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 Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  families shrieked, wept and rolled on the ground in their sense of transformation, and their delight that someone – not just their Saviour, but the Revd John Wesley – cared about them. Such behaviour was liable to break out repeatedly in Methodist revivals throughout the century, provoking in the increasingly institutionalized Wesleyan leadership a mixture of alarm, embarrassment and delighted wonder at God’s power. [35] Wesley’s answer was to establish an annual ‘Conference’ of his Connexional preachers, meeting under his own direction in various cities and towns through the kingdom. Conference exercised tight central control on these preachers, whose ministry was purposefully itinerant, and who were encouraged to be celibate to make that easier – the whole organization was remarkably like a Protestant version of the Society of Jesus. [36] The awful warning as to where uncontrolled emotional release might go was the crisis that hit the Moravians in the late 1740s in the middle of their transatlantic expansion. [37] This was the Moravian ‘Sifting Time’ – an uninformative label hiding a very considerable trauma that the Church in its denominational history long sought to obscure. Moravian community life and worship were centred on joyful celebration; equally important was their free use of medieval mystical themes that re-emerged in Lutheranism during the seventeenth century, despite the fact that Luther himself had largely rejected them. Moravian concentration on the wounds of Christ produced a great deal of cringe-making reference to his ‘side-hole’, pierced on the cross by the Roman soldier’s spear, but it was a different New Testament theme, the bridal union of Christ and his Church, that fatally excited the rapidly rising emotional temperature. Many activists in the Unitas Fratrum were very young to be placed in positions of leadership. Among them was Count von Zinzendorf’s son Christian Renatus, just out of his teens when made a presbyter in the Church, together with von Zinzendorf’s son-in-law Johannes von Watteville, regarded by many as the major actor in the disaster. Not for the first time in Christian history, many believers framed their perception of Christ’s forgiveness of sins as an absolute gift that included sins still to be committed – an ‘antinomianism’ (freedom from moral law) which was a dangerously logical extension of Martin Luther’s rejection of good works in salvation. They experienced union with Christ not merely through the joys of marriage, but in extramarital sex as well – their stripping-away of gender in mystical joy further extended to same-sex kisses and embraces. Young people plunged with delight into this proof of their freely given salvation. This was a repeat of the mystical promiscuity of Swiss radicals in the 1520s, and it has not proved the last time that new groups of Christians have improvised ethical codes encouraged by leaders with more charisma than self-discipline, threatening institutional and personal collapse. In this case, von Zinzendorf himself belatedly perceived where his own enthusiasms had led his movement.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  “Yes, yes,” Larry says, as he rises and gets the condom from his jeans pocket. He sits cross-legged as he tears it open and slides it on, sheathing his prick in white. He kisses me again, a soft little kiss, my last kiss as a virgin. I am lying on my back. I spread my legs for him; open them wide into a “V”. He positions himself above me, leaning himself on his elbows to spare me his full weight. I know it is supposed to hurt but I am not prepared for the sharp slice of pain as my maidenhead rips open. “Am I hurting you too much?” he asks. I find myself taking long, deep breaths. “Its okay,” I tell him. He takes it slow and soon it doesn’t hurt much anymore. As he moves inside me, his pelvis rubs against my mound; it is as if he is rubbing my clitoris, sending sweet thrills down. I am getting wetter and wetter, going with him, lifting my hips up, pulling him deeper in. We go faster and faster, our bodies building a fire that gets hotter and hotter.’ Then it happens, the heat between us grows and grows. Our insides melt together and we come in a way we have never come before. I feel the way a shooting star looks as it streaks across the sky. I thought I would hear music like in the romance novels my mother likes to read. I don’t hear any music, not even a violin. Larry is still inside me but his prick is getting smaller. He kisses my eyes, pulls out of me and rolls over on his back. He pulls the Trojan off and puts it in the sand. With his T-shirt he gently wipes between my legs. “Ts there a lot of blood?” I ask. “Nah,” he answers, “hardly any.” But when he puts the shirt back on, there is a long red stripe across the front. “See,” he tells me, “I’m wearing your brand. Want to go for pizza?” “Sure,” I say. When I get home the family has already finished dinner. My mother is clearing the table. “You hungry?” she asks. “No,” I tell her. “I ate pizza with Larry.” She takes a good, long look at me. “All right,” she says but her . expression changes. I can’t read her. That night I am too tired to watch The Ed Sullivan Show with my family. I climb into bed and fall asleep right away. When I wake up, the first rays of faint morning light are rising in the dark sky outside 400 Tsaurah Litzky

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  The image of the ripped and bloodied pants was arousing to Marius, and his happiness was also aroused in imagining the gift of the fur pants. He was joyful when presented with this first symbol of manhood. The walk into the mountains was an initiation, a rite of passage. His pants were power objects on this “walkabout. ” In wanting to “jump for joy” early in the session, Marius activated resources in the form of motor patterns that were essential in eventually thawing his freezing response. Successful renegotiation of trauma occurs when the adaptive resources of the person increase simultaneously with the arousal. In moving from the periphery of the experience to the freezing “shock core”, his unresolved freezing patterns were neutralized by flexible and resolvable patterns as the activation increased. As I encouraged Marius to gradually track the initial, positive experience with his pants towards the traumatic, freezing, “shock core”, a joyful experience became linked to his earlier experience of defeat and rejection. This gave him new resource s— natural aggression and competence. Armed with this newly found confidence, when Marius saw the image of the rocks, his resources began to constellate. In jumping from rock to rock and finding and picking up the stick, Marius’ creative process developed these resources to propel his forward movement toward meeting the impending challenge. In being the aggressor, like the hunters, he tracked the imagined polar bear while I tracked his bodily responses. Marius had become resourced by the images and feelings of his empowered legs and the connection with the men from his village. It is with this sense of power that he sights his dangerous prey and makes the kill. Finally, approaching ecstasy, he eviscerates the imagined bear. It is of the utmost importance to understand that, even though this experience was imagined, because of the presence of the felt sense, the experience was in every way as real for Marius’ as the original one, that is, mentally, physiologically, and spiritually.