Relief

Passages

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

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• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  This beautiful Byronic Buddhist not only fucked me royally on the last evening of the retreat, but also performed a particular kind of surgery I had only vaguely considered being of any possible use. He became the second man to fuck my ass in my whole life—gently, wildly, eagerly, Buddhistically. It was amazing. The sex, yes, he was so able, so young, so ready . . . and then ready again. But more amazing was that it happened at all, that I allowed it when others had tried to no avail. But when he asked, I looked into his saintly sexy eyes and saw that he could be the one. The one kind enough. It was like being vaccinated against the very illness I had so long been afflicted with. A-Man was the FirstMan, was the BestMan, but he was no longer the OnlyMan. The spell was broken. Buddha had found his way into my backyard. To think that God, that sly devil, had sent me a Buddhist John the Baptist to show me the way out of hell. Or at least to break the seal that bonded me to another but never to myself. How does one let go of the best thing one has ever known in the hope of something better? With a crazy, illogical leap of faith. I left early the next morning, feeling blessed for the first time in a long time. Time to shop. HEELED Upon returning home, I decided that I would not find a replacement or a continuation in a single man; I must find something entirely other. This plan got legs when I bought some new shoes. The right pair of shoes, at the right time, can really change a woman’s attitude. And these weren’t just any old shoes. These were the shoes in which I would find a new identity. Just as toe shoes had shaped the contours of my young life, these shoes would guide my life when submission to a man was no longer possible. These weren’t nice, elegant, sleek Manolo Blahnik pumps. These were nasty, heavy, spiky heels—useful shoes, practical shoes. No more easy-to-lose mules for me; these were serious strap-ons with buckles galore. I like a shoe with a good metaphor to support me. Toe shoes, hooker shoes, it’s all just bondage in the end. I got a lot of shoe for fifty bucks. I called them my “Don’t-Fuck-With-Me” shoes. They also, ironically, looked a lot like “Fuck-Me” shoes. Ah, the double-entendre shoes, the key to Freud’s question “What do women want?”—“Fuck me!” but “Don’t fuck with me!”

