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 Macho Sluts (1988)

  Her back and shoulders were ornamented with spirals formed from raised dots, and she wore long brass gauntlets on each arm. In her nose, she wore a gold ring decorated with an ivory bead. Her leathers—a bikini top, bottom, and leggings—were a mixture of fur and skin. The natural, uneven edges had been left on the hides. Nothing was hemmed or evened up. Her earrings were made out of bells and wooden beads. A white horsehair flywhisk with a scarlet tip hung from her belt. “Roxanne is going to lose her mind over you,” Alex said. Joy smiled. “Just give me the flesh and the mind will follow, is what I always say.” “Kay, EZ, come over here and get properly introduced,” Tyre snapped. EZ was diffident, and Kay apologized again for their lateness. Alex put a stop to that (and finally relieved her feelings) by slapping them both on the back. Hard. “Fine, fine,” she said heartily. “’s okay. I can’t tell you all how glad I am have you here and how turned on I am. It will probably take Roxanne awhile to realize it, but she is a very lucky girl.” She gathered Tyre under her arm, and Tyre embraced EZ, who pulled Kay close. Kay and Anne-Marie held hands, Anne-Marie put her arm around Chris, and Chris stood hip-to-hip with Joyous Day, who put her arm around Alex’s waist. They edged in until they were as close as possible. Someone started to hum. The hum got louder. It was like standing inside a beehive. EZ yipped like a coyote, and Joy hissed back like a cougar. The background hum rose and fell, but persisted as each of them found herself making animal noises. Tyre and Joyous Day moved Alex into the middle of the circle, and they all pressed up against her, hugged her, lifted her, and put her down. And the circle gradually separated, fell apart. “Look where we are,” Chris said. “Isn’t this the most amazing room? Magick with a K is going to be set loose tonight.” The dungeon was long and high-ceilinged, with thick wooded beams. Where there was no exposed brick, the walls were painted with black enamel. Wooden boards hung between each of the major pieces of bondage equipment. The boards were covered with s-hooks or cup-hooks that held a variety of restraints, clips, straps, and other useful miscellany. At the far end of the room was a Saint Andrew’s cross, fitted with a leather waist-belt and outlined in eye-hooks. A round stained-glass window surmounted it, and a candle burning behind the window cast colored patterns at the foot of the cross. To their left was a platform. A set of chains and pulleys dangled from the ceiling, and from the chains hung a thick sheet of leather— the sling.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Thus I vacillated between experiments in the nightmare of attachment with nice-nice sex and the thrill of naughty sex without attachment—take your Tantra and shove it up your yoni. There were only two rules that governed my behavior. One was relentlessly safe sex—I became the Queen of Condoms. The second was the importance of quality control. If the sex isn’t awesome, or at least fascinating, get out, stop, shift gears, and change direction with minimum discussion. There were, as a result, plenty of discarded bodies floating in the moat around my castle, but the drawbridge was always down, inviting new specimens into my laboratory. They came in droves. NEW YEAR’S EVE A year later. A petite, Pre-Raphaelite redheaded dancer kept flirting with me at the gym where I exercised. She could tell I was a dancer, too: lean, hard- bodied, physically intense. I had never been with a woman, though I had thought about it plenty. The reality seemed far, far away. It wasn’t quite as far as I had thought. She had been trying, she told me, to get this Young Man, who also worked out at the gym occasionally, to have sex with her, but had yet to succeed. She was recently out of a seven-year live-in disappointment. Heroin, lies, other women. Her mental masochism, like mine, needed a rest. One day, I was at the gym in a corner stretching on a mat when I saw the Young Man nearby, resting between exercises. I had hardly ever noticed him before. He was self-effacing, quiet, and ventured carefully. Sitting, stretching over my toes, I asked him for a push on my back. It was not a sexual overture; I wanted a push. I got one. His hands touched the middle of my back, moved up and down, pressing my tightness, and I released—even moaned a little. We said nothing. Just his firm fingers pushing deeply, consciously, up and down my back. Time stood still until he took his hands away and I lifted my head, flushed and clear-eyed, as if I’d just come. We looked at each other, said nothing, stood, went through a fire-exit door into an empty hallway, and slowly pressed into each other, my back to the wall. No words: just eyes and an electric current with European voltage. So much power in one man’s hands. It must, physically, be some kind of vibrational force, a quixotic dance of a million molecules. His touch was very strong, very unafraid, and yet so tender. And humble. My belly started contracting involuntarily, and he started trembling through his strength. Yielding, we slid down the wall, stunned. I had never before felt such immediate impact from a man’s touch, much less from a stranger. I didn’t even know his last name. It was New Year’s Eve that day. The redhead suggested to us both that we spend the midnight hour at her house. Still feeling the effects of his electric field, I agreed.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  I finished the last month of high school. Then, as soon as possible, I left. I came to Noxhurst. In Littell, during the college president’s opening talk, I walked out. I crossed the silent campus while everyone else sat in chapel pews, listening to the president tell them how glad they should feel. This school, he’d said. He called it one of the nation’s pinnacles of learning. Such luck. Privilege. The obligation to give back. In front of Latham gate, a fellow truant held a bluish flame up to the key-card light. The gate didn’t open; the flame went out. He flicked his flame on again. I asked what he was doing. It’s broken, he said. This gate. It’s busted. Won’t open. I could give it a try, I said. He paused, but then he stepped back. His broad face was pink, sullen. The tall bulk of him listed toward the stone arch. I swiped my card, and the gate rang open. I tried not to laugh. He said I was his hero. You’ll have to let me give you a drink, he insisted, until I followed him to his suite. He told me his name, Julian. Julian Noh. I gave him mine. He asked if I was also Korean, lifting his hand for a high five. I could tell, he said. Tilting into his futon, he slid on his back, sighed, then closed his eyes. I tiptoed as I left. In the morning, I had a waist-high bouquet, white gladioli, propped against the doorsill. It included a long note from Julian, apologizing. He requested that I come to his suite to join him in, as he put it, a wine-tasting shindig. I did, and then I went with him to more parties, not getting back to my place until dawn. We split a late lunch that afternoon. Phoebe, he said. Last night, you met a Mitch. Blond, kind of thin, this high. Tell me if you liked him. I do, I think. I asked Julian questions. He tried to reciprocate, asking about life before Edwards. No, I said. First, I have to know everything about you. I want all your secrets, Julian. Let’s start at the beginning. Big or small, what’s the first lie you told? I watched him smile, each wide tooth showing. It was like a picket fence swinging open: his smile invited me inside.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  On this wise they kept him in play good two months, without getting a step farther, at the end of which time, seeing the work draw to an end and bethinking himself that, an he brought not his amours to an issue in the meantime, he might never have another chance thereof, he began to urge and importune Bruno amain; wherefore, when next the girl came to the mansion, Bruno, having first taken order with her and Filippo of what was to be done, said to Calandrino, 'Harkye, gossip, yonder lady hath promised me a good thousand times to do that which thou wouldst have and yet doth nought thereof, and meseemeth she leadeth thee by the nose; wherefore, since she doth it not as she promiseth, we will an it like thee, make her do it, will she, nill she.' 'Ecod, ay!' answered Calandrino. 'For the love of God let it be done speedily.' Quoth Bruno, 'Will thy heart serve thee to touch her with a script I shall give thee?' 'Ay, sure,' replied Calandrino; and the other, 'Then do thou make shift to bring me a piece of virgin parchment and a live bat, together with three grains of frankincense and a candle that hath been blessed by the priest, and leave me do.' Accordingly, Calandrino lay in wait all the next night with his engines to catch a bat and having at last taken one, carried it to Bruno, with the other things required; whereupon the latter, withdrawing to a chamber, scribbled divers toys of his fashion upon the parchment, in characters of his own devising, and brought it to him, saying, 'Know, Calandrino, that, if thou touch her with this script, she will incontinent follow thee and do what thou wilt. Wherefore, if Filippo should go abroad anywhither to-day, do thou contrive to accost her on some pretext or other and touch her; then betake thyself to the barn yonder, which is the best place here for thy purpose, for that no one ever frequenteth there. Thou wilt find she will come thither, and when she is there, thou knowest well what thou hast to do.' Calandrino was the joyfullest man alive and took the script, saying, 'Gossip, leave me do.'

