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 Art of Seduction (2001)

  4. In 1919, the movie press agent Harry Reichenbach was asked to do advance publicity for a picture called The Virgin of Stamboul. It was the usual romantic potboiler in an exotic locale, and normally a publicist would mount a campaign with alluring posters and advertisements. But Harry never operated the usual way. He had begun his career as a carnival barker, and there the only way to get the public into your tent was to stand out from the other barkers. So Harry dug up eight scruffy Turks whom he found living in Manhattan, dressed them up in costumes (flowing sea-green trousers, gold-crescented turbans) provided by the movie studio, rehearsed them in every line and gesture, and checked them into an expensive hotel. Word quickly spread to the newspapers (with a little help from Harry) that a delegation of Turks had arrived in New York on a secret diplomatic mission. Reporters converged on the hotel. Since his appearance in New York was clearly no longer a secret, the head of the mission, "Sheikh Ali Ben Mohammed," invited them up to his suite. The newspapermen were impressed by the Turks' colorful outfits, salaams, and rituals. The sheikh then explained why he had come to New York. A beautiful young woman named Sari, known as the Virgin of Stamboul, had been betrothed to the sheikh's brother. An American soldier passing through had fallen in love with her and had managed to steal her from her home and take her to America. Her mother had died from grief. The sheikh had found out she was in New York, and had come to bring her back. Mesmerized by the sheikh's colorful language and by the romantic tale he told, the reporters filled the papers with stories of the Virgin of Stamboul for the next several days. The sheikh was filmed in Central Park and feted by the cream of New York society. Finally "Sari" was found, and the press reported the reunion between the sheikh and the hysterical girl (an actress with an exotic look). Soon after, The Virgin of Stamboul opened in New York. Its story was much like the "real" events reported in the papers. Was this a coincidence? A quickly made film version of the true story? No Appendix B: Soft Seduction: How to Sell Anything to the Masses • 453 one seemed to know, but the public was too curious to care, and The Virgin of Stamboul broke box office records. A year later Harry was asked to publicize a film called The Forbidden Woman. It was one of the worst movies he had ever seen. Theater owners had no interest in showing it. Harry went to work. For eighteen days straight he ran an ad in all of the major New York newspapers: WATCH THE SKY ON THE NIGHT OF FEBRUARY 21ST! IF IT IS GREEN—GO THE CAPITOL IF IT IS RED—GO THE RIVOLI IF IT IS PINK—GO TO THE STRAND IF IT IS BLUE—

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Finally, you might think it wiser to present yourself as someone reliable, not given to caprice. If so, you are in fact merely timid. It takes courage and effort to mount a seduction. Reliability is fine for drawing people in, but stay reliable and you stay a bore. Dogs are reliable, a seducer is not. If, on the other hand, you prefer to improvise, imagining that any kind of planning or calculation is antithetical to the spirit of surprise, you are making a grave mistake. Constant improvisation simply means you are lazy, and thinking only about yourself. What often seduces a person is the feeling that you have expended effort on their behalf. You do not need to trumpet this too loudly, but make it clear in the gifts you make, the little journeys you plan, the little teases you lure people with. Little efforts like these will be more than amply rewarded by the conquest of the heart and willpower of the seduced. Symbol: The Roller Coaster. The car rises slowly to the top, then suddenly hurtles you into space, whips you to the side, throws you upside down, in every possible direction. The riders laugh and scream. What thrills them is to let go, to grant control to someone else, who propels them in unexpected directions. What new thrill awaits them around the next corner? Keep Them in Suspense— What Comes Next? • 249 Reversal Surprise can be unsurprising if you keep doing the same thing again and again. Jiang Qing would try to surprise her husband Mao Zedong with sudden changes of mood, from harshness to kindness and back. At first he was captivated; he loved the feeling of never knowing what was coming. But it went on for years, and was always the same. Soon, Madame Mao's supposedly unpredictable mood swings just annoyed him. You need to vary the method of your surprises. When Madame de Pompadour was the lover of the inveterately bored King Louis XV, she made each surprise different— a new amusement, a new game, a new fashion, a new mood. He could never predict what would come next, and while he waited for the next surprise, his willpower was temporarily suspended. No man was ever more of a slave to a woman than was Louis to Madame de Pompadour. When you change direction, make the new direction truly new. Use the Demonic Power of Words to Sow Confusion It is hard to make people listen; they are consumed with their own thoughts and desires, and have little time for yours. The trick to making them

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Once your targets are drawn by the lure of the forbidden, dare them to match you in transgressive behavior. Any kind of challenge is seductive. Take it slowly heightening the challenge only after they show signs of yielding to you. Once they are under your spell, they may not even notice how far out on a limb you have taken them. The great eighteenth-century rake Duc de Richelieu had a prediliction for young girls and he would often heighten the seduction by enveloping them in transgressive behavior, to which the young are particularly susceptible. For instance, he would find a way into the young girl's house and lure her into her bed; the parents would be just down the hall, adding the proper spice. Sometimes he would act as if they were about to be discovered, the momentary fright sharpening the overall thrill. In all cases, he would try to turn the young girl against her parents, ridiculing their religious zeal or prudery or pious behavior. The duke's stategy was to attack the values that his targets held dearest—precisely the values that represent a limit. In a young person, family ties, religious ties, and the like are useful to the seducer; young people barely need a reason to rebel against them. The strategy, though, can be applied to a person of any age: for every deeply held value there is a shadow side, a doubt, a desire to explore what those values forbid. In Renaissance Italy, a prostitute would dress as a lady and go to church. Nothing was more exciting to a man than to exchange glances with a woman whom he knew to be a whore as he was surrounded by his wife, family, peers, and church officials. Every religion or value system creates a dark side, the shadow realm of everything it prohibits. Tease your targets, get them to flirt with whatever transgresses their family values, which are often emotional yet superficial, since they are imposed from the outside. One of the most seductive men of the twentieth century, Rudolph Valentino, was known as the Sex Menace. His appeal for women was twofold: he could be tender and attentive, but he also hinted of cruelty. At any moment he could become dangerously bold, perhaps even a little violent. The studios played up this double image as much as possible—when it was reported that he had been abusive to his wife, for example, they ex- Stir Up the Transgressive and Taboo • 357

