Tenderness

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.

Page 112 of 145 · 20 per page

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  Mother said that the wind had blown Dietrich’s white chiffon scarf over her mouth like a mask in that second, so at first all Mother could see was her red lipstick through the chiffon and her eyes peering out from above the scarf. “She had the loneliest eyes,” Mother said. Then she gets the idea of showing me how to charcoal my eyes like Dietrich did. She strikes a big kitchen match off the rough underside of the table. She picks up my ice cream bowl and holds it up high and lets the match burn for a minute on the bottom, so there’s a gray smoke smudge on the crockery. Then she digs around in her pocketbook for the jar of Vaseline she always carries. She dabs a tiny sable brush in the Vaseline and swooshes it around in the soot on the bowl’s bottom. She takes my chin in her left hand. She tells me to tilt my head back and make my eyes sleepy. Then she starts tickling at my eyelid with that brush. She goes on to say that I have the prettiest eyelashes in the universe. This matters to Mother because she’s only got lashes if she takes time to paste on false ones. “When I was pregnant with you, I didn’t care what sex you were, or if you had all your fingers and toes. I prayed to God you’d have long eyelashes.” She draws on her Salem for a minute, and we hang there in the smoke and the Shalimar and the vodka smell, waiting for her to exhale. She waves the smoke away from my face before she sets back to work on me, this time brushing at the hollow place above my eyeball in an arc. “My mother said God would send me a blue-headed baby with water on the brain for saying that kind of prayer. And I said, ‘Then that baby will have pretty eyelashes,’ and you did.” This is also the first time she’s said word one about Grandma since she came back. I try to cut my eyes over to Lecia to figure out what such a mention could mean. But Lecia has Mother’s compact in one hand and her mascara wand in the other. And I can see she’s worrying the mascara onto her lashes. Lecia is easily as broke out in eyelashes as I am, but Mother said mine were prettiest. It’s my face Mother’s holding. (In fights Lecia and I have as grown-ups, she’ll scream at me, “You were always so fucking cute!” And I’ll scream back, “You were always so fucking competent!” Which sums up our respective jobs in the family.) Mother steers my chin away from trying to sneak a look at Lecia, then it’s just Mother and me again. I can feel her breath in light puffs on my nose.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  On her side, she pretended that a strict resemblance, she fancied she saw in me, to an only daughter whom she had lost at my age, was the first motive of her taking to me so affectionately as she did. It might be so: there exist a slender motives of attachment, that, gathering force from habit and liking, have proved often more solid and durable than those founded on much stronger reasons; but this I know, that though I had no other acquaintance with her, than seeing her at my lodgings, when I lived with Mr. H..., where she had made errands to sell me some millinery ware, she had by degrees insinuated herself so far into my confidence, that I threw myself blindly into her hands, and came, at length, to regard, love, and obey her implicitly; and, to do her justice, I never experienced at her hands other than a sincerity of tenderness, and care for my interest, hardly heard of in those of her profession. We parted that night, after having settled a perfect unreserved agreement; and the next morning Mrs. Cole came, and took me with her to her house for the first time. Here, at the first sight of things, I found every thing breathe an air of decency, modesty and order. In the outer parlour, or rather shop, sat three young women, rather demurely employed on millinery work, which was the cover of a traffic in more precious commodities; but three beautifuller creatures could hardly be seen. Two of them were extremely fair, the eldest not above nineteen; and the third, much about that age, was a piquant brunette, whose black sparking eyes, and perfect harmony of features and shape, left her nothing to envy in her fairer companions. Their dress too had the more design in it, the less it appeared to have, being in a taste of uniform correct neatness, and elegant simplicity. These were the girls that composed the small domestic flock, which my governess trained up with surprising order and management, considering the giddy wildness of young girls once got upon the loose. But then she never continued any in her house, whom, after a due noviciate, she found un-tractable, or unwilling to comply with the rules of it. Thus she had insensibly formed a little family of love, in which the members found so sensibly their account, in a rare alliance of pleasure and interest, and of a necessary outward decency, with unbounded secret liberty, that Mrs.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  By my direction, however, the head of his unwieldy machine was so critically pointed, that, feeling him fore-right against the tender opening, a favourable motion from me met his timely thrust, by which the lips of it, strenuously dilated, gave way to his thus assisted impetuosity, so that we might both feel that he had gained a lodgment. Pursuing then his point, he soon, by violent, and, to me, most painful piercing thrusts, wedges himself at length so far in, as to be now tolerably secure of his entrance: here he stuck, and I now felt such a mixture of pleasure and pain, as there is no giving a definition of. I dreaded alike his splitting me farther up, or his withdrawing; I could not bear either to keep or part with him. The sense of pain, however, prevailing, from his prodigious size and stiffness, acting upon me in those continued rapid thrusts, with which he furiously pursued his penetration, made me cry out gently: “Oh, my dear, you hurt me!” This was enough to check the tender respectful boy even in his mid-career; and he immediately drew out the sweet cause of my complaint, whilst his eyes eloquently expressed, at once, his grief for hurting me, and his reluctance at dislodging from quarters, of which the warmth and closeness had given him a gust of pleasure, that he was now desire mad to satisfy, and yet too much a novice not to be afraid of my withholding his relief, on account of the pain he had put me to.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Then her miniature features joined to finish the extreme sweetness of it, which was not belied by that of a temper turned to indolence, languor, and the pleasures of love. Pressed to subscribe her contingent, she smiled, blushed a little, and thus complied with our desires: “My father was neither better nor worse than a miller near the city of York; and both he and my mother dying whilst I was an infant, I fell under the care of a widow and childless aunt, housekeeper to my lord N..., at his seat in the county of..., where she brought me up with all imaginable tenderness. I was not seventeen, as I am not now eighteen, before I had, on account of my person purely (for fortune I had notoriously none), several advantageous proposals; but whether nature was slow in making me sensible in her favourite passion, or that I had not seen any of the other sex who had stirred up the least emotion or curiosity to be better acquainted with it, I had, till that age, preserved a perfect innocence, even of thought: whilst my fears of I did not now well know what, made me no more desirous of marrying than of dying. My aunt, good woman, favoured my timorousness, which she looked on as childish affection, that her own experience might probably assure her would wear off in time, and gave my suitors proper answers for me. “The family had not been down at that seat for years, so that it was neglected, and committed entirely to my aunt, and two old domestics to take care of it.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  As soon as he was off, I ran to her, and sitting down on the couch by her, rais’d her head, which she declined gently, and hung on my bosom, to hide her blushes and confusion at what had passed, till by degrees she re-composed herself, and accepted of a restorative glass of wine from my spark, who had left me to fetch it to her, whilst her own was readjusting his affaire and buttoning up; after which he led her, leaning languishingly upon him, to oar stand of view round the couch. And now Emily’s partner had taken her out for her share in the dance, when this transcendently fair and sweet tempered creature readily stood up; and if a complexion to put the rose and lily out of countenance, extreme pretty features, and that florid health and bloom for which the country girls are so lovely, might pass her for a beauty, this she certainly was, and one of the most striking of the fair ones.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  She was bound hand and foot like a criminal, and in such a weakened state, she would surely have fallen had her guards not given her support. A cry of surprise and horror escaped from Madame de Lorsange: the girl turned and revealed, together with the loveliest figure imaginable, the most noble, the most agreeable, the most interesting visage, in brief, there were there all the charms of a sort to please, and they were rendered yet a thousand times more piquant by that tender and touching air innocence contributes to the traits of beauty. Monsieur de Corville and his mistress could not suppress their interest in the miserable girl. They approached, they demanded of one of the troopers what the unhappy creature had done. "She is accused of three crimes," replied the constable, "'tis a question of murder, theft and arson; but I wish to tell your lordship that my comrade and I have never been so reluctant to take a criminal into custody; she's the most gentle thing, d'ye know, and seems to be the most honest too." "Oh, la," said Monsieur de Corville, "it might easily be one of those blunders so frequent in the lower courts... and where were these crimes committed ?" "At an inn several leagues from Lyon, it's at Lyon she was tried; in accordance with custom she's going to Paris for confirmation of the sentence and then will be returned to Lyon to be executed." Madame de Lorsange, having heard these words, said in lowered voice to Monsieur de Corville, that she fain would have from the girl's own lips the story of her troubles, and Monsieur de Corville, who was possessed of the same desire, expressed it to the pair of guards and identified himself. The officers saw no reason not to oblige, everyone decided to stay the night at Montargis; comfortable accomodations were called for; Monsieur de Corville declared he would be responsible for the prisoner, she was unbound, and when she had been given something to eat, Madame de Lorsange, unable to control her very great curiosity, and doubtless saying to herself, "This creature, perhaps innocent, is, however, treated like a criminal, whilst about me all is prosperity...

