Jealousy

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  My little Philanderer could make a fortune out of escorting truly glamorous men—and not all of them would turn out to be as weird as the eye-catching Gabriel. It was quite likely, wasn’t it, that Phil had already caught Gabriel’s eye? I found the corner by the service lift and the steep flight of stairs up to Phil’s attic. It was a drab, cheapjack little area, unambiguously removed from the public, and yet I had come to love it in a way I never could the rest of the monstrous edifice. The little room—and above it the lonely roof—were nothing really, but like the lovers’ cottage in ‘Tea for Two’ they had been wonderfully sufficient for our romance. I knew there was no chance of finding him in—he would be well off on his laddish booze by now—but it would be comforting to sit there for a bit with the window open and surrounded by his empty clothes. When I put my key in the lock, though, there was a muffled call of surprise, I thought, from within. Phil and Bill were kneeling face to face on the bed. Bill’s hand rested on Phil’s shoulder, and it looked like some College jerk-off job. Their tilting dicks, alert as orgiasts’ on a Greek vase, withered astonishingly under my expressionless stare. Not for them the witless priapism of Gabriel; but there was enough defiance in their confusion for them not to blabber excuses—not to say anything at all. And I couldn’t think of anything much to say. I know I swallowed and coloured and took in, as if I needed to satisfy myself, the circumstantial details. Certainly there were no signs of passionate haste. Bill’s trousers were neatly folded and his vast smalls were spread like an antimacassar across the back of the chair. I nodded repeatedly and slowly withdrew, closing the door as if not to disturb a sleeper. Before I had reached the top of the stairs I heard a gasped ‘Oh my God’ and a loud frightened laugh. And so to James’s. By the time I got there my anger, hurt, care were welling up under the frigid discipline I had instinctively assumed. I smeared away stupid tears.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  "Yes, they'll be there for a bit. Then they're probably going to take a boat out this afternoon. They've got this nice little dinghy." "Mm. I shouldn't let your imagination run away with you." Matt came back to me, put his arms round my shoulders and kissed me on the nose. "That's what they said they were going to do, anyway." "You mean you actually overheard them talking." "Ed!" He shook me. "I've just spent the last half hour with them. We've been playing frisbee together—well, the girl and Big Boy and me. The professor was studying . . . And then they very nicely shared their light lunch with me." I backed away. "How can you do this?" I said, amazed and angry and eaten out with jealousy. He sauntered along the side of the house, and I watched him stoop at the back door and rattle the handle. He walked haltingly round, bare feet on pine-needled gravel. When he'd done his circuit, he said softly, "We'd better stay here tonight", and sent me away down the garden again, so that I shouldn't see what he was going to do. I began to feel that he could do anything he wanted, just by not caring about it. When I stepped into that house and the back door scraped shut and a family of mice whizzed and froze over the kitchen floor, it was with a whisper of reluctance that could hardly be heard. Matt beckoned me through a shadowy doorway and we were in limbo; the quick adrenalin of the crime was calmed by the still, stale air; the twirling shafts of light from the cracked shutters only stroked our legs as we passed and left me with a feeling of mysterious safety, hushed and remote as the sound of the sea. In the entrance hall the two oars and paddles of L'Allegro were propped in a corner and a 1987 calendar with an image of the Virgin and the compliments of a Citroen garage in Dunkerque was pinned up above a telephone—which Matt lifted, listened to and laid on the table-top, as if we had no wish to be disturbed. The owners were called Rostand, rather impressively, but the cold, intrusive shock of seeing their name on a spew of dead mail, a gardening catalogue for each year, seasonal circulars from St Ernest, was allayed by the long passage of time, almost as if they had given up any rights in the property by leaving it alone so long. I envied them their holiday home and remembered how possessive I had felt of the bungalow we took each year at Kinchin Cove; how I liked the second-best, third-best furniture, the formica-topped table, the patched armchairs, the shell-covered lamp just like the Rostands had, and how I hated the last day, the bed-stripping, the tidying-away, the final retreat to the back door, wiping the floor as we went and effacing the last footprint of our presence.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  Helene was back from her honeymoon in Rome and Naples, and radiating a new self-esteem; it showed in the lethargy of her movements, the unembarrassed glow that came to her cheeks, her evident sense of returning to a quaint little world whose rules she observed with a new irony. I asked her what was it like, and though her answer was restricted to days among the ruins of the Forum or Pompeii it was clear that the real wonders had taken place, and kept on taking place, in the up-to-date privacy of the hotel. "Paul's found a funny box," she said, and her chuckle, too, came with more confidence of there being something to chuckle about. I was sceptical, of course, but still I envied her; I kissed her on the cheek to associate myself with luck and happiness. The box didn't look funny, as it stood on the floor by Paul's desk. It was tuck-box sized, with the lid flung back because the restraining leather strap had perished. He had taken a piece of coloured glass from it and was rubbing it gently in his handkerchief. I came round and craned over. "You'll be interested in this, dear," he said, as if I'd been Marcel, and held up a ruby-coloured lozenge, with a clasp at the top. "It looks like a bit off a chandelier," I said. "Mm. I think it probably was." He laid it on his blotter beside another identical piece. "There. The price of a virtuous woman is far above rubies." "I'm sure." I looked into the jumble of the box, neck-chains, costume jewellery, remnants of peacock-patterned silk. "Kundry's ear-rings," said Paul. "You'll find some other familiar things in there." And he nodded to show that I could have the treat of looking. I squatted and rummaged disparagingly, as I might have done at a fleamarket. There were cheap brooches with rusted hasps, a crystal ball, a moulting fur cap ("Le toquet de vair"!), the beaded blue vell of "L'Infini", that tore as I lifted it, a slender wand with a bird on top—I knew it from Orst's "Osiris", though not how the resting hawk was an infant's wooden toy. It was real junk that would never have passed muster at one of Theo's fancy-dress balls. At the bottom lay the collar of medals, that heavy treasure that had held up the chins of both the Janes in their different poses, the antique profiles blurred by time and the inscriptions rubbed down to vestigial runes.