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.

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• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Never, however, did dear youth carry in his head more wherewith to justify the turning of a girl’s head, and making her set all consequences at defiance, for the sake of following a gallant. For, besides all the perfections of manly beauty which were assembled in his form, he had an air of neatness and gentility, certain smartness in the carriage and port of his head, that yet more distinguished him; his eyes were sprightly and full of meaning; his looks had in them something at once sweet and commanding; his complexion out-bloomed the lovely coloured rose, whilst its inimitable tender vivid glow clearly saved it from the reproach of wanting life, of raw and dough-like, which is commonly made of those so extremely fair as he was. Our little plan was, that I should get out about seven the next morning (which I could readily promise, as I knew where to get the key of the street door) and he would wait at the end of the street with a coach to convey me safe off; after which, we would send, and clear any debt incurred by my stay at Mrs. Brown’s, who, he only judged, in gross, might not care to part with one, he thought, so fit to draw custom to the house. I then just hinted to him not to mention in the house his having seen such a person as me, for reasons I would explain to him more at leisure. And then, for fear of miscarrying, by being seen together, I tore myself from him with a bleeding heart, and stole up softly to my room, where I found Phœbe still fast asleep, and hurrying off my few clothes, lay down by her, with a mixture of joy and anxiety, that may be easier conceived than expressed. The risks of Mrs. Brown’s discovering my purpose, of disappointments, misery, ruin, all vanished before this new-kindled flame. The seeing, the touching, the being, if but for a night, with this idol of my fond virgin heart, appeared to me a happiness above the purchase of my liberty or life. He might use me ill, let him: he was the master, happy, too happy, even to receive death at so dear a hand. To this purpose were the reflections of the whole day, of which every minute seemed to me a little eternity. How often did I visit the clock! nay, was tempted to advance the tedious hand, as if that would have advanced the time with it!

• From Sexual Politics (1970)

  It is dedicated to Fumio, and the nightly martini over which he listened to each day’s pages, laughed and crowed, criticized, and egged me on. Sexual Politics also owes a great deal to a long-vanished debating society called Downtown Radical Women, where each detail of the theory of patriarchy was hatched, rehearsed, and refined upon again; to friends in New Haven, graduate women at Yale, who would stay up nights speculating on the origins of patriarchy, the discovery of paternity, the population explosion following upon the implementation of that discovery in the rise of slavery, property, and the city-state. Sexual politics, the idea, was an ongoing project among a great many women in the months I was writing it. And I had their support and companionship, their intellectual energy running through me so actively I felt I composed it for all of us, was the scribe of many. Without Lucinda Cisler’s amazing bibliography to draw upon, I couldn’t have located many of my sources. Other books were emerging at the same time too: Robin Morgan’s Sisterhood Is Powerful, Shulamith Firestone’s Dialectic of Sex, all the pamphlets that were collected together into the Notes from the First Year. We were all in this together, knew each other, were collaborators in the creation of a different consciousness. There was Columbia Women’s Liberation too, founded with friends in the graduate school and faculty; we devoted hundreds of hours of research to documenting the university’s unfair salary schedules, deliberately using the tools of our academic training to attack the system. We were dedicated to scholarship, loved it, believed in it so much that we dreamed about it out loud, lying on someone’s rug uptown and outlining a curriculum freed of sexual prejudice, a whole new way to see history, literature, economics, psychology, political events. We were beginning to invent women’s studies, we were reinterpreting knowledge, discovering a new learning. These were the days of the millennium. As the book took shape, so did events. By the time Sexual Politics was published, our actions and demonstrations, meetings, issues, were running through this and other countries, mobilizing women. By the summer of 1970, the moment this text was released, there was a great wave of feminism building. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the suffrage, there were marches and strikes of women workers in New York and throughout the United States. It was the right moment. The rest is history.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "The Rubicon was crossed; the column began to slide softly in; he could begin his pleasurable work. Soon the whole penis slipped in; the pain that tortured me was deadened; the delight was ever so much increased. I felt the little god moving within me; it seemed to be tickling the very core of my being; he had shoved the whole of it into me, down to its very root; I felt his hair crushed against mine, his testicles gently rubbing against me. "I then saw his beautiful eyes gazing deep into mine. What unfathomable eyes they were! Like the sky or the main, they seemed to reflect the infinite. Never again shall I see eyes so full of burning love, of such smouldering langour. His glances had a mesmeric spell over me; they bereft me of my reason; they did even more—they changed sharp pain into delight. "I was in a state of ecstatic joy; all my nerves contracted and twitched. As he felt himself thus clasped and gripped, he shivered, he ground his teeth; he was unable to bear such a strong shock; his outstretched arms held fast on my shoulders; he dug his nails into my flesh; he tried to move, but he was so tightly wedged and grasped that it was impossible to push himself any further in. Moreover, his strength was beginning to fail him, and he could then hardly stand upon his feet. "As he tried to give another jerk, I myself, that very moment squeezed the whole rod with all the strength of my muscles, and a most violent jet, like a hot geyser, escaped from him, and coursed within me like some scorching, corroding poison; it seemed to set my blood on fire, and transmuted it into some kind of hot, intoxicating alcohol. His breath was thick and convulsive; his sobs choked him; he was utterly done up. "'I am dying!' he gasped out, his chest heaving with emotion; 'it is too much.' And he fell senseless in my arms. "After half an hour's rest he woke up, and began at once to kiss me with rapture, whilst his loving eyes beamed with thankfulness. "'You have made me feel what I never felt before. "'Nor I either,' quoth I, smiling. "'I really did not know whether I was in heaven or in hell. I had quite lost my senses.' "He stopped for a moment to look at me, and then,—'How I love you, my Camille!' he went on, showering kisses on me; 'I have loved you to distraction from the very moment I saw you.' "Then I began to tell him how I had suffered in trying to overcome my love for him; how I was haunted by his presence day and night; how happy I was at last.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  “There are three thousand four hundred and twelve books here,” Gordy said. “I know that because I counted them.” “Okay, now you’re officially a freak,” I said. “Yes, it’s a small library. It’s a tiny one. But if you read one of these books a day, it would still take you almost ten years to finish.” “What’s your point?” “The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don’t know.” Wow. That was a huge idea. Any town, even one as small as Reardan, was a place of mystery. And that meant that Wellpinit, that smaller, Indian town, was also a place of mystery. “Okay, so it’s like each of these books is a mystery. Every book is a mystery. And if you read all the books ever written, it’s like you’ve read one giant mystery. And no matter how much you learn, you just keep on learning there is so much more you need to learn.” “Yes, yes, yes, yes,” Gordy said. “Now doesn’t that give you a boner?” “I am rock hard,” I said. Gordy blushed. “Well, I don’t mean boner in the sexual sense,” Gordy said. “I don’t think you should run through life with a real erect penis. But you should approach each book—you should approach life—with the real possibility that you might get a metaphorical boner at any point.” “A metaphorical boner!” I shouted. “What the heck is a metaphorical boner?” Gordy laughed. “When I say boner, I really mean joy,” he said. “Then why didn’t you say joy? You didn’t have to say boner. Whenever I think about boners, I get confused.” “Boner is funnier. And more joyful.” Gordy and I laughed. He was an extremely weird dude. But he was the smartest person I’d ever known. He would always be the smartest person I’d ever known. And he certainly helped me through school. He not only tutored me and challenged me, but he made me realize that hard work—that the act of finishing, of completing, of accomplishing a task—is joyous. In Wellpinit, I was a freak because I loved books. In Reardan, I was a joyous freak. And my sister, she was a traveling freak. We were the freakiest brother and sister in history. My Sister Sends Me an E-mail [image file=image_rsrc4RJ.jpg] -----Original Message----- From: Mary Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2006 4:41 PM To: Junior Subject: Hi! Dear Junior:

