Joy

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 203 of 299 · 20 per page

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Now I pushed it aside, and rolled upon her. ‘And this,’ I said, moving my hips, ‘is really contributing to the social revolution?’ ‘Oh, yes!’ I wriggled lower. ‘And this, too?’ ‘Oh, certainly!’ I slid beneath the sheet. ‘And how about this?’ ‘Oh!’ ‘Lord,’ I said a little later. ‘To think I have been part of the socialist conspiracy all these years, and never knew it till now ...’ We kept Towards Democracy beside the bed permanently, after that; and just as Florence would sometimes say to me, when the house was quiet, ‘Sing me a song, in your moleskins, Uncle ...’, so I would occasionally lean to whisper to her, over supper or as we walked side by side: ‘Shall we be democratic tonight, Flo ... ?’ Of course, there were certain songs - ‘Sweethearts and Wives’ was one of them - I would never have sung for her. And Leaves of Grass, I noticed, stayed downstairs, on the shelf beneath the photographs of Eleanor Marx and Kitty. I didn’t mind it. How could I mind it? We had struck a kind of bargain. We had fixed to kiss for ever. We had never once said, I love you. ‘Isn’t it marvellous to be in love, in spring-time?’ Annie asked us one evening in April: she and Miss Raymond were sweethearts now, and spent long hours in our parlour, sighing over one another’s charms. ‘I went visiting a factory today, and it was the grimmest, most broken-down old place you ever saw. But I came out into its yard and there was a piece of pussy-willow growing there — just a piece of common old pussy-willow, but with a bit of yellow sun on it, and it looked so exactly like my dear Emma I thought for a moment I would fall down and kiss it, and weep.’ Florence snorted. ‘They should never have let women into the civil service, I said it all along. Weeping over pussy willow? I never heard such rubbish in my life; I really wonder, sometimes, how Emma can bear you. If I heard Nancy likening me to a sprig of catkins, I should be sick.’ ‘Oh, for shame! Nancy, have you never seen Florrie’s face in a chrysanthemum, or a rose?’ ‘Never,’ I said. ‘Though there was a flounder for sale on a fishmonger’s barrow, in Whitechapel yesterday, and the likeness was quite uncanny. I very nearly brought it home ...’ Annie took Miss Raymond’s hand in hers, and gazed at us in wonder. ‘I swear,’ she said, ‘you two are the most unsentimental sweethearts I’ve ever known.’ ‘We are too sensible for sentiment, aren’t we, Nance?’ ‘Too busy, more like,’ I said, with a yawn.

• From Less (2017)

  Arthur Less—he suddenly stands very still, as one does when about to swat a fly. Don’t let it go. Distractions are pulling at his mind—Robert, Freddy, fifty, Tahiti, flowers, the waiter gesturing at Less’s coat sleeve—but he will not look at them. Don’t let it escape. Laughable. His mind is converging on one point of light. What if it isn’t a poignant, wistful novel at all? What if it isn’t the story of a sad middle-aged man on a tour of his hometown, remembering the past and fearing the future; a peripateticism of humiliation and regret; the erosion of a single male soul? What if it isn’t even sad? For a moment, his entire novel reveals itself to him like those shimmering castles that appear to men crawling through deserts… It vanishes. The balcony door slams shut; the sleeve of the blue suit remains snagged on a cuckoo’s beak (a tear lies seconds in the future). But Less does not notice; he is clinging to the one thought that remains. AH ah ah ah! comes the Lessian laugh. His Swift isn’t a hero. He’s a fool. “Well,” he whispers to the night air, “happy birthday, Arthur Less.” Just for the record: happiness is not bullshit. Less Indian

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  The Belgian girl was shy, but she didn’t shy away. The redhead and the Young Man looked at each other slyly, and before I knew it they had lined me and the beautiful Belgian up on the bed side by side; he devoured my pussy while the redhead ate hers. I looked to my left, catching eyes and hands with the Belgian. I felt so safe. Later he and I lay faceup underneath the soft white ass of the kneeling Belgian, our lips close to hers, as we took turns licking her. “Eat her,” I say, and watch him dive and suck and drink pussy, another pussy. It made me wild with joy. Later we rolled out another futon and slept, all four, side by side. In the morning I climbed on his hard cock while the other two watched, the Belgian reaching out and holding his hand while we fucked for her, for us. Loving and hot . . . like hell on fire. That was New Year’s Day. This was my unmarried life. The Young Man and I fucked alone as well. But when the redhead told me she had seduced him without me, I didn’t like it—no, not one bit. It was legal and democratic—the three of us had no rules—but it felt horrid to be left out of the party. And horrid, in my newfound sexual bravado, to experience something so shameful as jealousy. I had never felt this particular pain before, having only been with faithful men. The three of us met at his place and tried to talk about what was hurting me. I was playing with fire all right, but it burned so brightly that I could not, and would not, acknowledge the warning that had just come my way. Between all the forbidden ecstasy I was having, I was still weeping on a regular basis over my marriage, and still interpreting all grief as emotional weakness. It seemed such an awful bore to be jealous, so bourgeois. Surely I could overcome this feeling with practice, with the right bohemian attitude. They countered my fear—fear of loss of him, of her, of our magic triangle—by telling me how much they both loved me. I told them that I loved them, too . . . and that I wanted to see them fuck. I put the condom on him and, leaning over his back, guided his cock between her legs and into her. We both looked down on her, the delicate little redhead, as he fucked her, and I saw myself: pale, vulnerable, and pierced. But I was also him, fucking her with a big beautiful cock, riding his back as he pulsed in her, me.