Longing

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 Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Yet it was spring, and the bluebells were coming in the wood, and the leaf-buds on the hazels were opening like the spatter of green rain. How terrible it was that it should be spring, and everything cold-hearted, cold-hearted. Only the hens, fluffed so wonderfully on the eggs, were warm with their hot, brooding female bodies! Connie felt herself living on the brink of fainting all the time. Then, one day, a lovely sunny day with great tufts of primroses under the hazels, and many violets dotting the paths, she came in the afternoon to the coops and there was one tiny, tiny perky chicken tinily prancing round in front of a coop, and the mother hen clucking in terror. The slim little chick was greyish-brown with dark markings, and it was the most alive little spark of a creature in seven kingdoms at that moment. Connie crouched to watch in a sort of ecstacy. Life, life! Pure, sparky, fearless new life! New life! So tiny and so utterly without fear! Even when it scampered a little scramblingly into the coop again, and disappeared under the hen's feathers in answer to the mother hen's wild alarm-cries, it was not really frightened, it took it as a game, the game of living. For in a moment a tiny sharp head was poking through the gold-brown feathers of the hen, and eyeing the Cosmos. Connie was fascinated. And at the same time, never had she felt so acutely the agony of her own female forlornness. It was becoming unbearable. She had only one desire now, to go to the clearing in the wood. The rest was a kind of painful dream. But sometimes she was kept all day at Wragby, by her duties as hostess. And then she felt as if she too were going blank, just blank and insane. One evening, guests or no guests, she escaped after tea. It was late, and she fled across the park like one who fears to be called back. The sun was setting rosy as she entered the wood, but she pressed on among the flowers. The light would last long overhead. She arrived at the clearing flushed and semi-conscious. The keeper was there, in his shirtsleeves, just closing up the coops for the night, so the little occupants would be safe. But still one little trio was pattering about on tiny feet, alert drab mites, under the straw shelter, refusing to be called in by the anxious mother. "I had to come and see the chickens!" she said, panting, glancing shyly at the keeper, almost unaware of him. "Are there any more?" "Thurty-six so far!" he said. "Not bad!" He too took a curious pleasure in watching the young things come out. Connie crouched in front of the last coop. The three chicks had run in. But still their cheeky heads came poking sharply through the yellow feathers, then withdrawing, then only one beady little head eyeing forth from the vast mother-body.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Quoth the lady, 'I beseech you thereof for God's sake, and should he deny, prithee scruple not to tell him that it was I who told you this and complained to you thereof.' Then, having made her confession and gotten her penance, recalling the friar's exhortations to works of almsgiving, she stealthily filled his hand with money, praying him to say masses for the souls of her dead kinsfolk; after which she rose from his feet and taking leave of him, returned home. Not long after up came the gentleman, according to his wont, and after they had talked awhile of one thing and another, the friar, drawing his friend aside, very civilly rebuked him of the manner in which, as he believed, he pursued and spied upon the lady aforesaid, according to that which she had given him to understand. The other marvelled, as well he might, having never set eyes upon her and being used very rarely to pass before her house, and would have excused himself; but the friar suffered him not to speak, saying, 'Now make no show of wonderment nor waste words in denying it, for it will avail thee nothing; I learnt not these matters from the neighbours; nay, she herself told them to me, complaining sore of thee. And besides that such toys beseem not a man of thine age, I may tell thee this much of her, that if ever I saw a woman averse to these follies, it is she; wherefore, for thine own credit and her comfort, I prithee desist therefrom and let her be in peace.' The gentleman, quicker of wit than the friar, was not slow to apprehend the lady's device and feigning to be somewhat abashed, promised to meddle no more with her thenceforward; then, taking leave of the friar, he betook himself to the house of the lady, who still abode await at a little window, so she might see him, should he pass that way. When she saw him come, she showed herself so rejoiced and so gracious to him, that he might very well understand that he had gathered the truth from the friar's words, and thenceforward, under colour of other business, he began with the utmost precaution to pass continually through the street, to his own pleasure and to the exceeding delight and solace of the lady. After awhile, perceiving that she pleased him even as he pleased her and wishful to inflame him yet more and to certify him of the love she bore him, she betook herself again, choosing her time and place, to the holy friar and seating herself at his feet in the church, fell a-weeping. The friar, seeing this, asked her affectionately what was to do with her anew.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  She heard the curious satisfaction in his voice. She went upstairs to her bedroom. There she heard the loud-speaker begin to bellow, in an idiotically velveteen-genteel sort of voice, something about a series of street-cries, the very cream of genteel affectation imitating old criers. She pulled on her old violet-coloured mackintosh, and slipped out of the house at the side door. The drizzle of rain was like a veil over the world, mysterious, hushed, not cold. She got very warm as she hurried across the park. She had to open her light waterproof. The wood was silent, still and secret in the evening drizzle of rain, full of the mystery of eggs and half-open buds, half-unsheathed flowers. In the dimness of it all trees glistened naked and dark as if they had unclothed themselves, and the green things on earth seemed to hum with greenness. There was still no one at the clearing. The chicks had nearly all gone under the mother hens, only one or two lost adventurous ones still dibbed about in the dryness under the straw roof-shelter. And they were doubtful of themselves. So! He still had not been. He was staying away on purpose. Or perhaps something was