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  "She certainly seemed very passionate, and possessive, when we met at dawn in the middle of a field the other day. It was almost like a duel. Of course I had no idea why he'd run off again, he's never told me anything personal. She couldn't help giving me the impression that it was her he'd run away from." Patrick gave a nervous flicker of a smile. "Au contraire," he said. "He was running away from me." This had the air of a briskly unwilling confession, and I was generous, welcoming, to the surprise it sprang. We had something in common, I could help him after all. "So you were both after him!" And of course there was nothing surprising in that—it puzzled me that Luc wasn't mobbed through the streets by defenceless admirers. "Au contraire," he said again, with a certain satisfaction at the chime and at the polymorphous stamina of the Three. "He was after me." I felt I'd have had to be Racine to keep abreast of this convulsive trio, their switches of allegiance that seemed compacted in retrospect into little more than a day. My heart quickened, absurdly, at the glimpse of a second chance, the beautiful confirmation of how Luc's thoughts turned, the need to get to him now before anyone else did. My mind roamed the map with a new sense of danger and jealousy. The unprecedented guilt of the past week, the fear that it was I who had driven him away, was lost in the deeper draft of these other explanations—went unseen, unguessed. If I had killed him, then it was only in a dream. "Yes," he went on, perhaps noticing my queer glow and wanting to distance himself, "after all these years he has announced that he's in love with me." "That doesn't mean he wasn't in love with you all along," I said, tender of Luc's own feelings in the face of Patrick's touchily butch manner. "Or ready to be in love with you when the moment came." At which he looked down and faltered. "Anyway, you don't love him." "Well, of course I love him," Patrick said, with the same secret pride at his recent graduation to the fellowship of high feeling, and a hint of a sulk at the suspicion he might still have something to learn. "I've known him all my life. He's my clever friend. I am his friend, well, I'm almost his only friend, we were always together at St Narcissus, though other boys didn't like him. And of course we . . . did things together . . . Years ago. And I can't do those things any more—that's all I can say." "That's perfectly understandable. In fact it's dreadfully commonplace." "I wish I could, you know, make him happy," he said, both rueful and smug. "But nothing seems to fit together any more. Our little group of friends has become like a group of enemies!"

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  The car was a lallrel-green Renault saloon, about ten years old but with surprisingly little on the clock. Inside there was an oppressive smell of polish and plastic, it was a bit like sick, sour and sweet, or like cod-liver oil and malt. In spite of the rain I opened my window for air—the drops zipped past me on to the crocheted seat-shawls and strewn cushions of the rear window. So the Three had finally declared themselves. Their egg had rocked and cracked and out from its opaque wreckage had scuttled the blanched baby basilisk Luc and Sibylle. My mouth was open in a rictus of contempt, loss, jealousy, guilt—to run so quickly, and with her . . . How had they arranged it? Why had they even bothered? I grew claws and wings, I was a monster of gross, intolerable demands. He couldn't face me, after what had happened. And here I was coming after him with a roar. I stamped wretchedly on the accelerator, and after a moment's uncertainty the car thrust forward with a power it seemed almost to have forgotten. We thrummed over the cobbles of the Street of Disappointments with a new speed and a new compression of misery. There was something about Cherif’s coat, as he sat beside me, that only darkened the mood. It had got a soaking, of course, its first, and even within the sour-sweet stuffiness of the car it gave off a melancholy smell of its own, of wet wool, doggy and defenceless—a smell of defeat. I knew that it had lost its sheeny down, its expensive freshness, and that it would never be new again. I wondered why he didn't take it off. He had sat hunched in it in the Altidores' hall for quarter of an hour whilst I changed and talked. I came downstairs patting the pockets of Luc's best sports-jacket, the one I had sometimes envied him, fine grey tweed with a wide yellow square in it, and there Cherif stubbornly was, un-attuned, unamenable, like a foreman summoned to the mill-owner's house. In the car he said nothing, but I knew he was glancing at me as I drove, and at the little bufferings my face was taking from the feelings I was sparring with. I winced and ducked at the wheel and knocked my glasses as I knuckled away furious tears. I couldn't take him with me on this journey, or pretend a merely tutelary interest in Luc when I was gasping already with anger and anxiety. I would have to tell him he couldn't come. Then he said, "Let me out of the car." There was a van on my tail in the lashing rain, I couldn't instantly stop, but he was in a passion of his own. "Let me out," he said again, with a frightening edge.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  The ritual events of the summer unfolded, both more intense and more trivial than usual. The May Day bank holiday fair came to the sloping football-pitch by the Flats, and gave me its annual, slightly threatening surprise as I strolled over the common on Friday after school and saw the caravans and dogs among the new greenery below and heard the mingled roar of generators and jangle of carousel-music. I saw Dawn there later in the company of three of his sporting friends from Drake, leaving a fortune-teller's booth with grinning faces, leaning superbly in at a shooting gallery, then wandering on, the others lighting up, watching shaken kids unloading from an aerial whirligig, Dawn secretly following the acrobatics of a teenage fair-boy swinging from pole to pole on a kind of switchback roundabout. I half-hid from them, paralysed with possessiveness, and dully tensed against the sarcasms that would break out when Dawn and I came together. We had a rather unhappy notoriety by then—ours wasn't a classic prefect-fag tendresse: our terms were worryingly for real, they sounded a deeper note than was tolerated in their lumbering, not unloving, locker-rbom camp. Then it was Wimbledon again, watched in illicit