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  I experience a regression to a very young age when he’s in my ass. I goo and gaa and giggle and feel the joy that must have existed before anxiety took over. As if all I ever wanted was to be loved while not gripping my ass, but allowing it to be as it is. And what is released along with my anal sphincter? A love that is enormous, a love waiting decades to be released, a love that flows freely, a love that is infinite at the moment of its conception. Okay, I understand. You’re thinking: Infinite love is good, but what if I bleed en route? To be on the safe side I have never not used a condom, but I have also never, ever bled. This can be a question of the skill of one’s lover but it also may be that some assholes, like mine, are just more able, more resilient, than others—a genetic blessing. If you bleed, don’t do it. I wouldn’t. Period. I also know that when some of you hear anal sex you see nothing but shit—shit, shit everywhere. Shit on the bed, shit on his cock, shit on your ass. I am here to tell you it just isn’t like that. Hardly a trace, ever. All you have to do is include in your regular bathing a nice little finger-in-the-ass bath prior to an anal visitation. What woman doesn’t wash her pussy before sex? Same thing, just rinse out your ass, too. Shit is not my thing, either—don’t want to see it, smell it, or clean it up. Ass-fucking is not about shit. It’s about not being afraid of your shit, going past your shit—to find the shit that matters. #98 He fucked me in the ass at 11:20 last night so long, so hard, so smooth, so hilariously, so slowly, so fast, so very, very deep. After forty-five minutes of this he says, “Now I’m gonna fuck your pussy.” And he fucked my pussy 360 degrees around. Then he says, “I’m gonna get me some sacred spot.” And he does, anointing my sacred place—the grave of my past—with his blasphemous baptismal juice. “I think it’s your greatest gift,” he says after. “What is?” “Submission.” PROFILE OF AN ASS-FUCKER Ass-fucking a woman is clearly about authority. The man’s authority; the woman’s complete acceptance of it. A man must have this confidence, in himself and his cock, to fuck a woman in the ass. If he does not have this control, his cock will direct the action; he will move too quickly, hurt the once-willing woman, and rarely, rightly, will he be given a second chance.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —Estaré despierto —respondo en voz baja. Confiaría en un drogadicto para sostener mi billetera más de lo que confiaría en Kyle Cramer. Escucho cuando se abre la puerta de madera y los niños entran arrastrando los pies. Entonces escucho su voz. —Oh, y eres un idiota —dice. La miro. —Me lo agradecerás cuando no te hayan violado en una cita. Hace una mueca y cierra la puerta, golpeándola con fuerza. La miro fijamente, riendo en silencio. Es tan jodidamente adorable. Y luego mi rostro cae, dándome cuenta de que estoy casi mareado. No soy una persona sonriente, y he superado con creces mi cuota desde que ella entró en la casa. Termino de limpiar el patio trasero mientras el cielo se vuelve negro sobre mí, y me aseguro de envolver la pizza en papel de aluminio, según las instrucciones. La piscina está despejada, los juguetes y flotadores guardados, y la mesa de picnic está limpia. Agarrando las toallas húmedas de la cubierta, entro en la casa y cierro la puerta trasera, apagando también la luz de la piscina. Tirando las toallas a la lavadora, dejo la tapa abierta, para poder poner más ropa después de la ducha. Mientras me dirijo hacia las escaleras, suena el timbre. Cruzando la sala de estar, abro la puerta de entrada y veo a un joven a través de la puerta mosquitera. Mi guardia se eleva un poco, pero la abro, forzándolo a retroceder. —Hola —dice. Asiento, mirando al creído aspirante de fraternidad, que me parece algo familiar, aunque no recuerdo de dónde. —¿Se acuerda de mí? —dice, tendiéndome la mano—. Soy Jay McCabe. Amigo de Cole. Le estrecho la mano, estudiándolo. Jay… —¿Jordan está aquí? —pregunta—. Me dijeron que todavía se está quedando aquí. ¿Jordan? ¿Qué quiere él con...? Y entonces lo comprendo. —Jay —digo, la comprensión me ilumina mientras mi columna vertebral se endereza como una barra de acero recta—. ¿Su ex novio? La esquina de su boca se curva en una sonrisa y un brillo se desliza en sus ojos. —Sí, éramos novios. Pero ya ni siquiera estoy escuchando. Paso mis dedos sobre mi pulgar, con ganas de apretar mis manos, mientras mi pecho comienza a subir y bajar con fuertes respiraciones. Salgo de la casa y camino directamente hacia él, apenas un centímetro más alto, pero me aseguro de que lo sepa. Su rostro cae cuando no me detengo, y se tropieza hacia atrás para evitar que choque con él. —Oye —protesta. Pero continúo. Camino hasta que lo obligo a retroceder, a bajar las escaleras y dirigiéndolo hacia el maldito césped. La alarma se asienta en sus ojos. —Jesús, ¿qué diablos? Me le acerco y cruzo los brazos sobre mi pecho. —Normalmente no empujo mi peso a un niño como tú, pero quiero dejar esto en claro —lo provoco—. Puedes tener tu propio grupo de seguidoras que están enamoradas de ti o te tienen miedo, pero yo... —hago una pausa para darle efecto—

• From Less (2017)

