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.

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• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Fortunately Villiers was easy to work with; he had a naturally buoy- ant manner and nothing seemed to bother him. That same year the conspirators managed to get him appointed the royal cup-bearer: every night he poured out the king's wine, so that the king could see him up close. After a few weeks, the king was in love. The boy seemed to crave at- tention and tenderness, exactly what he yearned to offer. How wonderful it would be to mold and educate him. And what a perfect figure he had! The conspirators convinced Villiers to break off his engagement to a young lady; the king was single-minded in his affections, and could not stand competition. Soon James wanted to be around Villiers all the time, for he had the qualities the king admired: innocence and a lighthearted spirit. The king appointed Villiers gentleman of the bedchamber, making it possible for them to be alone together. What particularly charmed James was that Villiers never asked for anything, which made it all the more de- lightful to spoil him. By 1616, Villiers had completely supplanted the former favorite. He was now the Earl of Buckingham, and a member of the king's privy coun- cil. To the conspirators' dismay, however, he quickly accumulated even more privileges than the Earl of Somerset had done. The king would call him sweetheart in public, fix his doublets, comb his hair. James zealously protected his favorite, anxious to preserve the young man's innocence. He tended to the youth's every whim, in effect became his slave. In fact the king seemed to regress; whenever Steenie, his nickname for Villiers, en- tered the room, he started to act like a child. The two were inseparable un- til the king's death, in 1625. Interpretation. We are most definitely stamped forever by our parents, in ways we can never fully understand. But the parents are equally influenced and seduced by the child. They may play the role of the protector, but in the process they absorb the child's spirit and energy, relive a part of their own childhood. And just as the child struggles against sexual feelings toward the parent, the parent must repress comparable erotic feelings that lie just beneath the tenderness they feel. The best and most insidious way to seduce people is often to position yourself as the child. Imagining them- selves stronger, more in control, they will be lured into your web. They will feel they have nothing to fear. Emphasize your immaturity, your weakness, and you let them indulge in fantasies of protecting and parenting you—a strong desire as people get older. What they do not realize is that you are getting under their skin, insinuating yourself—it is the child who is con- trolling the adult.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  Many mammals have circuitry that looks similar to ours but has different functions, so we can’t answer the question just by examining the wiring. No one, to my knowledge, has specifically studied the interoceptive circuitry of dogs, but it seems pretty clear from their behavior that they have an affective life. And how about birds, fish, or reptiles? We don’t know for sure. I have to admit that these questions preoccupy me as a civilian (as my husband calls me in non-scientist moments). I can’t shop for meat or eggs in a supermarket or attempt to rid my kitchen of bloody irritating fruit flies without asking myself . . . what do these creatures feel? I think it’s best to assume all animals can experience affect. I realize this discussion has the potential to transport us from the land of science to the land of ethics, coming perilously close to moral issues such as pain and suffering in laboratory animals, creatures who are factory-farmed for food, and whether fish feel pain when a hook enters their mouth. The natural chemicals that relieve suffering within our own nervous systems, opioids, are found in fish, nematodes, snails, shrimps, crabs, and some insects. Even tiny flies might feel pain; we know that they can learn to avoid odors that are paired with electric shock. 6 The eighteenth-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham thought that an animal belongs in the human moral circle only if we can prove the animal can feel pleasure or pain. I disagree. An animal is worthy of inclusion in our moral circle if there is any possibility at all that it can feel pain. Does that keep me from killing a fly? No, but I’ll make it quick. 7 Macaques do have an important difference from humans where affect is concerned. Many, many objects and events in your world, from the tiniest insect to the largest mountain, cause fluctuations in your body budget and change your affective feelings. That is, you have a large affective niche. Macaques, however, don’t care about as many things as you and I do. Their affective niche is much smaller than ours; the sight of a majestic mountain rising in the distance doesn’t impact their body budget in the least. Simply put, more things matter to us. 8 An affective niche is one area of life where size truly matters. In the lab, if we present a human toddler with a collection of toys, they are usually within her affective niche. My daughter, Sophia, would sort her toys by shape, by color, by size, for the sheer fun of it, over and over, statistically honing the various concepts involved.