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  Still, she had been reluctant to try intercourse with Hugo again because he was too large and would hurt her when he pounded too hard. Fortunately, he was sympathetic, and with great tenderness they found a way to share affection that worked for both of them, returning to their pattern of the first two years of their marriage, when they were both virgins. When they went to bed, they caressed, kissed, and held each other, sometimes for an hour before Hugo would roll over and go to sleep. At twenty, this kissing and cuddling had frantically aroused her, but she had not known what for, whereas now the heartbreaking past sexual disappointments with Hugo had spoiled her appetite. Reading what she had allowed her hand to write freely, she admitted to herself that she wanted to experience lovemaking with Rupert one more time. She needed to know that despite the hysterectomy, she could still feel sexual fulfillment. Only Rupert could give her that reassurance. He would intuitively respond to her desire for him to be gentle. She needed Rupert’s lovemaking to restore her. One last time. When Rupert picked her up at LAX and brought her to the cabin, the fireplace was ready to be lit, a mattress positioned in front of it, a bottle of wine and glasses set on the hearth. She felt shy. She’d forgotten how beautiful Rupert was: his golden skin, his ardent, sensitive face lit by the now-blazing fireplace. He offered her a massage, and she placed herself in his hands. Under his touch, her skin became smooth and elastic; her body came alive as he explored its curves and muscles. Her tightly knotted nerve endings released like sea anemones unfolding. He turned her over and played his hands over her breasts, her stomach, her inner thighs. As he was entering her, he called, “Anaïs, be my wife, my beautiful wife.” She tensed with guilt, but as he continued to caress her, as he moved inside her, she lost all thought. Their bodies spoke only pleasure, only desire mounting, rising, and ringing its great cathedral bell, high and low, proclaiming all the joy in the world. From the perspective of the body, this jubilee was everything, the only truth that mattered. All the rest was a lie. Rupert ran his fingers over her skin again, bringing her down. She watched the glowing embers in the fireplace. She listened to her slow, relaxed breathing and had no regrets. Rupert had given back to her the life of the body. Now she had to give back to him his whole life, to free him for what he wanted and deserved—a wife, a child. Her lies were standing in his way. Her best hope was that after she’d told him the truth, he would allow her to remain his friend, that the love between them would not be completely destroyed.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  Pietism sought to bring a new individual and emotional commitment to enrich the parish systems inherited from the medieval Western Church and make up for much devotional variety that Protestants had lost in the Reformation. Out of Pietism came the peculiar construction of an episcopally led ‘Moravian Church’ conjured up out of the remnants of the Unitas Fratrum (‘Unity of Brothers’), an ecclesiastical shadow persisting from religious crises in the fifteenth-century kingdom of Bohemia. The Moravians’ refounding and presiding Bishop was Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, an eccentric and charismatic aristocrat who was closely acquainted with some of the chief movers of Pietist Lutheranism, but who took his own path beyond them. From 1722 von Zinzendorf gathered a motley array of the religiously dissatisfied or persecuted from central Europe, first on his own extensive estates in the rural southern borders of Saxony and then in further communities reminiscent of some of the radical groupings of the Reformation such as the Hutterites. The Moravians were thus not a nationality but a newly crafted religious identity. They had an importance out of all proportion to their always relatively small numbers, because they were the first Protestant Church to commit itself to world mission with consistent passion. People who had already undergone one exile to join the Moravian family zestfully threw themselves into fresh overseas exiles to share the joy they experienced in their own reconstructed lives. Unlike the missionary outreach of Counter-Reformation religious Orders or Jesuits, they were primarily laypeople, often quite humble and uneducated folk, seeking to earn a living by their craft skills on missions that reached out to people equally disadvantaged. [33] The Moravians spread their work to the Atlantic Isles, ruled after 1714 by the German Lutheran George I (also Elector of Hanover); they met with a warm reception, which included the unprecedented ecumenical gesture of formal recognition by the British Parliament in 1749. There they became one of many influences on the brothers John and Charles Wesley. The Wesleys were priests of the Church of England; despite being sacramentalist ‘High Churchmen’ in theological outlook, they felt compelled to leave the security of church buildings in order to preach more widely (even in the open air) a ‘religion of the heart’. It was styled ‘Evangelical’ because it preached a gospel message of sin acknowledged, repented and cancelled in reconciliation to God through Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. Evangelicalism took to itself and emphasized the universal application of the models of individual conversion provided by the stories of Paul of Tarsus and Augustine of Hippo: a profound alteration of personal identity in a new relationship with God. Thousands of converts mushroomed beyond the existing religious structures of Britain, creating mass ‘revivals’ which the tidy mind of John Wesley sought to channel into an organization, fuelled by Charles Wesley’s prolific and compelling output of hymns for crowds to learn and sing.