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 The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  It curved in from under an archway of huge shade trees, then sped towards us down, down, quite sharply, past old Miss Opposite’s ivied brick house and high-sloping lawn (much trimmer than ours) and disappeared behind our own front porch which I could not see from where I happily belched and labored. The dandelions perished. A reek of sap mingled with the pineapple. Two little girls, Marion and Mabel, whose comings and goings I had mechanically followed of late (but who could replace my Lolita?) went toward the avenue (from which our Lawn Street cascaded), one pushing a bicycle, the other feeding from a paper bag, both talking at the top of their sunny voices. Leslie, old Miss Opposite’s gardener and chauffeur, a very amiable and athletic Negro, grinned at me from afar and shouted, re-shouted, commented by gesture, that I was mighty energetic to-day. The fool dog of the prosperous junk dealer next door ran after a blue car—not Charlotte’s. The prettier of the two little girls (Mabel, I think), shorts, halter with little to halt, bright hair—a nymphet, by Pan!—ran back down the street crumpling her paper bag and was hidden from this Green Goat by the frontage of Mr. and Mrs. Humbert’s residence. A station wagon popped out of the leafy shade of the avenue, dragging some of it on its roof before the shadows snapped, and swung by at an idiotic pace, the sweatshirted driver roof-holding with his left hand and the junkman’s dog tearing alongside. There was a smiling pause—and then, with a flutter in my breast, I witnessed the return of the Blue Sedan. I saw it glide downhill and disappear behind the corner of the house. I had a glimpse of her calm pale profile. It occurred to me that until she went upstairs she would not know whether I had gone or not. A minute later, with an expression of great anguish on her face, she looked down at me from the window of Lo’s room. By sprinting upstairs, I managed to reach that room before she left it. 18 When the bride is a widow and the groom is a widower; when the former has lived in Our Great Little Town for hardly two years, and the latter for hardly a month; when Monsieur wants to get the whole damned thing over with as quickly as possible, and Madame gives in with a tolerant smile; then, my reader, the wedding is generally a “quiet” affair.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Meanwhile, feeling reassured that Genji was no longer chasing her, Tamakazura saw her protector more often. And now she could not help noticing little details: Genji's robes seemed to glow, in pleasing and vibrant colors, as if dyed by unworldly hands. Hotaru's robes seemed drab by comparison. And the perfumes burned into Genji's garments, how intoxicating they were. No one else bore such a scent. Ho- taru's letters were polite and well written, but the letters Genji sent her were on magnificent paper, perfumed and dyed, and they quoted lines of poetry, always surprising yet always appropriate for the occasion. Genji also grew and gathered flowers—wild carnations, for instance—that he gave as gifts and that seemed to symbolize his unique charm. One evening Genji proposed to teach Tamakazura how to play the koto. She was delighted. She loved to read romance novels, and whenever Genji played the koto, she felt as if she were transported into one of her books. No one played the instrument better than Genji; she would be hon- ored to learn from him. Now he saw her often, and the method of his lessons was simple: she would choose a song for him to play, and then would try to imitate him. After they played, they would lie down side by side, their heads resting on the koto, staring up at the moon. Genji would have torches set up in the garden, giving the view the softest glow. The more Tamakazura saw of the court—of Prince Hotaru, the other For years after her entry into the palace, a large number of court-maidens were especially set aside for preparing Kuei-fei 's dresses, which were chosen and fashioned according to the flowers of the season. For instance, for New Year (spring) she had blossoms of apricot, plum and narcissus; for summer, she adopted the lotus; for autumn, she patterned them after the peony; for winter, she employed the chrysanthemum. Of jewelry she was fondest of pearls, and the finest products of the world found their way into her boudoir and were frequently embroidered on her numerous dresses. • Kuei- fei was the embodiment of all that was lovely and extravagant. No wonder that no king, prince, courtier or humble attendant who ever met her could resist the allurement of her charms. Besides, she was the most artful of women and knew how to use her natural gifts to the best purpose. . . . The Emperor Ming Huang, supreme in the land and with thousands of the most handsome maidens to choose from, became a complete slave to her magnetic powers . . . spending day and night in her company and giving up his whole kingdom for her sake. —SHU-CHIUNG, YANG KUEI- FEI: THE MOST FAMOUS BEAUTY OF CHINA Then [Pao-yu] called Bright Design to him and said to her, "Go and see what [Black Jade] is doing.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  In walking she seemed to float, her tiny steps invisible beneath her gown. She surprised that Black Jade did not take offense at what seemed to her a crude joke. • As Black Jade thought over the signif- icance of the handkerchiefs she was happy and sad by turns: happy because Pao- yu read her innermost thoughts and sad because she wondered if what was uppermost in her thoughts would ever be fulfilled. Thinking thus to herself of the future and of the past, she could not fall asleep. Despite Purple Cuckoo's remonstrances, she had her lamp relit and began to compose a series of quatrains, writing them directly on the handkerchiefs which Pao-yu had sent. —TSAO HSUEH CHIN, DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER, TRANSLATED BY CHI-CHEN WANG Pay Attention to Detail • 273 danced to perfection, wrote songs in his honor that she sang magnificently, had a way of looking at him that made his blood boil with desire. She quickly became his favorite. Yang Kuei-fei drove the emperor to distraction. He built palaces for her, spent all his time with her, satisfied her every whim. Before long his king- dom was bankrupt and ruined. Yang Kuei-fei was an artful seductress who had a