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  “I can do it.” Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It’s one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they’re the four hugest words in the world when they’re put together. You can do it. I can do it. Let’s do it. We all screamed like maniacs as we ran out of the locker room and onto the basketball court, where two thousand maniac fans were also screaming. The Reardan band was rocking some Led Zeppelin. As we ran through our warm-up layup drills, I looked up into the crowd to see if my dad was in his usual place, high up in the northwest corner. And there he was. I waved at him. He waved back. Yep, my daddy was an undependable drunk. But he’d never missed any of my organized games, concerts, plays, or picnics. He may not have loved me perfectly, but he loved me as well as he could. My mom was sitting in her usual place on the opposite side of the court from Dad. Funny how they did that. Mom always said that Dad made her too nervous; Dad always said that Mom made him too nervous. Penelope was yelling and screaming like crazy, too. I waved at her; she blew me a kiss. Great, now I was going to have to play the game with a boner. Ha-ha, just kidding. So we ran through layups and three-on-three weave drills and free throws and pick and rolls, and then the evil Wellpinit five came running out of the visitors’ locker room. Man, you never heard such booing. Our crowd was as loud as a jet. They were just pitching the Wellpinit players some serious crap. You want to know what it sounded like? It sounded like this: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! We couldn’t even hear each other. I worried that all of us were going to have permanent hearing damage. I kept glancing over at Wellpinit as they ran their layup drills. And I noticed that Rowdy kept glancing over at us. At me. Rowdy and I pretended that we weren’t looking at each other. But, man, oh, man, we were sending some serious hate signals across the gym. I mean, you have to love somebody that much to also hate them that much, too. Our captains, Roger and Jeff, ran out to the center circle to have the game talk with the refs. Then our band played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” And then our five starters, including me, ran out to the center circle to go to battle against Wellpinit’s five. Rowdy smirked at me as I took my position next to him. “Wow,” he said. “You guys must be desperate if you’re starting.” “I’m guarding you,” I said. “What?” “I’m guarding you tonight.” “You can’t stop me. I’ve been kicking your ass for fourteen years.”