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Connie expostulated roundly, and was angry with both of them. The upshot was, Sir Clifford raised Mrs. Bolton's wages a hundred a year, and she could gamble on that. Meanwhile it seemed to Connie, Clifford was really going deader. She told him at length she was leaving on the seventeenth. "Seventeenth!" he said. "And when will you be back?" "By the twentieth of July at the latest." "Yes! the twentieth of July." Strangely and blankly he looked at her, with the vagueness of a child, but with the queer blank cunning of an old man. "You won't let me down, now, will you?" he said. "How?" "While you're away. I mean, you're sure to come back?" "I'm as sure as I can be of anything, that I shall come back." "Yes! Well! Twentieth of July!" He looked at her so strangely. Yet he really wanted her to go. That was so curious. He wanted her to go, positively, to have her little adventures and perhaps come home pregnant, and all that. At the same time, he was afraid of her going. She was quivering, watching her real opportunity for leaving him altogether, waiting till the time, herself, himself, should be ripe. She sat and talked to the keeper of her going abroad. "And then when I come back," she said, "I can tell Clifford I must leave him. And you and I can go away. They never need even know it is you. We can go to another country, shall we? To Africa or Australia. Shall we?" She was quite thrilled by her plan. "You've never been to the Colonies, have you?" he asked her. "No! Have you?" "I've been in India, and South Africa, and Egypt." "Why shouldn't we go to South Africa?" "We might!" he said slowly. "Or don't you want to?" she asked. "I don't care. I don't much care what I do." "Doesn't it make you happy? Why not? We shan't be poor. I have about six hundred a year, I wrote and asked. It's not much, but it's enough, isn't it?" "It's riches to me." "Oh, how lovely it will be!" "But I ought to get divorced, and so ought you, unless we're going to have complications." There was plenty to think about. Another day she asked him about himself. They were in the hut, and there was a thunderstorm. "And weren't you happy when you were a lieutenant and an officer and a gentleman?" "Happy? All right. I liked my Colonel." "Did you love him?" "Yes! I loved him." "And did he love you?" "Yes! In a way, he loved me." "Tell me about him."