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The last week of his life, the saint had repeated to him again and again the 142d Psalm, beginning with the words, "I cry with my voice unto Jehovah," and also his Canticle to the Sun. He called in brothers Angelo and Leo to sing to him about sister Death.814 Elias of Cortona, who had aided the Roman curia in setting aside Francis’ original Rule, remonstrated on the plea that the people would regard such hilarity in the hour of death as inconsistent with saintship. But Francis replied that he had been thinking of death for two years, and now he was so united with the Lord, that he might well be joyful in Him.815 And so, as Thomas à Celano says, "he met death singing."816 At his request they carried him to the Portiuncula chapel. On his way he asked that his bed be turned so that once more his face might be towards Assisi. He could no longer see, but he could pray, and so he made a supplication to heaven for the city.817 At the church he broke bread with the brethren, performing the priestly service with his own lips. On Oct. 3, 1226, to use Brother Leo’s words, he "migrated to the Lord Jesus Christ whom he had loved with his whole heart, and followed most perfectly." Before the coffin was closed, great honors began to be heaped upon the saintly man. The citizens of Assisi took possession of the body, and Francis’ name has become the chief attraction of the picturesque and somnolent old town. He was canonized two years later.818 The services were held in Assisi, July 26, 1228, Gregory IX. being present. The following day, the pontiff laid the corner stone of the new cathedral to Francis’ memory. It was dedicated by Innocent IV. in 1243, and Francis’ body was laid under the main altar.819 The art of Cimabue and Giotto has adorned the sanctuary within. The statuary of the modern sculptor, Dupré, in front, represents the great mendicant in the garb of his order with arms crossed over his chest, and his head bowed. Francis was scarcely dead when Elias of Cortona made the astounding announcement of the stigmata. These were the marks which Francis is reported to have borne on his body, corresponding to the five wounds on Christ’s crucified body. In Francis’ case they were fleshy, but not bloody excrescences. The account is as follows. During a period of fasting and the most absorbed devotion, Christ appeared to Francis on the morning of the festival of the Holy Cross, in the rising sun in the form of a seraph with outstretched wings, nailed to the cross. The vision gone, Francis felt pains in his hands and side. He had received the stigmata. This occurred in 1224 on the Verna,820 a mountain on the Upper Arno three thousand feet above the sea.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  But before he was permitted to practice the simplest yogic exercise, an aspiring yogi had to undergo a long apprenticeship, which amounted to a head-on collision with the Four Fs. He had to observe five “prohibitions” (yamas). Violence of any sort was forbidden: he must not swat an insect, speak unkindly, make an irritable gesture, or harm a single creature in any way. Stealing was outlawed, which also meant that he could not grab food when he was hungry but must simply accept what he was given whenever it was offered. Renouncing the acquisitive drive, he forswore avarice and greed. He was required to speak the truth at all times, not altering what he said to protect himself or serve his own interests. And, finally, he had to abstain from sex and intoxicants, which could cloud his mind and hinder his yogic training. Until his guru was satisfied that this behavior was now second nature to him, he was not even allowed to sit in the yogic position. But once he had mastered these disciplines, explained Patanjali, author of the Yoga Sutras, he would experience “indescribable joy.”17 Making a deliberate effort to transcend the primitive self-protective instincts had propelled him into a different state of consciousness. Siddhatta Gotama, the future Buddha, studied yoga under some of the best teachers of his day before he achieved the enlightenment of Nirvana. He quickly became expert, attaining the very highest states of trance. But he did not agree with the way his teachers interpreted these peak experiences. They told him that he had tasted the supreme enlightenment, but Gotama discovered that after the ekstasis had faded he was plagued by greed, lust, envy, and hatred in the same old way. He tried to extinguish these passions by practicing such fierce asceticism that he became horribly emaciated and almost ruined his health. Yet still his body clamored for attention. Finally, in a moment of mingled despair and defiance, he cried, “Surely there must be another way to enlightenment!” and at that moment a new solution declared itself to him.18 He recalled an incident from his early childhood, when his father had taken him to watch the ritual plowing of the fields before the first planting of the year. His nurse had left him under a rose-apple tree while she attended the ceremony, and little Gotama sat up and noticed that some tender shoots of young grass had been torn up by the plow and that the tiny insects clinging to them had been killed.19 He felt a pang of grief as though his own relatives had died, and this moment of empathy took him out of himself, so that he achieved a “release of the mind” (ceto-vimutti). He felt a pure joy welling up from the depth of his being, sat in the yogic position, and, even though he had never had a yoga lesson in his short life, immediately entered a state of trance.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  And there's nowhere you'd rather be. Not to rub it in or anything, but on my most recent visit to Masa, I had it even better than that. Sometimes it's good to be a chef. I rolled into Masa with Le Bernardin's four-starred chef, Eric Ripert, on one flank and the well-known author of such professional foodie classics as Soul of a Chef, Michael Ruhlman, on the other. Michael had just emerged from a long day observing the kitchen operations at Per Se, down the hall. In case you didn't know, that's Thomas Keller's breathlessly anticipated, just-opened temple of haute cuisine. Michael coauthored The French Laundry Cookbook with Keller, and I guess that experience left a reservoir of goodwill because on entering Masa, we were immediately followed by Per Se's sommelier, who for the full span of the evening kept us lubricated with a progression of jaw-droppingly good wines. I'm talking wines that never in my life will I be either smart enough, or wealthy enough, to order again. As always, there was nothing on the bar but napkins and chopsticks. A glass of wine for each of us—and for chef Takayama—and in the hushed, reverential silence, it began. First, some raw crayfish tossed with cucumber, served, like all the courses to follow, in simple earthenware vessels designed by the chef. Next, a lovely lighter-than-air softshell crab tempura. Wine. Then more wine. A thick, nearly pureed disk of raw toro tuna, heaped with a giggle-inducing pile of osetra caviar, followed by bonito rolled around radish sprouts—I think (the wine beginning to kick in now). Then a simmering stoneware hotpot, a bowl of combu broth in which we were invited to dip slices of fresh foie gras and lobster, before shoveling them greedily into our faces. The broth, now beaded with tiny golden pearls of foie gras fat, was then served in soup bowls. Keller's sommelier was pouring heavily, each wine, each course leading beautifully to the next unbelievable thing . . . and then the next. (I'm relying increasingly on Ruhlman's notes here, as I was by this point pleasurably drunk.) Masa put a dark gray slate square down in front of each of us and my favorite part of the meal began: sushi. One piece at a time. Don't even think about soy or dipping sauce or that hideous, electric-green wasabi paste you see in most sushi bars. Each warm, ethereal pillow of rice and fish came preseasoned, with yuzu or sea salt or soy or freshly grated wasabi, as the chef felt appropriate. Fresh water eel. . . then sea eel. . . screamingly fresh mackerel. . . buttery, unctuous otoro tuna that seemed to sigh as it relaxed onto the rice in front of me. The three of us were eating with our hands now, eyes glazed, begging for seconds.