devastating effect on all of the men who crossed her path. There were so many ways her presence charmed—the scents, the voice, the movements, the witty conversation, the artful glances, the embroidered gowns. These pleasurable details turned a mighty king into a distracted baby. Since time immemorial, women have known that within the most ap- parently self-possessed man is an animal whom they can lead by filling his senses with the proper physical lures. The key is to attack on as many fronts as possible. Do not ignore your voice, your gestures, your walk, your clothes, your glances. Some of the most alluring women in history have so distracted their victims with sensual detail that the men fail to notice it is all an illusion. From the 1940s on into the early 1960s, Pamela Churchill Harriman had a series of affairs with some of the most prominent and wealthy men in the world—Averill Harriman (whom years later she married), Gianni Agnelli (heir to the Fiat fortune), Baron Elie de Rothschild. What attracted these men, and kept them in thrall, was not her beauty or her lineage or her viva- cious personality, but her extraordinary attention to detail. It began with her attentive look as she listened to your every word, soaking up your tastes. Once she found her way into your home, she would fill it with your favorite flowers, get your chef to cook that dish you had tasted only in the finest restaurants. You mentioned an artist you liked?

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Make the harmony of the universe and union with God seem to confuse with physical harmony and the union between two people. If you can make the endgame of your seduction appear as a spiri- tual experience, you will heighten the physical pleasure and create a seduc- tion with a deep and lasting effect. he conveyed the girl to one of their beds, where he instructed her in the art of incarcerating that accursed fiend. • Never having put a single devil into Hell before, the girl found the first experience a little painful, and she said to Rustico: • "This devil must certainly be a bad lot, Father, and a true enemy of God, for as well as plaguing mankind, he even hurts Hell when he's driven back inside it. " • "Daughter," said Rustico, "it will not always be like that." And in order to ensure that it wouldn't, before moving from the bed they put him back half a dozen times, curbing his arrogance to such good effect that he was positively glad to keep still for the rest of the day. • During the next few days, however, the devil's pride frequently reared its head again, and the girl, ever ready to obey the call to duty and bring him under control, happened to develop a taste for the sport, and began saying to Rustico: • "I can certainly see what those worthy men in Gafsa meant when they said that serving God was so agreeable. I don't honestly recall ever having done anything that gave me so much pleasure and satisfaction as I get from putting the devil back in Hell. To my way of thinking, anyone who devotes his energies to anything but the service of God is a complete blockhead." • . . . And so, young ladies, if you stand in need of God's grace, see Use Spiritual Lures • 367 Symbol: The Stars in the sky. Objects of worship for cen- turies, and symbols of the sublime and divine. In contemplat- ing them, we are momentarily distracted from everything mundane and mortal. We feel lightness. Lift your tar- gets' minds up to the stars and they will not notice what is happening here on earth. Reversal L etting your targets feel that your affection is neither temporary nor superficial will often make them fall deeper under your spell. In some, though, it can arouse an anxiety: the fear of commitment, of a claustro- phobic relationship with no exits. Never let your spiritual lures seem to be leading in that direction, then. To focus attention on the distant future may implicitly constrict their freedom; you should be seducing them, not offer- ing to marry them. What you want is to make them lose themselves in the moment, experiencing the timeless depth of your feelings in the present tense.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  What would come later would be only airy remembrances of the thing called love she used to give me. I felt a kind of peace about Reva seeing her off that day. I’d cost her so much dignity, but the bounty she was now shoving into the trunk of the cab seemed to make up for it. I was absolved. She gave me a hug, kissed my cheek. “I’m proud of you,” she said. “I know you can get through this.” When she pulled away, there were tears in her eyes, maybe just from the cold. “I feel like I won the lottery!” She was happy. I watched her through the tinted glass, smiling and waving as she drove off. • • • AT THE BODEGA, I got two coffees and a piece of prepackaged carrot cake, bought all the garbage bags the Egyptians had in stock, then went back upstairs and packed everything up. Every book, every vase, every plate and bowl and fork and knife. All my videos, even the Star Trek collection. I knew I had to do it. The deep sleep I would soon enter required a completely blank canvas if I was to emerge from it renewed. I wanted nothing but white walls, bare floors, lukewarm tap water. I packed up all my tapes and CDs, my laptop, unmelted candles, all my pens and pencils, all my electric cords and rape whistles and Fodor’s guides to places I never went. I called the Jewish Women’s Council Thrift Shop and told them my aunt had died. Two guys came with a van an hour later, lugging the garbage bags four at a time into the hallway and out of my life forever. They took most of the furniture, too, including the coffee table and the bed frame. I got them to carry out the sofa and the armchair and leave them on the curb. The only pieces of furniture I kept were the mattress, the dining table, and a single aluminum folding chair with a cushion whose stained gray linen cover I threw down the trash chute. Ta-ta. What I kept for myself amounted to one set of towels, two sets of sheets, the duvet, three sets of pajamas, three pairs of cotton underpants, three bras, three pairs of socks, a comb for my hair, a box of Tide laundry detergent, a large bottle of Lubriderm moisturizing lotion. I bought a new toothbrush and four months’ worth of toothpaste and Ivory soap and toilet paper at Rite Aid. A four months’ supply of iron supplements, a women’s daily vitamin, aspirin. I bought packages of plastic cups and plates, plastic cutlery.