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Then each person was sent forth into their own one-on-one five-minute conversation. What happened was nothing short of amazing: First, participants who dropped their safety behaviors looked less anxious. Indeed, when they stopped trying to conceal, rather than all that unconcealed anxiety spilling out, they looked more comfortable. Next, when Alden and Taylor asked the confederates about their experience, guess whom they enjoyed talking to more? The group who dropped their safety behaviors. Who would they like to spend more time with? Ditto. Who did they want as a friend? You guessed it. But most interesting is that participants who dropped their safety behaviors thought the confederates liked them because they seemed less anxious. But in reality, the confederates said they liked them because they were friendlier, talked more openly, conveyed interest, and were actively engaged. In other words, the participants thought their partners liked them because they did less of the bad stuff, but in reality the partners liked them because they did more of the good stuff. Once all the bandwidth used for rehearsing sentences or managing their appearance was freed up, authentic friendliness—the good stuff—naturally filled in the gaps. There’s that word again: “authentic.” In other words, being yourself. Indeed, when we use safety behaviors we know we’re coming off as fake. We know it’s not our true self that we’re presenting to the world—instead, it’s a filtered, highly managed version. Safety behaviors are designed to hide your true self, the one your Inner Critic says is flawed. But instead, safety behaviors keep us stuck in the idea that we’re unlikable or deficient. We never get the chance to prove those ideas wrong. Ironically, when the study participants stopped trying to save themselves they could be themselves. And that, in turn, made them connect on a genuine level. Plus, unsurprisingly, they had a much better time than the participants who were simply told to hang in there. For Jia Jiang, the difference between his first two attempts at rejection illustrates the difference between concealing with safety behaviors and leaving them behind. For his inaugural rejection attempt, Day One, he decided to ask a stranger—the security guard in the lobby of his office building—if he could borrow a hundred dollars. In the video of the encounter Jia filmed on his phone, the security guard is sitting at his desk, hunched over a computer screen. Jia approaches. Before he even gets to the desk, he blurts out, “Excuse me, do you think I could borrow a hundred dollars from you?” The guard looks puzzled and says no. But then a hint of a smile crosses his face. He looks up at Jia. “Why?” But Jia is too freaked out to hear him. “No? All right. No. Okay, thanks,” and he scurries away.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  He has unwound my wound. My ass began life as the tiny pale recipient of Daddy’s angry hand. It was the place of shame, the site of humiliation, the area to hide from The Hand. It received the proof of my shameful badness, my seemingly unavoidable wrongness. I was Bad and I was Punished. And now that same ass—older but wiser —is the coveted arena of a lover’s pleasure where I am naughty and rewarded. And so my ass remains the strongest point of contact with the most important men in my life. It holds my deepest and oldest emotional nerve endings. Is there a direct connection between getting spanked on the bottom, as I was as a child, and my inclination to being anally penetrated? Possibly. If every father who spanked his little girl thought he might be creating a hungry little sodomite, well, that might be a deterrent. Being sodomized now, by choice, reconciles this injury with a scenario of the dominant male and the obedient little girl. Instead of rejection and criticism, I am told, “Good girl, good girl.” The nastier I am and the better I suck his cock, the better I am, until I’m the goodest little girl in the world. I am finally loved. The relief it brings me is profound. I, with my total submission, in fact wield a great healing power: the more I submit the more excited he gets, until I enter the deepest phase of surrender and he comes. He only comes when I’ve given it up. It takes a lot of surrender, discipline, and love to let a man fuck your ass hard enough, long enough, deep enough, and fast enough to shoot. His orgasm is my victory over my lesser self, over the pain of my anger. It fills the hole; I’m finally whole. #162 Owwww! My dad just left after a lovely friendly visit of a week, and three hours later I was doubled over in literal gut-wrenching pain lasting a solid twenty-four hours. Like I’d been punched in the stomach, like I’d rewound in one hour 161 unwinding ass fucks. So the only logical thing to do was go for #162. Jesus, that hurt. New levels of tolerance, new levels of release, new levels of discipline. As he entered I thought, not so painful, I’m already healed by being naked with my ass on display. I was wrong. By the time he got in five inches and then some, he was pushing into the fist in my gut and rolfing me from the inside. It hurt like hell but I didn’t say a word. I just maintained the pain level just past bearable and adored the challenge all the while thinking, Girl, you really are Daddy’s little masochist. DEVOTION A-Man does not require my devotion, he says, but he has it anyway.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  We’ll harness our dream team of traits: conscientiousness, grit, commitment to excellence. We’ll keep our strong work ethic and attention to detail. In addition to using our existing powers, we’ll also gain some new powers: rest without guilt, enjoyment without a goal, flexibility without anxiety, success (and failure) without overevaluation, forgiveness for mistakes (both others’ and our own), and a kinder, gentler regard for ourselves. We’ll grant ourselves some kindness instead of the inner nun with a ruler, some grace instead of the internal cattle prod. We’re going to take this whole enterprise called life, and ourselves, both very seriously and a lot less seriously. We’ll definitely mess up along the way, but paradoxically, taking that in stride will move us forward. Most people read psychology books because they want to get their act together. But you are not most people. Your act, in fact, might be a little too together. Those of us with perfectionism have self-control that’s gotten a little out of control. Believe me, I’m right there with you. I’m on the same journey as you. This is not a finger-wagging self-improvement book that says you’re doing things wrong—you do that to yourself already. Instead, consider it permission. Permission to discover what your life might look like when you let yourself breathe. When you stop pushing so hard. When you focus on what makes life meaningful rather than your performance. You’ll still be perfectionistic, but it will work for you, not against you. Officially, this is called adaptive perfectionism, but really it just means perfectionism that buys you more than it costs you. * * * For me, turning down the volume on my intensity is like nothing I’d ever encountered before. When I started writing this book, I dug in with typical perfectionism: I read a stack of books and papers so high it could be measured in feet. I vowed to work diligently to put what I learned into practice. In other words, I approached my type A tendencies as a problem to be vanquished like all other challenges (and yes, I fully see the irony of doubling down on letting go). Previously, if I wanted to change something in my life—start a podcast, get in shape, jump from a research career to writing—I could do it systematically: set a goal, get to work, and check it off. But this time, there were no boxes to check. Checking boxes was actually the problem. Rather than pushing, I had to let things be. Instead of working toward a goal, I had to focus on things that defied goal-setting—like values, enjoyment, and community. Instead of trying to do everything myself, I had to be vulnerable with others.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Then gather your courage and hit “play.” For the first few seconds, you will have a visceral reaction—“Is that what I look like?” Everyone experiences this—it’s totally normal. But then watch as if you were watching a stranger. Watch as objectively as possible and ask if your fears came true. Does this person look stupid? Does this person jump from topic to topic? How many times did this person pause? Taking a neutral perspective allows you to see and hear yourself for real. Chances are that bits of visible anxiety leak out here and there, but not nearly as much as you think. How you feel inside and how you appear outside don’t match. Then watch again and take a look at the other people in the video—your conversation partner, your audience. Find a point in which you remember feeling a surge of anxiety—a mistake, a pause, a point where your mind went blank. Then ask yourself, Do other people seem to have noticed? Are the other people reacting as if there was a big mistake? If a stranger walked in would they think one of these people looked really odd? (Probably not.) If it’s a conversation, compare each side. Is the other person pausing and tripping over their words at all? (Probably a little—welcome to the human race.) But more important, welcome to evidence that how you feel isn’t how you look. When I’m watching videos with a client in my office, sometimes I’ll take a screen shot of the moment they felt worst—self-absorbed and brimming with anxiety. Then we’ll take another from a moment they felt pretty good—attention focused outward, feeling calmer. We’ll put the screen shots side by side. I got this technique (as well as the following picture) from a team at King’s College London and the University of Oxford. Take a look. On the left is this gentleman’s worst moment during a conversation. He remembers feeling anxious, turning his attention inward, and was sure his face looked weird. On the right, he reported focusing outward, feeling much less anxious, and that he wasn’t thinking at all about his face. What’s the difference in how he looks? Exactly nothing. The only difference was in how he felt. Not only did his face not look weird, but also his feelings weren’t even visible.

