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 A Way of Being (1980)

  Frustration, anger, and disappointment because of the unmet expectations are both experienced and—in the freedom of the climate—expressed. The gurus have not provided the answers! There is the extreme discontinuity of the statements. Each person functions separately, without paying attention to others’ statements or hearing what has been said. There is the desire to do something, anything, rather than stay with the unknown and the anxiety it creates. There is the desire for quick solutions that would take care of everything. The large group becomes paralyzed when it tries consciously to make specific choices, such as whether to break into groups. Only later does it recognize that it oozes along, organically, making few clear, conscious choices. There is the excitement of being part of a fluid process whose outcome is unknown. (This is why the best of presentations seems pale by comparison.) There is the desire to participate, to give, to initiate. There is a beginning sharing of significant experience. There is the recognition that the resolution of the situation lies within the power of the group, exhibiting itself through the spontaneous functioning of each person. The middle portion of the process might be called the working portion. During this portion, which, of course, is not clearly demarcated, individuals begin to use the sessions for expression of more feelings about themselves and the group, their personal problems and concerns. There is a beginning willingness on the part of the group to listen and to hear. The speakers, though talking of highly personal things, are unwittingly speaking for many others in the audience. Thus, even though only a small minority are able to obtain “air time,” many persons find comfort and help in discovering that their own problems are being voiced by the speaker. This recognition of so many common feelings and experiences lays the foundation for the sense of community that is building. In the final portion of the process, the whole group is able to give its undivided attention to one person, if necessary. There is a sense that “we are together.” Individuals begin to talk about how they will deal with their new learnings in the “back-home” situation—in marriage, on the job, with colleagues, with students. A majority of the crowd of eight hundred has jelled into a cooperative community, although some are skeptical, and others are openly opposed to what is going on. But the individuals experience their own strength. They have struggled through to a successful process of decision- making. They feel together. STAFF FUNCTION AND THE DYNAMICS OF THE LARGE GROUP The Staff as Participants

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “What’s the matter!” I asked. “Matter!” he repeated scornfully, “I don’t believe there’s a place in the hull God d—d town big enough to show our double-crown Bills! Not one: not a place. And I meant to spend ten thousand dollars here in advertising the great Hatherly Minstrels, the best show on earth: they’ll be here for a hull fortnight and by God, you won’t take my money: you don’t want money in this dead-and-alive hole!” The fellow amused me: he was so convinced and outspoken that I took to him. As luck would have it I had been at the University till late that day and had not gone to the Gregory’s for dinner: I was healthily hungry: I asked Mr. Dingwall whether he had dined? “No, Sir”, was his reply, “Can one dine in this place?” “I guess so”, I replied, “if you’ll do me the honor of being my guest, I’ll take you to a good porterhouse steak at least” and I took him across to the Eldridge House, a short distance away, leaving a young friend, Will Thomson, a doctor’s son whom I knew, in my place. I gave Dingwall the best dinner I could and drew him out: he was, indeed, “a live wire” as he phrased it and suddenly inspired by his optimism the idea came to me that if he would deposit the ten thousand dollars he had talked of, I could put up hoardings on all the vacant lots in Massachusetts Street and make a good thing out of exhibiting the bills of the various travelling shows that visited Lawrence. It wasn’t the first time I had been asked to help advertise this or that entertainment. I put forward my idea timidly, yet Dingwall took it up at once: “if you can find good security, or a good surety”, he said, “I’ll leave five thousand dollars with you: I’ve no right to, but I like you and I’ll risk it.” I took him across to Mr. Rankin, the banker, who listened to me benevolently and finally said: “Yes”, he’d go surety that I’d exhibit a thousand bills for a fortnight all down the chief street on hoardings to be erected at once, on condition that Mr. Dingwall paid five thousand dollars in advance, and he gave Mr. Dingwall a letter to that effect and then told me pleasantly he held five thousand and some odd dollars at my service.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I returned to my chair to think, and soon found the solution. Next day I again crouched before the girl’s legs, choking with emotion. I put my pencil near her toes, and reached round between her legs with my left hand as if to get it, taking care to touch her calf. She shrieked, and drew back her legs, holding my hand tight between them, and cried: “What are you doing there!” “Getting my pencil”, I said humbly, “it rolled.” “There it is”, she said, kicking it with her foot. “Thanks” I replied, overjoyed, for the feel of her soft legs was still on my hand. “You’re a funny little fellow”, she said, but I didn’t care; I had had my first taste of Paradise and the forbidden fruit—authentic heaven! I have no recollection of her face: it seemed pleasant; that’s all I remember. None of the girls made any impression on me but I can still recall the thrill of admiration and pleasure her shapely limbs gave me. I record this incident at length, because it stands alone in my memory, and because it proves that sex-feeling may show itself in early childhood. One day about 1890 I had Meredith, Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde dining with me in Park Lane and the time of sex-awakening was discussed. Both Pater and Wilde spoke of it as a sign of puberty; Pater thought it began about 13 or 14 and Wilde to my amazement set it as late as 16. Meredith alone was inclined to put it earlier. “It shows sporadically”, he said, “and sometimes before puberty.” I recalled the fact that Napoleon tells how he was in love before he was five years old with a school-mate called Giacominetta, but even Meredith laughed at this and would not believe that any real sex-feeling could show itself so early. To prove the point, I gave my experience as I have told it here, and brought Meredith to pause: “very interesting”, he thought, “but peculiar!” “In her abnormalities”, says Goethe, “Nature reveals her secrets”; here is an abnormality, perhaps as such, worth noting. I hadn’t another sensation of sex till nearly six years later when I was eleven, since which time such emotions have been almost incessant. My exaltation to the oldest class in arithmetic got me into trouble by bringing me into relations with the headmistress, Mrs. Frost, who was very cross and seemed to think that I should spell as correctly as I did sums. When she found I couldn’t, she used to pull my ears and got into the habit of digging her long thumb-nail into my ear till it bled. I didn’t mind the smart; in fact, I was delighted, for her cruelty brought me the pity of the elder girls who used to wipe my ears with their pocket-handkerchiefs and say that old Frost was a beast and a cat.

