Fear

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 Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  The Queen's open coach stood in the courtyard, and she was already seated surrounded by her footmen and her Pages who rode on the sides, and her coachmen with their fine caps, their plumes and their gleaming spurs. A great mounted force of soldiers was ready. "Before being led out, I was fitted with the bit by Leon, who gave my hair a last thorough combing. He wedged the leather bit well back into my mouth, wiped my lips and then told me the hardest thing would be to keep my chin raised. I must never let it drop to a normal position. The bridle, which the Queen would hold idly in her lap could of course keep my head raised, but I must never lower my head. She would feel it if I did and be in a fury. "Then he showed me the leather phallus. It had no straps, no belts attached to it. It was as big as a man's erect cock, and I was afraid. How should I ever keep it in? From it hung a horse's tail of thin black leather thongs for a mere decoration. He told me to spread my legs. He forced it up into my anus and told me I must keep it in place, as the Queen would suffer me to be covered with nothing. The thin leather thongs hung down and stroked my thighs. They would swing like a horse's tail when I trotted along but they were short, they would conceal nothing. "Then he oiled my pubic hair again, my cock and my balls. He rubbed some oil into my belly. I had my hands clasped behind my back and he gave me a small leather-covered bone to hold with them saying it would make it easier to keep them clasped. But my tasks were these: to keep my chin raised, to keep the phallus in place, and to keep my own penis hard and presentable to the Queen. "Then I was led out by the little bridle into the courtyard. The bright noonday sun flashed on the spears of the Knights and the soldiers. The horses' hooves made a loud clatter on the stones. "The Queen who was in fast conversation with the Grand Duke at her side scarcely noticed me. She threw me one quick smile. The bridle was given her. It went up over the door of the coach and kept my head quite turned up. "'Keep your eyes down at all times, respectfully,' Leon said. "And soon the carriage moved out of the gates and over the drawbridge. "Well, you can imagine what that day was like. You were brought here naked through the villages of your own Kingdom. You know what it is like to be gazed at by all, soldiers, Knights, commoners.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Lord Gregory had wanted her to dine with the slaves. He had shown her the hall. There were two long rows of Princes and Princesses, all on their knees, hands clasped behind their backs, eating with their quick little mouths from plates on a low table before them. They were bent over so that, as she passed, she saw the row of sore buttocks and felt herself shocked by the sight of so many of them. They were all alike, and yet each body was different. The Princes showed less of themselves if their legs were together, as the scrotum couldn't be seen; but the girls could do nothing to hide their pubic lips. It had alarmed her. But the Prince had wanted her immediately in his chamber. And now she was with him. Leon had removed the small sealing wax from her secret core of pleasure, and she felt the first stirring of desire. She did not care about the servants moving about, or the last minister waiting nearby with his petition. She kissed the Prince's boots again. "It's very late," the Prince said. "You've had a long rest, and I see you are much improved for it." Beauty waited. "Look at me," he said. And when she did, she was shocked by the beauty and ferocity of his black eyes. She felt her breath catch in her throat. "Come," he said, rising and dismissing the minister. "Time for lessons." He walked fast towards his bed chamber and she followed on her hands and knees, rushing before him as he waited for her to open the door, then going in behind him. "If only she could sleep here, live here," she thought. And yet she was afraid as she saw him turn with his hands on his hips. She remembered the whipping last night with the strap and she shuddered. Beside him was a high pedestal table, and he reached into a cloth-covered casket there, and took out what seemed a handful of little brass bells. "Come here, my spoilt dear," he said softly. "Tell me, have you ever attended a Prince in his chamber, dressed him, groomed him?" he asked. "No, my Prince," Beauty said, and she hurried to his feet. "Kneel up," he said. She obeyed, hands behind her neck and then she saw the little brass bells he held and that each was fixed to a little spring clamp. Before she could protest, he applied one very carefully to the nipple of her right breast. It was not tight enough to hurt; nevertheless it bit down on her nipple, pinching her, and causing the nipple to harden. She watched as he clamped the other to her left breast, and then without meaning to, she took a breath that made the bells ring ever so faintly. They were heavy. They pulled on her. And she flushed, desperately wishing to shake them loose.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  “I don’t want to kill it while it’s still inside of me,” she said. I rolled my eyes, took the bottle from where she’d left it on the coffee table, shook one out. “I’ll take one, too.” I opened my mouth, threw the pill back. I swallowed. “Fine,” Reva said, and pulled a Diet 7UP from her purse. She placed the Infermiterol onto her tongue like Holy Communion and sucked down half the can. “What do we do now?” I didn’t answer. I just sat down on the sofa and flipped through the channels until I found one that wasn’t covering the inauguration. Reva moved from the armchair to sit next to me to watch TV. “Saved by the Bell! ” Reva said. We sat and watched together, Reva chatting every now and then. “I don’t feel anything, do you?” and then, “Why bother having a kid when the world’s just going to hell anyway?” and then, “I hate Tiffani-Amber Thiessen. She’s so trailer park. You know she’s only five foot five? I knew a girl who looked like her in middle school. Jocelyn. She wore dangly earrings before anyone else.” And then, “Can I ask you something? I’ve been sitting on it for a while. Just don’t get angry. But I need to ask you. I wouldn’t be a good friend otherwise.” “Go ahead, Reva. Ask me anything.” • • • WHEN I WOKE UP three days later, I was still at home, on the sofa, in my fur coat. The TV was off and Reva was gone. I got up and drank water from the kitchen sink. Either Reva or I had taken out the trash. It was strangely quiet and clean in the apartment. And there was a yellow Post-it note left for me on the refrigerator. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life! xoxo” I had no idea what I’d said to inspire Reva to leave me such a patronizing note of encouragement. Maybe I’d made a pact with her in my blackout: “Let’s be happy! Let’s live every day like it’s our last!” Barf. I got up and snatched the note off the fridge and crumpled it in my fist. That made me feel a little better. I ate a cup of vanilla Stonyfield yogurt that I hadn’t remembered buying. I decided to take a few Xanax, just to calm myself down. But when I opened the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, my pills were gone. Each and every bottle had disappeared. My stomach dropped. I went slightly deaf. “Hello?”

