Joy

Passages

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

Page 290 of 299 · 20 per page

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

  "Are you all right?" she asked, her eyes narrowing as she searched his expression for any signs of incipient insanity, stroke, or Tourette's. "Fine! Fine!" insisted Marvin, beads of sweat erupting on his brow. "Best meal I've had in ages . . . ho ho ho. Waiter!" he commanded. "Some dessert, please!" Of course, Alexandra adroitly rescued the situation, smiling warmly at the two women guests, patting one on the hand and confiding, "Actually tonight's a very good night to be here. A very special night. The chef is cooking everything himself. You know he can't do that very often anymore. Tonight is a very special night. You're in luck." She whisked them to a four-top in the center of the dining room and seated them with menus. Ricardo, the restaurant's best waiter, was at their elbows in a second, while Paul, in a moment of possibly divine inspiration, pretending to visit the service bar for a consultation, whispered an order to extinguish the lights out front and draw the curtains. "Lock the door," he said. "No more customers." There was a brief exchange with Ricardo. "Mr. Schutz," said Ricardo in hushed tones meant to convey solemn, yet breathlessly concealed, delight, "the chef has instructed me to close the restaurant to all other customers. It would be his honor and pleasure to prepare a special menu for the four of you. If it's all right with you he'd like you to just relax and enjoy. He has something really extraordinary in mind for your party. Would that be satisfactory to you and your guests?" The two girls, already thrilled that America's Sexiest Chef would be personally preparing their meals, were exuberant, particularly as the two of them had, until their recent move to New York, experienced nothing more extravagant than Shoney's and Olive Garden. Here they were now—with Roland Schutz! Being fed personally by Rob Holland. And look! Look at this! A magnum of champagne, gratis! Headed their way was Ricardo, at his most graceful with the white napkin as he peeled the foil, removed the wire stay, and gently released the cork with a muffled pop. Schutz, who at this early stage of the evening was concerned with nothing more substantial than getting the two girls to go tag-team in his heart-shaped bed later, was happy to go along. They were happy? He was happy. Fuck the food. He'd just as soon be sitting on his couch in his silk boxer shorts, eating his usual peanut butter and bacon sandwich (no crusts) and watching American Gladiators with his chin-strap on. But chicks didn't dig that. The girls looked pleased. They looked impressed. And that was what was important. Cleveland, his security guard, ate, as far as he could tell, only energy bars and Grape Nuts. "Yes, of course. That would be delightful," he said.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  According to Mr. Levy, this power of seeing with the face is diminished by a fog, but not by ordinary darkness. At one time he could tell when a cloud obscured the horizon, but he has now lost that power, which he has known several persons to possess who are totally blind. These effects of aqueous vapor suggest immediately that fluctuations in the heat radiated by the objects may be the source of the perception. One blind gentleman, Mr. Kilburne, an instructor in the Perkins Institution in South Boston, who has the power spoken of in an unusual degree, proved, however, to have no more delicate a sense of temperature in his face than ordinary persons. He himself supposed that his ears had nothing to do with the faculty until a complete stoppage of them, not only with cotton but with putty on top of it, by abolishing the perception entirely, proved his first impression to be erroneous. Many blind men say immediately that their ears are concerned in the matter. Sounds certainly play a far more prominent part in the mental Life of the blind than in our own. In taking a walk through the country, the mutations of sound, far and near, constitute their chief delight. And to a, great extent their imagination of distance and of objects moving from one distant spot to another seems to consist in thinking how a certain sonority would be modified by the change of place. It is unquestionable that the semi-circular-canal feelings play a great part in determining the points of the compass and the direction of distant spots, in the blind as in us. We start towards them by feelings of this sort; and so many directions, so many different-feeling starts.[211]

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  But the symbol will often give us the emotional effect of the perception. Such expressions as the abysmal vault of heaven, the endless expanse of ocean, etc., summarize many computations to the imagination, and give the sense of an enormous horizon. So it seems with the blind. They multiply mentally the amount of a distinctly felt freedom to move, anti gain the immediate sense of a vaster freedom still. Thus it is that blind men are never without the consciousness of their horizon. They all enjoy travelling, especially with a companion. On the prairies the feel the great openness; in valleys they feel closed in; and one has told me that he thought few seeing people could enjoy the view from a mountain-top more than he. A blind person on entering a house or room immediately receives, from the reverberations of his voice and steps, an impression of its dimensions, and to a certain extent of its arrangement. The tympanic sense noticed on p. 140, supra, comes in to help here, and possibly other forms of tactile sensibility not yet understood. Mr. Hank Levy, the blind author of 'Blindness and the Blind' (London), gives the following account of his powers of perception:

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  "I have also received batches of answers from various educational establishments both in England and America, which were made after the masters had fully explained the meaning of the questions, and interested the boys in them. These have the merit of returns derived from a general census, which my other data lack, because I cannot for a moment suppose that the writers of the latter are a haphazard proportion of those to whom they were sent. Indeed I know of some who, disavowing all possession of the power, and of many others who, possessing it in too faint a degree to enable them to express what their experiences really were, in a manner satisfactory to themselves, sent no returns at all. Considerable statistical similarity was, however, observed between the sets of returns furnished by the schoolboys and those sent by my separate correspondents, and I may add that they accord in this respect with the oral information I have elsewhere obtained. The conformity of replies from so many different sources which was clear from the first, the fact of their apparent trustworthiness being on the whole much increased by cross-examination (though I could give one or two amusing instances of break-down), and the evident effort made to give accurate answers, have convinced me that it is a much easier matter than I had anticipated to obtain trustworthy replies to psychological questions. Many persons, especially women and intelligent children, take pleasure in introspection, and strive their very best to explain their mental processes. I think that a delight in self-dissection must be a strong ingredient in the pleasure that many are said to take in confessing themselves to priests.

• From On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy (1961)

  Oak illustrates this trend rather nicely in her thirty-third interview. Is it significant that this follows by ten days the interview where she could for the first time admit to herself that the therapist cared? Whatever our speculations on this point, this fragment indicates very well the quiet joy in being one’s self, together with the apologetic attitude which, in our culture, one feels it is necessary to take toward such an experience. In the last few minutes of the interview, knowing her time is nearly up she says: C: One thing worries me—and I’ll hurry because I can always go back to it—a feeling that occasionally I can’t turn out. Feeling of being quite pleased with myself. Again the Q technique.* I walked out of here one time, and impulsively I threw my first card, “I am an attractive personality”; looked at it sort of aghast but left it there, I mean, because honestly, I mean, that is exactly how it felt—a—well, that bothered me and I catch that now. Every once in a while a sort of pleased feeling, nothing superior, but just—I don’t know, sort of pleased. A neatly turned way. And it bothered me. And yet—I wonder—I rarely remember things I say here, I mean I wondered why it was that I was convinced, and something about what I’ve felt about being hurt that I suspected in—my feelings when I would hear someone say to a child, “Don’t cry.” I mean, I always felt, but it isn’t right; I mean, if he’s hurt, let him cry. Well, then, now this pleased feeling that I have. I’ve recently come to feel, it’s—there’s something almost the same there. It’s—We don’t object when children feel pleased with themselves. It’s—I mean, there really isn’t anything vain. It’s—maybe that’s how people should feel. T: You’ve been inclined almost to look askance at yourself for this feeling, and yet as you think about it more, maybe it comes close to the two sides of the picture, that if a child wants to cry, why shouldn’t he cry? And if he wants to feel pleased with himself, doesn’t he have a perfect right to feel pleased with himself? And that sort of ties in with this, what I would see as an appreciation of yourself that you’ve experienced every now and again. C: Yes. Yes. T: “I’m really a pretty rich and interesting person.” C: Something like that. And then I say to myself, “Our society pushes us around and we’ve lost it.” And I keep going back to my feelings about children. Well, maybe they’re richer than we are. Maybe we—it’s something we’ve lost in the process of growing up. T: Could be that they have a wisdom about that that we’ve lost.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  I made my usual biscuit recipe and he, his garlic mashed potatoes. At his aunt’s house, we sat around a long table decorated with flowers and ribbons and turkey-shaped sugar cookies. June darted from the kids’ table to my lap and back, and when it was time to say what I was thankful for, I cried into her hair. I remember thinking that night that our marriage hadn’t failed. We were succeeding, if on different terms from the ones we’d set out with. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] Ash and I had been dating for six weeks. For all my interest in staying casual, that’s not what we were. We were falling in love. To love Ash felt easy, inevitable, and I made no move to stop. But I was afraid. Well, I thought, you wanted to know what it was like to love and be loved by a woman, didn’t you? Here you are. But how was I supposed to trust what I wanted, when I knew very well that what I wanted could change? I took solace in the fullness of our lives—that between Ash’s work schedule and my custody schedule, we rarely saw each other more than once a week. I needed breathing room, a safe distance from which to study Ash, to believe in what I felt. The week of Thanksgiving, Ash was with family in California, and I liked missing them. I wanted them closer. A couple of weeks before Christmas, I asked if they wanted to meet June. Ash came over one Sunday, late afternoon. We wouldn’t make a big thing of it. June was fresh from the bath, and she sat on my bed in her pink fleecy bathrobe, watching a show on the iPad and eating sheets of dried seaweed the size of playing cards. Ash and I stood in the doorway. This is my friend Ash, I said, and June looked up from the screen. She was sleepy, couldn’t be bothered. Ash waved and grinned and said, Whatcha watching? June shook a piece of seaweed in greeting. In the hall Ash squeezed my arm and beamed. I’m so excited, they whispered. Thank you. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] The days shortened, gaining speed. It was nearly Christmas. I got a two-week teaching job near Toronto, my longest stretch away from June. Brandon and my mother gamely stepped in to pick up my slack, but I beat the shit out of myself about it. The timing was wrong: June cried for me; the restaurant needed me for payroll and scheduling; I knew I never should have gone. Ash and I fought the day before I left. I’d told them that, on a grocery run, I’d picked up an extra box of dishwasher detergent for Brandon’s apartment, having seen a few days earlier that he was out. You know, you don’t have to take care of him anymore, Ash said. I’m not taking care of him, I snapped. I’m just being considerate. Am I not allowed to be considerate?

