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.

Page 71 of 529 · 20 per page

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  The priest reached out and clapped Dove’s shoulder. Now he turned back up. Halfway, he stopped to finger himself, pulled down his zipper, and emptied his bladder on the steps. Dove narrowed his eyes at the cable of flesh. It was not as long as his. Urine made waterfalls down the steps, made a hot puddle about Dove’s calloused feet. Dove flattened his toes. Suddenly he got an odd look. A lot of it was grin. Something vicious tempered it. “Hey, Father?” The priest’s water trickled away. He shook himself, shoved himself in. “Hey, Father, you ever get to stick that big hook of yours in that redheaded pig’s pussy?” The priest frowned. “You know; the cunt you’re waiting for.” Dove gestured toward the priest’s crotch. “You got a fucker like a little whale shark. Don’t you ever stick her, Father? You go down in that strawberry sundae a-lickin’ and a-suckin’, like me?” Dove recognized the priest’s look as rage the same moment the father kicked. Dove twisted away, to crouch at the gutter edge, grinning. The metal teeth on the priest’s fly gaped and flashed. His fists clenched, raised beside his head. Then he stalked up the church steps. Dove’s laughter chattered high like broken glass. Ripples moved from his feet. Back in the alley he squatted beside them. Nig had her on the pavement. The buttocks rose and rose and rose. Dove touched them. They were sweaty, and they quivered at the bottom and top of each stroke. He pushed his finger in the crack. Played with the balls; let the shaft rub the nub of his middle finger. Nig groaned. Dove opened his fly and played with himself. Nig reached back, caught Dove’s cock. “Bitch,” he growled, “give this white boy some head. Hey, swing that pussy around!” Dove kneeled by her face. She tried to twist her head. Nig pushed it back. Put his knuckles against her jaw. Dove slid back and forth in her limp mouth. “Oh, baby, suck him good! Suck, baby!” She didn’t. But Dove could feel Nig’s beat shaking her. Nig’s breath coarsened. His rhythm doubled. Dove felt her tongue move once on the side of his cock. He pressed in to the hair; and came. Nig stood up over her, massaging his bright, black penis. “Go on.” He gestured toward her. “You better get it before it all runs out.” Dove scurried around between her legs. She moaned and turned her head. Nig watched his brother’s yellow head waggle in the fork. Once, when Dove got too violent, she gave a small scream. Nig put his foot on her mouth. Her jaw moved under his instep, and once she tried to pull his ankle away. “Yeah, that’s it. Eat my shit.” Nig grinned. “Eat it.” Now Dove lay across her, his buttocks tightening, tightening, his face on her neck.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  “I thought so. Doesn’t matter.” He stretched out his hands and laid them on the table. “She’s tired of our lives now. Certainly by now she’s gone on to . . . well, I’m sure her doings would seem bizarre even to us. Still, I notice she has no compunction about steering you back into the tangles of what she, no doubt, considers a swamp.” He noticed that when he touched the table Peggy-Ann’s fingers retreated into her lap, meshed in a pale knot. “I’m also sure she didn’t misrepresent us. Can you tell me why you thought you would enjoy it here?” She shook her head again. “Oh, I’m so sor . . .” That word failed. She tried three more; could make no sound; could only beg with her eyes. He let the chair legs tap down. “We’ll let it go by saying you just wanted to see for yourself. I dare say you’ve done quite a bit of ‘experimenting’ in your . . . time. You’re very attractive. Are you twenty yet?” She hazarded a nod. “Older?” With a small jerking motion, she shook: no. “I dare say you’re also bright. Catherine never had time for stupid women. Or stupid men either.” “I . . . I didn’t know her well.” “Then your intellect must have impressed her very much, if she recommended us so quickly.” “I feel so . . . silly . . .” in a voice that communicated only terror. “No. Not silly. You have quite a lot of time left to wander this globe. You must find out who you are. So. You’ve discovered, now, you are the sort of person who can enjoy such things as pass in these rooms only in fantasies—eh?” Her eyes jerked back up to his. He laughed. “There, with your pretty green eyes and your red hair all awry—” Her hands started for her hair, stopped when Proctor laughed again.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  No, sir, I said. He said, Not a pretty habit on a young woman. After an awkward silence, he added, Here’s the real truth, if you can dig it. He reached into the backseat and handed over a bedraggled paperback whose inside-back ads involved books on UFOs and Nostradamus. Looks real interesting, I said. You believe in presences? he said. I lied that I knew ESP and ghosts existed, though I believed in nothing, naught, nada. (When I got to college and found the word nihilist, I’d glom onto it the way a debutante does an alligator handbag.) He shook his head. Those are just circus tricks for the weak mind. That’s when I noticed that no aspect of this hillbilly matched up with the surfboard lashed on top. Sam’s sunken chest meant his only swimming included water wings. Or—the ghost of reason said to me—when he was weighing down corpses in some black sunken lagoon. He said, My granny back in Tennessee was born with the web of a caul over her head like a wedding veil, and I come into this world wearing that same veil. I see what others don’t. I am wed to the truth and a missionary of it. He studied me in black-eyed silence for a while. You’re not a Jew, are you? I didn’t peg you for a Jew. Me? No, sir. Actually, do you know a good church around here for me and my fiancée? As if, I thought, I’d ever enter a church other than carried by handles. He spat in a coffee can and