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  SA: Well, think of the books that we read when we were kids and how formative they are. I think of It by Stephen King or The Snowy Day when I was much younger, the picture book by Ezra Jack Keats. I didn’t have imaginary playmates growing up like some kids did; I had books. Books were my imaginary playmates. Books were my siblings and sometimes books were the best version of a parent I could have. So to think I might have even a fraction of that power for a kid with True Diary is amazing. JW: You must see it. I see kids carrying the book around. You must get letters from kids that just blow you away. SA: The most powerful ones are the ones I get from the teachers or the kids themselves about reluctant readers. The thing I hear all the time is, “This is the first book I ever finished,” which is on one level very sad, an indictment of our education system, but on the other level, you think, well, maybe I’m the gateway book, the gateway drug. Maybe my book will lead this kid into other books. But to have had that influence on somebody who didn’t like books, who didn’t like to read and then all of a sudden I get these letters from these kids: “This is the first book I’ve finished.” “I stole it from the library.” I get very excited. And teachers write me letters and say, “I can’t keep this in my classroom because all these kids steal it.” JW: Oh, that’s so great. SA: One of the great moments for me was maybe about six or seven years ago, I read in New York and this entire class of kids from the Bronx came. It was a public school in the Bronx, so it was all brown kids of various ethnicities and races and countries, you know, a lot of them are first-generation immigrants. It was really amazing to see this incredibly diverse group of kids so identify with this reservation Indian boy. And you know, we’re from the same place in the world, I mean, Eastern Washington from Springdale and Wellpinit, from the rez and just off the rez, and to think that we could have any standing or any influence over anybody, let alone some kid in the Bronx? It’s astonishing. It never fails to astonish me.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "The very quintessence of love was in these kisses. All that was excellent in us—the essential part of our beings—kept rising and evaporating from our lips like the fumes of an ethereal, intoxicating, ambrosial fluid. "Nature, hushed and silent, seemed to hold her breath to look upon us, for such ecstacy of bliss had seldom, if ever, been felt here below. I was subdued, prostrated, shattered. The earth was spinning round me, sinking under my feet. I had no longer strength enough to stand. I felt sick and faint. Was I dying? If so, death must be the happiest moment of our life, for such rapturous joy could never be felt again. "How long did I remain senseless? I cannot tell. All I know is that I awoke in the midst of a whirlwind, hearing the rushing of waters around me. Little by little I came back to consciousness. I tried to free myself from his grasp. "'Leave me! Leave me alone! Why did you not let me die? This world is hateful to me, why should I drag on a life I loathe?' "'Why? For my sake.' Thereupon he whispered softly, in that unknown tongue of his, some magic words which seemed to sink into my soul. Then he added, 'Nature has formed us for each other; why withstand her? I can only find happiness in your love, and in your's alone; it is not only my heart but my soul that panteth for your's.' "With an effort of my whole being I pushed him away from me, and staggered back. "'No, no!' I cried, 'do not tempt me beyond my strength; let me rather die.' "'Thy will be done, but we shall die together, so that at least in death we may not be parted. There is an after-life, we may then, at least, cleave to one another like Dante's Francesca and her lover Paulo. Here,' said he, unwinding a silken scarf that he wore round his waist, 'let us bind ourselves closely together, and leap into the flood.' "I looked at him, and shuddered. So young, so beautiful, and I was thus to murder him! The vision of Antinöus as I had seen it the first time he played appeared before me. "He had tied the scarf tightly round his waist, and he was about to pass it around me. "'Come.' "The die was cast. I had not the right to accept such a sacrifice from him. "'No,' quoth I, 'let us live.' "'Live,' added he, 'and then?' "He did not speak for some moments, as if waiting for a reply to that question which had not been framed in words. In answer to his mute appeal I stretched out my hands towards him. He—as if frightened that I should escape him—hugged me tightly with all the strength of irrepressible desire. "'I love you!' he whispered, 'I love you madly! I cannot live without you any longer.'

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  She slowly descended the stairs, and I could watch her with a calmness in which not a single atom of torment or desire was intermingled. I could see her plunge into and rise out of the crystalline water, and the wavelets which she herself raised played about her like tender lovers. Our nihilistic aesthetician is right when he says: a real apple is more beautiful than a painted one, and a living woman is more beautiful than a Venus of stone. And when she left the bath, and the silvery drops and the roseate light rippled down her body, I was seized with silent rapture. I wrapped the linen sheets about her, drying her glorious body. The calm bliss remained with me, even now when one foot upon me as upon a footstool, she rested on the cushions in her large velvet cloak. The lithe sables nestled desirously against her cold marble-like body. Her left arm on which she supported herself lay like a sleeping swan in the dark fur of the sleeve, while her left hand played carelessly with the whip. By chance my look fell on the massive mirror on the wall opposite, and I cried out, for I saw the two of us in its golden frame as in a picture. The picture was so marvellously beautiful, so strange, so imaginative, that I was filled with deep sorrow at the thought that its lines and colors would have to dissolve like mist. “What is the matter?” asked Wanda. I pointed to the mirror. “Ah, that is really beautiful,” she exclaimed, “too bad one can’t capture the moment and make it permanent.” “And why not?” I asked. “Would not any artist, even the most famous, be proud if you gave him leave to paint you and make you immortal by means of his brush. “The very thought that this extra-ordinary beauty is to be lost to the world,” I continued still watching her enthusiastically, “is horrible—all this glorious facial expression, this mysterious eye with its green fires, this demonic hair, this magnificence of body. The idea fills me with a horror of death, of annihilation. But the hand of an artist shall snatch you from this. You shall not like the rest of us disappear absolutely and forever, without leaving a trace of your having been. Your picture must live, even when you yourself have long fallen to dust; your beauty must triumph beyond death!” Wanda smiled. “Too bad, that present-day Italy hasn’t a Titian or Raphael,” she said, “but, perhaps, love will make amends for genius, who knows; our little German might do?” She pondered. “Yes, he shall paint you, and I will see to it that the god of love mixes his colors.” * * * * *

