? Describe what you’re seeing and feeling. Offer her your appreciation. Take turns. 9. Switch. After all these years of being the top, have you secretly wanted to throw your heels in the air? Or have you nurtured a secret fantasy of giving your aggressive girlfriend a taste of her own medicine? ‘Fess up, now! 10. Talk—to your partner. Sure, your best friend can recite your marital disappointments blow for blow. But have you talked with your partner about your sexual frustrations? Are you afraid that if you tell her your complaints, she’ll tell you hers, and you’ll realize you’re not so happy after all, and soon you’ll be down $90 a week for couples counseling—forget that trip to London—and besides, you’ll just break up anyway…. Whew! Talk to your partner;tell her your erotic hopes and dreams. 11. Speak in positives; don’t dump. Unless you’ve negotiated a humiliation scene, telling your lover of six years that she bores you is not likely to improve your sex life! Remind her how much you love her.Tell her you’d like to have the sex life of your dreams—with her. Be specific. Know what you want and ask for it. (See chapter 7, Communication and Finding Sex Partners, for hints.) 12. Don’t assume you know what she likes, either. Ask. Then listen. 13. Be blissfully wedded…novices. Pick a sexual activity neither of you has ever done—and do it. Never played with anal beads? Rope bondage? Attended a live erotic performance? Have you thought of cross-dressing? 14. Find a role model. Whether in a self-help book or on your dyke rugby team, find someone who’s in an intimate relationship and has hot sex. Get details! 15. Face your demons. Bet this isn’t the first time your desire has fizzled out on a lover. If so, you’re not alone! Many people find intimate relationships daunting. Why does closeness snuff out your desire? Why do you want to bolt before the ink is dry on the rental agreement? Finding the answers will require some soul-searching, and maybe some help. Do you want an intimate sex life—really? You may have to work very hard to achieve that, but the results can pay off, big-time.

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  Sex ed pros like Betty Dodson, Annie Sprinkle, Carol Queen, Tristan Taormino, and others facilitate hands-on workshops designed to help participants become more sexually confident. Some teach particular skills, such as G-spot ejaculation, anal penetration, Tantric sexual practices, or the art of the striptease. All of them endorse masturbation as their core curriculum. Those who’ve devoted themselves to teaching others know that self-exploration is the key to sexual discovery. If you had the opportunity to attend a masturbation workshop, what would you like to learn? Would you wish to change some aspect of your masturbation practice? Would you want to devote more time and energy to thoroughly pleasuring yourself? Would you want to figure out how to get out of a rut—try a new position, a new toy, or a new style of stimulation? Tristan Taormino got just that opportunity. Writing for On Our Backs, Tristan reported on her solo session with Betty Dodson, the “mother of masturbation.” Intrepid journalist that she is, Tristan arranged a private lesson. “I was so excited about this adventure I nearly peed in my pants,” she reported. “I was going to touch myself for Dr. Betty Dodson!” 3 Like any responsible Ph.D., Betty began the session by taking a client history—in this case, talking to Tristan about her masturbation habits and practices. “I’ve been jerking off since I was 4 years old, so I was pretty comfortable with it, but I still believed that I could benefit from Betty’s expertise. You can never be too rich or too sexually skilled.” Confessing her citizenship in the Prozac nation, Tristan told Betty that she’d had difficulty reaching orgasm lately and would like to try coming on her back, rather than her tried-and-true method of lying on her stomach. Intimacy—closeness to yourself in times of solitude or closeness to others in moments of sharing and connecting—reflects your inner world as almost nothing else does. And intimacy begins from the inside; it begins with your own self. STEPHANIE DOWRICK Betty led Tristan through a genital self-examination in which she praised Tristan’s shaved cunt, coached her as she began to touch herself, and offered up a basket of toys for Tristan’s edification, including a Crystal Wand (the S-shaped Lucite dildo designed for G-spot stimulation), a Hitachi Magic Wand, and a barbell that resembles the Kegelcisor, designed by Betty herself. So what happened? Tristan earned an A+ in pelvic thrusting, but got a big “needs improvement” in the breathing department. Betty also pointed out that Tristan’s reliance on extreme direct clitoral pressure was self-limiting; if she could train herself to respond to other forms of stimulation, Tristan would be a more “versatile” lover. Apparently, even the On Our Backs Adventure Girl could learn some new tricks! Tristan summed up the most important lesson of all: “Betty helped me remember something I knew, but sometimes tend to forget, especially when having really good sex with an amazing lover: The one person who holds the key to my pleasure is me.”