• From Story of the Eye (1928)

  Now the steps resumed, faster this time, almost running, and suddenly a ravishing blond girl loomed into view: Marcelle, the purest and most affecting of our friends. But we were too strongly contracted in our dreadful positions to move even a hair’s breadth, and it was our unhappy friend who suddenly collapsed and huddled in the grass amid sobs. Only now did we tear loose from our extravagant embrace to hurl ourselves upon a self-abandoned body. Simone hiked up the skirt, ripped off the panties, and drunkenly showed me a new cunt, as lovely and pure as her own: I kissed it furiously while finger fucking Simone, whose legs closed around the hips of that strange Marcelle, who no longer hid anything but her sobs. “Marcelle,” I exclaimed, “please, please don’t cry. I want you to kiss me on the mouth….” Simone, for her part, stroked the girl’s lovely smooth hair, covering her body with fond kisses. Meanwhile the sky had turned quite thundery, and, with nightfall, huge raindrops began plopping down, bringing relief from the harshness of a torrid, airless day. The sea was loudly raging, outroared by long rumbles of thunder, while flashes of lightning, bright as day, kept brusquely revealing the two pleasured cunts of the now silent girls. A brutal frenzy drove our three bodies. Two young mouths fought over my arse, my balls, and my cock, but I still kept pushing apart female legs wet with saliva and come, splaying them as if writhing out of a monster’s grip, and yet that monster was nothing but the utter violence of my movements. The hot rain was finally pouring down and streaming over our fully exposed bodies. Huge booms of thunder shook us, heightening our fury, wresting forth our cries of rage, which each flash accompanied with a glimpse of our sexual parts. Simone had found a mud puddle, and was smearing herself wildly: she was jerking off with the earth and coming violently, whipped by the downpour, my head locked in her soil-covered legs, her face wallowing in the puddle, where she was brutally churning Marcelle’s cunt, one arm around Marcelle’s hips, the hand yanking the thigh, forcing it open. 2. The Antique Wardrobe That was the period when Simone developed a mania for breaking eggs with her behind. She would do a headstand on an armchair in the parlour, her back against the chair’s back, her legs bent towards me, while I jerked off in order to come in her face.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The perfect illusion is one that does not depart too much from reality, but has a touch of the unreal to it, like a waking dream, head the seduced to a point of confusion in which they can no longer tell the difference between illusion and reality. Fantasy in the Flesh I n 1964, a twenty-year-old Frenchman named Bernard Bouriscout ar- rived in Beijing, China, to work as an accountant in the French embassy. His first weeks there were not what he had expected. Bouriscout had grown up in the French provinces, dreaming of travel and adventure. When he had been assigned to come to China, images of the Forbidden City, and of the gambling dens of Macao, had danced in his mind. But this was Communist China, and contact between Westerners and Chinese was almost impossible at the time. Bouriscout had to socialize with the other Europeans stationed in the city, and what a boring and cliquish lot they were. He grew lonely, regretted taking the assignment, and began making plans to leave. Then, at a Christmas party that year, Bouriscout's eyes were drawn to a young Chinese man in a corner of the room. He had never seen anyone Chinese at any of these affairs. The man was intriguing: he was slender and short, a bit reserved, but he had an attractive presence. Bouriscout went up and introduced himself. The man, Shi Pei Pu, proved to be a writer of Chinese-opera librettos who also taught Chinese to members of the French embassy. Aged twenty-six, he spoke perfect French. Everything about him fascinated Bouriscout; his voice was like music, soft and whis- pery, and he left you wanting to know more about him. Bouriscout, al- though usually shy, insisted on exchanging telephone numbers. Perhaps Pei Pu could be his Chinese tutor. They met a few days later in a restaurant. Bouriscout was the only Westerner there—at last a taste of something real and exotic. Pei Pu, it turned out, had been a well-known actor in Chinese operas and came from a family with connections to the former ruling dynasty. Now he wrote operas about the workers, but he said this with a look of irony They began to meet regularly, Pei Pu showing Bouriscout the sights of Beijing. Bouris- cout loved his stories—Pei Pu talked slowly, and every historical detail seemed to come alive as he spoke, his hands moving to embellish his words. This, he might say, is where the last Ming emperor hung himself, pointing to the spot and telling the story at the same time. Or, the cook in the restaurant we just ate in once served in the palace of the last emperor, and then another magnificent tale would follow.