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  I was then, by Mrs. Cole, brought in, and presented to him, in a loose dishabille fitted, by her direction, to the exercise I was to go through, all in the finest linen and a thorough white uniform: gown, petticoat, stocking, and satin slippers, like a victim led to sacrifice; whilst my dark auburn hair, falling in drop-curls over my neck, created a pleasing distinction of colour from the rest of my dress. As soon as Mr. Barville saw me, he got up, with a visible air of pleasure and surprise, and saluting me, asked Mrs. Cole, if so fine and delicate a creature would voluntarily submit to such sufferings and rigours, as were the subject of his assignation. She answered him properly, and now, reading in his eyes that she could not too soon leave us together, she went out, after recommending to him to use moderation with so tender a novice. But whilst she was employing his attention, mine had been taken up with examining the figure and person of this unhappy young gentleman, who was thus unaccountably condemned to have his pleasure lashed into him, as boys have their learning. He was exceedingly fair, and, smooth complexioned, and appeared to me no more than twenty at most, though he was three years older than what my conjectures gave him; but then he owed this favourable mistake to a habit of fatness, which spread through a short, squab stature; and a round, plump, fresh coloured face gave him greatly the look of a Bacchus, had not an air of austerity, not to say sternness, very unsuitable even to his shape of face, dashed that character of joy, necessary to complete the resemblance. His dress was extremely neat, but plain, and far inferior to the ample fortune he was in full possession of; this too was a taste in him, and not avarice. As soon as Mrs. Cole was gone, he seated me near him, when now his face changed upon me, into an expression of the most pleasing sweetness and good humour, the most remarkable for its sudden shift from the other extreme, which I found afterwards, when I knew more of his character, was owing to a habitual state of conflict with, and dislike of himself, for being enslaved to so peculiar a lust, by the fatality of a constitutional ascendant, that rendered him incapable of receiving any pleasure, till he submitted to these extraordinary means of procuring it at the hands of pain, whilst the constancy of this repining consciousness stamped at length that cast of sourness and severity on his features: which was, in fact, very foreign to the natural sweetness of his temper.

