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 Macho Sluts (1988)

  Alex’s crooked smile promised one hell of a payback for all this teasing. “Kay is going to stay in your ass while EZ puts her hand in your cunt,” Alex said. “Then I bet they make you come. Come while you get double-fucked, both holes at once. And I’m gonna watch it all.” “Oh God! Daddy, it’ll tear me apart. I’m just a little girl.” “God has nothing to do with this. Look at me.” Alex slapped her several times. “If you are mine, I’ll give you to whoever I please. If you don’t belong to me, why are we here? Don’t give me any of that shit about getting split open, I know how you make your living, fucking your own little pussy while all those men watch from behind the windows and drop quarters in the slot and jerk themselves off. They ought to come all over your face. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Almost as much as you like the idea of being filled so full you can’t help but pop. Gotta make sure my little girl gets enough fucking so she can sit still for five minutes, that’s the only problem I got.” Kay had adopted a more insistent, driving rhythm. Roxanne moaned, shouted, rocked in the sling. Then Kay froze, and she felt EZ slithering into her cunt, her fingers splayed out along Kay’s forearm. When she finally slid home, they were practically holding hands inside her. Only a thin membrane kept them apart. She could feel them flexing their muscles, turning; even an eighth of an inch of motion made her eyes roll back and her nerve endings sing. There was no way to come on this rollercoaster of sensation. It was an experience more like an orgasm than any other part of sex, but it just kept on happening, peaking, cresting, climbing higher and peaking again. When Roxanne felt a real climax coming, she sneaked a glance at it, and got scared by how big it was. Alex magically knew all about it, grabbed her head and slammed it into the sling. “Bullshit,” she said. “Aren’t you the cunt who was going to wear it all out? Now you’re holding out on us, you little coward. I won’t stand for this shit.” Alex stuffed one of her gloves into Roxanne’s mouth. “Bite down on that if you get scared. Now come!”

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Roxanne realized, however, that as each member of the pack worked her over, the pack itself—as an entity—became a more powerful force in her imagination. The women seemed to loom nearer and taller, their voices more forceful and resonant. She knelt, small and helpless, in an amphitheater of cruel feminine presences. There were long moments when it seemed to her that only they existed, and her life force had flowed into them. She was like a vessel being emptied into the sea, or a shadow melting into evening. But she was also a current of energy that held the pack together—the point at which they crossed and focused. She was the medium through which they communicated with one another. Her body was a palpable message, a bond, a live wire strung between eight strong women. As long as they used her, needed her, or displayed even casual interest in her, she was vibrant and vivid and real. Without their attention and close supervision, she feared she would vanish. She did not want to be whipped. It was the worst thing that could happen to her. She did not love pain. She hated and feared it, and she fiercely resisted being subjected to it. It was a rare occasion when she would beg to be beaten. When Alex bullied her into committing some error that she knew meant a whipping, she would scream with anger each time the whip landed on her thighs or ass or shoulders. But it was clear, from this token Chris had twined about her body, that she wanted her for a living target. Nothing would obviate the threat of the whip between her legs. She whimpered for herself, just a poor girl, all wet, chained to a rail, so well trained she did not even dare touch herself. The whip bit deeper between the folds of her cunt, and she spread her legs another notch to make it hurt even more. The other side of the story was that despite her fear and even loathing of the whip, she felt a reluctant sort of love for it. When she was alone in her bed, caressing herself, she would think about being beaten, and long for it, and dwell lovingly on each detail of the ritual. If only if didn’t hurt so much. It was one of those ceremonies that she could not initiate and found extremely difficult to endure. It was, nevertheless, an experience she required. She was always grateful to Alex for having the strength to ignore her pleas and rage and proceed with the beating. After a prolonged session with the whip, she found her center. It made her tranquil for days. As long as the marks lasted, she cherished them as tokens of her own courage and Alex’s love.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  “Good. Now open your mouth—just a little—that’s good.” His kid glove pursed her mouth into a kissing shape. The barrel of the gun, tasting of smoke and steel, was poised between her lips. She struggled to open her mouth wider, to swallow it whole and get it over with, but he would not let her. Carefully, patiently, he dictated just how much of the barrel she could take into her mouth and how slowly or quickly it would slide in and out. It was impossible to think of or remember anything else that had happened to her, other than the pistol ravaging her tender, wet mouth. He pressed deeper, into her throat. Despite the constriction produced by fear, she did not gag on it. Not once. She did not dare. Finally, he withdrew the weapon and wiped it on her T-shirt, over her breasts. “Thank me,” he said absently. “Thank you, sir,” she said. The pistol teased her nipples into erection. When he slid it back into its holster, she gave a long, shuddering sigh of relief. Then he took her by the ears and brought her face back to his dick. It was only half hard now, lying in a fat curve on his thigh. The dribbling head had made a small, dark spot on the light gray wool of his trousers. “Kiss it,” he whispered, stroking the back of her neck. He wrapped one hand around his cockhead. She bent her head and put her mouth on him. She actually did kiss the vein that ran like a vat work along the underside of his shaft. His cock jumped a little, startling her. “Lick it,” he urged her, sliding down in his seat. Her tongue bathed the smooth rod, but he would not let her put the tip of it in her mouth. Instead, he lifted his balls and fed them, one at a time, to her. She took each orb into her mouth and laved it. Suddenly, without prompting, she engulfed the whole sac and sucked and tugged on it. The twin eggs in their purse of skin and hair stretched out her cheeks and tickled the roof of her mouth. He gut-groaned the peculiar sound of pleasure and fear that men make when their manhood is taken from behind someone’s teeth. “You do that real good for somebody who doesn’t like it.” He nudged her away and she extruded his testicles slowly, careful not to scrape them. He pointed his cock at her. “Want it?” he asked. She did. And she could not lie. Why bother in the face of death? “Yes, sir.” Two words, and the whole world changed. She was now an actor, not a victim. He uncuffed one of her hands, refastened them in front of her body. “Joe, gimme a safe.”

