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 Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  I lifted my head. “How does he know I’m going to like it?” After all, Pop Tingle was a top, through and through. What cocksucking experience could he have? None! “Take it into your mouth, Bottom,” Mr. Jack whispered. “You will like it. You’re a natural sissy. All sissies like to suck cock. You’ll see.” “Suck him, Bottom,” Pop Tingle ordered. I let Mr. Jack’s cock slide along my tongue. I pulled my head back and went down again. His cock was filling my mouth. I teased his cock with my lips, then I licked down the shaft. I was in ecstasy. “You’ll suck Jack-Off until he comes, Bottom,” Pop Tingle said. “You’re going to swallow his cum. Meanwhile, I’ll be giving you your present. He held an elegant wooden gift box, which he opened to reveal a golden prostate massager. The goldplated massager did not vibrate but had fluid curves, and it was the smoothest metal I’d ever felt. Pop Tingle warmed it between his hands, and then he coated it with a thick lubricant. I slid my lips over Mr. Jack’s dick while Pop Tingle inserted his finger through the massager’s ringed end and slid it into my ass. Delicious feelings swept over me. I went down hard on Mr. Jack, sucking him ravenously. Pop Tingle slowly worked the massager inside of me. My body was a rapture of sensation. I felt Mr. Jack’s cock slacken for three seconds before it stiffened to supreme hardness. As I worried the head with my lips, it twitched. A hot tasty fluid covered my tongue. I swallowed it down while deep pleasure sensations filled my ass. My cock was not fully hard, but it was dripping cum. Delirious pleasure swept over me. More cum was in my mouth and I savored it before I swallowed. Meanwhile Pop Tingle kept massaging me with the golden tool, driving me to pinnacles of sexual rapture that were beyond imagining. Shortly after that day, I became aware of how much I’d changed. I’d been a good student in high school with all that implies: conformist, mundane, lackadaisical and ordinary. While I lived on the street I hadn’t read serious works, nor had I exercised my brain much. Pop Tingle gave me the leisure for study. He owned an impressive library, and one day I picked up a copy of Emerson’s Essays. I struggled through “Self-Reliance” until I had a fair idea what Emerson meant. I dipped into Thoreau, enjoying Walden and coming alive with “Civil Disobedience.” For the next six months I read my way through the greatest American authors, the profound and the downright fun. Meanwhile, Mr. Jack watched old movies. I watched classic films with him, but mostly I read. I moved into British literature, philosophy, history and religious studies.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  I spurted. And I continued to spurt through spasm after spasm. Because I was young. Because it had been so long. Because I wanted this man. And Craig took it all, took my essence, drew my boyhood into him. I screamed “Daddy,” and then clutched Craig in my crotch as I softened and my breathing subsided. I let go and he sat cross-legged in front of me. I leaned over and ran my fingers through his hair, a gentle caress of deep appreciation. Daddy stepped to the side and kissed me. I folded back into the bed, feet hanging over the side, and Craig joined me. Daddy reached for the bottles of water. I took one with trembling hands. “No, thanks,” Craig said. “I want to savor this boy as long as I can.” He ran his tongue languidly around his lips. Daddy nodded and drained his bottle. He leaned against the dresser and gazed at us. “You make a nice couple,” he said. My eyes widened. “Thanks,” Craig said. Silence hung in the air, not threatening, somehow welcoming. Finally, Daddy spoke in a unique, melodious flow of dulcet tones. “I’d like Craig to be your Hawaii Daddy. And I have to go away on business in two months. Perhaps Craig can come to California and keep an eye on you. How’s that sit with both of you?” Craig and I locked eyes. “Great. Very great,” Craig said. “Yes, Sir,” I answered. We remained motionless for a few seconds, absorbing our new situation. Craig broke the silence. “Can I give your boy a bracelet that matches his collar?” Daddy looked at me. My eyes said yes. “We’d both like that,” Daddy said. He drew Craig into a bear hug with me between them. I was glad I was shorter, so they wouldn’t see yet another shit-eatin’ grin. And a solitary, salty tear. Yes, a boy can have two Daddies. MEN OF THE OPEN ROAD Landon Dixon I was only a mile out of town when the first car stopped. It was a Benz, the driver a businessman in a flawless pin-striped suit and flashy pink tie. He had rings on his fingers, his white hair was perfectly coiffed, soft and flowing; his green eyes smiled into mine. For a guy over fifty, his face was smooth and young looking, though tanned a golden brown. “Where you headed?” he asked, as I filled the open passengerside window with my blond-haired head and broad, bare shoulders. Ignoring the ringing of his cell phone, he looked me over. “West,” I responded vaguely. “Then get in. I’m headed out to my cottage. I can take you about thirty miles down the road.” “Sounds good,” I said, and pulled the door open and slid into the leather bucket seat next to him.