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  Flannery O’Connor answered, “Because I’m good at it,” and when the occasional interviewer asks me, I quote them both. Then I add that other than writing, I am completely unemployable. But really, secretly, when I’m not being smart-alecky, it’s because I want to and I’m good at it. I always mention a scene from the movie Chariots of Fire in which, as I remember it, the Scottish runner, Eric Liddell, who is the hero, is walking along with his missionary sister on a gorgeous heathery hillside in Scotland. She is nagging him to give up training for the Olympics and to get back to doing his missionary work at their church’s mission in China. And he replies that he wants to go to China because he feels it is God’s will for him, but that first he is going to train with all of his heart, because God also made him very, very fast. So God made some of us fast in this area of working with words, and he gave us the gift of loving to read with the same kind of passion with which we love nature. My students at the writing workshops have this gift of loving to read, and some of them are really fast, really good with words, and some of them aren’t really fast and don’t write all that well, but they still love good writing, and they just want to write. And I say, “Hey! That is good enough for me. Come on down .” So I tell them what it will be like for me at the desk the next morning when I sit down to work, with a few ideas and a lot of blank paper, with hideous conceit and low self-esteem in equal measure, fingers poised on the keyboard. I tell them they’ll want to be really good right off, and they may not be, but they might be good someday if they just keep the faith and keep practicing. And they may even go from wanting to have written something to just wanting to be writing, wanting to be working on something, like they’d want to be playing the piano or tennis, because writing brings with it so much joy, so much challenge. It is work and play together. When they are working on their books or stories, their heads will spin with ideas and invention. They’ll see the world through new eyes. Everything they see and hear and learn will become grist for the mill. At cocktail parties or in line at the post office, they will be gleaning small moments and overheard expressions: they’ll sneak away to scribble these things down. They will have days at the desk of frantic boredom, of angry hopelessness, of wanting to quit forever, and there will be days when it feels like they have caught and are riding a wave.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  You might think that I had just offered them membership in my embroidery club. They are angry people. This is why they write. So let me go further. There are a lot of us, some published, some not, who think the literary life is the loveliest one possible, this life of reading and writing and corresponding. We think this life is nearly ideal. It is spiritually invigorating, says a friend, who converted at eighteen from Christianity to poetry. It is intellectually quickening. One can find in writing a perfect focus for life. It offers challenge and delight and agony and commitment. We see our work as a vocation, with the potential to be as rich and enlivening as the priesthood. As a writer, one will have over the years many experiences that stimulate and nourish the spirit. These will be quiet and deep inside, however, unaccompanied by thunder or tremulous angels. My friend Tom, the gay Jesuit priest, said that he has longed for spiritual experiences all his life but that when he was drinking, he longed specifically to go into a church and have the statue of Mary wave back at him. And sometimes it did, when he was drinking—just quick little waves and then she’d sit down. But after he got sober, he could tell he’d had a genuine experience when he’d feel a sense of liberation afterward, in his chest, his lungs, his soul. This feeling is something my students report, especially those in writing groups, this feeling of liberation that, ironically, discipline brings. Becoming a writer can also profoundly change your life as a reader. One reads with a deeper appreciation and concentration, knowing now how hard writing is, especially how hard it is to make it look effortless. You begin to read with a writer’s eyes. You focus in a new way. You study how someone portrays his or her version of things in a way that is new and bold and original. You notice how a writer paints in a mesmerizing character or era for you, without your having the sense of being given a whole lot of information, and when you realize how artfully this has happened, you may actually put the book down for a moment and savor it, just taste it. There are moments when I am writing when I think that if other people knew how I felt right now, they’d burn me at the stake for feeling so good, so full, so much intense pleasure.