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

  There was no dramatic invasion; they arrived in small groups, gradually infiltrating the region over a very long period. 3 During their travels, they would have seen the ruins of a great civilization in the Indus Valley, which at the height of its power (c. 2300–2000 BCE) had been larger than either Egypt or Sumer, but they made no attempt to rebuild these cities, because like all pastoralists, they despised the security of settled life. A rough, hard-drinking people, Aryans earned their living by stealing the herds of rival Aryan tribes and fighting the indigenous peoples, the dasas (“ barbarians”). 4 Because their agricultural skills were rudimentary, they could support themselves only by cattle raiding and plunder. They owned no territory but let their animals graze on other people’s lands. Driving relentlessly eastward in search of new pastures, they would not wholly abandon this peripatetic life until the sixth century BCE. Continually on the move, living in temporary encampments, they left no archaeological record. For this early period, therefore, we are entirely dependent on ritual texts that were transmitted orally and that allude, in veiled, riddling fashion, to the mythology that the Aryans used to give shape and significance to their lives. In c. 1200 a group of learned Aryan families began the monumental task of collecting the hymns that had been revealed to the great seers ( rishis ) of old, adding new poems of their own. This anthology of more than a thousand poems, divided into ten books, would become the Rig Veda, the most sacred of four Sanskrit texts known collectively as Veda (“knowledge”). Some of these hymns were sung during the Aryans’ sacrificial rituals to the accompaniment of traditional mimes and gestures. Sound would always have sacred significance in India, and as the musical chant and the enigmatic words stole into their minds, Aryans felt in touch with the mysterious potency that held the disparate elements of the universe together in a cosmic coherence. The Rig Veda was rita, divine order, translated into human speech. 5 But to a modern reader these texts do not seem at all “religious.” Instead of personal devotion, they celebrate the glory of battle, the joy of killing, the exhilaration of strong drink, and the nobility of stealing other people’s cattle. Sacrifice was essential to any ancient economy. The wealth of society was thought to depend on gifts bestowed by the gods who were its patrons. Humans responded to this divine generosity by giving thanks, thus enhancing the gods’ honor and ensuring further benefaction.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  “Simon.” I encourage his contact, placing a firm hand to his cheek. After all, he’s part of the deal. The stiff bristle of his short beard crackles under my palm and tingles against my face for an instant before I let go. The skinny bitch of a waitress who’s ignored me since I arrived shows up with surprising speed. “Can I get y’all somethin’ ta drink?” She snaps her gum and makes big eyes at Simon. 280 Alice Gray He laces his fingers together and leans across the table on his forearms. “Jameson neat, all around.” A quick glance at Ava tells me she finds Simon’s effect on the waitress as funny as I do. The waitress doesn’t seem to notice; she only has eyes for Simon. With an exaggerated turn, she bounces off toward the cocktail station. “Ronnie.” Simon turns his attention my way and takes my hand in both of his. “How was your flight?” “The flight was as good as you could expect for someone who hates to fly.” Ava squeezes closer to me and lays her head on my shoulder. “I hate flying, too. Simon says it’s because I’m a control freak.” Panic flashes through me in warm rush. Things are moving too fast. “Here you go.” The waitress deals out three cheap cardboard coasters with a matching trifecta of drinks. “Twenty-four dollars.” Simon slides a sinuous arm around his back to reach for his wallet. The plastic card snaps against the laminated tabletop. “Start a tab.” The waitress’s resin nails click when she peels his card up. “Of course.” She gives him a mischievous smile before twirling away. Pent-up excitement flows like an ocean current under us. Simon holds up his glass. “A toast. To new friends.” Ava and | hurry to raise our drinks. The clink of glass on glass is lost in the buzz of conversation around us. Some of the liquid spills over my hand, warm and cool at the same time. There is nothing cool about the whiskey as it runs down my throat. Simon slams his glass to the tabletop and swipes his thumb across his lips. ““Damn, that’s good.” His eyes are quicksilver in the dim light. I always pictured him with eyes as black as coal. It’s unsettling. Another reminder that I don’t really know these people I’ve traveled so far to see. A second round of drinks and the conversation flows like liquid gold, engaging, stimulating. Hands begin to wander under the table. My fingers on hers, hers on mine. She traces light circles against my palm, sending shivers rippling up my arm. The night’s entertainment takes the stage. Their appearance draws the focus of the audience forward. Anticipation spreads through the crowd. The drummer begins a low, steady beat. Guitars, languid and rhythmic, pour out the hypnotic notes of roots reggae. Ava squeezes my hand. She shifts until her lips are an inch from my ear. “Dance with me, Ronnie.” Simon Says 281

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  WHAT ARE THE PERSONAL RESULTS? What are the results? I would like first to give some living pictures of what happens when these attitudes exist, and then turn to the research findings. Dr. Anderson is a high school teacher whom I have come to know well. She teaches in a school that is a cross section of an urban community. She seems to be without pretense or façade or defensiveness. You can’t talk with her for five minutes without realizing that she thinks high school students are “the greatest.” I have a suspicion that she likes the troublemakers best of all. And the way she can move sensitively and empathically (in her blunt, direct manner) into the feelings and reactions of her students is uncanny. Her courses have been titled Psychology, Human Relations, and the like, but they would be better labeled Learning Experiences. The students discuss anything that concerns them—drugs, family