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Thought to be a literary first novel by a poet, it was given an arty cover and printed in a rather small edition. If it had not been for the enthusiasm of the paperback editor—Elaine Koster, now a literary agent—who fell in love with the novel and bought it to reprint the following year, it might not have been given more than a token hardcover printing. Early reviews were mixed. Reviews were either wildly enthusiastic or horrified that a woman would “talk like that.” There were never enough copies in the pipeline. Whenever word of mouth took hold—for the novel was hotly debated from the time it appeared in galley proofs—it would go out of stock and be unavailable. There was a period of months when it clung to the lower reaches of the bestseller list and went out of stock again and again. Then John Updike praised it in the New Yorker and things began to shift. But unbeknownst to me, my publisher was preparing to leave the company. For several months his job as editor in chief and publisher was vacant while Fear of Flying became the book everyone had heard of but no one could obtain. At some point during that agonizing period, Henry Miller discovered Fear of Flying and wrote an enthusiastic essay about it in the New York Times. He called the novel the female version of Tropic of Cancer and predicted that it would change American writing. As a result of his generosity, he and I began a voluminous correspondence about writing. I discovered in Miller a literary soul mate whose friendship nurtured me in a chaotic time. When the paperback of Fear of Flying came out in November 1974, millions of copies were sold in the first few months. Eventually, Fear of Flying sold seven million copies in the U.S. alone and went on to become a bestseller all over the world. In the thirty years that have zoomed by, I have been struck by how similar the responses to the novel have been in vastly different cultures. Japanese, Chinese and Korean readers have been as enthusiastic about the book as French, Spanish, German, Italian and Yugoslavian readers. With the fall of communism, the novel became available in Poland, Czechoslovakia and the former Soviet Union. It has fascinated me to see how alike are the issues of sexual politics all over the world.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  His actis et rebus meis in illo cubiculo conditis pergens ipse ad balneas, ut prius aliquid nobis cibatui prospicerem, forum cupidinis peto inque eo piscatum opiparem expositum video et percontato pretio, quod centum nummis indicaret, aspernatus viginti denariis praestinavi. Inde me commodum egredientem con- tinuatur Pythias condiscipulus apud Athenas Atticas meus, qui me post aliquam multum temporis amanter agnitum invadit, amplexusque ac comiter deosculatus 40 j THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK I hard by is at your commandment, use it as your own ; then you shall both magnify our house by your deigning and shall gain to yourself good report, if, being contented with a humble lodging, you shall resemble and follow the virtuous qualities of your good father’s namesake Theseus, who disdained not the slender and poor cottage of old Hecale.” And then he called his maid, which was named Fotis, and said : * Carry this gentleman’s packet into the cham- ber and lay it up safely, and bring quickly from the cupboard oil to anoint him, and a towel to rub him, and other things necessary ; and then bring my guest to the nearest baths, for I know he is very weary of so long and difficult travel." These things when I heard, I partly perceived the manners and parsimony of Milo, and (endeavouring to bring myself further in his favour) I said: ** Sir, there is no need of any of these things, for they are everywhere my com- panions by the way ; and easily I shall enquire my way unto the baths, but my chief care is that my horse be well looked to, for he brought me hither roundly, and therefore, I pray thee, Fotis, take this money and buy some hay and oats for him." When this was done and all my things brought into the chamber, I walked towards the baths, but first I went to the provision market to buy some victuals for my supper, whereas I saw great plenty of fish set out to be sold, and so I cheapened part thereof, and that which they first held at an hundred pieces, I bought at length for twenty pence: which when I had done and was departing away, Pythias, one of mine old companions and fellow at Athens, fortuned to pass by, and viewing me a good space, in the end brought me kindly to his remembrance, and gently came and 4l LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Her body convulsed; overwhelmed with new sensations, totally at sea, she began to cry—out of happiness, she said. Flynn comforted her with a kiss and returned to his room above, in the same inexplicable way he had arrived. Now Blanca was hopelessly in love with him and would do anything he asked of her. A few weeks later, in fact, she followed him to Hollywood, where she went on to become a suc- cessful actress, known as Linda Christian. In 1942, an eighteen-year-old girl named Nora Eddington had a tem- porary job selling cigarettes at the Los Angeles County courthouse. The place was a madhouse at the time, teeming with tabloid journalists: two young girls had charged Errol Flynn with rape. Nora of course noticed Flynn, a tall, dashing man who occasionally bought cigarettes from her, but her thoughts were with her boyfriend, a young Marine. A few weeks later Flynn was acquitted, the trial ended, and the place settled down. A man she had met during the trial called her up one day: he was Flynn's right-hand man, and on Flynn's behalf, he wanted to invite her up to the actor's house on Mulholland Drive. Nora had no interest in Flynn, and in fact she was a little afraid of him, but a girlfriend who was dying to meet him talked her into going and bringing her along. What did she have to lose? Nora agreed to go. On the day, Flynn's friend showed up and drove them to a splendid house on top of a hill. When they arrived, Flynn was standing shirtless by his swimming pool. He came to greet her and her girlfriend, moving so gracefully—like a lithe cat—and his manner so relaxed, she felt her jitters melt away. He gave them a tour of the house, which was full of artifacts of his various sea voyages. He talked so delightfully of his love of adventure that she wished she had had adventures of her own. He was the perfect gentleman, and even let her talk about her boyfriend without the slightest sign of jealousy. Nora had a visit from her boyfriend the next day. Somehow he didn't seem so interesting anymore; they had a fight and broke up on the spot.