• From Less (2017)

  At that, the dam breaks; all the young men burst into howls of laughter, hooting and weeping beside the chili bins. The vendor looks on with raised eyebrows. And even when it begins to subside, the men keep stoking their laughter, asking Less how often he tastes his grandmother’s chow-chow. And does it taste different at Christmas? And so on. It does not take long for Less to understand, sharing a pitying glance with the Head, feeling the burn of the relish beginning anew in the back of his mouth, that there must be a false cognate in Spanish, yet another false friend… What was it like to live with genius? Well, then there was the time he lost his ring in the mushroom bin at Happy Produce. Less wore a ring, one Robert gave him on their fifth anniversary, and, while it was long before the days of gay marriage, they both knew it meant a kind of marriage: it was a thin gold Cartier Robert had found in a Paris flea market. And so young Arthur Less wore it always. While Robert wrote, locked in his room with the view of Eureka Valley, Less often went grocery shopping. This day he was in the mushrooms. He had pulled out a plastic bag and had just begun choosing mushrooms when he felt something spring from his finger. He knew instantly what it was. In those days, Arthur Less was far from faithful. It was the way of things among the men they knew, and it was something he and Robert never spoke of. If on his errands he met a handsome man with a free apartment, Less might be willing to dally for half an hour before he came home. And once he took a real lover. Someone who wanted to talk, who came just short of asking for promises. At first it was a wonderful, casual connection not very far from his home, something easy to grab on an afternoon or when Robert was on a trip. There was a white bed beside a window. There was a parakeet that warbled. There was wonderful sex, and no talk afterward of I forgot to tell you Janet called, or Did you put the parking permit on the car? or Remember, I’m going to LA tomorrow. Just sex and a smile: Isn’t it wonderful to get what you want and pay no price? Someone very unlike Robert, someone cheerful and bright, with affection, and, maybe, not terribly smart. It took a long time for it to be sad. There were fights and phone calls and long walks with little said. And it ended; Less ended it. He knew he had hurt someone terribly, unforgivably. That happened not long before he lost his ring in the mushroom bin. “Oh shit,” he said. “Are you okay?” a bearded man asked, farther down the row of vegetables. Tall, glasses, holding a baby bok choy. “Oh shit, I just lost my wedding ring.”