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  THERE ARE LOTS OF PARTS OF MY MEMORY MISSING: THE names of everyone I went to primary school with; family holidays; all the Hebrew (classical and modern) that I learned, five classes a week for seven years. Sometimes it’s more subtle and frustrating: the links of causality drop out, as if a vivid memory were a dream I was trying to describe a day later. I get flashes, but not the ligatures that bind the flashes into coherent, narratable memories. I KNOW WHY I WAS HYSTERICAL AT THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE: IT wasn’t the pain of the cut, or the visible bone, or the tetanus jab. It was the thought of having to tell my father why I was late for . . . why I missed . . . I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. There was something I’d been supposed to do that evening, something he’d yelled at me about that morning, and I was going to miss it. Whatever it was, it’s unimportant. It was unimportant then, and it is now. I survived. But sitting on the cold ledge of the doctor’s table, my school trousers scissored to bits, I was retching incoherent with tears. Call it shock, call it displacement, call it adolescent hysteria. It was fear. SOMETIMES I WONDER IF I DID SURVIVE ANY/ALL OF IT, IF I float through a life stolen from ending before it started. I was six weeks premature, tiny as fuck, jaundiced as hell, a wee yellow screamer blessed with a bald patch from birth. Do you survive if you don’t know how you’ve survived? I remember an elaborate plan to sneak into the kitchen and steal a knife to . . . One of those half-dreamed, half-conscious unraveling thoughts in the dark before dawn. I remember dreaming repeatedly that the walls of the house were made of paper and would crumple. I remember having to pee in a jar because of the anorexia. I remember running and running my fingers over the smooth place on my shin when I’m working, a nervous habit I feel like I’ve had since I was born. IN HER MEMOIR MY FATHER’S HOUSE, SYLVIA FRASER TALKS about having a photographic memory for details of her childhood, a memory she used to write her early novels. She describes the shock of discovering that the photographic accuracy was a front, a disguise for the sexual abuse she had forgotten until—violently—her body reminded her. I spent a semester in grad school writing about Fraser’s work, and Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees, and Camilla Gibb’s Mouthing the Words. I’d moved three thousand miles from my past, from London, UK, to Toronto, Canada, and I was in love with Canadian feminist literature. For months, I studied and framed these, and more—accounts by daughters of sexual abuse by their fathers. Immersed. It would be another two years before I had any inkling that this immersion was personal. I SURVIVED BY READING.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  men, it is eight years past since the poor woman began first to swell, and now she is increased so big that she seemeth as though she would bring forth some great elephant: and when this was known abroad and published throughout all the town, they took indignation against her, and ordained that the next day she should be most cruelly stoned to death ; which purpose of theirs she prevented by the virtue of her enchantments, and as Medea (who obtained of King Creon but one day’s respite before her departure) did burn in the flames of the bride’s garland all his house, him and his daughter, so she, by her conjurations and invocation of spirits, which she uses over a certain trench, as she herself declared unto me being drunken the next day following, closed all the persons of the town so sure in their houses, by the secret power of her gods, that for the space of two days they could not come forth, nor open their gates nor doors, nor even break down their walls ; whereby they were enforced by mutual consent to cry unto her and to bind themselves straitly that they would never after molest or hurt her, and moreover if any did offer her any injury they would be ready to defend her; whereupon she, moved at their promises, released all the town. But she conveyed the principal author of this ordinance, about midnight, with all his house, the walls, the ground and the foundation, into another town distant from thence a hundred miles situate and being on the top of a barren hill, and by reason thereof destitute of water: and because the edifices and houses were so close builded together that it was not possible for the house to stand there, she threw down the same before the gate of the town.’ 19 LUCIUS APULEIUS 11 discessit ‘Mira’ inquam ‘Nec minus saeva, mi Socrates, memoras. Denique mihi quoque non par- vam incussisti sollicitudinem, immo vero formidinem, iniecto non scrupulo sed lancea, ne quo numinis ministerio similiter usa sermones istos nostros anus illa cognoscat. Itaque maturius quieti nos reponamus et somno levata lassitudine noctis antelucio aufugia- mus istine quam pote longissime.' * Haee adhuc me suadente insolita vinolentia ac diurna fatigatione pertentatus bonus Socrates iam sopitus stertebat altius. Ego vero adducta fore pessulisque firmatis, grabatulo etiam pone cardines supposito et probe aggesto, super eum me recipio : ac primum prae metu aliquantisper vigilo, dein circa tertiam ferme vigiliam paululum conniveo. Commo- dum quieveram, et repente impulsu maiore quam ut latrones crederes ianuae reserantur, immo vero fractis et evolsis funditus cardinibus prosternuntur. Grabatulus, alioquin breviculus et uno pede mutilus ac putris, impetus tanti violentia prosternitur, me quoque evolutum atque exeussum humi recidens inversum cooperit ac tegit. 1? «Tune ego sensi naturalitus quosdam affectus in contrarium provenire : nam ut lacrimae saepicule de gaudio prodeunt, ita et in illo nimio pavore risum nequivi continere, de Aristomene testudo factus,