wrong. Perhaps she could go to the cottage and see. But she was born to wait. She opened the hut with her key. It was all tidy, the corn put in the bin, the blankets folded on the shelf, the straw neat in a corner; a new bundle of straw. The hurricane lamp hung on a nail. The table and chair had been put back where she had lain. She sat down on a stool in the doorway. How still everything was! The fine rain blew very softly, filmily, but the wind made no noise. Nothing made any sound. The trees stood like powerful beings, dim, twilit, silent and alive. How alive everything was! Night was drawing near again; she would have to go. He was avoiding her. But suddenly he came striding into the clearing, in his black oilskin jacket like a chauffeur, shining with wet. He glanced quickly at the hut, half-saluted, then veered aside and went on to the coops. There he crouched in silence, looking carefully at everything, then carefully shutting the hens and chicks up safe against the night. At last he came slowly towards her. She still sat on her stool. He stood before her under the porch. "You come then," he said, using the intonation of the dialect. "Yes," she said, looking up at him. "You're late!" "Ay!" he replied, looking away into the wood. She rose slowly, drawing aside her stool. "Did you want to come in?" she asked. He looked down at her shrewdly. "Won't folks be thinkin' somethink, you comin' here every night?" he said. "Why?" She looked up at him, at a loss. "I said I'd come. Nobody knows." "They soon will, though," he replied. "An' what then?" She was at a loss for an answer.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  The mere fact that it was absolutely useless made it an enormous gift in those days. A few days after I recovered from my cold, Kusano's mother telephoned. She said that visits to Kusano's regiment near M City were to be allowed for the first time, on March the tenth, and asked if I wouldn't like to go with them to visit Kusano. I accepted the invitation, and a short time later went to the Kusano house to make arrangements. In those days the hours between dusk and 8 P.M. were regarded as the safest time of day. When I arrived, the family had just finished supper. As Kusano's father was dead, the family now consisted solely of his mother, grandmother, and three sisters. I was invited to join them around the footwarmer where they were sitting. The mother introduced me to the sister whom I had heard playing the piano that time. Her name was Sonoko. Because there was a well-known pianist with the same name, I made a slightly caustic joke concerning the fact that I had previously overheard her practicing the piano. The eighteen-year-old girl blushed in the dim light of the blackout-lamp and said nothing. She was wearing a red-leather jacket. On the morning of March the ninth I waited for the Kusano family on the platform of a station near their house. The row of shops across the tracks had been condemned by the government to make way for a firebreak, and the work of demolition, already begun, could be seen in detail. The activity tore through the clear air of early spring with fresh, crashing noises. Among the demolished structures there could be seen newly exposed surfaces of naked wood, dazzling to the eye. The mornings were still cold. For several days not a single air-raid warning had sounded. During that interval the air had become more and more brightly burnished and had been stretched so thin that it now seemed in danger of bursting. The atmosphere was like the tautly tuned string of a samisen, ready to reverberate piercingly at the first pluck. It reminded one of those few moments of silence, rich in emptiness, that are fulfilled in a burst of music. Even the cold sunlight that fell upon the deserted platform was quivering with something like a premonition of music. Then Sonoko appeared, wearing a blue coat, coming down the opposite stairway with her two sisters. She was holding her smaller sister by the hand, watching her carefully and coming down the steps one at a time. The other sister, then about fourteen or fifteen, seemed impatient at this slow rate of progress, but instead of gradually outstripping the other two she was deliberately coming zigzag down the empty staircase. Sonoko seemed not to have noticed me yet. From where I stood I could see her clearly.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  The handle of the whip came up and caressed her cheek. She accepted the touch without flinching away. All her fear of being whipped had been burned away by what she had endured, and there was no ambivalence left in her, only longing. Chris saw the change, let approval show in her eyes, and drew the touch out into a line that ran down between Roxanne’s breasts and found her navel. The handle of the whip continued to descend, seeking something even softer, something that would yield, a cavity, an oasis. Chris held the thick roll of braided leather in the palm of her hand and inserted it gently between Roxanne’s thighs, held it against the spread wings of her vulva, held it there, and moved it slightly. Roxanne wanted to cry, she was in such need. Chris fed the whip butt-first into her, and then Roxanne witnessed something incredible and almost blasphemous. Chris went down on her knees. Hot breath moved like a vagina around Roxanne’s engorged clitoris. It can’t be, she thought, and moved to prevent it, but could not, and then Chris took her with her mouth. She was held within that darkness and liquid and heat by a slight suction. Chris held her in place with the suction, and moved her lips in a semicircle. The whip also rotated within her. Roxanne realized she was being possessed by an expert. But this was a maîtresse, on her knees, and it was not right! It should not be this way! The service offered her was too much for her to accept, a gift too gracious, abundance she was afraid to receive. She tried to persuade Chris to release her and allow her, Roxanne, to suckle on Chris’s cunt. “No,” Chris said firmly in the cold tone that the mistress uses when she will brook no more nonsense and tolerate no more dissent. “I want this, bitch, so hand if over and disappear. Just get lost, give it up. I don’t want anything to do with you, just this, your pussy. Don’t interfere. Don’t tell me I can’t have anything I want right now. You’ve had it. You’ve lost and you’re nothing. Disappear.” The touch was so taboo it was irresistible. To allow a dominant to kneel and use her mouth upon her—to grin into her mouth and demand further attention, repetition of the most exacting and gratifying and difficult caresses. It was so sweet, so sweet, thrilling and devastating and impossible to halt.