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  She smiled graciously at me and called me back, when I was about to withdraw respectfully. “Come, Gregor, have your breakfast quickly too,” she said, “then we will go house-hunting. I don’t want to stay in the hotel any longer than I have to. It is very embarassing here. If I chat with you for more than a minute, people will immediately say: ‘The fair Russian is having an affair with her servant, you see, the race of Catherines isn’t extinct yet.’” Half an hour later we went out; Wanda was in her cloth-gown with the Russian cap, and I in my Cracovian costume. We created quite a stir. I walked about ten paces behind, looking very solemn, but expected momentarily to have to break out into loud laughter. There was scarcely a street in which one or the other of the attractive houses did not bear the sign camere ammobiliate. Wanda always sent me upstairs, and only when the apartment seemed to answer her requirements did she herself ascend. By noon I was as tired as a stag- hound after the hunt. We entered a new house and left it again without having found a suitable habitation. Wanda was already somewhat out of humor. Suddenly she said to me: “Severin, the seriousness with which you play your part is charming, and the restrictions, which we have placed upon each other are really annoying me. I can’t stand it any longer, I do love you, I must kiss you. Let’s go into one of the houses.” “But, my lady—” I interposed. “Gregor?” She entered the next open corridor and ascended a few steps of the dark stair-way; then she threw her arms about me with passionate tenderness and kissed me. “Oh, Severin, you were very wise. You are much more dangerous as slave than I would have imagined; you are positively irrestible, and I am afraid I shall have to fall in love with you again.” “Don’t you love me any longer then,” I asked seized by a sudden fright. She solemnly shook her head, but kissed me again with her swelling, adorable lips. We returned to the hotel. Wanda had luncheon, and ordered me also quickly to get something to eat. Of course, I wasn’t served as quickly as she, and so it happened that just as I was carrying the second bite of my steak to my mouth, the waiter entered and called out with his theatrical gesture: “Madame wants you, at once.” I took a rapid and painful leave of my food, and, tired and hungry, hurried toward Wanda, who was already on the street. “I wouldn’t have imagined you could be so cruel,” I said reproachfully. “With all these, fatiguing duties you don’t even leave me time to eat in peace.” Wanda laughed gaily. “I thought you had finished,” she said, “but never mind. Man was born to suffer, and you in particular. The martyrs didn’t have any beefsteaks either.”

• From Manhunt (2022)