problems, sex, contraception, pregnancy, abortion, dropping out, getting a job, the grading system—literally any topic. They have learned to trust her and one another, and the level of honesty and self-disclosure is amazing. At this point, some of you may be thinking, “O.K., O.K., perhaps they get help in their personal adjustment, but do they actually learn anything?” They do indeed. Miss Anderson is a tremendous reader, and her enthusiasm for books is contagious. Her students are literally “turned on” by the chance to read the books they want on the subjects that interest them. And what books they choose! Some of the students are classed as slow learners, but they are reading Martin Buber, Sóren Kierkegaard, Erich Fromm, my books, Philip Slater, Wilhelm Reich, John Holt, A. S. Neil (Summerhill)—you name it, they have read it. People tell her that these books are far too advanced for high school students: she just laughs and says that they love to tackle difficult challenges. They also choose the films they want to see, and plan community trips. They are excited, personally involved learners. Miss Anderson has received the oddest and most flattering compliment a teacher could receive. In her school, if a student is found to have any connection with drugs, he or she is suspended and not permitted to attend school. There are quite a number of these. But they have found that if they skirt the parking lot, go in a back door, and take a circuitous route, they can reach Miss Anderson’s room without being observed. They know she won’t throw them out, so they sneak

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  feeling, and gut levels, with a clear awareness of the different aspects of this unified learning. I suspect that in its purest form, this occurs rarely, but perhaps learning experiences can be judged by their closeness to or remoteness from this definition. Let me give an example closer to the academic world. Roger Hudiburg (undated), a teacher in a Colorado junior high school, describes a number of the effects of his attempts to be open in his classroom. He says, “Openness scares the hell out of me—it also makes me feel good.” In its effect on learning he speaks of the shared learning through inquiry and discovery: Excited girl peering through microscope at snow crystals: “Wow, look at this, Teach!” Boy experimenting with electromagnetism inadvertently produces copper carbonate: “What’s this weird blue stuff? Where’d it come from?” He follows this for weeks, happy and excited. Others are surprised when they put alcohol and salt in snow and frost forms on outside of container: someone says “ice cream!”—they learn much more than this, for they fool around for days; in fact they turn the whole class on to their “freezer.” Students do learn in an open environment. They learn about the excitement and importance of discovery, about their capabilities, their limits, self-discipline, and responsibility. They also learn facts. How many? Who knows? I just know that they learn some facts. They know this, too. I don’t think I every really knew this before, and I don’t think that they did either. It makes me feel good to really know something and to know down deep that we are learning. Openness. . . . You’ve got to experience it, live it, do it! To me, this description sounds like learning by the whole person. It has plenty of cognitive elements—the intellect is working at top speed. It certainly has feeling elements—curiosity, excitement, passion. It has experiential elements— caution, self-discipline, self-confidence, the thrill of discovery. So it is another example of what I am endeavoring to speak about. THE CURRENT SITUATION I am deeply concerned with what is going on in American educational institutions. They have focused so intently on ideas, have limited themselves so completely to “education from the neck up” that the resulting narrowness is having serious social consequences. I think of a weekend attempt to close the communications gap at Columbia University—with trustees, administrators, students, and faculty participating. Some progress was made, but not much. It seemed as though the faculty could communicate only intellectual ideas, while the students were expressing deep feelings about their education and about the institution. Following this weekend, one of the students, Greg Knox, wrote a letter (Lyon, 1971). He tells how, as a freshman, he had heard a talk saying that the goal of the student at Columbia was to become a “whole man,” and this thought “blew” his mind. He continues:

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Why do you smile?” he asked. “Because, sir, pay like water tends to find its level!” “What the devil d’ye mean by its level?” “The level,” I went on, “is surely the market price; sooner or later it’ll rise towards that and I can wait.” His keen grey eyes suddenly bored into me. “I begin to think you’re much older, than you look, as my nephew here tells me,” he said. “Put yourself down at a hundred a month for the present and in a little while we’ll perhaps find the ‘level,’” and he smiled. I thanked him and went out to my work. It seemed as if incidents were destined to crowd my life.... A day or so after this the taciturn steward, Payne, came and asked me if I’d go out with him to dinner and some theatre or other? I had not had a day off in five or six months so I said “Yes.” He gave me a great dinner at a famous French restaurant (I forget the name now) and wanted me to drink champagne. But I had already made up my mind not to touch any intoxicating liquor till I was twenty one and so I told him simply that I had taken the pledge. He beat about the bush a great deal, but at length said that as I was bookkeeper in place of Curtis, he hoped we should get along as he and Curtis had done. I asked him just what he meant but he wouldn’t speak plainly which excited my suspicions. A day or two afterwards I got into talk with a butcher in another quarter of the town and asked him what he would supply seventy pounds of beef and fifty pounds of mutton for, daily for a hotel; he gave me a price so much below the price Payne was paying that my suspicions were confirmed. I was tremendously excited. In my turn I invited Payne to dinner and led up to the subject. At once he said “of course there’s a ‘rake-off’ and if you’ll hold in with me, I’ll give you a third as I gave Curtis. The ‘rake-off’ don’t hurt anyone,” he went on, “for I buy below market-price.” Of course I was all ears and eager interest when he admitted that the ‘rake-off’ was on everything he bought and amounted to about 20 per cent. of the cost. By this he changed his wages from two hundred dollars a month into something like two hundred dollars a week.