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  No, no, it should not be. She saw the image of him, naked white with tanned face and hands, looking down and addressing his erect penis as if it were another being, the odd grin flickering on his face. And she heard his voice again: Tha's got the nicest woman's arse of anybody! And she felt his hand warmly and softly closing over her tail again, over her secret places, like a benediction. And the warmth ran through her womb, and the little flames flickered in her knees, and she said: Oh no! I mustn't go back on it! I must not go back on him. I must stick to him and to what I had of him, through everything. I had no warm, flamy life till he gave it to me. And I won't go back on it. She did a rash thing. She sent a letter to Ivy Bolton, enclosing a note to the keeper, and asking Mrs. Bolton to give it to him. And she wrote to him: "I am very much distressed to hear of all the trouble your wife is making for you, but don't mind it, it is only a sort of hysteria. It will all blow over as suddenly as it came. But I'm awfully sorry about it, and I do hope you are not minding very much. After all, it isn't worth it. She is only a hysterical woman who wants to hurt you. I shall be home in ten days time, and I do hope everything will be all right." A few days later came a letter from Clifford. He was evidently upset. "I am delighted to hear you are prepared to leave Venice on the sixteenth. But if you are enjoying it, don't hurry home. We miss you, Wragby misses you. But it is essential that you should get your full amount of sunshine, sunshine and pyjamas, as the advertisements of the Lido say. So please do stay on a little longer, if it is cheering you up and preparing you for our sufficiently awful winter. Even today, it rains. "I am assiduously, admirably looked after by Mrs. Bolton. She is a queer specimen. The more I live, the more I realise what strange creatures human beings are. Some of them might just as well have a hundred legs, like a centipede, or six, like a lobster. The human consistency and dignity one has been led to expect from one's fellow men seem actually non-existent. One doubts if they exist to any startling degree even in oneself. "The scandal of the keeper continues and gets bigger like a snowball. Mrs. Bolton keeps me informed. She reminds me of a fish which, though dumb, seems to be breathing silent gossip through its gills, while ever it lives. All goes through the sieve of her gills, and nothing surprises her. It is as if the events of other people's lives were the necessary oxygen of her own.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  So why am I here, one of the bad guys, working up a sweat, my tension building, slowly poisoning my muscles? I unlock my knees, rock back and forth a few times, shift my weight onto the other foot, and try to settle my stomach. Am I bored enough to eroticize this situation? I try to pretend that the liquid dripping from my armpits and spilling over my back is blood. It’s been too long. I can’t really remember what it feels like to be whipped that severely. After all, it’s been two years. Reconstruct, I order myself. You hang from your wrists, the tips of your toes scrabble for tenuous contact with the ground, cold air hits your bare skin as your shirt is ripped open. You hear the swish of the whip and scream before you feel the pain. The fear makes you scream, but the pain leaves you dumb. It doesn’t stop, it doesn’t alter its character, you have no choice but to learn how to accept it and take it and ride it out. How did I do that? I cannot remember what it is like to abandon my will to the other’s careful, deadly hand and the impartial whip that will obtain the same truth from me it obtains from anyone who comes under it: to be human is to be a prisoner of your suffering flesh, but your physical senses allow you to catch a glimpse of some other possibility, something free and mysterious. I can only remember concrete details and conversation. Jackie’s whip, homemade out of unraveled hemp rope, had little nails in the end of it that she had sharpened by hand. She cut me down. She said, “I don’t love you.” I was crying, broken, liberated, and I said, “I don’t care. You’ve never lied to me. I’d rather have honesty than love.” What a motto! Well, it was our idea of romance. People who said they loved us had done terrible things to us—locked us in cells, sent us away to a penal farm on a rocky piece of ground that couldn’t support the inmates, let alone produce a cash crop, starved us, given us nothing but summer clothes to do outdoor work in the middle of winter. But tough-talking Jackie, whose favorite nicknames for me were “asshole” and “dumb-shit,” Jackie would lie to me about how much money we had to make sure I would eat. We were quite a pair, prowling the streets, outlaw aristocracy living on bottles we returned for the deposit in neighborhoods where nobody would recognize us, her in that leather jacket, me in my denim imitation. One of her epaulets was missing a star. I wore it on the flap of my breast pocket.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  In this manner my insubordinate toy passed many futile days and months without achieving even its secondary goal—what I shall call my "bad habit"—let alone its ultimate, its primary goal. Various changes had been taking place about me. The family had divided into two and, leaving the house where I was born, had moved into separate houses, not over half a block apart on the same street. My grandparents and I were in one house, while my parents and my sister and brother were in the other. During this time my father was sent abroad on official business, toured several countries in Europe, and returned home. Before long my parents moved again. My father had finally reached the belated resolve to reclaim me back into his own household and took this opportunity to do so. I underwent a scene of parting with my grandmother —"modern melodrama" my father called it—and thus finally went to live with my parents. Now I was separated from the house where my grandparents lived by several stops on the government railway and the municipal streetcar line. Day and night my grandmother clasped my photograph to her bosom, weeping, and was instantly seized with a paroxysm if I violated the treaty stipulation that I should come to spend one night each week with her. At the age of twelve I had a true-love sweetheart, aged sixty. Presently my father was transferred to Osaka. He went alone, the rest of us remaining behind in Tokyo. One day, taking advantage of having been kept from school by a slight cold, I got out some volumes of art reproductions, which my father had brought back as souvenirs of his foreign travels, and took them to my room, where I looked through them attentively. I was particularly enchanted by the photogravures of Grecian sculptures in the guidebooks to various Italian museums. When it came to depictions of the nude, among the many reproductions of masterpieces, it was these plates, in black and white, that best suited my fancy.This was probably due to the simple fact that, even in reproductions, the sculpture seemed the more lifelike. This was the first time I had seen these books. My miserly father, hating to have the pictures touched and stained by children's hands, and also fearing—how mistakenly!