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  In Shakespeare's The Tragedy of King Richard III, Richard, when still the Duke of Gloucester, has murdered King Henry VI and his son, Prince Edward. Shortly thereafter he accosts Lady Anne, Prince Edward's widow, who knows what he has done to the two men closest to her, and who hates him as much as a woman can hate. Yet Richard attempts to seduce her. His method is simple: he tells her that what he did, he did because of his love for her. He wanted there to be no one in her life but him. His feelings were so strong he was driven to murder. Of course Lady Anne not only resists this line of reasoning, she abhors him. But he persists. Anne is at a moment of extreme vulnerability—alone in the world, with no one to support her, at the height of grief. Incredibly, his words begin to have an effect. Murder is not a seductive tactic, but the seducer does enact a kind of killing—a psychological one. Our past attachments are a barrier to the present. Even people we have left behind can continue to have a hold on us. As a seducer you will be held up to the past, compared to previous suitors, perhaps found inferior. Do not let it get to that point. Crowd out the past with your attentions in the present. If necessary, find ways to disparage their previous lovers—subtly or not so subtly, depending on the situation. Even go so far as to open old wounds, making them feel old pain and seeing by con- Isolate the Victim • 317 trast how much better the present is. The more you can isolate them from their past, the deeper they will sink with you into the present. The principle of isolation can be taken literally by whisking the target off to an exotic locale. This was Aly Khan's method; a secluded island worked best, and indeed islands, cut off from the rest of the world, have always been associated with the pursuit of sensual pleasures. The Roman Emperor Tiberius descended into debauchery once he made his home on the island of Capri. The danger of travel is that your targets are intimately exposed to you—it is hard to maintain an air of mystery. But if you take them to a place alluring enough to distract them, you will prevent them from focusing on anything banal in your character. Cleopatra lured Julius Caesar into taking a voyage down the Nile. Moving deeper into Egypt, he was further isolated from Rome, and Cleopatra was all the more seductive.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Thomas Hobbes was born to terror. His mother had gone into premature labor upon hearing that the Spanish Armada was about to attack England. “My mother,” Hobbes wrote many years later, “gave birth to twins: myself and fear.” Leviathan, the book in which he famously asserts that prehistoric life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” was composed in Paris, where he was hiding from enemies he’d made by supporting the Crown in the English Civil War. The book was nearly abandoned when he was taken with a near-fatal illness that left him at death’s door for six months. Upon publication of Leviathan in France, Hobbes’s life was now being threatened by his fellow exiles, who were offended by the anti-Catholicism expressed in the book. He fled back across the channel to England, begging the mercy of those he’d escaped eleven years earlier. Though he was permitted to stay, publication of his book was prohibited. The Church banned it. Oxford University banned it and burned it. Writing of Hobbes’s world, cultural historian Mark Lilla describes “Christians addled by apocalyptic dreams [who] hunted and killed Christians with a maniacal fury they had once reserved for Muslims, Jews and heretics. It was madness.”8 Hobbes took the madness of his age, considered it “normal,” and projected it back into prehistoric epochs of which he knew next to nothing. What Hobbes called “human nature” was a projection of seventeenth-century Europe, where life for most was rough, to put it mildly. Though it has persisted for centuries, Hobbes’s dark fantasy of prehistoric human life is as valid as grand conclusions about Siberian wolves based on observations of stray dogs in Tijuana. To be fair, Malthus, Hobbes, and Darwin were constrained by the lack of actual data. To his enormous credit, Darwin recognized this and tried hard to address it—spending his entire adult life collecting specimens, taking copious notes, and corresponding with anyone who could provide him with useful information. But it wasn’t enough. The necessary facts wouldn’t be revealed for many decades. But now we have them. Scientists have learned to read ancient bones and teeth, to carbon-date the ash of Pleistocene fires, to trace the drift of the mitochondrial DNA of our ancestors. And the information they’ve uncovered resoundingly refutes the vision of prehistory Hobbes and Malthus conjured and Darwin swallowed whole. Poor, Pitiful Me We are enriched not by what we possess, but by what we can do without. IMMANUEL KANT If George Orwell was correct that “those who control the past control the future,” what of those who control the distant past?