pointed out my window, saying, Look at this cathedral we been give here. Sun was spattering the indigo water with silver sequins. Girls who seem to have stepped from chewing gum commercials jogged in bikinis along the shoreline. It was a lobster-salad-eating crowd. I said, They say it never rains here hardly at all. With two fingers, he stroked the edges of his thick mustache like some diminutive Chinese emperor about to sign a death order. He said, We’re not made to wallow in pleasure. Pleasure is joy’s assassin. He paused to spit in the coffee can. He said, I can see past this day to the time when these same waves will be made of blood. You believe that? Sounds like you know the Bible, I said. That I do. I’ve studied on it pretty good. You don’t mind, he said, brightening up—you don’t mind, I gotta make a quick stop by a friend’s house right this side of San Clemente. With that statement, his manner altered. He smiled, showing the pointy incisors of a gerbil. Which change hit my adrenal system like jumper cable voltage. He was suddenly trying to be charming. For the first time, I could see how wildly high he was. I must have had heatstroke to miss it. His eyes were tar pits, his body slick with sweat.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  The little dragon leapt to the dog’s back and clung. The great beast that had stepped from the broken cage went “Ahhhhh—” and the heat hit his chin, whirled inside his eye sockets. The dog was barking. Its second head—beaked and feathered—cawed. The tongue of the third—flat and scaled—slithered and whipped on the bony gum. The little dragon had slipped to the floor. It hissed and beat translucent wings. The woman in the carcass was battling to get free. The ribs closed and opened, closed and opened as she crawled in the livid offal. Her arms glistened to the elbows. Her hair fell forward like yarn. She fell; sprawled on the floor; crawled forward dragging coiled horse gut. His severed hand scuttled through flame toward the three-headed dog that barked at her. The fingers reached up, fell, reached again and grasped at the chimera’s scrotum. The dripping wrist cleared the floor, hauled itself along the sheathed cock. Thumb and forefinger worked the black bristles till the shaft bulged at its half length. The tip rubied the pursed hose of over-flesh. The working fingers massaged the sheath back. The inner shaft, wet, thrust from the husk. Raw in the firelight, it sagged from the hairless belly. The grasping hand thumbed the husk over the bulge. Niger barked again and sprang at the crawling woman. She stopped shaking her hair. Nervous forepaws scraped her flanks. The dog head yipped. Hawk and snake head made their softest sounds. Bunched haunches hunched. And hunched. The fingers guided the slick stick between her hams: flexed the wet tip in the hairy sheath; fed the mucus-filmed meat into the meat of her. Her thighs wobbled. He stared at his delinquent appendage prodding the bestial juncture. He kept trying to breathe. And breath kept snagging on words for which there was no syntax. With his good hand he reached for her hair. It was dry and crisp. He pulled it back. “Kiss me . . .” she whispered from bad teeth. Her lips shook with the hound’s rhythm. Blind sockets dribbled ocher down her nose. Snake, dog, and bird breath were rank. She seized his lower lip in her loose, brown mouth. And she was pulling at his maimed arm, holding it to her stomach, hauling him closer. Her dugs swung against his bicep. A tickling at the stump became pain. He tore his mouth from her (blood bubbled inside his lips and drooled his chin) to see she had a penis, the blotched color of a new bruise, jutting from her hair. She jabbed his wound, laid it along the bone. With the dog on her back, she humped his glowing stub, He jerked away. She howled and reared, almost unmounting the beast on her. Blood from her clotted cock drooled her thigh. He rolled on floor, cuddling his aching wrist, eyes tight. He lay on his back. His breath made multiple S sounds between clamped teeth.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  With darkness, she couldn’t even move. She shivered, and her body wouldn’t do any of the things she wanted. Trying, now, only to avoid pain, realized she had been thinking, Maybe he won’t hurt me anymore if I cooperate, though she already hurt between her legs where he had pinched her. He was pulling her panties down. And with his hands on her belly he moved down against her. “Feed papa all that pretty pussy.” That, mumbled into her. She reached down and caught hold of his hair, not to get him away, but to keep from falling. She felt numb, and his face slipping in her numbness. He was squeezing her buttocks. She thought: Why am I thinking; if I don’t move maybe he won’t— “Hey, there, pretty baby. How about some of that pussy for me? Dove boy, you got it all set?” She skinned her hand on dried paint and tried to kick the one on his knees. Because the second one was coming at her. He was black and his pants were open. The white one pulled back his head. “Come on, Nig. Swing that black mother-fucker around here.” She felt herself start to collapse. (She cannot fight. Watch her beautiful fear. I will not let her fight.) The black one caught her by the shoulders and slammed her on the door. “Open your mouth, bitch! Lemme get some tongue.” She cried and tried to keep her teeth together. Only the sobs pried them open from behind, and his tongue from the front; suddenly she hissed because of what the second one did with four fingers between her legs. When she moved her arms he hurt them with his hands that could go all the way around. Her thighs shook against Dove’s cheek. He turned away, and Nig’s cock hit his face (Nig’s legs leaned across his back). He ducked and reached up to feel the hot, rough sack with its wiry hair, bitter with her. Sweat, and the stench of (his own) shit; to touch it with the tip of his tongue. With his hand he guided the wide head. Dove grunted when she began to squirm hard against what he was pushing in her. He bit her thigh when she tried to yank aside, so he could push it in another inch. Now Nig jammed too. “Suck on my balls while I dick this pussy, boy,” growled from above. Dove nosed the balls, ministered with tongue and fingers to the plunging junction. He held their legs till Nig’s thighs clamped his head. Which meant get out of the way. He came up, tired. Her arms hung on Nig’s neck. Dove leaned on the wall and watched Nig convulse in her. Once he stuck his hand between their slapping bellies, fingered the slippery thickness, put two fingers into her, then, with his wet hand, kneaded the hairy bag.