• From The Ultimate Guide to Orgasm for Women: How to Become Orgasmic for a Lifetime (2011)

  I have a vast variety of orgasms. I see stars, rockets, and all kinds of other visuals. Some (orgasms) feel like jumping out of a plane. Or they’re like an ocean swell, and sometimes the surf is so strong it sweeps me away; other times it just laps at the shore. They can be very deep, where all my internal organs go into pleasant spasm; maybe my knees go weak, suddenly all the tension drains down and out of my body. Sometimes they are like earthquakes, but more commonly they’re like waves. They’re often electrical; I feel the electrical energy moving up and down central channels inside my body, not on the surface. They can be either vaginally or clitorally centered. But when they’re clitorally centered, it’s like that three centimeters of flesh is the whole universe. Notes 1 Kermit E. Krantz, MD, “Innervation of the Human Vulva and Vagina: A microscopic study,” Obstetrics & Gynecology, 12: 382-396.2 William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, Human Sexual Response (Ishi Press, 2010). Originally published in 1966.CHAPTER 4 THE ENERGETIC EXPERIENCE OF ORGASM My orgasms are exquisite and deep, like riding a wave: exciting, wild, raw energy, primal, deeply satisfying. The buildup is a warm, flowing, pleasantly exciting sensation that keeps building to more excitement. It’s fun to hang out there for a while. Orgasm brings the excitement to a peak that satisfies a deep body longing and leaves me glowing, ecstatic, and floating. It’s a feeling of being deeply bonded with the universe. There’s a building of intensity of feeling; I feel like I’m becoming pure energy, ceasing to be a clearly defined physical body with boundaries. It’s like I can clearly perceive being an energetic being of vibrating molecules, part of and one with the woman I’m with and everything in the universe. I experience this in differing degrees of intensity depending on my situation. Then orgasm itself is like a wave of energy cresting inside me and through me, a release of the buildup of energy with me, truly ecstatic and totally exquisite. This is also accompanied by my muscles contracting and shuddering, often very strongly—yes, the earth does move for me! Sexuality can put us in touch with powerful flows of energy that we may not otherwise have reason or ability to access. Thinking of orgasm in terms of energy flow can be very useful, enabling us to visualize it in a much broader way than the merely physical. The same is true of life: understanding it as occurring on a plane of energy allows us to comprehend some of the unseen forces that affect us.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  one another and we work out feelings together. We are a marvelous support group for one another. We have become a catalytic force. THE PROCESS OF THE GROUP So complex is the process within these workshop groups that I despair of doing more than hinting at its multifaceted aspects. Yet, there are elements that I think are significant and characteristic. Unity Out of Separateness The sense of community does not arise out of collective movement, nor from conforming to some group direction. Quite the contrary. Each individual tends to use the opportunity to become all that he or she can become. Separateness and diversity—the uniqueness of being “me”—are experienced. This very characteristic of a marked separateness of consciousness seems to raise the group level to a oneness of consciousness. We have found that each person not only perceives the workshop as a place to meet personal needs, but actively forms the situation to meet those needs. One individual finds new ways of meeting a difficult transition in marriage or career. Another gains insights that enable inner growth. Another learns new ways of building community. Still another gains improved skills in interpersonal relationships. Others find new means of spiritual, artistic, and aesthetic renewal and refreshment. Many move toward more informed and effective action for social change. Others experience combinations of these learnings. The freedom to be individual, to work toward one’s own goals in a harmony of diversity, is one of the most prized aspects of the workshop. One participant catches beautifully, in poetic form, both the separateness and the closeness that develop. For the first time in my life, I feel I am a truly special person. For the first time in my life, I feel that who I am is all I need to be. It is the knowledge that at the tender core and naked center, where I am, There need be no more. There is enough. I have never felt so validated, or so affirmed, as a person. I have never known real self-esteem. You . . . have empowered me to live in openness, to touch your realness. I have never known myself before. I have never known another human being, before this week. I have never known such peace, or strength. Nor have I ever grown so fast, or learned so much. I have never felt so rich in love of self and love of you. Another participant, writing at a point some months following the workshop, states very well the way in which community develops out of separateness.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  that you will accept them as mine regardless of the lack of style, format, or academic expression. . . . My real concern is to try to communicate with myself so that I might better understand myself. I guess what I am really saying is that I am writing not for you, nor for a grade, nor for a class, but for me. And I feel especially good about that, for this is something that I wouldn’t have dared to do or even consider in the past. . . . (Rogers, 1969, p. 84) It seems clear that he had learned a great deed at the affective and experiential level, for the first time in twenty years of education. He has grown as a person. However, one might well question whether this change would really make him a different kind of administrator or teacher. Here is another small portion of his report: My staff meeting Tuesday was truly significant as I was able to relate to the staff how I really felt. Many told me afterwards that they were very surprised and impressed and wanted to applaud, not because I had said anything different, but it was the way I said it. I have had various teachers in my office daily who have wanted to relate to me and state they now find me more accepting than ever. . . . I feel that life has so much more meaning, (p. 89) This has been my experience: when inner changes take place in the attitudes and self-concept of the person, then changes begin to show up in his or her interpersonal behavior. A Program of Change in Teacher Training I should like to turn now to the more difficult question of whether it would be possible to change the teacher-training institutions. I am bold and brash enough to say that if I were given a free hand, and if I had the energy and ample funding (say the equivalent of the cost of a half dozen B-52 bombers), I think that in one year I could introduce such a ferment into schools of education that it would initiate a revolution. Since I am sure that must sound like an arrogant statement, I would like to state as precisely as I can what I would do. Much of the plan would change, of course, as obstacles were encountered and as the participants desired to move in somewhat different directions. First, I would enlist the aid of a large number of skilled facilitators, who are familiar with small-group process. This would be entirely feasible. Then, since it is necessary to begin somewhere, I would in each institution indicate that task-