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  I took off the white fur and the bustier and the fishnets and went to the bathroom to run the hot water in the shower. My toenails were painted lilac, my previously flaky calloused soles now smooth and soft. I used the toilet and watched a vein throb in my thigh. What had I done? Spent a spa day then gone out clubbing? It seemed preposterous. Had Reva convinced me to go “enjoy myself” or something just as idiotic? I peed, and when I wiped myself, it was slick. I had recently been aroused, it seemed. Who had aroused me? I remembered nothing. A wave of nausea made me lurch over and regurgitate an acrid globule of phlegm, which I spat into the sink. From the sandy feel of my mouth, I was expecting to see granules of dirt or the grit of a crushed pill speckling my saliva. Instead, it was pink glitter. I opened the medicine cabinet and took two Valiums and two Ativans, guzzled water from the tap. When I righted myself, someone appeared in the mirror as if through a porthole window, and it startled me. My own startled face startled me. Mascara had streaked down my cheeks like a masquerade mask. Remnants of bright pink lipstick stained the outer edges and corners of my lips. I brushed my teeth and tried my best to scrub the makeup off. I looked in the mirror again. Wrinkles in my forehead and lines around my mouth looked like they’d been drawn in pencil. My cheeks were slack. My skin was pale. Something flashed in the gloss of my eyeballs. I got close up to the mirror and looked very carefully. There I was, a tiny dark reflection of myself deep down in my right pupil. Someone said once that pupils were just empty space, black holes, twin caves of infinite nothingness. “When something disappears, that’s usually where it disappears—into the black holes in our eyes.” I couldn’t remember who had said it. I watched my reflection disappear in the steam. • • • IN THE SHOWER, a memory returned from middle school: a cop who visited our seventh grade class to warn us about the dangers of drug use. He hung up a chart depicting every illicit drug in Western civilization and pointed at the little sample pictures one by one—a pile of white powder, cloudy yellow crystals, blue pills, pink pills, yellow pills, black tar. Under each was the drug’s name and nicknames. Heroin: smack, dope, horse, skag, junk, H, hero, white stuff, boy, chiva, black pearl, brown sugar. “This feels like this. That feels like that.” The cop had some kind of disorder that made it hard for him to moderate the volume of his own voice. “Cocaine!

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  I rode, bound hand and foot and ignominiously thrown over a horse, in a state of fury. "But finally we reached the castle. I was scrubbed, then oiled and brought before her Highness. She was coldly beautiful. This made its impression upon me at once. I had never seen such pretty eyes, yet such cold eyes. And when I refused to be silent or to obey, she laughed. She ordered me gagged with a leather bit. I'm sure you've seen it. Well, mine was bound in place so I couldn't remove it. And then she had me shackled in leather so that I could not rise from my hands and knees. I could move as told, but not rise, the leather collar around my neck securely linked by leather chains to the leather cuffs on my wrists, and those to the cuffs on my legs above the knees. My ankles were linked so they couldn't be spread very wide apart. It was all quite clever. "And then the Queen took her long lead -- as she calls it -- to drive me. It was a rod with a leather-encased phallus on the end of it. I shall never forget the first moment I felt it drive into my anus. She thrust it forward, and in spite of myself I moved ahead of her like an obedient pet as she commanded me. And when I lay down and refused to obey, she only laughed at this, and commenced her work with the paddle. "Well, I was fiercely rebellious. The more she paddled me, the more I growled and refused to obey. So she had me hung upside down and paddled on and off for hours. You can well imagine the misery of it. But understand, other slaves were looking at me in utter confusion. Being stripped, being cuffed, being ordered about with the paddle was quite enough to make them obey, coupled as it was with the knowledge that they could not escape and they must serve for several years, and they were helpless. "Yet nothing worked its magic with me. When I was taken down I was sore from the paddle on my buttocks and my legs, but I did not care. And all attempts to rouse my organ had failed. I was too stubborn. "Lord Gregory lectured me at length. The paddle was far easier to bear with an erect organ, he told me; with passion coursing through my veins, I should see the rhyme and reason of pleasing my mistress. I wouldn't listen. "The Queen still found me amusing. She told me I was more beautiful than any other slave sent to her. She had me bound to the wall in her chambers night and day so that she might watch me. But more truly, it was so that I might watch her and desire her.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  My east-door neighbor was by far the most dangerous one, a sharp-nosed character whose late brother had been attached to the College as Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds. I remember her waylaying Dolly, while I stood at the living-room window, feverishly awaiting my darling’s return from school. The odious spinster, trying to conceal her morbid in-quisitiveness under a mask of dulcet goodwill, stood leaning on her slim umbrella (the sleet had just stopped, a cold wet sun had sidled out), and Dolly, her brown coat open despite the raw weather, her structural heap of books pressed against her stomach, her knees showing pink above her clumsy Wellingtons, a sheepish frightened little smile flitting over and off her snub-nosed face, which—owing perhaps to the pale wintry light—looked almost plain, in a rustic, German, Mägdlein-like way, as she stood there and dealt with Miss East’s questions “And where is your mother, my dear? And what is your poor father’s occupation? And where did you live before?” Another time the loathsome creature accosted me with a welcoming whine—but I evaded her; and a few days later there came from her a note in a blue-margined envelope, a nice mixture of poison and treacle, suggesting Dolly come over on a Sunday and curl up in a chair to look through the “loads of beautiful books my dear mother gave me when I was a child, instead of having the radio on at full blast till all hours of the night.” I had also to be careful in regard to a Mrs. Holigan, a charwoman and cook of sorts whom I had inherited with the vacuum cleaner from the previous tenants. Dolly got lunch at school, so that this was no trouble, and I had become adept at providing her with a big breakfast and warming up the dinner that Mrs. Holigan prepared before leaving. That kindly and harmless woman had, thank God, a rather bleary eye that missed details, and I had become a great expert in bedmaking; but still I was continuously obsessed by the feeling that some fatal stain had been left somewhere, or that, on the rare occasions where Holigan’s presence happened to coincide with Lo’s, simple Lo might succumb to buxom sympathy in the course of a cozy kitchen chat. I often felt we lived in a lighted house of glass, and that any moment some thin-lipped parchment face would peer through a carelessly unshaded window to obtain a free glimpse of things that the most jaded voyeur would have paid a small fortune to watch.