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  He laughed wryly, and threw off his clothes. It was too much. He jumped out, naked and white, with a little shiver, into the hard slanting rain. Flossie sprang before him with a frantic little bark. Connie, her hair all wet and sticking to her head, turned her hot face and saw him. Her blue eyes blazed with excitement as she turned and ran fast, with a strange charging movement, out of the clearing and down the path, the wet boughs whipping her. She ran, and he saw nothing but the round wet head, the wet back leaning forward in flight, the rounded buttocks twinkling: a wonderful cowering female nakedness in flight. She was nearly at the wide riding when he came up and flung his naked arm round her soft, naked-wet middle. She gave a shriek and straightened herself, and the heap of her soft, chill flesh came up against his body. He pressed it all up against him, madly, the heap of soft, chilled female flesh that became quickly warm as flame, in contact. The rain streamed on them till they smoked. He gathered her lovely, heavy posteriors one in each hand and pressed them in towards him in a frenzy, quivering motionless in the rain. Then suddenly he tipped her up and fell with her on the path, in the roaring silence of the rain, and short and sharp, he took her, short and sharp and finished, like an animal. He got up in an instant, wiping the rain from his eyes. "Come in," he said, and they started running back to the hut. He ran straight and swift: he didn't like the rain. But she came slower, gathering forget-me-nots and campion and bluebells, running a few steps and watching him fleeting away from her. When she came with her flowers, panting to the hut, he had already started a fire, and the twigs were crackling. Her sharp breasts rose and fell, her hair was plastered down with rain, her face was flushed ruddy and her body glistened and trickled. Wide-eyed and breathless, with a small wet head and full, trickling, naive haunches, she looked another creature. He took the old sheet and rubbed her down, she standing like a child. Then he rubbed himself, having shut the door of the hut. The fire was blazing up. She ducked her head in the other end of the sheet, and rubbed her wet hair. "We're drying ourselves together on the same towel, we shall quarrel!" he said. She looked up for a moment, her hair all odds and ends. "No!" she said, her eyes wide. "It's not a towel, it's a sheet." And she went on busily rubbing her head, while he busily rubbed his.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  4 “However, if a single trumpet is blown, then the leaders, heads of the tribes of Israel, shall gather themselves to you. 5 “When you blow an alarm, the camps on the east side [of the tabernacle] shall set out. 6 “When you blow an alarm the second time, then the camps on the south side [of the tabernacle] shall set out. They shall blow an alarm whenever they are to move out [on their journeys]. 7 “When the assembly is to be gathered, you shall blow [the trumpets in short, sharp tones], but without sounding an alarm. 8 “The sons of Aaron, the priests, shall blow the trumpets; and the trumpets shall be for you a perpetual statute throughout your generations. 9 “When you go to war in your land against the enemy that attacks you, then sound an alarm with the trumpets, so that you may be remembered before the LORD your God, and you shall be saved from your enemies. 10 “Also in the day of rejoicing, and in your appointed feasts, and at the beginnings of your months, you shall sound the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifice of your peace offerings; and they shall be as a reminder of you before your God. I am the LORD your God.” The Tribes Leave Sinai 11 On the twentieth day of the second month in the second year [since leaving Egypt], the cloud [of the Lord’s presence] was lifted from over the tabernacle of the Testimony, 12 and the Israelites set out on their journey from the Wilderness of Sinai, and the cloud [of the LORD ’s guiding presence] settled down in the Wilderness of Paran. 13 So they moved out for the first time in accordance with the command of the LORD through Moses. 14 The a standard of the camp of the sons of Judah, according to their armies, moved out first, Nahshon the son of Amminadab was [commander] over its army, 15 and Nethanel the son of Zuar was [commander] over the tribal army of the sons of Issachar; 16 and Eliab the son of Helon was [commander] over the tribal army of the sons of Zebulun. 17 Then the tabernacle was taken down; and the sons of Gershon and the sons of Merari, who were carrying the tabernacle, moved out. 18 Next the b standard of the camp of the sons of Reuben, according to their armies, moved out, with Elizur the son of Shedeur [commander] over its army, 19 and Shelumiel the son of Zurishaddai was [commander] over the tribal army of the sons of Simeon, 20 and Eliasaph the son of Deuel was [commander] over the tribal army of the sons of Gad. 21 Then the Kohathites moved out, carrying the holy things, and the tabernacle was set up before they arrived.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Among other monstrosities in this lumber room was a largish black japanned box, excellently and ingeniously made some sixty or seventy years ago, and fitted with every imaginable object. On top was a concentrated toilet set: brushes, bottles, mirrors, combs, boxes, even three beautiful little razors in safety sheaths, shaving bowl and all. Underneath came a sort of escritoire outfit: blotters, pens, ink bottles, paper, envelopes, memorandum books: and then a perfect sewing outfit with three different-sized scissors, thimbles, needles, silks and cottons, darning egg, all of the very best quality and perfectly finished. Then there was a little medicine store, with bottles labelled Laudanum, Tincture of Myrrh, Ess. Cloves and so on: but empty. Everything was perfectly new, and the whole thing, when shut up, was as big as a small, but fat weekend bag. And inside, it fitted together like a puzzle. The bottles could not possibly have spilled: there wasn't room. The thing was wonderfully made and contrived, excellent craftsmanship of the Victorian order. But somehow it was monstrous. Some Chatterley must even have felt it, for the thing had never been used. It had a peculiar soullessness. Yet Mrs. Bolton was thrilled. "Look what beautiful brushes, so expensive, even the shaving brushes, three perfect ones! No! and those scissors! They're the best that money could buy. Oh, I call it lovely!" "Do you?" said Connie. "Then you have it." "Oh no, my Lady!" "Of course! It will only lie here till Doomsday. If you won't have it, I'll send it to the Duchess as well as the pictures, and she doesn't deserve so much. Do have it!" "Oh your Ladyship! Why I shall never be able to thank you." "You needn't try," laughed Connie. And Mrs. Bolton sailed down with the huge and very black box in her arms, flushing bright pink in her excitement. Mr. Betts drove her in the trap to her house in the village, with the box. And she _had_ to have a few friends in, to show it: the schoolmistress, the chemist's wife, Mrs. Weedon the under-cashier's wife. They thought it marvellous. And then started the whisper of Lady Chatterley's child. "Wonders'll never cease!" said Mrs. Weedon. But Mrs. Bolton was _convinced_, if it did come, it would be Sir Geoffrey's child. So there! Not long after, the rector said gently to Clifford: "And may we really hope for an heir to Wragby? Ah, that would be the hand of God in mercy, indeed!" "Well! We may _hope_," said Clifford, with a faint irony, and at the same time, a certain conviction. He had begun to believe it really possible it might even be _his_ child.