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Despite her advanced age, she was more of a nymphet than ever, with her apricot-colored limbs, in her sub-teen tennis togs! Winged gentlemen! No hereafter is acceptable if it does not produce her as she was then, in that Colorado resort between Snow and Elphinstone, with everything right: the white wide little-boy shorts, the slender waist, the apricot midriff, the white breast-kerchief whose ribbons went up and encircled her neck to end behind in a dangling knot leaving bare her gaspingly young and adorable apricot shoulder blades with that pubescence and those lovely gentle bones, and the smooth, downward-tapering back. Her cap had a white peak. Her racket had cost me a small fortune. Idiot, triple idiot! I could have filmed her! I would have had her now with me, before my eyes, in the projection room of my pain and despair! She would wait and relax for a bar or two of white-lined time before going into the act of serving, and often bounced the ball once or twice, or pawed the ground a little, always at ease, always rather vague about the score, always cheerful as she so seldom was in the dark life she led at home. Her tennis was the highest point to which I can imagine a young creature bringing the art of make-believe, although I daresay, for her it was the very geometry of basic reality. The exquisite clarity of all her movements had its auditory counterpart in the pure ringing sound of her every stroke. The ball when it entered her aura of control became somehow whiter, its resilience somehow richer, and the instrument of precision she used upon it seemed inordinately prehensile and deliberate at the moment of clinging contact. Her form was, indeed, an absolutely perfect imitation of absolutely top-notch tennis—without any utilitarian results. As Edusa’s sister, Electra Gold, a marvelous young coach, said to me once while I sat on a pulsating hard bench watching Dolores Haze toying with Linda Hall (and being beaten by her): “Dolly has a magnet in the center of her racket guts, but why the heck is she so polite?” Ah, Electra, what did it matter, with such grace! I remember at the very first game I watched being drenched with an almost painful convulsion of beauty assimilation. My Lolita had a way of raising her bent left knee at the ample and springy start of the service cycle when there would develop and hang in the sun for a second a vital web of balance between toed foot, pristine armpit, burnished arm and far back-flung racket, as she smiled up with gleaming teeth at the small globe suspended so high in the zenith of the powerful and graceful cosmos she had created for the express purpose of falling upon it with a clean resounding crack of her golden whip.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I breathed into his mouth again—a strange sensation, intimate and yet symbolic, tasting his lips in an impersonal and disinterested way. Then I massaged his chest, with deep, almost offensive pressure, one hand on top of the other; and already he had come back to life. It had all been so rapid and inevitable that it was only when he was breathing regularly and we had laid him down on a coat and done up his fly that I felt shaken by a surge of delayed elation. I raced up the steps into mild sunshine and hung around waiting for the ambulance, unable to stop grinning, my hands trembling. Even so, it was too soon to understand. I told myself that I had scooped someone back from the threshold of death, but that seemed incommensurate with the simple routine I had followed, the vital little drill retained from childhood along with all the more complex knowledge that would never prove so useful—convection, sonata form, the names of birds in Latin and French. The Corinthian Club in Great Russell Street is the masterpiece of the architect Frank Orme, whom I once met at my grandfather’s. I remember he carried on in a pompous and incongruous way, having recently, and as if by mistake, been awarded a knighthood. Even as a child I saw him as a fraud and a hotchpotch, and I was delighted, when I joined the Club and learned that he had designed it, to discover just the same qualities in his architecture. Like Orme himself, the edifice is both mean and self-important; a paradox emphasised by the modest resources of the Club in the 1930s and its conflicting aspiration to civic grandeur. As you walk along the pavement you look down through the railings into an area where steam issues from the ventilators and half-open toplights of changing-rooms and kitchens; you hear the slam of large institutional cooking trays, the hiss of showers, the inane confidence of radio disc-jockeys. The ground floor has a severe manner, the Portland stone punctuated by green-painted metal-framed windows; but at the centre it gathers to a curvaceous, broken-pedimented doorway surmounted by two finely developed figures—one pensively Negroid, the other inspiredly Caucasian—who hold between them a banner with the device ‘Men Of All Nations’. Before answering this call, step across the street and look up at the floors above. You see more clearly that it is a steel-framed building, tarted up with niches and pilasters like some bald fact inexpertly disguised. At the far corner there is a tremendous upheaving of cartouches and volutes crowned by a cupola like that of some immense Midland Bank. Finances and inspiration seem to have been exhausted by this, however, and alongside, above the main cornice of the building, rises a two-storey mansard attic, containing the cheap accommodation the Club provides in the cheapest possible form of building.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O X X V I I I Dante enters the Garden of Eden from the west, facing the rising sun, and meeting a sweet breeze laden with the odours of Paradise and full of the song of birds to which the leaves of the divine forest murmur a pedal bass. On the opposing bank of a stream that flows pure under the forest shade, he perceives a lady gathering flowers and singing, as enamoured. It is Matilda, the genius of Eden; and in answer to Dante’s petition she approaches the stream with downcast eyes, the song on her lips growing ever more articulate. Then, her hands still busy with the flowers, she flings upon him the blaze of her laughing eyes. As a responsive rapture awakes in Dante’s heart, she initiates him into the frank and innocent love and joy of Eden, and proffers all further service he may desire. In answer to his question she confirms what Statius had already said as to the higher regions of the mount above the gate being unaffected by meteorological phenomena. The stream and the breeze, therefore, are