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  What is most upsetting about this sudden disappearance of all the corny magazines full of sloppy bondage and the grainy movies about leather-corseted women who don’t know how to aim their whips is the message it sends out that S/M has become even more forbidding, beyond the pale, and dangerous for me to pursue. It’s as if it suddenly became even more abnormal. This dearth of images will make it more difficult for novices and beginners to realize there are folks who share their scary fantasies and know how to act them out with care and safety. If you don’t know that there’s a whole group of people who engage in a particular sexual behavior, it makes it much more difficult to imagine yourself ever being able to do it. And porn is one of the most common ways that people discover there are other folks out there who like to do cunnilingus, anal sex, gay sex, get tied up, have threesomes—in short, that there are others who want more than awkward and guilty sex in the dark, bare skin only, no birth control or safe sex, no dirty talking, no artificial lube, no shifting to another, more comfortable position, no toys, no special requests, and usually no orgasm for the woman and a pretty unsatisfactory one for the man. S/M fantasies are usually much more lurid and perilous than the games of real-life sadomasochists. Standard Mafia bondage porn doesn’t instruct people in the finer points of S/M technique, but it at least shows the reader that this is a sexual deviation, not an elaborate form of suicide, because the models who do these things appear to be enjoying them, and survive to pose for more pictures in another magazine. Before this crackdown, the genre was marginally improving because leather and S/M people were starting to make sexually explicit material for our own consumption. Legal hassles and the risk of public exposure will discourage that. And more people will remain convinced there is something terribly wrong with them because they have these awful fantasies about being restrained, dominated, or punished, and if they ever dare to look for someone who will do any of those wicked things, they will “get what they deserve”—i.e., snuffed. Two distributors of S/M videos—a small business in Florida that sold wooden bondage devices and a handful of movie titles, and Centurions in Los Angeles—have been busted. The LAPD has reportedly visited gay video companies and warned them to stop distributing S/M movies.

• From Enchanted: Erotic Bedtime Stories for Women (Erotic Fiction) (2006)

  When these preparations were completed, she followed the servant to the dining room. But upon arriving there she found herself in an empty room, with only one place setting on the table. A handsome young manservant entered, bringing her an assortment of delicious treats for dinner. “Am I not to dine with the prince?” she asked him. “After dinner, madam, you will be brought before the prince and allowed to choose him…or any other that you wish.” He said this civilly enough, but with such a smirk on his face that she drew back as if she had been slapped. “I have come a very far distance to find my prince,” she replied haughtily. “I can’t imagine why you would dare to imply that I might choose another man besides him!” “Perhaps it was wishful thinking” was his rejoinder. “You see, I am one of the other ninety-nine men you will be choosing from.” “I do see,” she replied curtly, thinking to herself, You will be punished for your impertinence when I marry the prince! She ate what she could of the dinner in silence. Shortly after the meal, she was led to the room where she would at last see her beloved prince. The servant left her at the door. Taking a deep breath, she opened it. There stood the prince’s stepmother. “Where is the prince?” demanded the frustrated girl. “He is just beyond that door,” his stepmother replied, pointing to yet another door at the far end of the room. “But,” she added, just as the girl was rushing toward that portal, “there are a few things you should know before you rush in there.” She smiled as she continued. “There are one hundred men in that room. All of them have been placed under a spell so that they cannot move from the place where they stand, and they cannot utter a sound. It was necessary to do this, for, if you truly love the prince, you must find him among the men without his help.” “I do not need to hear him speak to find him, nor will he be required to come to me,” replied the girl. “Also,” continued the stepmother, ignoring her remark and smiling wider, “since you strengthened the original curse by bringing light upon the darkness, you must now relinquish the light and once again enter the darkness to find and save your beloved prince.” The girl gasped. “Do you mean to say that I must distinguish him from ninety-nine others—in the dark?” “If it is really true love, it can be done,” the cruel woman replied, again dismissing the girl by ringing the servant’s bell. But before leaving the girl alone, she turned to add, “Be careful to whom you speak in the room, for your choice of a ‘true love’ will be determined by the first man you speak to.” And she was gone.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "They don't!" he replied. "And don't fall into errors: in your sense of the word, they are _not_ men. They are animals you don't understand, and never could. Don't thrust your illusions on other people. The masses were always the same, and will always be the same. Nero's slaves were extremely little different from our colliers or the Ford motorcar workmen. I mean Nero's mine slaves and his field slaves. It is the masses: they are the unchangeable. An individual may emerge from the masses. But the emergence doesn't alter the mass. The masses are unalterable. It is one of the most momentous facts of social science. _Panem et circenses!