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  After the bond between mother and child comes the oedipal triangle of mother, father, and child. This triangle forms during the period of the child's earliest erotic fantasies. A boy wants his mother to himself, a girl does the same with her father, but they never quite have it that way, for a parent will always have competing connections to a spouse or to other adults. Unconditional love has gone; now, inevita- bly, the parent must sometimes deny what the child desires. Transport your victims back to this period. Play a parental role, be loving, but also some- times scold and instill some discipline. Children actually love a little discipline—it makes them feel that the adult cares about them. And adult children too will be thrilled if you mix your tenderness with a little tough- ness and punishment. Unlike infantile regression, oedipal regression must be tailored to your target. It depends on the information you have gathered. Without knowing enough, you might treat a person like a child, scolding them now and then, only to discover that you are stirring up ugly memories—they had too much discipline as child. Or you might stir up memories of a parent they loathed, and they will transfer those feelings to you. Do not go ahead with the regression until you have learned everything you can about their childhood—what they had too much of, what they lacked, and so on. If the target was strongly attached to a parent, but that attachment was par- tially negative, the oedipal regression strategy can still be quite effective. We always feel ambivalent toward a parent; even as we love them, we resent having had to depend on them. Don't worry about stirring up these am- bivalences, which don't keep us from being tied to our parents. Remember to include an erotic component in your parental behavior. Now your tar- gets are not only getting their mother or father all to themselves, they are getting something more, something previously forbidden but now allowed. The Ego Ideal Regression. As children, we often form an ideal figure out of our dreams and ambitions. First, that ideal figure is the person we want to be. We imagine ourselves as brave adventurers, romantic figures. Then, in our adolescence, we turn our attention to others, often projecting our ideals onto them. The first boy or girl we fall in love with may seem to have the ideal qualities we wanted for ourselves, or else may make us feel that we can play that ideal role in relation to them.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  There was one very special rehearsal … my heart, my heart … there was one day in May marked by a lot of gay flurry—it all rolled past, beyond my ken, immune to my memory, and when I saw Lo next, in the late afternoon, balancing on her bike, pressing the palm of her hand to the damp bark of a young birch tree on the edge of our lawn, I was so struck by the radiant tenderness of her smile that for an instant I believed all our troubles gone. “Can you remember,” she said, “what was the name of that hotel, you know [nose puckered], come on, you know—with those white columns and the marble swan in the lobby? Oh, you know [noisy exhalation of breath]—the hotel where you raped me. Okay, skip it. I mean, was it [almost in a whisper] The Enchanted Hunters? Oh, it was? [musingly] Was it?”—and with a yelp of amorous vernal laughter she slapped the glossy bole and tore uphill, to the end of the street, and then rode back, feet at rest on stopped pedals, posture relaxed, one hand dreaming in her print-flowered lap.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Adrian wanted to be loved for himself alone, and not his yellow hair. (Or his pink prick.) It was rather touching, actually. He didn’t want to be a fucking machine. “I can fuck with the best of them when I feel like it,” he said defiantly. “Of course you can.” “Now you’ve got your bloody social worker voice on,” he said. I had been a social worker on a couple of occasions in bed. Once with Brian, after he’d been released from the psycho ward and was too full of Thorazine (and too schizoid) to screw. For a month we’d lain in bed and held hands. “Like Hansel and Gretel,” he said. It was rather sweet. What you’d imagine Dodgson doing with Alice in a boat on the Thames. It was also something of a relief after Brian’s manic phase when he’d come very close to strangling me. And even before he cracked up, Brian’s asexual preferences were somewhat odd. He only liked sucking, not fucking. At the time, I was too inexperienced to realize that all men weren’t that way. I was twenty-one and Brian was twenty-five, and remembering what I’d heard about men reaching their sexual peak at sixteen and women at thirty, I figured that Brian’s age was to blame. He was in decline. Over the hill, I thought. I did get very good at sucking, though. I’d also played social worker to Charlie Fielding, the conductor whose baton kept wilting. He was dazzlingly grateful. “You’re a real find,” he kept saying that first night (meaning that he expected I’d throw him out in the cold and I didn’t). He made up for it later. It was only opening nights that wilted him.