  Mandern, Arthur Less marveled that he would not be returning, as he had his entire life, from the east but from the mysterious west. And during this odyssey, he was certain he would not think about Freddy Pelu at all. New York is a city of eight million people, approximately seven million of whom will be furious when they hear you were in town and didn’t meet them for an expensive dinner, five million furious you didn’t visit their new baby, three million furious you didn’t see their new show, one million furious you didn’t call for sex, but only five actually available to meet you. It is completely reasonable to call none of them. You could instead sneak off to a terrible, treacly Broadway show that you will never admit you paid two hundred dollars to see. This is what Less does on his first night, eating a hot dog dinner to make up for the extravagance. You cannot call it a guilty pleasure when the lights go down and the curtain goes up, when the adolescent heart begins to beat along with the orchestra, not when you feel no guilt. And he feels none; he feels only the shiver of delight when there is nobody around to judge you. It is a bad musical, but, like a bad lay, a bad musical can still do its job perfectly well. By the end, Arthur Less is in tears, sobbing in his seat, and he thinks he has been sobbing quietly until the lights come up and the woman seated beside him turns and says, “Honey, I don’t know what happened in your life, but I am so so sorry,” and gives him a lilac-scented embrace. Nothing happened to me, he wants to say to her. Nothing happened to me. I’m just a homosexual at a Broadway show. Next morning: the coffeemaker in his hotel room is a hungry little mollusk, snapping open its jaws to devour pods and subsequently secreting coffee into a mug. The instructions on care and feeding are clear, and yet somehow Less manages to produce, on the first go, nothing but steam and, on the second, a melted version of the pod itself. A sigh from Less. It is an autumn New York morning, and therefore glorious; it is his first day of his long journey, the day before the interview, and his clothes are still clean and neat, socks still paired, blue suit unwrinkled, toothpaste still American and not some strange foreign flavor. Bright-lemon New York light flashing off the skyscrapers, onto the quilted aluminum sides of food carts, and from there onto Arthur Less himself. Even the mean delighted look from the lady who would not hold the elevator, the humor-free girl at the coffee shop, the tourists standing stock-still on busy Fifth Avenue, the revved-up accosting hawkers (“Mister, you like comedy? Everybody likes comedy!”), the toothache sensation of jackhammers in concrete—none of it can dull the day.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Turning out the legs from the hips just winds up that pelvic floor like a corkscrew. I worked my gut all my life standing at that ballet barre. Now it is being unworked. His cock, my ass, unwinding. Divine. As he enters me I let go, millimeter by millimeter, of the tensing, pulling, tightening, gripping. I am addicted to extreme physical endurance, the marathon of uncoiling intensity. I release my muscles, my tendons, my flesh, my anger, my ego, my rules, my censors, my parents, my cells, my life. At the same time I pull and suck and draw him inward. Opening out and sucking in, one thing. Bliss, I learned from being sodomized, is an experience of eternity in a moment of real time. Sodomy is the ultimate sexual act of trust. I mean you could really get hurt—if you resist. But pushing past that fear, by passing through it, literally, ah the joy that lies on the other side of convention. The peace that is past the pain. Going past the pain is key. Once absorbed, it is neutralized and allows for transformation. Pleasure alone is mere temporary indulgence, a subtle distraction, an anesthetization while on the path to something higher, deeper, lower. Eternity lies far, far beyond pleasure. And beyond pain. The edge of my ass is the sexual event horizon, the boundary to that beyond from which there is no escape. Not for me, anyway. I am an atheist, by inheritance. I came to know God experientially, from being fucked in the ass—over and over and over again. I am a slow learner—and a gluttonous hedonist. I am serious. Very serious. And I was even more surprised than you are now by this curiously rude awakening to a mystic state. There it was: God’s big surprise, His subtle humor and potent presence, manifested in my ass—well, it sure is one way to get a skeptic’s attention. Anal sex is about cooperation. Cooperation in an endeavor of aristocratic politics, involving rigid hierarchies, feudal positions, and monarchist attitudes. One is in charge, the other obedient. Entirely in charge, entirely obedient. There is no democratic, affirmative- action safety net swinging below ass-fuckers. But they’d best be of firm action, very firm. You can’t half-ass butt-fuck. It would be a travesty. There are no understudies, no backups, for anal Cirque du Soleil. It’s a high-wire act—all the way up. The truth always shows itself with the ass. A cock in an ass operates like the arrow on a lie-detector test. The ass doesn’t know how to lie, it can’t lie: it hurts, physically, if you lie. The pussy, on the other hand, can lie at the mere entry of a dick in the room—does so all the time. Pussies are designed to fool men with their beckoning waters, ready opening, and angry owners.