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  There is no stunt food. If you see me eating it on camera, I'm really eating it. All of it. Often with seconds. A lot of very nice people go to a lot of trouble to give me their best, and I try to be a good guest. If I look happy on TV, I'm probably happy shooting the scene. If I look cranky, sweaty, nauseated, and unhappy, then that's probably my mood at the time. There is no makeup, obvious from the ever-changing panorama of pimples, bug bites, and scars visible on my rapidly aging mug, and if I haven't shaved for a scene, it probably means I just couldn't get it together that morning, 'cause my hands were shaking too badly. Chris, Lydia, and I spend a lot of time together on the road, both working and hanging out. After all the hours in crummy hotels and airports, shooting scenes that just don't "work" but that we continue to "French shoot" (meaning they turn off the camera but mime shooting anyway to be polite), a sort of hysteria sets in. Some tiny little detail will become endlessly hilarious. While in Japan, the word chanko—for no good reason at all—had us all spastic with uncontrollable laughter for hours. I am now often referred to in internal memos—or when being difficult—as my evil, egomaniacal action-film-star alter ego, "Vic Chanko"—as in "Vic doesn't want to come out of his trailer" (though we of course don't have trailers). If I'm unhappy, I will torment them by referring to myself in the third person, as in: "Vic doesn't like this scene. Vic is checking out and checking in to the fucking Sofitel down the road." For episodes with a disturbingly homoerotic subtext (as in the Rio show), I become Vic's porn-star brother "Tad Chanko." It doesn't—as you've probably guessed—take a lot for us to laugh, not afterwe've been softened up by countless "hang-yourself-in-the-shower-stall" hotel rooms. Speaking of hotels, you definitely don't want to know how much time we spend talking about lower intestinal activity and the peculiarities of the local plumbing. In Brazil, for instance, the "capacity" of the hotel toilets is lamentably weak. Used toilet paper, horrifyingly, is to be deposited in a plastic bucket next to the crapper. This goes against the grain of everything we've come to believe in in American urban upbringing—who wants the room-service maid giving you the thumbs-up on a good day, or looking worriedly at you after the results of too much dende oil? Such matters should be between you and your porcelain, n'est- ce pas? Not on the road. We are all-too-familiar with our respective contributions, and the viability of our flushing apparatus.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  MILITANT SOCIETY The Compostela route was only part of a growing Western enterprise of mass pilgrimage, new not in character but in scale; it became one of the defining features of Western Latin devotion right up to the sixteenth-century Reformation. This search for holy places and the route to salvation that they might offer was enticingly open to anyone who chose to undertake it (that might include the growing proportion of Europeans who were serfs, or other unfree people, if they could seize or were granted the opportunity). Choice, it is true, was not always part of the package: we have already noted in Chapter 11 that, from the beginning of the new penitential discipline in Ireland or Wales, one penitential possibility was an order to go on pilgrimage to seek the forgiving power of a saint. That became standard in medieval Europe’s repertoire of penance, an early spiritual variant on the modern proposition that travel broadens the mind. [2] Pilgrimage afforded the same opportunities to women as to men, and, despite all the problems that medieval women might face in travel, they took full advantage of it; one estimate of Western pilgrim activity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries considers that women were almost as numerous as men among those known to have undertaken pilgrimages. Naturally all this activity created its own economy of service industries for support, entertainment and accommodation, besides very considerable financial benefit for the shrine churches themselves. [3] Unusually, the devotional activism of pilgrimage put laypeople on the same footing as clergy during a devotional revolution that in so many ways gave clergy a privileged position in society. Indeed, holy travelling gave laity the advantage over monks and nuns who observed their commitment to sacred enclosure. In the fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer’s pilgrim Prioress did exploit seniority to exempt herself from enclosure for her cheerful journey to Canterbury, but her sisters would have had to make do with journeys of the mind. Accordingly, some late medieval nunneries resourcefully equipped themselves with a series of pictures of goals of pilgrimage for pleasantly profitable contemplation amid their other spiritual amenities. The Poor Clares of Villingen in south Germany outclassed most others by enriching their precinct with no fewer than 210 representations of places to visit in Rome and Jerusalem, and a generous papal grant gave them all benefits of indulgences just like a ‘real’ visit to these shrines (they all burst into tears with dutiful pleasure when this grant was read out to them). This was the ultimate tribute to the power of the pilgrimage. [4] Those travelling to the actual scenes of Christ’s life, death and resurrection in Jerusalem and the Holy Land had to face the reality of Muslim rule. From the beginning of the eleventh century, the growing numbers of Western pilgrims provoked rising tension, fuelled by the development of a new land-route through Hungary especially useful for northern Europeans. An unusual flashpoint occurred in 1009 when, in the course of steadily more deranged general behaviour, the Fatimid Caliph al-Hākim ordered the complete destruction of the magnificent Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, built long before in the time of the Emperor Constantine I. Even after Byzantine reconstruction in the 1030s and 1040s, the evidence