• From What My Bones Know (2022)

  On our second Christmas together, his mother gave me a bunch of clothing that I previously thought might be too revealing to wear to a family occasion (but if she wanted me to look cute and show off my whole derriere, then cool I guess), mugs and appliances and a salad bowl for our apartment, and a horde of other items, which all got blended together with the rest of his family’s maddening generosity. Joey continued his “You Better Love Christmas” campaign and gave me a wooden clock he’d crafted himself. It opened up to a ten-year calendar to plan our future. — Somehow we survived my crazy year of diagnosis and unemployment and meditation, and now, this would be our third Christmas together. I was excited to see what kinds of mischief he’d get up to this time. But after all the presents were opened and the wrapping paper crumpled into a bag, I still hadn’t received anything from him. That’s when he handed everyone in the family envelopes. Inside each of them was a puzzle piece. One Christmas years ago, when Joey and his siblings were little, their dad designed an elaborate treasure hunt for them to find their presents by following clues. The kids got really into it and started throwing these treasure hunts for one another. This year, Joey was taking up the tradition. We divided into two teams and started searching; there were clues designed for each family member. One required finding the Mirror of Erised from Harry Potter and looking into its reflection. That led to a clue based on a Rick and Morty joke, which led to a chess puzzle, which led to us changing the pitch on a series of musical notes until we realized they spelled C-A-B-B-A-G-E, inside which the next clue was hidden. The three-hour hunt required us to pick locks, sip liquor, look for clues in the Bible, and solve math problems. And then we all stumbled over one another up the stairs. On the door to his brother’s room was a large map of New York City with some index cards tacked to each side. Each of the cards listed key moments in our relationship: the first time he told me he loved me, the tour he’d taken me on of downtown New York, my old apartment. And that’s when I knew. When I solved the puzzle, the final clue told me—and me alone—to go to his grandmother’s house down the street. I started trembling and crying, and I couldn’t find my shoes anywhere, so Joey’s mother gently led me to the closet and put her own Uggs on my feet. I hiccuped with nervousness and excitement all the way down the street.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  I hope, later in the book, to do justice to the intoxication that overruns me when my mouth is filled by a limp member; one of the agents of this feeling is an identification of my pleasure with the man’s; the more he arches his body, the more emphatically he moans, gasps or whispers encouragement, the more I feel he is exteriorising the frantic calling coming from deep within my own genitals. For now, I must concentrate on describing the scene with Henri, given that I sucked him off with what he called astonishing ardour. How did I go about it? Following the instinctual pressure of his pubis against mine, did I let myself slip to his feet, guided down the length of his body by the persistent embrace of my arms, and then, kneeling before him did I, as I usually did, rub my face, cheeks, forehead and chin over a shape that by its form and hardness always reminds me of a darning egg? The light went out. Henri joined me on the threadbare mat and we curled up together at the bottom of the stairs, facing the lift. I extricated the object that was imprisoned behind the straining fly buttons and helped it assume the shape that suits with slow, regular movements of my hand. Then my head, bent between his legs, I continued the motion with a similar to-ing and fro-ing of my lips. The light came back on, suspending my progress. I felt the hammering of fear beating in my chest and ringing in my ears, its echoes reverberating as far as the pleasurable zones in my groin… But no sound followed the light. While we waited, I automatically kept my hand over his organ which was now too swollen to be put back where it belonged. Then, reassured, we settled more comfortably on the stairs. Some of the rules of fucking, especially if it is performed in a place that does not lend itself to excesses, are like the rules of courtesy: the partners take it in turns to devote themselves to the other’s body, temporarily keeping their own body out of reach, just like two people exchanging thanks or desultory compliments in a one-upmanship of unselfish attention. Henri’s fingers triggered a motion in my cunt like the connecting rod of a train, while I sat against the front of the stairs, taking only the surrounding light into my mouth and, although I still held his member in my hand, no longer rubbed it up and down. Then I considered myself satiated, and it was my turn to close my thighs and to bury my head back between his. Our movements took up no more space than our tightly joined bodies. The light went back on again two or three times. In the intervals between it was as if the darkness were hiding us in a crevice in the walls of the well formed by the lift shaft. The blaze of light whipped my forehead to make me suck more quickly. I now don’t remember whether Henri discharged by ‘day’ or by ‘night’. Some little patting movements with the flat of the hand to straighten out clothes and tidy hair. When Claude and I spent an evening with friends and I unexpectedly had a fuck – as I had that night – out of his sight, I couldn’t meet up with him again without feeling slightly awkward. I think it was probably the same for whoever was with me. Claude was waiting for us at the foot of the stairs; he pretended he had just come from another building. Henri thought he looked strangely. We gave up on the idea of finding the girl’s door.