Love

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 Delta of Venus (1977)

  As he said this I remembered how I hid in the closet of a young man when I was only thirteen, for the same reason. He was twenty-five and he treated me like a little girl. I was in love with him. Sitting next to him in a car in which he took all of us for long rides, I was ecstatic just feeling his leg alongside mine. At night I would get into bed and, after turning out the light, take out a can of condensed milk in which I had punctured a little hole. I would sit in the dark sucking at the sweet milk with a voluptuous feeling all over my body that I could not explain. I thought then that being in love and sucking at the sweet milk were related. Much later I remembered this when I tasted sperm for the first time. Mollie remembered that at the same age she liked to eat ginger while she smelled camphor balls. The ginger made her body feel warm and languid and the camphor balls made her a little dizzy. She would get herself in a sort of drugged state this way, lying there for hours.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  In 1 Jn., asin the Gospel of John, 6 cate absolut> frequently occurs in antithesis with 6 vids, suggesting that the ref- erence is to God as Father of Christ. N. T. usage in general evidently has a twofold basis, on the one side in the conviction attested by the synoptic gospels that as Jesus could speak to other men of God as “your Father,” so he could also think and speak of him as ‘‘my Father,” and on the other, in that the ascription to him of messiahship carried with it the designation of God as his Father in the sense in which God was the Father of the Messiah (cf. esp. Heb. 15). These two conceptions have, indeed, a common root in the conception of God’s love and watch-care over those whom he approves, but the differentiation of the two ideas would probably be more present to early Christian thought than their common root. A comparison of the several books of N. T., with remembrance of the order of their development and of that of their sources, especially of the synoptists and the fourth gospel, indicates that the two conceptions developed in the order named, the conception of the fatherhood of God as pertaining to Jesus in a unique sense or degree grad- ually gaining ascendancy over the earlier idea that God is Father of all whom he approves, but even in its latest forms never wholly losing sight of the basal idea of fatherhood as consisting essentially in love. That “the Father loveth the Son and showeth him all things that he himself doeth,”’ is still in the fourth gospel the fundamental element of fatherhood. In respect to the thought of Paul in particular, it is to be noted (a) that he used the same form of expression in reference to Jesus as in respect to Christians, viz., ““God and Father of us,” “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”’; (b) that he expressly associated together the sonship of men by virtue of which they call God their Father and the sonship of Jesus, making the possession of the Spirit of the Son the ground or the conse- quence of the possession of the spirit of sonship (Rom. 8-16 Gal. 44-7); but (c) that he did not apparently join the two together in the expression, ‘“‘the God and Father of us and of the Lord Jesus Christ”’ ; (d) that though employ- ing the expression “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and once (2 Cor.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  I always found cocks rather ugly—better not to look too closely. Wrinkled, asymmetrical, disparate shades of color. Dangling and silly when down, curved, veiny, and just plain weird when up. Was this foreign protuberance supposed to get me wet? Visually, it dried me up. Visually, it was humorous. And scary. And they all want you to lick it, suck it, and rub it. Ugh. The only thing I liked about it was the metaphor, a monument of vertical desire. And that unruly hair all over the place. It’s insulting. When I deigned to go down on a man, hairs always caught on my tongue—and it can take ages to find that one curly culprit. In short, a cock was not a thing of beauty to me. Now, women, they are beautiful. Breasts, hips, curves, asses, faces, eyes, lips, smell, pussy—everything about a beautiful woman is, well, beautiful. Would my eyes ever see a cock as an object of beauty? I tolerated them at worst and felt a mild, passing affection at best. And since they rarely did much for me during intercourse, I really had no proper place for them. Then he came along and it all changed—in those first three hours. The epiphany of the cock. I love his cock. Every millimeter, every centimeter, every movement at every moment. His was the first that spoke to me, that took me personally, that never failed me. A-Man remains calm in the face of his own erection—the ultimate test of male dignity. In my experience, most men, when hard, don’t act as if their penis is their own, but as if they have suddenly become subject to some kind of erectile radar device that forces them to relinquish all responsibility for its erratic behavior. A-Man, however, presents a complete paradox. Filled with the same juices, the same desires, the same hardness, he never loses his head. He uses his desire to create an event, to push boundaries, to do something not done before. He is the only man I’ve seen who can walk around a room with a killer erection and still look like a man with a mission—focused, alert, self-contained, and mischievous. He has the most noble erection I’ve ever met. Sometimes we discuss just where exactly is his cock going in my body. Somewhere into the center, behind my belly button. We have even measured with the tape measure. Hard to tell the exact angle. What is sure is that he stirs my guts from right to left, forward, upward, sideways, and back. It really gets your attention, having a large cock in your ass, concentrates the mind. Each time, rebirth. Nearly a hundred and fifty so far. That is a lot of starting your whole life over. You might think, after all that ass-fucking, why am I still counting? I’m anal! There you have it. Back to the terrible twos.