of al-Hākim’s demolition was still obvious to travellers, and memories of it fed into an increasingly vocal call for revenge and for the Christian sites to be liberated from Muslim rule. [5] Loudest among those voices were monk-historians associated with Cluny’s rebranding of Benedictine life in its own image, Rodolph Glaber (‘the Bald’) and Adémar of Chabannes. They also banged the drum for the cosmic significance of the world turning its millennium of 1000 CE , a chronological detail that may not have excited those beyond Cluny’s influence quite so much. [6] The link of these themes to Cluny was no accident, given its management of pilgrimages to the westernmost extreme of Christendom at Compostela. The shrine of St James the Apostle, now safe from Muslim expansion as Christian armies successfully pushed back Muslim territory in Iberia, was itself a proof that God approved of warfare directed against the Church’s enemies. (In the Americas, where Spain and Portugal forcibly established new empires in the sixteenth century, a thousand years later James the Apostle still doubles as a symbol of the defeat of ‘Moors’ by Iberian Christians, as I have myself observed as a festal processional float passed me in rural Mexico: there was James

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  It’s a funny thing. Your face screws up when you’re coming and you roll your eyes and make uncouth noises and if you’ve seen yourself at that moment you probably think you look ridiculous. Still, there is absolutely no vision as glorious as the face of someone you’re crazy about when she’s in the throes of orgasm. When Elle began to shudder and her face transformed like that, right before she began to cry out, I started coming too, and it was the sight of her face, not my hands or the dildo or the original fantasy that sparked us, that pushed me to ecstasy. Eventually—after a romp in the backyard and another in the shower—we settled down to fall asleep in each other’s arms. Just as we were drifting off, Elle began chuckling. “What is it?” I mumbled. It was hard to be grumpy after coming approximately forty-seven times over the course of the night, but I’d almost been asleep. “I didn’t tell you whose partner I was covering for tonight.” She’d already explained that she’d only been scheduled to work until nine-thirty. She had, in fact, engineered the whole thing to act on our new fantasies. “Oh my god!” I said. “You got stuck with MacIntyre!” “Talk about the longest evening in history.” She moaned dramatically, the back of her hand against her forehead. “Every so often I’d catch him looking at me, and he’d see that I saw, and he’d go all red again. To make it worse, we had to patrol the beach parking lot.” I laughed. “So, did you catch anyone in the act?” She pulled me closer. “Only you, Destiny. Only you.” ABOUT THE AUTHORS RACHEL KRAMER BUSSEL is a senior editor at Penthouse Variations, and formerly wrote the “Lusty Lady” column in the Village Voice. She is the editor of Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z and coeditor of Up All Night: Adventures in Lesbian Sex. Her writing has been published in more than fifty erotic anthologies, including Best Lesbian Erotica (2001, 2004, and 2005) and Best American Erotica 2004, as well as AVN, Bust, Curve, Diva, Girlfriends, On Our Backs, Penthouse, Punk Planet, Rockrgrl, the San Francisco Chronicle, Velvetpark, and other publications. Learn more about her at www.rachelkramerbussel.com. From East Anglia, England, LEE CAIRNEY writes about the imaginative loophole sex creates out of the boring contract of everyday life. “Cruising” is her first foray into the dirty and demanding twilight world, or so she likes to imagine it, of women’s erotica. DELILAH DEVLIN (DelilahDevlin.com) is an author with a rapidly expanding reputation for writing deliciously edgy stories with complex characters. SOPHIE MOUETTE is the pseudonym of two professional writers who also publish solo work in erotica, science fiction/ fantasy and other genres under other names. Sophie’s publications include an erotica novel, Cat Scratch Fever, and short fiction in the anthologies Best Women’s Erotica 2005, Sex… in the Sports Club, Sex…in the Kitchen, Sex…in Uniform and Sex…on the Move.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  The perfect mixture of pleasure and pain. I feel strangely in competition with David. They say "never let them see you sweat," but it's way too late for that. We're both in full lather. David swallows another slice of kidney, rubs his solar plexus, and grimaces, and I feel—to my shame—gratified by his pain. I'm surviving Szechuan. I'm making it through this most incendiary of incendiary meals in the fire capital of the world. And I'm loving it. The effect of all the peppers is almost narcotic in its endorphin- producing qualities. In fact, early hotpot chefs were rumored to lace their concoctions with opium, to keep customers coming back. It wasn't necessary. Those who survive their initial exposure to the dish can't help but return to it, like a beautiful but bad girlfriend. (Later, when I return to the States, I'll secrete two kilos of those magical hua jiao in my luggage, wanting never to be separated from them again.) The next day, at Chen Ma Po Dou Fu (which translates loosely to "Pockmarked Granny's Tofu"), I happily submit to another glorious if painful scourging and devour the restaurant's namesake dish: a bowl of meat and spice- stippled tofu awash in more palm oil, named for its likeness to its creator. I pick cautiously through a Szechuan chicken that is easily 80 percent dried chilies (one tries to pick around them) and 20 percent chicken, and, like so much of local fare, awash in yet more pepper-infused palm oil. As David said, even knowing my inevitable unpleasant gastroenterological destiny, I don't care. It's too good. My palate—if it doesn't burn out of my skull entirely—will never be the same again. The relatively friendly flavors of Beijing are a welcome change. And I concentrate, in the limited time I have, on what the capital city is best known for: duck. Duck so crispy, flavorful, juicy, and unctuous that it will ruin you for "Peking Duck" anywhere else. Li Qun Roast Duck Restaurant, located in an old hutong neighborhood near Tiananmen Square, is a crowded, ramshackle home turned eatery. Eager customers are squeezed around a central courtyard, jammed into small former bedrooms, their tables brimming with stacked plates of food. In the kitchen, the chef carefully positions head-on ducks over open peachwood flame in an ancient brick oven, turning them and moving them constantly to expertly crisp the skin. The meat is sliced and presented with the de rigueur pancakes, sliced scallion, and hoisin sauce—but it's better, much better, eaten straight and unadorned.