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  Before I came to know the games played on the paths of the Bois de Boulogne or the track at the porte Dauphine, my outings with Henri and with Claude allowed me to continue having these surreptitious petting sessions (pretty heavy some of them) in the public spaces of Parisian apartment blocks. At the witching hour when thieves are abroad, we disappeared into a group of buildings, looking for a friend’s apartment. Even though she was an artist and she always liked to appear very relaxed, rebellious even, she was bourgeois – we’re talking boulevard Exelmans here – and, on top of that, she was the girlfriend of the man who was Henri’s and my ‘boss’. Our aim is childish. We go and ring on the door, and beg her most sweetly to forgive us for disturbing her. The ulterior motive is that at least one of the boys will succeed in ramming his persistent prick into the depths of her little cushion of moist flesh, impregnated with the smell of sleep. But we still have to know exactly which building and on which floor the girl was sleeping. Claude, very sure of himself, volunteers to explore one of the buildings floor by floor, probably deliberately leaving Henri and myself to linger in another where our search proves fruitless. Henri is always tender in his movements, his fingers always seem slightly awkward as if he uses them more to establish things than to hold them. I am usually more forthright. Standing clamped together, we start by stroking each other’s buttocks. Mine are bare under my skirt. There is not much more of him than there is of me and I like to take a man’s arse in my hand, and to be able to put my arms right round him easily. I have been with tall, well-built men but I have never snubbed the seductions of small men. If a man’s size is comparable to my own, and I feel an equal division of physical strength in our embraces, I experience a very particular kind of pleasure, which probably includes the desire to feminise the man in question, even a narcissistic illusion: by holding him I can experience the same pleasure he has in holding me.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  We had sex for the first time in her bed, early one afternoon. We'd been dating for three weeks. I drove to her house with Beyoncé's Lemonade on the stereo, turned up until the dash vibrated. I knew what we were going to do. I was nervous when I walked in the door. I didn't want to be shy with her, but I couldn't shake it. She must have felt it, too. We lumbered through a greeting, small-talked. It was daylight, and her sheets were patterned in beige and white. There are no men here, I remember thinking. We could be anything. When she lifted her T-shirt over her head, there were three freckles along the ridge of her collarbone, dark as ink and evenly spaced. Orion's Belt. We would find our way. I'd set an alarm on my phone so I wouldn't be late to pick up June, after. I wondered if anyone at school would notice that I was different. Was I different? Was I the same person I'd been all along, before that afternoon, before that spring, before jury duty? June and I stopped for eggs at the grocery store. She wanted cherries too, and I let her pick out a bag of them. At home we made dinner, put unicorn Band-Aids on each other for fun, waited for Brandon. He didn't have to work that night, so he'd be home to eat with us. […] June helped set the table, as she was learning how to do. Brandon made a salad. I warmed beans and boiled seven-minute eggs, rinsed the cherries and piled them in a bowl. We sat together around our table with its stack of bills at one end and mail-in ballots for the 2016 primaries. June spat cherry pits onto her plate, gleeful, her face and hands splotched with hot-pink juice.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  Who doesn’t have somewhere amongst their memories some of those voracious kisses, those exchanges of tongues which suddenly made full use of their complement of muscles, their great length and their monstrous adhesion, exploring each other as well as the relief of their partner’s entire mouth and lips? And didn’t this obscene deployment happen on some doorstep, at the foot of the stairs in an apartment block or in the corner of a porch, just where the light switches are which, of course, you hadn’t used? Adolescents rarely have somewhere they can call their own, and so their carnal displays take place in semi-public places such as side doors, stairwells and landings. I have referred above to the need – felt most keenly by the urban pubescent population – to establish their own intimate sphere within forbidden spaces. The sexual instinct that civilisation has made secret finds its first spontaneous expression not behind a closed bedroom door but in places we pass through, that belong to everyone and where courtesy reaches its peak of reserve: ‘Good morning. Good evening. I’m so sorry. After you…’ Etc. The number of times I have had a breast mauled by clumsy hands in the exact spot where my neighbour usually holds the door for me. Even once I had become an emancipated adult, I still sometimes displayed sufficient masochistic impatience to let myself be manhandled like a heavy bag in a tiled hallway lit by the street lights filtering while I sat on the radiator with my knees under my chin and the cast-iron tubes digging a little further into the flesh of my buttocks with every slam. As a result, shouldn’t we be asking ourselves whether the taste for transgression which encourages adults to choose this sort of place, and other even more public and uncomfortable ones, to undertake the sexual act, whether this derives from some so-called ‘primary’ transgression, and whether their ‘perversity’ should not be put down to a venal immaturity?