• From Vox (1992)

  “I’ve seen that one,” he said. “That’s very different from my ad. My ad has a color shot of a woman with a phone cord wrapped around her leg and one arm kind of covering her breasts, and the headline over the phone number is, MAKE IT HAPPEN . But there is something intangibly classier about this ad than the other ads, something about the layout and the type that the phone number is in, despite the usual woman-plus-phone image, and I thought that maybe it might attract a different sort of caller. Although, boy, that flurry of assholic horniness from the men on the line when you first spoke was not exactly cucumber sandwich conversation. That one guy that kept interrupting—‘You like to sock on a big caulk?’ ‘How big and brown are your nips?’ But then, I suppose we aren’t calling for cucumber sandwich conversation.” “I wouldn’t object—cucumber away. But I guess not. Anyhow, here we are, ‘one on one,’ as they say, in the famous fiber-optical ‘back room.’ ” “True enough.” “So go on,” she said. “You were telling me how you were on the floor rolling your head back and forth?” “Oh, right. Well, I was on the floor with the catalog facedown on my chest, entranced by those tights, and a conception, this conception of thrilling wrongness, took shape in my brain stem. I had a vision of myself jerking off while I ordered that pair of tights, specifically the vision was of, of, of …” “Of?” “Of being in the bathtub, but on the phone with the order-taker from Deliques, who’s got, you know, this nice innocent voice, a mistaken but lovable overfrizzed perm, a hint of twang, bland face, freshly laundered jeans, cute socks, but probably wearing a pair of Deliques finest ‘fusion panties’ with a chevron of lace or something over her mound, which she’s bought at the employee discount, while I’m in my bathtub, which is ridiculous since I never take baths, but I’m in my bathtub moving so carefully so she won’t hear any aquatic splips or splaps and know that I’ve taken the portable phone into the bathroom and that I’m semi-submerged, and she says, ‘Let me check to be sure we have that in stock for you, sir,’ and during the pause, I arch myself up out of the water and sort of point the phone at my Werner Heisenberg so she can see it somehow or get its vibes, and at the moment she says, ‘Yes, we do have the pointelle tights in faun,’ I come, in perfect silence, making a Smurf grimace.” “That’s awful.” “I know, but I don’t know, I was there on the living-room floor. I don’t often lie down there.” “Were you actually … playing with yourself as you envisioned this?”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  In the midst of this great turmoil and concourse of folk, it chanced that there arrived at Treviso three of our townsmen, whereof one was called Stecchi, another Martellino and the third Marchese, men who visited the courts of princes and lords and diverted the beholders by travestying themselves and counterfeiting whatsoever other man with rare motions and grimaces. Never having been there before and seeing all the folk run, they marvelled and hearing the cause, were for going to see what was toward; wherefore they laid up their baggage at an inn and Marchese said, 'We would fain go look upon this saint; but, for my part, I see not how we may avail to win thither, for that I understand the Cathedral place is full of German and other men-at-arms, whom the lord of this city hath stationed there, so no riot may betide; more by token that they say the church is so full of folk that well nigh none else might enter there.' 'Let not that hinder you,' quoth Martellino, who was all agog to see the show; 'I warrant you I will find a means of winning to the holy body.' 'How so?' asked Marchese, and Martellino answered, 'I will tell thee. I will counterfeit myself a cripple and thou on one side and Stecchi on the other shall go upholding me, as it were I could not walk of myself, making as if you would fain bring me to the saint, so he may heal me. There will be none but, seeing us, will make way for us and let us pass.'