  She kneaded Indi’s breast as her free hand slipped between the rolls of her waist, fingers walking gently over tender skin. “Am I hurting you?” Indi whispered, pulling her fingers free to stroke Beth’s cheek and leaving a warm streak of saliva down almost to her chin. Beth wriggled, smiling. “Not enough.” “Fuckin’ bullshit!” Leda cried from across the firepit, where stacked driftwood burned just above the tide mark in a circle of dark stones. She had a low, lazy-sounding voice, all vocal fry. Her six-year-old, George, sat curled asleep in her lap, his breath stirring his long brown curls where they fell across his little mouth. “There is no fuckin’ way, Steph.” “I’m telling you I saw him,” said Steph, who was tiny and doughy and had something distinctively trailer-parky about her under the purple hair and lime-green tights and the DYKE knuckle tattoo on her left hand. “He was in a ShopRite in Norwalk, like, six months after T. Day. He was looting beans.” “Steve fucking Martin did not survive the apocalypse.” Fran, wrapped in an old wool blanket at the edge of the circle of firelight, ran again and again through the feeling that had raced up from the pit of her stomach into her throat when she’d held that laminated card with its little XX. She’d had a few puffs of the joint they were passing around, hoping it would mellow her out, but instead it seemed to have stuck her in a short, deep rut. She kept imagining her fingers inside Sophie, the times she’d put her cock in the other girl ( because she promised you a cunt ), and then the body. Dead. Zia leaned forward into the firelight, grinning evilly. “Fuck Steve Martin. Have the new girls heard what happened to the Harry Potter lady?” Most of the women around the fire groaned, though a few straightened up attentively. Beth shook her head, blushing at being made the center of attention. Her bruises were fading from dark purple to brown and yellow, as though someone had spray painted her for autumn camouflage. She sat leaning against Indi’s side, hands in the pouch of her hoodie. It felt so fucking weird to sit on the rocky beach as the stars came out, swapping stories about what had happened to the world’s celebrities when the big one hit. It felt like the end of the world was prowling the limits of the firelight, waiting for the embers to go out. “Okay, so, first off she ended up being a crazy TERF, like, super intense.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  “What shall I say? my emotions of fear and surprise were instantly subdued by those of the pleasure I bespoke in great presence of mind from the turn this adventure might take. He seemed to me no other than a pitying angel, dropt out of the clouds: for he was young and perfectly handsome, which was more than even I had asked for, man, in general, being all that my utmost desires had pointed at. I thought then I could not put too much encouragement into my eyes and voice; I regretted no leading advances; no matter for his after-opinion of my forwardness, so it might bring him to the point of answering my pressing demands of present case; it was not now with his thoughts but his actions that my business immediately lay. I raised then my head, and told him, in a soft tone, that tended to prescribe the same key to him, that his mamma was gone out and would not return till late at night: which I thought no bad hint; but as it proved, I had nothing of a novice to deal with. The impressions I had made on him from the discoveries I had betrayed of my person in the disordered motions of it, during his view of me asleep, had, as he afterwards told me, so fixed and charmingly prepared him, that, had I known his dispositions, I had more to hope from his violence, than to fear from his respect; and even less than the extreme tenderness which I threw into my voice and eyes, would have served to encourage him to make the most of the opportunity. Finding then that his kisses, imprinted on my hand, were taken as tamely as he could wish, he rose to my lips; and glewing his to them, made me so faint with overcoming joy and pleasure, that I fell back, and he with me, in course, on the bed, upon which I had, by insensibly shifting from the side to near the middle, invitingly, made room for him. He is now lain down by me, and the minutes being too precious to consume in ultimate ceremony, or dalliance, my youth proceeds immediately to those extremities, which all my looks, humming and palpitations, had assured him he might attempt without the fear of a repulse: those rogues the men, read us admirably on these occasions. I lay then at length panting for the imminent attack, with wishes far beyond my fears, and for which it was scarce possible for a girl, barely thirteen, but tall and well grown, to have better dispositions. He threw up my petticoat and shift, whilst my thighs were, by an instinct of nature, unfolded to their best; and my desires had so thoroughly destroyed all modesty in me, that even their being now naked and all laid open to him, was part of the prelude that pleasure deepened my blushes at, more than same.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Novelty ever makes the strongest impressions, and in pleasures, especially; no wonder then, that he was swallowed up in raptures of admiration of things so interesting by their nature, and now seen and handled for the first time. On my part, I was richly overpaid for the pleasure I gave him, in that of examining the power of those objects thus abandoned to him, naked and free to his loosest wish, over the artless, natural stripling: his eyes streaming fire, his cheeks glowing with a florid red, his fervid frequent sighs, whilst his hands convulsively squeezed, opened, pressed together again the lips and sides of that deep flesh wound, or gently twitched the over-growing moss; and all proclaimed the excess, the riot of joys, in having his wantonness thus humoured. But he did not long abuse my patience, for the objects before him had now put him by all his, and, coming out with that formidable machine of his, he lets the fury loose, and pointing it directly to the pouting-lip mouth, that bid him sweet defiance in dumb shew, squeezes in his head, and, driving with refreshed rage, breaks in, and plugs up the whole passage of that soft pleasure-conduit pipe, where he makes all shake again, and put, once more, all within me into such an uproar, as nothing could still, but a fresh inundation from the very engine of those flames, as well as from all the springs with which nature floats that reservoir of joy, when risen to its floodmark. I was now so bruised, so battered, so spent with this overmatch, that I could hardly stir, or raise myself, but lay palpitating, till the ferment of my senses subsiding by degrees, and the hour striking at which I was obliged to dispatch my young man, I tenderly advised him of the necessity there was for parting; at which I felt so much displeasure as he could do, who seemed eagerly disposed to keep the field, and to enter on a fresh action. But the danger was too great, and after some hearty kisses of leave, and recommendations of secrecy and discretion, I forced myself to send him away, not without assurances of seeing him again, to the same purpose, as soon as possible, and thrust a guinea into his hands: not more, less, being too flush of money, a suspicion or discovery might arise from thence; having everything to fear from the dangerous indiscretion of that age in which young fellows would be too irresistible, too charming, if we had not that terrible fault to guard against.