_ Only today education is one of the bad substitutes for a circus. What is wrong today, is that we've made a profound hash of the circuses part of the programme, and poisoned our masses with a little education." When Clifford became really roused in his feelings about the common people, Connie was frightened. There was something devastatingly true in what he said. But it was a truth that killed. Seeing her pale and silent, Clifford started the chair again, and no more was said till he halted again at the wood gate, which she opened. "And what we need to take up now," he said, "is whips, not swords. The masses have been ruled since time began, and till time ends, ruled they will have to be. It is sheer hypocrisy and farce to say they can rule themselves." "But can you rule them?" she asked. "I? Oh yes! Neither my mind nor my will is crippled, and I don't rule with my legs. I can do my share of ruling: absolutely, my share; and give me a son, and he will be able to rule his portion after me." "But he wouldn't be your own son, of your own ruling class; or perhaps not," she stammered. "I don't care who his father may be, so long as he is a healthy man not below normal intelligence. Give me the child of any healthy, normally intelligent man, and I will make a perfectly competent Chatterley of him. It is not who begets us, that matters, but where fate places us. Place any child among the ruling classes, and he will grow up, to his own extent, a ruler. Put kings' and dukes' children among the masses, and they'll be little plebians, mass products. It is the overwhelming pressure of environment." "Then the common people aren't a race, and the aristocrats aren't blood," she said.

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  A year after I watched the boy with the small eyes pull out a gun, my father beat me for letting another boy steal from me. Two years later, he beat me for threatening my ninth-grade teacher. Not being violent enough could cost me my body. Being too violent could cost me my body. We could not get out. I was a capable boy, intelligent, well-liked, but powerfully afraid. And I felt, vaguely, wordlessly, that for a child to be marked off for such a life, to be forced to live in fear was a great injustice. And what was the source of this fear? What was hiding behind the smoke screen of streets and schools? And what did it mean that number 2 pencils, conjugations without context, Pythagorean theorems, handshakes, and head nods were the difference between life and death, were the curtains drawing down between the world and me? I could not retreat, as did so many, into the church and its mysteries. My parents rejected all dogmas. We spurned the holidays marketed by the people who wanted to be white. We would not stand for their anthems. We would not kneel before their God. And so I had no sense that any just God was on my side. “The meek shall inherit the earth” meant nothing to me. The meek were battered in West Baltimore, stomped out at Walbrook Junction, bashed up on Park Heights, and raped in the showers of the city jail. My understanding of the universe was physical, and its moral arc bent toward chaos then concluded in a box. That was the message of the small-eyed boy, untucking the piece—a child bearing the power to body and banish other children to memory. Fear ruled everything around me, and I knew, as all black people do, that this fear was connected to the Dream out there, to the unworried boys, to pie and pot roast, to the white fences and green lawns nightly beamed into our television sets.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  But Chris moved away, and Joyous Day took her place. “Say hello to me proper,” she said, and kissed her, growling. The cicatrices on her face looked like lion-whiskers. “Hello,” Roxanne gasped when she could finally breathe. Joy laughed, and slapped her hard. She cried out, and found she could not get away. “Are you sufferin’?” Joy asked sympathetically, and hit her again. Once again, she tried to jerk away, and could not escape. “Relax, Goldilocks. I and I ain’t goin’ anywhere,” Joy said with grim satisfaction, and turned toward the cart where she had sorted out her equipment. Roxanne could see the gleam of metal, but no details. Her imagination conjured up scalpels, electrodes, forceps, thumb-screws, retractors—all the instruments of a surgeon or a torturer. But what Joyous Day held up for her too see was nothing so terrible. It was a mundane wooden clothespin, not even painted black. She could not quite stifle a laugh at its appearance. For a few seconds, Joyous Day joined her in mirth. Then she slapped her again. “You got a thing or three to learn about me, girl. Just wait around. You’ll laugh out of the other side of that smart mouth.” She began to place the clothespins on Roxanne’s breasts. She worked slowly, methodically, grasping the flesh between her thumb and forefinger and working it for several seconds before closing the clip upon it. She stepped back to view her work several times, and occasionally repositioned a clip. “I wanna be mos’ symmetrical,” she told Roxanne. “Mos’ artistical.” Before long, both of Roxanne’s breasts bristled with clothespins, and she was definitely feeling their cumulative effect. Joy smiled at her and turned once more to the tray. She returned with a wicked-looking pair of alligator clips, connected by a heavy chain. “Tell me, you want to wear these for me?” she asked her. Roxanne stared into those black eyes. Was her will strong enough to require this much of her? Joy’s gaze never wavered. The answer was not in doubt. She sighed and shivered and gave her consent.