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  “You’ve scratched the wood!” he said, letting his mouth dangle open about an inch wider than usual. “I wanted to make sure I got all the paint off,” I said. “My God, you got all the paint off and half the wood!” I tried to explain to him that when people used the table, they’d have it right-side up and wouldn’t be able to see the scratches underneath, but he never did give this type of argument much credit. “You can’t strip!” he said from his kneeling position next to the table. His tone was one of both outrage and sorrow, but mainly outrage. “You cannot to save yourself strip!” Right about then two of our better customers, Mrs Deffinbaugh and Mrs Seilhamer, came wandering back into the stripping room, I guess to see what the commotion was about. I noticed them all right, permed hair and pressed outfits, but even their presence couldn’t dissuade me from doing what I'd already started to do. My pent- up frustration with life, the chemieals singing in my head, and my own. poor judgment had blended together into a perfect storm of misbehavior. “T can so strip,” I said. “Check it out.” And I began to glide through the room, swinging my butt, pouting and vamping. I imagined myself moving to the throbbing, brassy sound of that timeless classic “The Stripper”. My hand went to my goggles, which were strapped around my sweaty forehead, ripped them off, whirled them repeatedly overhead and tossed them at Mr Pickering. They missed him but horseshoed around one of the table’s upright legs, spun once and clattered down. Next I took off my rubber gloves, inch by inch, fondled them a bit and cast them aside. I never stopped moving; I’d seen this done before. Still in full strut, I removed my toolbelt, flipped it this way and that and dropped it at the ladies’ feet. Popeyed, they both sat back against the edge of a shipping crate and watched me intently. Mr Pickering stood up. He was watching me too, his permanent look of surprise more focused than I'd ever seen it. “James?” he said. But I couldn’t be stopped. I took off my workboots and socks and flung each in a different direction. I was wearing one-piece denim coveralls, and my hand found the zipper and tugged it down, lower and lower. When I got the zipper to waist-level, I stood straight and 360 Greg Fenkins

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

  132 People still dreamed of going on Crusade and liberating Jerusalem, but in an important development, holy warfare was beginning to merge with the patriotism of national war. 2 India: The Noble Path F or the Aryans who migrated to the Indian subcontinent, springtime was the season of yoga. After a winter of “settled peace” ( ksema ) in the encampment, it was time to summon Indra to lead them on the warpath into battle once again, and the priests performed a ceremony that reenacted the god’s miraculous birth. 1 They also chanted a hymn celebrating his cosmic victory over the chaos dragon Vritra, who had imprisoned the life-giving waters in the primal mountain so that the world was no longer habitable. During this heroic battle, Indra had been strengthened by hymns sung by the Maruts, the storm gods. 2 Now priests chanted these same hymns to fortify the Aryan warriors, who like Indra before his battles drank a draught of soma. At one now with Indra, exalted by the intoxicating liquor, they harnessed their horses to their war chariots in the formalized yug (“yoking”) ritual and set off to raid the villages of their neighbors, firm now in their conviction that they too were setting the world to rights. The Aryans regarded themselves as “noble,” and yoga marked the start of the raiding season, when they really lived up to their name. As for the pastoralists of the Near East, Indian Aryan ritual and mythology glorified organized theft and violence. For the Indo-Aryans too, cattle rustling needed no justification; like any aristocrats, they regarded forcible seizure as the only noble way to obtain goods, so raiding was per se a sacred activity. In their battles they experienced an ecstasy that gave meaning and intensity to their lives, performing thus a “religious” as well as an economic and political function. But the word yoga, which has such different connotations for us today, alerts us to a curious dynamic: in India, Aryan priests, sages, and mystics would frequently use the mythology and rhetoric of warfare to subvert the warrior ethos. No myth ever had a single, definitive meaning; rather, it was constantly recast and its meaning changed. The same stories, rituals, and set of symbols that could be used to advocate an ethic of war could also advocate an ethic of peace. By meditating on the violent mythology and rituals that shaped their worldview, the people of India would work as energetically to create a noble path of nonviolence ( ahimsa ) as their ancestors had promoted the sanctity of the warpath. But that dramatic reversal would not begin until almost a millennium after the first Aryan settlers arrived in the Punjab during the nineteenth century BCE.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  All the time, the other five men clicked intently, spellbound as she was, their cameras touching her, chasing the light along her curves, fondling her breasts and bringing the nipples to explosive sensitive peaks, molding the tight curve of her thighs and hips. She turned before them, showing her bare bottom, aware that if she bent only a little, they would see the spread lips of her treasure. But she kept that from them. Then, late in the afternoon, the light beyond the windows ruby and gold, she wore the last costume, a tattered white shift that left her breasts and almost all of her legs bare. Charlie had stripped down to a single band of white cloth, the idea being that she and he were slaves together to a wicked sultan. “Now, Desi,’ Mr Bentley said, his voice warm and breathless, “take off the dress.” She did not hesitate, her heart trilling with power and excitement, but she held them in the infinite compliance of her motion, not pulling it over her head but letting the thin straps fall