not such as those on earth. The breeze is caused by the sweep of the atmospheric envelope of the earth, from east to west, with the primum mobile; and it bears with it germs from the divine forest; which may explain the seeming spontaneous generation of wondrous plants on earth. And the water of the stream does not rise from the pulsations of any mist- and rain-fed vein; but issues from a fountain which draws supplies for this and a companion stream direct from the will of God. These streams are Lethe and Eunoë, the one of which washes away all memory of sin, and the other restores the memory of all righteous doing; and for the full effect to be experienced, both alike must be tasted. So much in answer to Dante’s questions. But Matilda further delights her pupil by suggesting that some confused tradition of the state of innocence lay behind the dreams of the classical poets who sang of the Golden Age; whereon he sees a smile of recognition lighten the faces of Virgil and Statius. NOW EAGER to search within and around the divine forest dense and verdant, which to mine eyes was tempering the new day, without waiting more I left the mountain-side, crossing the plain with lingering step, over the ground which gives forth fragrance on every side.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O X I I A second circle of lights encloses the first and-with music whereof our sweetest strains are but as the reflection—the two, like the parallels of a double rainbow, circle Dante and Beatrice, first moving and then at rest. Like the needle of the compass to the north star so Dante is swept round to one of the new-come lights at the sound of its voice. It is Bonaventura, the Franciscan, who undertakes the enconium of Dominic, just as Thomas, the Dominican, had pronounced that of Francis. Dominic’s zeal for true learning and against heresy. If he was such, what must his colleague have been? But his disciples are ruined by the extremes of the strict and lax schools of observance. Bonaventura names himself and the other lights that circle with him. SOON AS the blessed flame had taken up the final word to speak, began the sacred millstone to revolve, 1 and in its rolling had not turned full round ere a second, circling, embraced it and struck motion to its motion and song to its song; song which so far surpasseth our Muses, our Sirens, in those sweet tubes, as the first splendour that which it back throweth. 2 As sweep o’er the thin mist two bows, parallel and like in colour, when Juno maketh behest to her handmaiden, the one without born from the one within—in fashion of the speech of that wandering nymph whom love consumed as the sun doth the vapours,— making folk here on earth foreknow, in virtue of the compact that God made with Noah, that the world never shall be drowned again; 3 so of those sempiternal roses revolved around us the two garlands, and so the outmost answered to the other. 4 Soon as the dance and high great festival,—alike of song and flashing light with light, gladsome and benign,— accordant at a point of time and act of will had stilled them, like to the eyes which at the pleasure that moveth them must needs be closed and lifted in accord, from out the heart of one of the new lights there moved a voice which made me seem the needle to the star in turning me to where it was; and it began: 5 “the love which maketh me beautiful draweth me to discourse of the other chief, on whose account such fair utterance is made to us concerning mine. 6 Meet is it that wherever is the one the other be led in, that, as they warred together, so may their glory shine in union.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  After this we returned home glad and merry of so great vengeance upon them, and the riches which we carried was committed to the public treasury, and this done the maid was married to Tlepolemus, according to the law, whom by so much travail he had valiantly recovered. Then my good mistress looked about for me, calling me her saviour and deliverer, and asking for me, commanded, the very same day as her marriage, that my manger should be filled with barley, and that I should have hay and oats abundantly, as much as would be enough for a camel of Bactria. But how greatly and worthily did I curse Fotis in that she had transformed me into an ass, and not into a dog, because I saw the dogs had filled their paunches to bursting with the relics and bones of so worthy a supper as they had. The next day, after that best of nights and her learning of the secrets of Venus, this new wedded woman (my mistress) did not forget to commend me before her parents and husband for the kindness I had shewed unto her, and never left off until such time as they promised to reward me with great honours. Then they called together all their friends of more dignity, to resolve in what manner it were most worthy to reward me; and thus it was concluded: one said that I should be closed in a stable and never work, x 321 15 LUCIUS APULEIUS hordeo lecto fabaque et vicia saginari: sed obtinuit alius qui meae libertati prospexerat, suadens ut rure- stribus potius campis in greges equinos lasciviens discurrerem, daturus dominis equarum inscensu generoso multas mulas alumnas. Ergo igitur evocato statim armentario equisone magna cum praefatione deducendus assignor : et sane gaudens laetusque prae- currebam, sarcinis et ceteris oneribus iam nunc re- nuntiaturus, nanctaque libertate veris initio pratis herbantibus rosas utique reperturusaliquas, Subibat me tamen illa etiam sequens cogitatio, quod tantis actis gratiis honoribusque plurimis asino meo tributis, humana facie recepta, multo tanto pluribus beneficiis honestarer. Sed ubi me procul a civitate gregarius ille perduxerat, nullae deliciae ac ne ulla quidem libertas excipit. Nam protinus uxor eius avara equidem nequissimaque illa mulier molae machinariae subiugum me dedit, frondosoque baculo subinde castigans, panem sibi suisque de meo parabat corio. Nectantum sui cibi gratia me fatigare con- tenta, vicinorum etiam frumenta mercenariis discur- sibus meis conterebat. Nec mihi misero statuta saltem cibaria pro tantis praestabantur laboribus : namque hordeum meum frictum et sub eadem mola meis quas- satum ambagibus colonis proximis venditabat, mihi vero per diem laboriosae machinae attento sub ipsa 322 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VII