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  Many women say they experience their most intense orgasms through anal penetration, especially when combined with clitoral stimulation. Perhaps you like anal penetration because you experience indirect G-spot stimulation through pressure on the walls of the rectum. You may relish the naughty thrill of engaging in a form of sexuality that’s so taboo. The three keys to pleasurable anal sex are communication, relaxation, and lubrication. The women of Toys in Babeland call them their butt-play mantra: “You can never have too much of any of those three, so talk about it, breathe deep, slap on more lube than you think is necessary, start slow, and have fun!” 1 Take a TourMake yourself comfortable—take a hot bath, put on some relaxing music, light some candles, and unplug the phone. Grab a hand mirror and your favorite lube. Slip on a latex glove. (If you’d rather not use a glove, make sure your nails are smoothly filed and your hands clean and soft. See “Basic Preparations,” below.) You can sit on the bed or lean back in a plush chair. Hold the mirror between your legs; or, for an even better view, kneel or squat over the mirror. Viewing the puckered folds of the anus, you can appreciate how delicate it is. We’re often so crass in how we refer to our asses that we forget how tender we are there. Rub a lubed finger over the opening. Get used to the feeling of your anus being stimulated. Slip just the tip of your lubed finger inside. Notice the heat you generate, the firm grip of your sphincter muscles on your finger, and the pulsing sensation as the anus becomes aroused and the tissues engorge with blood. You have two muscles at the opening of your anus: the external and internal sphincters. The external sphincter is a voluntary muscle—you can flex the external sphincter as you squeeze your PC muscles. The internal sphincter is involuntary—it reacts automatically to stimuli like pleasure or fear. However, like other involuntary muscles, it can be trained. If you poke directly at the anus, the sphincter muscles will clamp down in an automatic response much like the blinking of an eye. This response, which some sex educators call the “anal wink,”2 explains many bad anal sex experiences. Someone attempts to enter you by poking a finger or toy into your anus. Your internal sphincter closes against the intrusion. It hurts. You tell the errant partner to remove the finger, butt plug, or dildo. Next time a finger, dildo, or butt plug nears your anus, your unforgiving sphincter clamps down against the memory of that painful intrusion. Rather than condition your anus for pain, you can condition it for sexual enjoyment. With relaxation, communication, and lots of lube, you can teach your sphincters to anticipate pleasure.

• From On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy (1961)