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  Her cheeks were swollen, her eyes red, her skin waxy. She’d looked like that when she used to throw up all the time. Senior year, she’d even popped blood vessels in her eyes, so for weeks she’d worn dark glasses around campus. She kept them off at home in our dorm. It was hard to look at her. She started driving. “Isn’t the snow so beautiful? It’s peaceful here, right? Away from the city? It really puts things in perspective. You know . . . life?” Reva looked at me for a reaction, but I gave none. She was going to be annoying, I could tell. She’d expect me to say comforting things, to put an arm around her shoulders while she sobbed at the funeral. I was trapped. The day would be hell. I would suffer. I felt I might not survive. I needed a dark, quiet room, my videos, my bed, my pills. I hadn’t been this far from home in many months. I was frightened. “Can we stop for coffee?” “There’s coffee at the house,” Reva said. I truly hated her in that moment, watching her navigating the icy roads, craning her neck to see over the dash from the sunken seat of the car. Then she gave a litany of everything that she’d been up to—cleaning the house, calling relatives and friends, making arrangements with the funeral home. “My dad decided to cremate,” she said. “He couldn’t even wait until after the funeral. It seems so cruel. And it’s not even Jewish. He was just trying to save money.” Her cheeks sagged as she frowned. Her eyes filled with tears. It always impressed me how predictable Reva was—she was like a character in a movie. Every emotional gesture was always right on cue. “My mom is in this cheap little wooden box now,” she whined. “It’s only this big.” She took her hands off the wheel to show me the dimensions, voguing. “They wanted us to buy this huge brass urn. They try to take advantage of you every step of the way, I swear. It’s so disgusting. But my dad is so cheap. I told him I’m going to dump her ashes out in the ocean and he said that was undignified. What? How is the ocean undignified? What’s more dignified than the ocean? The mantel over the fireplace? A cabinet in the kitchen?” She choked a bit on her own indignation, then turned to me softly. “I thought maybe you could come with me and we could drive down to Massapequa and do it and have lunch some time. Like next weekend, if you have time. Or any day, really. Maybe when it gets warmer. At least when it’s not snowing. What did you do with your mom?” she asked. “Buried her next to my father,” I said.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  And in each I will proclaim your restoration and new dominion. Can you ask for more than that? The spring is warm already; Beauty shall suffer no ill effects from serving me immediately." "Forgive us, your Highness," the King hastened to say. "But is it the same in this age? Beauty's servitude will not be forever?" "It is the same now as it was always. Beauty will be returned in time. And she shall be greatly enhanced in wisdom and beauty. Now, tell her to obey as your parents commanded you to obey when you were sent to us." "The Prince speaks the truth, Beauty," the King said in a low voice, still unwilling to look at his daughter. "Obey him. Obey the Queen. And though you find your servitude surprising and difficult at times, be confident you will return, as he says, greatly changed for the better." The Prince smiled. The horses were restless on the drawbridge. The Prince's charger, a black stallion, was particularly hard to restrain, so the Prince, bidding them all farewell again, turned and picked up Beauty. He heaved her easily over his right shoulder, clasping her ankles to his waist, and heard her cry out softly as she fell over his back. He could see her long hair sweep the ground just before he mounted the stallion. All the soldiers fell into place behind him. He rode into the forest. The sun spilled down in glorious rays through the heavy green leaves, the sky now brilliant and blue overhead only to vanish in a shifting green-tinted light as the Prince rode on at the head of his soldiers, humming to himself, and now and then singing. Beauty's lithe, warm body swayed slightly over his shoulder. He could feel her trembling, and he understood her agitation. Her naked buttocks were still red from the spanking he had given her, and he could well imagine the succulent vision she was to the men who rode after him. As he walked his horse through a dense glade where the fallen leaves were thick and red and brown beneath him, the Prince tied the rein on his saddle, and with his left hand felt the soft hairy little pelt between Beauty's legs, and leaned his face against her warm hip, kissing it gently. After a while, he pulled her down into his lap, turning her as before so she rested against his left arm, and he kissed her red face and brushed the long golden strands of her hair away from it, and then he suckled her breasts almost idly as though taking little drinks from them. "Put your head on my shoulder," he said.