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  She showed us a futon that rolled out over the Persian carpet, kissed us both on the forehead, placed two condoms and a bottle of water beside the futon, and disappeared to her own bedroom. She was our fairy godmother, she had felt it between us, she had seen it, and she sanctioned it, even engineered it—despite the fact that she had wanted him. I’d never had a woman do that for me before. I loved the redhead and her house of Freudian mirrors. And then the blessings really began. Thus far, there had been no fucking that night. Now love poured out of this guy’s body like oil. When he entered me, I knew. I just knew. He fucked in love, not frenzy; in tenderness, not anger; in ease, not desperation. What his cock could do for me seemed to be the question he was answering. It did plenty for both of us. Finally, a fuck I liked. A new year, a new world. I saw him once more, alone, before he went to Europe for two weeks, but I simply didn’t have the courage to love him, so I got myself one of those temporary boyfriends—monogamy, weekends away, dinner parties, friends, plans. When the Young Man returned, he called, and I told him I had a boyfriend, I couldn’t see him. He was too good to be real, I told myself, so I chose instead a small, jealous man who didn’t even like to eat pussy. Why? Self-hatred, lack of faith, and a fear of what is beautiful: divorce can make you nuts. But after the boyfriend snooped in my diary one morning six weeks later and confronted me with questionable evidence—I had kissed the Young Man at the gym and had written it down—I fired him on the spot, my outrage being greater than his. I never saw him again. So I continued to date some men (dinner) while fucking others (no dinner). I was learning a lot—well, two things anyway. I preferred sex on an empty stomach, and to eat alone with a good book. MEN Despite all this emerging knowledge, convention dies hard and I still kept trying out boyfriends—whom I always bitterly resented afterwards for allowing me to entrap myself. But between these misguided debacles there were several amusing forays. The impossibly handsome actor who modeled Jansen bathing suits but whose riveting blue eyes seemed to look into mine only to see their own reflection. It was the first time I witnessed a man’s narcissism that was undoubtedly greater than mine—how unbecoming, I thought. His cock was huge and, I suppose, impressive, but it smelled antiseptic and I kept away. The big neighbor who looked like Nicolas Cage was a bit of a jerk, but he fucked so slow that I cried at the beauty, at the sadness. Then there was the other neighbor, the biker. I’d never had a Harley man; never done it before on a Harley, over a Harley.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  The sentence dcYa7nrjaet<; . . . aeaui:6v is quoted from Lev, 19", following the Lxx. dyaTCiQcjett; clearly refers specially to the love of benevolence (see detached note on 'Ayarcdw and 'Aydcic^). In the original passage, :pD3 rijn1? Fanxi, n, though in itself capable of being used colourlessly to denote another person without indication of the precise relationship, doubtless derives from the context ("Thou shalt not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself") a specific reference to fellow Israelites. This limitation of the command, as, of course, also those passages which enjoin or express a hostile attitude to non-Israelites or to per- sonal enemies (Deut 23SM1 25"-" Ps." 41" 6922-28 io9«-»), the apostle* disregards, as he does the specific statutes of the law, such, e. #., as those requiring circumcision and the observance of days, which he conceived to be no longer valuable and valid. His affirmation is to be taken not as a verdict of mere exegesis, summing up with mathematical exactness the whole teaching of 0. T., and giving its precise weight to each phase of it, but as a judgment of insight and broad valuation, which, discriminating what is central, pervasive, controlling, from what is exceptional, affirms the former, not introducing the latter even as a qualification but simply ignoring it. It is improbable that he drew a sharp distinction between portions of the law, and regarded those which were contrary to the spirit of love or not demanded by it as alien elements intruded into what was otherwise good; at least he never in- timates such a discrimination between good and bad parts of the law. Rather, it would seem, he looked at the law as a whole, as one might view a building many parts of which taken alone are without v, 14-16 297 form or comeliness, yet which as a whole is wholly beautiful. Its total meaning was to him love; and this was the law of God; the parts as such had for him no authority. 15. el 5e a\\rj\ovs Mwert ical KartcrOkTe, /JXerrcre JUT? far* aXX^Xoou apaXco07?r€. "But if ye are biting and devouring one another, take heed lest ye be consumed by one another." The form of the conditional clause and the tense of the verbs imply that the apostle has in mind a condition which he knows to be, or thinks may be, even now existing. It would but slightly exaggerate this suggestion to translate, "If ye continue your biting and devouring of one another." What the condition was to which he referred neither the passage nor the context discloses; most probably it was strife over the matters on which the judaisers were disturbing them.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  as the sphere of his new life, the apostle now hastens to identify that faith by the addition of the article rfj and a genitive express- ing the object of the faith. For other instances of a qualitative noun made definite by a subjoined article and limiting phrase, see W. XX 4 (WM. p. 174); Rad. p. 93; Gild. Syn. p. 283; Rob. p. 777; EMT 424; and cf. chap, i7 321. On the objective genitive after TrCcm?, see on 5i& Tr^rreco? Xpwrrou 'Iqo-ov, v.16. On the meaning of TOV vlov TOV 0eov, see detached note on The Titles and Predicates of Jesus, V, p. 404, What par- ticular phase of the meaning of this title as applied to Jesus is here in mind, or why it is chosen instead of X^O-TO'? or Xpio-rfa 'I^crov?, which have been used in this passage thus far, there is nothing in the context clearly to indicate. No theory is more probable than that here, as in i16, it is the Son of God as the revelation of God that he has in mind, and that this expression comes naturally to his lips in thinking of the love of Christ. See Rom. 83* 32; but notice also Rom. 58 836' 39, and observe in the context of these passages the alternation of titles of Jesus while speaking of his