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Her husband being as it were inchanted with these words and compelled by violence of her often embracing, wiping away her teares with his haire, did yeeld unto his wife. And when morning came, departed as hee was accustomed to doe. Now her sisters arrived on land, and never rested til they came to the rock, without visiting their parents, and leapt down rashly from the hill themselves. Then Zephyrus according to the divine commandment brought them down, although it were against his wil, and laid them in the vally without any harm: by and by they went into the palace to their sister without leave, and when they had eftsoone embraced their prey, and thanked her with flattering words for the treasure which she gave them, they said, O deare sister Psyches, know you that you are now no more a child, but a mother: O what great joy beare you unto us in your belly? What a comfort will it be unto all the house? How happy shall we be, that shall see this Infant nourished amongst so great plenty of Treasure? That if he be like his parents, as it is necessary he should, there is no doubt but a new cupid shall be borne. By this kinde of measures they went about to winne Psyches by little and little, but because they were wearie with travell, they sate them downe in chaires, and after that they had washed their bodies in baines they went into a parlour, where all kinde of meats were ready prepared. Psyches commanded one to play with his harpe, it was done. Then immediately others sung, others tuned their instruments, but no person was seene, by whose sweet harmony and modulation the sisters of Psyches were greatly delighted. Howbeit the wickednesse of these cursed women was nothing suppressed by the sweet noyse of these instruments, but they settled themselves to work their treasons against Psyches, demanding who was her husband, and of what Parentage. Then shee having forgotten by too much simplicity, what shee had spoken before of her husband, invented a new answer, and said that her husband was of a great province, a merchant, and a man of middle age, having his beard intersparsed with grey haires. Which when shee had spoken (because shee would have no further talke) she filled their laps with Gold and Silver, and bid Zephyrus to bear them away.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  THE ELEVENTH CHAPTER How Apuleius supped with Byrrhena, and what a strange tale Bellephoron told at the table. It fortuned on a day, that Byrrhena desired me earnestly to suppe with her; and shee would in no wise take any excusation. Whereupon I went to Fotis, to aske counsell of her as of some Divine, who although she was unwilling that I should depart one foot from her company, yet at length shee gave me license to bee absent for a while, saying, Beware that you tarry not long at supper there, for there is a rabblement of common Barrettors and disturbers of the publique peace, that rove about in the streets and murther all such as they may take, neither can law nor justice redress them in any case. And they will the sooner set upon you, by reason of your comelinesse and audacity, in that you are not afeared at any time to walke in the streets. Then I answered and sayd, Have no care of me Fotis, for I esteeme the pleasure which I have with thee, above the dainty meats that I eat abroad, and therefore I will returne againe quickly. Neverthelesse I minde not to come without company, for I have here my sword, wherby I hope to defend my selfe.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  The sun burned hotter and hotter, as if someone were holding a magnifying glass over me. I took off my T-shirt and felt the sweat flow down my sides to my stomach as I bent over to pick blueberries from low bushes. The ground was wet. A huge bee hung buzzing, motionless, in the air. I was so happy alone and in the woods, away from the dangers posed by other people. At first I wanted to tell someone else how happy I was; I needed a witness. But as the great day revolved slowly above me, as the scarlet tanager flew overhead on his black wings to the distant high trees, as an owl, hidden and remote, sounded a hoot as melancholy as winter, as the leaves, ruffled by the wind, tossed the sun about as though they were princesses at play with a golden ball, as the smell of sweet clover, of bruised sassasfras leaves, of the mulch of last year’s duff flowed over me, as I crushed the hot, sweet blueberries between my teeth and then chewed on an astringent needle from a balsam, as I sensed the descent of the sun and the slow decline of summer—oh, I was free and whole, safe from everyone, as happy as with my books. For I could thrive in the expressive, inhuman realm of nature or the expressive, human realm of books—both worlds so exalted, so guileless—but I felt imperiled by the hidden designs other people were drawing around me. The tender white bells of the flower by the rotting stump, the throbbing distillation of blue in the fringed gentian, the small, bright-green cone of the Scots pine—these were confidences nature placed in me, wordless but as trusting as a dog’s eyes. Or the pure, always comprehensible and sharply delineated thoughts and emotions of characters in fiction—these, too, were signs I could read, as one might read a marionette’s face. But the vague menace of Ralph with his increasingly haggard face, this boy at once pitiable and dangerous, who had already been caught twice this summer attempting to “hypnotize” younger campers and was now in danger of expulsion, who studied me at meals not with curiosity, much less with sympathy, but with crude speculation (Can I get him to do it? Can he relieve me?)