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  Do you know what he did for her?” Gunner shook his head. “He brewed her strange drugs that shatter the mind and the vision: a hallucinogen that the body cannot break down, it explodes the consciousness for an hour or more, till it is passed with the urine, intact. Always a hunchback, he became so lost in the pits of their joint depravity that he is only a fouled vision of his former self, and lives in nauseous squalor, devouring his own or any filth that falls to him, a pathetic but vicious thing, less than an animal.” “Let him out!” Gunner whispered. “I have given Bull the keys.” Proctor stuck two fingers into his shirt pocket, pulled out a small vial. He thumbed up the top and rolled a ruby capsule onto his palm. “Open your mouth.” Gunner did. Proctor pushed his palm over the boy’s mouth. Gunner swallowed. “What was that?” “Five hundred micrograms of the drug whose abuse reduced that poor fool to the creature he is.” He put another of the capsules into his own mouth, then poured some more into his palm. “A couple, Captain? You’ll get off in an hour. Here, Kim. Three for you, Sambo. A buck your size needs an extra dose.” The black reached for the capsules. The others crowded behind him, tried to push ahead. “Jon!” Benny pushed through the crowd. “Hey, Jon! Nazi!” “What is it, boy?” Proctor halted his largesse. “In the bar,” Benny said. “Somebody wants to see Bull! He says it’s important. It’s police business.” The bald lawman was just about to take the pill. He stopped. “Who is it?” “Father Michael.” “Now what could—shit!” He handed the pill to Benny and pushed from the crowd, frowned back at Proctor, before disappearing into the doorway. Proctor grunted disgustedly and stood up. “Her priest, the one she and the little redhead study with. Sometimes I think a great great grandmother of hers must have invented religion. After swallowing one of these little red pills, she pissed in some chalice, and the poor man who drank from it was never the same.” He turned to the others. “Here! I have a dozen more. Who’s hungry for visions of the beasts that lurk behind the night!” The others crowded forward. Bull picked up the rifle from the bar, turned around, and let the stock thump the floor. He lay the barrel up along the black denim. The tip was cold through the hair matting his belly. He moved his boot, clearing sawdust. “You want to tell me what this is all about, Father?” The priest, from the chair he had taken off the bar, looked up at Bull.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  One corner of his mouth kept twitching. He lurched across the street, ducked into the alley as two men appeared from behind a further boat. He turned to watch them in the moon’s light. “You know, Father, probably, like I said, he got out of town as soon as he ran away from the girl.” That was an immense, shirtless creature, shaven skull, mat-chested, whose boots thumped the wharf boards and whose voice sounded like a rasp doing something to rock. And he was swinging a rifle against his hip. “But, Sheriff, we can’t take any chance! We just can’t allow a beast like that to roam our streets, attacking women. If you had seen what that monster had done to the poor, poor child.” That was the priest! “If you had seen!” “You just point him out to me, and I’ll blow his fuckin’ head off—excuse me, Father. But I’m just saying I don’t think it’s very likely you will.” “If he isn’t down here by the docks, Sheriff, I think we can probably assume you’re right. They’ll catch him in one of the towns along the coast here. I just hope they get him before he kills some other innocent creature.” Horror struck through Robby like long crystals forming. He pulled back against the wall as they passed the alley entrance. And almost gagged again. “When we work our way down to the end of the docks, then I’m afraid you’ll have to turn me loose. I promised I’d do some work for Proctor before the night was up. He needs me.” They passed beyond his vision. Robby ran down the narrow street. His shirt was a cold tongue lapping his chest. His pant leg went flap, flap. He tried to run close to the wall. Small streets kept emptying him onto bigger ones. He would turn off them again, ducking down behind wooden fences— Two, ahead of him in workmen’s greens: white and black; he recognized them in the lamp light, and froze. They were laughing, and the white one was elbowing the black one over some stupendous joke. They stopped, looked around. Robby wasn’t breathing, sure that they had seen him, not knowing why he should fear if they did, but fearing it more than anything. Then there was an unfamiliar voice. A figure vaulted over the fence. Robby ground his flank on the wall. “Where the hell you two guys been? I’ve been huntin’ all over.” “Tearin’ up a little cunt down in front of St. Mark’s,” Nig said. “Redheaded whore. Shit, she had some mouth-fillin’ pussy,” Dove said. A black-haired man, a leather jacket open on a naked chest. And a chain around his neck with a black swastika, silver rimmed: “Bull said he thought it was you two. Look, you better come with me.” “What for, Nazi?” “Whyn’t you come with us, Nazi? We still out huntin’.” “Proctor needs you.” “Oh.”