love or the love of God, without apparent reason for the change. •roO uloO TOO 0eoO: so tf ACDb a* «KLP, all the cursives, f Vg. Syr, (psh. hard.), Boh. Sah. Arm. Eth. Goth. Clem., and other fathers. Ln. adopted the reading TOO 0sou xal XptatoO attested by BD* FG d g. Despite its attestation by B, this is probably a Western corruption. The apostle never speaks of God expressly as the object of a Christian's faith. TOI) &*ya*jrtfcravr<k f*& teal frrapa&6vrQ<s eavrov im& "who loved me and gave himself up for me." Cf, the note on roS &fonw $avri*v vw^p r&v a/yuzpri&v ^/i<5i/? chap. i4. Here as there, and even more clearly because of the use of the verb irapaSCBwtu (cf. Rom. 425 8* i Cor. nw Eph. 52> 25, esp. Eph. 5*) in, place of the simple S/Scp/u, the reference is to Christ's volun- tary surrender of himself to death. The use of /^ and lf*ov rather than f)^m and fm&v indicates the deep personal feeling with which the apostle writes. The whole egression, while suggesting the ground of faith and the aspect of Christ's work with, which faith has specially to do, is rather a spontaneous 140 GALATIANS and grateful utterance of the apostle's feeling called forth by the mention of the Son of God as the object of his faith than a phrase introduced with argumentative intent. On the mean- ing of ayaTrdu, see on 514.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  the Greek is very expressive even when reproduced in Eng- lish: "and live no longer I, but liveth in me Christ/' The first Se is not adversative but continuative, the sentence ex- pressing another aspect of the same fact set forth in the preced- ing sentence. The translation of AV. and RV., "Yet I live, yet no longer I," is wholly unwarranted; this meaning would have required a\\d before ovic£nt Cf. RV. mg. The second 8e is sub-adversative (Ell.), equivalent to the German "son- dern," introducing the positive correlative to a preceding nega- tive, statement. In this sentence Paul is clearly speaking of spiritual fellowship with Christ (cf. on v.19). Yet this is not a departure from the central thought of the whole passage. He has already said in v.19 that the purpose of the dying to law was that he might devote himself directly to the service of God instead of to the keeping of commandments. He now adds that in so doing he gains a new power for the achievement of that purpose, thus further justifying his course. Saying that it is no longer "I" that live, he implies that under law it was the "I" that lived, and the emphatic fy<*> is the same as in Rom. 715-20. There, indeed, it stands in w.17- 20 in direct antithesis to the apaprfa which is inherited from the past (cf. Rom. s12), here over against the Christ who is the power for good in the life of one who, leaving law, turns to him in faith. But the ^y<w is the same, the natural man having good impulses and willing the good which the law commands, but opposed by the inherited evil impulse and under law unable to do the good. On the significance of the expression &> ^/W, see Rom, 8*- u i Cor, 2*6 Col i27-29 Eph. 316"19. It is, of course, the heavenly Christ of whom he speaks, who in religious experience is not distinguishable from the Spirit of God (cf. chap, s16- ia- *8). With this spiritual being Paul feels himself to be living in such intimate fellowship, by him his whole life is so controlled, that he conceives him to be resident in him, imparting to him im- pulse and power, transforming ham morally and working through him for and upon other men. Cf. 4™. Substantially the same fact of fellowship with Christ by which he becomes the con- trolling factor of the life is expressed, with a difference of form 138 GALATIANS of thought rather than of essential conception of the nature of the relation, by the phrase eV X/MCTT$, which is more frequent in Paul than eV ejjiot. Cf. i22 326- 28 S4, and Frame on i Thes. i1, and references there given to modern literature.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  2. 'AXX^Xft)? TO, ftdpri jSaoraf ere, Kal ovrois rbv vow? rov ^pterroO. "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of the Christ." The reference of r& pdprj is clearly to that especially which is spoken of in the preceding verse, viz., the burden of temptation and possible ensuing sin. This bur- den they are to share, each bearing the other's. Yet the prin- ciple that underlies the injunction, and so in a sense the injunc- tion itself, applies to burdens of any kind. The position of aXX^Xcop makes it emphatic. On the force of vdpoVj see de- tached note NOJUOJ, V, 2. (d), p. 459. On TOV j$u<rro{), see de- tached note on The Titles and Predicates of Jesus, p. 395, and concluding discussion under B, p. 398. See also i7 Col. 3**. By " the law of the Christ" Paul undoubtedly means the law of God as enunciated by the Christ; just as the law of Moses (Lk. a23 Acts i339) is the law of God as put forth by Moses. By the use of the official term rov 'xpicrrov in preference to 'iTjow or even XPIOTOT), the authoritative character of the promulga- tion is suggested. It is clear also that the apostle conceived of the law put forth by the Christ as consisting not in a body of statutes, but in the central and all-inclusive principle of love; though whether in his present reference to that law he had in mind its content, or thought simply of the law of God set forth by the Christ, can not be decided with certainty. Whether he is here thinking of this law as having been promulgated by Jesus while on earth and known to him, Paul, through the medium of those who followed Jesus before his death, or as communicated through his Spirit, there is likewise no wholly decisive indication. If, as seems probable, the former is the case, this is one of the few passages in which the apostle refers 330 GALATIANS to teaching of Jesus transmitted to him through the Twelve or their companions. Cf. i Cor. 710914n23i Thes. 415'17 (?) WH. read (JvaicXi^cranrs with tfACDKLNP al. pier. Syr. (hard.) Arm. Clem. Bas. Ephr. Didym. Ath. Chr. Euthai Thdrt. Dam. Following BFG d f g Vg. Syr. (psh.) Boh. Eth. Goth. Prod. Marc. Thdrt. cod. Tert. Cyp. Victorin. Hier. Aug. Ambrst. al. Tdf. adopts 6vc«cXi}p&<ieTe. Neither external nor internal evidence is decisive, but the preponderance of the latter seems in favour of — craTe. The fut. is probably due to the natural tendency to convert the second imperative into a promissory apodosis.