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Thus, happy, then, by the heart, happy by the senses, it was beyond all power, even of thought, to form the conception of a greater delight than what I now am consummating the fruition of. Charles, whose whole frame was convulsed with the agitation of his rapture, whilst the tenderest fires trembled in his eyes, all assured me of a perfect concord of joy, penetrated me so profoundly, touched me so vitally, took me so much out of my own possession, whilst he seemed himself so much in mine, that in a delicious enthusiasm, I imagined such a transfusion of heart and spirit, as that coalescing, and making one body and soul with him, I was he, and he me. But all this pleasure tending, like life from its first instants, towards its own dissolution, lived too fast not to bring on upon the spur its delicious moment of mortality; for presently the approach of the tender agony discovered itself by its usual signals, that were quickly followed by my dear lover’s emanation of himself, that spun out, and shot, feelingly indeed! up the ravished indraught: where the sweetly soothing balmy titillation opened all the juices of joy on my side, which ecstatically in flow helped to allay the prurient glow, and drowned our pleasure for a while. Soon, however, to be on float again! for Charles, true to nature’s laws, in one breath, expiring and ejaculating, languished not long in the dissolving trance, but recovering spirit again, soon gave me to feel that the true mettle spring! of his instrument of pleasure, were, by love, and perhaps, by a long vacation, wound up too high to be let down by a single explosion: his stiffnesss till stood my friend.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  In short, she was now as mere a machine as much wrought on, and had her motions as little at her own command, as the natural himself, who, thus broke in upon her, made her feel with a vengeance his tempestuous mettle he battered with; their active loins quivered again with the violence of their conflict, till the surge of pleasure, foaming and raging to a height, drew down the pearly shower that was, to allay this hurricane. The purely sensitive idiot then first shed those tears of joy that attend its last moments, not without an agony of delight, and even almost a roar of rapture, as the gush escaped him; so sensibly too for Louisa, that she kept him faithful company, going off, in consent, with the old symptoms: a delicious delirium, a tremendous convulsive shudder, and the critical dying: Oh! And now, on his getting off she lay pleasure- drenched, and regorging its essential sweets; but quite spent, and gasping for breath, without other sensation of life than in those exquisite vibrations that trembled still on the strings of delight; which had been too intensively touched, and which nature had so ravishingly stirred with, for the senses to be quickly at peace from. As for the changeling, whose curious engine had been thus successfully played off, his shift of countenance and gesture had even something droll, or rather tragi-comic in it: there was now an air of sad repining foolishness, superadded to his natural one of no meaning and idiotism, as he stood with his label of manhood, now lank, unstiffened, becalmed, and flapping against his thighs, down which it reached half way, terrible even in its fall, whilst under the dejection of spirit and flesh, which naturally followed his eyes, by turns, cast down towards his struck standard, or piteously lifted to Louisa, seemed to require at her hands what he had so sensibly parted from to her, and now ruefully missed.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  It seems, that having drank too freely before he came upon the rake with some of his young companions, he had put himself out of a condition to go through all the weapons with them, and crown the night with a getting a mistress; so that seeing me in a loose undress, he did not doubt but I was one of the misses of the house, sent in to repair his loss of time; but though he seized that notion, and a very obvious one it was, without hesitation, yet, whether my figure made a more than ordinary impression on him, or whether it was his natural politeness, he addressed me in a manner far from rude, though still on the foot of one of the house pliers come to amuse him; and giving me the first kiss that I ever relished from man in my life, asked me if I could favour him with my company, assuring me that he would make it worth my while: but had not even new-born love, that true refiner of lust, opposed so sudden a surrender, the fear of being surprised by the house was a sufficient bar to my compliance. I told him then, in a tone set by love itself, that for reasons I had not time to explain to him. I could not stay with him, and might even ever see him again, with a sigh at these words, which broke from the bottom of my heart. My conqueror, who, as he afterwards told me, had been struck with my appearance, and liked me as much as he could think of liking any one in my supposed way of life, asked me briskly at once, if I would be kept by him, and that he would take a lodging for me directly, and relieve me from any engagements he presumed I might be under to the house.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "Having done this, he took hold of my rod and pressed it against his gaping anus. The tip of the frisky phallus soon found its entrance in the hospitable hole that endeavoured to give it admission. I pressed a little; the whole of the glans was engulfed. The sphincter soon gripped it in such a way that it could not come out without an effort. I thrust it slowly to prolong as much as possible the ineffable sensation that ran through every limb, to calm the quivering nerves, and to allay the heat of the blood. Another push, and half the phallus was in his body. I pulled it out half an inch, though it seemed to me a yard by the prolonged pleasure I felt. I pressed forward again, and the whole of it, down to its very root, was all swallowed up. Thus wedged, I vainly endeavoured to drive it higher up—an impossible feat, and, clasped as I was, I felt it wriggling in its sheath like a baby in its mother's womb, giving myself and him an unutterable and delightful titillation. "So keen was the bliss that overcame me, that I asked myself if some ethereal, life-giving fluid were not being poured on my head, and trickling down slowly over my quivering flesh? "Surely the rain-awakened flowers must be conscious of such a sensation during a shower, after they have been parched by the scorching rays of an estival sun. "Teleny again put his arm round me and held me tight. I gazed at myself within his eyes, he saw himself in mine. During this voluptuous, lambent feeling, we patted each other's bodies softly, our lips cleaved together and my tongue was again in his mouth. We remained in this copulation almost without stirring, for I felt that the slightest movement would provoke a copious ejaculation, and this feeling was too exquisite to be allowed to pass away so quickly. Still we could not help writhing, and we almost swooned away with delight. We were both shivering with lust, from the roots of our hair to the tips of our toes; all the flesh of our bodies kept bickering luxuriously, just as placid waters of the mere do at noontide when kissed by the sweet-scented, wanton breeze that has just deflowered the virgin rose. "Such intensity of delight could not, however, last very long; a few almost unwilling contractions of the sphincter brandle the phallus, and then the first brunt was over; I thrust in with might and main, I wallowed on him; my breath came thickly; I panted, I sighed, I groaned. The thick burning fluid was spouted out slowly and at long intervals.