  C: That’s right. My time’s up. Here she arrives, as do so many other clients, at the tentative, slightly apologetic realization that she has come to like, enjoy, appreciate herself. One gets the feeling of a spontaneous relaxed enjoyment, a primitive joie de vivre, perhaps analogous to the lamb frisking about the meadow or the porpoise gracefully leaping in and out of the waves. Mrs. Oak feels that it is something native to the organism. to the infant, something we have lost in the warping process of development. Earlier in this case one sees something of a forerunner of this feeling, an incident which perhaps makes more clear its fundamental nature. In the ninth interview Mrs. Oak in a somewhat embarrassed fashion reveals something she has always kept to herself. That she brought it forth at some cost is indicated by the fact that it was preceded by a very long pause, of several minutes duration. Then she spoke. C: You know this is kind of goofy, but I’ve never told anyone this (nervous laugh) and it’ll probably do me good. For years, oh, probably from early youth, from seventeen probably on, I, I have had what I have come to call to myself, told myself were “flashes of sanity.” I’ve never told anyone this, (another embarrassed laugh) wherein, in, really I feel sane. And, and pretty much aware of life. And always with a terrific kind of concern and sadness of how far away, how far astray that we have actually gone. It’s just a feeling once in a while of finding myself a whole kind of person in a terribly chaotic kind of world. T: It’s been fleeting and it’s been infrequent, but there have been times when it seems the whole you is functioning and feeling in the world, a very chaotic world to be sure— C: That’s right. And I mean, and knowing actually how far astray we, we’ve gone from, from being whole healthy people. And of course, one doesn’t talk in those terms. T: A feeling that it wouldn’t be safe to talk about the singing you* — C: Where does that person live? T: Almost as if there was no place for such a person to, to exist. C: Of course, you know, that, that makes me—now wait a minute—that probably explains why I’m primarily concerned with feelings here. That’s probably it. T: Because that whole you does exist with all your feelings. Is that it, you’re more aware of feelings? C: That’s right. It’s not, it doesn’t reject feelings and—that’s it. T: That whole you somehow lives feelings instead of somehow pushing them to one side. C: That’s right. (Pause) I suppose from the practical point of view it could be said that what I ought to be doing is solving some problems, day-to-day problems. And yet, I, I—what I’m trying to do is solve, solve something else that’s a great, that is a great deal more important than little day-to-day problems.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  When I told Ash, I could see them flush under the low purple lights. You know I’ve dressed as Justin Bieber for Halloween, they confessed. Three times. Ash pulled up a split-screen picture on their phone: Bieber on the left, Ash-as-Bieber on the right. It was perfect. I cackled, doubled over. We walked to the car with our arms around each other. It was late, but there were lots of bars on this street, and people outside them to smoke. We were safe: this was the gay part of town, the urban gut of Seattle, where bass thumps from the buildings well after midnight. But when we walked down the sidewalk like this, arms draped over our shoulders like scarves, eyes met us with a gaze I wasn’t accustomed to. When I walk down the sidewalk alone, I pass for a straight woman. This is dicey enough: as a straight woman, I rarely feel entirely safe. Company helps, safety in numbers. A female friend can do the job, sort of; a male friend can make me forget myself. But in the company of Ash, I felt as though a sinkhole waited under the asphalt. Does Ash feel this all the time? Is this what it’s like in the gender of their skin? The minute the wrong person sees that Ash is not a man, they’re something even worse than a woman. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] We went to my house, and at the front door I took their hand and led them down the hall. I switched on the lamp, kissed their upper lip first and then their lower. Ash tugged at my shirt where it knotted in the back. Under their T-shirt they wore a sports bra, and I slid a finger under the elastic in front, up where the skin rose gently, like a foothill, to Ash’s breast. They unfastened their watch, knelt to step out of their jeans. Ash’s breasts were small and neat, like a textbook drawing of breasts, two curves as tidy as the arc of a bow. I’d never felt the length of a woman’s body against me like this, nothing in between. I felt chosen, a woman chosen by a choosy creature, another woman. We were equal. I began to wonder then what we even were, women or just humans, and then I realized I didn’t care enough to finish the thought. We slept all night with our toes touching. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] Early the next morning Ash appeared beside the bed, standing, and bent close to my face: I loved last night. Thank you. I texted them later. I loved waking up next to you, I said. I felt lucky. Ash replied with two blushing emoji faces. Are we officially dating? they asked. I think so. I hope so, I said. Please? My fingers flew over the keypad. Yes!! they replied.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  I leaned toward her, and she laughed. Then her face was right there in front of me, and I went in, catching her top lip between my two. She was so soft, my head went blank, as though a curtain dropped. Even when Brandon was freshly shaved, he wasn't soft like this. She opened her mouth and took my bottom lip, sucked it between her teeth. […] Can I kiss you? I said against my cheek. Come on, she said, rising from the stool. She was standing by my hip. I turned and clasped her elbow. She dropped to me and met my mouth square-on, so firm I felt the bones behind her skin. I searched her with my tongue. […] The next morning, Brandon, June, and I had plans with my mother to take the ferry to Bainbridge Island. […] I cried for a long time, Mama, June said. What I heard was: while I was out kissing a woman, my three-year-old fell on her face in the street. […] But I'd had a choice, hadn't I, and I'd been away from her. Brandon had been absent too, but he was just doing his job. June fell, and I was out kissing a woman in a bar.

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  You can compare Yes/No/Maybe lists—with the addition of a few items, like sexual frequency and variation. You can combine your sexual standards lists (see “Be Specific,” above). There are many models for talking about your shared sexual values. Sex coaches and therapists can help here—they may ask you to clarify, on paper, each of your values, histories, expectations, concerns, and desires regarding sexual partnership. Authors of books on relationships (see chapter 19, Bibliography) offer their own approaches to designing partnerships. Most of them are not specifically looking at sexuality, much less lesbian sexuality, but you can adapt their methods to your own needs. One author who does write about sexuality in the context of relationships is Jack Morin, author of The Erotic Mind. He is convinced that “couples who openly confront the difficulties of combining intimacy and passion are the ones most likely to thrive.”5 Remember that the goal isn’t necessarily to see where your wish lists match. If you look only for common ground, you will eliminate all the sexual possibilities that do not appear on both lists. Here you want to avoid winnowing your lists—which contracts your sexual possibilities. Instead, think about expanding your sexual possibilities. Whatever your method, the main thing is that designing your sexual partnership becomes a conscious practice, considered and deliberate and done with awareness and intention. It’s work, yes, but it’s hardly drudgery. You may find the experience of talking about sex in this much detail to be a real turn-on. The most courageous conversation we’ve had was about using toys in the bedroom and the outcome was great! We talked about who would feel more comfortable purchasing the items, what kinds of things we wanted, what was an acceptable size/shape/texture for a dildo. It made us more comfortable talking about sex with each other. This practice can be as much a part of your ongoing sexual relationship as, well, sex. You needn’t think of this as just something you do before you get to the good stuff—or an exercise you do to prevent your sex life from withering. Inventing sexual scenarios together, sharing fantasies, solving problems is part of who you are as sex partners. Some of the best conversations you will have with your partner will be ones in which you reveal yourselves sexually to each other. Partners who are able to talk about sex on this level say it’s one of the best things about their relationship. Plus it will get you hot. Promise. You make your sex life happen. You generate the energy, time, interest, and desire. You develop sexual standards for your relationship, which you can review periodically—you can check in to see whether or not your relationship is meeting your mutual hopes for it. You can also note where your priorities may have changed. Some couples do this on their anniversary, on Valentine’s Day, or in the wee hours of New Year’s Day.