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

  The same vigor, depth and acuteness of mind, but illuminated by the Holy Spirit; the same strong temper and burning zeal, but cleansed, subdued and controlled by wisdom and moderation; the same energy and boldness, but coupled with gentleness and meekness; and, added to all this, as crowning gifts of grace, a love and humility, a tenderness and delicacy of feeling such as are rarely, if ever, found in a character so proud, manly and heroic. The little Epistle to Philemon reveals a perfect Christian gentleman, a nobleman of nature, doubly ennobled by grace. The thirteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians could only be conceived by a mind that had ascended on the mystic ladder of faith to the throbbing heart of the God of love; yet without inspiration even Paul could not have penned that seraphic description of the virtue which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things, which never faileth, but will last for ever the greatest in the triad of celestial graces: faith, hope, love. Saul converted became at once Paul the missionary. Being saved himself, he made it his life-work to save others. "Straight way" he proclaimed Christ in the synagogues, and confounded the Jews of Damascus, proving that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God.400 But this was only a preparatory testimony in the fervor of the first love. The appearance of Christ, and the travails of his soul during the three days and nights of prayer and fasting, when he experienced nothing less than a spiritual death and a spiritual resurrection, had so shaken his physical and mental frame that he felt the need of protracted repose away from the noise and turmoil of the world. Besides there must have been great danger threatening his life as soon as the astounding news of his conversion became known at Jerusalem. He therefore went to the desert of Arabia and spent there three years,401 not in missionary labor (as Chrysostom thought), but chiefly in prayer, meditation and the study of the Hebrew Scriptures in the light of their fulfilment through the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth. This retreat took the place of the three years’ preparation of the Twelve in the school of Christ. Possibly he may have gone as far as Mount Sinai, among the wild children of Hagar and Ishmael.402 On that pulpit of the great lawgiver of Israel, and in view of the surrounding panorama of death and desolation which reflects the terrible majesty of Jehovah, as no other spot on earth, he could listen with Elijah to the thunder and earthquake, and the still small voice, and could study the contrast between the killing letter and the life-giving spirit, between the ministration of death and the ministration

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  The experience of being truly free, without recrimination, without judgment, to choose at any time, on any day, this one or that one, only reinforces love of the Beloved, reinforces the choice of the Beloved as the Beloved. Not being monogamous, and exercising that option, secures the great love—always being tested, it is confirmed, strengthened, reshaped, redefined. If a man can possess a woman sexually—really possess—he won’t need to control her ideas, her opinions, her clothes, her friends, even her other lovers. In my experience of many lovers, only he has truly possessed me and so set me free. He fucks my ass for hours with a dick an inch too big for the job: that is possession. After a round like that he doesn’t need to infiltrate my life, my psyche, my time, or my wardrobe, because he has infiltrated the core of my being—the rest is just peripheral decoration. Domination—total and complete domination of my being—that is where I find freedom. I assumed from the beginning of our affair that he was probably fucking this other woman here or there or somewhere. And he knew that I knew. This was not the Pre-Raphaelite redhead but a pretty, quiet brunette who also exercised at the gym. I was even turned on by the power I assumed he had over her. I knew about her, but she didn’t know about me, and this worked just fine. I even had my own fantasies about her. About seducing her myself, about him telling her to eat my pussy while he watched. I ran into her on occasion at the gym and we were always friendly; she seemed like a nice woman, self-effacing. He and I had even discussed the idea of a three-way with her—we always reminisced fondly about the magic of our times with the redhead and wondered if it could be reproduced with someone else. But he said he was not sure that I would like her body. Proportion is important to me in matters of beauty, and though she was slim, she had no tits and a wide ass. Good enough for him, obviously, but perhaps not for me. A curious assessment, but probably correct. As time went on, however, this woman became increasingly abstract. A-Man was fucking me so often and so well that she was easily dismissed, often forgotten. That he is free to fuck whomever he likes and yet repeatedly calls me, comes to me, fucks me, seems a greater proof of love and desire on a daily basis than a commitment of monogamy would be—especially if it was made only to prevent insecurities from rising to the surface.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —Pero en realidad, no fue hasta la acumulación de cada pequeña cosa que haces, llevarme el almuerzo, servirme mi propio trasero en esa sala de suministros en el bar, en ambas ocasiones, e incluso diciéndome que consiga ese salpicadero y haciéndome reír con tu insinuación de que soy como una cueva. —Se ríe—. Haces que mi corazón palpite tan fuerte que duele, Jordan. Tú, tu boca y quién eres, todo hace que quiera tocarte. Me hace no querer detener esto. Se encuentra con mis ojos y me coloca el cabello detrás de la oreja izquierda. —¿Te arrepientes de mí? —pregunta. Sacudo la cabeza. —Está bien —dice—. Puedes ser honesta, incluso si es solo una pequeña parte de ti. Entenderé. Me inclino, plantando una mano al lado de su cabeza. —Lamento la forma en que no pude dejar de mirarte el día que me mudé cuando llevabas algunas de mis cajas a la casa —le digo—. Cómo me gusta la forma en que no dices mucho y cómo te gusta ver películas conmigo. Lamento la forma en que se me revuelve el