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  “Do your nipples always pucker when you’re frightened?” Her fingers brushed the edges of my labia, her touch insulting me. “You little whore, you’re wet already, and I haven’t even touched you.” She pushed two fingers slowly inside of me, turning her hand from side to side. “Either you’re not really scared, or you have your wires crossed, honey.” She thrust deeper inside of me and gently moved my cervix. “Little mushroom,” she whispered, “hidden away, so spongy-soft and secret. No—don’t wiggle away. Hold still.” The friction warmed my vagina until I thought I would burst into flame. To lie passive was impossible. I struggled wildly—to escape or to increase my pleasure, I hardly knew which. “Stop that!” Her fingers were motionless within me. I rested, panting, and she began again. I moaned, and my hips rocked in response to the repeated, slow penetration. “Lay still.” I tried to clamp my ass to the mattress. For a minute or two, I succeeded. But she was so skillful, fucking me so carefully, I could not restrain myself. A groan erupted from the pit of my stomach, and I writhed on the brink of orgasm. She slapped the inside of my thigh with her free hand. “You’ll make me angry,” she warned. “I thought you’d learned your lesson.” Her gaze wandered around the room. Without taking her hand out of me, she plucked a candle from the bedside table. I could see thin trails of wax running down its side. Her pupils reflected two tiny flames. “Oh! No, no, no!” I cried. “Then—don’t—move.” And her fingers worked in me again until my juices welled up in rings around her knuckles. She watched me with clinical detachment, knowing I must break sooner or later. My thighs turned to water. I almost sobbed, and thrust my cunt against her hand. She tilted the candle. Hot wax spattered my thigh. I screamed a little—and came. She quickly pressed the heel of her hand against my clitoris and massaged it lightly until the jolt of pleasure had passed. “You’re a very slow learner,” she said when I was through. Her tone was sinister. “You just came without my permission. Spread your legs wider.” I could not. She made adjustments to my bonds, and my legs were held further apart. She brought the candle close again. “You can scream if you like,” she said generously. The first rain of fire fell upon my skin. I struggled and cried for mercy. “I can’t stand this,” I wept.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Now he was using a very thin riding crop. The pain escalated sharply. From the feel of it, it had a whalebone core. It was horrifying. Beyond expressing with a mere scream. She was convinced that the sweat rolling down her legs must be blood, knowing that it most certainly was not. It was too much—too much—too much for decency— So she pissed. Uncontrollably. From fear and anguish. All over herself, the floor of the cage, and anything else close enough to get splashed. Then he was enraged, as yellow drops of her urine beaded up on the toes of his mirror-shiny boots, and the strokes he laid on her with that evil, skinny crop made her shimmy as though she were possessed and yell until she lost her voice. When it stopped, she felt as if she were in the eye of a hurricane. There was respite from pain, but not from drama or tension. The only question was, when would it start again, and how? She hung her head, weeping, in fact blinded by tears, slobbering and sweating, her nose dripping snot, every pore and orifice opened up, wet, and slack. If it were not for her tit clamps and the steel circlets around her wrists, she would have slid to the floor and passed out. His hands were lifting the swollen masses of her buttocks, moving them to one side of the bar that divided them, his fingertips admiring this or that particularly purple spot. “Say that you love me,” he said, intense and tender. “I love you,” she sobbed. What broken-hearted prisoner does not love her torturer after a beating stops? “Say that you’re sorry.” “I—I’m sorry.” She was blubbering now. God, how disgusting. His questing fingers removed the butt plug—or rather, received it as it fell out of her. They probed—tentatively—and the by-now familiar feel of his rubber-clad erection against her raw cleft replaced his fingers. “Say you want me.” “I want you, sir.” “To do what?” Surrender. Quivering. Bowing to the inevitable. “To fuck my ass, sir.” “That’s good. That’s very good. I’d really like to.” The leather-gloved hand was moving up and down his cock. She had never met a man who loved handling himself so much. The back of his moving hand pressed against her, making obscene insinuations. “Persuade me, cunt. Talk me into it. If you make it sound sweet enough, maybe I will … put this inside of you. But hurry. If you don’t make it fast, I might come in my fist, and all this good hot stuff would go to waste. Talk to me, darlin’.” Talk to him? And why was this harder (well, just as hard) as squirming on a butt-plug to heat herself up for his cock? It was another barrier—but this time she recognized the danger, refused to postpone her pleasure or invite more punishment, and pushed the words out of her mouth as fast as she could.