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  “Try it on,” Caitlin said. “Try it on … now?” “Yes …” “But I’ve got citronella … and sunscreen …” “It’s washable,” Caitlin said and now she was laughing, too. “I made sure before I bought it … that it was … you know … washable.” “Washable …” “Yes … washable.” This struck Vix as hysterically funny. She wondered why Bru and Von didn’t get it, didn’t get that this dress, or whatever it was, that was suitable for a princess to wear to a garden party, was washable. The word itself—washable —was enough to send her into gales of laughter. Caitlin held out her hand. Vix took it and Caitlin pulled her to her feet, then led her behind the dunes. Vix tossed Bru’s shirt up in the air, still laughing. She untied her bikini top and flung that aside, too. Caitlin dropped the dress over her head. It fell around her, cool and smooth, a perfect fit. Well, maybe it was cut dangerously low in front, but so what? Who was going to see it besides Caitlin and Bru and maybe Von, but he had eyes only for Caitlin. Caitlin adjusted the silky rose centered between Vix’s breasts. “Here …” she said, “I think it goes more like this …” and she eased the dress off her shoulders. She stepped back to admire her work. “God, Vix … you look so beautiful!” Then they were dancing on the beach, Caitlin and Vix, twirling to “Wild thing … you make my heart sing …” Vix had never felt more beautiful, more desirable. She couldn’t wait to be with Bru! Couldn’t wait to actually make love, to feel him inside her. Was she stoned? Maybe … probably … but so what? For once she wasn’t self-conscious about her body. She was proud of her lush breasts, her shapely legs glistening with oil, her long dark hair swinging back and forth as she twirled, growing more and more dizzy. It was her birthday, she was seventeen, dancing on the beach in the moonlight as her lover watched, watched with desire written all over his face. Tonight she was the wild thing . The temptress. Then they were all dancing together, all four of them, and she was thinking, It can’t get any better than this … ever! They were hugging and kissing, so much in love. This will be my best Vineyard memory. This will be the one I remember all my life . The kissing grew more serious, deeper, hungrier. Vix let her eyes close and she moaned softly, turned on by hot breath, soft lips, hands sliding the dress from her shoulders, hands on her naked breasts. She felt the hardness inside his shorts and reached down. “Vix …” he whispered. “Oh baby …” Oh baby … oh baby? Wait! Something was wrong with this picture. The hands on her body weren’t Bru’s, the lips on her lips weren’t his.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  In April 2004, it was proposed that Clear Channel Communications, the nation’s largest radio broadcaster, be fined no less than $495,000 by the Federal Communications Commission for a single twenty- minute segment of the Howard Stern Show in which Stern discussed, at some length, what he refers to as “anal.” (It probably didn’t help matters that the conversation was frequently punctuated by fart noises.) Thank God that having anal sex is so much cheaper than talking about it. Despite this new trend of sodomitic censorship, ass-fucking has made several auspicious appearances recently on screens both big and small. The subject came up regularly in the popular TV series Sex and the City, whose heroines discussed not only men’s growing interest in “the ass” but also their own willingness to accommodate those interests, the appropriateness of doing so on a first date, and the basic lube how-tos. Perhaps even more surprising was its mention in the Hollywood hit Bridget Jones’s Diary. At one point, when Bridget is lying in bed after having sex with her caddish lover, Daniel Cleaver, she reminds him that what they just did is illegal in several countries. To which he replies, without missing a beat, that that’s one of the reasons he’s so pleased to be living in England today. Is Daniel Cleaver the latest incarnation of the bad-boy lover, the zipless fuck for the twenty-first century? After all, the zipless ass-fuck simply takes zipless to a new hole level. So does missionary-position ass-fucking. The term itself conjures up such perfect contradiction: the most patriarchal position, the most biblically sanctioned, and yet, well, what a difference an inch can make. The experience on the other hand—best achieved with a nice firm pillow under the ass—makes me feel downright missionary. After all, here I am spreading the word, sharing the epiphany like a born-again believer, a convert, an anal zealot. #145 and #146 We just completed both 145 and 146 consecutively in the course of an hour and a half. He never went down. I grabbed the base of his cock shortly after he had pulled out and shot vertically up my arched back, arcing over my face. His jizz landed squarely on a black velvet pillow with a satisfying splat. That look was still in his eye, that crazy fucking look, and I asked, “May I lick your cock?” “Yes,” he said gently, generously. And we did the whole thing all over again. Double bliss, double cum, exponential fun. GETTING READY If you want the whole thing, the Gods will give it to you.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I did not speak, but only nodded wonderingly. ‘I came,’ she said, ‘to make them. I wore my smartest frock, so they would think me grander than I am. I thought, they might be the meanest and most miserable family in all of Kent; yet I will work so hard at being nice, they’ll trust me like a daughter. ‘But oh, Nan, they’re not miserable or mean, and I didn’t have to play at being nice at all! They are the kindest family I ever met; and you are all the world to them. I cannot ask you to give them up ...’ My heart seemed to stop - and then to pound, like a piston. ‘What do you mean?’ I said. She looked away. ‘I meant to ask you to come with me. To London.’ I blinked. ‘To go with you? But how?’ ‘As my dresser,’ she said, ‘if you’d care to. As my - anything, I don’t know. I have spoken to Mr Bliss: he says there will not be much money for you at first - but enough, if you share my diggings.’ ‘Why?’ I said then. She raised her eyes to mine. ‘Because I - like you. Because you are good for me, and bring me luck. And because London will be strange; and Mr Bliss may not be all that he seems; and I shall have no one...’ ‘And you truly thought,’ I said slowly, ‘that I would say no?’ ‘This afternoon - yes. Last night, and this morning, I believed - Oh, it was so different in the dressing-room, when it was just the two of us! I didn’t know then how it was for you here. I didn’t know then that you had a - a chap.’ Her words made me bold. I drew my hand away from hers and got to my feet. I walked to the head of the bed, where there was a little cabinet, with a drawer in it. I opened it, and took something from it, and showed it to her. ‘Do you know this?’ I said, and she smiled. ‘It’s the flower I gave you.’ She took it from me, and held it. It was dry and limp, and its petals were brown at the edges and coming loose; and it was rather flat, because I had slept many nights with it beneath my pillow. ‘When you threw this to me,’ I said to her, ‘my life changed. I think I must have been - asleep - till that moment: asleep, or dead.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  In other words, when one partner’s good news and enthusiasm ignites to become the other partner’s good news and enthusiasm as well, a micro-moment of positivity resonance is born. Studies show that these moments of back-and-forth positivity resonance are not only satisfying in and of themselves, providing boosts to each partner’s own mood, but they also further fortify the relationship, making it more intimate, committed, and passionate next season than it is today. Another person’s expression of positivity, from this perspective, can be seen as a bid for connection and love. If you answer that bid, the ensuing positivity resonance will nourish you both. Two ways to fortify your intimate relationships, then, are to bring your own good news home to share, and to celebrate your partner’s good news. Regardless of who initiates, the key is to connect to create a shared experience, one that allows positivity to resonate between you for a spell, momentarily synchronizing your gestures and your biorhythms and creating the warm glow of mutual care. Sharing or celebrating the joy of some personal good fortune is certainly not the only way to foster the micro-moments of love that strengthen relationships. Any positive emotion, if shared, can do the same. In collaboration with my colleague Sara Algoe, for instance, I’ve explored how kindness and appreciation flow back and forth in couples, creating tender moments of positivity resonance that also serve to nourish intimacy and relationship growth. In particular, we’ve examined how people habitually express appreciation to their partners. We learned from this work that some people tend to say “thanks” better than others. Genuine feelings of appreciation or gratitude, after all, well up when you recognize that someone else went out of his or her way to do something nice for you. Another way to say this is that the script for gratitude involves both a benefit , or kind deed, and a benefactor , the kind person behind the kind deed. Whereas many people express their appreciation to others by shining a spotlight on the benefit they received—the gift, favor, or the kind deed itself—we discovered that, by contrast, the best “thank-yous” simply use the benefit as a springboard toward shining a spotlight on the good qualities of the other person, their benefactor. Done well, then, expressing appreciation for your partner’s kindness to you can become a kind gesture in return, one that conveys that you see and appreciate in your partner’s actions his or her good and inspiring qualities. How did we know that this is the best way to convey appreciation?

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Art and Elaine, a married couple living in Long Island, New York, learned this fact in a surprising way. They saw a poster in town recruiting couples to join a study on the “factors that affect relationships.” Motivated more by curiosity than the promised thirty dollars, they called to sign up. They got more curious when the person on the phone asked them about a range of medical conditions that might prevent them from engaging in physical or aerobic activity. Their curiosity rose still higher when they met the researcher at the designated lab room on campus. It was set up more like a gymnastics room, with a large gymnasium mat rolled out across the floor, covering about thirty feet. Halfway down the mat, another fat mat was rolled up like a barricade, about three feet high. As part of the study, the researcher asked Art and Elaine to complete surveys and discuss a few topics together, like their next vacation and a future home improvement project, which she videotaped for later analysis. These tasks seemed simple enough and not altogether unexpected in a study of relationships. Yet they were flabbergasted when the researcher directed them to their next task. Indeed, their curiosity about the room setup erupted into outright chuckles of disbelief as the researcher used Velcro bands to tie Art’s and Elaine’s wrists and ankles together. She told them that their task was to crawl on their hands and knees as fast as they could to the far end of the mat and back, clearing the barrier in each direction. All the while, they’d need to hold a cylinder-shaped pillow off the floor without using their hands, arms, or teeth. If they could complete this absurd task in less than a minute, she told them, they’d win a bag of candy, something she said few couples before them had done. It didn’t take long for Art and Elaine to discover that they could only hold the pillow up by pressing it between their torsos, which made their bound- crawling all the more challenging. The whole event was hilarious. They toppled over several times, laughing uncontrollably. By their third attempt, they finally got their limbs into sync. They beat the clock and won the prize—all smiles and (once unbound) high fives! It turned out that other couples who’d signed up for the study didn’t have nearly as much fun as did Elaine and Art.