paragraphs of two or three hours amid the final exam preparations, sometimes with Ogg's Seventeenth-Century Europe numbly open on my knee. Mirabelle was in electrifying form in an early women's heat I saw and seemed to call "Fault" obliviously at every first service. One of the men players from Eastern Europe evidently had an enormous penis, which I never heard the commentators refer to. I imagined Mirabelle would have some tales to tell about him. I loved the dream acoustics of Wimbledon, the curtains drawn but the windows open behind them, occasional noises of traffic, distant shouts from the sunny common or close-up chatter of people walking past, louder and more unguarded than we were, as if they had leant right in to the lulled half-light of the room to say "Yeah, well see what she says" or "No you fucking don't!"; then, recessed within this, the hushed, attentive sound-world of the court, whose irregular pock-pocks and applause and torpid rallies of commentary themselves gave way from time to time to a further unseen dimension, disconnected applallse from another court, the sonic wallow of a plane distancing in slow gusts above, that a minute or two later would pass high over our house as well and drown out the television as it passed. The whole experience was one of oddly compelling languor, an English limbo of light and shade, near and far, subtly muddled and displaced. My father seemed satisfied with it, as if his family could share for a while his own powerless and agitated calm.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  Edie was a hit in the Cassette and shook hands with people and made funny conversation, much of which was over their heads. She wore black shoes and tights, a thick short bunched red skirt that stuck out, a black leather jacket and her hair pulled up inside her black cap: she looked like an interesting young man during that brief phase when skirts for men were considered a possibility. She wasn't a fag-hag (if anything, she claimed, it was I who was a hag-fag), but an emotional aloofness, the afterspace of several short, obscurely unhappy affairs, made her at home among gay men; they wete abruptly intimate yet made no deep demands on her, and she followed their doings with close attention and a kind of caustic merriment, as at some gratifying old melodrama. She would go into the George IV at lunchtime, but never at night, when she thought the boys should be left to make their own mischief, which she could hear about next day. She was kind, too, when she needed to be: she had looked after friends of ours who were dying. Dawn was one of them. She and Gerard took to each other and had a long lively talk, while I sat it out on a bar-stool and made occasional interjections implying a closer relationship with Gerard than was really the case. I suppose their witty chat, with Edie like a louche minor royal showing a radiant fullness of interest in her interlocutor's stories, stirred some clumsy jealousy—and I remembered Gerard's old ambiguity, the early marriage, and didn't quite trust him. I bought us all another drink and he dropped the subject of Burgundian court music like a flash and said, "How's it going with Matt, then?" "Fine!" I said. Gerard looked around the room and said, "Yes, a lot of people were quite surprised when you went off with him." "Too hot for me, you mean?" "Well . . . And then he's not very interested in the things you like." "I'm sorry", I said, "but we seem to have quite enough in common to be getting on with. Perhaps you believe in the narcissist theory of gay attraction; I've always loved it with people who are different from me." I was sounding cross and turned cosy for a moment. "He's been away for a couple of weeks, should be back tomorrow." I looked down. "I've missed him a lot actually." "I hear he likes pretty kinky sex." I said, "Yup", and Edie said, "Is this the person you've been working for?" "No, no," I said, with the warm mendacity of tone I knew she would understand—in fact she had named it the Manners Disclaimer years before.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  I was still peering at the empty lawn. "There's nothing to see at the moment." A flesh-mantled finger with a tiny oblong of lost nail pushed down the blind-slat, and the leathered cylinders of a massive pair of field-glasses slid into position. "Man, you can see everything with these." How did he do it? I was ineffectual again, a mere blundering inner man, protected and outwitted by my cold-hearted friend. Another blunt finger rocked the milled focus-wheel. "Incredible. You can count the blades of grass," he said. "If you want to." "Let's have a look." His whole identity was obscured by the glasses, and his grin might only have been the sneer of a face screwed up against the sun. "You could count the pubes on his balls." "He doesn't have pubes on his balls. Now can I have a look, please?" "Yeah . . . Yeah . . ."—a concentrating tongue peeped and havered. "Oh boy. Here comes Big Boy. Just look at that . . . Looks like they're going boating again." I squinted through, somehow convinced that without the binoculars I wouldn't be able to see a thing, though there of course Sibylle and Patrick were, encumbered with paddles and a bailer and boxy pink life-jackets. "Now where's your little friend, I wonder? He'll probably stay indoors to do his reading, and you won't see him at all, which will be your fault." I gave Matt a blow in the ribs—just like the boys fighting, I saw—and he cackled and said, "No, hold on, who do we have here?" And Luc was back again, awkward on the steps, as if unable to give help when it was expected of him. "If I was young . . . Luc," said Matt, "I'd be getting a bit jealous of Big Boy and the girl." When I got the glasses at last though, and caught the pair as they scuffed out on to the beach, there was an angry firmness about them. They looked unlikely to enjoy themselves. I took off my specs and twiddled the focus to my shorter sight. The lenses were powerful, ocean-sweepers proved perhaps in some war-time conning-tower, treasured later for their ability to capture shorebirds' markings and charming movements. The heavy casing was chipped, the leather was frayed and in the paint the name DHONDT was roughly scratched. Half an hour raced and drifted by before Luc appeared again. Then things began to unfold with a canny momentum of their own. He came on to the porch and I had the field-glasses on him: he was starlingly clean and close, palpable but also stylised in the flowing depthless picture-plane.