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  In those days I would come out of the house, turn onto Flatbush Avenue, and my face would tighten like a Mexican wrestler’s mask, my eyes would dart from corner to corner, my arms loose, limber, and ready. This need to be always on guard was an unmeasured expenditure of energy, the slow siphoning of the essence. It contributed to the fast breakdown of our bodies. So I feared not just the violence of this world but the rules designed to protect you from it, the rules that would have you contort your body to address the block, and contort again to be taken seriously by colleagues, and contort again so as not to give the police a reason. All my life I’d heard people tell their black boys and black girls to “be twice as good,” which is to say “accept half as much.” These words would be spoken with a veneer of religious nobility, as though they evidenced some unspoken quality, some undetected courage, when in fact all they evidenced was the gun to our head and the hand in our pocket. This is how we lose our softness. This is how they steal our right to smile. No one told those little white children, with their tricycles, to be twice as good. I imagined their parents telling them to take twice as much. It seemed to me that our own rules redoubled plunder. It struck me that perhaps the defining feature of being drafted into the black race was the inescapable robbery of time, because the moments we spent readying the mask, or readying ourselves to accept half as much, could not be recovered. The robbery of time is not measured in lifespans but in moments. It is the last bottle of wine that you have just uncorked but do not have time to drink. It is the kiss that you do not have time to share, before she walks out of your life. It is the raft of second chances for them, and twenty-three-hour days for us. —

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Roxanne examined it carefully, trying to find some acceptance or desire for it in her heart. She wanted the rings, lusted after them, but the needle appalled her. “Where will you pierce me?” she asked, trying to be calm. “Wherever I like.” Roxanne gave the needle back and folded up at Alex’s feet again, trying to hide within her own arms. She had a perverse desire to fall asleep. Alex stood up and stepped behind the bar. She and Tyre scrubbed together in the sink there, lathering themselves up past the elbow with antiseptic soap. “Think we’re sterile?” Alex asked Tyre. “We’re all girls. I don’t think anybody’s going to get pregnant,” she replied. Alex gave her a pained look. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist. It was starting to sound like the Wedding March in here.” Chris and Joyous Day scooped Roxanne up in their arms and bore her to the operating table. Tyre and Alex followed them. They arranged her comfortably and switched on a strong overhead light. Anne-Marie adjusted the head of the table until she was sitting up. Roxanne followed everyone with her eyes, recording everything. When Alex ran her hands over her body, she arched beneath the caress, trying to prolong contact between her skin and Alex’s hands. “Very nice,” Alex told her. “I’m glad you’re ready for this. I hope you want it as much as I do.” “I’m real scared,” Roxanne said. “Can I see the rings?” Alex lifted the tray and held it up for her examination. “What do they mean to you?” her slave whispered. Alex replaced the tray on its stand. She noticed how precise and careful her own hands were. “They are the symbols of our relationship,” Alex said. “Symbols of my responsibility and payment for my attention. They are, in and of themselves, a constant reminder that I care for and possess you. They are reassurance and ornamentation. And they will always belong to me, despite the fact that it is your body they pierce and decorate.” Roxanne’s eyes were full of alarm and love. “Anybody who sees these rings will know all about me,” she said. “When I go see a doctor—and at the gym. The other dancers at the theater. Daddy, I won’t even be able to pick up a trick unless I want her to see me … that way.” Alex nodded. “It’s not a small gift I’m asking you to give me.” “What if you leave me?” she wailed. Alex shrugged. “I think you’re the kind of woman who ought to wear slave rings. If you ever leave me, though, I will expect to get them back. If I choose to set you free, I’ll give you the choice of keeping them or having me take them out.”

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  She heard the door of the glove compartment open. Without turning around, Joe held out a foil packet between his first two fingers. “Take it,” Don snarled. “You don’t think I’m gonna put it on myself, do you? Or don’t you know how?” She tore open the small package (it was surprisingly tough) and took out a flat circle of latex. It had a rolled rim. How was this little bitty thing going to fit over that big piece of cop-meat? Impatiently, he urged her forward, and she took his cock between her hands. His pre-cum was running freely, and he jumped when the tip of her little finger slid into the piss-slit. As she rolled the rubber over his erection, she milked him, keeping the latex sheath snug. He pinched the nipple at the tip of it, squeezing the air out of it, reminding her what was about to rush out of his tool. The prophylactic outlined and exaggerated every wrinkle and vein, and its base fell short of the root of him. As she stared, fascinated by the strangeness of his body, some of the starch went out of him. The leather-gloved hand fell on the back of her neck, exerting gentle but irresistible pressure. So she turned her head, opened her mouth, and took all of his partially rigid dick in her mouth. She pumped up and down it a few times to get her saliva going, and his response was immediate. Too bad, she thought. If he wouldn’t get completely hard, I could keep all of it in my mouth quite comfortably. Now it’s going to be harder to get it all down. “Teasing bitch,” he muttered. “Get down on it, cock-tease. Don’t worry, you can take it all. We’ll make a good cocksucker out of you. We know how, don’t we, Joe?” Mouth full, she suddenly became aware that the patrol car had stopped moving. It was parked somewhere. A window had been unrolled enough to admit fresh air and the sound of wind in trees. Also, slurping sounds were coming from the front seat. Somebody else was getting a blow job—from his partner! Were those two cops faggots? It didn’t make sense. Her cunt convulsed. Leathermen were sexy enough—dark knights and princes that she loved to look at, even if women weren’t supposed to touch. By comparison, cops were kings—fuck, emperors. In the hierarchy of sex objects, she guessed gay cops ranked right up there next to God. But, shit, if Don was supposed to be gay, it didn’t reduce the menace level much. He could get good head anywhere, any time. She knew she hadn’t had enough practice to be as good as the boys who went to the glory holes, fell on their knees, and stayed there for hours, taking eight inches and more down their throats until dawn. How was she going to please him enough to save herself?