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  Reflexively, thinking somehow she might hurt herself, he caught it. Her hand twisted about on its very small wrist. Her lips snarled back. She made a high, screeching sound that finally broke, and broke again, till she shook with rasping sobs. And she kept hitting at his chest and head. He tried to duck and at the same time not drop her. She hit him above the eye, so he raised his head—her movements were all despair and no strength—and saw the church door open. A tall priest (white collar, tweed jacket), stepped out— She clawed at Robby’s face. He grunted and pushed her hand away, terribly relieved by the advent of someone official. “What the . . . Peggy-Ann! Boy, what are you doing to—” The father came quickly down the steps into the street lamp glare. Robby saw his expression and wondered. “Get away from that girl!” Realization struck him the same time as the priest’s foot. It hit his shoulder, glanced his ear. Robby fell back, scraping the heels of his palms on the wet cement. He scrambled, trying to hold the side of his head. The priest stood over the girl. The fear broke apart all that was left of Robby’s astonishment, scattered it. He rolled to his knees, rocked to his feet, and ran. He heard the priest call something after him. And kept running. Tripped once, rolled over, and came up crying. And ran again. PROCTOR’S ADDRESS : There, leave your pleasuring a moment. I have something to tell you. Yes, yes, I know elegance and symmetry would have me wait until we are all assembled. But one of the side effects of a life dedicated to sensuality is a lack of punctuality—though not dependability, once we learn to decode behavioral signs: there simply is no way I can guarantee an assemblage of all the demons I should like to raise. I am merely human. sambo, your sons would certainly enhance our number. Nazi, if you would loose that creature in the basement, what an ornament he would make us! No matter. I doubt I shall say anything our more experienced members have not already discerned for themselves. If I do outline a famliar template, then by all means go back to rutting on the fouled mattresses—as the lustier company, I notice by the grunts and sounds of sweaty bodies slapping that comes through the shadows, have already begun to do. I only beg you not to make so much noise that those who are bored with indulgence, tired, or (one hopes there are few so unfamiliar with the process as to be:) honestly curious, cannot hear. If it is to be said at all, it must be said now. Ah! I see you, our least experienced member, have left off rubbing and twisting a bit.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  He turned his head. A dragon of tarnished bronze writhed about the candle stub that guttered and flapped its light through the room. A tiny screeching over metal: He jerked around to stare at the bird cage. It wasn’t a bird inside. All his muscles contracted. The back of his hand dragged more grit. Claws ticked the floor. He jerked up. The dog waited. His body shrank from the beast. The only thing his mind could touch were new facets of fear. It is a big dog. On the wall the carcass of a horse fell apart. Crouching in the livid cage, he, distorted, pawed between her legs. She, grotesque, flopped his gross cock from thigh to thigh. It stayed limp. Flames sputtered about the protecting ribs. Skull and fore-hooves pawed and wagged before the infernal sea where six feet dangled. The dog sprang. Robby screamed. Nothing hit. The black cock and balls rolled off its brass plate, slipped from the table, and flopped to the floor. Where it fell, blood inched the wood. He snatched his hand away. Jerked again because teeth clicked. Dog breath lanced his ear. He fell on his belly and began to cry. His cheek slipped on puddled blood. The dog barked. As he flailed out, the light went insane. Three candles fell from the window sill. He pulled back, expecting the floor to fire. Two went out. He got to his feet. The blood patch burned, flames half an inch above the bright surface as though it were kerosene. He looked at his right hand, which was in pain. Two drops of hot wax dulled on his skin. The creature in the cage scraped its claws on the bars. He slapped at the puddle. Fire splashed. The whole floor was pocked with amethysts. His hand stung. He scraped at the spots, to pry up the wax scales with his thumb nail. His hand fell off. His wrist spurted fire. He whirled, waving fire. Fire hit the cage bars. The creature inside shrieked. The bars sagged, dribbled away. The thing leaped, clawing and shrieking, on pale green wings. It walked across the floor on its hind legs, foreclaws scraping at the ceiling beams. Its wings masked out the door behind it. The forelegs thumped down. The dog ran to grovel between them. It yawned hugely on flame-colored gums, reared again. Clawed toes splayed in ashes. Amethysts glittered between its talons. The wings made a wind that tugged his hair. The candles about the room roared. And the tarnished dragon was crawling from around the mash of wax to the table’s edge. The floor was cluttered with emeralds and cut spinel besides. On knees and one hand, he crawled the points. Then his hand mashed something soft. He reared back from the crushed flesh. The dog had gotten to its feet again, chin and underbelly flickering in the floor’s litter.