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  Altar servers bring three or four large crucifixes from the sacristy and take them down to the first step in front of the altar. Each server holds a crucifix forward, so that the feet of the figure of Jesus on the cross are in reach of someone kneeling on the first step. When I was a boy and served on Good Friday, the lines of congregants stretched to the back of the church. They came forward, genuflected briefly on the first step in front of the altar, leaned forward, and kissed the feet of the figure of Jesus on the cross. If I was holding the cross, I tried to keep it as steady as possible.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  Her eyes filled with tears—just like in a movie—and she embraced me. It was a good hug. Reva had always been good at hugs. I felt like a praying mantis in her arms. The fleece of her robe was soft and smelled like Downy. I tried to pull away but she held me tighter. When she finally let go, she was crying and smiling. She sniffed and laughed. “It’s beautiful. Thanks. That’s really sweet. Sorry,” she said, wiping her nose on her sleeve. She put the necklace on and pulled the collar of her robe away and studied her neck in the mirror. Her smile turned a little phony. “You know, I don’t think you can use ‘condole’ that way. I think you can ‘condole with’ someone. But you can’t ‘condole’ someone.” “No, Reva. I’m not condoling you. The necklace is.” “But that’s not the right word, I think. You can console someone.” “No, you can’t,” I said. “Anyway, you know what I mean.” “It’s beautiful,” Reva said again, flatly this time, touching the necklace. She pointed to the mess of black stuff she’d brought down. “This is all I found. I hope it’s okay.” She took her dress out from the closet and went into the bathroom to change. I put the pantyhose on, picked through the shoes, found a pair that fit. From the tangle of shirts I pulled out a black turtleneck. I put it on, and put the suit on. “Do you have a brush I can borrow?” Reva opened the bathroom door and handed me an old hairbrush with a long wooden handle. There was a spot on the back that was all scratched up. When I held it under the light, I could make out teeth marks. I sniffed it but couldn’t detect the smell of vomit, only Reva’s coconut hand cream. “I’ve never seen you in a suit before,” Reva said stiffly when she came out of the bathroom. The dress she wore was tight with a high center slit. “You look really put together,” she said to me. “Did you get a haircut?” “Duh,” I said, handing her back the brush. We put our coats on and went upstairs. The living room was empty, thank God. I filled my McDonald’s cup with coffee again as Reva stood at the fridge, shoving cold steamed broccoli in her mouth. It was snowing again. “I’m warning you,” Reva said, wiping her hands. “I’m going to cry a lot.” “It would be weird if you didn’t,” I said. “I just look so ugly when I cry. And Ken said he’d be there,” she told me for the second time. “I know we should have waited until after New Year’s. Not like it would have made a difference to my mom. She’s already cremated.” “You told me.” “I’ll try not to cry too hard,” she said. “Tearing up is OK.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  their feelings, and spent hours in their ladies' boudoirs, listening to the seeing the Captain was of women's complaints and soaking up their spirit. In return for their willing- a surety a right gallant ness to play weak, the troubadours earned the right to love. gentleman, and as ready- tongued as most, he was Little has changed since then. Some of the greatest seducers in recent able so to win them over at history—Gabriele D' Annunzio, Duke Ellington, Errol Flynn—understood this, the very first visit, the value of acting slavishly to a woman, like a troubadour on bended knee. that they did gain their The key is to indulge your softer side while still remaining as masculine as father's leave for him to quit his wretched dungeon possible. This may include an occasional show of bashfulness, which the and to be put in a seemly philosopher Søren Kierkegaard thought an extremely seductive tactic for a enough chamber and man—it gives the woman a sense of comfort, and even of superiority. Re- receive better treatment. Nor was this all, for they member, though, to keep everything in moderation. A glimpse of shyness