• From Manhunt (2022)

  He pressed a kiss to the crown of her head and she let him hold her close among the falling leaves and relished the illusion that, if only for a little while, she was safe. “Thanks,” she said against his unwashed sweatshirt, which smelled of gasoline and sweat. “For saving my life.” They broke apart and to her surprise she saw that Robbie was crying, tears pouring down his smudged and grubby face. It would be extremely inappropriate to ask him if he saw someone littering, she told herself. That’s an inside thought. “I haven’t had a friend in a long time,” he said. His voice trembled. His eyes were bright, tears clinging to his long, dark lashes. Beth thought he might kiss her. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but in the end he just squeezed her hands and then turned to lead her uphill through the trees and falling leaves. They came out of the woods not far from the bus where it sat parked on the edge of an old logging road, along which a throng of what looked like a hundred women milled in anxious, orbiting clusters of tears and arguments and low, hushed conversations. There was a van, too, one of the Screw’s big white ones, like the kind contractors drove, and around it stood another group, mostly young and in fatigues. She didn’t recognize them. They seemed to be listening to a tall black trans girl with buzzed hair and an AK-47 on one shoulder. “Who’s that?” Beth asked. “Her name’s Zia.” He led her toward the van through the fringes of the crowd. Some of the women paused to watch her pass, eyes widening at the sight of her bruised and battered face. “She’s got a plan to raid the Screw. I’m going with her. Getting Indi out. You coming?” “Where’s Fran?” “Safe in Seabrook, at least for tonight.” His voice was suddenly hard, his jaw set. “She blew me off when I tried to tell her what was going on.” Beth couldn’t think of anything to say. The leaden weight that settled in her stomach was familiar, but not something she could voice. She thought of Fran watching her fall from that roof at the end of summer, the day they’d met Robbie. She thought of Fran’s slim body in her arms. You make me feel so delicate. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go get Indi.” XI. Off-Duty XI OFF-DUTY Fran sipped her bitter, yeasty beer politely, watching Nam-joo dance with the TERFs and the city council people. Septum Piercing—Ramona—was lurking by the seafood table. She looked drunk and pissed off about something, her expression sour, her chest flushed and blotchy.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  I mean, the bus stop was as horrifying a place as could exist. I mean, it was Dante’s fourth circle. SA: [Laughs] The public school bus stop. Yeah. JW: It is hard to get across. But it seems like the voice, while autobiographical, also does seem of itself. You have no doubt of who Junior is in this book. He seems fully realized from the beginning. SA: In a lot of ways, I think I created the idealized version of me. A lot of wish fulfillment on who I wish I would have been back then, or maybe looking back, decisions I would have made or ways I would have acted. I could have been a better person, slightly better. And also in writing the other characters, I blended people, I took real aspects of certain people and blended them into a fictional stew and created these other characters. It’s realistic and people are racist and classist and sexist and mean and funny and kind. And I think because I wrote with specific people in mind, it was easier to create a real world or a fictional world that felt real. JW: Has the response in that real world been different than to your other books? SA: You know, I never really heard much from Reardan. I mean, there’s a real Gordy—Gordy the white boy genius in the book—there’s a real character he’s based on. He had a different name in the early drafts; I think I called him Henry? JW: Oh, and it just never felt right, I guess. SA: No, and I sent the manuscript to the real Gordy, and he said, “Yeah, this is good, but why are you calling him Henry? Call him Gordy.” So he wanted his real name in the book. To this day I think he’s the only real person I’ve seen at a reading of True Diary. He lives in Arizona and I gave a reading in Arizona, and I knew he was coming, but I didn’t have a cell phone back then so I had no contact with him, and I was reading the book and I decided to read that chapter—even though I hadn’t seen him yet—where Gordy teaches Arnold about books and boners and how to read and the importance of education. ...That’s also an interesting thing to write in the book, that positive idea of education. I think that was quietly revolutionary for a Native American character. JW: It really is a quest to have the best education you can get. SA: It’s the Iliad of public school education, the Odyssey of public school education. And I was reading the chapter and I was getting emotional just thinking about Gordy being out there, not seeing him yet, and then as I was reading I looked up and we locked eyes and he was in the crowd and he was weeping....I mean, his shoulders were shaking and tears were running down his face.