• From Vox (1992)

  “That’s right!” he said. “And here I am talking to you, and you truly are somewhere on the East Coast, and you’re wearing a bra!” “Amazing as it may seem. What other words do you have for the things I’m looking down at right now and admiring?” “Other words for breasts? Frans is the main one. Sometimes … frannies. Frans, nans, and Kleins. And I never thought ‘ass’ fit. Sometimes I think of a woman’s ass as a ‘tock.’ ” “So then it follows that she has a ‘tockhole’ as well?” “I never pushed it that far.” “Kleins is strange. ‘I’m squeezing my big fleshy Kleins’? You sure?” “I don’t know, I think Patsy Cline is a sexy name. I don’t even know who she is.” “She’s a singer.” “I know that much. Once I looked down the list of Kleins in the phone book and found one with a woman’s name spelled out, and God, it was everything I could not to call that number. In fact, I did call the number, and she answered, and I said, ‘Oh gosh, I must have the wrong number.’ And yet the Kleins I’ve known in real life haven’t been surrounded by a mysterious sexual power.” “It’s that telephone.” “Your last name isn’t Klein?” “No,” she said. “But I will tell you something.” “What? What? What?” “Occasionally when I’m just about to reach an orgasm I … I think of it as a ‘Delgado.’ ” “Think of what as a Delgado?” he asked. “The erect male cock.” “Oh, oh. Sorry.” “It’s because I was infatuated with a boy named Delgado in high school. So when you said something about, something about your ‘sperm-dowel’ earlier, I misheard for a second, and I felt this rush of blood—I thought you were using my secret word.” “Now see that is what I live for, for someone to tell me something like that. I need that to happen to me every minute, every second.” “That’s an impossibility.” “I will feast on that revelation for weeks to come.” “It’s a secret, though, so …” “ Up , it doesn’t go beyond this conversation. Out here we say everything, but in our lives, nothing. Out here you can tell me, just request me, to pull on the knot of my bathrobe until it falls open.” “What kind of bathrobe is it?” “White terry cloth. And you can just tell me, you can just say, ‘Jim, please lift the waistband of your gray underpants up to its extreme limit of stretch so that it clears your erection and then bring it around and hook it under your balls, and then take that Juggs magazine and use it to fan your overheated pop stand.’ And you know what? I would do it.” “Well, yes, I could tell you to do all that, but I don’t know, those are important decisions you maybe ought to make for yourself.”

• From Vox (1992)

  “Ten bucks, something like that, I can’t remember. On an impulse, I bought a People magazine, too. So then we went back to the car, and the great lucky thing was, I’d been able to park craftily not right in front of the discount store, but to one side, a little ways down—we were driving in my car—and I’d parked almost directly in front of this video spot. The place hadn’t been too noticeable when we’d driven in, but now that it was darker it had the flashing lights on, video video video, it was the brightest thing in the whole mall. So I opened the door for her, and she got in, and I handed her the blanket in this enormous bag, and I said, ‘Hang on, I’ll be right back,’ and I darted into the video place and went to the adult section that they had sequestered away and I started looking over the boxes. I was out of breath, and my senses were so hyper-alert, I was scanning the boxes for ‘Atom’ ‘Atom’ ‘Atom.’ I knew I had to get only one single film, the right film, which seemed impossible, but I could feel myself surging forward on this irresistible surge of luck, and I found a couple of ‘Atom’ productions among all the Caballero Controls and the Cal Vistas and all the other little companies, and I rented this thing called Pleasure So Deep . I mean the title reeked of translation, it was perfect. I signed up for membership, rented the movie, was back in the car in five minutes. Emily was there leafing calmly through the People magazine. She said, ‘What did you get?’ and I said, ‘It’s called Pleasure So Deep.’ She made this little ‘Oh!’ and she said, ‘And you’re going to watch that tonight?’ I said, ‘Yes, I have to, I need to commit myself to a situation, you’ve totally convinced me.’ And she said, ‘Tell me again, so I have it clear in my mind. What you’re advertising for is a woman who wants to sit on the couch next to you and watch this movie and masturbate, right?’ She put her hand lightly on the box holding the tape. I said ‘Yep’ and she said, ‘Just that, nothing else, only that, nothing beside that, right?’ And I said, ‘Yes, just that. And I think I really have a shot at formulating the ad that will find someone who wants to do that, thanks to you. You helped me pick out the right blanket, and I think now I’ve got the right tape …’ Then I hesitated, and I said, ‘I think I’ve got the right tape, but still—that’s worrying me now. How will I know that the tape is really right, and which specific scenes on it are the ones …?’ By this time we’d pulled in the company parking lot right behind her car. She was either going to get out or not get out. I said, ‘Look, I’m at sea. I don’t know anything about imported sex movies. I really need your advice on this. I won’t be able to judge on my own. I won’t be certain.’ And I looked at her, and she looked at me, and, remember, I’d spent hours listening to her think out loud about Lee, and she said, ‘Okay.’ So we went to my apartment.”