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  He would establish a capital on the Dnieper River, Ekaterinoslav ("To the glory of Catherine"), that would rival St. Petersburg and would house a university outshining anything in Europe. The countryside would hold endless fields of corn, or- chards with rare fruits from the Orient, silkworm farms, new towns with bustling marketplaces. On a visit to the empress in 1785, Potemkin talked of these things as if they already existed, so vivid were his descriptions. The empress was delighted, but her ministers were skeptical—Potemkin loved to talk. Ignoring their warnings, in 1787 Catherine arranged for a tour of the area. She asked Joseph II to join her—he would be so impressed with the modernization of the Crimea that he would immediately sign on for the war against Turkey. Potemkin, naturally, was to organize the whole affair. And so, in May of that year, after the Dnieper had thawed, Catherine prepared for a journey from Kiev, in the Ukraine, to Sebastopol, in the Crimea. Potemkin arranged for seven floating palaces to carry Catherine and her retinue down the river. The journey began, and as Catherine, Joseph, and the courtiers looked at the shores to either side, they saw tri- umphal arches in front of clean-looking towns, their walls freshly painted; healthy-looking cattle grazing in the pastures; streams of marching troops on the roads; buildings going up everywhere. At dusk they were enter- tained by bright-costumed peasants, and smiling girls with flowers in their hair, dancing on the shore. Catherine had traveled through this area many years before, and the poverty of the peasantry there had saddened her—she had determined then that she would somehow change their lot. To see be- fore her eyes the signs of such a transformation overwhelmed her, and she berated Potemkin's critics: Look at what my favorite has accomplished, look at these miracles! They anchored at three towns along the way, staying in each place in a magnificent, newly built palace with artificial waterfalls in the English-style gardens. On land they moved through villages with vibrant marketplaces; the peasants were happily at work, building and repairing. Everywhere they spent the night, some spectacle filled their eyes—dances, parades, mytho- logical tableaux vivants, artificial volcanoes illuminating Moorish gardens. Finally, at the end of the trip, in the palace at Sebastopol, Catherine and express realized before him in movements and surprising transformations— standing, kneeling, sitting, reclining, serious, sad, playful, ecstatic, contrite, alluring, threatening, anxious, one pose follows another without a break. She knows how to arrange the folds of her veil to match each mood, and has a hundred ways of turning it into a headdress. The old knight idolizes her and is quite enthusiastic about everything she does.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  at their tastes and predilections. Genji knew he was dealing with a young that he happened to have around. " Black Jade was girl who loved romantic novels; his wild flowers, koto playing, and poetry even more puzzled, and brought their world to life for her. Attend to your targets' every move and then it suddenly dawned desire, and reveal your attentiveness in the details and objects you surround upon her: Pao-yu knew them with, filling their senses with the mood you need to inspire. They can that she would weep for him and so sent two argue with your words, but not with the effect you have on their senses. handkerchiefs of his own. • "You can leave them, then," she said to Bright Design, who in turn was 272 • The Art of Seduction surprised that Black Jade Therefore in my view when the courtier wishes to declare did not take offense at his love he should do so by his actions rather than by what seemed to her a crude speech, for a man's feelings are sometimes more clearly re-joke. • As Black Jade vealed by . . . a gesture of respect or a certain shyness than thought over the significance of the handkerchiefs by volumes of words. she was happy and sad by —BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE turns: happy because Pao- yu read her innermost thoughts and sad because she wondered if what was Keys to Seduction uppermost in her thoughts would ever be fulfilled. Thinking thus to herself of the future and of the past, When we were children, our senses were much more active. The colors of a new toy, or a spectacle such as a circus, held us in thrall; a she could not fall asleep. smell or a sound could fascinate us. In the games we created, many of them Despite Purple Cuckoo's remonstrances, she had her reproducing something in the adult world on a smaller scale, what pleasure lamp relit and began to we took in orchestrating every detail. We noticed everything. compose a series of As we grow older our senses get dulled. We no longer notice as much, quatrains, writing them for we are constantly hurrying to get things done, to move on to the next directly on the handkerchiefs which task. In seduction, you are always trying to bring the target back to the Pao-yu had sent. golden moments of childhood. A child is less rational, more easily de- — T S A O H S U E H C H I N , ceived. A child is also more attuned to the pleasures of the senses. So when DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER, your targets are with you, you must never give them the feeling they nor-TRANSLATED BY C H I - C H E N WANG