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  |fu hameful as it is to say, the riots were the best thing that ever hap- wl pened to us. Overnight we went from being a family desperately QJJ trying to stay in the middle class to one with hopes of sneaking into the upper, or at least the upper-middle. The insurance money didn't amount to quite as much as Milton had anticipated. Two of the companies refused to pay the full amount, citing excessive insur- ance clauses. They paid only a quarter of their policies' value. Still, taken all together, the money was much more than the Zebra Room had been worth, and it allowed my parents to make some changes in our lives. Of all my childhood memories, none has the magic, the pure dreaminess, of the night we heard a honk outside our house and looked out the window to see that a spaceship had landed in our driveway. It had set down noiselessly next to my mother's station wagon. The front lights flashed. The back end gave off a red glow. For thirty seconds nothing more happened. But then finally the window of the spaceship slowly retracted to reveal, instead of a Martian inside, Mil- ton. He had shaved off his beard. "Get your mother," he called, smiling. "We're going for a little ride." Not a spaceship then, but close: a 1967 Cadillac Fleetwood, as in- tergalactic a car as Detroit ever produced. (The moon shot was only 252 a year away.) It was as black as space itself and shaped like a rocket lying on its side. The long front end came to a point, like a nose cone, and from there the craft stretched back along the driveway in a long, beautiful, ominously perfect shape. There was a silver multi- chambered grille, as though to filter Stardust. Chrome piping, like the housing for circuitry, led from conical yellow turn signals along the rounded sides of the car, all the way to the rear, where the vehicle flared propulsively into jet fins and rocket boosters. Inside, the Cadillac was as plushly carpeted and softly lit as the bar at the Ritz. The armrests were equipped with ashtrays and cigarette lighters. The interior itself was black leather and gave off a strong new smell. It was like climbing into somebody's wallet.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The day after the debate, Kennedy's poll numbers soared miraculously, and wherever he went he was greeted by crowds of young girls, screaming and jumping. His beautiful wife Jackie by his side, he was a kind of demo-But we have seen that, cratic prince. Now his television appearances were events. He was in due considered as a total course elected president, and his inaugural address, also broadcast on televi-phenomenon, the history of sion, was stirring. It was a cold and wintry day. In the background, Eisen-the stars repeats, in its own proportions, the history of hower sat huddled in coat and scarf, looking old and beaten. But Kennedy the gods. Before the gods stood hatless and coatless to address the nation: "I do not believe that any of (before the stars) the us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. mythical universe (the screen) was peopled with The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will specters or phantoms light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can endowed with the glamour truly light the world." and magic of the double. • Several of these presences Over the months to come Kennedy gave innumerable live press confer-have progressively assumed ences before the TV cameras, something no previous president had dared. body and substance, have Facing the firing squad of lenses and questions, he was unafraid, speaking taken form, amplified, and flowered into gods and coolly and slightly ironically. What was going on behind those eyes, that goddesses. And even as smile? People wanted to know more about him. The magazines teased its certain major gods of the readers with information—photographs of Kennedy with his wife and ancient pantheons meta-children, or playing football on the White House lawn, interviews creating morphose themselves into hero -gods of salvation, th e a sense of him as a devoted family man, yet one who mingled as an equal star-goddesses humanize with glamorous stars. The images all melted together—the space race, the themselves and become new Peace Corps, Kennedy facing up to the Soviets during the Cuban missile mediators between the fantastic world of dreams crisis just as he had faced up to Truman. and man's daily life on After Kennedy was assassinated, Jackie said in an interview that before earth. . . . • The heroes of he went to bed, he would often play the soundtracks to Broadway musicals, the movies . . . are, in an obviously attenuated way, and his favorite of these was Camelot, with its lines, "Don't let it be forgot / mythological heroes in this that once there was a spot / For one brief shining moment / That was sense of becoming divine. known as Camelot." There would be great presidents again, Jackie said, but The star is the actor or never "another Camelot." The name "Camelot" seemed to stick, making actress who absorbs some of the heroic— i.e., divinized

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "He blew chunks. Right into his stinger. I couldn't believe it. It was like the Niagara Falls of puke. Selfridge woofs on the bar and everybody jumps off their stools, right? Selfridge is facedown in his own puke. For a minute there's total silence. Then this one girl starts . and it's like a chain reaction. The whole place starts gag- gagging . ging, puke's dripping everywhere, and the bartender is—pissed. He's huge, too. He's rucking huge. He comes over and looks down at Sel- fridge. I'm going like I don't know this guy. Never saw him before. And then guess what?" . "What?" "The bartender reaches out and grabs hold of Selfridge. He's got him by the collar and the belt, right? And he lifts Selfridge like a foot up in the air— and Zambonis the bar with him!" "No way!" "I'm not kidding. Zambonied the Fridge right in his own barf!" At that point we stepped out onto the porch. The Object and Rex Reese were sitting together on a white wicker couch. It was dark out, coolish, but the Object was still in her swimsuit, a shamrock bikini. She had a beach towel wrapped around her legs. "Hi," I called out. The Object turned. She looked at me blankly. "Hey," she said. "She's here," said Jerome. "Safe and sound. Dad didn't run off the road." "Daddy's not that bad a driver," said the Object. 366 "When he's not drinking he's not. But tonight I'd wager he had the old martini thermos on the front seat." "Your old man likes to party!" Rex called out hoarsely. "Did my dad have occasion to quench his thirst on the drive up?" Jerome asked. "More than one occasion," I said. Now Jerome laughed, going loose in the body and slapping his hands together. Meanwhile Rex was saying to the Object, "Okay. She's here. So let's party." "Where should we go?" the Object said. "Hey, Je-roman, didn't you say there was some old hunting lodge out in the woods?" "Yeah. It's about half a mile in." "Think you could find it in the dark?" "With a flashlight maybe." "Let's go." Rex stood up. "Let's take some beers and hike on in there." The Object got up, too. "Let me put on some pants." She crossed the porch in her swimsuit. Rex watched. "Come on, Callie," she said. "You're staying in my room." I followed the Object inside. She went quickly, almost running, and didn't look back at me. As she climbed the stairs ahead of me, I whacked her from behind. "I hate you," I said. "What?" "You're so tan!" She flashed a smile over her shoulder. As the Object dressed, I snooped around the bedroom. The furni- ture was white wicker up here, too. There were amateur sailing prints on the walls and on the shelves Petoskey stones, pinecones, musty pa- perbacks. "What are we going to do in the woods?" I said, with a note of complaint.