estómago cuando te escucho mover en tu habitación por la mañana, y sé que te veré pronto. —Paso mi mano por su pecho y cuello—. Y lamento buscarte cuando entro en una habitación y que, después que te vayas a trabajar a la mañana siguiente, tenga que bañarme otra vez, porque no puedo dejar de fantasear contigo y excitarme mientras espero que vengas a casa. —Sus abdominales se flexionan mientras se arquea un poco, presionando su polla contra mí—. Y lamento que no haría nada diferente —continúo—. No podría no sentir esto. Balanceo mi pierna hacia atrás, me doy vuelta y me levanto sobre él otra vez, esta vez de vaquera inversa. Levanto mi camiseta por encima de mi cabeza, dejando que mi cabello caiga por mi espalda desnuda, y lanzo una mirada sobre mi hombro, coqueteando con él. Su polla se hincha debajo de mí, y empiezo a rodar mis caderas, frotándome. —Estás tratando de matarme —gime. Paso mis dedos por mi cabello, sintiendo sus manos correr por todo mi cuerpo y llegar hasta ahuecar mis pechos. —¿Con cuántas mujeres te acostaste? —le pregunto. —¿Con cuántos hombres te has acostado? —replica—. No, no importa, no respondas eso. Sonrío, respondiéndole de todos modos. —¿Antes de ti? Dos. —Más de dos —me da su respuesta. —¿Hay algo que no esté haciendo que quieras hacer? —Continúo rodando sobre él, sus ojos congelados en mi culo mientras se mueve. —¿Por qué preguntas eso? —Simplemente me pregunto cómo estoy a la altura de un hombre con mucha más experiencia —le explico. Encuentra mi mirada. —Primero que nada, no es mucha más experiencia. Y, en segundo lugar, hay muchas cosas que aún no hemos hecho y que tengo la intención de hacer contigo una vez que podamos calmarnos y dejar de arrancarnos la ropa al segundo en que entro a la maldita casa después del trabajo todos los días —gruñe en broma.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  All these endless words thrown toward this act, this Holy Fuck, all in the attempt to believe it, believe in something so deep and powerful, to hold on to it, to not let it expire into the black hole of my private terror. My demons are like an infection in the soul and they desire to devour and destroy the truth—and even the beauty—of my very own experience. They are the Devils. My Devils. Damn the Devils. It’s all about evidence. My quest for evidence. Evidence of attachment because attachment predicts repetition. Once one has been taken to the land of primal joy, revisiting that land becomes one’s sole desire. Words, a call, a look, a sigh, the third erection of the afternoon, all are evidence. A condom shot through with cum; two condoms, one shot through with cum, the other empty because he pulled out and shot up my back and into the soft hair at the nape of my neck. His worn shirt, his scent—my madeleine. Or it can be a fuck count. That is why I count, to know it really happened, to know it might happen again. Like a detective, I amass the evidence of love, love that was, love that is, and therefore try to convince my internal jury that love will be. All too often, however, I don’t believe the evidence. Until the next time. Another number, another reprieve. Another shot, another high. I am an anal addict, but only with him. I want it consistently, frequently, repetitively, ritually, and if I don’t get it I become sad, tearful, lonely, beleaguered, unhappy, grouchy, faithless, and miserable. I want to mainline him. Only his penetration of my ass excavates my fear and restores my faith, the faith he created. When an experience of love arrives that demotes all others to impostors, it brings, inside the joy, a haunting fear. How could this delight have been showered upon me, a mortal woman with the usual sins, unhealed wounds, desperate anger, and fierce desire? “Why me?” says my voice of disbelief. “Why not me?” says a small, faint voice not my own, echoing up from my gut. Then I found the best evidence of all—the one that actually worked, that relieved the withdrawal symptoms and gave me solace. He had a game, the postcoital fling-the-condom-into-the-wastebasket-by-the-bed game. Not surprisingly, his aim was amazingly accurate. After he left, I would resituate the condom so that it dangled over the top edge of the basket, the pocket of cum weighing it down, the rim secured by the still sticky K-Y. And I would leave this trophy there where I could easily see it, until the next time he called and said, “It’s Time.” Time to shave my pussy, time to turn off the phone, time to make way for new DNA, time for time to end. With this ritual I contrived to never be without his molecular makeup near me at all times.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  At the age of twenty-three, while still dancing, I attempted to marry God. It was all very sudden. His father was a minister and he was a believer, and so my searching, frustrated atheist self tried to get religion the only way she could: by marrying into the family. My husband was the first man who reflected back to me an image of myself preferable to the one in the mirror. Thus I quickly transferred my dependence to his point of view. Now I existed, but differently. He adored what he saw and told me all about it; it was a lovely thing. Once again, I had good reason to suspect that I had an existence. As time went on, however, he became far less reliable to show me to myself on a daily basis. He was an acquisitive man of many artistic passions, and others eventually took my place. My reflection became blurred; too many fingerprints upon the once-clear looking glass. Smeared, reduced to a smudge in his mind, I found myself dancing numbly in the black hole one more time. God had turned off the spotlight. Where am I? I cannot see. I cannot feel. I must not be. SEX HISTORY I had my first orgasm, alone, at age sixteen, after going to a French porn movie called Exhibition at an Upper East Side art house in New York City with an equally curious girlfriend. Despite the legitimate location, this was my first moviegoing experience where my feet stuck to the floor in front of my seat; this was rather disturbing to my virgin soul. While watching the woman in this movie masturbate, however, I realized that I had simply not persisted long enough with my own explorations to get to the big bang. I went straight home after the movie and imitated my new mentor, with instant results. Thus