• From The Ultimate Guide to Orgasm for Women: How to Become Orgasmic for a Lifetime (2011)

  I have three kinds of orgasm. One I call the waterfall: it’s like a whooshing out and down; the sensation goes up to my waist and then shoots downward out of my toes. Then there’s the sparkler; that’s like a sparkler, you know, fireworks. It emanates from my lower belly and sends sprinklies out everywhere, sideways as well as up and down. It’s very white. Then there’s one I call Saturn, because I feel like that’s where I go. I don’t have them so often, but when I do they are really exquisite. I feel them in my whole body from my head to my toes. I nearly always have at least four orgasms at one time, and the fourth is always the best. When I have a Saturn, it’s always the fourth. Dee loves penetration, but she does not generally come without some kind of clitoral stimulation, even if it’s fairly indirect. She didn’t relate her different kinds of orgasm to what was being done to her so much as to her emotional state, and she said she could rarely project in advance which kind she was likely to have. Dee’s desire to have direct stimulation on her clitoris at the same time as vaginal penetration is very common. Not many women say they are able to come from vaginal penetration alone. What makes one woman able to do this when others can’t? It might be simply physical differences in our bodies. In 1958, Dr. Kermit Krantz performed several autopsies on women and went to the trouble of counting the nerve endings in the pelvic area. He discovered quite enough variation in the distribution of the nerves to account for differing sexual responses.1 But, most likely, the inability to have an orgasm is a combination of physical factors and cultural conditioning from a society that has trained women to rein in their passion. I have attempted to address some of these issues in later chapters. Following my initial series of interviews, I identified several categories of orgasms, and I fed these categories back to the women I was interviewing. Here are some of the labels I assigned: • flying orgasms • wave orgasms • falling orgasms • pounding orgasms • surface orgasms • deep orgasms • disappearing orgasms • crying orgasms • throbbers • veets • blips These labels were the ones that generally received the most positive response from women (such as, “Yes, I think that describes what I experience.”). However, they are quite arbitrary, because I invented them only as a way of encouraging women to form words to describe their orgasms. And for every woman who told me that one or more of those particular words did describe her experience, there were other women who said, “No, I wouldn’t use that word.”

• From What My Bones Know (2022)

  CHAPTER 18 [image file=image_rsrc3E3.jpg] For five whole days, I was happy. Normal. When Joey mm-hmmed at me, I realized he was probably busy, and I went to talk to the cat instead. When I made a mistake in a freelance project and my editor pointed it out, I just fixed the thing and we moved on. I was cautiously optimistic. Some sources say it takes three to five years to feel substantially healed from C-PTSD, but I have always been precocious. Maybe I knocked all my healing out in three months. The fifth day was Saturday. It was our anniversary weekend, but Joey was too swamped with work to do much. It was his first year teaching middle school math—a Herculean task, as it turned out—and he was often busy and distracted. He was appropriately sorry and disappointed, but he said I should go have fun with my childhood best friend, Kathy. We’d celebrate later. Kathy still lives in California, but she was in New York on a business trip for a few days. We hadn’t seen each other yet because she’d been working a lot, too, and last night she was too tired to meet up. Today, she said she was finally ready to hang—but she’d invited other friends, people I’d never met. “We’re going on a soup dumpling crawl,” she said. “Jared says he knows all the best spots!” “Is Jared Chinese?” I asked. “No, he’s white.” “Really? You think a white dude knows the best spots in Flushing?” She shrugged diplomatically, didn’t say anything. When I showed up on Roosevelt Avenue, Kathy and her pals were recalling monumental burgers and bulgogis of yore, and I realized that this was their thing, food crawls. They’d been on so many together before. I’d never tried any of the restaurants they mentioned, so I had nothing to contribute. Jared said he knew about this incredible hole-in-the-wall with great lamb broth that we could try, too. “Oh, I also know this great place in the food court that has this really stinky, pungent, delicious seafood stew that I’ve never had anywhere else,” I added, but everyone ignored me, so I shut up. The worst part was that Jared actually did know all the good spots. I only knew Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao, but he knew about Joe’s Shanghai and Shanghai You Garden and a secret place with unique egg tarts, and the basement boiled lamb soup was very tasty. But instead of my mood improving with each delicious bite, I got more and more irritable. When they left for their second dessert, I said I had a stomachache from too many dumplings. I headed home, and when Joey asked me how it was, I said it was fine, but that I was too tired to talk. I picked out the dumbest movie I could find on Netflix, and even though I wasn’t hungry, I ate the leftover lamb noodles while Joey made a lesson plan beside me on the couch.