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  A few weeks later the king was inspecting the royal stables when he caught sight of a young man who was new to the court: the twenty-two-year-old George Villiers, a member of the lower nobility. The courtiers who accompanied the king that day watched the king's eyes following Villiers, and saw with what interest he asked about this young man. Indeed everyone had to agree that he was a most handsome youth, with the face of an angel and a charmingly childish manner. When news of the king's interest in Villiers reached the conspirators, they instantly knew they had found what they had been looking for: a young man who could seduce the king and supplant the dreaded favorite. Left to nature, though, the seduction would never happen. They had to help it along. So, without telling Villiers of their plan, they befriended him. King James was the son of Mary Queen of Scots. His childhood had been a nightmare: his father, his mother's favorite, and his own regents had all been murdered; his mother had first been exiled, later executed. When James was young, to escape suspicion he played the part of a fool. He hated the sight of a sword and could not stand the slightest sign of argument. When his cousin Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603, leaving no heir, he became king of England. James surrounded himself with bright, happy young men, and seemed to prefer the company of boys. In 1612, his son, Prince Henry, died. The king was inconsolable. He needed distraction and good cheer, and his favorite, the Earl of Somerset, was no longer so young and attractive. The timing for a seduction was perfect. And so the conspirators went to work on Villiers, under the guise of trying to help him advance within the court. They supplied him with a magnificent wardrobe, jewels, a glittering carriage, the kind of things the king noticed. They worked on his riding, Effect a Regression • 347 fencing, tennis, dancing, his skills with birds and dogs. He was instructed in the art of conversation—how to flatter, tell a joke, sigh at the right moment. Fortunately Villiers was easy to work with; he had a naturally buoyant manner and nothing seemed to bother him. That same year the conspirators managed to get him appointed the royal cup-bearer: every night he poured out the king's wine, so that the king could see him up close. After a few weeks, the king was in love. The boy seemed to crave attention and tenderness, exactly what he yearned to offer. How wonderful it would be to mold and educate him. And what a perfect figure he had!

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  CR: To be honest, we’re surprised and thrilled at the reception. Of course, I’ve got a Google alert set to the title, so I see most of the blog discussions, reviews on Amazon.com and GoodReads, etc. Overall, people seem to be very positive about the book. Much more than we’d expected. We figured we’d get about 50 percent hate mail and 50 percent non-hate mail, but probably 90 percent of the people who’ve written to us have been very, very kind in their comments. Some of the emails are heartbreaking. A lot of them along the lines of, “Damn, I wish I’d known all this when I was young!” One I’ll never forget said, simply, “I’m a sixty-three-year-old widow and I consider this one of the most important books I’ve ever read. I wish I could live my life over with this information.” We get a lot of messages that relate to what you said earlier, about how people feel better when they can understand why they feel as they do. Why they can honestly love their partner but still feel attracted to other people. Seriously, the response from readers has been mind-blowing. DS: But surely not all positive. CR: No, and maybe this is still the calm before the storm. There hasn’t been much negative response from the academic community—at least not the evolutionary psychology crowd we critique in our book: Pinker, Buss, Chagnon, and those guys. We’ve received lovely messages from people like Frans de Waal and Sarah Hrdy—certainly two of the most prominent authorities in the evolution of human sexuality—although they don’t necessarily agree with everything we wrote. On the other hand, Alan Dixson, a prominent primatologist we quote extensively, trashed us in an interview he gave to a paper in New Zealand, but he admitted he hadn’t read the book, he was just responding to what he’d heard about it. That’s been sort of typical of the most negative critical responses so far. They admit they haven’t read Sex at Dawn, but they dismiss it anyway. Megan McArdle, the business and economics editor at The Atlantic, wrote what is probably the most negative review to date, and she openly admitted she was only halfway through the book when she wrote it. DS: I saw that! “Humans aren’t like bonobos…because we’re not like bonobos!” CR: Right. Rock-solid logic there, no? She apparently felt so threatened by the book that she couldn’t think straight. I mean, she accused us of leaving out any discussion of jealousy as it didn’t fit our model, somehow missing Chapter 10, which is called “Jealousy: A Beginner’s Guide to Coveting Thy Neighbor’s Spouse.” But as I said, the negative response has been much less than we were expecting, and is understandable; lots of people feel threatened by the arguments we’ve made.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  We squeaked the springs of the secondhand bed which Brian, with trembling anticipation, had bought two weeks earlier from a Puerto Rican junk dealer on Columbus Avenue. In the end, of course, I had to seduce him. I’m sure that from Eden onward it has never been any different. Afterward I cried and felt guilty and Brian comforted me as men have probably comforted the virgins who seduced them throughout the centuries. We lay there in the candlelight (in his romanticism or perhaps innate sense of symbolism, Brian lit a taper on the night table before we undressed each other) and listened to the whining of alley cats in the cement well beyond the soot-blackened window. Sometimes one of the cats would leap on an overfull can of garbage and knock an empty beer can to the ground, and the sound of the hollow tin on the pavement would echo through the room. In the beginning our romance was fine and spiritual and adolescent. (In later times we were to sound more like the dialogue from a Strindberg play.) We used to read poetry to each other in bed, discuss the difference between life and art, ponder whether or not Yeats would have become a great poet if Maud Gonne had, in fact, married him. Spring found us taking a Shakespeare course together as I suppose all young lovers should. One brilliant but slightly chilly day in April we read The Winter’s Tale aloud to each other sitting on a bench in Riverside Park. When daffodils begin to peer, With heigh! The doxy over the dale— Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year, For the red blood peers in the winter’s pale… The lark that tirra-lyra chants— With heigh! With heigh! The thrush and the jay— Are