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Michaelis came: in summer, in a pale-coloured suit and white suède gloves, with mauve orchids for Connie, very lovely, and Act I was a great success. Even Connie was thrilled ... thrilled to what bit of marrow she had left. And Michaelis, thrilled by his power to thrill, was really wonderful ... and quite beautiful, in Connie's eyes. She saw in him that ancient motionlessness of a race that can't be disillusioned any more, an extreme, perhaps, of impurity that is pure. On the far side of his supreme prostitution to the bitch-goddess he seemed pure, pure as an African ivory mask that dreams impurity into purity, in its ivory curves and planes. His moment of sheer thrill with the two Chatterleys, when he simply carried Connie and Clifford away, was one of the supreme moments of Michaelis' life. He had succeeded: he had carried them away. Even Clifford was temporarily in love with him ... if that is the way one can put it. So next morning Mick was more uneasy than ever: restless, devoured, with his hands restless in his trousers pockets. Connie had not visited him in the night ... and he had not known where to find her. Coquetry!... at his moment of triumph. He went up to her sitting-room in the morning. She knew he would come. And his restlessness was evident. He asked her about his play ... did she think it good? He _had_ to hear it praised: that affected him with the last thin thrill of passion beyond any sexual orgasm. And she praised it rapturously. Yet all the while, at the bottom of her soul, she knew it was nothing. "Look here!" he said suddenly at last. "Why don't you and I make a clean thing of it? Why don't we marry?" "But I am married," she said amazed, and yet feeling nothing. "Oh that!... he'll divorce you all right.... Why don't you and I marry? I want to marry. I know it would be the best thing for me ... marry and lead a regular life. I lead the deuce of a life, simply tearing myself to pieces. Look here, you and I, we're made for one another ... hand and glove. Why don't we marry? Do you see any reason why we shouldn't?" Connie looked at him amazed: and yet she felt nothing. These men, they were all alike, they left everything out. They just went off from the top of their heads as if they were squibs, and expected you to be carried heavenwards along with their own thin sticks. "But I am married already," she said. "I can't leave Clifford, you know." "Why not? but why not?" he cried. "He'll hardly know you've gone, after six months. He doesn't know that anybody exists, except himself. Why the man has no use for you at all, as far as I can see; he's entirely wrapped up in himself."

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Clifford stopped the chair at the top of the rise and looked down. The bluebells washed blue like floodwater over the broad riding, and lit up the downhill with a warm blueness. "It's a very fine colour in itself," said Clifford, "but useless for making a painting." "Quite!" said Connie, completely uninterested. "Shall I venture as far as the spring?" said Clifford. "Will the chair get up again?" she said. "We'll try; nothing venture, nothing win!" And the chair began to advance slowly, jolting down the beautiful broad riding washed over with blue encroaching hyacinths. Oh last of all ships, through the hyacinthian shallows! Oh pinnace on the last wild waters, sailing on the last voyage of our civilisation! Whither, Oh weird wheeled ship, your slow course steering! Quiet and complacent, Clifford sat at the wheel of adventure: in his old black hat and tweed jacket, motionless and cautious. Oh Captain, my Captain, our splendid trip is done! Not yet though! Downhill in the wake, came Constance in her grey dress, watching the chair jolt downwards. They passed the narrow track to the hut. Thank heaven it was not wide enough for the chair: hardly wide enough for one person. The chair reached the bottom of the slope, and swerved round, to disappear. And Connie heard a low whistle behind her. She glanced sharply round: the keeper was striding downhill towards her, his dog keeping behind him. "Is Sir Clifford going to the cottage?" he asked, looking into her eyes. "No, only to the well." "Ah! Good! Then I can keep out of sight. But I shall see you tonight. I shall wait for you at the park gate about ten." He looked again direct into her eyes. "Yes," she faltered. They heard the Papp! Papp! of Clifford's horn, tooting for Connie. She "Coo-eed!" in reply. The keeper's face flickered with a little grimace, and with his hand he softly brushed her breast upwards, from underneath. She looked at him, frightened, and started running down the hill, calling Coo-ee! again to Clifford. The man above watched her, then turned, grinning faintly, back into his path. She found Clifford slowly mounting to the spring, which was halfway up the slope of the dark larch wood. He was there by the time she caught him up. "She did that all right," he said, referring to the chair. Connie looked at the great grey leaves of burdock that grew out ghostly from the edge of the larch wood. The people call it Robin Hood's Rhubarb. How silent and gloomy it seemed by the well! Yet the water bubbled so bright, wonderful! And there were bits of eye-bright and strong blue bugle. And there, under the bank, the yellow earth was moving. A mole! It emerged, rowing its pink hands, and waving its blind gimlet of a face, with the tiny pink nose-tip uplifted. "It seems to see with the end of its nose," said Connie.