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  He said that it was difficult to find a nice Christian wife—the only way he could legitimately have sex again. I didn’t understand; he looked so incredibly eligible. Then he admitted with a shy grin that he liked his women a little slutty—trashy was the word he used. Admittedly, I couldn’t be a genuine Christian, but I had been practicing slutty and trashy for a few years already. This man’s contradictions were as epic as my own. I asked him just how far could he go sexually before God got mad: “Where is the line?” An hour later, I still hadn’t gotten an answer, just a discernible sigh as his tongue hit my clit on the roof of a nearby car park. He had suggested looking at the view. God was now speaking to me, too, and the time was now and the view superb. And thus, I, too, died and was born again. I have never seen a man before or since look at a pussy the way this guy did. I felt penetrated by his gaze alone. He projected an innocent, open-eyed hunger layered with filthy lust and divine desire. It is forever fixed in my mind’s eye and, easily recalled, can make me come in a jiffy. The risk of being caught in public did wonders for Born Again. One afternoon I sucked his cock in a Denny’s parking lot, just as the lunch crowd of blue-haired ladies was heading for their Pontiacs. He had a great way of staying calm, cool, and on the lookout above while fucking my mouth furiously below. Jekyll and Hyde, sacred and profane, horny man of God. Another time he stuck his hard cock through my vertical mail slot, humping my front door, as I sucked him on the other side while neighbors passed behind him in my courtyard. Perhaps this was a man I could actually date. But shortly afterward he told me that both Darwin and the Dalai Lama were, in general, wrong about most things, and my brief hope for a man who combined the erotic and the spiritual disappeared. When he told me that he didn’t believe in evolution (so I came from a monkey but he didn’t?), I suggested we stop talking entirely and find a nice mail slot through which to communicate.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same . . . then you will enter the kingdom. One day, I ventured down on the Pre-Raphaelite. First time. Terrified. Curious. I wanted to see her pleasure in order to know my own. She was a genuine redhead. Eating pussy when you are a heterosexual woman is overwhelming. To confront a pussy that close for the first time—you can’t ever get that close, at that angle, to your own—is like looking narcissism in the face with a resounding Yes! Profound. Wet. It can sometimes be so hard to be oneself in one’s own sex life. With another woman, a woman’s identity receives a brutal jolt: she is me, I am her, her pleasure is mine, mine is hers. The source, the center, the origin of the human race becomes your only view. I bonded with my own sex and learned to love myself. I also developed a new compassion for the male divers. A pussy is a wild and watery landscape of hills and valleys and ravines and mighty holes that suck one in like quicksand. Once in, you cannot escape. Diving is an act of bravery. The redhead, however, demonstrated less hesitancy, and ate me like a woman who knows how. Naughty, considerate, and relentless. Her fingers felt like tongues, her mouth like a baby’s, sucking. I resist men’s fingers. Too rough, too big, too fast. My shield goes up, my clit hides. My orgasms with her were long, open, and free. The next New Year’s we three reconvened and she had a surprise for us: her beautiful young Belgian friend who was mourning the loss of her rock-star lover. One-two-three-four, three of one and one of the other. She and me and him . . . and her. I did a striptease to Led Zeppelin, swinging around the luscious green velvet curtains at the door of her boudoir—a kind of Gone With the Wind–Vivien-Leigh-Gone-Wild moment.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  He kisses my belly, inside my thighs, my pubic hair. Eventually with a very soft, very gentle tongue, contact is made with my pussy, my clit. My eyes open. I see his lovely eyes, looking at me, mouth buried in my cunt. My knees drop open 180 degrees, my feet press on the sides of his chest, my pussy is pushed into his mouth, contact, contact, contact. He is there a long time. I have many small, very intense orgasms. He moves his tongue and mouth quickly side to side, then stops on the tip, on my center, a tiny pinpoint where my whole being of emotion, power, and love are centered. Legs and belly convulse, contract, vibrate. Through these releases I know it’s not over, not finished. Possessed, I explode. My torso rises off the table over and over, his tongue works furiously, my legs are all over, my arms flailing. I am crying, whimpering, never before so conscious of tears of joy, that someone had been so kind to me. Every time I called, the pleasure was given and received. His tongue held close and soft and fast on my clitoris became the center of the world. And fingers everywhere—fingers on my clit, fingers in my pussy, fingers up my ass—how many tendrils can one man have? I stopped tipping him. But I did buy a series of ten massages at a reduced rate. He insisted, for his own moral welfare (and perhaps mine), that he always give me a massage—although on more than one occasion the massage came after we did. I was surprised at how much I liked sucking his cock. It was because he had shown me love first, and filled with gratitude, I headed down. I gave this guy the first good blow job I had ever given, one that came from my guts and brought tears into my eyes. It was the first time I was that grateful to a man. We never saw each other outside of the room in my apartment. We stayed in the bedroom, only going to the kitchen for liquids and the bathroom for rinses. The bedroom was the world. No dinners, no dates, only phone calls to make an appointment. Because my damaged hip had ended my dance career, the massages were paid for by insurance. Insurance for the resurrection of my deeply injured sexual desire.