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  How to fix this? As Dr. Taylor puts it, “We want people to be scientists. First you need to have a good understanding of what safety behaviors you are using. Then you can do some experimental testing and see what happens if you remove the safety behavior.” Here’s the good news: letting go of the life preserver that’s actually keeping you underwater not only is doable; it also gets results. How do we know? Over the past decade, Alden and Taylor have run a series of groundbreaking studies where they asked people to do just that. And in those studies, they told me, 92 percent of people could identify right away what safety behaviors they were using. I certainly know what I used to do: I avoided eye contact and avoided introducing myself, preferring, oddly, to pretend that I already knew the person, which led to confusion on their part and awkwardness all around. But once I realized that’s what I was doing, I stopped. And in their studies, Alden and Taylor found their participants could stop, too. In several studies, Alden and Taylor asked socially anxious participants to have a five-minute conversation with a lab confederate—a getting-to-know-you chat that is the prerequisite for any potential new friendship. Beforehand, the participants were asked what they were afraid might happen during the conversation. In other words, what Reveal was their Inner Critic predicting? Answers ranged from, “I will say something stupid,” to, “My partner will think badly of me,” to, “They’ll think I’m weird,” and everything in between. Next, participants were asked about their safety behaviors: What did they do to try to make themselves feel safer or to prevent The Reveal from occurring? Again, answers ran the gamut: “Think really hard about getting my words out right.” “Put my hand in front of my mouth when I talk.” “Rehearse what I’m going to say next while the other person is talking.” “Smile, smile, smile.” “Focus on my enunciation.” “Continuously monitor what I’m saying.” “Think about taking deep breaths to calm myself down.” Then half the participants got the following instructions, with their personal fears and safety behaviors filled in the blanks, like so: In order to help overcome your anxiety, it is important to discover whether what you fear can actually happen. To accomplish this, you should try not to do the things you normally do to prevent the person from thinking you’re stupid. For example, during the conversation, do nothing to save yourself, do not avoid eye contact. Just think that you want to discover what will happen when you don’t avoid eye contact. By doing this, you will be better able to see if your expectations are confirmed. The other half were told nothing about safety behaviors. They were told to wait it out—that getting over anxiety was like getting into a bath of hot water: at first unpleasant, but after a while they’d get used to it and feel better.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  It takes both body and mind into a place of existence that is beyond normal experience. I learned from the age of four to experience my life through my body, inside my body, always on the brink of perpetual endurance. All this, I believe, prepared me for getting fucked in the ass. It answers the call of my physical masochism. It re-creates the physical extremism of dancing, the discipline, the striving for perfection. It is my being in extremis. Now that I am retired from dancing all of life has a dull edge—except this. A- Man calls it “the Hard Edge of Truth.” Dancing is about being in service to the choreographer, to the steps, to the music. Allowing this man into my ass reproduces this dynamic of service, of yielding to something greater than myself. Learning to go past—way past—one’s physical comfort level, and to love that moment of going past, is intrinsic to a dancer’s training. It is only in passing this place that one finds that Edge where Risk is real and Rapture resides. If you have a ballerina’s tight ass like mine, the pain and pleasure of the internal pressure of sodomy are inseparable. Ballet school perfects the desire to be perfect, and you can end up a delightful and disciplined little slave. I understand that receiving a cock in your ass goes right in tandem with the psychology of perfectionism that afflicts high achievers like myself. To begin with, we need it: being perfect results in a very tight ass. Secondly, the challenge to remain perfect while being anally penetrated is one of the greatest challenges one could entertain. To succeed surely proves one’s inner and outer perfection of being, shape, health, and resilient attitude. Recipient sodomy is a perfectionist’s dream, a masochist’s nirvana. But—as with most things anal—the opposite is also true. Getting ass-fucked while wearing one’s metaphorical tutu is perhaps the ballerina’s most propitious—and scandalous—debut. But it is also her crucifixion, her ultimate sacrifice to transcend the human to find the divine. Never on the stage, however, did I feel as safe as I do when I obey A-Man completely and he covers my face with his big, strong hand and rocks my ass onto his cock. An incredible sense of relief—I have completely let go not only of all control but all responsibility and have given it to him. The sense of safety is so high with him because any time spent with him is the only waking time when my anxiety is gone, when I am not afraid. #175 Well, I did just give him a truly insane blow job—cock, balls, asshole—the full run over and over, ending every now and then with full cock-throat immersion. Every blow job for me is an act of insanity because I feel every one could be the last, and so every one contains all I have. Fuck on the edge. Suck on the edge.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Aguanté tanto como lo hice porque Cole era un amigo y no solo un novio. La mayoría de las chicas, si son más inteligentes que yo y eso no sería difícil, creo, se cansan de los holgazanes realmente rápido. Saber que él y Elena probablemente no durarán es el único consuelo para el dolor. Saltó de mi cama inmediatamente a la suya, ¿verdad? Pero quizás me hizo un favor. ¿Lo querría que regreso? No. No quiero odiarlo y sé que es mejor que esto, pero lo forzamos porque necesitábamos aferrarnos a algo por una vez en la vida. Forzamos lo que no estaba allí, no porque nos necesitáramos el uno al otro, sino porque necesitábamos a alguien. Siempre fuimos mejores amigos. Siento que ahora puedo respirar. Y si él tiene un problema conmigo por estar aquí, dejaré que su papá lidie con eso. Frente a la habitación de Cole, abro la puerta de la otra habitación de invitados, mi nueva habitación, y saco mi cesta plegable para la ropa sucia de la esquina. Amo mi nuevo espacio. Ya había una cama aquí, así que simplemente fui y compré un nuevo juego de sábanas. Pude haber traído mi viejo juego de sábanas de la cama de Cole, dado que es mío de cualquier forma, pero quise empezar de nuevo. Nada que me recordara quién había sido con él. Moví el resto de mis cosas, cerré su puerta y no he vuelto a entrar. Pike y yo fuimos a IKEA y compramos un tocador, por el cual pagué, pero necesitábamos su camioneta para traerlo, una mesita de noche y un sillón acolchado. Me divertí un poco decorando, dado que no necesité considerar a nadie más que a mí. Hay luces parpadeantes ondeando en la cabecera de hierro forjado de mi cama, algunos cojines divertidos, una lámpara y una pintura que le compré a un vendedor ambulante en Nueva Orleans cuando fui con mi hermana. Incluso Dutch, el amigo de Pike, me trajo su vieja radio casetera Panasonic vintage que encontró limpiando el garaje de sus padres un par de días atrás. Supongo que Pike le contó sobre los casetes. —¡Jordan! —Llega un bramido desde abajo. Dejo caer la camiseta blanca que estaba acomodando y sacudo mi cabeza, escuchando la puerta mosquitera cerrarse de golpe contra el marco en el piso de abajo. Mi corazón late un poco más fuerte. Saliendo de la habitación, bajo rápidamente las escaleras. Pike está en la puerta principal sacando su chaqueta del armario. Agua cae por su rostro y la piel dorada de sus brazos tatuados, y su cabello está pegado a su cuero cabelludo. Se quita la chaqueta y su camiseta empapada. Camino hacia él. —¿Qué pasó? —La orilla del río está inundándose —dice, entrando rápidamente en la cocina y directo hacia el refrigerador—. Están llamando a cualquiera que pueda venir a ayudar con sacos de arena antes que llegue a la calle.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  I stayed long enough to allow the pain to slice right through my mental masochism and discovered the relief on the other side: my sadism. I considered the radical possibility that there might be nothing “wrong” with me. Except perhaps choosing guys who adored me, seduced me, and then couldn’t control their dicks, and therefore had to control me. I’d protest, get upset, and the discussion would be successfully diverted from their penis to my hysteria. Oh, the myriad insecurities, baffling behaviors, addictions, and possessive outbursts that inhabit the man in search of control. There is only one kind of control that really matters . My nice-girl martyrdom over, I turned to its heady antidote, the liberation of tyranny. I would no longer accommodate penis problems—whether they were insecurities about length or width, or issues of control lost and not found. If a damaged dick and his owner threatened to raise their heads in my direction, I would simply move out of their reach, and be on my way. I told the Boyfriend that either we were finished or he could retain me as his mistress—meaning my own mistress. I even wrote down the rules—a parody of a best-selling treatise by a couple of housewives on how to lead a man to the altar. My rules led to slavery instead. THE REAL RULES 1. See each other a maximum of once a week, except in special circumstances and when it’s a mutual decision to do so. A week is defined as Monday through Sunday—hence there can be a Saturday encounter and then a Tuesday encounter but then not until the following Monday, when a new week begins. 2. One encounter is defined as any time spent together with no specific limits on hours, etc.—a late-night horny rendezvous and a weekend away both count equally as one encounter . 3. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on nonmonogamy issue. But when together, completely together—no procurements, flirtations, etc. 4. Outside issues to be carefully avoided: work, friends, and family. 5. Phone calls are for only two purposes: to plan an encounter, or, if desired, a thank-you follow-up call, postencounter. No long, in-depth discussions of any nature on the phone—not about others, not about our relationship, not about current sports events. 6. Both parties are equally free to initiate the next encounter and the one who calls preferably has an “offer,” a “plan.” Examples: Be ready at 6 P.M. Friday with an overnight bag, sunglasses, and a jacket; or meet me at Café Lulu at 9 P.M. , I’ll have no panties on; or movie, dinner, and sex; or a 10 P.M. call—I’m coming over to suck your cock; or pick me up and I’ll surprise you; or let’s talk and not have sex. . . .