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  But I won't. Vietnamese food can be great in Texas, or Minneapolis. But Vietnamese food in Vietnam, when outside the window it's Hanoi—a slice of an apartment building with faded, peeling facade just visible across the street; women hanging out laundry; the chatter of noodle and fruit vendors coming from one flight down; the high, throaty vibrations of countless motorbikes; Madame's two daughters giggling upstairs, perhaps laughing about the freakishly tall, unbelievably hungry American who sits downstairs, ineptly struggling to eat Mom's still-bone-in chicken with chopsticks—at such times, Vietnamese food tastes even better. Linh is happy. We're getting into shots of nep moi now, the vicious, delicious Hanoi rice vodka, and everybody at the table is in a festive holiday mood. Chris and Lydia finally put down their cameras and join us hungrily at the table. When we are finished with this, there will be tea, and Madame's award-winning blend of fresh roasted coffee, and 555 cigarettes, and Madame's lighter-than-air, crunchy coconut macaroons. Tonight, as the camera crew and I sit in comfortable rattan chairs at the Bamboo Bar of the drenched-in-history Metropole Hotel, drinking vermouth cassis and reviewing the day's events, we will all smile, and nod silently to one another—maybe uttering an occasional "Oh yeah!" to commemorate the day's events. We know we've got it good. We're happy to be alive. And still in Vietnam. DECODING FERRAN ADRIA EVERYBODY WANTS IT. "It's the most magnificent book you can find—anywhere in the world," says Eric Ripert, chef of Le Bernardin in Manhattan. He's talking about Spanish chef Ferran Adria's mammoth cookbook El Bulli 1998-2002, the first of three volumes that will track backward the development of recipes and procedures at the famed Spanish three-star restaurant. Currently available only in Spanish and Catalan, costing about one hundred seventy-five euros and weighing in at nearly ten pounds (with its accompanying guidebook and CD-ROM), it seems more the mysterious black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey than a cookbook. It is also the most talked-about, sought-after, wildly impressive and intimidating collectible in the world of professional chefs and cookbook wonks. If you're a hotshot chef, even if you can't read it, every minute without it is misery. Science-fiction and space-travel metaphors come up frequently when discussing it. "There's no cookbook like it. I love the fact that it's like Star Wars," says Wylie Dufresne, an unabashed fan of Adria whose WD-50 menu in New York was unapologetically created under the controversial Catalonian chef's influence. "He's going backward!" (The next book will cover the years 1994 to 1997.) "We're all looking at Spain. And Adria's ground zero." For years now, I'd been hearing from chef friends about their experiences at El Bulli.

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints (2023)

  17. Saints and Modernity Benedict XVI. Miracles and the putative saint’s way of life still must be verified, a process that involves doctors, lawyers, archivists, and historians, as well as theologians and cardinals. Pope John Paul II single-handedly canonized or beatified as many holy dead as all his predecessors combined. Under his papacy, canonizations became enormous events, and St. Peter’s Square became an exuberant, joyful sea of proud national groups waving flags and celebrating their saints. Miracles and Modern Science In the face of modern medicine and science, how should we understand, investigate, and even verify miracles? This is a problem the Catholic Church has been grappling with for centuries. Even as early as the 13th century, doctors might be called in to examine the bodies of the holy dead and confirm signs of sanctity. This might take the form of curious anatomical findings, as with Saint Clare of Montefalco. When she died in 1308, a local doctor helped the sisters of her community perform an autopsy. They discovered her heart muscle had altered to form the shape of the instruments of the Passion, and three gallstones represented the Trinity, making her a kind of “living reliquary,” in the words of scholar Cordelia Warr. Other medical experts might be called in to examine the exhumed bodies of saints, who were regularly moved from their initial resting place to a prominent location beneath or near the altar of a church. A common early physical indicator of sanctity was supposed to be the appearance of an “incorrupt body,” or one that was at least partially mummified, with a “sweet odor” instead of the stench of decomposition. 127

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  Then there it was, her climax, like a shock to both our systems as she shuddered beneath me. After a few moments we came back to earth. She looked up at me, squinting. “Baby, I just have one question,” she said. “I know I got a perfect score, but can we have a wet T-shirt contest next time we go to the beach?” “Of course,” I said, and kissed her. We’d be fools not to. SABRA Lux Zakari I bet I could change your mind, Mrs. B,” Sabra said with a smile as we stood next to each other on the pavement. She continued to hold open the limo door for me, the gold streetlight making her dark skin seem luminescent. The night’s crisp air turned her breath into clouds. I stopped scrambling in my purse for her tip and froze, startled. “Change my mind about what?” I had no idea what she was talking about, but my skin prickled anyway. “Everything.” She purred the words as she urged me back into the limo. For the past few hours she’d been driving me to my meetings, just as she had the last time I’d been in the city. She’d shown up at my door with a cocked hip and a crooked, knowing smile, but had remained professional all evening. Despite that, every glance she shot me in the rearview made my heart pound; no one had ever looked at me with such intensity, such want . I was sure she’d gotten a sneaking suspicion of the sudden, inexplicit dampness between my legs by the way I’d nervously cleared my throat and looked down at my hands, clenched in my lap. Now we were parked across from my hotel on a quiet street, and although her duties were technically considered to be over, she clearly had other things in mind. Sabra closed the limo door behind her and sat down next to me on the leather seat, still wearing that mysterious smile. She pulled off her black chauffeur’s cap, shaking her braids free. Her fingers went to the giant gold buttons on the front of her uniform and she undid them slowly, watching my face for any reaction. When she opened her top, her naked breasts sprung free, presenting her already stiff nipples. I sucked in a gulp of air and tried to will my body to stop shaking. This all was certainly different from the last time she’d driven me to my meetings, which had just been a few months ago, when I was still married and spent the majority of the time in her limo arguing with my ex-husband on my cell phone. She’d remained silent, but I’d seen her knowing smirks in the rearview mirror. At any rate, now it looked like she wanted to take me on a different kind of ride.