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  But I haven’t told what makes Herr Bildungs one of those special kinds. The third night I worked for him, nearly two years before what I just told you on the beach, he was working one night and I came to ask something. I surprised him, he turned and dropped the lens and it missed the rug and broke on the tiles. There it is. The two of us staring at the bits of glass, the metal ring. He was mad, too. He called me a little black devil and said I was clumsy and tried to hit me, and that I couldn’t work any more if I didn’t learn to knock first and know manners. But too many people had hit and cursed me already for it to make much difference but I was scared. He changed his mind. But can you see with that attention by kerosene light a white man, a black boy, a broken lens? I took trips with Herr Bildungs in my two and a half years with him to Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Caracas. Once we flew to Houston, Texas, for a weekend when he went to all sorts of meetings. That’s when I decided I would have to make my English much better. It was a good idea. Six months and Herr Bildungs went back to Germany. I started working on boats. The third one I was on stalled in New Orleans. The Captain disappeared. I liked the city, and in a week I had been everywhere from Dekator Street to Tulane. It was a city of many magicians. Four years, mostly there and the rest working the coast with New Orleans to return to, maybe made almost an American out of me. You see? And maybe gave me an advantage. Therese in New Orleans, big as a barrel of chocolate, who had red hair and wore dresses she was always near falling out, and white socks over ankles with lots of burn scars on them, and shoes split down the back. She modeled at art classes in the university, brought me books from there, and all the time sat in a bar I found out (first surprise) she owned and (second surprise) gave me a job on a boat I didn’t know she owned as well as the bar. She talked with me a lot and (third surprise) spoke Spanish. And became one, one afternoon sitting in front of her establishment on a sagging board between two pork tubs.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  Fingers in his mouth—one hand over his nose, one pulling down over his chin—kept his teeth apart. “Stick it right on in. Right on down.” Robby got one hand loose and struck at the canvas covered legs. Iron behind the cloth. He thought he was falling, slapped the ground to balance. A bare foot pinned his hand, bruising it. “Hey, look at this cocksucker—” He couldn’t get breath. “You better swallow, or you gonna die—” He couldn’t swallow for gagging. His tongue blunted on the flesh that flooded him. One of them wiped his hands over his face—so hard it hurt—and he could see: a big buckle and splattered cloth, very near. Then the ridged black belly, small head far away. But grinning. The nigger swung his hand—still grinning—and Robby’s ear clanged with the smack. One eye went blazing blind. But jarred into him. He got one gasp without taking in water. The knuckles came back the other way. With the pain, urine flushed his eyes. He reeled under their hands and his hand was still clamped on the ground. He swallowed. When they dropped him he went down clutching at their ankles. His face rolled over a foot. As he knuckled his eyes, toes struck his cheek. He curled on his side. Glancing up, he saw a fist slide up a dick. “Motherfucker—” the fisherman drawled, puckered his lips to a prune. He kicked again. Robby gaped with pain. The fisherman spat. Robby swallowed out of surprise: froth, and thicker than froth. He rolled his head aside, while their laughter unraveled. “Come on, nigger! This is the third white face you been in tonight.” “We better get on back to Proctor, before he gets where he’s goin’.” “Did me good to see him drink it down!” “Shit, you’d a’ thought that son of a bitch didn’t like it none, hey?” “He sure gonna feel funny in a little while when that stuff hits!” They laughed, and the laughter moved up the bank. Robby scrubbed his palm on his mouth. He got to his knees. His jaw hurt. He pulled his wet shirt from his chest, let it flop back. He pulled the thigh of his pants out with his fingertips. He stood, frowning. His left foot was awash in his shoe. He walked up the bank from under the dock. He slipped once, and barked a curse. His voice died quivering. He gained the concrete, looked along the boats; looked down at himself. Looked across the street. One corner of his mouth kept twitching. He lurched across the street, ducked into the alley as two men appeared from behind a further boat. He turned to watch them in the moon’s light.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  Father and son, faces pressed together, bit her belly. When Guido rose, Pietro clawed into her like a nervous weasel. She bled. I rose to stop him, but Guido halted me. “While she was still as the corpse on the table, she attracted them. They invited me to take her. I did. Their excitement excited me. As well, I realized that while I covered her lacerated body, it was harder for them to wound her further—though, as I toiled in her, they nipped at her feet and ankles, or shoved their fingers in alongside my prick. Between us, we entered her nine, ten times. But though she kept them stiff, neither Guido nor Pietro could empty himself into her. Only I filled her cavity. Then father and son got their heads between her legs and I drew their final juices. Several times I heard Guido restrain the boy: ‘No, no, go in her gently. We have all night, and the beauty on the table still to go . . .’ “We rested a while. “Once I opened my eyes to see Guido, in the firelight, kneeling to lick the blood from the face of his sleeping son. Toward dawn, I felt Guido rousing me with a boot, and Pietro kicking at me with his bare foot. ‘Come to the table . . .’ “Later, when Guido was buttoning his fly, and Pietro had gone to the wall to pee, I helped the Duchessa up. She was barely able to walk. Guido held the door silently for us. The cool air revived her a little as we walked along the road. It was growing light. “ ‘Are you . . .?’ I ventured inanely. “She looked at me with bruised and scabbed face. ‘Go away . . .’ she said. ‘Go away from this town.’ “ ‘But—’ “Her expression was suddenly recognizable through the injury. I started at it and tried not to show my start. “I said, ‘You shouldn’t have—’ “She stopped me: ‘My husband is looking for me. I shall take him to the cemetery and he will have those two monsters arrested. They will be tried for their abominations and hung.’ “ ‘But—’ “ ‘My husband is looking for me, Jonathan,’ she said. ‘Do you hear the horses . . . ?’ “There were horses. “ ‘Those can’t be the Duke’s . . .’ “ ‘Don’t you think I told him where I was going? If I was not back before dawn, he was to send men out to look for me. Go away. Or I shall tell them your part in this and you will be arrested too.’ “I turned and fled into the bushes at the side of the road as the hooves clattered on the turning. There was no time to warn Guido and Pietro. I hid in the woods all day.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  There were too many other things he liked to talk about, the three chambered hearts of birds, the evolution between the bird and the lizard. Later, when I took my boat to the east and came to ports where German is still the trade tongue, I had to try all over again. It is still my least good language. He said once, walking from his house in the village to the sea, “Do you want to know the most valuable piece of information there is? Always remember the objects you are working with. When you make a bridge, remember you are putting steel on stone and dirt. When you build a raft, remember you are floating wood in water. Someday you will write poems to a little girl: marks with ink on paper. When you want to turn them into songs and sing them, remember you are squeezing wet bags of air over the cartilages in your throat. When you are making love, you are moving flesh against flesh. That is the basis of all magic. It is very simple and very complicated.” Later he asked me, “Do you know any more magicians besides me?” “Two,” I said. He was surprised. I told him about the man and woman in the doorway. But I haven’t told what makes Herr Bildungs one of those special kinds. The third night I worked for him, nearly two years before what I just told you on the beach, he was working one night and I came to ask something. I surprised him, he turned and dropped the lens and it missed the rug and broke on the tiles. There it is. The two of us staring at the bits of glass, the metal ring. He was mad, too. He called me a little black devil and said I was clumsy and tried to hit me, and that I couldn’t work any more if I didn’t learn to knock first and know manners. But too many people had hit and cursed me already for it to make much difference but I was scared. He changed his mind. But can you see with that attention by kerosene light a white man, a black boy, a broken lens? I took trips with Herr Bildungs in my two and a half years with him to Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Caracas. Once we flew to Houston, Texas, for a weekend when he went to all sorts of meetings. That’s when I decided I would have to make my English much better. It was a good idea. Six months and Herr Bildungs went back to Germany. I started working on boats. The third one I was on stalled in New Orleans.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  The boy kept shrieking, jerked left, then slipping right, while she did something to him inside. “Hey, boy!” From deck the captain, arms folded on the rail, gazed down the side of the boat. Robby opened his mouth. What wanted to become speech dissolved. The fog drifted on his blunted tongue. A dog barked in the city. “Hey there, boy! What you doing out here tonight? Rumors going out what you got yourself into some trouble,” and laughter followed into the fog. Robby blinked against the chill. Night’s vapors coiled between them to blur the buck. “Some people are saying you messed up one of this town’s more respectable young ladies” Memories confused themselves in Robby’s mind. Something raged in him and would take no name. He stepped back again, trying to speak. He was still shivering. Something coursed through, leaving a burning in his joints, setting a slow rage in his belly. “Come on up here.” Robby stepped on the plank. His boot hit a cross rib and he stopped. Flecks of light sped the water. “You think it’s a good idea for you just to be hanging around like this?” The captain reached under his shirt to scratch. “We’ll be pulling out of here come dawn.” From among the houses came a fit of canine wailing. The captain looked up. Then his eyes returned to Robby “You going to come aboard, boy?” Robby stepped on the boat. “What . . .” and had to back off the word to get voice. “. . . what do you want me to do . . . Captain.” The captain frowned. “I’ll do anything you want me to, Captain” The sound kept roughening, snagging on harsher sounds. And there was the metallic backing of hysteria. Robby looked at the deck. “Anything?” “You tell me to do something. I don’t care. I’ll . . . I’ll . . .” He began to raise his eyes. “. . . do it!” The black, bare feet on the grey boards; the heavy chain on the right ankle; the frayed denim cuffs—the seam on the left had torn halfway up the calf—and the knees, grey, and baggy; Robby’s eyes reached the second baggy place, high on the thigh. His heart drummed. His armpits greased with sweat. He watched the captain slip one thumb through a belt loop: the dark fingers arched on the lap. Did what was in the pants leg move? The captain laughed. “You sure as shit look like you would!” Robby’s jaw hurt, and he was very cold. His vision kept blurring with veils and wild glistenings. He forced out, “Tell me . . .” and his belly had become water. He thought he was falling, thought he was rising. “Come on down with us to the cabin.”