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Recipient sodomy is a perfectionist’s dream, a masochist’s nirvana. But—as with most things anal—the opposite is also true. Getting ass-fucked while wearing one’s metaphorical tutu is perhaps the ballerina’s most propitious—and scandalous—debut. But it is also her crucifixion, her ultimate sacrifice to transcend the human to find the divine. Never on the stage, however, did I feel as safe as I do when I obey A-Man completely and he covers my face with his big, strong hand and rocks my ass onto his cock. An incredible sense of relief—I have completely let go not only of all control but all responsibility and have given it to him. The sense of safety is so high with him because any time spent with him is the only waking time when my anxiety is gone, when I am not afraid. #175 Well, I did just give him a truly insane blow job—cock, balls, asshole—the full run over and over, ending every now and then with full cock-throat immersion. Every blow job for me is an act of insanity because I feel every one could be the last, and so every one contains all I have. Fuck on the edge. Suck on the edge. All ways. OLD ORGASMS Is anal sex sex? I keep on wondering about this. My connection to him is primarily penetrative and, specifically, anal. Is this sex? Or merely an act of spiritual submission, divine submission? 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.

• From Less (2017)

  What a ridiculous person he was. What a terrible writer, to get caught up in a metaphor like this. As if it would reveal anything to Robert, signify anything about their love. It was just a ring lost in a bin. But he could not help himself; he was too attracted to the bad poetry of it all, of his one good thing, his life with Robert, undone by his carelessness. There was no way to explain it that would not sound like betrayal. Everything would show in his voice. And Robert, the poet, would look up from his chair and see it. That their time had come to an end. Less leaned against the Vidalia onions and sighed. He took the bag, now empty of mushrooms, to crumple it up and toss it in the trash bin. A glint of gold. And there it was. In the bag all along. Oh, wonderful life. He laughed, he showed it to the shop owner. He bought all five pounds of mushrooms the men had handled and went home and made a soup with pork ribs and mustard greens and all the mushrooms and told Robert everything that had happened, from the ring, to the men, to the discovery, the great comedy of it all. And in the telling, laughing at himself, he watched as Robert looked up from his chair and saw everything. That’s what it was like to live with genius.

• From Bigorexia

  And so, you know, I'm really enjoying being a father which is a whole other thing that I'm so glad I'm done with bodybuilding. Once I had a kid and realized what that meant, it began to make bodybuilding look pretty, pretty silly. If I'm going to have to explain to him later on in life why I have health issues, you know, "Because daddy wouldn't be the biggest guy in the supermarket," you know. No one gives a crap. -Ready to be with the group or-- -Yeah, yeah, you can go this way. -[woman] Hello! How are you doing? -Hey, look at you! -[indistinct chat] -[Jeff] Here comes the pizza guy. [woman] Oh, there's the most of meat here. -[man] I want to know-- -[Jeff] All right. So we're going to do our meeting real quick. Uh... -[man] Jeff! -...structure of an AA meeting, right? We're not out here in recovery. Well, no, I just wanted to say, um, this one thing you-- you know, one thing, uh, the man, we're coming to this meeting, you know, all the way here, we're talking about, you know, why I do this, and I was just explaining the-- well, pointing to the camera that this-- it does a lot for me. You know, the youth man help me out. Every week I'm here, you know, this is the-- I always leave here feeling better than when I got here. There's usually one or two of you youth folk outside, we have a heart to heart talk afterwards about, "Do this because I was once in your seat--" I believe in helping people, I'm only here because of all the people that took time to help me. And I'm now ready to help other people. And I think the last problem to solve was bo-- was bodybuilding. It was really the last little thing that kind of didn't make sense. [gentle music] I don't know how it's going to play out for the future. I know that I feel very dedicated to following Dr. O'Connor. I-- I think having the health facts backing me up, that he's telling me I need to lose weight to help my heart, I've never had that before. No one's ever told me anything is wrong. I tried to do this before and I failed so I am nervous about that, but I would argue that at this point of my life, there's a lot of great reasons why this is a smart move. It's something I could kind of feel in my gut, I kind of wanted to do and now, "Hey, let's go do something else, right?" -[indistinct speech] -[radio plays softly] [man speaks in Russian] [interviewer] So how important is it for you to maintain your size? [gentle music] [melancholic music] [airbrush machine softly hiss] [Zac] I am pushing myself so hard, mentally, physically, I'm sacrificing a lot. I'm not seeing my family, I'm not seeing my friends.