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  Taking turns pleasuring one another is a wonderful way to enjoy sex. But not all women have reciprocity as their goal. What if your partner doesn’t want to have an orgasm? Does that mean she identifies as a “stone butch”? Maybe. Maybe not. Why not ask her? You can’t predict gender identity by whether or not someone is orgasm-focused. See chapter 14, Gender (Not Destiny). It also doesn’t necessarily mean she’s shut down, self-hating, or unable to have orgasms. Ask your partner how she feels about orgasm and what kinds of sexual attention she likes for herself. She may share with you profound feelings about her gender and sexuality. She may feel completely gratified by your sexual encounter. After your strap-on stud has finished riding you through more orgasms than you can count, she may simply be spent. Truly, all I care about is pleasing my femme. Sometimes I don’t have any orgasms at all, and neither one of us feels that the session is missing anything. Now, if my girlfriend didn’t have an orgasm, I imagine that we would feel differently. We have different sexual roles. Your partner’s experience of your orgasm isn’t vicarious. Think of your partner’s lips, hand, or pelvis as a conduit for sexual energy. As your body is humming with orgasm, your partner is riding that wave with you. She may indeed feel your orgasm from her heart to the bottom of her toes. Multiple OrgasmsWomen can and do have multiple orgasms. Which doesn’t mean you should have multiple orgasms or even that multiple orgasms are more satisfying than ordinary single orgasms. I’m not multiorgasmic and that’s OK with me because the ones I already have nearly break the bank. But many women do find that one orgasm leads to another, with very little time elapsing in between. After she fucks me really hard, if my partner goes back to my clitoris and plays roughly with it, I will usually orgasm again, and again, and again…. Rather than relaxing into afterglow, these women go right back to the plateau stage and come over and over. Some women experience this as a series of smaller orgasms; others experience orgasms that increase in intensity and duration, leading up to a really big bang. Sometimes I have smaller orgasms before the big one. After the big one, I get ticklish and it’s hard to be touched. But if my partner works past that point I have powerful orgasms over and over.

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  • Touch yourself. Play with your clit while your girl’s going down on you, while she’s penetrating you, even while she’s touching you. • Breathe into your pelvis, move your pelvis, don’t clench—let go. • Fantasize. What are the images or scenarios that make you sizzle? It’s OK to fantasize during partner sex. You can invite your partner into your fantasy, too—tell her a story as she reaches for your clit. If you come only by your own hand or vibrator, you’re no less a sexual partner. You can incorporate masturbation into partner sex in a way that will be incredibly hot for both you and your partner. You’ll find suggestions throughout the book for what to do when your lover’s tongue or hands—or even her strap-on—get tired. (These will also help out with your partner’s fatigue and that pesky repetitive stress problem.) I need my vibrator; it’s very difficult for me to come by any other method. I can have an orgasm from oral sex, but it’s hard for my girlfriend to keep up the constant, unchanging stimulation that I need. I need repetitive movements, and it takes a while. If you don’t happen to have an earth-shattering orgasm every time your girlfriend makes love to you, it doesn’t mean that she’s a bad lover or that you’ve fallen out of love. It may be that you’re just not getting the right stimulation to send you over the edge. You may be too stressed. You may not know your partner well enough, trust her enough, trust yourself enough, or feel safe enough to give it up in that moment. Just how vulnerable you care to be varies from day to day. I don’t always have the most intense orgasms that I know I can have. It depends on my psychological readiness to be thoroughly opened. Orgasm is about pleasure. It’s not about your girlfriend’s reputation or bedpost notches—that’s her problem. That she may be gratified by your coming is great—but it’s not the point for you. However you come, how easily, how hard, how often, you have a sexuality that’s yours and yours alone. You’re not broken, gluttonous, selfish, oversexed, defective, or perverted (unless thinking of yourself in these terms turns you on). You needn’t compare yourself to some mythic example of sapphic perfection. If You Can’t Have an OrgasmIf you’ve never had an orgasm, or aren’t sure if you’ve had an orgasm, you may be preorgasmic, a term that presumes that you can become orgasmic. (See chapter 6, Masturbation, for suggestions on learning to orgasm.) There are many reasons why you may never have had an orgasm or may find it very difficult to reach orgasm. Chief among them are lack of information about your body and sexual response, dissociation, and trauma from sexual abuse.