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  “Hey, that’s a big hand full of pussy.” He winced; and his fingers gouged. She hit him hard as she could. She clamped her teeth and sucked in air. I’ve got to get away! She tried to see past him, left, right. “I’m gonna take you over in the alley. Then we’re gonna do it.” He jerked her head forward when she tried to hit again; her hand glanced his shoulder; his fingers clamped her neck. The other hand twisted between her legs; she staggered forward. He pulled her across the street. The shadow from the building edge covered them, and she tripped. Her underpants tore. But he caught her waist. He pushed her against a door. The knob struck her hip. And she was gagging on the outrage and the absurdity. With darkness, she couldn’t even move. She shivered, and her body wouldn’t do any of the things she wanted. Trying, now, only to avoid pain, realized she had been thinking, Maybe he won’t hurt me anymore if I cooperate, though she already hurt between her legs where he had pinched her. He was pulling her panties down. And with his hands on her belly he moved down against her. “Feed papa all that pretty pussy.” That, mumbled into her. She reached down and caught hold of his hair, not to get him away, but to keep from falling. She felt numb, and his face slipping in her numbness. He was squeezing her buttocks. She thought: Why am I thinking; if I don’t move maybe he won’t— “Hey, there, pretty baby. How about some of that pussy for me? Dove boy, you got it all set?” She skinned her hand on dried paint and tried to kick the one on his knees. Because the second one was coming at her. He was black and his pants were open. The white one pulled back his head. “Come on, Nig. Swing that black mother-fucker around here.” She felt herself start to collapse. (She cannot fight. Watch her beautiful fear. I will not let her fight.) The black one caught her by the shoulders and slammed her on the door. “Open your mouth, bitch! Lemme get some tongue.” She cried and tried to keep her teeth together. Only the sobs pried them open from behind, and his tongue from the front; suddenly she hissed because of what the second one did with four fingers between her legs. When she moved her arms he hurt them with his hands that could go all the way around.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  The fear broke apart all that was left of Robby’s astonishment, scattered it. He rolled to his knees, rocked to his feet, and ran. He heard the priest call something after him. And kept running. Tripped once, rolled over, and came up crying. And ran again. PROCTOR’S ADDRESS:There, leave your pleasuring a moment. I have something to tell you. Yes, yes, I know elegance and symmetry would have me wait until we are all assembled. But one of the side effects of a life dedicated to sensuality is a lack of punctuality—though not dependability, once we learn to decode behavioral signs: there simply is no way I can guarantee an assemblage of all the demons I should like to raise. I am merely human. sambo, your sons would certainly enhance our number. Nazi, if you would loose that creature in the basement, what an ornament he would make us! No matter. I doubt I shall say anything our more experienced members have not already discerned for themselves. If I do outline a famliar template, then by all means go back to rutting on the fouled mattresses—as the lustier company, I notice by the grunts and sounds of sweaty bodies slapping that comes through the shadows, have already begun to do. I only beg you not to make so much noise that those who are bored with indulgence, tired, or (one hopes there are few so unfamiliar with the process as to be:) honestly curious, cannot hear. If it is to be said at all, it must be said now. Ah! I see you, our least experienced member, have left off rubbing and twisting a bit. You will do for audience, even though you will be the least efficacious in the resolution of my scheme, for you must admit, you are only a trifle braver than that silly girl you came in with and whom I had to calm down and send away an hour ago. But even you, I must warn: I lie frequently, for I am a man whose interest in the truth is only its aesthetic fascination in a landscape of lies. At any rate, let me continue.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  Don’t you think I have this fantastic preoccupation as well as you? I’m an artist: imagination is a weakness we share. If you could merely arrive, tear off your clothes, throw yourself between the knees of whatever buck hauled out his—” He stopped, because she was looking down at her hands. “You tried. Quite admirably, I might add.” “It was so dark in there, I couldn’t even see who it was who . . .” “But you were afraid they could see you? They could, you know. You were the last one in. There was a light on in the hall. When you stepped through the open door, there was a moment when your eager, expectant face was in full view of all those already—I’m sorry. I’m being cruel. But my simple point is: even so, it doesn’t matter. We, above all people, have learned how to keep secrets. When you leave here, no one outside will know. Your skirt is neat; you’ve sustained no terribly large bruises; your hair? That can be counted to the sea breeze outside—” “Ohhh . . .” on an indrawn breath. “My . . . do you have a . . .” She reached for his arm: stopped before she touched him, stared at her hand, jerked it back. “. . . comb. Oh I can’t . . . anymore, I’m afraid to . . . You must have a—comb? I . . . ” She let her head fall forward. Her shoulders shook twice. The dark red hair, which wasn’t very messy at all, swung forward. When she looked up, bright tracks descending her cheeks, she blinked. “I’m afraid to . . .” (Head shaking.) “. . . touch anybody, now!” Proctor reared his chair back again and locked his hands over his stomach. “Go home, Peggy-Ann. Go home. It will all be over in a sleep and a shower and the nice, smiling man who will come tomorrow—if not tomorrow, next month, next year.” She stood, reaching to steady herself on the table, but even drew back there. “I’m . . . not going home, you know. When I went out I was on my way to . . . church.” Proctor raised an eyebrow. “Father Michael, he’s my advisor, there. We study together. That’s where I met . . . Catherine. She studies with him too.” “Her new priest?” “He’s not an ordinary . . . I mean, he’s been all over the country. He’s very interested in the problems of today. He . . .” “Catherine has even less tolerance for stupid priests than she has for stupid women,” He narrowed his eyes. “Her one totally accomplished talent is the corruption of both. I’ve known her a while.” “I . . . was supposed to go and talk to Father Michael tonight.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  That is because he is saying things that he has said before to other people, and the artist smiles, nods, makes explanations of complicity or indignation in the places where other people have, and it is reassuring. Occasionally Robby finds his eyes suddenly snatched away from the sympathetic face by some trick of a candle on the paintings, and chills clutch along his nerves. Still, Proctor listens like any ordinary man. “You seem a lot better,” Proctor, finally. “Perhaps you can go now.” “Oh,” Robby, warily. “Yeah, I guess I should.” He stands, a little shakily. “Thanks. For the coffee.” At the bottom step he realizes how cold it is. And the pressure on his bladder. Leaning one hand against the wall, he urinates, occasionally looking up to see if anybody is coming. Down the street, toward the harbor, there is mist. He starts for the coiling fogs. A sound makes him look back. A black dog has come around the corner, has stopped by the door frame. He laps the puddle by the wall. He looks up, panting, drops his head again. Robby puts his hands in his pockets to stop the terror that begins at the base of his spine, and hurries toward the wharf. Sambo’s cock came out of her ass, and she was left sucking Dove deep, and the smell of his groin, and her fingers pressing brass hair, and the smell of the water around the boat. The smell of fog, the rocking around them, Her tongue played him, troweled beneath the foreskin, and as she felt the boy’s father’s juice dripping down the back of her leg, she drank the son’s first gout, and let it wash about the cylinder as he spilled in her. Later, when she thought they were asleep, Kirsten went to the rail and looked at the ordered arc of moons the dock lights made in the fog. The night poured its damp smokes over the water. She heard bare feet behind her on the wet deck. Nig grinned at her. His shirt hung open, his left hand held his balls. His cock angled like a piece of the night between the fallen flaps of his pants. His right reached for her smock hem. He put his other arm, now, around her shoulder, brushed his lips on her cheek, mumbling, “. . . Hey, sweet pussy . . . oh yeah, some shitty pussy . . . ain’t this little blonde whore got some hot ole nasty pussy . . .” There was the smell of old effort, and on that new effort bloomed. He moved his fingers back and forth in her.