• From The Art of Memoir

  vastness of that mystery and the chilling breath of wind around some ghosts that haunt him. He doesn’t obscure facts or withhold them—he says everything he can about what he’s staring at, and it still denies him any certainty. He makes it sound as if many people survive war by grasping a single truth—Those people were monsters we had to destroy, say—clutching it like a god, while a thousand conflicting truths go unstudied. Herr never makes himself a figure of pity, but I disagree with a reviewer who claimed the book is not about him. It’s not in the sense that he’s never doing what Leo Tolstoy blames Ivan Turgenev for—“pointing to the tear in his eye.” As with many great memoirists, you are never not behind his eyes. The carnage, of course, sparks a natural urge toward moral outrage, a position that demands somebody be blamed. But blame makes deep compassion impossible, and in spiritual terms—which is what Herr grows into by book’s end, when he becomes a Buddhist— only compassion can bring about deep healing. He can never reconcile the beauty and joy he found in the war with the horror—“It wreaks havoc on the Western mind,” he notes. “It was way off the ordinary scale of good and bad. It’s just another level.” For Herr, the war’s gorgeous polyglot of voices—however beautiful and horrifying and, in his word, glamorous—keeps the nature of information fluid. The constantly mutating landscape prevents him from finding a moral stance that doesn’t include rage at somebody—rage, again, serving as a compassion blocker. Nowhere is ethical judgment more desperately called for, and nowhere is it more impossible. His tenderness for the young soldiers is infectious. “I had such love for them and thought I wasn’t supposed to,” he says. They were capable of profound barbarity: “[They] threw people out of helicopters, tied people up and put the dogs on them.” But those same young men also took bullets for each other and threw themselves on grenades. They quite literally kept him alive, laying down fire for him in a hot zone so he could dash to a helicopter whenever he fled a place they were often doomed to die in. They offered to hump Herr’s pack or give him the only warm sleeping spot