from her shoulders and the fabric pool around her waist, standing to roll it over her hips and down. With a little gesture of submissive flirtation, Desi stepped quickly out of the white cotton and dropped it, finally naked before them. The light on her treasure thrilled her, their eyes, their desire, pulsed through her sex. She welcomed them, wanted them, soared into an ecstasy that their eyes would drink, their cameras record. Charlie’s hands rested on her hips as ripples of pleasure flowed from her treasure, through her core, her heart, her fingers and toes, and she came right there, immortal on their film. Scheherazade. That was who she was. The servant of these men and their mistress, and the thousand and one tales had only begun to be told. “Oh, baby!” Bobby exclaimed to her in the car on the way home. “That was the best. You’re incredible.” “T liked it,” Desi laughed, drunk beyond the wine. “I liked it a lot.” Mr Bentley, his gaze hot and flashing, had handed her a $100 tip. Dr Barlow gave her 50 and the other men pooled another 100. They wanted her to come back, but Desi didn’t commit. Another idea bloomed in her soul. Calendar Girl 485 “Bobby?” she asked. “You ever been to San Francisco?” “Once,” he said. “Why?” “We could go out there,” she said, resting her hand on his thigh as the car rumbled down the lane leading away from Bentley’s house. “I could be a model and you could be my photographer.” “That’s ...” he started to say and then he laughed. “Why not? You’re amazing and you make me amazing. Those pictures I took the other day — they’re the best I’ve taken — well, until today.”

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  “Oh, my God,” she said, helplessly, as he pushed particularly hard, and pressed the front of his abdomen (which she noticed was flatter than Martin’s, despite his being so much older, fifteen or forty-five years, though she had only briefly glimpsed Martin’s soft stomach through his unzipped and partly pulled down pants) against her clitoris, and she thought of a dolphin, as if she was still in an ocean, and how it butted against you or something when it liked you and The Dead End Fob 161 you swam with it; he (or maybe just his erection) was like a strong and slippery dolphin, rock hard but really responsive, and making that little chirping radar sound, which she now realized was coming from her own open mouth. “It’s good, it’s good,” she said, and again she hadn’t meant to say anything at all. Then, suddenly, he stopped moving, obviously could move no more without ending everything, which meant that she was on, it was up to her; and instinctively she wrapped around him, from the inside and outside: outside with her arms — and inside she had never known she had such flexibility, like when you realize you can bend a finger back all the way without breaking it, only this was better, had never known that she could be tender with a grown man, not just her baby sister or her old kitty cat Monkey, kissing and kissing them — she was passionate, that’s what she was, and why had it been embarrassing to say before now? Then coming with him felt like (she could not stop comparing things; it made her feel safer to do it, put things in perspective so she wouldn’t feel she had entered. an environment alien and disorienting — it was still her own life, she had not gone insane, you know?) coming with him felt like that trick where the magician pulls out a tablecloth and all the plates stay put: and she was the tablecloth, the table, and the plates. And he came, too, immediately after, or actually during, though she suspected he’d started a little ahead of her, could feel him doing that pulsing that, of course, came from his heart and had been weaker in her hand when it came from Martin; and Owen’s sound was bigger: Martin’s was like air going out of a balloon and Owen’s was like one bursting, a whole float in, say, the Puerto Rican Day Parade: or he was a terrorist exploding himself along with everything else, and she had made him into one; and that was so exciting that it made her come again, or maybe it was just the end of her first orgasm, an aftershock, like they say there are in earthquakes. “I can’t stop,” she said, and perhaps that was another trick, because she wanted it to continue and thought saying that might be the spell to make it so.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  “Here we go!” she concluded. Her pussy engulfed my face again, and I simultaneously felt her hand begin to fondle my cock. Fondle isn’t quite the word, she was also busy slapping it from side to side. But she finally settled for encircling the shaft with her fingers and sliding them up and down and around. I smiled inwardly. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t have much luck with this, as I prided myself on my ability to resist ejaculation. This is silly, I thought, she can’t possibly mean to come in my face and make me shoot my load at the same time. There’s no way she can do that. But Bossetta was oblivious to my reasoning; she was beginning to tap into a wisdom far beyond my own. She began to set down a rhythm that ran from her hand to her crotch and back again. She was working to realize her ultimate goal, and nothing could stop her. It was from this point onward that things became rather strange for me, and I wondered again if shortness of breath and her commanding tempo had combined to distort my view of reality. Prades toaPirst 465 It was not a total hallucination, I was aware that the hotel room was still there around us, but everything else suggested that we were somewhere on a mountain top together with a temple in the background, and that she was a goddess who was somehow both consuming and nourishing my spirit. Except that she was a goddess who was also a demon with tentacles, and two of her tentacles were concentrated on possessing both my face and my cock. Her aroma became ever more alluring and irresistible, and I could tell from the clasp of her hand that my cock had grown larger and harder than ever before, both in length and girth. This added to my confusion, since I couldn’t imagine how she had done it. It was as though she had dug inside of me through some secret gateway and taken over part of my body. I was also still hoping to mount her from behind afterwards, and I wanted nothing to detract from my prowess when the time came. There are orgasms, and then there are orgasms. The most usual kinds are the ones that after a certain period of stroking and love-making you yourself have. They work fine, though they are expectable and to some extent unexceptional. And then there are the other orgasms, the ones you don’t have, the ones that suddenly sneak up and have you.’This was one of those orgasms. I was totally in the power of this goddess-demon who showed no sign of relenting or relinquishing her control over me. If anything, her passion had grown even stronger, and I felt the warning signs from between my legs as her massage grew ever more powerful.