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  34 A gas station attendant in Parkington explained to me very clearly how to get to Grimm Road. Wishing to be sure Quilty would be at home, I attempted to ring him up but learned that his private telephone had recently been disconnected. Did that mean he was gone? I started to drive to Grimm Road, twelve miles north of the town. By that time night had eliminated most of the landscape and as I followed the narrow winding highway, a series of short posts, ghostly white, with reflectors, borrowed my own lights to indicate this or that curve. I could make out a dark valley on one side of the road and wooded slopes on the other, and in front of me, like derelict snowflakes, moths drifted out of the blackness into my probing aura. At the twelfth mile, as foretold, a curiously hooded bridge sheathed me for a moment and, beyond it, a white-washed rock loomed on the right, and a few car lengths further, on the same side, I turned off the highway up gravelly Grimm Road. For a couple of minutes all was dank, dark, dense forest. Then, Pavor Manor, a wooden house with a turret, arose in a circular clearing. Its windows glowed yellow and red; its drive was cluttered with half a dozen cars. I stopped in the shelter of the trees and abolished my lights to ponder the next move quietly. He would be surrounded by his henchmen and whores. I could not help seeing the inside of that festive and ramshackle castle in terms of “Troubled Teens,” a story in one of her magazines, vague “orgies,” a sinister adult with penele cigar, drugs, bodyguards. At least, he was there. I would return in the torpid morning. Gently I rolled back to town, in that old faithful car of mine which was serenely, almost cheerfully working for me. My Lolita! There was still a three-year-old bobby pin of hers in the depths of the glove compartment. There was still that stream of pale moths siphoned out of the night by my headlights. Dark barns still propped themselves up here and there by the roadside. People were still going to the movies. While searching for night lodgings, I passed a drive-in. In a selenian glow, truly mystical in its contrast with the moonless and massive night, on a gigantic screen slanting away among dark drowsy fields, a thin phantom raised a gun, both he and his arm reduced to tremulous dish- water by the oblique angle of that receding world,—and the next moment a row of trees shut off the gesticulation. 35 I left Insomnia Lodge next morning around eight and spent some time in Parkington.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  It seemed she felt her nakedness and her helplessness more fully now as she looked at him. Her lashes were matted and dark, and her blue eyes larger than he had thought. "Do you find me handsome?" he asked her. "Ah, but before you answer, I should like to know the truth from you, not what you think I should like to hear, or what would be best for you to say, you understand me?" "Yes, my Prince," she whispered. She seemed calmer. He reached out, massaged her right breast lightly, and then stroked her downy underarms, feeling the little curve of the muscle there beneath the tiny wisp of golden hair, and then he stroked that full, most hair between her legs so that she sighed and trembled. "Now," he said, "answer my question, and describe what you see. Describe me as if you had only just met me and were confiding in your chambermaid." Again she bit her lip, which he dearly loved, and then, her voice a little diminished by uncertainty, she said: "You are very handsome, my Prince, no one could deny that. And for one...for one..." "Go on," he said. He drew her just a little closer so that her sex was against his knee, and putting his right are about her, he cradled her breast in his left hand and let his lips touch her cheek. "And for one so young to be so commanding," she said, "it's not what one might expect." "And tell me how does that show itself in me, other than my actions?" "Your manner, my Prince," she said, her voice gaining a little strength. "The look of your eyes, such dark eyes...your face. There are none of the doubts of youth in it." He smiled and kissed her ear. He wondered why the wet little cleft between her legs was so very hot. His fingers could not keep from touching it. Twice already he's had her today, and he would have her again, but he was thinking he should go about it more slowly. "Would you like it if I were older?" he whispered. "I had thought," she said, "that it would be easier. To be commanded by one so very young," she said, "is to feel one's helplessness." It seemed the tears had welled up and were spilling out of her eyes, so he pushed her gently back so he might see them. "My darling, I have awakened you from a century's sleep, and restored your father's Kingdom. You're mine. And you won't find me such a hard master. Only a very thorough master. When you think night and day and every moment only of pleasing me, things will be very easy for you." And as she struggled not to look away, he could see again the relief in her face, and that she was in complete awe of him.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "O, she shall only make a plaything of you, of course. And you shall try to please her." THE QUEEN'S CHAMBER HALF THE night was gone before the Queen came. Beauty had dozed, then awakened again and again, to find herself still chained in the ornate bedchamber as if in a nightmare. She was bound to the wall, her ankles cuffed in leather, her wrists up over her head, her buttocks pushed against the cold stone behind her. At first the stone had felt good. Now and then she twisted to leg the air touch the soreness. Of course the abraded flesh was much healed from last night's ordeal on the Bridle Path, but she still suffered, and she knew tonight she was surely destined for more torment. Not the least of it, however, was her own passion. What had the Prince awakened in her that after one night of no satisfaction, she should feel so wanton? It was the stirring between her legs that first brought her out of sleep in the Slaves' Hall, and now and then she felt it as she stood waiting. The room itself lay in shadow and unbroken stillness. Dozens of thick candles burned in their heavy gilded holders, the wax spilling in rivulets through the traceries of gold. The bed with its tapestried draperies appeared a gaping cavern. Beauty closed her eyes. She opened them again. And when she was again on the verge of dream, she heard the heavy double doors thrown open and suddenly saw the tall, slender figure of the Queen materialized before her. The Queen moved to the center of the carpet. Her blue velvet gown cleaved to her girdled hips before flaring gently to cover her black pointed slippers. She gazed at Beauty with narrow, black eyes tipped up at the ends to give her a cruel expression, and then she smiled, her white cheeks dimpling though an instant before they had seemed as hard as white porcelain. Beauty had lowered her eyes at once. Petrified, she watched covertly as the Queen moved away from her and seated herself at an ornate dressing table, her back to a high mirror. With an off-handed gesture she dismissed the Ladies who stood at the door. A figure remained there, and Beauty, afraid to look, was certain it was Prince Alexi. So her tormentor had come, Beauty thought. Her heart pounded in her ears, becoming a roar rather than a pulse, and she felt the bonds holding her helpless so that she could not have defended herself against anyone or anything. Her breast felt heavy, and the moisture between her legs greatly agitated her. Would the Queen discover it and use it to further punish her?