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  His impetuous words, his caresses, the danger of it all—her head was whirling, she was lost. What was virtue and her prior boredom compared to an evening with the court's most notorious rake? So while the chaperone knitted away, the duke initiated her into the rituals of libertinage. Months later, de Valois's father had reason to suspect that Richelieu had broken through his lines of defense. The chaperone was fired, the precau- tions were doubled. D'Orléans did not realize that to Richelieu such mea- sures were a challenge, and he lived for challenges. He bought the house next door under an assumed name and secretly tunneled a trapdoor through the wall adjoining the duke's kitchen cupboard. In this cupboard, over the next few months—until the novelty wore off—de Valois and Richelieu en- joyed endless trysts. Everyone in Paris knew of Richelieu's exploits, for he made it a point to publicize them as loudly as possible. Every week a new story would cir- culate through the court. A husband had locked his wife in an upstairs room at night, worried the duke was after her; to reach her the duke had crawled in darkness along a thin wooden plank suspended between two upper-floor windows. Two women who lived in the same house, one a widow, the other married and quite religious, had discovered to their mu- tual horror that the duke was having an affair with both of them at the same time, leaving one in the middle of the night to be with the other. When they confronted him, the duke, always on the prowl for something novel, and a devilish talker, had neither apologized nor backed down, but proceeded to talk them into a menage a trois, playing on the wounded vanity of each woman, who could not stand the thought of him preferring the other. Year after year, the stories of his remarkable seductions spread. One woman admired his audacity and bravery, another his gallantry in thwarting a husband. Women competed for his attention: if he did not want to seduce you, there had to be something wrong with you. To be the target of his attentions became a great fantasy. At one point two ladies to drench me before I felt your scalding touch. But your fire is such that even in water I burn. • TISBEA: So cold and yet burning? • DON JUAN: So much fire is in you. • TISBEA: How well you talk! • DON JUAN: How well you understand! • TISBEA: I hope to God you're not lying. —TIRSO DE MOLINA, THE PLAYBOY OF SEVILLE, TRANSLATED BY ADRIENNE M. SCHIZZANO AND OSCAR MANDEL Pleased with my first success, I determined to profit by this happy reconciliation.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Casanova, however, was not one to be daunted. He smuggled letters to I count upon taking [ the Caterina. He began to attend Mass at the convent several times a week, French people] by surprise. A bold deed upsets people's catching glimpses of her. The nuns began to talk among themselves: who equanimity, and they are was this handsome young man who appeared so often? One morning, as dumbfounded by a great Casanova, leaving Mass, was about to board a gondola, a servant girl from novelty. the convent passed by and dropped a letter at his feet. Thinking it might be —NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, from Caterina, he picked it up. It was indeed intended for him, but it was QUOTED IN EMIL LUDWIG, NAPOLEON, TRANSLATED BY not from Caterina; its author was a nun at the convent, who had noticed EDEN AND CEDAR PAUL him on his many visits and wanted to make his acquaintance. Was he interested? If so, he should come to the convent's parlor at a particular time, when the nun would be receiving a visitor from the outside world, a friend The first care of any dandy of hers who was a countess. He could stand at a distance, observe her, and is to never do what one decide whether she was to his liking. expects them to do, to always go beyond. . . . Casanova was most intrigued by the letter: its style was dignified, but The unexpected can be there was something naughty about it as well—particularly from a nun. He nothing more than a had to find out more. At the appointed day and time, he stood to the side gesture, but a gesture that is totally uncommon. in the convent parlor and saw an elegantly dressed woman talking with a Alcibiades cut off the tail of nun seated behind a grating. He heard the nun's name mentioned, and was his dog in order to surprise astonished: it was Mathilde M., a well-known Venetian in her early twen- people. When he saw the looks on his friends as they ties, whose decision to enter a convent had surprised the whole city. But gazed upon the mutilated what astonished him most was that beneath her nun's habit, he could see animal, he said: "Ah, that that she was a beautiful young woman, particularly in her eyes, which were is precisely what I wanted to happen: as long as the a brilliant blue. Perhaps she needed a favor done, and intended that he Athenians gossip about would serve as her cat's-paw. this, they will not say His curiosity got the better of him. A few days later he returned to the anything worse about me." convent and asked to see her. As he waited for her, his heart was beating a • Attracting attention is not the only goal of a