• From Less (2017)

  He gathers his student papers to grade them on the plane. These he carefully slips into a special compartment of his black rucksack. He gathers the suit coats, the shirts; he makes the little bundle that an earlier traveler would have hung from a stick over his shoulder. In another special place he puts his pills (the Head was right; they do indeed work). Passport, wallet, phone. Loop the belts around the bundle. Loop the ties around the belts. Stuff the shoes with socks. The famous Lessian rubber bands. The items still unused: sun lotion, nail clippers, sewing kit. The items still unworn: the brown cotton trousers, the blue T-shirt, the brightly colored socks. Into the bloodred luggage, zipped tight. All of these will circle the globe to no purpose, like so many travelers. Back in the kitchen, he loads the last of the coffee (too much) into the French press and fills it with the boiling water. With a chopstick, he stirs the mixture and fits it with the plunger. He waits for it to steep, and as he waits he touches his face; he is startled to feel the beard, like someone who has forgotten they are wearing a mask. Because he was afraid. And now it’s over. Freddy Pelu is married. Less pushes down the plunger as with cartoon TNT and explodes coffee all over Berlin. A phone call, translated from German into English: “Hello?” “Good morning, Mr. Less. This is Petra from Pegasus!” “Good morning, Petra.” “I just wanted to make sure you got off okay.” “I am on the airport.” “Wonderful! I wanted to tell you what a success it was last night and how grateful your students were for the little class.” “Each one became a sick one.” “They all recovered, as has your assistant. He said you were quite brilliant.” “Each one is a very kind one.” “And if you’ve found you’ve left anything behind you need, just let us know, and we’ll send it on!” “No, I have no regrets. No regrets.” “Regrets?” (Sound of flight being announced) “I leave nothing behind me.” “Good-bye! Until your next wonderful novel, Mr. Less!” “This we do not know. Good-bye. I head now to Morocco.” But he does not head now to Morocco. Less French