the summer songs for me and my aunts, While we lie tumbling in the hay. Brian was busy playing Florizel to my Perdita (“These your unusual weeds to each part of you/Do give a life—no shepherdess, but Flora/Peering in April’s front…”) when a whole tribe of urchins—black and Puerto Rican kids about eight or nine years old—were attracted by our reading and distributed themselves on the bench and the grass near us, seemingly entranced by our performance. One of the kids sat at my feet and looked up at me worshipfully. I was thrilled. So poetry was, after all, the universal voice! There was something in Shakespeare which could appeal to even the most naive, untutored ear. All my beliefs seemed vindicated. I read with new inspiration: Yet nature is made better by no mean But nature makes that mean. So o’er that art Which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentler scion to the wildest stock And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of noble race. This is an art Which does mend nature—change it rather; but The art itself is nature.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Though crusty old Ed Sullivan would have been scandalized to realize what he was saying when he announced this new “rock and roll all the kids are crazy about,” examples of barely concealed sexual reference lurking just below the surface of common American English don’t stop there. Robert Farris Thompson, America’s most prominent historian of African art, says that funky is derived from the Ki-Kongo lu-fuki, meaning “positive sweat” of the sort you get from dancing or having sex, but not working. One’s mojo, which has to be “working” to attract a lover, is Ki-Kongo for “soul.” Boogie comes from mbugi, meaning “devilishly good.” And both jazz and jism likely derive from dinza, the Ki-Kongo word for “to ejaculate.”6 Forget the billions pouring in from porn. Forget all the T&A on TV, in advertising, and in movies. Forget the love songs we sing on the way into relationships and the blues on the way out. Even if we include none of that, the percentage of our lives we human beings spend thinking about, planning, having, and remembering sex is incomparably greater than that of any other creature on the planet. Despite our relatively low reproductive potential (few women have ever had more than a dozen or so children), our species truly can, and does, rock around the clock. If I had had to choose my place of birth, I would have chosen a state in which everyone knew everyone else, so that neither the obscure tactics of vice nor the modesty of virtue could have escaped public scrutiny and judgment. JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality” (1754) Rousseau was born in the wrong time, wrong place. If he’d been born in the same spot twenty thousand years earlier, among the artists sketching life-sized bulls on European cave walls, he’d have known every member of his social world. Alternatively, born into his own era but in one of the many societies not yet altered by agriculture, he’d have found the close-knit social world for which he yearned. The sense of being alone—even in a crowded city—is an oddity in human life, included, like so much else, in the agricultural package. Looking back from his overcrowded world, Thomas Hobbes imagined that prehistoric human life was unbearably solitary. Today, separated from countless strangers by only thin walls, tiny earphones, and hectic schedules, we assume a desolate sense of isolation must have weighed on our ancestors, wandering over their windswept prehistoric landscape. But in fact, this seemingly common-sense assumption couldn’t be more mistaken.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Dan Savage: You know how every once in a while you see a movie or you read a book or an article in a magazine—or perhaps some advice in an advice column—and you think, “Oh my god, I’m not crazy!”? I’ve just had that experience reading your book. I don’t know how to start this interview with you but by gushing. I understand that you’re married to a woman, but where have you been all my life? Christopher Ryan: (laughing) I’ve been trying to get your attention for the past couple of years! DS: I’ve been reading your book and screaming and yelling and jumping up and down. I feel so vindicated by the research that you guys have done because for years, I’ve been pointing out just from observation and anecdotal evidence that monogamy is hard, doesn’t work, and makes people kind of miserable. And yet we’re told it should come easily and naturally when we’re in love, that a monogamous commitment is effortless where there’s love. And you guys have demonstrated that this is simply not true. CR: That’s our conclusion. DS: What inspired you to write this book, to paint this bull’s-eye on your backs? Because you are going to get criticized from all sides. CR: I guess what got me into this line of thinking initially was the Clinton-Lewinsky situation. I was thinking, How is it possible that if men have had all the power—political, economic, even physical power—since the beginning of time, how is it that the most powerful man in the world is being publicly humiliated for having a consensual sexual relationship with someone? It just didn’t make sense. So that led me to investigate evolutionary psychology. For the first year or so, I had the passion of the convert. I thought it explained everything. Luckily, at the time, I was living in San Francisco, working for a nonprofit organization called Women in Community Service. I was one of the only men working there. Consequently, I had lots of very intelligent, outspoken women around me who helped me see that the depiction of female sexuality that is fundamental to evolutionary psychology really doesn’t make much sense at all. DS: And what is the picture painted of female sexuality? You say in the book that “women are whores”—that’s what they’re telling us. CR: We don’t say that! We half-jokingly say that Darwin says women are whores, in that they supposedly trade sex for stuff: protection, food, status, and so on, according to the conventional Darwinian view. We argue that women aren’t whores by nature; they’re sluts…and we mean that as a compliment! In other words, women evolved to have sex for the same reasons men do—because they like it. It feels good. Not because they’re trying to get something from men.