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  Going through into the back room where the peep-show is going on is like arriving late at the theatre. You are plunged into darkness, in a circular corridor lined with ‘boxes’. You need coins not to tip any usherettes but to raise the screen which hides the central stage where a girl or a couple undergo a series of unbelievably slow contortions. It is so dark in the little kiosk that I have never been able to see a thing, not even the walls; which amounts to being in a void. There is, though, a faint bluish light coming from the stage, and a beam of this light settles on the base of the member that I have just taken in my mouth, so that the perceptible space around me is reduced to this section of wrinkled flesh dotted with hairs, which I swallow rhythmically. Perhaps Éric has to go to the till to change a note for some more coins. Having turned towards the window, I then don’t recognise the hands which start smoothing over my exposed buttocks; I can believe that both the hands and indeed the buttocks are far, far away from me, also on the other side of the screen. Just after we go into the kiosk, we feel each other blindly, our eyes focused on the show which we talk about. We agree that the girl has a nice pussy. The guy is a bit too cutesey. Éric would really like to watch the girl and me bringing each other off. I ask whether we could meet up with her afterwards, etc. Then we are taken up in the acceleration of our own movement; the couple in the blue light becomes less real; they are merely the distant, almost subconscious projection of the images conjured in the minds of those busying themselves in the dark. The shadow bent over my back lets out a hoarse ‘twang’ as it smacks more firmly against my arse. The fantasy exchange between the show and the real action, when you fuck while watching a peep show, is not as fluid as what happens when you watch a video or a film on television, occasionally releasing your own grip to follow the action on the screen, and using it as a pretext for changing position. While the flickering pixels blur boundaries so that the space they delineate becomes almost an extension of the space you are in, the window at a peep-show is a hiatus which substantiates the separation between the two symmetrical parts, one that can be crossed but which remains considerable. Two further points: pornographic films have a story-line which, however formulaic, hold your attention, whereas the action in a peep-show evolves very little; finally, you can watch a film continuously or spend the night in front of the television, but the bottomless kiosk has a limit which is attained when the timer runs out.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  The second conclusion is that natural spaces do not feed the same fantasies as urban spaces. Because the latter is by definition a social space, it is a territory in which we express a desire to transgress codes with our exhibitionist/voyeuristic impulses; it presupposes the presence of others, of fortuitous looks to penetrate the aura of intimacy which emanates from a partially naked body or from two bodies soldered together. Those same bodies out under the clouds, with only God as their witness, are looking for the opposite sensation; not to make others come into the pocket of air in which their rapid breathing mingles, but, thanks to their Edenic solitude, to let their pleasure spread as far as the eye can see. The illusion there is that their ecstasy is on the same scale as this expanse, that the body that houses them is dilating to infinity. Perhaps the tipping into unconsciousness known as the petite mort is felt more keenly when the bodies are in contact with the earth, teeming with invisible life and in which everything is buried. Granted, most of my masturbatory fantasies take place in urban settings (apart from those already mentioned, the following is often called up: a man in a packed Métro train presses his flies up to my buttocks and manages to hitch my clothes up enough to slip his dick in; his manoeuvre is not lost on other men who move through the crowds to take his place; the carriage is divided between those taking pleasure and those taking offence, the factions start arguing …: go find a more Parisian fantasy!), and I managed to make do with the hard shoulders of main roads and the car parks of the capital. Even so, when all is said and done, I think I prefer vast open spaces. In fact, at night cities give you the illusion of vastness. When Claude and I started living together, we would get home late to our little apartment in the suburbs, I would walk ahead of him and, without any warning, would lift my skirt up over the naked globe, not as an invitation for him to fuck me there (I don’t think we ever did), nor to shock a potential passer-by, but to breathe in the road around me, a cool balm for my quivering crack. In fact, I wonder whether the men of trees and car parks, by their sheer numbers and their shadowy nature, aren’t made of the same substance as space, whether I didn’t just rub myself up against shreds of the same fabric as air though with a slightly closer weave. More specifically: I have an unrivalled ability to find my way on an unfamiliar road. Perhaps the aptitude to pass from one man to another within a group, or to navigate – as I did at certain times in my life – between a number of different relationships, perhaps they belong to the same family of psychological predispositions as a sense of direction.