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The greatest mistake in seduction is being too nice. At first, perhaps, your kindness is charming, but it soon grows monotonous; you are trying too hard to please, and seem insecure. Instead of overwhelming your targets with niceness, try inflicting some pain. Make them feel guilty and insecure. Instigate a breakup— now a rapprochement, a return to your earlier kindness, will turn them weak at the knees. The lower the lows you create, the greater the highs. To heighten the erotic charge, create the excitement of fear. Contents • xvii Phase Four: Moving In for the Kill 21 Give Them Space to Fall—The Pursuer Is Pursued page 383 If your targets become too used to you as the aggressor, they will give less of their own energy, and the tension will slacken. You need to wake them up, turn the tables. Once they are under your spell, take a step bach and they will start to come after you. Hint that you are growing bored. Seem interested in someone else. Soon they will want to possess you physically, and restraint will go out the window. Create the illusion that the seducer is being seduced. 22 Use Physical Lures page 393 Targets with active minds are dangerous: If they see through your manipulations, they may suddenly develop doubts. Put their minds gently to rest, and waken their dormant senses, by combining a nondefensive attitude with a charged sexual presence. While your cool, nonchalant air is lowering their inhibitions, your glances, voice, and bearing— oozing sex and desire— are getting under their skin and raising their temperature. Never force the physical; instead infect your targets with heat, lure them into lust. Morality, judgment, and concern for the future will all melt away. 23 Master the Art of the Bold Move page 405 A moment has arrived: Your victim clearly desires you, but is not ready to admit it openly, let alone act on it. This is the time to throw aside chivalry, kindness, and coquetry and to overwhelm with a bold move. Don't give the victim time to consider the consequences. Showing hesitation or awkwardness means you are thinking of yourself as opposed to being overwhelmed by the victim's charms. One person must go on the offensive, and it is you. 24 Beware the Aftereffects page 415 Danger follows in the aftermath of a successful seduction. After emotions have reached a pitch, they often swing in the opposite direction— toward lassitude, distrust, disappointment. If you are to part, make the sacrifice swift and sudden. If you are to stay in a relationship, beware a flagging of energy, a creeping familiarity that will spoil the fantasy. A second seduction is required. Never let the other person take you for granted— use absence, create pain and conflict, to keep the seduced on tenterhooks. Appendix A: Seductive Environment/Seductive Time page 431 Appendix B: Soft Seduction: How to Sell Anything to the Masses page 441 Selected Bibliography • 455 Index • 457 Preface

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "This is my country," Lefty said, and to prove it, he did a very American thing: he reached under the counter and produced a pistol. These conflicts lie in the past now— as Tessie paints her toenails— overshadowed by a much bigger conflict. All over Detroit in 1944, automobile factories have been retooled. At Willow Run, B-24s roll off the assembly line instead of Ford sedans. Over at Chrysler, they're making tanks. The industrialists have finally found a cure for the stalled economy: war. The Motor City, which hasn't been dubbed Motown yet, becomes for a time the "Arsenal of Democracy." And in the boardinghouse on Cadillac Boulevard, Tessie Zizmo paints her toenails and hears the sound of a clarinet. Artie Shaw's big hit "Begin the Beguine" floats on the humid air. It freezes squirrels on telephone lines, who cock their heads alertly to listen. It rusties the leaves of apple trees and sets a rooster on a weather vane spinning. With its fast beat and swirling melody, "Begin the Beguine" rises over the victory gardens and the lawn furniture, the bramble-choked fences and porch swings; it hops the fence into the backyard of the O'Toole Boardinghouse, stepping around the mosriy male tenants' recreational activities— a lawn-bowling swath, some forgotten croquet mallets— and then the song climbs the ragged ivy along the brick facing, past windows where bachelors snooze, scratch their beards, or, in the case of Mr. Danelikov, formu- late chess problems; up and up it soars, Artie Shaw's best and most beloved recording from back in '39, which you can still hear playing from radios all over the city, music so fresh and lively it seems to ensure the purity of the American cause and the Allies' eventual tri- 169 umph; but now here it is, finally, coming through Theodora's win- dow, as she fans her toes to dry them. And, hearing it, my mother turns toward the window and smiles.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  cigarettes in public, as if nothing were more natural. Photographers appeared and took pictures of this novel sight. Usually at the Easter parade, people would have been whispering about a new hat style or the new spring color. This year everyone was talking about the daring young women and their cigarettes. The next day, photographs and articles appeared in the papers about them. A United Press dispatch read, "Just as Miss Federica Freylinghusen, conspicuous in a tailored outfit of dark grey, pushed her way thru the jam in front of St. Patrick's, Miss Bertha Hunt and six colleagues struck another blow in behalf of the liberty of women. Down Fifth Avenue they strolled, puffing at cigarettes. Miss Hunt issued the following communique from the smoke-clouded battlefield: 'I hope that we have started something and that these torches of freedom, with no particular brand favored, will smash the discriminatory taboo on cigarettes for women and that our sex will go on breaking down all discriminations.' " The story was picked up by newspapers around the country, and soon women in other cities began to light up in the streets. The controversy raged for weeks, some papers decrying this new habit, others coming to the women's defense. A few months later, though, public smoking by women had become a socially acceptable practice. Few people bothered to protest it anymore. Interpretation. In January 1929, several New York debutantes received the same telegram from a Miss Bertha Hunt: "In the interests of equality of the sexes . . . I and other young women will light another torch of freedom by smoking cigarettes while strolling on Fifth Avenue Easter Sunday." The debutantes who ended up participating met beforehand in the office where Hunt worked as a secretary. They planned what churches to appear at, how to link up with each other, all the details. Hunt handed out packs of Lucky Strikes. Everything worked to perfection on the appointed day. Little did the debutantes know, though, that the whole affair had been masterminded by a man—Miss Hunt's boss, Edward Bernays, a public relations adviser to the American Tobacco Company, makers of Lucky Strike. American Tobacco had been luring women into smoking with all kinds of clever ads, but the consumption was limited by the fact that smoking in the street was considered unladylike. The head of American Tobacco had asked Bernays for his help and Mr. Bernays had obliged him by applying a technique that was to become his trademark: gain public attention by creating an event that the media would cover as news. Orchestrate every detail but make them seem spontaneous. As more people heard of this "event," it would spark imitative behavior—in this case more women smoking in the streets.