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  When he left I was dazed: never had I been so receptive. My clit had come out of hibernation, no longer hiding, no longer scared, but reaching out, reaching for direct contact with heaven. For the first time, I was in submission to my own orgasms, trying only to survive the contractions, to stay conscious despite annihilating pleasure. I knew right then that my decision to leave my marriage and break those vows taken before God was worth it. Worth it all for those two hours. I was sure, of course, that it would not happen again. Why would I be so blessed when I also felt so guilty? Guilt, pleasure, and the impossible man: the ingredients of sexual ecstasy were becoming apparent. I waited the requisite week, counting the days, and called for another massage, expecting nothing, wanting everything. I jumped when the doorbell rang: bathed, perfumed, and obsessed. Again it happened. Again, and again, and again. One day he suggested a couple of rules—he’d been thinking, like me, about how to make this thing happen when it shouldn’t happen. He didn’t play with clients: I was the first, so keep it quiet, very quiet. Of course. The other rule: no intercourse. No problem. “We’re just going to play,” he explained, and I came to understand just what playing really was. Fucking wasn’t so interesting to me, anyway. At best it was a return offering for receiving a good licking. Now licking was the sole activity. And he never, ever, in all the time I knew him, took off his shoes. His shoes became our mutual marker that we were still within our limits of decency. Sort of. He presented me with the first sex I’d ever had that I thought about in words, that I wanted to describe and preserve in words. And so the scribbling began. Every time he came, and left, I went straight to my notebook and wrote it all down. I was experiencing an impossible pleasure, and having it on paper would prove that the impossible existed. I knew something profound had happened to me: I had shifted from being my small, hurt, wounded, and unhappy self to being a conduit of a pleasure that was far greater than myself, a pleasure that I did not own, but that I could feel. And I could not experience this in silence. I had to tell some unknown, undefined audience. Perhaps that audience was really me, my unbelieving atheist self being told by my transformed sexual self about hope.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I was at first a little dismayed to learn that I would not be sharing Diana’s chamber; but I could not stay dismayed for long. The room to which she led me - it was a little way along the corridor - was hardly less imposing than her own, and quite as grand. Its walls were bare and creamy-white, its carpets gold, its screen and bedstead of bamboo; its dressing-table, moreover, was crowded with goods - a cigarette-case of tortoise-shell, a pair of brushes and a comb, a button-hook of ivory, and various jars and bottles of oils and perfumes. A door beside the bed led to a long, low-ceilinged closet: here, draped on a pair of wooden shoulders, was a dressing-gown of crimson silk, to match Diana’s green one; and here, too, was the suit I had been promised: a handsome costume of grey worsted, terribly heavy and terribly smart. Besides this there was a set of drawers, marked links and neckties, collars and studs. These were all full; and on a further rack of shelves, marked linen, there was fold after fold of white lawn shirts. I gazed at all this, then kissed Diana very hard indeed - partly, I must confess, in the hope that she would close her eyes, and thus not see how much I was in awe of her. But when she had gone, I fairly danced about the golden floor in pleasure. I took the suit, and a shirt, and a collar, and a necktie, and laid them all, in proper order, upon the bed. Then I danced again. The bags I had brought with me from Mrs Milne’s I carried to the closet and cast, unopened, into the farthest corner. I wore my suit to supper; it looked, I knew, very well on me. Diana, however, said the cut was not quite right, and that tomorrow she would have Mrs Hooper measure me properly, and send my details to a tailor. I thought her faith in her housekeeper’s discretion quite extraordinary; and when that lady had left us - for, as she had at lunch, she filled our plates and glasses, then stood in grave and (I thought) unnerving attendance until dismissed - I said so. Diana laughed. ‘There’s a secret to that,’ she said; ‘can’t you guess it?’ ‘You pay her a fortune in wages, I suppose.’ ‘Well, perhaps. But didn’t you catch Mrs Hooper, gazing through her lashes at you as she served you your soup? Why, she was practically drooling into your plate!’ ‘You don’t mean - you can’t mean - that she is just - like us?’ She nodded: ‘Of course. And as for little Blake - why, I plucked her, poor child, from a reformatory cell. They had sent her there for corrupting a house-maid ...’