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  I laughed, sympathetically in part. "The time I saw you together Luc said you'd been arguing." "You mean in the bar?" "Yes. He told me then he was in love and how he caught cold standing under a window, it must have been your window, at night . . ." "I wouldn't be surprised. That's nothing. I have hundreds of letters, every day more letters. He's gone crazy—as I said, quite suddenly, though you say perhaps it was always there. He says if I would just go to sleep with him once, it would be okay." I clutched at my throat and looked away. "I told him there would be no point." Patrick hunched and drank off his coffee in a few gulps. "No, I think he had that idea from his friend Arnold." "You mean his clever friend?" "He mentioned him? He is now at university. He was madly in love with Luc for years, and they were quite good friends too, though Arnold was going on like a second mother to him and making him be interested in classical music and reading poetry. Luc was quite flattered by his attention, well, he's quite intelligent, he didn't want to be unkind. But he did make the mistake of . . . making love with Arnold, just once, and as a matter of fact I don't think Arnold has ever got over it." "I see." Patrick was unbuttoning a shirt-pocket beneath the ski-jacket's whispering cocoon. He fiddled out an envelope, and drew a letter from it, and half unfolded it. "It's very sweet," he said, as I stared away from it and then let my eyes flick back in an involuntary attempt to decipher what was visible of Luc's rapid, clumsy hand. Patrick held the letter close to himself and scanned it in a vain and rather tasteless way—I had the feeling he was teasing me with its private and unguarded contents, that he carried it as a sentimental token and liked to let me glimpse, when he turned it over, the wild and old-fashioned endearment with which it began, and which I might hunger for ever to hear from Luc myself. I thought he was going to read a bit out, and then with a shake of the head and a little smile he decided not to. He snapped the letter away and gave me a quick cold stare as if to repudiate any spurious intimacy. "Anyway, he hasn't written to you since . . . he left." "No." "And you think he's run away to escape from you, or from his feelings about you?" I pressed this point with something of a policeman's dullness and scepticism. "I don't know," said Patrick crossly. And then, " I don't see how I can be in charge of him. He's done this before." "Yes, I know. But that was only for a night." "Who told you that? He was away for about three days before the police found him."

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  I had reached across the table to cover his fist for the announcement and in the silence that followed he looked down at this loose handclasp with a rather impressive contempt. He let me force my fingers into the curl of his, but I soon withdrew them. "Of course I still want to be with you," I said, like the clumsiest kind of adulterer—and for a second or two I hungered for Cherif and was mad with irritation at him and myself. After that he was in an angry sulk for the rest of the evening and was difficult company. I wandered and settled amongst the other people I was getting to know. Perhaps I forced myself on them—but I presumed on a kind of queer camaraderie and drank so as not to notice. For a while I chatted with Gerard, a young musician—very good company but somehow remote, the sort of person it is hopeless to fall for, as I quite did at first, with his hooting laugh and witty sentimental conversation. He told me he had been married at seventeen, but separated by the time he left university: she was a strong, demanding girl and had almost convinced him that he was straight. But after a year or so he found his thoughts were turning all the time to other men, as they had done before he met her. I could imagine the couple's self-absorption: he spoke of it as of some brief annoyance, like missing a train; but it was clear that it had troubled him more deeply. I put my hand on his shoulder and stroked his neck once or twice with my thumb, but we were no more intimate for that. He was still quite spotty, although probably about my age, and wore hopeless clothes—shapeless jeans, fluorescent trainers and complicated musician's knitwear; but he was beautiful, with his dirty blond hair and chestnut eyes. He gave off the sexy mood of youth going smoky and drinky: if too shrewd actually to be a drunk he was certainly a very drinky kind of person. He was girlish but unshaven; naked he would have been quite hairy, though I wondered if his body was slack or heavy and strong. He was relaxed and broad-bottomed but gave the impression he would be nasty in a fight.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  “That’s nothing,” said Hampton. “My brother’s cock is enormous. Got me by a good two inches, at least. I’m talking length and girth. Two years younger than me, walking around with the stuff of legend up under his Wranglers. From the time I got to where I knew how important your cock is, I knew what it was like to feel inferior because of my own. I un derstood how impressive his cock was before he did, and all I could do was envy the thrill he’d feel on finding out for him self. Lord, when he found out. He got laid more than I did. He did it with girls I wanted to do it with, and did it with some girls I even had done it with.” “Hard to believe there was a time in my life,” Foster said, “I thought the thing was only for pissing.” “I get to where I think the pissing mechanism’s only inci dental,” I said. “That just doesn’t seem like the main work it’s intended for, you know?” “Situation similar to yours,” Hampton said, indicating Foster with a nod. “Only worse. He was in the bathroom, I needed in. Only he didn’t have the door locked. I just walked on in. He was stark naked in front of the mirror with that monster in his hand. He wasn’t even hard. He just had it in his hand. He was flapping it, seeing how far up and down it’d swing. I got in there and he turned so he could show me. ‘That’s where it is,’ he told me. ‘That’s where it is, and all Hawkinsville knows it.’ It was like one of them snake han dlers over in Alabama. I just turned and ran.” That one gave us pause. Hampton stood back with a smug look of achievement. “That’ll be hard to beat,” I said at last. “That’s awful,” Foster agreed. “That’s nothing.” Birnauer, whose idea this had all been in the first place, sucked his Winston to the filter and threw it overboard. He threw it like he was throwing a dart, like he