—this menace was becoming more and more intense. After the other campers appeared and the summer’s activities had been under way for a week, I understood that I’d been betrayed. There wouldn’t be any plays for me to put on, and I had exhausted myself for no good reason with all-night fantasies of the rehearsals, the performances, the triumphs. My mother’s promises had just been a way of getting me out of the house for the summer. A few miles away my sister—shy to the point of invisibility in the winter, unpopular, pasty, overweight—had emerged once again into her estival beauty.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  Cork was pretending to be shocked by the innocent improprieties that so excited my stepmother. I could tell Mrs. Cork had palled around with real screwballs, even unwed couples—it was just a sense I had. When I took her out one day in a motorboat alone, she and I happily discussed opera. We cut the motor and drifted. I relaxed and became animated to the point of effeminacy; she relaxed and became coarser. “Oh, my boy,” she promised me in her brogue, “you want to hear fine singing, I’ll play you my John McCormack records, make you weep your damn eyes out of their bloody sockets. That ‘Lucevan le stelle,’ it’ll freeze your balls.” I shrieked with delight—we were conspirators who’d somehow found ourselves stranded together here in a world of unthrillable souls. I dreamed of running off and becoming a great singer; I walked through the woods and vocalized. Tonight we had not yet made our rapport explicit, but I was already wise to her. She had through circumstance ended up not on the La Scala stage but in this American cottage, married to an affable, overweight businessman. Now her job was to ingratiate herself with people who would help her husband in his career (lawyer for industry); she was retaining just enough brogue and temperament to be a “character.” Characters—conventional women with minor eccentricities—flourished in our world, as Mrs. Cork had no doubt observed. But she’d failed to notice that the characters were all old, rich and pedigreed. Newcomers, especially those of moderate means, were expected to form an attractive but featureless chorus behind our few madcap divas. “Time for bed, young fella,” my father said at last. Downstairs I undressed by the colored light of the glass-brick bar and, wearing just a T-shirt and jockey shorts, hurried into the dark dormitory and slipped into my cot. Nights on the lake are cold even in July; the bed had two thick blankets on it that had been aired outside that day and smelled of pine needles. I listened to the grown-ups; the metal vents conducted sound better than heat. Their conversation, which had seemed so lively and sincere when I had witnessed it, now sounded stilted and halting. Lots of fake laughter. Silences became longer and longer. At last everyone said good night and headed upstairs. Another five minutes of moaning pipes, flushing toilets and padding feet. Then long murmured consultations in bed by each couple. Then silence. “You still awake?” Kevin called from his bed. “Yes,” I said. I couldn’t see him in the dark but I could tell his cot was at the other end of the room; Peter was audibly asleep on the cot between. “How old are you?” Kevin asked. “Fifteen. And you?” “Twelve. You ever done it with girls?” “Sure,” I said. I knew I could always tell him about the black prostitute I’d visited. “You?” “Naw.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  But Cupid being now healed of his wound and Maladie, not able to endure the absence of Psyches, got him secretly out at a window of the chamber where hee was enclosed, and (receiving his wings,) tooke his flight towards his loving wife, whom when he had found, hee wiped away the sleepe from her face, and put it againe into the boxe, and awaked her with the tip of one of his arrows, saying: O wretched Caitife, behold thou wert well-nigh perished againe, with the overmuch curiositie: well, goe thou, and do thy message to my Mother, and in the meane season, I will provide for all things accordingly: wherewithall he tooke his flight into the aire, and Psyches brought her present to Venus.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  Like them she must remain eternally young—hence her flamboyant clothes and gestures and hectic displays of energy (the middle-aged imagine the young are energetic). Later, much later, when I was sixteen and eighteen and twenty, I’d meet her downtown where she worked at a museum and we’d go off in the middle of a dim winter afternoon to a deserted bar and drink manhattans (I remember because they were the first drinks I ever ordered). Another afternoon I attended a madrigal concert she sang in at the public library, something planned in conjunction with an exhibition of one page from the hand of that monster Gesualdo. There she was, breasts half-exposed and working, eyes turned inward, trembling upper lip rising on one side until it had suddenly been everted, her face painted an unlikely yellow and her hair dyed a brittle blue-black, her clothes still “youthful” but now so out of date that the few members of the audience under twenty-five would have had no idea what she was signifying. They might have thought that she was an émigrée wearing the national costume of Estonia and that these songs—these gliding transits, startling rhythms and suave, uncomfortable harmonies—were folk songs in need of a pitch pipe. One afternoon over manhattans I confessed to Marilyn I was gay and she told me she was, too, and that she and Fred had known all along that I would be, even when I was eleven. “And Fred? Was he gay?” “Oh yes. Didn’t you know? I thought we all knew about each other,” Marilyn said as she redrew her eyes in the compact mirror. “Well, I knew you both liked me and that I felt good with you, better than with most grown-ups.” “Then why did you stop