began my long and secret career as an aspiring porn star. I continued practicing for my debut, but saw no reason to employ a man for the job. A year later, a geeky young boy put his tongue down my throat at a party while pressing something very hard up against my belly. This confirmed my suspicions. Men were gross. Sometime later, a handsome womanizer who knew I was a virgin persisted in pursuing me, and managed to change all these negative feelings. He was famous, strong, charismatic, and sexy as hell. Don Juan. After much resistance, which amused him, I allowed him in. Excitement, pressure, a pool of blood, and awakening. I had never seen an erect penis before. Totally shocking. But once he started in on me, I got over it. He dominated me—physically, completely—and it was the most thrilling thing that had ever happened to me. I don’t believe, however, that I ever had an orgasm with him: I was too excited. And totally in love with him. He suggested a world beyond my own.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  He was the one who looked beautiful to me when we fucked, the others all looked like men with contorted faces—best not to look. He didn’t grunt, or groan, or squeak during sex. He beamed and glowed, eyes wide open, shaking his head, saying, “Wow! Wow!” and then he’d fuck me some more. He was the thirty-third man, and the only one I really liked to fuck. The others were just men and I allowed it. Resentfully. Most men fuck in and out, in and out, in and out, on and on. But he fucked like he was actually going somewhere. And he was. He was the only one who took time to be friends with my cat. The others regarded my little fur ball as a hindrance, an obstacle, even a threat. They just didn’t get it: love me, love my pussy. He was my blood. He was the one who never got real. He was the one I never conquered. He was one I had the most fun with. He had the only cock I worshiped. He was the one with whom I couldn’t tell whose pleasure gave me more pleasure. With the others my pleasure was the only pleasure. He was the guy who could fuck for three hours . . . and still not come. He was the one who showed me real physical joy. The others just made me come. With him I came to . . . the Kingdom. He was sweet-sweet-sweet. He was the one who oozed love. Through his fingertips, his movement, his skin, and his cock. He gave me nothing outside of bed. In bed he gave me everything that I, as a woman, could ever desire. He fucked like a rolling ocean. I didn’t have those powerful but so brief and geographically specific outward climaxes with him, it was the building of an inward tidal wave that flooded my body, my brain, and then spilled into my soul. He never, unlike the others, asked me to be “his”—but I was. He was the one who treated me like his—in bed. All the others treated me like theirs out of bed, but in bed I could smell their fear. With him sex was about transcendence, with the others power. He swooped in and out of my pussy, my ass, my life. Others smothered, wishing, foolishly, to colonize what they coveted. Fucking him was like breathing in wide open space. If I never loved again I would die having known a big, big love. There was always that moment when he fucked me when all my thoughts ceased and turned to God: I was entering His territory. He didn’t please me. He possessed me. He, you see, was the one I really loved. Having now imagined its demise, I mustered the courage to proceed with the affair. #101

• From Less (2017)

  It was so easy. Freddy found Carlos’s house intolerable and so often, after a long Friday teaching and hitting a happy hour with a few of his college friends, would show up at Less’s, tipsy and eager to crawl into bed for the weekend. The next day would be Less nursing a hungover Freddy with coffee and old movies until Less kicked him out on Monday morning. This happened once a month or so when they first began but grew into a habit, until Less found himself disappointed when one Friday evening, the doorbell never rang. How strange to wake up in his warm white sheets, the sunlight through the trumpet vine, and sense something missing. He told Freddy, the next time he saw him, that he should not drink so much. Or recite such terrible poetry. And here was a key to his house. Freddy said nothing but pocketed the key and used it whenever he liked (and never returned it). An outsider would say: That’s all fine, but the trick is not to fall in love. They would have both laughed at that. Freddy Pelu and Arthur Less? Freddy was as uninterested in romance as a young person should be; he had his books, and his teaching, and his friends, and his life as a single man. Old, easy Arthur asked nothing. Freddy also suspected that it drove his father nuts that he was sleeping with Carlos’s old nemesis, and Freddy was still young enough to take pleasure in torturing his foster parent. It never occurred to him that Carlos might be relieved to have the boy off his hands. As for Less, Freddy was not even his type. Arthur Less had always fallen for older men; they were the real danger. Some kid who couldn’t even name the Beatles? A diversion; a pastime; a hobby.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  My orgasm arc with him is an act of giving, opening, giving. With others it is withholding, a battleground of control. In the past, I have achieved orgasm through the paradoxical experience of maintaining control of my pleasure all the while that my orgasm, with a life force of its own, desires its own fruition. The battle—and it is a battle—always ends with an orgasm more potent for its release than for any emotional pleasure. There are quite a few men out there who want nothing more than to please. For them I come in angry triumph: the greater my contempt for their wishing-to-please, the greater my resistance; the greater my resistance, the greater my orgasm. This is the pleasure, literally—and clitorally—of the war between the sexes. Afterwards, so sensitized, I shun all touch and, like Garbo, want to be alone. To take notes, eat dinner, and read The New Yorker. Is this any way to come? Well, it is one way. With him I have learned another. The way of no resistance. Of infinite contractions and many arrivals. And it was not a struggle to give up the struggle. It just happened with him, as if my body knew—I sure didn’t—that