• From Hot Rods: Gay Erotic Stories (2011)

  Heated convulsions massaged Randy’s pounding meat. His orgasm hit him like a kick to the nuts. He yanked his cock out of that churning fuck-hole and let loose. Randy’s long pole jerked against the officer’s white crack, the flared helmet spurting creamy spunk all over the sweaty mounds. He could hardly catch his breath, wheezing and jerking from head to toe. Kent almost immediately swung into action. “Enemy fire, Private! Prepare for incoming!” Randy had imagined it was just the ringing in his ears from his intense orgasm, but then recognized the pop and rattle of distant fire. It was amazing how fast he managed to pull up his pants and snatch up his weapon. Taking up his position by the opposite window, he peered out at the desolate mountain landscape. He was definitely reenergized. He felt stronger, braver; amazing. He also felt the gooey comfort of his cum in his shorts. A reminder of what had happened. And a hint of more to come. SANDHOGS Kiernan Kelly Already blistering hot at seven in the morning, the sun bakes my ass inside my flannel work shirt and jeans. I can feel sweat dripping down my spine, collecting at the small of my back, pooling in my armpits, dampening my crotch. Standing in front of the Check-In/Check-Out board for City Tunnel No. 3, where I’m supposed to meet Sonny’s kid, I’m dressed for fucking December, not August. But down in the tunnels the temperature never gets much above fifty-five degrees, even when the city is being fried to a crisp under the summer sun six hundred feet above my head. Sonny was a good guy, Pop’s best friend. Before he died, I promised Sonny I’d take his son down the first time, and I’ll know the minute the cage starts to descend into the shaft whether or not he’s got the stuff it’s going to take to make it in this business. The money’s good, which is the only reason a lot of men stay at it. Still, most sandhogs are second or third generation. It’s in our blood, but even then it’s not for everybody. Takes something special in a man to be a sandhog, to spend your life drilling holes underneath the ground like a mole. Breathing in dust all day, knowing that it’s going to fuck up your lungs; knowing that there’s a good chance that you might go down and not ever come back up, but still showing up for your shift. I only hope Sonny’s kid doesn’t puke or shit his pants before we hit bottom.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She did not stop to analyse her feelings, she only knew that she felt exultant — for no reason at all she was feeling exultant, very much alive too and full of purpose, and she walked for miles alone on the hills, unable to stay really quiet for a moment. She found herself becoming acutely observant, and now she discovered all manner of wonders; the network of veins on the leaves, for instance, and the delicate hearts of the wild dog-roses, the un- certain shimmering flight of the larks as they fluttered up singing, close to her feet. But above all she rediscovered the cuckoo — it was June, so the cuckoo had changed his rhythm — she must often stand breathlessly still to listen: ‘ Cuckoo-kook, cuckoo- kook,’ all over the hills; and at evening the songs of blackbirds and thrushes. — Her wanderings would sometimes lead her to the places that she and Martin had visited together, only now she could think of him with affection, with toleration, with tenderness even. In a curious way she now understood him as never before, and in consequence condoned. It had just been some rather ghastly mis- take, his mistake, yet she understood what he must have felt; and thinking of Martin she might grow rather frightened — what if she should ever make such a mistake? But the fear would be driven into the background by her sense of well-being, her fine exultation. The very earth that she trod seemed exalted, and the green, growing things that sprang out of the earth, and the birds, ` Cuckoo-kook,’ all over the hills — and at evening the songs of blackbirds and thrushes. THE WELL OF LONELINESS 15i

• From Vox (1992)

  “Well, in the scene I saw, and this is the first time I’ve seen any of this particular Disney by the way, and you have to remember that I’m in an altered state there in the movie store, with my three orange movies and my men’s magazine in my briefcase, but in the scene, Tinker Bell zips around in a sprightly way, with lots of zings of the xylophone and little sparkly stars trailing her flight, and you think, right, typical fairy image, ho hum. And she’s tiny , she’s a tiny suburbanite, she’s about five inches tall. This insubstantial, magical, cutely Walt Disneyish woman. But then this thing happens. She pauses in mid-air, and she looks down at herself, and she’s got quite small breasts—” “I thought you didn’t like that word.” “You’re right, but sometimes it seems right. Actually most of the time it’s the right word. Anyway, she’s got quite small breasts but quite large little hips, and large little thighs, and she’s wearing this tiny little outfit that’s torn or jaggedly cut and barely covers her, and she looks down at herself, a lovely little pouty face, and she puts her hands on her hips as if to measure them, and she shakes her head sadly—too wide, too wide. Oh that got me hot! This tiny sprite with big hips . And then a second later she gets caught in a dresser drawer among a lot of sewing things and she tries to fly out the keyhole but—nope, her hips are too wide, she gets stuck!” “Sounds sizzling hot.” “It was.” “You remember Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , when Marilyn Monroe tries to squeeze through a porthole on a ship, but her hips are too wide?” “I don’t remember that. I better rent that.” “It would be funny if Tinker Bell inspired old Marilyn,” she said. “You know, I found the Disney Peter Pan vaguely sexual, too.” “Well, yeah—J. M. Barrie was a fudgepacker from way back, and clearly some of that forbiddenness sneaks into every version.” “The girl floats around in her nightgown,” she said.