—that I might be attracted by the nude women of the masterpieces, had kept the books hidden away deep in the recesses of a cupboard. And for my part, until that day I had never dreamed they could be more interesting than the pictures in adventure-story magazines. I began turning a page toward the end of a volume.

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  This missing thing, this lost essence, explained the boys on the corner and “the babies having babies.” It explained everything, from our cracked-out fathers to HIV to the bleached skin of Michael Jackson. The missing thing was related to the plunder of our bodies, the fact that any claim to ourselves, to the hands that secured us, the spine that braced us, and the head that directed us, was contestable. This was two years before the Million Man March. Almost every day I played Ice Cube’s album Death Certificate: “Let me live my life, if we can no longer live our life, then let us give our life for the liberation and salvation of the black nation.” I kept the Black Power episodes of Eyes on the Prize in my weekly rotation. I was haunted by the shadow of my father’s generation, by Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. I was haunted by the bodily sacrifice of Malcolm, by Attica and Stokely. I was haunted because I believed that we had left ourselves back there, undone by COINTELPRO and black flight and drugs, and now in the crack era all we had were our fears. Perhaps we should go back. That was what I heard in the call to “keep it real.” Perhaps we should return to ourselves, to our own primordial streets, to our own ruggedness, to our own rude hair. Perhaps we should return to Mecca. [image file=image_rsrcPX.jpg] — My only Mecca was, is, and shall always be Howard University. I have tried to explain this to you many times. You say that you hear me, that you understand, but I am not so sure that the force of my Mecca—The Mecca—can be translated into your new and eclectic tongue. I am not even sure that it should be. My work is to give you what I know of my own particular path while allowing you to walk your own. You can no more be black like I am black than I could be black like your grandfather was. And still, I maintain that even for a cosmopolitan boy like you, there is something to be found there—a base, even in these modern times, a port in the American storm. Surely I am biased by nostalgia and tradition. Your grandfather worked at Howard. Your uncles Damani and Menelik and your aunts Kris and Kelly graduated from there. I met your mother there, your uncle Ben, your aunt Kamilah and aunt Chana.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The count, whose thought was far from that of the lady, betook himself to her without any delay and at her bidding, seated himself by her side on a couch; then, they being alone together, he twice asked her the occasion for which she had caused him come thither; but she made him no reply. At last, urged by love and grown all vermeil for shame, well nigh in tears and all trembling, with broken speech she thus began to say: 'Dearest and sweet friend and my lord, you may easily as a man of understanding apprehend how great is the frailty both of men and of women, and that more, for divers reasons, in one than in another; wherefore, at the hands of a just judge, the same sin in diverse kinds of qualities of persons should not in equity receive one same punishment. And who is there will deny that a poor man or a poor woman, whom it behoveth gain with their toil that which is needful for their livelihood, would, an they were stricken with Love's smart and followed after him, be far more blameworthy than a lady who is rich and idle and to whom nothing is lacking that can flatter her desires? Certes, I believe, no one. For which reason methinketh the things aforesaid [to wit, wealth and leisure and luxurious living] should furnish forth a very great measure of excuse on behalf of her who possesseth them, if, peradventure, she suffer herself lapse into loving, and the having made choice of a lover of worth and discretion should stand for the rest,[123] if she who loveth hath done that. These circumstances being both, to my seeming, in myself (beside several others which should move me to love, such as my youth and the absence of my husband), it behoveth now that they rise up in my behalf for the defence of my ardent love in your sight, wherein if they avail that which they should avail in the eyes of men of understanding, I pray you afford me counsel and succour in that which I shall ask of you. True is it, that availing not, for the absence of my husband, to withstand the pricks of the flesh nor the might of love-liking, the which are of such potency that they have erst many a time overcome and yet all days long overcome the strongest men, to say nothing of weak women,--and enjoying the commodities and the leisures wherein you see me, I have suffered myself lapse into ensuing Love his pleasures and becoming enamoured; the which,--albeit, were it known, I acknowledge it would not be seemly, yet,--being and abiding hidden, I hold[124] well nigh nothing unseemly; more by token that Love hath been insomuch gracious to me that not only hath he not bereft me of due discernment in the choice of a lover, but hath lent me great plenty thereof[125] to that end, showing me yourself worthy to be loved of a lady such as I,--you whom, if my fancy beguile me not, I hold the goodliest, the most agreeable, the sprightliest and the most accomplished cavalier that may be found in all the realm of France; and even as I may say that I find myself without a husband, so likewise are you without a wife. Wherefore, I pray you, by the great love which I bear you, that you deny me not your love in return, but have compassion on my youth, the which, in very deed, consumeth for you, as ice before the fire.'