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  Reva now wore a big red fleece robe. She had done her hair and makeup already. I was still in the towel, under the covers. I took the quiche and ate it while Reva sat on the edge of the bed. She prattled on about her mother, that she never appreciated her mother’s artistic talent. It was going to be a long afternoon. “She could have been great, you know? But in her generation, women were expected to be mothers and stay at home. She gave her life up just for me. Her watercolors are amazing, though. Don’t you think?” “They’re decent amateur watercolors, yeah,” I said. “How was the shower?” “No soap,” I said. “Did you find any shoes I can borrow?” “You should go up there and look yourself,” said Reva. “I really don’t want to.” “Just go up there and pick something. I don’t know what you want.” I refused. “You’re going to make me go back up there?” “You said you’d bring me some options.” “I can’t look in her closet. It’s too upsetting. Will you just go look?” “No. I’m not comfortable doing that, Reva. I can just stay here if you want and miss the funeral, I guess.” I put down the quiche. “Okay, fine, I’ll go,” Reva sighed. “What do you need?” “Shoes, stockings, some kind of shirt.” “What kind of shirt?” “Black, I guess.” “Okay. But if you don’t like what I bring down, don’t blame me.” “I’m not going to blame you, Reva. I don’t care.” “Just don’t blame me,” she repeated. She got up, leaving little bits of red fuzz on the bed where she’d been sitting. I got out of bed and looked inside the bag from Bloomingdale’s. The suit was made of stiff rayon. The necklace was nothing I’d ever wear. The Infermiterol seemed to ruin my usual good taste in things, although the white fur coat was interesting to me. It had personality. How many foxes had to die, I wondered. And how did they kill them so that their blood didn’t stain their fur? Maybe Ping Xi could have answered that question, I thought. How cold would it have to be to freeze a live white fox? I tore the tags off the bra and panties and put them on. My pubic hair puffed out the panties. It was a good joke—sexy underwear with a huge bush. I wished I had my Polaroid camera to capture the image. The lightheartedness in that wish struck me, and for a moment I felt joyful, and then I felt completely exhausted. When Reva came back with her arms full of shoes and shirts and an unopened package of flesh-colored nylons from the eighties, I handed her the necklace. “I got you something,” I said, “to condole you.” Reva dropped everything on the bed and opened the box.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  With her brown bobbed hair, luminous gray eyes and pale skin, she looked perfectly charming. Her hips were no bigger than those of a squatting lad; in fact, I do not hesitate to say (and indeed this is the reason why I linger gratefully in that gauze-gray room of memory with little Monique) that among the eighty or so grues I had had operate upon me, she was the only one that gave me a pang of genuine pleasure. “Il était malin, celui qui a inventé ce truc-là,” she commented amiably, and got back into her clothes with the same high-style speed. I asked for another, more elaborate, assignment later the same evening, and she said she would meet me at the corner café at nine, and swore she had never posé un lapin in all her young life. We returned to the same room, and I could not help saying how very pretty she was to which she answered demurely: “Tu es bien gentil de dire ça” and then, noticing what I noticed too in the mirror reflecting our small Eden —the dreadful grimace of clenched-teeth tenderness that distorted my mouth—dutiful little Monique (oh, she had been a nymphet all right!) wanted to know if she should remove the layer of red from her lips avant qu’on se couche in case I planned to kiss her. Of course, I planned it. I let myself go with her more completely than I had with any young lady before, and my last vision that night of long-lashed Monique is touched up with a gaiety that I find seldom associated with any event in my humiliating, sordid, taciturn love life. She looked tremendously pleased with the bonus of fifty I gave her as she trotted out into the April night drizzle with Humbert Humbert lumbering in her narrow wake. Stopping before a window display she said with great gusto: “Je vais m’acheter des bas!” and never may I forget the way her Parisian childish lips exploded on “bas,” pronouncing it with an appetite that all but changed the “a” into a brief buoyant bursting “o” as in “bot.” I had a date with her next day at 2.15 P.M. in my own rooms, but it was less successful, she seemed to have grown less juvenile, more of a woman overnight. A cold I caught from her led me to cancel a fourth assignment, nor was I sorry to break an emotional series that threatened to burden me with heart-rending fantasies and peter out in dull disappointment. So let her remain, sleek, slender Monique, as she was for a minute or two: a delinquent nymphet shining through the matter-of-fact young whore. My brief acquaintance with her started a train of thought that may seem pretty obvious to the reader who knows the ropes.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  That night, Flynn took her out on the town, to the famous Mocambo nightclub. He was drinking and joking, and she fell into the spirit, and hap- physical female. Nothing more than that. When you get hold of that—hang on to it, for a short while." —EARL CONRAD, ERROL FLYNN: A MEMOIR A sweet disorder in the dress \ Kindles in clothes a wantonness: \ A lawn about the shoulders thrown \ Into a fine distraction: \ An erring lace, which here and there \ Enthralls the crimson stomacher: \ A cuff neglectful, and thereby \ Ribbands to flow confusedly: \ A winning wave (deserving note) \ In the tempestuous petticoat: \ A careless shoestring, in whose tie \ I see a wild civility: \ Do more bewitch me, than when art \ Is too precise in every part. —ROBERT HERRICK,"DELIGHT IN DISORDER," QUOTED IN PETER WASHINGTON, ED., EROTIC POEMS Satni, the son of Pharaoh Usimares, saw a very beautiful woman on the plain-stones of the temple. He called his page, and said, "Go and tell her that I, Pharaoh's son, shall give her ten pieces of gold to spend an hour with me." "I am a Pure One, I am not a low person," answers the Lady Thubuit. "If you wish to have your pleasure with me, you will come to my house at Bubastis. Everything will be ready there." Satni went to Bubastis by boat. "By my