• From Laura Middleton; Her Brother and Her Lover (1890)

  After enjoying the voluptuous sensations of the elastic constriction the nerves of the sheath in which it was plunged exerted upon his throbbing weapon for some minutes, during which his hands roved over my body in nervous agitation, he resumed his delightful exercise, and thrust after thrust of his delicious weapon was driven into me with the most intense enjoyment to both parties. At length, his lusty efforts were rewarded with success, and, from the warm gush within me, I felt that a torrent of bliss must have issued from him, while his nervous frame shook and quivered with blissful agitation and enjoyment as the extasy of delight came over him. He lay for a few minutes bathed in enjoyment, and then raising his head, thanked me most fervently for all the bliss I had conferred on him and expressed his hope that it had been accomplished without much suffering on my part. In answer I gently turned both him and myself on one side, too much delighted with its presence to allow his sword to escape from my scabbard, and made him look at the pillow on which my weapon had rested, and where a plenteous effusion of the balmy liquid plainly attested that I too had shared in the delights of his enjoyment. He expressed his great gratification at this, as he said the sole drawback to his enjoyment had been the fear that it had been attained at my expense. But he said that what he now saw emboldened him to make a new request, and as the difficulty had now been overcome, to ask whether I might be persuaded to allow him still to retain his present quarter and enjoy another victory. I readily agreed. I told him that the sensations produced upon me by the insertion of his weapon in so sensitive a place was so agreeable--that it was so was, indeed, very evident from the powerful manner in which it still affected mine--that he must allow it to remain quietly where it was for a time and let me enjoy the agreeable sensation of its presence there.

• From Laura Middleton; Her Brother and Her Lover (1890)

  Finding that he was determined to complete his third pleasing operation, I proposed that he should change his position and take up my place in Laura's palace of pleasure and allow me again to stimulate him in the rear, and assist him to attain his object. He highly approved of this proposal, and immediately took up his position in Laura's arms, while, getting behind him and inserting my weapon in his delicious sheath, I proceeded to render him the same agreeable service he had just done me. This speedily had the desired effect, and a delicious emission from all the three parties brought our undertaking to a most successful and satisfactory conclusion. By this time, Laura for once had had enough to satisfy her, and we separated, sadly grudging the loss of the two days which were still to pass before the departure of her aunt would admit of a renewal of our joys in security. We faithfully proposed on our part that we should be abstinent in the meantime with the view of being the better able to enjoy ourselves thoroughly when the happy time for our all again meeting together should arrive. Upon the whole, with the assistance of an occasional solace from her in the summer house, when an opportunity afforded, we kept our promise tolerably well, though as Frank would insist on coming to my bed, and we could neither of us refrain from indulging in a sight of each other's charms, it was sometimes a hard struggle to restrain our desires. At length Miss Middleton's departure enabled us to give free course to all our wanton inclinations, and night after night my room was the scene of a repetition of the most exquisite and voluptuous enjoyments it is possible to conceive. When our exhausted frames could no longer furnish us with the means of indulging in the performance of our soul-stirring rites, we were never tired of gazing on and caressing the delicious forms which were constantly exhibited without reserve for the delectation and amusement of one another, for we all seemed to feel that our own delight was heightened by aiding to promote the happiness of the others. We had no secrets from Laura; in fact, she had witnessed with delight the pleasures which Frank and I mutually conferred upon each other. On one occasion when she was disqualified from joining in our amusements, she watched Frank and me stripping and enjoying by ourselves the pleasures she was unable to participate in. The evident delight they afforded us affected her so greatly that she declared she must try the effect of the same operation upon herself.