• From The Decameron (1353)

  [Footnote 438: _i.e._ from a serious or moral point of view.] You must know that, the high renown of Solomon's miraculous wisdom being bruited abroad well nigh throughout the whole world, no less than the liberality with which he dispensed it unto whoso would fain be certified thereof by experience, there flocked many to him from divers parts of the world for counsel in their straitest and most urgent occasions. Amongst others who thus resorted to him was a young man, Melisso by name, a gentleman of noble birth and great wealth, who set out from the city of Lajazzo,[439] whence he was and where he dwelt; and as he journeyed towards Jerusalem, it chanced that, coming forth of Antioch, he rode for some distance with a young man called Giosefo, who held the same course as himself. As the custom is of wayfarers, he entered into discourse with him and having learned from him what and whence he was, he asked him whither he went and upon what occasion; to which Giosefo replied that he was on his way to Solomon, to have counsel of him what course he should take with a wife he had, the most froward and perverse woman alive, whom neither with prayers nor with blandishments nor on any other wise could he avail to correct of her waywardness. Then he in his turn questioned Melisso whence he was and whither he went and on what errand, and he answered, 'I am of Lajazzo, and like as thou hast a grievance, even so have I one; I am young and rich and spend my substance in keeping open house and entertaining my fellow-townsmen, and yet, strange to say, I cannot for all that find one who wisheth me well; wherefore I go whither thou goest, to have counsel how I may win to be beloved.' [Footnote 439: Apparently Laodicea (_hod._ Eskihissar) in Anatolia, from which a traveller, taking the direct land route, would necessarily pass Antioch (_hod._ Antakhia) on his way to Jerusalem.]

• From Wild (2012)

  I loaded my food into my old blue bag, sick with the knowledge that I’d have to hike 143 miles to my next box with only six dollars and twelve cents in my pocket. At least I didn’t need money where I was going, I reasoned, in order to calm myself. I was heading through the heart of Oregon—over Willamette Pass and McKenzie Pass and Santiam Pass, through the Three Sisters and Mount Washington and Mount Jefferson Wildernesses—and there’d be no place to spend my six dollars and twelve cents anyway, right? I hiked out an hour later with the Three Young Bucks, crisscrossing with them all day; occasionally we stopped together for breaks. I was amazed by what they ate and how they ate it. They were like barbarians loose upon the land, shoving three Snickers bars apiece into their mouths on a single fifteen-minute break, though they were thin as sticks. When they took off their shirts, their ribs showed right through. I’d lost weight too, but not as much as the men—an unjust pattern I’d observed across the board in the other male and female hikers I’d met that summer as well—but I didn’t much care anymore whether I was fat or thin. I cared only about getting more food. I was a barbarian too, my hunger voracious and monumental. I’d reached the point where if a character in one of the novels I was reading happened to be eating, I had to skip over the scene because it simply hurt too much to read about what I wanted and couldn’t have. I said goodbye to the Three Young Bucks that afternoon. They were going to push on a few miles past where I planned to camp because in addition to being three young incredible hiking machines, they were eager to reach Santiam Pass, where they’d be getting off the trail for a few days to visit friends and family. While they were living it up, showering and sleeping in actual beds and eating foods I didn’t even want to imagine, I’d get ahead of them again and they’d once more be following my tracks. “Catch me if you can,” I said, hoping they would, sad to part ways with them so soon. I camped alone near a pond that evening still aglow from having met them, thinking about the stories they’d told me, as I massaged my feet after dinner. Another one of my blackened toenails was separating from my toe. I gave it a tug and it came all the way off. I tossed it into the grass. Now the PCT and I were tied. The score was 5–5.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  He shut the door, and lit a tiny light in the hanging hurricane lamp. "One time we'll have a long time," he said. He put the blankets down carefully, one folded for her head. Then he sat down a moment on the stool, and drew her to him, holding her close with one arm, feeling for her body with his free hand. She heard the catch of his intaken breath as he found her. Under her frail petticoat she was naked. "Eh! what it is to touch thee!" he said, as his finger caressed the delicate, warm, secret skin of her waist and hips. He put his face down and rubbed his cheek against her belly and against her thighs again and again. And again she wondered a little over the sort of rapture it was to him. She did not understand the beauty he found in her, through touch upon her living secret body, almost the ecstasy of beauty. For passion alone is awake to it. And when passion is dead, or absent, then the magnificent throb of beauty is incomprehensible and even a little despicable; warm, live beauty of contact, so much deeper than the beauty of wisdom. She felt the glide of his cheek on her thighs and belly and buttocks, and the close brushing of his moustache and his soft thick hair, and her knees began to quiver. Far down in her she felt a new stirring, a new nakedness emerging. And she was half afraid. Half she wished he would not caress her so. He was encompassing her somehow. Yet she was waiting, waiting. And when he came into her, with an intensification of relief and consummation, that was pure peace to him, still she was waiting. She felt herself a