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  Itd been a while since Jeannie had played at being extraverted Patty, but she hadn’t lost her chops. When Gene stripped her of the blue dress she’d exchanged with her twin for her pink one, she remembered to arch her back and pose for him, just as Patty might do. When he peeled off his white tee and dropped his blue shorts to his feet, she saw he was identical to his brother, right to the fair, sparse down on his balls. Certainly, his cock was every bit as impressive and as rock solid as her husband’s. His lips on hers were soft, and his tongue, as it tasted her lips and then her mouth, was luscious and questing, so like Pat’s, so familiar, but not Pat’s, so different. She was excited, and secretly shamed by how extra wet her pussy was when his tongue slid along her slit, in agonizingly slow strokes, and then dipped inside. He moaned. She felt it more than heard it, a low, deep exhalation that warmed her inside and out. “T love it when you lick my — um, my cunt,” she said. “Then [ll eat you until you can’t come any more,” he said. Inwardly, she groaned at the idea. But as he laved and nibbled and sucked her to one orgasm after another, Jeannie groaned out loud, with gusto. rae In the other bridal suite, Pat rolled Patty on to her belly. They were both naked and highly aroused from foreplay. “T want your ass, Jeannie,” he said. “I know how much you love it.” Patty shivered. Who’d have thought her fearful sister would’ve embraced this dirty act with such gusto. Still, she wasn’t about to be found out and so, though anal wasn’t her favourite, she giggled with delight and parted her legs wider, to welcome him. She hoped he’d take his time but he lubed his cock and leaned close, rubbing the head up and down her crack until it “caught” at her back entrance. “You want it?” he asked. “T want it.” “Tell me.” “T want it.” Patty paused, then added, “A lot.” “What do you want? Tell me. You know I like to hear you talk dirty.” “JT want your — um — prick in me, in my bum, in deep.” “Me too! I love to do your bum — Jeannie.” He leaned in, pushing _his way slowly inside her until she was full to the hilt with him. “To it,” he said. “Do it like you know I like it.” Oops! Jeannie hadn’t told her about this. He liked something that her sister did, something special, when he fucked her ass. Damn! 196 Madeline Moore

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The distinctively Florentine flavour of the five stories involving Bruno and Buffalmacco stems mainly from their being placed within specifically Florentine contexts, no opportunity being missed to pinpoint the exact location of particular narrative episodes. By contrast, there is one story, that of Monna Belcolore and the priest of Varlungo (VIII, 2), where the setting in the Florentine countryside ( contado ) is secondary in importance to its dazzling display of Florentine verbal wit. The wordplay here is a vital component of the narrative itself, which moves swiftly along by way of a series of lively and intricately assembled effusions of verbal humour, from the initial description of Monna Belcolore to the equivocal final paragraph, with its account of her eventual conversion to the priest’s way of thinking. Florentinisms and double meanings pour forth in a constant stream, and even the names of the characters contribute to the tale’s overall comic effect. Apart from Belcolore herself and her slow-witted husband, Bentivegna del Mazzo, the narrative includes a whole gallery of other characters whose sole raison d’être is to heighten the humorous effect by the very sound of their odd and at times equivocal Florentine names. And similar considerations apply to the various references to rustic pursuits, such as Belcolore’s flair for singing and dancing and the priest’s gardening skills that account for the curious presents he sends to the object of his lustful passion. No translation can convey the uniquely Florentine rustic tone of the original text, which is one of the most brilliant examples of humorous writing in medieval literature. Wordplay of a different order is to be found in the story of Friar Alberto (IV, 2), set in Venice, where the vain and foolish Donna Lisetta is variously referred to, by antonomasia, as Donna mestola, Donna zucca al vento, Madama baderla , and Donna pocofila . The conversion of such titles into fairly close English equivalents presents no great difficulty: Lady Numbskull, Lady Bighead, Lady Noodle, Lady Birdbrain. But Boccaccio confronts his translators with the most serious problems of all in the tale of Friar Cipolla (VI, 10), whose lengthy and ingenious sermon is shot through from beginning to end with puns and double meanings. Most of Boccaccio’s Italian editors maintain, with some reason, that the catalogue of far-flung places which Cipolla claims to have visited is mainly a list of localities in and around Florence, to which the writer has added a few of his own, such as Truffa (‘Swindleland’), Buffia (‘Prankland’) and terra di Menzogna (‘Spoofland’). The present translation dispenses with the possible Florentine associations of the passage. Truffia and Buffia are converted into Funland and Laughland, and terra di Menzogna into Liarland, thus hinting at a possible extension of the friar’s globetrotting to include the Baltic region and the Celtic fringe.