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  But he looked at her hands: they were rather blue. So he quickly took some larch twigs to the little brick fireplace in the corner, and in a moment the yellow flame was running up the chimney. He made a place by the brick hearth. "Sit 'ere then a bit, and warm yer," he said. She obeyed him. He had that curious kind of protective authority she obeyed at once. So she sat and warmed her hands at the blaze, and dropped logs on the fire, whilst outside he was hammering again. She did not really want to sit, poked in a corner by the fire; she would rather have watched from the door, but she was being looked after, so she had to submit. The hut was quite cosy, panelled with unvarnished deal, having a little rustic table and stool beside her chair, and a carpenter's bench, then a big box, tools, new boards, nails; and many things hung from pegs: axe, hatchet, traps, things in sacks, his coat. It had no window, the light came in through the open door. It was a jumble, but also it was a sort of little sanctuary. She listened to the tapping of the man's hammer; it was not so happy. He was oppressed. Here was a trespass on his privacy, and a dangerous one! A woman! He had reached the point where all he wanted on earth was to be alone. And yet he was powerless to preserve his privacy; he was a hired man, and these people were his masters. Especially he did not want to come into contact with a woman again. He feared it, for he had a big wound from old contacts. He felt if he could not be alone, and if he could not be left alone, he would die. His recoil away from the outer world was complete; his last refuge was this wood; to hide himself there! Connie grew warm by the fire, which she had made too big: then she grew hot. She went and sat on the stool in the doorway, watching the man at work. He seemed not to notice her, but he knew. Yet he worked on, as if absorbedly, and his brown dog sat on her tail near him, and surveyed the untrustworthy world. Slender, quiet and quick, the man finished the coop he was making, turned it over, tried the sliding door, then set it aside. Then he rose, went for an old coop, and took it to the chopping-log where he was working. Crouching, he tried the bars; some broke in his hands; he began to draw the nails. Then he turned the coop over and deliberated, and he gave absolutely no sign of awareness of the woman's presence.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  The man cast an angry look at me now and then and, pointing his finger at me, growled: ‘Take care, let me once get to Standerton and I shall show you what I do.’ I sat speechless and prayed to God to help me. After dark we reached Standerton and I heaved a sigh of relief on seeing some Indian faces. As soon as I got down, these friends said: ‘We are hereto receive you and take you to Isa Sheth’s shop. We have had a telegram from Dada Abdulla.’ I was very glad, and we went to Sheth Isa Haji Sumar’s shop. The Sheth and his clerks gathered round me. I told them all that I had gone through. They were very sorry to hear it and comforted me by relating to me their own bitter experiences. I wanted to inform the agent of the Coach Company of the whole affair. So I wrote him a letter, narrating everything that had happened, and drawing his attention to the threat his man had held out. I also asked for an assurance that he would accommodate me with the other passengers inside the coach when we started the next morning. To which the agent replied to this effect: ‘From Standerton we have a bigger coach with different men in charge. The man complained of will not be there tomorrow, and you will have a seat with the other passengers.’ This somewhat relieved me. I had, of course, no intention of proceeding against the man who had assaulted me, and so the chapter of the assault closed there. In the morning Isa Sheth’s man took me to the coach, I got a good seat and reached Johannesburg quite safely that night. Standerton is a small village and Johannesburg a big city. Abdulla Sheth had wired to Johannesburg also, and given me the name and address of Muhammad Kasam Kamruddin’s firm there. Their man had come to receive me at the stage, but neither did I see him nor did he recognize me. So I decided to go to a hotel. I knew the names of several. Taking a cab I asked to be driven to the Grand National Hotel. I saw the Manager and asked for a room. He eyed me for a moment, and politely saying, ‘I am very sorry, we are full up’, bade me good-bye. So I asked the cabman to drive to Muhammad Kasam Kamruddin’s shop. Here I found Abdul Gani Sheth expecting me, and he gave me a cordial greeting. He had a hearty laugh over the story of my experience at the hotel. ‘How ever did you expect to be admitted to a hotel?’ he said. ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘You will come to know after you have stayed here a few days,’ said he.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  QUICKENED SPIRIT OF SACRIFICE Before I narrate the struggle for the Indian settlers rights in the Transvaal and their dealing with the Asiatic Department, I must turn to some other aspects of my life.Up to now there had been in me a mixed desire. The spirit of self- sacrifice was tempered by the desire to lay by something for the future. About the time I took up chambers in Bombay, an American insurance agent had come there a man with a pleasing countenance and a sweet tongue. As though we were old friends he discussed my future welfare. ‘All men of your status in America have their lives insured. Should you not also insure yourself against the future? Life is uncertain. We in America regard it as a religious obligation to get insured. Can I not tempt you to take out a small policy?’ Up to this time I had given the cold shoulder to all the agents I had met in South Africa and India, for I had though that life assurance implied fear and want of faith in God. But now I succumbed to the temptation of the American agent. As he proceeded with his argument, I had before my mind’s eye a picture of my wife and children. ‘Man, you have sold almost all the ornaments of your wife,’ I said to myself. ‘If something were to happen to you, the burden of supporting her and the children would fall on your poor brother, who has so nobly filled the place of father. How would that become you?’ With these and similar arguments I persuaded myself to take out a policy for Rs. 10,000. But when my mode of life changed in South Africa, my outlook changed too. All the steps I took at this time of trial were taken in the name of God and for His service. I did not know how long I should have to stay in South Africa. I had a fear that I might never be able to get back to India: so I decided to keep my wife and children with me and earn enough to support them. This plan made me

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  The family doctor was called. After examining me, he said he was not sure I would recover. I was given injections of camphor and glucose until I was like a pincushion. The pulses of both my wrist and upper arm became imperceptible.Two hours passed. They stood looking down at my corpse. A shroud was made ready, my favorite toys collected, and all the relatives gathered. Almost another hour passed, and then suddenly urine appeared. My mother's brother, who was a doctor, said, "He's alive!" He said it showed that the heart had resumed beating. A little later urine appeared again. Gradually the vague light of life revived in my cheeks. That illness—autointoxication—became chronic with me. It struck about once a month, now lightly, now seriously. I encountered many crises. By the sound of the disease's footsteps as it drew near I came to be able to sense whether an attack was likely to approach death or not. My earliest memory, an unquestionable one, haunting me with a strangely vivid image, dates from about that time. I do not know whether it was my mother, a nurse, a maid, or an aunt who was leading me by the hand. Nor is the season of the year distinct. Afternoon sunshine was falling dimly on the houses along the slope. Led by the hand of the unremembered woman, I was climbing the slope toward home. Someone was coming down the slope, and the woman jerked my hand. We got out of the way and stood waiting at one side. There is no doubt that the image of what I saw then has taken on meaning anew each of the countless times it has been reviewed, intensified, focused upon. Because within the hazy perimeter of the scene nothing but the figure of that "someone coming down the slope" stands out with disproportionate clarity. And not without reason: this very image is the earliest of those that have kept tormenting and frightening me all my life. It was a young man who was coming down toward us, with handsome, ruddy cheeks and shining eyes, wearing a dirty roll of cloth around his head for a sweatband. He came down the slope carrying a yoke of night-soil buckets over one shoulder, balancing their heaviness expertly with his footsteps. He was a night-soil man, a ladler of excrement.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Joyous Day laughed until she coughed. Alex patted her gently on the back, then hugged her tight. “Hey, I think she’s getting antsy.” “Too bad,” Joy chuckled. “Never hurts to let them simmer. Makes those tough cuts get so tender they just fall apart in dere own gravy. Chrissie, you ready, Snake-Charmin’ Woman?” Chris uncoiled the bullwhip and playfully snapped the end of it at Joyous Day’s feet. “Willing and able,” she replied. “Just waiting for you to get your jollies so I can get down to some serious sadism.” “White Devil Girl, you think you know serious sadism, you ought to let me do you up in my transcendental clamps sometime. Those clothespins are nothing, honey, they are strictly Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour. I got devices that would have you screaming for mercy in no time. Get you talking to the stars and walkin’ on the moon.” Chris laughed. “Oh, I’m sure you do. Didn’t mean to cast aspersions on your technique. Listen, I’m such a chickenshit, I have to be a top.” Joy nodded, laughed, and took a hit of beer. She handed the bottle back to Alex and walked over to Roxanne. “Hello, stranger,” she said. Roxanne raised her head, smiled a little, and softly said, “Hello.” Once more, Joy handled the pins as if they were the keys of some bizarre musical instrument. Roxanne cried out. Her head fell forward. “I can’t take much more of this,” she warned. “Oh, I think you can,” Joy replied. “I think you got no choice, workin’ girl. We got to get a little music out of you now. You are a dancer. Surely you got music in your soul.” Roxanne cursed her. Joy hit her across the face. The slaps echoed in the black chamber. Finally she gave her the “music” she wanted. The high-pitched screams brought the pack running to witness her pain. “No more,” Roxanne gasped. “Please. I’m sorry, I won’t talk back to you. Please. No more.” “That’s a better attitude,” Joy said. “Do you much better, considerin’ your true situation.” She tweaked at one or two of the clips. “So you want these off, I hear?” Roxanne nodded, eyes closed tightly, her teeth gritted. Joy put her lips close to her ear. While she talked, she touched the clips around Roxanne’s face. They were only gentle taps, punctuating the speech she made.