he was the one, the one man I could trust, the one man I could give to without his misinterpreting the gift, taking advantage of it, making it mean what it didn’t mean. Perhaps it was his beauty. DNA to DNA. He does have, objectively speaking, the most beautiful physique of them all. Maybe my clit knew he was my sexual mate long before I did. Just as it knew that resistance was necessary to all those men whose DNA was not a match for mine. With them I come from hostility, with him from love. #181 Last night—181. I tell him, after, “A hundred and eighty-one.” And I point out that that is just ass-fucks, that does not count pussy warm-ups. “What does that tell you?” I say. “That tells me three-hundred and sixty-two,” he said, “that’s what that tells me. Three sixty-two tells me it’s a good year.” SOUVENIRS As we approached two hundred, I found that my desire for continual repetition, for impossible guarantees, was intensifying. Managing my relentless need to be in that place with him became a full-time job. There was the disastrous day when the cleaning lady grabbed his well-worn shirt off my bed with the sheets and I came home and saw, to my horror, that she had washed, dried, and neatly folded my aromatic lifeline. I had slept every night with the shirt that smelled like him. Now it smelled like Bounce.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  If I never loved again I would die having known a big, big love. There was always that moment when he fucked me when all my thoughts ceased and turned to God: I was entering His territory. He didn’t please me. He possessed me. He, you see, was the one I really loved. Having now imagined its demise, I mustered the courage to proceed with the affair. #101 He stands by the bed naked, hard, and beautiful and says, “Show me your pussy.” He watches as I take off my thong, lie back on the bed, and bend my knees up and apart. Looking at my pussy, he says, “Spread it apart.” With a hand on each side I open my little pink pussy lips to him. He kneels before me and sucks on my clit, sings on my clit like a troubadour breaking all the rules. I flowed into his tongue and he murmured, “You like it when I eat your pussy, don’t you?” “I would die for it,” I admitted. I cannot imagine feeling greater love in all my life, nor do I expect to ever feel greater love, except for him. Nor would I ever ask or want greater love than I feel for him. With any others, after him, I will need to rest. THE UNWRITTEN RULES We are not domestic. We stay in the desire, in the bedroom—and out of the kitchen, the laundry, the office, and any other room that would threaten to bring in reality. We have, on a few occasions, when famished after sex, cooked dinner—well, actually he cooked it, but then we ate it in the bathtub with candles, floating a large metal bowl filled with tender rare meat between us. Both of us in the deep end, of course. We’ve never been to a movie and don’t plan on going to one, ever. Why would we? We are the movie: the porn that can never be—visually astounding, spontaneously inventive, genitally graphic, and viscerally soul-searing. It isn’t predictable with A-Man. The sex, the ass-fucking, that is the only constant. We never don’t fuck. We are not monogamous. Never have been and never will be. Neither of us has ever asked for it and neither of us has ever offered it. Offering it is the only way it could happen—neither of us would intrude on the other’s free choice. Free choice is at the core of what is hot between us. The subject has been discussed only to establish what is mutually understood. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is the basic policy. He says, “I don’t need to know.” He pays attention to what is, not what isn’t. Having never done this before, I thought about it plenty. If one has sex with someone other than the Beloved, what happens? Does one risk diminishing one’s affection for the Beloved? Does it contaminate the love?

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  I always found cocks rather ugly—better not to look too closely. Wrinkled, asymmetrical, disparate shades of color. Dangling and silly when down, curved, veiny, and just plain weird when up. Was this foreign protuberance supposed to get me wet? Visually, it dried me up. Visually, it was humorous. And scary. And they all want you to lick it, suck it, and rub it. Ugh. The only thing I liked about it was the metaphor, a monument of vertical desire. And that unruly hair all over the place. It’s insulting. When I deigned to go down on a man, hairs always caught on my tongue—and it can take ages to find that one curly culprit. In short, a cock was not a thing of beauty to me. Now, women, they are beautiful. Breasts, hips, curves, asses, faces, eyes, lips, smell, pussy—everything about a beautiful woman is, well, beautiful. Would my eyes ever see a cock as an object of beauty? I tolerated them at worst and felt a mild, passing affection at best. And since they rarely did much for me during intercourse, I really had no proper place for them. Then he came along and it all changed—in those first three hours. The epiphany of the cock. I love his cock. Every millimeter, every centimeter, every movement at every moment. His was the first that spoke to me, that took me personally, that never failed me. A-Man remains calm in the face of his own erection—the ultimate test of male dignity. In my experience, most men, when hard, don’t act as if their penis is their own, but as if they have suddenly become subject to some kind of erectile radar device that forces them to relinquish all responsibility for its erratic behavior. A-Man, however, presents a complete paradox. Filled with the same juices, the same desires, the same hardness, he never loses his head. He uses his desire to create an event, to push boundaries, to do something not done before. He is the only man I’ve seen who can walk around a room with a killer erection and still look like a man with a mission—focused, alert, self-contained, and mischievous. He has the most noble erection I’ve ever met. Sometimes we discuss just where exactly is his cock going in my body. Somewhere into the center, behind my belly button. We have even measured with the tape measure. Hard to tell the exact angle. What is sure is that he stirs my guts from right to left, forward, upward, sideways, and back. It really gets your attention, having a large cock in your ass, concentrates the mind. Each time, rebirth. Nearly a hundred and fifty so far. That is a lot of starting your whole life over. You might think, after all that ass-fucking, why am I still counting? I’m anal! There you have it. Back to the terrible twos.