• From My People (2022)

  Charlayne Hunter-Gault: Do you ever encounter negative reactions from people when you’re off the set and out in the public, or is it all positive? Tracee Ellis Ross: No, I mean, the one—you know, I have heard, very interestingly, people say things like, “I had no idea I would like your show.” And I always—because that’s the kind of person I am, I’m always, like, “Why? Why didn’t you think you would like it?” “Well, you know, the title.” And I’m, like, “Oh, well, what did the title mean to you, that you wouldn’t like it?” “Well, I thought it was just going to be just about like black people” or something, like, that it was unidentifiable. Or, “I mean, it’s so funny. You guys, I’m so—my family is so much like yours,” you know, as if it’s surprising. And—but that’s the beauty of it. I think that’s the beauty of it. That is the beauty of comedy. And people seem to be moved and changed by it, and I love that. It’s a very rewarding thing. I mean, you can just make entertainment, you can make people laugh, and that in and of itself is a gift and a really joyful part of the job that I have. But to also make people think is also really cool, and to make people talk and have conversations about things that they wouldn’t normally talk about. New Museum Traces Black Stage HistoryThe New York Times JULY 9, 1975 A worn-down black shoe with wooden taps on the heel and toe that belonged to John Bubbles when he danced with Judy Garland at the Palace . . . A check stub for eighty-six dollars—the take-home pay in 1952 for Flournoy Miller, the black writer who created the prototypes of Amos ’n’ Andy . . . Two cow bones—replicas of instruments played in minstrel shows by the “Mr. Bones” . . . A letter from Edward Albee’s father upbraiding a theater manager for referring to black vaudevillians as niggers . . . These are some of the items of theater history that show the long and continuing impact and influence of blacks on the American stage. And while at the moment Broadway is overflowing with black talent, the contributions of blacks in the past, toward making Broadway what it is, have not been so well established. But Helen Armstead Johnson is trying to change that. Dr. Johnson, a perky scholar in her fifties, is starting a Museum of Black Theater History, partly to demonstrate that it was the Afro-American who gave the American stage its first native form. Blacks in the theater in New York go back at least as far as 1821 and the African Grove Theater for free blacks, which was at the corner of Bleecker and Mercer Streets. “They had a garden there,” Dr. Johnson recalled the other day, “and as whites went to Chatham Gardens to sip and drink, blacks went to sip and chat at the Grove.

• From My People (2022)

  My disappointment over my image of the vine-filled Vineyard was soon more than assuaged by the multifarious landscapes at every turn in the road after our visit with the Sviridoffs. Oak Bluffs was calling. So we rented a car and drove through the enchanting towns of Chilmark, West Tisbury, Vineyard Haven, and at last, Oak Bluffs. I’d never been there but had heard about the more-than-century-old, black-owned Shearer Cottage. We immediately set out to find it and spent a night there before we began our Oak Bluffs exploration, which took us to places I had heard about from Bobby, including the Inkwell. There I discovered (well, kind of like Christopher Columbus “discovered” America) one of the main arteries that was the heartbeat of Oak Bluffs: beautiful black bodies of all shapes, sizes, and ages frolicking freely in and out of the water they owned by virtue of years of occupancy. I was so excited about what I was seeing that I immediately got my editor at the New York Times on the phone and convinced him to allow me to extend my vacation by a few days so I could tell the world about something many would find hard to conceive, since even then in 1970, after the Civil Rights Acts abolished the last of the “separate but equal” lie in the South, there were still places in both the North and the South that were not welcoming to people of color. And tell the world I did, on the second front of the New York Times , illustrated with a picture of longtime Vineyarder Teixiera Nash in a huge sun hat. By this time, we had met Dr. and Mrs. Leslie Hayling, who graciously invited us to stay with them in their home with a beautiful grand piano and copious amounts of great food. Over the years and many more trips to the Vineyard with our children Suesan and Chuma and our friends and theirs who joined us, we put down roots—even though they were in the yards of other people. There was the legendary Lee Simmons, who knew (and would share) everybody’s business because everybody found in her a sympathetic mother confessor. And there were longtime Vineyarders like Claudia Bowser, who lived next door to Jessica Harris, whom I came to know as a great culinary anthropologist who could cook as well as write about foods from all over the world, and her diminutive mother, Rhoda, who is long gone from us, but whose Wisdom in a Pouch cards still rest on a table in our home for all newcomers to learn from. While others have decried the loss of Oak Bluffs landmarks that spoke to the so-called historic African American presence here, and while the name Inkwell is now debated among those who believe it carries unkind racial overtones and others who defend it, insisting the name derived from the many writers who waded there, the beach still beckons the older generations and their children.