• From Story of the Eye (1928)

  But when Granero faced the bull, the combat was launched with brio, proceeding amid a frenzy of cheers. The young man sent the furious beast racing around him in his pink cape; each time, his body was lifted by a sort of spiralling jet, and he just barely eluded a frightful impact. In the end, the death of the solar monster was performed cleanly, with the beast blinded by the scrap of red cloth, the sword deep in the blood-smeared body. An incredible ovation resounded as the bull staggered to its knees with the uncertainty of a drunkard, collapsed with its legs sticking up, and died. Simone, who sat between Sir Edmund and myself, witnessed the killing with an exhilaration at least equal to mine, and she refused to sit down again when the interminable acclamation for the young man was over. She took my hand wordlessly and led me to an outer courtyard of the filthy arena, where the stench of equine and human urine was suffocating because of the great heat. I grabbed Simone’s cunt, and she seized my furious cock through my trousers. We stepped into a stinking shithouse, where sordid flies whirled about in a sunbeam. Standing here, I exposed Simone’s cunt, and into her blood-red, slobbery flesh I stuck my fingers, then my penis, which entered that cavern of blood while I tossed offher arse, thrusting my bony middle finger deep inside. At the same time, the roofs of our mouths cleaved together in a storm of saliva. A bull’s orgasm is not more powerful than the one that wrenched through our loins to tear us to shreds, though without shaking my thick penis out of that stuffed vulva, which was gorged with come. Our hearts were still booming in our chests, which were equally burning and equally lusting to press stark naked against wet unslaked hands, and Simone’s cunt was still as greedy as before and my cock stubbornly rigid, as we returned to the first row of the arena. But when we arrived at our places next to Sir Edmund, there, in broad sunlight, on Simone’s seat, lay a white dish containing two peeled balls, glands the size and shape of eggs, and of a pearly whiteness, faintly bloodshot, like the globe of an eye: they had just been removed from the first bull, a black-haired creature, into whose body Granero had plunged his sword. “Here are the raw balls,” Sir Edmund said to Simone in his British accent. Simone was already kneeling before the plate, peering at it in absorbed interest, but in something of a quandary. It seemed she wanted to do something but didn’t know how to go about it, which exasperated her. I picked up the dish to let her sit down, but she grabbed it away from me with a categorical “no” and returned it to the stone seat.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "Twice in college, three times in graduate school," answered Julie. There was no other response to this but to kiss her again. To resume my parents' story, I need to bring up a very embarrassing memory for a Greek American: Michael Dukakis on his tank. Do you remember that? The single image that doomed our hopes of getting a Greek into the White House: Dukakis, wearing an oversize army helmet, bouncing along on top of an M41 Walker Bulldog. Trying to look presidential but looking instead like a little boy on an amuse- ment park ride. (Every time a Greek gets near the Oval Office some- thing goes wrong. First it was Agnew with the tax evasion and then it was Dukakis with the tank.) Before Dukakis climbed up on that ar- mored vehicle, before he took off his J. Press suit and put on those army fatigues, we all felt— I speak for my fellow Greek Americans, whether they want me to or not— a sense of exultation. This man was the Democratic nominee for President of the United States! He was from Massachusetts, like the Kennedys! He practiced a religion even 184 stranger than Catholicism, but no one was bringing it up. This was 1988. Maybe the time had finally come when anyone— or at least not the same old someones— could be President. Behold the banners at the Democratic Convention! Look at the bumper stickers on all the Volvos. "Dukakis." A name with more than two vowels in it running for President! The last time that had happened was Eisenhower (who looked good on a tank). Generally speaking, Americans like their presidents to have no more than two vowels. Truman. Johnson. Nixon. Clinton. If they have more than two vowels (Reagan), they can have no more than two syllables. Even better is one syllable and one vowel: Bush. Had to do that twice. Why did Mario Cuomo de- cide against running for President? What conclusion did he come to as he withdrew to think the matter through? Unlike Michael Dukakis, who was from academic Massachusetts, Mario Cuomo was from New York and knew what was what. Cuomo knew he'd never win. Too liberal for the moment, certainly. But also: too many vow- els. On top of a tank, Michael Dukakis rode toward a bank of pho- tographers and into the political sunset. Painful as the image is to re- call, I bring it up for a reason. More than anything, that was what my newly enlisted father, Seaman 2nd Class Milton Stephanides, looked like as he bounced in a landing craft off the California coast in the fall of 1944. Like Dukakis, Milton was mostiy helmet. Like Dukakis's, Milton's chin strap looked as though it had been fastened by his