little left out. And she knew, partly it was her own fault. She willed herself into this separateness. Now perhaps she was condemned to it. She lay still, feeling his motion within her, his deep-sunk intentness, the sudden quiver of him at the springing of his seed, then the slow-subsiding thrust. That thrust of the buttocks, surely it was a little ridiculous. If you were a woman, and apart in all the business, surely that thrusting of the man's buttocks was supremely ridiculous. Surely the man was intensely ridiculous in this posture and this act! But she lay still, without recoil. Even, when he had finished, she did not rouse herself to get a grip on her own satisfaction, as she had done with Michaelis; she lay still, and the tears slowly filled and ran from her eyes. He lay still, too. But he held her close and tried to cover her poor naked legs with his legs, to keep them warm. He lay on her with a close, undoubting warmth. "Are ter cold?" he asked, in a soft, small voice, as if she were close, so close. Whereas she was left out, distant. "No! But I must go," she said gently.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  There was nothing but the smell of disinfectants. Nowhere was there that pale-pink smell, like hot sugared milk, so characteristic of a room where a crowd of boys are awaiting a physical examination, their naked bodies pushing and jostling against each other. Instead there was only a handful of us, taking off our clothes in silence, shivering miserably. . . . There was a skinny boy who, like me, was always catching cold. He was standing on the scales, and as I looked at his pale, bony back, covered with down, I suddenly remembered my everlasting, fierce desire to see Omi's naked body. I realized how stupid I had been not to have foreseen what a perfect opportunity the physical examination of the day before would have provided for achieving that desire. Now the opportunity was already lost; there was nothing to do but go on awaiting some random chance in the future. I turned pale. In the pallid goose-flesh that suddenly covered me I was experiencing a form of regret like some piercing cold. I stared vacantly into the air, scratching the ugly vaccination scars on my thin arms. My name was called. The scales looked exactly like a scaffold proclaiming the hour of my execution. "Eighty-eight," the assistant barked to the school doctor. This assistant had formerly been an orderly in a military hospital and still retained the bearing. As the doctor entered the figure on my card, he was mumbling to himself : "Wish he'd get to ninety pounds at least." I had become used to undergoing this treatment at every physical examination. But today I was so relieved that Omi was not present to witness my humiliation that the doctor's words did not cause me the usual anguish. For an instant my feeling of relief amounted almost to joy. . . . "All right—next!" The assistant shoved my shoulder impatiently. But this time I did not glare back at him with the hateful and irritable look I usually gave him. Nevertheless, even though dimly, I must have foreseen the ending of my first love. In all likelihood it was the uneasiness created by this foreboding that formed the nucleus of my pleasure.There came a day in late spring that was like a tailor's sample cut from a bolt of summer, or like a dress rehearsal for the coming season. It was that day of the year that comes as Summer's representative, to inspect everyone's clothing chest and make sure all is in readiness.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Soldiers are fond of children, and I always looked forward to receiving some empty cartridges from them. As my grandmother had forbidden me to accept these gifts, saying they were dangerous, my anticipation was whetted by the joys of stealth. The heavy thudding of army shoes, stained uniforms, and a forest of shouldered rifles are enough to fascinate any child utterly. But it was simply their sweaty odor that fascinated me, forming a stimulus that lay concealed beneath my hope of receiving cartridges from them. The soldiers' odor of sweat—that odor like a sea breeze, like the air, burned to gold, above the seashore —struck my nostrils and intoxicated me. This was probably my earliest memory of odors. Needless to say, the odor could not, at that time, have had any direct relationship with sexual sensations, but it did gradually and tenaciously arouse within me a sensuous craving for such things as the destiny of soldiers, the tragic nature of their calling, the distant countries they would see, the ways they would die. . . . These odd images were the first things I encountered in life. From the beginning they stood before me in truly masterful completeness. There was not a single thing lacking. In later years I sought in them for the wellsprings of my own feelings and actions, and again not a single thing was lacking. Ever since childhood my ideas concerning human existence have never once deviated from the Augustinian theory of predetermination. Over and over again I was tormented by vain doubts—even as I continue being tormented today—but I regarded such doubts as only another sort of temptation to sin, and remained unshaken in my deterministic views. I had been handed what might be called a full menu of all the troubles in my life while still too young to read it. But all I had to do was spread my napkin and face the table. Even the fact that I would now be writing an odd book like this was precisely noted on the menu, where it must have been before my eyes from the beginning. The period of childhood is a stage on which time and space become entangled. For example, there was the news I heard from adults concerning events in various countries—the eruption of a volcano, say, or the insurrection of an army—and the things that were happening before my eyes—my grandmother's spells or the petty family quarrels—and the fanciful events of the fairytale world in which I had just then become immersed: these three things always appeared to me to be of equal value and like kind. I could not believe that the world was any more complicated than a structure of building blocks, nor that the so-called "social community," which I must presently enter, could be more dazzling than the world of fairy tales. Thus, without my being aware of it, one of the determinants of my life had come into operation.