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  He presented me with the first sex I’d ever had that I thought about in words, that I wanted to describe and preserve in words. And so the scribbling began. Every time he came, and left, I went straight to my notebook and wrote it all down. I was experiencing an impossible pleasure, and having it on paper would prove that the impossible existed. I knew something profound had happened to me: I had shifted from being my small, hurt, wounded, and unhappy self to being a conduit of a pleasure that was far greater than myself, a pleasure that I did not own, but that I could feel. And I could not experience this in silence. I had to tell some unknown, undefined audience. Perhaps that audience was really me, my unbelieving atheist self being told by my transformed sexual self about hope . He kisses my belly, inside my thighs, my pubic hair. Eventually with a very soft, very gentle tongue, contact is made with my pussy, my clit. My eyes open. I see his lovely eyes, looking at me, mouth buried in my cunt. My knees drop open 180 degrees, my feet press on the sides of his chest, my pussy is pushed into his mouth, contact, contact, contact. He is there a long time. I have many small, very intense orgasms. He moves his tongue and mouth quickly side to side, then stops on the tip, on my center, a tiny pinpoint where my whole being of emotion, power, and love are centered. Legs and belly convulse, contract, vibrate. Through these releases I know it’s not over, not finished. Possessed, I explode. My torso rises off the table over and over, his tongue works furiously, my legs are all over, my arms flailing. I am crying, whimpering, never before so conscious of tears of joy, that someone had been so kind to me. Every time I called, the pleasure was given and received. His tongue held close and soft and fast on my clitoris became the center of the world. And fingers everywhere—fingers on my clit, fingers in my pussy, fingers up my ass—how many tendrils can one man have? I stopped tipping him. But I did buy a series of ten massages at a reduced rate. He insisted, for his own moral welfare (and perhaps mine), that he always give me a massage—although on more than one occasion the massage came after we did. I was surprised at how much I liked sucking his cock. It was because he had shown me love first, and filled with gratitude, I headed down. I gave this guy the first good blow job I had ever given, one that came from my guts and brought tears into my eyes. It was the first time I was that grateful to a man. We never saw each other outside of the room in my apartment.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Having tried out several other positive psychology interventions, Donna was immediately curious. She asked more about the technique. I shared that what our participants had done was extraordinarily simple—just answer those two questions about their three longest social interactions of the day. Donna soaked up our fresh data with great interest and wondered how her own life might be different if her three longest interactions each day were life-giving rather than life-draining, sources of strength rather than disappointment. Right then, she transformed our accidental finding into her own, self-styled well-being intervention. She set herself a new goal of seeking out at least three interactions each day that held positivity resonance. While she could hardly control the influx of uncertainty and setbacks in her day-to-day life, she could strive to cultivate more loving connections each day. As someone who lives alone, Donna’s new goal was challenging to pull off. But the initial payoff was high enough to keep her engaged. While she’d never kept up with the “three good things” exercise commonly used in positive psychology, in which you write down at the end of each day three things that went well that day and consider why each happened, she did stick with her own “three loving connections” exercise. Several weeks later she wrote me a note to say that she found it made a “huge difference” in her life. She also found that love breeds confidence and strength. The more loving interactions she had, the better prepared she was to face her difficult days at work. Donna observed that her self-styled “three loving connections” activity did two things for her. First, it made her look for people she enjoys being with and inspired her to enhance those relationships. She shared with me, for instance, that after a particularly stressful day, she now would often call her twentysomething niece, just to see what she’s been up to lately and share some giggles. As her phone calls to her niece became more frequent, their relationship grew deeper and stronger. Other family and friends became closer and her relationships with them became more healthy and helpful. The other effect of her “three loving connections” activity was that she now found herself looking for ways to make the difficult relationships in her life better. Her positive and powerful relationships with family and friends had become the new normal in her life, and she strove to make even the difficult relationships in her life better. She had a strong foundation of loving relationships to support her in this endeavor.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  You can even deploy silent celebration to transform any minor irritation you might feel at another’s actions into a more buoyant, lighthearted moment. Any of us, despite our generally benevolent attitudes, can grow somewhat impatient with others, even if their only crime is that they march to their own drummer. Perhaps it’s the cashier who tends the long, slow line in which you wait, who chats for a bit too long with each customer, or the restaurant patron at the next table who in her enthusiasm speaks too loudly, or the free spirits who hula hoop in your town square, obstructing your shortcut. For me, it seems like just about every day, while I’m at work in my office, I find my flow of thoughts interrupted by “the campus whistler,” an older gentleman who walks throughout campus and town enjoying music on his headphones while whistling in full force. He’s actually a fantastic whistler. Yet once you’ve heard him once or twice, it gets easy to begrudge his next arrival. I’m not the only one to react this way. My colleague shared with me that when she held her class outside one uncommonly fine day in February, for a moment their discussion was pierced by the campus whistler strolling nearby. Her students groaned and grumbled. Sometimes, when others enjoy themselves in unusual ways, your first reaction can be judgmental. Take two, however, can be more charitable. My campus whistler is joyful after all. When I allow myself to savor this unique musical moment and wish him continued enjoyment, I create my own joy as well. Try it for yourself. See if you notice any new radiance or levity within your heart, or any additional softness or openness within your face. As you experiment with celebratory love, notice how readily you can turn these feelings of loving connection on and off just by bringing in others’ presumed good fortune into your awareness. Notice how others respond to you. Does the face and openness with which you meet the world make a difference? Love 2.0: The View from Here The facts are that all people face both good and bad fortune every year, if not every day. When you look out at others, even without speaking with them or knowing anything specific about them, you can be virtually certain that they are simultaneously blessed by good fortune, however small or large, and also burdened by bad fortune, again, however small or large. Each person we encounter, then, simultaneously merits both our compassionate love and our celebratory love. Love, upgraded as positivity resonance, comes in many flavors. It bends toward compassion when suffering is salient, and toward celebration when good fortune is salient. Above all, love is connection. In connection, you are far more likely to recognize what other people are going through, and meet them where they are, sincerely wishing them the very best.