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Thank heavens at least no crass, unforgettable words had been spoken. ‘Darling, whisky’ was my own first utterance—and I thought, none of your namby-pamby Caribbean aphrodisiac nonsense. James was eating scrambled eggs standing up and listening to some fathomlessly gloomy music. ‘Bad day, dear?’ he enquired maritally. ‘The last twenty-four hours have actually been quite extraordinarily hideously awful.’ ‘Oh, darling.’ ‘I thought I was just about managing it until half an hour ago, when I went up to Phil’s room at the hotel—I don’t know why, just on some sentimental whim, I thought I’d put on some of his clothes and lie there for a bit and just be him, you know—he having arranged to go off drinking with some of his appalling friends. Well, they may not be appalling, I’ve never met them. I say, we couldn’t possibly take this music off? It’s driving me insane.’ ‘It’s Shostakovich’s viola sonata,’ said James pettishly. ‘Exactly … That’s better. And the drink?’ He poured a generous Bell’s. ‘Dearest—thank you. So I opened the door, to which as you know I have a key, and find Phil in there with old Bill Hawkins, from the Corry, messing around stark naked, etc, etc.’ ‘Fucking hell.’ ‘I do find it very terrible actually.’ I flopped onto the sofa and gulped at my drink. ‘I mean, I absolutely hate the thought of Phil going with someone else. But one would understand if it were just some spur-of-the-moment fling—some sexy guy staying in the hotel or something. To go with Bill, who is anyway a pal of mine and what? three times his age …’ ‘No?’ ‘Well, just about.’ I stared at James, through him, as I realised how slow I had been. ‘You know, I should have been on to this. I’ve seen Bill hanging around near the Queensberry before now—and of course I knew he was sweet on Phil, sweet on him before I was. Indeed it was really Bill’s interest in him that got me going, made me see how good he was. And then last week, when I took Phil to the Shaft, I knew something funny was going on. We were sort of horsing around outside the BM and I realised someone was watching us from across the road. I don’t think Phil saw him, but I’m convinced it was Bill.’ ‘Kind of creepy, n’est-ce pas?’ said James, wandering off and looking out of the window. He was my only friend but I knew that he would take a kind of wistful satisfaction in things having at last— at last: it was what? two months?—gone awry. ‘This needn’t mean it’s all over, though, surely?’ he said. I stared some time into my glass. ‘I don’t know. No, it needn’t.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  When she despaired I was full of conventional reassurance, modest confidence, I would see what I could do; when she withdrew into sudden solidarity with her son I found I was faintly jealous, and wondered how I could free him from her multi-coloured web. She told me Luc had been a scholar at the college of St Narcissus, the province's oldest and most exclusive Jesuit school, where his friends were the children of various important lawyers and bankers whose names meant nothing to me. Last summer, however, following on an obscure incident, which it would be "too great a waste of both our times" to go into, he had been required to leave. Now there was the worry of his finishing his education: Mrs Altidore thought she had persuaded him to try for university—perhaps in England: she had heard that Dorset had a European exchange scheme and a way with sensitive misfits. Luc himself was keen to go abroad. My task was to facilitate his escape—to polish his English conversation, already near-perfect, apparently, and to widen his knowledge of English literature: Milton, Wordsworth, Margaret Drabble and whatever further authors I considered significant. Before I left she asked me what other pupils I had and seemed satisfied that as yet I had only one and so might really be able to devote myself to the cause of Luc. She wanted to know who the second one was; and raised her eyebrows and tilted her head when I said it was Marcel Echevin; she thought him a suitable stable-mate even if hopelessly dim. "Don't try to cut corners by seeing Echevin at the same time as my son," she advised. "They are wholly incompatible. I hope I can trust you." The weather had turned breezy and hot, ideal September days, the pale-backed leaves quivering and glinting like spring, and I would have left town too, given the chance—joined my pupil at the beach in the flimsy pretence of studying a book. But I had the other one to see and my living to earn. It was hard to identify the impulse to work among the other sensations of merely being on holiday. I wrote a letter to my old friend Edie, telling her all about my rapid new start with Cherif but skirting round the blunt humiliation of the rendezvous at Wanne's bar. Also to my mother, but sticking more closely to matters of weather and diet.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  It was all arranged that I was going to look at his portfolio and let him know what I thought. We seemed to roam back and forth over a boundary between the functional nonsense of pick-up talk and some other elaborate fantasy of his own in which he was obliviously involved, and which turned around extended fashion shoots in tropical countries, rewarded by enormous fees. I took notice, though, when he started talking about the boys in the shadowy table-booth across the floor. I had deliberately kept my back to them but turned with false casualness, ashamed to feel ashamed: I knew it would be the kid I'd fallen for that Ty was pointing out. And there he was, curled up with a skinnier, long-haired friend and eating his face in the laborious public way that adolescents have . . . leaving me eaten up too with envy and irritation. I swung back and muttered to Ty (I saw him uncertain if I was angry or joking); then kissed him, briefly, and got some consolation from that: he smiled, as if to say that his charm had now been acknowledged and succumbed to. We got another drink, and I was feeling quite drunk and had reached the stage of deciding to go with this guy, the all-too-common pragmatic decision. I was trying to see all that was best in him: the teeth, the skin, probably a good body worked on in gym and sunbed, which was more than I could offer, as was what he showed in his pants, and yet I felt entirely superior to him, with a kind of superiority I was too superior even to have given him a glimpse of. Then Cherif was standing in front of us grinning and leaned close to embrace us both at the same time. His breath smelt of dope. I was cold to him and resisted his assumption that I would be pleased to see him. He ruffled my hair, and said with mock solemnity to Ty, "Bonsoir, M'sieur Mouchoir," and Ty laughingly but blushingly told him to piss off. "So you've met up with my friend M'sieur Mouchoir," he said to me; I supposed it was a tedious old joke to do with fashion and modelling—I merely shrugged. Cherif was nodding and chuckling and very slow. "How are you, my friend Edward?" he asked. I gave an unimpressed smile and said, "I missed you the other night at Wanne's bar." "Oh, I can't go there," he said, as if objecting to a suggestion I had made myself. "It wasn't a very good idea to ask me to meet you there, then, was it?" Cherif was absolutely opaque, and I wondered for a moment if he was struggling to repair some real lapse of memory; but his crude survivor's evasion proved he was not. "Why are men with glasses so sexy?" he said.