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  I argued with Mama on occasion that it couldn’t be more of a sin to actually drive in to the theater and listen to the movie than it was to watch in silence across the street.“Fine. We’ll stay home, then.”Gary rolled his eyes and asked me why I couldn’t for once just let well enough alone. We joined forces and pleaded and when the sun went down, we headed back to the doughnut shop to watch Bonnie bounce like an unstrung puppet to the tat tat tat of the machine guns, the only sound that drifted across the street with absolute clarity. Brother Terrell was putting up the tent in Dallas, and though Houston was four to five hours from Dallas, Mama said we were going. Our tent-revival attendance had become spotty. There was school and there was also the matter of keeping our secret life with Brother Terrell a secret. When we did go, I didn’t always get to see Pam. Like my mother, Betty Ann had retired from the tent circuit and settled down so that Pam and her other daughters could go to school. Randall traveled with his daddy and was omnipresent at the tent, though I am unclear about where he went when Brother Terrell came to see us.I was excited. Gary and I had not traveled with the tent in five years, but somehow I still considered it our real life, our real home. Plus, Mama told me that since it was summer, Pam would be there. In the days leading up to our trip, she knelt in front of me several times, rested her hands on my shoulders, and reminded me not to tell everyone everything I knew. Especially about Brother Terrell.“You’ll have to keep your mouth shut. Pam may try to pry information out of you, but you can’t tell her anything, not even where we live. It’s important.”“But why is it a secret?”“It just is. And it’s important for you to keep it. Do you hear me?”“Yes, ma’am.”The gravity of these talks made me feel important. At ten, all I knew was my mother trusted me with her secrets, and that I had to be very careful not to say or do anything to betray her trust. The world’s largest tent took me by surprise, as it always did. When I remembered the tent, I thought of the smaller one with a crowd capacity of about three thousand, not this monster that could accommodate more than five thousand people. My mother ushered us down one of the central aisles. People stopped her to ask her where she had been and to tell her how good it was to see her. She said she had taken time off to raise her kids, that we needed her. The words sounded less convincing each time she said them.“How long’s it been since you traveled with Brother Terrell?”“A year and half? Maybe two?”“My word.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Use the visual language of pleasure. Certain kinds of visual stimuli signal that you are not in the real world. You want to avoid images that have depth, which might provoke thought, or guilt; instead, you should work in environments that are all surface, full of glittering objects, mirrors, pools of water, a constant play of light. The sensory overload of these spaces creates an intoxicating, buoyant feeling. The more artificial, the better. Show your targets a playful world, full of the sights and sounds that excite the baby or child within them. Luxury—the sense that money has been spent or even wasted—adds to the feeling that the real world of duty and morality has been banished. Call it the brothel effect. Keep it crowded or close. People crowding together raise the psychological temperature to hothouse levels. Festivals and carnivals depend on the contagious feeling a crowd creates. Bring your target to such environments sometimes, to lower their normal defensiveness. Similarly, any kind of situation that brings people together in a small space for a long period of time is extremely conducive to seduction. For years, Sigmund Freud had a small, tight-knit stable of disciples who attended his private lectures and who engaged in an astonishing number of love affairs. Either lead the seduced into a crowded, festivallike environment or go trolling for targets in a closed world. Manufacture mystical effects. Spiritual or mystical effects distract people's minds from reality, making them feel elevated and euphoric. From here it is but a small step to physical pleasure. Use whatever props are at hand— astrology books, angelic imagery, mystical-sounding music from some far-off culture. The great eighteenth-century Austrian charlatan Franz Mesmer filled his salons with harp music, the perfume of exotic incense, and a female voice singing in a distant room. On the walls he put stained glass and Appendix A: Seductive Environment/Seductive Time • 435 mirrors. His dupes would feel relaxed, uplifted, and as they sat in the room where he used magnets for their healing powers, they would feel a kind of spiritual tingling pass from body to body. Anything vaguely mystical helps block out the real world, and it is easy to move from the spiritual to the sexual. Distort their sense of time— speed and youth. Festival time has a kind of speed and frenzy that make people feel more alive. Seduction should make the heart beat faster, so that the seduced loses track of time passing. Take them to places of constant activity and movement. Embark with them on some kind of journey together, distracting their minds with new sights. Youth may fade and disappear, but seduction brings the feeling of being young, no matter the age of those involved. And youth is mostly energy.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  hibitedness will invite other people to open up, sparking a chain reaction: their excitement in turn will animate you still more. The fantasies you bring to the surface do not have to be sexual—any social taboo, anything The roof did lift as Presley came onstage. He sang for repressed and yearning for an outlet, will suffice. Make this felt in your twenty-five minutes while recordings, your artwork, your books. Social pressure keeps people so re- the audience erupted like pressed that they will be attracted to your charisma before they have even Mount Vesuvius. "I never met you in person. saw such excitement and screaming in my entire life, ever before or since," said [ film director Hal] Kanter. The Savior. In March of 1917, the Russian parliament forced the coun- As an observer, he describ-ed being stunned by try's ruler, Czar Nicholas, to abdicate and established a provisional govern- "an exhibition of public ment. Russia was in rums. Its participation in World War I had been a mass hysteria . . . a tidal disaster; famine was spreading widely, the vast countryside was riven by wave of adoration surging up from 9,000 people, looting and lynch law, and soldiers were deserting from the army en masse. over the wall of police Politically the country was bitterly divided; the main factions