coming by the shop? Waiter, another round.” “Because my mother told me I couldn’t see you anymore. The old ladies in our hotel told my mother that you and Fred were Communists and living in sin.” Marilyn laughed and laughed. “Of course the truth is we’re both Catholics and gay and never touched each other. Perhaps those ladies even knew the truth but—but”—shriek of laughter—“assumed that communism and living in sin, that those two things together equaled being gay.” I was wearing a Brooks Brothers sack suit of black and brown twill that ran on the diagonal and a soft felt fedora from Paris, and this getup, which seemed so stylish to me, cast our conversation into the light of an excited urbanity, as did the cocktails, no doubt. Elevated tracks ran outside above the bar, and whenever a train passed by, our table trembled under our elbows and the glasses, accidentally touching each other, registered the shock in a muted chime. The light in the bar was as murky as old water in an aquarium dimmed by storms of fish food beat up by lazy fins.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Foster called, tapping his watch. “All right, Monty!” Mrs. Foster said. Then, quietly, to Suzanne and Miri, “Betsy has sniffles. It could be the beginning of something, or nothing. But check on her every half hour after she goes to sleep, okay?” “Okay, sure,” Miri said and Suzanne nodded. Mrs. Foster kissed Penny and Betsy. “You girls be good.” “Joanne!” Mr. Foster called, and this time Mrs. Foster hurried to the door. Once they heard the door close behind them Suzanne let out a sigh. As soon as their mother was out of sight, the girls started racing through the house. Miri chased them, a game they loved. “Eeny, meeny, miney, moe, catch a tiger by the toe. Which little tiger will I catch first?” The girls shrieked until Miri caught one, then the other, carrying them back to the living room. When they calmed down Suzanne painted their toenails and Miri brought them milk and gingersnaps from the kitchen. Later, when they were in their twin beds, tucked in just so, Miri and Suzanne took turns reading to them from a stack of library books. Mrs. Foster had been a first-grade teacher before the girls were born and stressed the importance of reading aloud to children. After that, Suzanne turned on the radio, both girls took out the homework their mothers thought they’d finished earlier and settled down on the living room floor. Mr. and Mrs. Foster returned happy, holding hands. It must have been a good movie. Usually Mrs. Foster asked for details of how the evening had gone. But not tonight. Mr. Foster drove them home, each with $1.50 in her pocket, a bonanza! Now that the holidays were over, Miri was saving her babysitting money for her ninth-grade prom dress. She figured $15 would do it, including shoes. When Mr. Foster started humming a tune, Suzanne leaned close to Miri and whispered, “I’ll bet they went to a motel instead of a movie.” This thought had never occurred to Miri. Why would a married couple go to a motel when they said they’d be at the movies? No, Miri didn’t believe it. She was sure Rusty would never do such a thing. Not that she was married. She didn’t even have a boyfriend. And Miri liked it that way. CapricornBorn on January 15, you are a natural leader and problem solver. You have the intelligence to understand any situation and the discipline to follow through in pursuing a solution. Coupled with the trait of great loyalty, it makes you respected by all who know you. There is no better friend to have than a Capricorn. —BY THE MIDDLE of the month Fred knew Miri so well he’d jump up and down, barking, the minute he saw her. She’d scoop him up, letting him lick her face. Unless she had an after-school activity, she’d meet Mason at Jefferson High and walk him down to Edison Lanes.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  “I’ll go first,” I said. Although I put lots of spit on him and me, he still said it hurt. I’d get about half an inch in and he’d say, “Take it out! Quick!” He was lying on his side with his back to me, but I could still look over and see him wince in profile. “Jesus,” he said. “It’s like a knife all through me.” The pain subsided and with the bravery of an Eagle Scout he said, “Okay. Try it again. But take it easy and promise you’ll pull out when I say so.” This time I went in a millimeter at a time, waiting between each advance. I could feel his muscles relaxing. “Is it in?” he asked. “Yep.” “All the way in?” “Almost. There. It’s all in.” “Really?” He reached back for my crotch to make sure. “Yeah, it is,” he said. “Feel good?” “Terrific.” “Okay,” he instructed, “go in and out, but slow, okay?” “Sure.” I tried a few short thrusts and asked if I was hurting him. He shook his head. He bent his knees up toward his chest and I flowed around him. Whereas face to face I had felt timid and unable to get enough of his body against enough of mine, now I was glued to him and he didn’t object—it was understood that this was my turn and I could do what I liked. I tunneled my lower arm under him and folded it across his chest; his ribs were unexpectedly small and countable, and now that he’d completely relaxed I could get deeper and deeper into him. That such a tough, muscled little guy, whose words were so flat and eyes so without depth or humor, could be so richly taken—oh, he felt good. But the sensation he was giving didn’t seem like something afforded by his body, or if so, then it was a secret gift, shameful and pungent, one he didn’t dare acknowledge. In the Chris-Craft I’d been afraid of him. He had been the usual intimidating winner, beyond excitement—but here he was, pushing this tendoned, shifting pleasure back into me, the fine hair on his neck damp with sweat just above the hollows the sculptor had pressed with his thumbs into the clay. His tan hand was resting on his white hip. The ends of his lashes were pulsing just beyond the line of his full cheek. “Does it feel good?” he asked. “Want it tighter?” he asked, as a shoe salesman might. “No, it’s fine.”