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "Are you hungry, beautiful one?" he asked. He could see she was afraid to answer. "When I ask you will say, 'Only if it pleases you, my Prince,' and I shall know the answer is yes. Or, 'Not unless it should please you, my Prince,' and I shall know the answer is no. Do you understand me?" "Yes, my Prince," she answered. "I'm hungry only if it pleases you." "Very good, very good," he said to her with genuine feeling. He lifted a small cluster of glistening purple grapes and fed them to her one by one, taking the seeds out of her mouth and casting them aside. And he watched with obvious pleasure as she drank deeply from the wine cup he held to her lips. Then he wiped her mouth and kissed her. Her eyes were glistening. But she had stopped crying. He felt the smooth flesh of her back, and her breasts again. "Superb," he whispered. "And were you terribly spoilt before and given everything that you wished?" She was confused, blushing again, and then full of shame she nodded. "Yes, my Prince, I think perhaps..." "Don't be afraid to answer me with many words," he coaxed, "as long as they are respectful. And never speak unless I speak to you first, and in all these things, be careful to note what pleases me. You were very spoilt, given everything, but were you willful?" "No, my Prince, I don't think I was that," she said. "I tried to be a joy to my parents." "And you'll be a joy to me, my dear," he said lovingly. Still holding her firmly in his left arm, he turned to his supper. He ate heartily, pork, roast fowl, some fruit, and several cups of wine. Then he told the servants to take it all away and leave them. New sheets and coverlets had been laid on the bed; there were fresh down pillows, and roses in a vase nearby, and several candelabra. "Now," he said as he rose and set her before him. "We must get to bed as we have a long journey before us tomorrow. And I have still to punish you for your earlier impertinence." Immediately the tears stood in her eyes; she looked up at him imploring. She almost reached to cover her breasts and her sex, and then remembering herself she made her hands into two little helpless fists at her sides. "I won't punish you very much," he said gently, lifting her chin. "It was just a little offense, and your first after all. But Beauty, to confess the truth, I shall love punishing you." She was biting her lip, and he could see she wanted to speak, and the effort to control her tongue and her hands was almost too much for her. "All right, lovely one, what do you want to say?" he asked. "Please, my Prince," she begged. "I'm so afraid of you."

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Pray I have grace to bear it in silence and without struggling. "But he drew close to me and commenced to talk to me. He told me I had comported myself very well and asked me if I knew the name of the Princess who had tormented me. I said 'No, my Lord,' respectfully taking some relief that I had pleased him. He is very hard to please. Harder than the Queen. "He then told me her name was Princess Lynette, and she was new and had made a great impression on everyone. She was the personal slave of the Grand Duke Andre. 'What is this to me,' I thought, 'I serve the Queen.' But he asked me pleasantly enough if I had found her pretty. I winced. How could I help it? I could remember her breasts well enough when she pressed them to me while her paddle made me smart and groan. I could remember her dark blue eyes for the one or two instants when I had not been too ashamed to look at them. 'I don't know, my Lord. I would think she would not be here,' I said, 'were she not pretty.' "For that impertinence, he gave me at least five rapid cracks with his belt. I was sore enough to be immediately in tears. He has often said that if he had his way, he would keep all slaves that sore always. Then their buttocks would be so tender that all he would have to do was stroke them with a feather. But as I stood there, my arms stretched painfully above me, my body pushed off balance by his blows, I was aware that he was particularly angered and fascinated by me. Why else would he come here to torment me? He had a castle of slaves to torment. It gave me some strange satisfaction. "I was conscious of my body, its obvious muscularity, what to some eyes was surely its beauty...Well, he came around and he said to me that Princess Lynette was unsurpassed in many respects and that her attributes were fired with an unusual spirit. "I feigned boredom. I was to hang in this position all night. He was a gnat, I thought. But then he told me that he had been to the Queen and told her how well Princess Lynette had punished me, that Princess Lynette showed a flair for command and shrank from nothing. I began to grow afraid. Then he assured me the Queen had been glad to hear it. "'And so was her master, the Grand Duke Andre,' he added, 'and both were curious and somewhat regretful that such a display had not been witnessed by them, being wasted only on other slaves.'