• From Laura Middleton; Her Brother and Her Lover (1890)

  Then gently laying her down, I again commenced operations; at first thrusting my weapon cautiously and gradually in and out of the charming orifice so as to avoid the risk of hurting her. But I soon found there was no danger of this. The elements of pleasure were so fiercely aroused within her that my exertions occasioned very different sensations from those which had accompanied my first entrance into her delicious quarters, and in a few minutes her efforts to promote our mutual bliss vied with, if they did not exceed, my own. For the first time in her life she thoroughly enjoyed the most exquisite of all sensations a woman can be blessed with, that of having her most sensitive region fully gorged with the masterpiece which first works her up to the most amorous frenzy and then subdues her by making her die away with itself in melting bliss. There was not a moment from the time when I half withdrew and again inserted the delicious morsel, the possession of which she so much enjoyed, till the overwhelming bliss of mutual emission took away our senses, that she did not evince both by her gestures and her words the most excessive and frantic delight, and I need hardly say that my enjoyment equalled hers. When our second course was finished, I withdrew my still unexhausted weapon, which notwithstanding its double victory still held up its head bravely, but I was somewhat horrified at the mingled tide which now poured out its crimson stream down her thighs. She was in great distress less it might betray her, but I managed to prevent any of it getting upon her dress and persuaded her to accompany me to a small fountain a little way off where, dipping my handkerchief in the water, I first removed all marks of the conflict, and then continued to bathe the swollen and tender lips which still bore traces of the fierce nature of the combat. Finding the cooling sensation was grateful to her, I continued the application until the sight of her charms, thus freely exposed, made the author of the mischief so wild at the contemplation of the effects of his own deeds that I was obliged to show the state he was in, and tell her that it would require another defeat before he could be quieted. She hesitated a little from the fear of the pain accompanying his re-entrance in the present tender state of her interior. But seeing that he also bore bloody marks of the fray, she insisted on reciprocating the good offices I had bestowed upon her, and taking the handkerchief, she proceeded to remove them by tenderly bathing the little gentleman.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Mission accomplished! Dushawn let out a loud groan that echoed through the large empty building. On his last stroke, he tried to plunge his big-ass dick up through the roof of my pussy. I felt like I was ’bout to bust wide open, but I kept ridin’. He moaned and kept grindin’. I threw my ass into overdrive and bounced on the leftovers until I finished my second hard cum. • • • We got dressed in the purple light of night. Just before we climbed out of a secret third-story entrance, Dushawn hugged me tightly and gently devoured my lips and tongue. He gave me one last sweet deep kiss and said, “Let’s bounce.” Holding hands, we left the old abandoned factory where we’d played hide-and-seek as kids, and started walkin’ back to Alameda to where we had parked our cars by Angel’s Doughnuts. We figured it was safe there cuz it’s always some old guys on the patio playin’ dominoes and takin’ bets. As we got closer to Angel’s, the streets got noisier and more crowded than usual because it was Friday night. All the soldiers lined the sidewalks and steps of their apartments, laughin’ and plottin’ capers. Pook and Dre were at the curb slippin’ dimes of Chronic, and a slick song was blastin’ from the windows of a big tan-and-white apartment building on Willowbrook. A couple of young moms were sittin’ out front, bouncin’ their babies to the beat while they kicked it and cut it up. “Hey, gurrrrrrrrrrrl!” It was this bitch named Nakisha. She knew me and Cami from Willowbrook. I could tell she was shocked to see me holdin’ hands with Dushawn. Life had not been kind to her. She was fat as fuck, with a kangaroo pouch in the front and two grocery bags of ass in the back. “Camille never told me you and her brother was kickin’ it.” “Did I miss something? When did you and Cami start kickin’ it? We talk er’ night and she never mentioned yo ass.” I shut that shit straight down, but I knew I’d have to talk to Cami right away. Dushawn never said a word, but he never let go of my hand either. A little further down, somebody was fryin’ the hell out of some chicken. It was smellin’ up the whole block. TVs were flickering through every other window. Dushawn was quiet and I was pretty quiet my damn self. My pussy was still clenching and throbbin’ from being broke off proper. I thought about Camille. I wondered how she’d act when I told her about me and Dushawn. She used to haaate the bitches that tried to get to Dushawn by tryin’ to strike up a fake-ass friendship with her. I knew I had to tell her before Nakisha blurted it out just to see the look on her face. You know how foul bitches do it. • • •

• From Laura Middleton; Her Brother and Her Lover (1890)

  When I awoke, the sun was shining brightly into the room. During her sleep Laura had somewhat changed her position, and instead of fronting me, had turned upon her left side, presenting her splendid posteriors to me, between which my champion was nestling himself. Judging by his imposing appearance, his powers did not seem in any way impaired by the exertions of the previous night. Turning down the bedclothes, I for some time quietly revelled in the sight of her charms, and then getting excited beyond endurance, though unwilling to disturb her peaceful slumber, I thought I might perhaps be able without awakening her to take up a more satisfactory position than the one I enjoyed. So gently raising her right leg and creeping as close behind her as I could, I placed my right leg between her thighs in such a manner that my champion shoved himself between her legs, stretching up almost to her navel, In this position I lay for some little time till some half muttered words and certain movements of her body made me suspect that Laura in her sleep was acting over again the scenes of the previous night. Convinced that she would have no more objection than myself to the illusion being converted into the reality, I gently separated the lips of the seat of pleasure and inserted the tip of the appropriate organ. His sweet touch in such a sensitive spot at once broke her slumber. She opened her eyes, and glancing downward got a full view of my stiffly distended weapon with its ruby head quite uncovered just entering within the charming precincts of her lovely retreat, and she said smiling that it was just what she had been dreaming of. She was then going to turn herself round towards me, but I told her to remain as she was and that I thought we should be able to accomplish our wishes in that position. I pointed out to her that although we could not so well enjoy the pleasure of kissing each other, we could at least better watch and observe each other's operations while my weapon was perforating her, as the reflexion of our figures in a large mirror, which I had purposely placed so as to produce the best effect, would add greatly to our enjoyment. Looking towards it, she blushed deeply at beholding exposed to her full view her own lovely face, exquisite swelling breasts, snow-white belly and ivory thighs, with the upper part of the mount of pleasure beautifully shaded with its appropriate fringe and the lips swollen and distended with the shaft of love, while my leg, holding her thighs apart, exposed to view between them the pleasure-yielding receptacles of its liquid treasures, and at every heave I gave exhibited at full length the staff of my weapon as I alternately penetrated and then partly withdrew it from its delicious sheath. This exquisite site delighted us so much that we determined to prolong it as much as possible, and regulating each other's movements so as to keep up the enjoyment to the uttermost and at the same time hold back the crisis, we lay in the most extatic bliss for upwards of an hour, enjoying the thrilling delight which this perfect combination of the most exquisite sensations of touch and sight can confer. At length, in spite of our endeavours, we could no longer restrain the tide of passion, a few furious heaves of my maddened and thrusting pleasure-giver completed our bliss, and the genial shower sprinkled the field of pleasure and calmed our overexcited senses.