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  In saying these words shee came to me to bed, and embraced me sweetly, and so wee passed all the night in pastime and pleasure, and never slept until it was day: but we would eftsoones refresh our wearinesse, and provoke our pleasure, and renew our venery by drinking of wine. In which sort we pleasantly passed away many other nights following.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  feed on, so did I see more than a thousand splendours draw towards us, and in each one was heard: Lo! one who shall increase our loves. 9 And as each one came up to us, the shade appeared full filled with joy, by the bright glow that issued forth of it. Think, reader, if what I now begin proceeded not, how thou would’st feel an anguished dearth of knowing more, and by thyself thou shalt perceive how it was in my longing to hear from these concerning their estate, soon as they were revealed unto my eyes. “O happy-born, 10 to whom grace concedeth to look upon the Thrones of the eternal triumph ere thou abandonest thy time of warfare, 11 by the light that rangeth through all heaven are we enkindled; and therefore if thou desire to draw light from us, sate thee at thine own will.” Thus by one of those devout spirits was said to me, and by Beatrice: “Speak, speak securely, and believe as thou would’st deities.” “Verily, I see how thou dost nestle in thine own light, and that thou dost draw it through thine eyes, because they sparkle as thou smilest; 12 But I know nor who thou art, nor why, O worthy soul, thou art graded in this sphere, which veileth it to mortals in another’s rays.” 13 This I said, turned towards the light which first had spoken to me; whereat it glowed far brighter yet than what it was before. Like as the sun which hideth him by excess of light when the heat hath gnawed away the tempering of the thick vapours, so by access of joy the sacred figure hid him in his own rays, and thus enclosed, answered me in such fashion as chanteth the following chant. 1. Angels and men. 2. Cf. Canto iii. 3. “To apply to some other good purpose what has been vowed, would only be like giving the proceeds of oppression or plunder in charity.” 4. Regulations as to substitution or “redemption” are found in Exodus xiii. 13, xxxiv. 20, and Numbers xviii. 15-18. But the subject is most fully treated in the last chapter of Leviticus. 5. In popular estimate, “the silver key of knowledge and the golden key of authority.” But Aquinas says more accurately: “for either of these [i.e., to decide that the penitent is fit to be absolved, and actually to absolve him] a certain power of authority is needed; and so we distinguish between two keys, one pertaining to the judgment as to the fitness of him to be absolved, the other pertaining to the absolution itself.” Cf. Purg. ix. 6. Both Jephthah (Judges xi) and Agamemnon sacrificed their daughters. 7. “If ignorant and unauthorized ‘pardoners’ and others tempt you to light-hearted vows and offer you easy terms of remission, do not be so senseless as to be misled by them. The blessing of the Christian dispensation is turned into a curse by such as do the like, and the very Jews have a right to make a mock of them.” Cf. Canto xxix. 8. The Equator is the swiftest part of the heaven (Conv. ii. 4). The equinoctial point is the germinal point of the Universe (Par. x). The sun is the source of all mortal life (Par. xxii). Dante’s words may apply to any of the three; but since, at the date of the Vision, the sun is at the equinoctial point, they all coincide. 9. Cf. Purg. xv. 10. Cf. Cantos viii (note 3), and ix (note 9). 11. The Church on earth is militant; only in heaven triumphant. 12. The last reference to the features of a blessed spirit, as discerned by Dante, in any of the revolving spheres. 13. Mercury is so near the sun as to be seldom visible.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O X X As when the one light of the sun disappears, the heaven is straightway rekindled by many stars, so when the one voice of the eagle ceased the many beings that composed it, shining yet more brightly, burst into an angelic chime of many notes, which was followed by a murmuring as of falling waters, gathering once more in the neck of the eagle into a single voice. The eagle declares that the six lights which forms its pupil and eyebrow are the greatest of all, and goes on to enumerate them, using, in most cases, rich and pregnant circumlocution, but expressly naming Ripheus the Trojan, that there may be no room to misconceive a statement so incredible as that he (as well as Trajan, the heathen emperor, already indicated by a paraphrase not to be misunderstood) is in heaven. Then once more the eagle bursts into rapturous song, and when it pauses, Dante, though he knows that the spirits read his inmost thoughts as we on earth see colour through a sheet of glass, yet can not restrain the utterance of his amazement at the presence of these two heathen; whereon the eagle declares that both of them died in the true faith, Ripheus in Christ to come and Trajan in Christ come; and so explains the former case as to suggest that revelations may have been vouchsafed to other righteous Pagans. So little do men fathom the divine counsels! Nay, the redeemed souls, as they look on God, know not yet who shall be the saved; and in this very limitation of their knowledge they rejoice, for it is a point of conscious contact with the will of God. Thus, as the souls of Trajan and Ripheus glint responsive to the eagle’s discourse, Dante receives sweet solace partly from the thought that he knows not, after all, how many of the supposed heathen are in truth saved, and partly from the spectacle of the souls in bliss rejoicing in the limitations of their knowledge no less than in its conquests. WHEN HE who doth illumine all the world descendeth so from our hemisphere that day on every side is done away, the heaven which before is kindled by him only, now straightway maketh itself reappear by many lights wherein the one regloweth. 