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "Now I can't even leave off writing to you. "But a great deal of us is together, and we can but abide by it, and steer our courses to meet soon. John Thomas says good night to Lady Jane, a little droopingly, but with a hopeful heart." *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER *** Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. START: FULL LICENSE THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg License available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license. Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg electronic works 1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  “Take me with you,” she whispered, and her bearer did not ask her where or when, just carried her away in a rush of black and silent wind. Oh, how she had missed being transported this way, effortlessly, in the grip of something far more powerful than herself, so powerful that is was pointless to worry about the destination or what would happen once they arrived there. The venom that had prevented her blood from clotting and closing the wound sang now in her veins, making her see colors behind her closed eyelids, making her warm inside and simultaneously relaxed and alert. No other drug could ever duplicate this ecstasy, this calm. She should know, she had had long enough to search for a substitute. Her thighs trembled, needing to be separated, and the arms around her tightened, hurt her and reassured her. Her arms full, but under no strain, Kerry felt amazed, disgusted with herself, hopeful, but terribly afraid. She had a low tolerance for ambiguity. It slowed her down too much, made her angry. She had not succumbed to temptation, and that was a dangerous weakness. She had not kept her secret, which must mean she had been careless. If one woman could ferret it out, someone else could. Furthermore, she had not slain her discoverer. This was surely stupidity. The code had been violated beyond repair. It was time for another change, another sleep, another decade, another name. But this blood—whose? Her name was … Iduna—Iduna’s blood had been very good. She had never had it offered this way, seductively, with persistence and determination, or felt it being given up with joy. But should the pleasure of feeding be mutual? It made her uneasy, no matter how many times she had imagined it and craved it. Now, of course, she wanted it again, and how she resented that! Would there be more nourishment, more pleasure from this source? Or would the woman wake up sweating with the fear of death and the devil, sick of what she had done, and repudiate it and try to make her terror public? What did it mean, to be offered blood by a mortal who claimed to know what she was doing? Could anyone who was not like herself really know what it meant? Had any of her kind ever felt this way, asked themselves these questions? Perhaps it would be better to allow her own veins to be opened, briefly become prey, and turn this taking heifer in a hated peer. That image brought too much shame, hostility, and desire (yes, desire) to be tolerated for long. What had she done?

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "I had a letter from Father this morning," she said. "He wants to know if I am aware he has accepted Sir Alexander Cooper's invitation for me for July and August, to the Villa Esmeralda in Venice." "July _and_ August?" said Clifford. "Oh, I wouldn't stay all that time. Are you sure you wouldn't come?" "I won't travel abroad," said Clifford promptly. She took her flowers to the window. "Do you mind if I go?" she said. "You know it was promised, for this summer." "For how long would you go?" "Perhaps three weeks." There was silence for a time. "Well," said Clifford slowly, and a little gloomily. "I suppose I could stand it for three weeks: if I were absolutely sure you'd want to come back." "I should want to come back," she said, with quiet simplicity, heavy with conviction. She was thinking of the other man. Clifford felt her conviction, and somehow he believed her, he believed it was for him. He felt immensely relieved, joyful at once. "In that case," he said, "I think it would be all right, don't you?" "I think so," she said. "You'd enjoy the change?" She looked up at him with strange blue eyes. "I should like to see Venice again," she said, "and to bathe from one of the shingle islands across the lagoon. But you know I loathe the Lido! And I don't fancy I shall like Sir Alexander Cooper and Lady Cooper. But if Hilda is there, and we have a gondola of our own: yes, it will be rather lovely. I _do_ wish you'd come." She said it sincerely. She would so love to make him happy, in these ways. "Ah, but think of me, though, at the Gare du Nord: at Calais quay!" "But why not? I see other men carried in litter-chairs, who have been wounded in the war. Besides, we'd motor all the way." "We should need to take two men." "Oh no! We'd manage with Field. There would always be another man there." But Clifford shook his head. "Not this year, dear! Not this year! Next year probably I'll try." She went away gloomily. Next year! What would next year bring? She herself did not really want to go to Venice: not now, now there was the other man. But she was going as a sort of discipline: and also because, if she had a child, Clifford could think she had a lover in Venice. It was already May, and in June they were supposed to start. Always these arrangements! Always one's life arranged for one! Wheels that worked one and drove one, and over which one had no real control! It was May, but cold and wet again. A cold wet May, good for corn and hay! Much the corn and hay matter nowadays! Connie had to go into Uthwaite, which was their little town, where the Chatterleys were still _the_ Chatterleys. She went alone, Field driving her.