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  The positivity you harbor for yourself needs to be fully embodied. Indeed, all true emotions are embodied. “Wishful thinking” positivity, by contrast, remains forever imprisoned within your mind. It does you little good up there, remaining just talk. The embodied positive regard in which you hold yourself has all the markers of a truly positive emotion: It opens you, relaxes you, and helps you see the larger tapestry of life in which you are embedded. It doesn’t tempt you to shun negative feedback or failure. Rather, it supports you, like a well of reserved resources, when you need to take a close look at the hard facts of your life. Above all, genuine, heartfelt self-love is flexible and grounded in reality. These critical ingredients are missing from much of the positive self-talk prescribed in the self-help industry: flexibility, openness, and realism. Absent these attributes, positive self-talk can morph into cold-blooded narcissism. It becomes inner chatter that in fact serves to insulate you from healing connections with others. It drugs you into thinking that while you’ve got your own life together, most other people decidedly do not, and therefore they’re hardly worth your time. Smugness can prevent you from being a true friend to yourself. The key to knowing whether self-correction or self-congratulations are in order is to assess the degree to which either is commensurate with your actual circumstances. This is where the classic tools of cognitive behavioral therapy can work wonders. What evidence backs up your self-talk? Is any evidence being ignored or distorted? Are there parts of the bigger picture that you are conveniently keeping out of view, whether negative or positive? The idea is to check your self-talk against the full reality of the situation as evenhandedly as you can. Whatever your tally of self-criticism or self-aggrandizement amounts to, this same number represents the opportunities you have each day to practice something altogether different: gentleness instead of harshness, openness instead of tightness, flexibility instead of rigidity, an inner smile instead of that all-too-familiar inner scowl. This is what learning to be a true friend to yourself entails. Try This Micro-moment Practice: Narrate Your Day with Acceptance and Kindness Your inner voice narrates your experience—your days, and indeed, your life. Your self-talk can feel unbidden and completely outside of your control. Yet truth is, it isn’t. Like any habit, with awareness and effort, you can change it. After you’ve witnessed your own self-talk for a day or two, and perhaps tallied instances of your inner harshness or inner Pollyanna, try countering any unfriendly or rigid tendencies with a more accepting, kind, or loving tone. When you notice a shortcoming, instead of berating yourself for it, try gently reminding yourself that other people also struggle with that same shortcoming. Like them, you’re human, you’re learning. Like everyone else, your aspirations and shortcomings are all intertwined in one jumbled skein of experience.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Se siente tan cohibida, y es adorable. La abrazo, sintiéndome tan lleno, porque todo lo que necesito es ella en mis brazos ahora. Sus curvas encajan perfectamente conmigo, y estoy lleno. Mi pecho se llena de algo que es prácticamente demasiado para poder contener. Ella respira calmadamente, y deslizo mi mano sobre su estómago desnudo, mi cuerpo vuelve a la vida por ella. Tan fácilmente, como siempre lo hace. De pronto, su pequeña voz interrumpe una vez más el silencioso cuarto. —Me embarazaste —susurra. No me muevo. ¿Qué dijo? No, eso no puede ser verdad. Hemos tenido cuidado. Cuando no digo nada, gira para mirarme. —No tuve mi período la semana pasada —dice tímidamente—. Me hice unas pruebas en la mañana. Mi mejor suposición es que tengo un mes. Cierro los ojos. Dios mío. ¿Un bebé? Mi bebé. —Espero que tenga mis ojos —dice. Abro los míos. —¿Tus ojos? —Bueno, ella será una mezcla de ambos después de todo —explica—, y quiero que tenga tu sonrisa. Eso lo pone parejo, ¿verdad? Toco su rostro. —¿Estás segura? ¿Un bebé? Asiente. —Estoy segura. —Me mira con cautela y pregunta—. ¿Está bien? Abro mi boca, pero ninguna palabra sale. ¿Un bebé? Me imagino despertando con un infante a mitad de la noche, asientos para auto, y caricaturas, y me siento abrumado, pero extrañamente, me siento… tan jodidamente enamorado de ella y de la idea de su cuerpo creciendo con mi niño. Pero quería que tuviera opciones. ¿Realmente quiere esto? Lo único que sé, es que la quiero a ella. Quiero todo con ella, y deseo, por su bien, que todavía no lo estuviera, pero lo querría eventualmente. —Te amo —susurro—. Te amo tanto. Exhala y sonríe como si hubiera estado conteniendo el aliento todo ese tiempo, y se coloca sobre mí, a horcajadas. —Te amo, también. —Me besa, su cuerpo desnudo acoplándose al mío—. Estaba tan nerviosa. No estaba segura si querías más niños, o… —Shh, nena —le digo, besándola y sosteniendo su rostro—. Te amo. Es solo… —me detengo y luego continúo, mirándola a los ojos—, estás atrapada conmigo, ¿no es así? Me regala una pequeña sonrisa, y tomo su trasero en mis manos. —He visto muchas veces el amor fracasado, Pike —dice—. Ambos lo hemos visto, ¿no es así? —Y luego se mueve contra mí, despertando mi cuerpo de inmediato—. Este es de la buena clase. Cuando lo encuentras, lo conservas. Nada es más importante. Me pongo duro, mientras ella se mueve contra mí, y tomo su rostro, mirándola a los ojos. —¿Me amas? —pregunta. —Nunca dejaré de amarte. Se agacha y me besa, cerniendo sus labios sobre los míos. —Entonces, soy muy afortunada —susurra—. Somos tan afortunados. Clavo mis manos en ella y la acerco, pero de pronto no hay nada aquí, y abro los ojos, viendo que mis brazos están vacíos. Era un sueño, y no puedo calmar mi respiración. Apartando las sabanas, me siento, columpiando mis piernas, y cubriéndome la cabeza con las manos.