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Such was the infernal logic of Rodin's wretched passions; but Rosalie, gentle and less corrupt, Rosalie, detesting the horrors to which she was submitted, was a more docile auditor and more receptive to my opinions. I had the most ardent desire to bring her to discharge her primary religious duties; but we would have been obliged to confide in a priest, and Rodin would not have one in the house; he beheld them, and the beliefs they professed, with horror: nothing in the world would have induced him to suffer one to come near his daughter; to lead the girl to a confessor was equally impossible: Rodin never allowed Rosalie to go abroad unless he accompanied her. We were therefore constrained to bide our time until some occasion might present itself; and while we waited I instructed the young person; by giving her a taste for virtue, I inspired in her another for Religion, I revealed to her its sacred dogmas and its sublime mysteries, and I so intimately attached these two sentiments to her youthful heart that I rendered them indispensable to her life's happiness. "O Mademoiselle," I said one day, my eyes welling with tears at her compunction, "can man blind himself to the point of believing that he is not destined to some better end? Is not the fact he has been endowed with the capacity of consciousness of his God sufficient evidence that this blessing has not been accorded him save to meet the responsibilities it imposes? Well, what may be the foundation of the veneration we owe the Eternal, if it is not that virtue of which He is the example? Can the Creator of so many wonders have other than good laws? And can our hearts be pleasing unto Him if their element is not good? It seems to me that, for sensitive spirits, the only valid motives for loving that Supreme Being must be those gratitude inspires. Is it not a favor thus to have caused us to enjoy the beauties of this Universe ? and do we not owe Him some gratitude in return for such a blessing? But a yet stronger reason establishes, confirms the universal chain of our duties; why should we refuse to fulfill those required by His decrees, since they are the very same which consolidate our happiness amongst mortals? Is it not sweet to feel that one renders oneself worthy of the Supreme Being simply by practicing those virtues which must bring about our contentment on earth, and that the means which render us worthy to live amongst our brethren are the identical ones which give us the assurance of a rebirth, in the life still to come, close by the throne of God! Ah, Rosalie! how blind are they who would strive to ravish away this our hope! Mistaken, benighted, seduced by their wretched passions, they prefer to deny eternal verities rather than abandon what may render them deserving of them.

• From My People (2022)

  He said, “We believe that Jesus, when he came, he was even able to talk to that woman,” referring to the woman at the well in Samaria. “Jesus, realizing that this woman needed help, he didn’t chuck her out. He said to her, ‘Go and buy food.’ And then he was left with her, and then he talked to her about the food and the truth was revealed and then she changed. We cannot fight the sinner. We don’t reject that person. If we send him out from the church, where do we expect that person to get help? That person is coming to the church to get help.” I asked him if this meant that the church intended to undertake its own version of “correcting” gays and lesbians, and he told me that it was important to understand “what causes a person to be gay. What causes them to be lesbian. What causes them to be like that.” Undistracted by the noise that the cleanup people were making as they put away the chairs, Pastor Mooke continued. “We believe God created men and women,” he said, but he added, as though speaking to the gay and lesbian community, “We have not made a stand, really, that we are for or against you.” Part VThe Road Less TraveledIn my early days as the first Black female student at the University of Georgia, I was asked to write a piece for a magazine called the Urbanite , which was started by Byron Lewis, a young man I first met in Alaska, when he was serving in the army. He sang in the army base choir where my father, an officer, was the chaplain and also brought with him from his upbringing in a religious family and civilian life his love of hymns. When Byron returned to New York after his service, he saw the need for a magazine that would focus on Black people and their contributions in a way somewhat different from the other, however important, Black publications. He had read about my UGA experience and called and asked if I would write a piece about my experiences, so far, at the university for his fairly new magazine. I was focused on my studies but because of his relationship with my father, I agreed. I was a bit reluctant to do it since I was still being segregated to the extent the university could, without breaking the law that ordered my sole Black classmate, Hamilton Holmes, and me in. Despite the court order, in the dorm I was still segregated, as I was put in a room on the first floor while all the other (white) girls lived on the second floor. But to honor my father and his relationship with his fellow Black soldiers, I agreed to write an article for the Urbanite . Once I finished, I asked for a first look over the finished piece so I could run it by M. Carl Holman.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Figure to yourself, Madam, fair stripling between eighteen and nineteen, with his head reclined on one of the sides of the chair, his hair disordered curls, irregularly shading a face, on which all the roseate bloom of youth and all the manly graces conspired to fix my eye sand heart; even the languour and paleness of his face, in which the momentary triumph of the lily over the rose was owing to the excesses of the night, gave an inexpressible sweetness to the finest features imaginable: his eyes, closed in sleep, displayed the meeting edges of their lids beautifully bordered with long eye-lashes; over which no pencil could have described two more regular arches than those that graced his forehead, which was high, perfectly white and smooth; then a pair of vermilion lips, pouting and swelling to the touch, as if a bee had freshly stung them, seemed to challenge me to get the gloves off this lovely sleeper, had not the modesty and respect, which in both sexes are inseparable from a true passion, checked my impulses. But on seeing his shirt collar unbottoned, and bosom whiter than a drift of snow, the pleasure of considering it could not bribe me to lengthen it, at the hazard of a health that began to be my life’s concern. Love, that made me timid, taught me to be tender too: with a trembling hand I took hold of one of his, and waking him as gently as possible, he started, and looking, at first a little wildly, said with a voice that sent its harmonious sound to my heart: “Pray, child, what-a-clock is it?” I told him, and added that he might catch cold if he slept longer with his breast open in the cool of the morning air.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  [image "Illustration titled ‘Who my parents would have been if somebody had paid attention to their dreams’ featuring a woman holding a book and a man playing a saxophone." file=image_rsrc4TW.jpg] Third, the penciled portraits suggest two different types of intimate situations. Detailed, more realistic drawings can take a while, and in that way describe a span of time, so we know that Arnold was concentrating and focusing on his artwork and on whatever subject he was drawing. [image "A person sitting at a table with their head resting on their hand, looking down at an open book in front of them." file=image_rsrc4TX.jpg] The pencil sketches of his friends suggest that he spent a lot of time with his friends looking at them intently and that they were comfortable with that intimacy. For example, I imagined that Arnold sketched his friend Gordy as he studied in the library, concentrating on the weird way Gordy rested his face on his hand with his intent facial expression and the curve of his shoulders. Arnold was using his sketchbook to love Gordy, in a way. Other pencil sketches, like the portrait of Eugene on a motorcycle, suggest that he drew them from a photograph. He wanted to spend time with those people, but for some reason—logistically, or emotionally—couldn’t do it in person. One other detailed style was for the Penelope bird. When Arnold drew that, he was thinking about how he loved Penelope and how they both wanted to fly away. I thought he might sit with that feeling for a while and I imagined he was in the school library copying a bird out of a textbook. Arnold would sit and draw very meditatively in ink—all the feathers, using shading, crosshatching, and even little dots. Can you explain how the portrait of Rowdy evolved from being a straight-on elegant sketch to one that was defaced? I actually did a similar thing in one of my own sketchbooks several years ago. I was in a terrible mood, and was drawing a self-portrait to get it out of my system. I was about half-done and I hated it, so I scribbled a big “X” over my whole face. When I looked at it later, I realized that it reflected my mood much better than if I’d actually finished the drawing. [image "A person lying on their stomach on a bed or couch with their legs crossed and head resting on their hand, facing a book on the surface in front of them." file=image_rsrc4TY.jpg] The drawing of Rowdy is meant to be a vignette, describing the particular intimacy in Arnold and Rowdy’s friendship. Rowdy was much more defensive than Arnold about how close they were, and was constantly pulling Arnold to him and pushing him away, often at the same time. I pictured the scene like this:

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  There were no grown-ups in the room, evidently they had all run out of the apartment. ‘They’re breaking the windows,’ the boy said and called: ‘Mama!’ No one answered, and then he said: ‘Mama, I’m afraid.’ Margarita drew the little curtain aside and flew in. ‘I’m afraid,’ the boy repeated, and trembled. ‘Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, little one,’ said Margarita, trying to soften her criminal voice, grown husky from the wind. ‘It’s some boys breaking windows.’ ‘With a slingshot?’ the boy asked, ceasing to tremble. ‘With a slingshot, with a slingshot,’ Margarita confirmed, ‘and you go to sleep.’ ‘It’s Sitnik,’ said the boy, ‘he’s got a slingshot.’ ‘Well, of course it’s he!’ The boy looked slyly somewhere to the side and asked: ‘And where are you, ma’am?’ ‘I’m nowhere,’ answered Margarita, ‘I’m your dream.’ ‘I thought so,’ said the boy. ‘Lie down now,’ Margarita ordered, ‘put your hand under your cheek, and I’ll go on being your dream.’ ‘Well, be my dream, then,’ the boy agreed, and at once lay down and put his hand under his cheek. ‘I’ll tell you a story,’ Margarita began, and placed her hot hand on his cropped head. ‘Once there was a certain lady . . . And she had no children, and generally no happiness either. And so first she cried for a long time, and then she became wicked . . .’ Margarita fell silent and took away her hand—the boy was asleep. Margarita quietly placed the hammer on the window-sill and flew out the window. There was turmoil by the building. On the asphalt pavement strewn with broken glass, people were running and shouting something. Policemen were already flashing among them. Suddenly a bell rang, and a red fire-engine with a ladder drove into the lane from the Arbat. But what followed no longer interested Margarita. Taking aim, so as not to brush against any wires, she clutched her broom more tightly and in a moment was high above the ill-fated house. The lane beneath her went askew and plunged away. In place of it a mass of roofs appeared under Margarita’s feet, criss-crossed at various angles by shining paths. It all unexpectedly went off to one side, and the strings of lights smeared and merged. Margarita made one more spurt and the whole mass of roofs fell through the earth, and in place of it a lake of quivering electric lights appeared below, and this lake suddenly rose up vertically and then appeared over Margarita’s head, while the moon flashed under her feet. Realizing that she had flipped over, Margarita resumed a normal position and, glancing back, saw that there was no longer any lake, and that there behind her only a pink glow remained on the horizon. That, too, disappeared a second later, and Margarita saw that she was alone with the moon flying above and to the left of her.