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "Allow me to keep her in my chambers, and to train her myself. Don't send her back to the Hall of Slaves tonight." Beauty tried to smother her own crying. It seemed the Page's hand over her mouth only made it more difficult for her. "My son, when she has proven her humility, we shall see," said the Queen. "Tomorrow night, the Bridle Path." "O, but Mother, it is so soon." "Such rigor will be good for her; it will make her malleable," said the Queen. And turning with a broad gesture that loosened the train of her gown and made it fall behind her, the Queen left the parlor. The Page released Beauty. And the Prince at once took her wrists in his hand and urged her out into the corridor, Lady Juliana coming beside him. The Queen was gone, and the Prince moved Beauty angrily along ahead of him, Beauty's sobs echoing under the dark vaulted ceilings. "O, dear, poor exquisite dear," said the Lady Juliana. At last they reached the Prince's apartments, and to Beauty's misery, the Lady Juliana came in as if this were nothing to enter the Prince's chamber. "Have they no propriety and restraint among themselves," Beauty thought, "or are they degraded with each other as we are degraded?" But she soon realized it was only the Prince's study, and Pages were about. And the door remained open. The Lady Juliana took Beauty now from the Prince, he soft cool hands urging Beauty down on her knees before her chair. Then from somewhere in the folds of her gown, the Lady produced a long narrow silver-handled brush and she commenced to brush Beauty's hair lovingly. "This will soothe you, my poor precious one," she said. "Don't be so frightened." Beauty broke into fresh sobs. She hated this lovely Lady. She wanted to destroy her. She felt such savage thoughts, ad yet she wanted at the same moment to cling to her, to sob against her breast. She thought of friends she'd had at her father's Court, her Ladies in waiting, and how many times they had been easily affectionate with one another, and she wanted to abandon herself to the same affection. The brushing of her hair produced a tingling all through her scalp and through the flesh of her arms as well. And when the Lady's left hand covered her breasts and gently patted them, she felt herself defenseless. Her mouth went slack and she turned towards the Lady Juliana and laid her forehead against her knee, defeated. "Poor, darling one," said the Lady. "But the Bridle Path is not so dreadful. You will be grateful afterwards that you were used rigorously in the beginning, for it will all the sooner soften you." "Familiar sentiments," Beauty thought. "Perhaps," the Lady Juliana went on with the rhythmic stroking of the brush, "I shall ride beside you." What could this mean? And then the Prince said: "Take her back to the Hall now."

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  It was nothing to them. I refused the meals until the third day when I could endure it no longer and I lapped up the gruel they gave me like a hungry puppy. They never took the slightest notice. When I finished my meals it was back to the heap of refuse until they had some time to make sport of me. "In the meantime I hung there. And when they passed, they would perhaps give me some strong slap, twist the nipples of my chest, spread my legs wider with one of their paddles. "It was an agony beyond anything I had known in the Queen's chamber. And soon, in the evening, the stable boys received word that they might come and use me as they wished. So I had them to satisfy as well. "They were better dressed, but they smelled of the horses. They came in and took me out of the hogshead, and one of them thrust the long rounded leather handle of his whip into my anus. Lifting me up by this, he forced me into the stable. I was then laid over a barrel again and raped by all of them. "It seemed unendurable, and yet I endured it. And as in the Queen's chamber, I could feast my eyes on my tormentors all day long though in between their wants they took little notice of me. "One evening however, when all of them had had much to drink and had been congratulated for a very good meal upstairs, they turned for more imaginative play with me. I was terrified. I had no thoughts of dignity anymore and began to groan behind my gag as soon as they approached me. I squirmed and twisted to resist their hands. "The games they chose were as degrading as they were disgusting. They spoke of decorating me, of improving my appearance, that I was altogether too clean and too fine an animal for my lodgings. And, spread-eagling me in the kitchen, they soon cut loose their fury on me with a dozen concoctions they made from the honey, the eggs, the various syrups and mixtures at their disposal. I was soon covered with these egregious liquids. They painted my buttocks, and laughed as I struggled. They painted my penis and balls. They decorated my face with it, and stuck back my hair with it. And when they had finished, they took the feathers from the fowl and pasted these to my body. "I was terror-stricken, not of any real pain, but merely of their vulgarity and their meanness. I could not bear the humiliation of such disfigurement. "Finally, one of the Pages came in, to see what was the noise, and he took pity on me. He had them release me and told them to wash me. Of course they scrubbed me roughly, and they took to paddling me again.

• From Querelle (1953)

  he would respond to the officer's call by swaggering up in an even more outrageous manner, hands in pockets pulling the material of his pants tight over his prick and balls, sticking out his belly. The Lieutenant went almost crazy, not daring to get angry, not daring to complain, nor to burst out into passionate praise of Querelle's attractions. The most striking_ memory Seblon had of him-and it was one he often recalled-was a time in Alexandria, Egypt� one blazing noon when the crewman showed up at the foot of the ship's gangway. Qqerelle was smiling, a dazzling, silent smile that showed all his teeth. At that time his face was bronzed, or 'rather, tanned a golden color, as is mostly the case with blonds. In some Ar�b garden he had broken off five or six branches of a mandarin tree, laden with fruit, and, as he liked to keep his hands free, to be able to swing his arms and roll his shoulders while walking, he had stuck them into the V-neck of his short white jacket, behind the regula_tion black satin cravat, their tips now tickling his chin. For the Lieutenant, that visual detail triggered a sudden and intimate revelation of Querelle. The foliage bursting forth from the jacket was, no doubt, what grew on the sailor's wide chest instead of any common hair, and perhaps there were-hanging from each intimate and precious little twig-some radiant balls, hard and gentle at the same time . . . For a second Querelle remained stock-stili at the top of the gangway, before setting foot on the metallic and burning hot deck, and then he moved on toward his mates. Most of the ship's crew were still ashore. Those aboard were lounging about in the shade of a tarpaulin. One of them yelled : "Wow, look at that! What a lazy sonofabitch! Or is it that he wouldn't dare be seen carrying them." "Well, would you? It would look like I was on my way to my own wedding." Carefully, Querelle pulled out the branches, which were catching on his striped T-shirt and on the black satin cravat. He kept smiling. 134 I JEAN GENET "Where'd you find 'em?" "In a garden. Just walked in." Though Querelle's murders surrounded him with a kind of charmed, tall hedge, this sometimes seemed to shrink, down to the dimensions of a low metal wire border round a flower bed.