• From The Historical Jesus (2000)

  5. Pilate needed to hear no more. Jesus was a potential troublemaker who was stirring up the crowds and who thought of himself as a political usurper of the prerogatives of Rome. Without further ado, Pilate ordered him executed as an enemy of the state. E. The trial was probably short. It may not have lasted more than a couple of minutes and was probably one of several items on a crowded morning agenda. Two others were charged with sedition the same morning. All three were taken outside the city gates to be crucified. II. Crucifixion was a horribly slow and torturous death reserved by the Romans for the lowest of criminals. A. Romans did not think that death sentences should be carried out in a humane and private manner. 1. They used public torture as a deterrent, a way to show to that the power of the Empire could be brutally brought to bear against the body of anyone who dared to defy it. 2. Jesus was not the only person crucified in the ancient world. This mode of execution was common for slaves, common criminals, rabble-rousers, people accused of sedition. When the Roman general Titus overthrew Jerusalem after a two-year siege in A.D. 70, he crucified so many people that he ran out of lumber. B. According to the Gospel traditions, before being led off to his execution, Jesus was flogged (Mark 15:15; John 19:1). 1. Flogging, too, was a horrific punishment; the Romans used leather thongs with little pieces of glass or bone tied to the ends to rip off the skin and the inner muscle. 2. The account of Jesus’ flogging may be a Christian addition to show how much he suffered, or it may be historically true. 3. Given that public torture of criminals from the lower classes was the rule of the day, the accounts are completely plausible. C. Jesus and the others would have been taken by soldiers outside the city gates, carrying their crossbeams to the upright stakes kept at the site of execution. We don’t know the actual site. 1. The uprights were reused, maybe every day. There the condemned would have been nailed to the crossbeams, or to ©2000 The Teaching Company. 142

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  Behold the foolish temerity of the man; what madness is necessary to call oneself the fountain of necromancy? —Abbot Trithemius of Sponheim to the mathematician and court astrologer, Johan Virdung, August 20, 1507 THREE FAUST IN ITALY Today, Wednesday after St. Vitus, 1528, one who calls himself Dr. Jorg Faustus of Heidelberg has been told to spend his penny elsewhere, and has promised not to resent or mock such summons of the authorities. —Record of expulsion from the minutes of the Town Council of Ingelstadt FOUR HOMUNCULI Oh, this is admirable! Here I ha’ stolen one of Doctor Faustus’ conjuring books, and i’ faith I mean to search some circles for my own use. Now will I make all the maidens in our parish dance at my pleasure, stark naked before me; and so by that means I shall see more than e’er I felt or saw before. —Marlowe, Doctor Faustus FIVE THE STONES OF ST. MARK I leave you free to choose whatever lie you think worthiest to be the truth. —My Faust, Paul Valéry SIX ALCHEMICA I knew a man named Faustus of Kundling, a little town near my home. When he studied at Cracow, he had learned magic, which was formerly keenly studied there and where public lectures were delivered about this art. Later he wandered about in many places and spoke about secret things. When he wanted to create a sensation in Venice, he announced that he was going to fly into the heavens. The Devil then lifted him up in the air, but let him fall to earth again, so that he nearly gave up the ghost again. —Johannas Manlius, 1565, Locorum Communium Colectunea SEVEN HARBOR OF THE SCORPION But Doctor Faustus within short time after he had obtained his degree fell into such fantasies and deep cogitations that he was marked of many, and of the most part of the students was called the Speculator. — The Historie of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faust (1592) THE SCORPION’s log: Perhaps this is a bad book. If there are bad things in this book then I should throw it in the water because I was afraid of what was on his face and because I was surprised and scared—I wasn’t surprised at Bull in fact I guess I’m glad—because I didn’t feel sorry for him at all. I didn’t feel sorry for him. And it would be too much trouble to have write this down then to tear it up. Or hire him. It is a magic book. Words mean things. When you put them together they speak. Yes, sometimes they flatten out and nothing they say is real, and that is one kind of magic. But sometimes a vision will rip up from them and shriek and clank wings clear as the sweat smudge on the paper under your thumb. And that is another kind.