were the flanking the stage, up over right, the social democrats, and the left-wing revolutionaries, and each of the flood-lights, to the performer and beyond him, these groups was itself afflicted by dissension. lifting him to frenzied Into this chaos came the forty-seven-year-old Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. A heights of response." Marxist revolutionary, the leader of the Bolshevik Communist party, he —A DESCRIPTION OF ELVIS had suffered a twelve-year exile in Europe until, recognizing the chaos PRESLEY'S CONCERT AT THE overcoming Russia as the chance he had long been waiting for, he had hur- HAYRIDE THEATER, SHREVEPORT, LOUISIANA, DECEMBER 17, 1956, ried back home. Now he called for the country to end its participation in IN PETER WHITMER, THE INNER the war and for an immediate socialist revolution. In the first weeks after his ELVIS: A PSYCHOLOGICAL arrival, nothing could have seemed more ridiculous. As a man, Lenin BIOGRAPHY OF ELVIS AARON PRESLEY looked unimpressive; he was short and plain-featured. He had also spent years away in Europe, isolated from his people and immersed in reading and intellectual argument. Most important, his party was small, representing only a splinter group within the loosely organized left coalition. Few took him seriously as a national leader.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The young man saw other young men like himself entering a teahouse, so he followed them in. Here the highest class of courtesans, the great tayus, plied their trade. A few minutes after the young man sat down, he heard a noise and bustle, and down the stairs came a few of the tayus, followed by musicians and jesters. The women's eyebrows were shaved, replaced by a thick black painted line. Their hair was swept up in a perfect fold, and he had never seen such beautiful kimonos. The tayus seemed to float across the floor, using different kinds of steps (suggestive, creeping, cautious, etc.), depending on whom they were approaching and what they wanted to communicate to him. They ignored the young man; he had no idea how to invite them over, but he noticed that some of the older men had a way of bantering with them that was a language all its own. The wine began to flow, music was played, and finally some lower-level courtesans came in. By then the young man's tongue was loosened. These courtesans were much friendlier and the young man began to lose all track of time. Later he managed to stagger home, and only the next morning did he realize how much money he had spent. If father ever found out . . . Yet a few weeks later he was back. Like hundreds of such sons in Japan whose stories filled the literature of the period, he was on the path toward squandering his father's wealth on the "floating world." Seduction is another world into which you initiate your victims. Like the ukiyo, it depends on a strict separation from the day-to-day world. When your victims are in your presence, the outside world—with its morality, its codes, its responsibilities—is banished. Anything is allowed, particularly anything normally repressed. The conversation is lighter and more suggestive. Clothes and places have a touch of theatricality. The license exists to act differently, to be someone else, without any heaviness or judging. It is a kind of concentrated psychological "floating world" that you create for the others, and it becomes addictive. When they leave you and return to their routines, they are doubly aware of what they are missing. The moment Appendix A: Seductive Environment/Seductive Time • 437 they crave the atmosphere you have created, the seduction is complete. As in the floating world, money is to be wasted. Generosity and luxury go hand in hand with a seductive environment.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Artificial and Natural T he big Broadway hit of 1881 was Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta Pa- tience, a satire on the bohemian world of aesthetes and dandies that had become so fashionable in London. To cash in on this vogue, the operetta's promoters decided to invite one of England's most infamous aesthetes to America for a lecture tour: Oscar Wilde. Only twenty-seven at the time, Wilde was more famous for his public persona than for his small body of work. The American promoters were confident that their public would be fascinated by this man, whom they imagined as always walking around with a flower in his hand, but they did not expect it to last; he would do a few lectures, then the novelty would wear off, and they would ship him home. The money was good and Wilde accepted. On his arrival in New York, a customs man asked him whether he had anything to declare: "I have noth- ing to declare," he replied, "except my genius." The invitations poured in—New York society was curious to meet this oddity. Women found Wilde enchanting, but the newspapers were less kind; The New York Times called him an "aesthetic sham." Then, a week af- ter his arrival, he gave his first lecture. The hall was packed; more than a thousand people came, many of them just to see what he looked like. They were not disappointed. Wilde did not carry a flower, and was taller than they had expected, but he had long flowing hair and wore a green velvet suit and cravat, as well as knee breeches and silk stockings. Many in the au- dience were put off; as they looked up at him from their seats, the combi- nation of his large size and pretty attire were rather repulsive. Some people openly laughed, others could not hide their unease. They expected to hate the man. Then he began to speak. The subject was the "English Renaissance," the "art for art's sake" movement in late-nineteenth-century England. Wilde's voice proved hyp- notic; he spoke in a kind of meter, mannered and artificial, and few really understood what he was saying, but the speech was so witty, and it flowed. His appearance was certainly strange, but overall, no New Yorker had ever seen or heard such an intriguing man, and the lecture was a huge success. Even the newspapers warmed up to it.