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Stephen bent down and began to soothe her. Then from out of that still and unearthly night, there crept upon Stephen an unearthly longing. A longing that was not any more of the body but rather of the weary and homesick spirit that endured the chains of that body. And when she must drive past the gates of Morton, the longing within her seemed beyond all bearing, for she wanted to lift the sleeping woman in her arms and carry her in through those gates; and carry her in through the heavy white door; and carry her up the wide, shallow staircase, and lay her down on her own bed, still sleeping, but safe in the good care of Morton. Angela suddenly opened her eyes: ‘Where am I?’ she muttered, stupid with sleep. Then after a moment her eyes filled with tears, and there she sat all huddled up, crying. Stephen said gently: ‘It’s all right, don’t cry.’ But Angela went on crying. CHAPTER 26 1 L ike a river that has gradually risen to flood, until it sweeps everything before it, so now events rose and gathered in strength towards their inevitable conclusion. At the end of May Ralph must go to his mother, who was said to be dying at her house in Brighton. With all his faults he had been a good son, and the redness of his eyes was indeed from real tears as he kissed his wife good-bye at the station, on his way to his dying mother. The next morning he wired that his mother was dead, but that he could not get home for a couple of weeks. As it happened, he gave the actual day and hour of his return, so that Angela knew it. The relief of his unexpectedly long absence went to Stephen’s head; she grew much more exacting, suggesting all sorts of intimate plans. Supposing they went for a few days to London? Supposing they motored to Symond’s Yat and stayed at the little hotel by the river? They might even push on to Abergavenny and from there motor up and explore the Black Mountains—why not? It was glorious weather. ‘Angela, please come away with me, darling—just for a few days—we’ve never done it, and I’ve longed to so often. You can’t refuse, there’s nothing on earth to prevent your coming.’ But Angela would not make up her mind, she seemed suddenly anxious about her husband: ‘Poor devil, he was awfully fond of his mother. I oughtn’t to go, it would look so heartless with the old woman dead and Ralph so unhappy—’ Stephen said bitterly; ‘What about me? Do you think I’m never unhappy?’ So the time slipped by in heartaches and quarrels, for Stephen’s taut nerves were like spurs to her temper, and she stormed or reproached in her dire disappointment: ‘You pretend that you love me and yet you won’t come—and I’ve waited so long—oh, my God, how I’ve waited! But you’re utterly cruel.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And she would not dare to proffer her love, which would burden her heart to breaking. She must now pay many calls with her mother, must attend all the formal social functions—this for the sake of appearances, lest the neighbours should guess the breach between them. She must keep up the fiction that she found in a city the stimulus necessary to her work, she who was filled with a hungry longing for the green of the hills, for the air of wide spaces, for the mornings and the noontides and the evenings of Morton. All these things she must do for the sake of her father, aye, and for the sake of Morton. On her first visit home Anna had said very quietly one day: ‘There’s something, Stephen, that I think I ought to tell you perhaps, though it’s painful to me to reopen the subject. There has been no scandal—that man held his tongue—you’ll be glad to know this because of your father. And Stephen—the Crossbys have sold The Grange and gone to America, I believe—’ she had stopped abruptly, not looking at Stephen, who had nodded, unable to answer. So now there were quite different folk at The Grange, folk very much more to the taste of the county—Admiral Carson and his apple-cheeked wife who, childless herself, adored Mothers’ Meetings. Stephen must sometimes go to The Grange with Anna, who liked the Carsons. Very grave and aloof had Stephen become; too reserved, too self-assured, thought her neighbours. They supposed that success had gone to her head, for no one was now allowed to divine the terrible shyness that made social intercourse such a miserable torment. Life had already taught Stephen one thing, and that was that never must human beings be allowed to suspect that a creature fears them. The fear of the one is a spur to the many, for the primitive hunting instinct dies hard—it is better to face a hostile world than to turn one’s back for a moment . But at least she was spared meeting Roger Antrim, and for this she was most profoundly thankful. Roger had gone with his regiment to Malta, so that they two did not see each other. Violet was married and living in London in the: ‘perfect duck of a house in Belgravia.’ From time to time she would blow in on Stephen, but not often, because she was very much married with one baby already and another on the way. She was somewhat subdued and much less maternal that she had been when first she met Alec. If Anna was proud of her daughter’s achievement she said nothing beyond the very few words that must of necessity be spoken: ‘I’m so glad your book has succeeded, Stephen.’ ‘Thank you, mother—’ Then as always these two fell silent. Those long and eloquent silences of theirs were now of almost daily occurrence when they found themselves together.