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  When a whip is cracked, the tip of it is going faster than the speed of sound. So Curt may be excused for feeling that each scream was being torn from his throat and praying that his next breath would be his last. He could have taken even this if he had not had to take it alone. But the stranger who had been so helpful did not speak to him, and he could not see his face. The pain had no purpose, it was madness, he was being taught things he did not want to know—why men broke under torture, how much you can suffer and still live, the sublime indifference of the sky from blue to black and to blue again; finally, that he was alone with this knowledge—alone, alone, alone with pain. The spoiler did not intend to send the young man spinning through the existential void. True, he felt little or nothing for this piece of bait, but that was not his fault. This novice did not have any of the qualities that aroused him—for example, a good-humored willingness to make others suffer if they would not obey. The category of beginner, virgin, or chicken was erotically neutral and empty for the spoiler. That was why he did not speak to the boy or establish empathy with him. They had nothing to say to one another. Whatever agony or ecstasy fired the boy’s synapses were immaterial; no electricity would jump the gap between them. This performance was for the master, whose eyes were glazing over as he watched Curt’s fit, young body being painted with red streaks and welts. He did not have to imagine what it felt like. He could remember. More than that, he was experiencing a rare, intense pleasure from watching someone else work. Only at major tribal gatherings like Inferno did he get a chance to see tops whose working style pleased him. Even when he co-topped, he usually found respectful, unobtrusive ways to relegate his partner’s activities to his peripheral vision. Not only was he eagerly watching this sober, quiet dude cut the kid to ribbons, he had a roaring hard-on and thought that if it went much longer he was going to come in his pants like a teenager. Just before the master’s excitement built to that point, Curt broke. They untied the sobbing kid, threw a bucket of cold water on him, gave him his clothes and a Valium, and called a cab to take him home. The master was so put off by this display of cowardice and bad manners (and by his own frustrating sensation of coitus interruptus) that he did not notice that the boy said an effusive goodbye to the other man’s boots and ignored his own. This whipped-dog devotion saddened the spoiler, but he was relieved that the ex-novice was leaving. He might get what he really wanted now. It could not take place in front of a witness.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  “Welcome to Precint 13,” somebody said, and the other two snickered. “Home of the city’s oldest, unbusted, floating crap game and emergency room for the treatment of blue flu.” “Look around. This is your new home,” the highway patrolman said. That was ominous. It implied permanence. “Your arms are probably sore. Not to mention your jaw,” he added, and motioned for Joe to unlock the handcuffs. She rubbed her wrists and flexed her arms, then—since she had been told to look around and nobody stopped her—she explored the room. Its walls and ceiling were painted a glaring white. She felt like she was trapped inside a refrigerator. The overhead light, a bare bulb, was in a wire cage to prevent unruly occupants from breaking it. There were a couple of dusty, overstuffed armchairs and a coffee table. But there was something weird—a small cell in the corner, not big enough to lie down in—a cage, actually. On the other side of the room was a double bed covered with a white sheet. Hospital restraints hung from the iron head-and-foot boards. The bathroom door was just past the bed. The bright light and sterile, ice-box walls made her jailers seem very colorful, intense, and interesting. She was crushable, disposable, like a little carton of leftovers waiting to be thrown out. “Luxury accommodations,” sneered the boss-cop. “The fucking Hilton. All for you. Think it’ll do?” She faced him squarely and said, “You motherfuckers can’t get away with this!” He smacked her, she fell, and the two uniforms dragged her to her feet. “Nobody talks to me like that,” he raged. “You’re just a goddamn dyke we dragged in of the street. Maybe we’re going to find some coke on you. Maybe you were diddling your girlfriend in a public john. Maybe you’re drunk and disorderly and need to stay here overnight to detox. Maybe I just happen to have a thing about lesbians. Arrogant bitches. No man is good enough for ’em. And you! You!” He was almost choking, pointing at her with his finger and his cock, which strained against the fabric of his uniform trousers. “Walking down that street with your hair all hacked off, above it all, in that fag outfit. Rip that bike jacket off of her.” The two uniforms began to struggle with her, trying to hold her and remove her jacket at the same time. It wasn’t easy, but they finally got it off—after she had hit one of them in the mouth and kicked the other one to his knees. The patrolman grabbed it, and she expected him to throw it on the floor, but instead he draped it over one of the faded armchairs. Then he walked back to the center of the room and confronted her again. “What do you mean by running around like that?” he demanded. “The way I dress is my own damned business.”