1 And this act of heaven came to my mind when the ensign of the world and of its leaders within its blessed beak was silent; because all those living lights, far brightlier shining, began songs which from my memory must slip and fall. O sweet love, smile-bemantled, how glowing didst thou seem in those flute holes breathed on only by sacred ponderings! 2 When the dear and shining stones, whereby I saw the sixth heaven gemmed, had imposed silence on the angelic chimes, meseemed to hear the murmuring of a river which drop-peth clear from rock to rock and showeth the abundance of its source.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  A net was dumped at my feet and I saw that cold life arc, panic, die. Tommy knew one of the old guys, who gave us a couple dozen fish, which we took back to the Wellingtons’ place. At midnight everyone was in bed, but Tom decided we were hungry and had to fry up our smelt right now. The odor of burning butter and bitter young fish drew Mrs. Wellington down from her little sitting room where she dozed, watched television and paged through books about gardening and thoroughbred dogs. She came blinking and padding down to the kitchen, lured by the smell of frying fish, the smell of a pleasure forbidden because it comes from a kingdom we dare not enter for long. I was certain she would be gruff—she was frowning, though only against the neon brightness of the kitchen. “What’s going on here?” she asked in what must have been at last the sound of her true voice, the poor, flat intonations of the prairies where she’d grown up. Soon she was pouring out tall glasses of milk and setting places for us. She was a good sport in an unselfconscious way I’d never seen in a grown-up before, as though she and we were all part of the same society of hungry, browsing creatures instead of members of two tribes, one spontaneous and the other repressive. She seemed to bend naturally to the will of her son, and this compliance suggested an unspoken respect for the primacy of even such a young and scruffy man. My own mother paid lip service to the notion of male supremacy, but she had had to make her own way in the world too long to stay constant to such a purely decorative belief. After the midnight supper Tommy started to play the guitar and sing. He and I had trekked more than once downtown to the Folk Center to hear a barefoot hillbilly woman in a long, faded skirt intone Elizabethan songs and pluck at a dulcimer or to listen, frightened and transported, to a big black Lesbian with a crew cut moan her basso way through the blues. The People—those brawny, smiling farmers, those plump, wholesome teens bursting out of bib overalls, those toothless ex-cons, those white-eyed dust bowl victims—the People, half-glimpsed in old photos, films and WPA murals, were about to reemerge, we trusted, into history and our lives. All this aspiration, this promise of fellowship and equality, informed Tom’s songs. We worried a bit (just a bit) that we might be suburban twerps unworthy of the People.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  I have a few other things to press.” “I don’t mind. Bring them down.” Ruby gathered a pair of shorts, two skirts, and an off-the-shoulder blouse. She ran down the stairs with them just as the doorbell rang. She pulled the door open, expecting to see Aunt Emmy. Instead it was Dana, Ruby’s best friend, another long-legged dancer. Dana burst out laughing. “You look cute,” she said, reminding Ruby her face was still covered in gray clay. “Dana, you’re frozen,” Ruby’s mother said, greeting her daughter’s friend. “A cup of coffee or tea?” “Thanks,” Dana said, “but I’m okay.” Dana followed Ruby up the stairs. They’d met and roomed together on the national tour of Kiss Me, Kate. Ruby wasn’t sure she’d ever have that much fun again. “Looks like you’re all packed,” Dana said. “Almost. I was just finishing wrapping presents for my mom and dad.” “Give me the ribbon. I’ll do it. You get that goo off your face. I can’t take you out for a holiday drink like that.” “We’re going out for drinks?” “We are.” Ruby passed the red and green ribbon to Dana. “Give me ten minutes. So long as I’m back for supper with the family. You should stay. My mother’s making pierogi.” “I love your mother’s pierogi.” “She’ll be happy to have another guest. Aunt Emmy’s driving in from Elizabeth.” “With handsome Uncle Victor?” “Afraid the handsome fireman has to stay at home. He’s on duty. Anyway, he’s old enough to be your father.” “I like older men.” “My uncle is off-limits.” “As if I don’t know.” They laughed as they walked arm in arm to Billy’s, the tavern on the corner, where they sat in a booth. Ruby’s skin was glowing from the facial. Without makeup she could pass for a high school student. “What can I bring you lovely ladies?” Billy asked. Billy was bald, short and round, but he moved fast. “Two hot toddies,” Dana said. “With pleasure, though neither one of you beauties looks old enough to be legal.” He knew they were. Billy had known Ruby’s family since before she was born. Knew she’d turned twenty-two over the summer, just before her father’s surgery. Billy knew almost everything about her family, and he kept it to himself. When they were served, Dana held up her glass. “Cheers. Here’s to a great year for both of us!” Ruby clinked glasses with her. “I’ll second that.” They talked for forty-five minutes over a second hot toddy, taking turns feeding nickels into the jukebox. When they tired of holiday songs they started on Broadway musicals, singing along with “Why Can’t You Behave?,” reminding them of their good times on the road and entertaining the few customers who were seated at the bar. When it was time to leave, Billy called, “Have a good trip, Ruby.” “Thanks, Billy. And don’t let my father have more than one, if anyone brings him in.” “Don’t worry, sweetheart.