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  What a place. I have been to the precipice. I looked over, and fell off the ledge. But now I am back, back from the great valley of my masochism, back to bear witness—for myself but also for you—to my survival, to my return from a world where depth was all that mattered. If you don’t fuck with death chasing you, you are mistaken. So long as love, crazy, crazy love, can be survived, there is no excuse. No excuse at all. Go. Come. Slowly, resentfully, I have moved out of slavery, though I cannot forget its freedom. But I am no longer blinded by obsession. I can now recognize what is commonly termed reality, wretched reality. I even live in it on occasion, when feeling perverse. I have endured the loss. Choice is mine. But I know what to do—and where to go—should I need a fix of beauty, of submission, of relief, of bliss. And, besides, I still have the Box. It does not only contain his DNA. It contains my very own madness—safely captured under its gilded lid. But I don’t need to open it. I have the key. Acknowledgments I would like to extend my deep appreciation to Alix Freedman for true friendship and to John Tottenham for being the first to say, yes, you must. I am eternally grateful to David Hirshey whose inexhaustible good humor and unwavering enthusiasm kept me laughing and gave me faith when mine faltered. And to Alice Truax, thank you for everything: guidance, intelligence, impeccable taste, and relentless pursuit. I am very grateful to my persistent and brave agents Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu, and to Catharine Sprinkel for the handling of so many things. And to Michael Wolf, a lawyer with real integrity, many thanks. At ReganBooks I want to thank—and applaud—Judith Regan, for her courage, Cassie Jones, who made it all happen on time, and Kurt Andrews, Paul Crichton, Michelle Ishay, Adrienne Makowski, and Kris Tobiassen. And my great gratitude to all my beloved and delightful advisers and friends who offered wonderful suggestions as well as numerous pictorial responses to my work: Elizabeth Alley, Christopher d’Amboise, Scott Asen, Jeff d’Avanzo, Erin Baiano, Beverly Berg, Jim Bessman, John B. Birchell Hughes, Laura Blum, Mary Bresovitch, Steve Brown, Leonard Cohen, Bonnie Dunn and Le Scandal, Alfredo Franco, Janet Goff, Bruce Grayson, Gregory Jarrett, Elizabeth Kramer, Marc Kristal, Maureen Lasher, Gillian Marloth, Michele Mattei, David Mellon, Carolyn Mishne, Adam Peck, Quentin Phillips, Ray Sawhill, Michael Schrage, Michael Sigman, Michael Solomon, David Stenn, Neal Tabachnick, Bill Tonelli, Vicky Wilson, Leslie Zemeckis, and Robin Ziemer. A very special thanks to Paul Kolnik and to my superb lawyer Martin Garbus for making impossibles possible. I extend much gratitude to my gracious publisher Daniel Halpern and the meticulous Libby Edelson for seeing the e-Book into elegant fruition. And, of course, to A-Man, always.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Being sodomized now, by choice, reconciles this injury with a scenario of the dominant male and the obedient little girl. Instead of rejection and criticism, I am told, “Good girl, good girl.” The nastier I am and the better I suck his cock, the better I am, until I’m the goodest little girl in the world. I am finally loved. The relief it brings me is profound. I, with my total submission, in fact wield a great healing power: the more I submit the more excited he gets, until I enter the deepest phase of surrender and he comes. He only comes when I’ve given it up. It takes a lot of surrender, discipline, and love to let a man fuck your ass hard enough, long enough, deep enough, and fast enough to shoot. His orgasm is my victory over my lesser self, over the pain of my anger. It fills the hole; I’m finally whole. #162 Owwww! My dad just left after a lovely friendly visit of a week, and three hours later I was doubled over in literal gut-wrenching pain lasting a solid twenty-four hours. Like I’d been punched in the stomach, like I’d rewound in one hour 161 unwinding ass fucks. So the only logical thing to do was go for #162. Jesus, that hurt. New levels of tolerance, new levels of release, new levels of discipline. As he entered I thought, not so painful, I’m already healed by being naked with my ass on display. I was wrong. By the time he got in five inches and then some, he was pushing into the fist in my gut and rolfing me from the inside. It hurt like hell but I didn’t say a word. I just maintained the pain level just past bearable and adored the challenge all the while thinking, Girl, you really are Daddy’s little masochist. DEVOTION A-Man does not require my devotion, he says, but he has it anyway. Sometimes I give up so much power to him, give up even more than I have, and this leaves me vulnerable just beyond my own capacity to endure. The best antidote for this is not biting the bullet and suffering like some deeply ethical woman—I have, at least, matured beyond that. No, the antidote is another guy. It’s called “The Two-Guy Solution.” Every woman should subscribe when necessary. Many already do without admitting to it. As one friend put it, “If you’re having trouble with one man, just call another man.” For me, A-Man with the occasional Hound form the ideal combination. Someone needs to give to me as I give to him—power, that is. While it is my greatest desire to surrender to him, with anyone else I am dominant. I never fuck anyone else, and no one else goes in my ass with their cock.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She caught up her coat from the back of the door, and pulled it on. Then she took up her satchel, reached into it, and brought out a piece of paper and a coin. ‘I’ve made you a list,’ she said, ‘of hostels and houses you might try to find a bed in. The money’- it was a half-crown - ‘is from my brother. He asked me to tell you good-bye and good luck.’ ‘He’s a very kind man,’ I said. She shrugged, then buttoned up her coat, put her hat upon her head, and thrust a pin through it. The coat and the hat were the colour of mud. She said, ‘There’s a piece of bacon still warm in the kitchen, which you may as well have for your breakfast. Then - oh! then you really must go.’ ‘I promise I will!’ She nodded, and pulled at the door. There came a blast of icy air from the street outside that made me shiver. Florence shivered, too. The wind blew the brim of her hat away from her brow, and she narrowed her hazel eyes against it, and tightened her jaw. I said, ‘Miss Banner! I - might I come back, sometime, on a visit? I should like - I should like to see your brother, and thank him...’ I should like to see her, was what I meant. I had come to make a friend of her. But I didn’t know how to say it. She put a hand to her collar, and blinked into the wind. ‘You must do as you like,’ she said. Then she pulled the door shut, leaving the parlour chill behind her, and I saw her shadow on the lace at the window as she walked away. After she had gone my leaden limbs seemed all at once, and quite miraculously, to lighten. I rose, and braved again the chilly privy; then I found the slice of bacon that had been put aside for me, and took a piece of bread and a bunch of cress, and ate my breakfast standing at the kitchen window, gazing sightlessly at the unfamiliar view beyond it. After that I rubbed my hands, and glanced about me, and began to wonder what to do. The kitchen, at least, was warm, for someone - Ralph, presumably - had lit a small fire in the range, early on, and the coals were only half consumed.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I promised it. Then I hitched the baby a little higher at my shoulder, and Florence turned away. I didn’t look to see what her expression was, now. I only smiled; and then I put my lips to Cyril’s head - he smelt rather sour - and kissed him. How thankful I was then, that I had lied about Diana! What did it matter, that I was not all that I pretended? I had been a regular girl once; I could be regular again - being regular, indeed, might prove a kind of holiday. I thought back over my recent history, and gave a shudder; and then I glanced at Florence, and was glad - as I had been glad once before - that she was rather plain, and rather ordinary. She had taken out a handkerchief, and was wiping at her nose; now she was calling out to Ralph, to put the kettle on the stove. My lusts had been quick, and driven me to desperate pleasures: but she, I knew, would never raise them. My too-tender heart had once grown hard, and had lately grown harder - but there was no chance of it softening, I thought, at Quilter Street. Chapter 17 O ne of the ladies who had come dressed as Marie Antoinette to Diana’s terrible party had come clad, not as a queen, but as a shepherdess, with a crook: I had heard her tell another guest (who had mistaken her for Bo Peep, from the nursery poem) about how Marie Antoinette had had a little cottage built in the garden of her palace, and had thought it droll to play in it, with all of her friends dressed up as dairy-maids and yokels. I remembered that story, in the first few weeks of my time at Quilter Street, a little bitterly. I think I had felt rather like Marie Antoinette, the day that I put on an apron and cleaned Florence’s house for her and cooked her supper; I think I even felt like her, the second day I did it. By the third day, however - the third day of waiting in the street for the stand-pipe to spit out its bit of cloudy water, of black-leading the fireplaces and the stove, of whitening the step, of scouring out the privy - I was ready to hang up my crook and return to my palace. But the palace doors, of course, had been closed on me; I must work, now, in earnest.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  With my fantasy beast-men I achieved orgasms that were, finally, entirely guiltless; they were, after all, my job. You see, I have an impeccable work ethic, whereas in matters of the heart I have no idea of my rights, much less their application. When sex becomes my work, I’m home free—cash in hand. I found that if I allowed these various fantasies to rove uncensored, they would uncover parts of myself that were otherwise entirely hidden. I became particularly interested in the fraction of time that preceded the moment of orgasmic inevitability. What thought, what dynamic, what image would cause that final, magical, loss of control? That was the pivotal moment that seemed to join consciousness to the divine—and more often than not, I found this lofty pathway to be inspired by completely slutty activities (see above—and below). This meeting of the galaxies in the gutter fascinates me still. I learned, for example, that I often reach the point of inevitability through the inspiration of a dire “last-resort” thought or image that renders me, my pussy, my clit, the most exposed, the most seen, the most helpless. Loss of responsibility—it’s-not-my-fault—does it every time. My OB-GYN fantasy works extremely well: I am the guinea pig, for a fee of five hundred dollars—I really need the money; it’s only for the money— for the final semester of classes for the advanced medical students. I am behind a big white sheet, just doing it for the dough, awake, and above it all—this is work. On the other side of the sheet my feet are in stirrups, my thighs are wide, and my pussy is spread for show-and-tell. The doctor teaching the class first uses a pointing rod to direct the ten students to the sites of the female sexual anatomy. Then, naughty doctor, he starts to use his fingers to better explain the details. And all those students, male and female, are gazing intently at my shaved, pink little pussy while I read the New York Times Arts & Leisure section on the other side of the sheet, blasé and anonymous, feeling nothing . . . I think. The final class is devoted to the clit and female sexual excitement, with the doctor suggesting that for thorough knowledge each student get up real close for a single, well-earned lick before their lunch break. By now I am somewhat distracted and wondering why the Times doesn’t have a horoscope section, and then the good doctor finishes me off, showing all those young men and women just how expert a physician he really is. Now I know my horoscope: it’s a “good day,” full of “unusual opportunity” with a “tempting offer” for “a lucrative position promising unexpected personal reward.”