• From Vox (1992)

  12 "Were you actually . . . playing with yourself as you envisioned this?" "Certainly not! I had one hand on the telephone, just toying with the number keys, teasing them, and the other hand was lying on the facedown catalog on my chest. Anyway, then I thought I would be embarrassed to order a pair of tights for myself—maybe the order-taker would assume that I was a transsexual, when in fact I am not a transsexual at all, I'm a telephone clitician." "An obscene phone caller." "Exactly. And I started to think of who I could order them for, and I thought of this woman at work, a very nice woman, some might say plain, but very nice, who once startled me and this other guy by telling a story out of the blue about some friends of hers who'd just had a large wedding at a museum during which some thieves backed a van up and loaded all the wedding gifts in and drove away." "The wedding gifts were on display?" she asked. "Yes." "Ah, well, that was their mistake." "Well, they were punished for it. Anyway, one of the gifts, this woman from work told us, was one of those sex slings that I guess you bolt to a stud in the ceiling, so that the woman is . . ." "Yeah, I know," she said. "And this woman from work had joked about the dif ficulty of trying to fence the stolen sex sling, and the

• From Hot Rods: Gay Erotic Stories (2011)

  Heated convulsions massaged Randy’s pounding meat. His orgasm hit him like a kick to the nuts. He yanked his cock out of that churning fuck-hole and let loose. Randy’s long pole jerked against the officer’s white crack, the flared helmet spurting creamy spunk all over the sweaty mounds. He could hardly catch his breath, wheezing and jerking from head to toe. Kent almost immediately swung into action. “Enemy fire, Private! Prepare for incoming!” Randy had imagined it was just the ringing in his ears from his intense orgasm, but then recognized the pop and rattle of distant fire. It was amazing how fast he managed to pull up his pants and snatch up his weapon. Taking up his position by the opposite window, he peered out at the desolate mountain landscape. He was definitely reenergized. He felt stronger, braver; amazing. He also felt the gooey comfort of his cum in his shorts. A reminder of what had happened. And a hint of more to come. SANDHOGS Kiernan Kelly Already blistering hot at seven in the morning, the sun bakes my ass inside my flannel work shirt and jeans. I can feel sweat dripping down my spine, collecting at the small of my back, pooling in my armpits, dampening my crotch. Standing in front of the Check-In/Check-Out board for City Tunnel No. 3, where I’m supposed to meet Sonny’s kid, I’m dressed for fucking December, not August. But down in the tunnels the temperature never gets much above fifty-five degrees, even when the city is being fried to a crisp under the summer sun six hundred feet above my head. Sonny was a good guy, Pop’s best friend. Before he died, I promised Sonny I’d take his son down the first time, and I’ll know the minute the cage starts to descend into the shaft whether or not he’s got the stuff it’s going to take to make it in this business. The money’s good, which is the only reason a lot of men stay at it. Still, most sandhogs are second or third generation. It’s in our blood, but even then it’s not for everybody. Takes something special in a man to be a sandhog, to spend your life drilling holes underneath the ground like a mole. Breathing in dust all day, knowing that it’s going to fuck up your lungs; knowing that there’s a good chance that you might go down and not ever come back up, but still showing up for your shift. I only hope Sonny’s kid doesn’t puke or shit his pants before we hit bottom.

• From Vox (1992)

  I was going to simply slice the packet of creamed chipped open and dump it over the spirals, which is what I normally do, but I was feeling sneaky, I’d just had a shower, and you know about me and showers, but I hadn’t dithered, despite the major striptease fantasy I’d had at the circus, because obviously I couldn’t, since a man was in my apartment, so I was feeling devious, and so I got out some olive oil and poured a little of it on the spirals, and he—he was definitely not in the know about cooking, and I’m certainly not much of a cook myself—but he said, ‘So that’s how you keep them from sticking and clumping.’ I stirred them up, and they made an embarrassingly luscious sexy sound, and I just decided, fuck it, I’ve dressed this person, I’m feeding this person, I’m going to seduce this person, right now, today, so I said, I said, ‘How very strange,’ I said, ‘I just remembered something I haven’t thought of in years. I just remembered this kid in my junior high—you remind me of him in some ways—I just remembered his commenting that a certain girl must have used olive oil to put on her jeans.’ Well, I saw Lawrence’s little eyeballs roll at this. He said something obvious about extra virgin cold pressed and he snuffled out a nervous laugh and I thought, yes, I am in charge here, I am going to see this person’s penis get hard, and even though I have a smoldering yeast problem and so can’t really have full-fledged sex I am going to have my way with this person somehow. It was probably that Venezuelan ball-twirling screamer that put me in that mood, now that I think back. I mean, I felt powerful and shrewd and effortlessly in control and everything else I usually don’t feel. I cut open the packet of creamed chipped and I said, musingly, ‘My grandmpther was very careful about money—she always used to say that she was as tight as the bark on a tree. And I used to think about what that really would feel like, whether bark does feel tight to the inner wood of the tree. I used to put on my jeans and take them off, thinking about that.’ Lawrence said, ‘Really!’ I said, ‘Yeah, although actually I didn’t like my jeans to be at all tight, even then.