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  “Hmm. You should come east for grad school. Gotta go. Do take extra precautions, won’t you?” When I put down the receiver, my heart was pounding. I thought it had gone all right. Hugo sounded cheerful when he hung up, but how could I know? I immediately phoned Anaïs. “That’s interesting Hugo called you so soon,” she said. At her request, I recounted my conversation with him, sentence by sentence. “You are a great actress, Tristine!” I felt triumphant, as when I’d won first place in a national high school acting competition. I started to ask Anaïs why Hugo believed I’d transferred from UCLA to USC, but she interrupted, “Can you come tomorrow evening to hear Rupert’s quintet?” Was she really inviting me? Or was she covering because Rupert had just walked in? I said uncertainly, “I’ll need your address.” “I’m going to put Rupert on the phone to give you directions,” she replied. “The music begins at six, but you should come earlier. You and I can go over some correspondence. Plan to stay for dinner before the music.” I was becoming a part of Anaïs’s life! “How long do you think it will take me to drive to Sierra Madre?” I asked. “Oh, we haven’t lived in Sierra Madre for two years!” “Did the forestry service relocate Rupert?” I asked. “No! He’s no longer with the Forest Service. He’s teaching secondary school in Hollywood, near our apartment here.” [image file=image_rsrc3R3.jpg] Anaïs’s faux Tudor building was in the flats near Fountain, a Nathanael West neighborhood: Swiss chalets next to Egyptian temples, Mediterranean terraces next to Moorish turrets. As I circled block after block for a parking space, I became increasingly disenchanted with Rupert for having left a cabin in nature for this congested grid of tired apartment buildings. Then it hit me—as I nearly hit an Impala pulling out of a parking space—Rupert was no longer a forest ranger. From what Anaïs had said, he hadn’t been one for several years, so he and Anaïs no longer needed to pretend they were married. Yet Rupert had introduced himself to me as Anaïs’s husband at Holiday House. Why? The only people who had heard him had been Christopher Isherwood, his boyfriend, Renate, and me. None of us would have cared that Anaïs and Rupert were shacking up. That’s what anyone who was cool was doing these days, according to Hugh Hefner. I added this to my list of things I wanted to ask her. After I parked and arrived at the apartment, Anaïs opened her cross-beamed door, wearing a long, embroidered caftan. “Please have a seat,” she said, indicating a nubby brown couch not unlike the one buried in my mother’s living room. “It’s awful, I know,” Anaïs apologized, “but Rupert refuses to part with it. He can be impossibly bullish.”

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  Unfortunately, this only makes him groan and fuck himself harder. I actually think he’s really going to come that quickly; I can see his bum cheeks clenching and he’s making far too much noise and soon he’s babbling: “God, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I need to come so bad, God, I’ve been thinking about your tits all afternoon.” I yank on his arm and get his hand away from his cock as punishment. He squirms with frustration, but doesn’t try to start it up with his other hand, as though he were just waiting for me to stop him and a show of stopping him is enough. “All afternoon?” “Yeeessss,’ he whines, and I want to turn him around so much. I want to see his gorgeous face all crumpled with impatience and lust, and then I want to watch him tug his cock until it gleams. “Ts this something you’ve done before?” Oddly, I feel like a doctor. It isn’t a terrible feeling by any means. “What? Think about ... your tits .. . or jerk off at work?” That last bit comes out in a rush, and sets me glowing. Oh, to think of him doing himself in one of the stalls or in his cubicle under his desk! My clit twinges in sympathy. “Usually I... Usually I have to ... you know. Because I’ve been thinking about you.” “What do you think about me doing?” “T catch you. I catch you playing with yourself. Playing with your nipples with your shirt open and your skirt up.” Oh Jesus, that’s nice. I’ve done it before, too, in my office. With the door locked, of course, but sometimes I’m daring enough to leave the blinds open, hoping that some beefy window cleaner will chance by and see me as lewd as can be, legs spread open, fingers strumming my clit to a great big juicy orgasm. 324 Charlotte Stein I need to come so bad now that I can feel my clit straining against the material of my panties, and I’m wet enough to feel it when I move. Maybe I’ll make him watch while I bring myself off with that little buzzing dildo I keep in my bag. Maybe I'll make him lick my clit with his hands tied behind his back so that he can’t do himself. Maybe I’ll let him fuck me over the desk, great handfuls of my tits in his big hands, some window cleaner watching with his cock in his fist. Oh the possibilities are endless, when you’ve got a slut on your hands.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  “Lick your fingers, first,’ I tell him, and he does so real quick without any kind of teasing show’ But then he waits, he waits, and that’s even better. “Now gently pinch and stroke them.” He’s not a bad boy at all; I was wrong. He’s very, very good. He licks and strokes and thumbs my nipples, sometimes lightly pinching, other times just circling, ever slick and smooth. The ache from those tight tips soon transfers itself to my swollen clit and my empty, creaming pussy, but I squeeze my thighs together against it. “Suck them,” I say, and he immediately falls to it, licking and sucking and mouthing until I’m shivering with pleasure. I even let out an “Oh yes, just like that,” and he groans into the flesh of my breast. It makes it so that I can’t wait any longer. I slip my knickers down while he’s still licking and playing with my breasts, and then I pull away briefly to sit on the desk, legs spread. The cool air feels wonderful against my heated cunt, my stiff bud, but, God, his mouth would feel so much better. I don’t even have to order him, either. He pushes up my skirt immediately, exposing my slick spread sex to his gaze. “You’ve done that to me, tease,” I say, and part my sex lips with two fingers to give him a better view. My clit stands out proud and coated in my own arousal, and I can’t resist stroking it, lightly. “What are you going to do about it?” 326 Charlotte Stein He drops to his knees, immediately. I am reminded of someone about to die and praying to God to deliver him, and I have to say, I don’t mind that at all. He can pray all he wants at the altar of my pussy. He hesitates before he leans forwards, but all that does is remind me how little he has hesitated so far. Not even at the lines I made him write. Not even at the spanking. But then again, you can’t exactly hesitate when you’ve rubbed your bottom into someone’s groin. It’s like a game of chicken, and no one wants to be the one who puts their foot on the brake first. I wonder where my brake would have been, if I hadn’t decided to punish him. Would I have let him keep pushing me, going further and further — how far would he have gone? Dirty pictures in my inbox, I think. Naughty emails and memos and oh, I should have let this game go on longer. I miss what I never got to see — him jerking off, just for me. But now he’s licking at me, fingering me, fucking me with his mouth and hands and I can’t complain. He laves his tongue over my clit roughly at first, but soon more softly, more teasing, more exploratory.