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  La puerta se cierra tras de mí, la música en el interior ahora es un sordo zumbido, y mi pecho se hunde, liberando la respiración que no sabía que había estado conteniendo. La quiero, pero desearía que no se preocupara por mí. Me mira como si fuera mi madre y quisiera arreglarlo todo. Supongo que debería sentirme afortunada al tener una madre como ella. El bien recibido aire fresco me inunda, el frío de la noche me eriza la piel en los brazos y el fragante aroma de las flores de mayo me recorre la nariz. Echo la cabeza hacia atrás, cierro los ojos y aspiro una bocanada de aire mientras mi largo flequillo me hace cosquillas en la mejilla con la ligera brisa. Las noches de verano están llegando. Abro los ojos y miro a la izquierda y luego a la derecha, viendo que las aceras están vacías, pero los autos siguen alineados a ambos lados de la calle. El estacionamiento VFA también está lleno. Su noche de Bingo generalmente se convierte en una escena de bar a esta hora, y parece que los viejos tiempos aún siguen fuerte. Girando a la izquierda, saco la goma de mi cabello, dejando caer los rizos sueltos, y deslizo la banda alrededor de mi muñeca mientras empiezo a caminar. La noche se siente bien, a pesar que todavía está un poco helada. Hay mucho licor en cada grieta, filtrándose en mi nariz toda la noche. Demasiado ruido y demasiados ojos, también. Aumento el paso, emocionada por desaparecer en el oscuro teatro por un tiempo. Normalmente no voy sola, pero cuando muestran una película de los 80, como Evil Dead, tengo que ir. A Cole le gustan los efectos especiales y no confía en las películas hechas antes de 1995. Sonrío, pensando en sus peculiaridades. No sabe lo que se está perdiendo. Los 80 fueron fantásticos. Es toda una década de diversión. No todo tenía que tener un significado o ser profundo. Es un escape bienvenido, especialmente esta noche. Al doblar la esquina y llegar a la taquilla, veo que llego unos minutos antes, lo cual es genial. Odio perder los avances al principio. —Uno, por favor —le digo al cajero. Saco de mi bolsillo un montón de propinas que hice esta noche y pago los siete con cincuenta por el boleto. No es que tenga dinero de sobra, con el alquiler vencido y un pequeño montón de facturas sobre el escritorio de Cole y mío, en nuestro apartamento, que todavía no podemos pagar, pero no es como si siete dólares me hicieran rica o me dejaran en la ruina. Y es mi cumpleaños, entonces… Al entrar, evito el puesto de venta y me dirijo al siguiente juego de puertas dobles. Solo hay un teatro, y sorprendentemente, este lugar ha sobrevivido durante sesenta años, incluso en el auge de los grandes centros de cine con doce salas