• From Querelle (1953)

  "Two brothers who love each other so much that they look alike . . . there's one of those veils. There it is. It's moving, gently, unfurled by two naked arms with closed fists, clenched tight inside me. And now it is like a coil. It is sliding. Another one comes to meet it, and it is black too, but of a different texture. And this new veil means : two brothers who look so alike that they love each other . . . And it, too, slides down into the vat, covers the other one . . . No, it is the same one, only turned over . . . Another pjece of material, of another shade of black. And it means : I love one of the brothers, only one . . . Another veil : If I love one of the brothers, I love the other one, too· . . . I have to go into all this, I have to put my finger on it. But it's impossible to get them out. Do I love Robert? I certainly do, or we wouldn't have stayed together these six months. But that, evidently, doesn't mean a thing. I love Robert. I don't love Jo. Why not? Perhaps I do. They adore each other. Nothing I can do about that. They adore each other: does that mean they make love, as well? But where? Where? They're never together. But that's just it, they take care not to be seen. Where then? In other regions . . . And they've both had that boy . . . That kid, he's their love-boy . . . I'm an idiot, what does one of those dresses matter compared to my veils-but I better give Germaine a piece of my mind for sweeping the floor with her dress. It is a matter of principle. How is it that a woman like me never gets to experience a little · peace and quiet?" Madame Lysiane had waited for love a long time. Males had never excited her a great deal. Only after she had turned fortv 217 I QUERELLE she developed an appetite for muscular young men . But exactly at a time when she could have achieved happiness, she began to be consumed by a jealousy she was unable to demonstrate to anyone. No 9ne would have understood her. She loved Robert. \Vhen she thought of his hair, the nape of his neck, his thighs, her nipples hardened as they were moving forward to their reunion with the evoked image, and all day long, in the feverish joy of an only barely restrained desire, Madame Lysiane prepared herself for nights of love. Her man! Robert was her man.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "Martinisina can,Callie.Weliveinanage ofwonders." Five hourslater, not at allsober,heturned up the unpavedroad that ledto the summerhouse.Itwasteno'clockby thistime. In moonlightwe carriedourbagsuptothebackporch. Mushrooms dotted the pine-needled path betweenthethingray pines.Next to the houseanartesian wellchimedamongmossyrocks. Whenwecame inthekitchendoor,wefound Jerome. Hewas sit- tingatthetable, readingtheWeekly World News.Thepallorof his face suggestedthat hehadbeen thereprettymuchallmonth. His luster- less blackhairlooked particularlyinert.Hehad ona Frankenstein T-shirt, seersuckershorts,whitecanvas Top-Siders withoutsocks. "Ipresenttoyou MissStephanides,"Mr.Objectsaid. "Welcometothe hinterland." Jerome stood up andshookhisfa- ther'shand.Theyattempteda hug. "Where's yourmother?" "She's upstairsgetting dressedforthepartyyou're incrediblylate for.Hermoodreflects that." "Whydon'tyou take Callie uptoher room?Showheraround." "Check,"said Jerome. Wewentupthe backstairsoffthekitchen. "The guest room's beingpainted," Jerome toldme."Soyou're stayingin my sister's room." "Where isshe?" "She's outonthe backporch withRex." Myblood stopped. "Rex Reese>" "His 'rents haveaplace up here,too." Jerome then showedmetheessentials,guesttowels,bathroom location, how toworkthelights.Buthismannerswerelostonme.I was wondering why theObject hadn'tmentionedanythingabout Rexon thephone. Shehadbeen up herethreeweeksandsaidnoth- ing. We came backintoherbedroom.Herrumpledclothes layonthe unmade bed.There wasadirtyashtrayononepillow. "Mylittle sister isacreatureofslovenlyhabits," Jerome said,look- ing around. "Are youneat?" I nodded. "Me too. Onlywaytobe.Hey." Hecamearoundtofaceme now. "What happened to your triptoTurkey?" "It got canceled." 365 "Excellent.Nowyoucan be inmyfilm.I'mshooting it uphere. Areyouup forthat?" "Ithoughtittookplacein a boarding school." "I decidedtomakeit a boarding schoolintheboonies." Jerome was standing somewhatclosetome.Hishandsfloppedaround inhis pocketsashesquintedatmeandrocked onhisheels. "Should wegodownstairs?"Ifinallyasked. "What?Oh,right.Yeah.Let's go." Jerome turnedandbolted.I followedhimbackdownandthrough thekitchen.Aswewerecross- ingtheliving roomIheardvoicesoutontheporch. "SoSelfridge,thatlightweight, pukes?RexReesewassaying. "Doesn'tevenmakeittothebathroom.Pukesrightonthebar." "Ican'tbelieve it!Selfridge!"ItwastheObjectnow,cryingout withamusement. "Heblewchunks. Rightinto his stinger.I couldn'tbelieve it. It wasliketheNiagaraFallsof puke. Selfridgewoofsonthebarand everybody jumpsofftheirstools,right?Selfridgeisfacedowninhis own puke. For a minutethere'stotalsilence.Thenthisonegirlstarts