life," said Thubuit, "come upstairs with me." On the upper floor, sanded with dust of lapis lazuli and turquoise, Satni saw several beds covered with royal linen and many gold 400 • The Art of Seduction pily let him touch her hand. Then suddenly she panicked. "I'm a Catholic and a virgin," she blurted out, "and some day I'm going to walk down the church aisle wearing a veil—and if you think you're going to sleep with me, you're mistaken." Totally calm and unruffled, Flynn said she had noth- ing to fear. He simply liked being with her. She relaxed, and politely asked him to put his hand back. Over the next few weeks she saw him almost every day. She became his secretary. Soon she was spending weekend nights as his house guest. He took her on skiing and boating trips. He remained the perfect gentleman, but when he looked at her or touched her hand, she felt overwhelmed by an exhilarating sensation, a tingling on her skin that she compared to stepping into a cold-needle shower on a red-hot day. Soon she was going to church less often, drifting away from the life she had known. Although outwardly nothing had changed between them, inwardly all semblance of resistance to him had melted away. One night, after a party, she succumbed.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Now Lancelot had his every wish: the queen willingly sought his company and affection as he held her in his arms and she held him in hers. Her love-play seemed so gentle and good to him, both her kisses and caresses, that in truth the two of them felt a joy and wonder of which has never been heard or known. But I shall let it remain a secret for ever, since it should not be written of: the most delightful and choicest pleasure is that which is hinted at, but never told. —CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES, ARTHURIAN ROMANCES, TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM W. KIBLER He was sometimes so intellectual that I felt myself annihilated as a woman; at other times he was so wild and passionate, so desiring, that I almost trembled 388 • The Art of Seduction intrusive. If you are always in their face, always the aggressor, they will be- come used to being passive, and the tension in your seduction will flag. Use letters to make them think about you all the time, to feed their imagina- tion. Cultivate mystery—stop them from figuring you out. Baudelaire's let- ters were delightfully ambiguous, mixing the physical and the spiritual, teasing Sabatier with their multiplicity of possible interpretations. Then, at the point when they are ripe with desire and interest, when perhaps they are expecting you to make a move—as Madame Sabatier ex- pected that day in her apartment—take a step back. You are unexpectedly distant, friendly but no more than that—certainly not sexual. Let this sink in for a day or two. Your withdrawal will trigger anxiety; the only way to relieve this anxiety is to pursue and possess you. Step back now and you make your targets fall into your arms like ripe fruit, blind to the force of gravity that is drawing them to you. The more they participate, the more their willpower is engaged, the deeper the erotic effect. You have chal- lenged them to use their own seductive powers on you, and when they re- spond, the tables will turn and they will pursue you with desperate energy. / retreat and thereby teach her to be victorious as she pur- sues me. I continually fall back, and in this backward movement I teach her to know through me all the powers of erotic love, its turbulent thoughts, its passion, what longing is, and hope, and impatient expectancy. —SØREN KIERKEGAARD Keys to Seduction S ince humans are naturally obstinate and willful creatures, and prone to suspicions of people's motives, it is only natural, in the course of any se- duction, that in some ways your target will resist you.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Inject a certain lightness into the roles you are playing; try to create a sense of drama and illusion; confuse people with the slight unreality of words and gestures inspired by fiction; in daily life, be the consummate ac- tor. Our culture reveres actors because of their freedom to play roles. It is something that all of us envy. For years, the Cardinal de Rohan had been afraid that he had somehow offended his queen, Marie Antoinette. She would not so much as look at him. Then, in 1784, the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois suggested to him that 306 • The Art of Seduction the queen was prepared not only to change this situation but actually to be- friend him. The queen, said Lamotte-Valois, would indicate this in her next formal reception—she would nod to him in a particular way. During the reception, Rohan indeed noticed a slight change in the queen's behavior toward him, and a barely perceptible glance at him. He was overjoyed. Now the countess suggested they exchange letters, and Ro- han spent days writing and rewriting his first letter to the queen. To his de- light he received one back. Next the queen requested a private interview with him in the gardens of Versailles. Rohan was beside himself with hap- piness and anxiety. At nightfall he met the queen in the gardens, fell to the ground, and kissed the hem of her dress. "You may hope that the past will be forgotten," she said. At this moment they heard voices approaching, and the queen, frightened that someone would see them together, quickly fled with her servants. But Rohan soon received a request from her, again through the countess: she desperately wanted to acquire the most beautiful diamond necklace ever created. She needed a go-between to purchase it for her, since the king thought it too expensive. She had chosen Rohan for the task. The cardinal was only too willing; in performing this task he would prove his loyalty, and the queen would be indebted to him forever. Rohan acquired the necklace. The countess was to deliver it to the queen. Now Rohan waited for the queen both to thank him and slowly to pay him back. Yet this never happened. The countess was in fact a grand swindler; the queen had never nodded to him, he had only imagined it. The letters he had received from her were forgeries, and not even very good ones. The woman he had met in the park had been a prostitute paid to dress and act the part. The necklace was of course real, but once Rohan had paid for it, and handed it over to the countess, it disappeared.