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Then came my hardest task: I had to tell Kendrick and Mr. Cotton that I must leave. They were more than astonished: at first they took it to be a little trick to extort a rise in salary: when they saw it was sheer boyish adventure-lust they argued with me but finally gave in. I promised to return to them as soon as I got back to Chicago or got tired of cowpunching. I had nearly eighteen hundred dollars saved, which, by Mr. Cotton’s advice, I transferred to a Kansas City bank he knew well. LIFE ON THE TRAIL. On the tenth of June, we took train to Kansas City, the Gate at that time of the “Wild West.” In Kansas City I became aware of three more men belonging to the outfit: Bent, Charlie and Bob, the Mexican. Charlie, to begin with the least important, was a handsome American youth, blue-eyed and fair-haired, over six feet in height, very strong, careless, light-hearted: I always thought of him as a big, kind, Newfoundland dog, rather awkward but always well-meaning. Bent was ten years older, a war-veteran, dark, saturnine, purposeful; five feet nine or ten in height with muscles of whipcord and a mentality that was curiously difficult to fathom. Bob, the most peculiar and original man I had ever met up to that time, was a little dried up Mexican, hardly five feet three in height, half Spaniard, half Indian, I believe, who might be thirty or fifty and who seldom opened his mouth except to curse all Americans in Spanish. Even Reece admitted that Bob could ride “above a bit” and knew more about cattle than anyone else in his world. Reece’s admiration directed my curiosity to the little man and I took every opportunity of talking to him and of giving him cigars—a courtesy so unusual that at first he was half inclined to resent it. It appeared that these three men had been left in Kansas City to dispose of another herd of cattle and to purchase stores needed at the ranch. They were all ready, so the next day we rode out of Kansas City, about four o’clock in the morning; our course roughly south by west. Everything was new and wonderful to me. In three days we had finished with roads and farmsteads and were on the open prairie; in two or three days more, the prairie became the great plains which stretched four or five thousand miles from north to south with a breadth of some seven hundred. The plains wore buffalo grass and sage-brush for a garment, and little else save in the river-bottoms, trees like the cottonwood; everywhere rabbits, prairie chicken, deer and buffalo abounded.

• From Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (2020)

  Bush, who, sensing which way the winds were blowing, had slowly aligned himself with religious conservatives.6 Evangelical support for Bush was tepid, and the feeling was mutual. Bush, too, lacked the rugged masculinity of his predecessor, but fortunately for him, he was running against Michael Dukakis. Republicans wasted no time in impugning Dukakis’s patriotism and sabotaging his masculinity—and in their view the two were closely connected. At least since 1972, Republicans had been arguing that Democrats lacked the strength to defend the nation. In the fall of 1988, evangelicals remained loyal to the Republican Party; 70 percent voted for Bush, and Bush easily beat his Democratic rival.7 The second year of Bush’s presidency, in the summer of 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. In response, the United States forged an international coalition to end the Iraqi occupation. Unlike Catholic bishops and Protestant mainline clergy, most evangelicals enthusiastically supported Operation Desert Storm. In this first major military engagement since America’s humiliating defeat in Vietnam, it wasn’t initially apparent how things would unfold, but once the ground assault against Saddam Hussein’s forces commenced, the answer became clear. This was no Vietnam. It was a stunning display of American military superiority. Granted, cleanup operations were a little messy. Oil wells burned, and Hussein remained in power. But for a time, the taste of renewed American power was exhilarating.8 In 1991, the Cold War officially came to an end. For more than four decades, evangelicals had mobilized against an imminent communist threat. With American power restored and their enemy vanquished, the need for evangelical militarism was no longer self-evident. Nothing if not creative, Pat Robertson led the way in identifying the requisite crisis. Having failed in his presidential bid, Robertson used the millions of names on his campaign mailing list to found the Christian Coalition. In 1991, Robertson published The New World Order , arguing that President Bush was being duped into thinking the threat of communism was over. In his view, totalitarianism had returned to the former Soviet bloc in a more “deceptive and dangerous form.” He also accused Bush of launching the Iraq War as a devious plot to cede American sovereignty to the United Nations. Inspired by their interpretation of biblical prophecies in the Book of Revelation, conservative Protestants had long feared a “one-world” government that would be ruled over by the Antichrist. In the early twentieth century these fears had attached to the League of Nations, and during the Cold War these fears were often channeled into a virulent anticommunism—though Hal Lindsey’s best-selling The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) had warned of a European Community that would usher in the reign of the devil. With the fall of the Soviet Union, suspicions fell squarely on the UN. And, in the case of Robertson, on the Illuminati, on wealthy Jewish bankers, and on conspiratorial corporate internationalists.