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  I failed to notice, for instance, that we never saw them together. Daddy sometimes hung around the stable to drink coffee with Mr. McBride, for Daddy could tell a mare’s age by staring into her mouth, guess a stallion’s weight within twenty pounds, and reckon how many hands high a gelding stood. Daddy had broken cutting horses as a young man, and this earned him a measure of cowboy respect, despite his being Texan, which was reprehensible to most of the hands. Mr. McBride even loaned Daddy his very own blue-spotted Appaloosa free of charge one day to take Lecia and me riding into the mountains. We tied our horses before a country store with an honest-to-God cracker barrel inside. Daddy paid the man to make us roast beef sandwiches on Wonder bread. He used grainy mustard and thin slices of red onion. We also bought tins of pink salmon eggs and rented fly rods and waders for trout fishing. Which remains about the only sport I’ve ever whipped Lecia at right off. Whatever reflex makes her sharp with a gun (she can still pluck a dove from a tree) made her restless in the water. Standing around just bored her. She needed more to do. That afternoon the canvas bag I’d slung around my neck quickly filled up with the shining bodies of flopping trout. When I could no longer carry it, I waded back to the bank to leave it with Lecia, who’d given up and broken out the sandwiches. I nearly laid down my rod too. That would have been a mistake, for the last fish I hauled out of the water that day must’ve weighed five pounds and was all fight. Daddy laughed like hell when it hit. My rod bent double. I staggered out into deeper water hollering for help. He had to wade back to the bank first and get rid of his pole before he could reel the fish in for me. I did manage to get the net under it myself. Together we dragged it flopping on the grassy bank, where it smacked its tail and made Lecia sidestep with an odd daintiness. She actually said ick. Daddy grabbed its tail in two sure hands to whack its head on a rock. Then it lay still, eyes staring ahead. Its gills puffed in reflex. It was not, like the old fish that poet Elizabeth Bishop once wrote about, “battered and venerable and homely” with the long mustache of a mandarin. Nor did it have the bulk that thrilled Hemingway in a tuna. But as fish go, it was close to perfect, being clean silver in the sun with that rainbow stripe all pink and blue and yellow-green melted right into its unnicked scales, and not a square inch of moss or tatter to mar it.

• From Manhunt (2022)

  Her thighs quivered against his cheeks. She pulled away, strands of mucus and jism stretching and snapping between her cock and his open mouth, and scrambled on her knees to the foot of the bed, where she went down onto her elbows to kiss him just above his swollen clit. Her hair tickled his mound and the crooks of his thighs, trailing through the wetness running out of him onto the towel they’d laid down. She licked him. Her tongue parted his lips. “Oh,” he whispered, his voice quavering as fire lapped at the arc of his pelvis, questing with pale fingers for his spine. “Don’t stop.” He breathed in, air enriching the taste of her cum on his lips. He was crying. When had he started crying? The wet sound of her lips closing on his clit, of her spit sucked back up into her mouth as she began to blow him. He beat a fist against the sheets and stuffed the other in his mouth, biting down hard on his knuckles. “God,” he moaned into his own sweating skin. “God, God, God. Please. Please.” Make me a man. He came with a seething snarl, back arched so that only his shoulders touched the sheets, and reached down to tangle his long fingers in her hair and force her face harder against his crotch. Tremors wracked his body. His thighs tensed so suddenly and with such force that he feared for a moment they’d cramp as a second wave broke small and quiet in the silence of the booming first. Her mouth still worked against him. Alien muscle jacked into his body’s throbbing substrate. He wrapped his thighs around her head, moaning through his teeth, and somewhere in the stretched-out moments afterward, he came a third and final time, the walls of his cunt gripping Fran’s fingers as though afraid she might let go until the strength went out of his legs and he went limp, breathing hard as tears rolled down his cheeks. Fran looked up from his sopping slit, her face slick up to the cheekbones, traces of dark menstrual blood on her lips and chin and the tip of her nose. She looked like a hyena pulling its muzzle out of a carcass. “I’m sorry,” he said reflexively, transfixed and revolted by those smears of red. “I didn’t know.” “I don’t care,” she said, smiling. His blood was in her teeth, too. “I like it.” He swallowed. “Can you hold me?” Her smile faltered. She wiped her face on her forearm. “Yeah, of course.” For a while they lay together in the quiet, Fran’s arms around him, the only sound the distant rumble of the Screw’s pumps and generators. She probably wanted me to hold her, he thought sadly. He licked his lips and tasted her again.