gagging . ..andit'slike a chainreaction.Thewholeplacestartsgag- ging, puke'sdrippingeverywhere,andthe bartenderis—pissed.He's huge, too.He'sruckinghuge.Hecomesoverandlooks down at Sel- fridge.I'mgoinglikeIdon't knowthisguy. Neversawhimbefore. Andthen guesswhat?" "What?" "The bartenderreachesoutandgrabshold ofSelfridge.He'sgot him bythecollarand thebelt, right?Andhelifts Selfridgelike a foot upintheair—and Zambonisthebarwithhim!" "Noway!" "I'mnotkidding. Zamboniedthe Fridgeright inhisownbarf!" Atthatpointwe stepped out ontothe porch.TheObjectand Rex Reesewere sitting together ona whitewicker couch.Itwasdarkout, coolish,butthe Object was stillin herswimsuit, ashamrock bikini. Shehad a beachtowelwrapped around herlegs. "Hi," Icalledout. The Object turned.Shelooked atme blankly. "Hey,"shesaid. "She's here,"said Jerome. "Safe and sound.Dad didn'trunoff the road." "Daddy's notthat bada driver," saidthe Object. 366 "Whenhe'snot drinkinghe'snot.But tonightI'd wagerhehad the old martinithermosonthefrontseat." "Your oldmanlikes toparty!"Rexcalledouthoarsely. "Didmydad haveoccasiontoquenchhisthirstonthe drive up?" Jerome asked. "More thanone occasion,"Isaid. Now Jerome laughed,goinglooseinthebodyandslappinghis handstogether. MeanwhileRexwassayingto the Object,"Okay.She'shere.So let'sparty." "Whereshouldwego?"theObject said. "Hey, Je-roman, didn'tyousay there was some oldhuntinglodge outinthewoods?" "Yeah.It'sabout half a milein." "Think you couldfindit in thedark?" "With a flashlight maybe." "Let'sgo." Rexstoodup."Let'stakesomebeersandhikeonin there." The Objectgot up, too. "Letmeputon some pants."Shecrossed the porchinherswimsuit. Rexwatched."Comeon,Callie,"shesaid. "You're stayinginmyroom." Ifollowed the Objectinside.Shewentquickly,almostrunning, anddidn'tlook back at me. Asshe climbedthestairsahead ofme,I whacked herfrom behind. "I hateyou,"I said. "What?" "You're sotan!" Sheflashed asmile overhershoulder. Asthe Object dressed,Isnoopedaroundthe bedroom.Thefurni- ture waswhite wicker uphere,too.Therewereamateursailingprints onthe walls andon theshelvesPetoskeystones,pinecones,musty pa- perbacks. "What are wegoingto do inthewoods?"I said,withanote of complaint. The Object didn't answer. "What arewe goingtodointhewoods?" Irepeated. "We're going forawalk,"she said. "You just want Rex to molestyou." 367

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther’s younger brother Jacob seems to have been a close companion, and their mother is reported as saying that “There was always such mutual MANSFELD AND MINING 33 good feeling between the two brothers so that neither of them preferred any companion to the other brother, nor took any delight in any food or any game without the other.” Perhaps, like many eldest children, Martin felt the arrival of the new siblings keenly, envying how they monopolised his mother’s attention — infants were normally suckled for a couple of years. In 1532, watching his own pregnant wife Katharina von Bora feed their young son Martin, Luther remarked, ‘It is hard to feed two guests, one in the house, the other at the door.’* When their fifth child Paul was born in 1533, Luther held him in his arms and mused ‘how much Adam must have loved his firstborn son Cain, and yet he became his brother’s killer’. At one level, this was a conventional recognition that fathers love their children no matter what they do, but the off-kilter remark may also reveal that he knew how envious a displaced firstborn can feel.** Whether or not Luther ever had an older brother, it was his education in which his father chose to invest, and this special treatment would have made him proud and confident of his ability to succeed like his father. But it may also have made him feel guilty towards his siblings, and worried about their envy. Luther knew the price of his university education: two years of smelting had to pay for his studies at Erfurt, something his father doubtless made sure he never forgot.” He also knew that this was money not spent on his brothers and sisters. Seven or possibly eight children, five of whom survived into adulthood, had to be trained or found dowries — all to be funded from Hans Luder’s mining operations. The structure of the family economy, where the children were meant to make their way from the income of the Mansfeld ores, was likely to have fostered a sense of common purpose, and the family seems to have remained close-knit throughout Luther's life.* When his parents died there was some bad feeling over the inheritance, which was to be equally divided, an irritation which may perhaps have reawoken conflicts from the past. Luther, as the eldest, acted as peacemaker and drew up the contract of division, insisting that now all ‘dislike and unwillingness’ be set aside.” But Martin's privileged position may have left occasional envy and bitterness as well. Luther’s almost allergic reaction whenever he thought others envied him would become a settled feature of his character.