• From Laura Middleton; Her Brother and Her Lover (1890)

  Having drawn me on his knees, he raised me up, and opening my buttocks and holding apart the lips of the orifice, he presented the enormous head of his charger and tried to gain admittance. He seemed to be aware that there must be considerable difficulty, and he not only anointed the parts with cold-cream, but he also refrained from attempting to force it in by any violent exertion on his part, apparently wishing that the junction should be brought about in a manner that would run less risk of occasioning me pain by my pressing gently down upon it myself. This he urgently begged me to do, and I could not withhold feeling sensible of this attention to my feelings on his part. I thought it would be hardly fair of me not to show that I was so by at least endeavouring, as far as I could, to aid in accomplishing his wishes. I therefore pressed down upon the impaling stroke with as much force as I could venture to exert, and with great difficulty and some pain did get the head fairly within the entrance. Having attained this, I desisted from my efforts for a moment and was pleased to find that the pain ceased entirely. As for him, he was perfectly enchanted and loaded me with kisses and caresses. Just then the bell announced that dinner would be on the table in five minutes. Although I had previously been anxiously expecting this announcement, I must confess I felt sorry when it did come, for I had now got so interested and excited in our proceedings that I would willingly have contributed by every means in my power, even at any sacrifice of pain, to bring the enterprise to a successful termination. But there seemed no help for it, and I turned my head round to him and said that I was afraid we must go downstairs. He caught me round the neck, pressed my lips passionately to his, and entreated me to have patience with him for a few moments; he said he would not attempt to do anything that would give me more pain, but that he was then enjoying the most transcendent pleasure from the kind assistance I had already afforded him in getting his instrument so far imbedded in the abode of bliss, and if I would only allow him to remain where he was for a few seconds longer, he would be overwhelmed with the excess of his joy and would never cease to be grateful to me for having thus contributed to it. I could not resist his appeal, seeing clearly from his excited and flashing eyes that the tempest was nearly at its height, and on the eve of bursting forth with all the fury of a torrent.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  [image "Illustration titled ‘Who my parents would have been if somebody had paid attention to their dreams’ featuring a woman holding a book and a man playing a saxophone." file=image_rsrc4TW.jpg] Third, the penciled portraits suggest two different types of intimate situations. Detailed, more realistic drawings can take a while, and in that way describe a span of time, so we know that Arnold was concentrating and focusing on his artwork and on whatever subject he was drawing. [image "A person sitting at a table with their head resting on their hand, looking down at an open book in front of them." file=image_rsrc4TX.jpg] The pencil sketches of his friends suggest that he spent a lot of time with his friends looking at them intently and that they were comfortable with that intimacy. For example, I imagined that Arnold sketched his friend Gordy as he studied in the library, concentrating on the weird way Gordy rested his face on his hand with his intent facial expression and the curve of his shoulders. Arnold was using his sketchbook to love Gordy, in a way. Other pencil sketches, like the portrait of Eugene on a motorcycle, suggest that he drew them from a photograph. He wanted to spend time with those people, but for some reason—logistically, or emotionally—couldn’t do it in person. One other detailed style was for the Penelope bird. When Arnold drew that, he was thinking about how he loved Penelope and how they both wanted to fly away. I thought he might sit with that feeling for a while and I imagined he was in the school library copying a bird out of a textbook. Arnold would sit and draw very meditatively in ink—all the feathers, using shading, crosshatching, and even little dots. Can you explain how the portrait of Rowdy evolved from being a straight-on elegant sketch to one that was defaced? I actually did a similar thing in one of my own sketchbooks several years ago. I was in a terrible mood, and was drawing a self-portrait to get it out of my system. I was about half-done and I hated it, so I scribbled a big “X” over my whole face. When I looked at it later, I realized that it reflected my mood much better than if I’d actually finished the drawing. [image "A person lying on their stomach on a bed or couch with their legs crossed and head resting on their hand, facing a book on the surface in front of them." file=image_rsrc4TY.jpg] The drawing of Rowdy is meant to be a vignette, describing the particular intimacy in Arnold and Rowdy’s friendship. Rowdy was much more defensive than Arnold about how close they were, and was constantly pulling Arnold to him and pushing him away, often at the same time. I pictured the scene like this:

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  “What are you looking for here, my dear sir?” he exclaimed. “This is the North Pole.” A moment later he had disappeared, and Wanda flew over the smooth ice on tiny skates. Her white satin skirt fluttered and crackled; the ermine of her jacket and cap, but especially her face, gleamed whiter than the snow. She shot toward me, inclosed me in her arms, and began to kiss me. Suddenly I felt my blood running warm down my side. “What are you doing?” I asked horror-stricken. She laughed, and as I looked at her now, it was no longer Wanda, but a huge, white she-bear, who was digging her paws into my body. I cried out in despair, and still heard her diabolical laughter when I awoke, and looked about the room in surprise. Early in the morning I stood at Wanda’s door, and the waiter brought the coffee. I took it from him, and served it to my beautiful mistress. She had already dressed, and looked magnificent, all fresh and roseate. She smiled graciously at me and called me back, when I was about to withdraw respectfully. “Come, Gregor, have your breakfast quickly too,” she said, “then we will go house-hunting. I don’t want to stay in the hotel any longer than I have to. It is very embarassing here. If I chat with you for more than a minute, people will immediately say: ‘The fair Russian is having an affair with her servant, you see, the race of Catherines isn’t extinct yet.’” Half an hour later we went out; Wanda was in her cloth-gown with the Russian cap, and I in my Cracovian costume. We created quite a stir. I walked about ten paces behind, looking very solemn, but expected momentarily to have to break out into loud laughter. There was scarcely a street in which one or the other of the attractive houses did not bear the sign camere ammobiliate. Wanda always sent me upstairs, and only when the apartment seemed to answer her requirements did she herself ascend. By noon I was as tired as a stag-hound after the hunt. We entered a new house and left it again without having found a suitable habitation. Wanda was already somewhat out of humor. Suddenly she said to me: “Severin, the seriousness with which you play your part is charming, and the restrictions, which we have placed upon each other are really annoying me. I can’t stand it any longer, I do love you, I must kiss you. Let’s go into one of the houses.” “But, my lady—” I interposed. “Gregor?” She entered the next open corridor and ascended a few steps of the dark stair-way; then she threw her arms about me with passionate tenderness and kissed me. “Oh, Severin, you were very wise. You are much more dangerous as slave than I would have imagined; you are positively irrestible, and I am afraid I shall have to fall in love with you again.”

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  There’s also a sense of immediacy because you can’t cut-and-paste or delete paragraphs; you only write and that’s that. The “crinkled scraps of paper” design was to make sure the graphics were set apart somehow so they didn’t just look like illustrations drawn straight from the text. The look makes clear that Arnold doesn’t have a nice, shiny sketchbook, but instead collects his artwork on scraps of paper. What did you take away from this project? I got to stretch my repertoire and deal with material that I wouldn’t have come up with on my own. I really wanted to do justice to the story, Junior, Sherman, and to the complex issues Sherman evoked so beautifully with his words. The manuscript is so rich and vivid; I couldn’t help but think, “What a task!” Doing this work was like running a marathon, eating a big rich feast, and walking into creepy basements with a candle. My dad got a copy of the book as soon as it came out. He’d read a review that said he’d laugh and cry, which he of course shrugged off as marketing pap. The next day, he called me to say that he’d chuckled out loud and teared up a few times by the end. He was amazed.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  The two old women came to tell me to conduct her into her cabinet; I transmitted the message; she was accustomed to it all, she went out at once, and the two women, aided by the two valets who had carried me off, served a sumptuous meal upon a table at which my place was set opposite my mistress. The valets retired and the women informed me that they would not stir from the antechamber so as to be near at hand to receive whatever might be Madame's orders. I relayed this to the Countess, she took her place and, with an air of friendliness and affability which entirely won my heart, invited me to join her. There were at least twenty dishes upon the table. "With what regards this aspect of things, Mademoiselle, you see that they treat me well." "Yes, Madame," I replied, "and I know it is the wish of Monsieur le Comte that you lack nothing." "Oh yes! But as these attentions are motivated only by cruelty, my feelings are scarcely of gratitude." Her constant state of debilitation and perpetual need of what would revive her strength obliged Madame de Gernande to eat copiously. She desired partridge and Rouen duckling; they were brought to her in a trice. After the meal, she went for some air on the terrace, but upon rising she took my arm, for she was quite unable to take ten steps without someone to lean upon. It was at this moment she showed me all those parts of her body I have just described to you; she exhibited her arms: they were covered with small scars.