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  Rianne said that she’d found out quite a bit about the arm and where it came from. “It belongs to someone named Dave,” she said. “I knew that,” Shandee snapped. “He went to a place called the House of Holes. There Dave had requested a larger thicker penis. Apparently you can do that. But at a price. The director, this woman named Lila, said to him: ‘Would you be willing to give your right arm for a larger penis?’ Dave said no at first, because his right arm was necessary for his work. But Lila said that it was only temporary—only till someone found the arm and took it back and stuck it on him. Dave said, ‘Oh, if it’s temporary, sure.’ So he underwent a voluntary amputation right near the elbow, and his arm had the self-contained life-support pack grafted on.” “You sure did find out a lot,” said Shandee. “I must say his touch is extremely sensitive,” Rianne went on. She threw herself back on the bed and laid the arm on her chest. Shandee watched the hand push aside the sides of Rianne’s shirt and find her breast again. “Hmm,” Shandee said. “I don’t know about this. I found him, not you.” She felt finger-snappings of jealousy. Rianne’s lips parted. “Oh my gosh, his fingers know what to do,” she said, flushing. The hand was gently rolling her nipple like a tender round pea. And then it surrounded her whole breast and shook it once. After that it turned and began crawling over her belly toward her pajama pants. “Are you just going to let that happen?” Shandee said, riveted. “Um, yes,” she said. “Could you dim the light?” Shandee turned off the overhead light and watched the arm undo the knot of Rianne’s pajama bottoms. It disappeared. Rianne went “Shooooo.” Shandee turned away. “He’s found it,” Rianne said, “and, boy, he’s got the touch of a master.” Then her voice changed and she said, “Oh my god, two fingers. Haw. Haw.” Shandee glanced at her. Rianne’s knees had fallen apart and her eyes were slitted closed. “He seems to want to make me come, oh god, oh shit.” Then: “Ham, ham, oo, oo, oo, oo, oo, oo, ham, ham, HAW!” She lay still and held up the arm. He made an O with his fingers, which glittered with her sex juices. “You want me to go with you?” Rianne said. “Okay, I’ll go. Bye, Shandee, I’m going!” With that, her face and body began to blur, and she swooshed into a long thin shape that went through the finger-O of Dave’s hand. She was gone. The hand lay on the bed. It began crawling toward Shandee.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  died, as if he were a relation. Nell, too, would show up at the palace on twenty years. If you want these occasions dressed in black, and would sorrowfully say that she was me to, I will tell you what happened to me a few years mourning for the "Cham of Tartary" or the "Boog of Oronooko"—grand ago. • At that time I had a relatives of her own. To her face, she called the duchess "Squintabella" and steady lover, a certain the "Weeping Willow," because of her simpering manners and melancholic Demophantos, a usurer living near Poikile. He had airs. Soon the king was spending more time with Nell than with the never given me more than duchess. By the time Keroualle fell out of favor, Nell had in essence befive drachmas and he come the king's favorite, which she remained until his death, in 1685. pretended to be my man. But his love was only superficial, Chrysis. He never sighed, he never shed Interpretation. Nell Gwyn was ambitious. She wanted power and fame, tears for me and he never spent the night waiting at but in the seventeenth century the only way a woman could get those Beware the Aftereffects • 421 things was through a man—and who better than the king? But to get in- my door. One day he came volved with Charles was a dangerous game. A man like him, easily bored to see me, knocked at my door, but I did not open it. and in need of variety, would use her for a fling, then find someone else. You see, I had the painter, Nell's strategy for the problem was simple: she let the king have his Callides, in my room; other girls, and never complained. Every time he saw her, though, she Callides had given me ten made sure he was entertained and diverted. She filled his senses with plea- drachmas. Demophantos swore and beat his fists on sure, acting as if his position had nothing to do with her love for him. Vari- the door and left cursing ety in women could wear on the nerves, tiring a busy king. They all made me. Several days passed so many demands. If one woman could provide the same variety (and Nell, without my sending for him; Callides was still in as an actress, knew how to play different roles), she had a big advantage. my house. Thereupon Nell never asked for money, so Charles plied her with wealth. She never Demophantos, who was asked to be the favorite—how could she? She was a commoner—but he ele- already quite excited, went wild. He broke open my vated her to the position. door, wept, pulled me Many of your targets will be like kings and queens, particularly those about, threatened to kill who are easily bored. Once the seduction is over they will not only have me, tore my tunic, and did everything, in fact, that a

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "Yes, Lord Gregory," she whispered. The stone floor beneath her was swept very clean and polished, but it hurt her knees nevertheless because it was stone. Yet she followed him at once past the other beds on which slaves were being groomed, and the baths in which two young men were being bathed, just as she had been bathed, their eyes flashing over her with mild curiosity as she risked a glance at each of them. "All handsome," she mused. But when a stunningly beautiful young woman was driven across her path, she felt a hot flush of jealousy. This was a girl with a mane of silvery hair much fuller and curlier than Beauty's, and as she was on her knees, her huge magnificent breasts hung down showing their large pink nipples to great advantage. The Page who drove her with the paddle seemed very engaged with her, laughing at her little cries, and forcing her to move faster with the force of his blows as well as the mocking and cheerful commands he gave her. Lord Gregory paused as if he, too, enjoyed the sight of this girl as she was brought up, and into the bath, her legs forces apart as Beauty's had been. Beauty could not help but notice her breasts again, and how large were the pink nipples. The girl's hips were ample for her size, and to Beauty's amazement, she was not really crying as she was lowered into the water. Her moans were more complaints as the paddle still smacked her. Lord Gregory made some approving sound. "Lovely," he said so that Beauty could hear him. "And three months ago she was as wild and untamed as a nymph from the forest. The transformation is quite exquisite." Lord Gregory turned sharply to his left and when Beauty did not at once realize it, he gave her a sound spank and then another. "Now, Beauty," Lord Gregory said, as they passed through a doorway into a long room, "do you wonder how others are trained to show the passion you exhibit with such abandon?" Beauty knew her cheeks were crimson. She could not bring herself to answer. The room was dimly lit by a nearby fire, but its doors were open to the garden. And here Beauty saw that many captives were positioned on tables as she had been in the Great Hall, each with a Page in attendance. And all the Pages worked diligently taking no note of cries or commotion at any other table. Several young men knelt with their hands strapped behind them. They were paddled steadily while at the same time their penises were also being given pleasure.