did crave and get is sufficient; too much of it and the target will despair, afraid that she will permission to come and see end up having to do all the work. him freely every day and converse with him. • And A man's fears and insecurities often concern his sense of masculinity; he this did fall out so well that usually will feel threatened by a woman who is too overtly manipulative, presently both the twain of who is too much in control. The greatest seductresses in history knew how them were in love with him, albeit he was not to cover up their manipulations by playing the little girl in need of mascu- handsome to look upon, line protection. A famous courtesan of ancient China, Su Shou, used to and they very fair ladies. make up her face to look particularly pale and weak. She would also walk And so, without a thought in a way that made her seem frail. The great nineteenth-century courtesan of the chance of more rigorous imprisonment or Cora Pearl would literally dress and act like a little girl. Marilyn Monroe even death, but rather knew how to give the impression that she depended on a man's strength to tempted by such survive. In all of these instances, the women were the ones in control of opportunities, he did set himself to the enjoyment of the dynamic, boosting a man's sense of masculinity in order to ultimately the two girls with good will enslave him. To make this most effective, a woman should seem both in and hearty appetite. And need of protection and sexually excitable, giving the man his ultimate these pleasures did continue without any scandal, for so fantasy. fortunate was he in this

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The innocent. The primary qualities of innocence are weakness and mis-long while, without success. understanding of the world. Innocence is weak because it is doomed to At last, as a party of them vanish in a harsh, cruel world; the child cannot protect or hold on to its in-passed through Arcadia, nocence. The misunderstandings come from the child's not knowing about they heard the muffled sound of music such as good and evil, and seeing everything through uncorrupted eyes. The weak-they had never heard ness of children elicits sympathy, their misunderstandings make us laugh, before, and the nymph and nothing is more seductive than a mixture of laughter and sympathy. Cyllene, from the mouth of a cave, told them that a The adult Natural is not truly innocent—it is impossible to grow up in most gifted child had this world and retain total innocence. Yet Naturals yearn so deeply to hold recently been born there, to on to their innocent outlook that they manage to preserve the illusion of whom she was acting as nurse: he had constructed innocence. They exaggerate their weakness to elicit the proper sympathy. an ingenious musical toy They act like they still see the world through innocent eyes, which in an from the shell of a tortoise adult proves doubly humorous. Much of this is conscious, but to be effec-and some cow-gut, with tive, adult Naturals must make it seem subtle and effortless—if they are which he had lulled his mother to sleep. • "And seen as trying to act innocent, it will come across as pathetic. It is better for from whom did he get the them to communicate weakness indirectly, through looks and glances, or cow-gut?" asked the alert through the situations they get themselves into, rather than anything obvi-satyrs, noticing two hides stretched outside the cave. ous. Since this type of innocence is mostly an act, it is easily adaptable for "Do you charge the poor your own purposes. Learn to play up any natural weaknesses or flaws. child with theft?" asked Cyllene. Harsh words were exchanged. • At that moment Apollo came up, The imp. Impish children have a fearlessness that we adults have lost. That having discovered the is because they do not see the possible consequences of their actions—how thief's identity by observing the suspicious behaviour of some people might be offended, how they might physically hurt themselves a long-winged bird. in the process. Imps are brazen, blissfully uncaring. They infect you with Entering the cave, he their lighthearted spirit. Such children have not yet had their natural energy awakened Maia and told and spirit scolded out of them by the need to be polite and civil. Secretly, her severely that Hermes must restore the stolen we envy them; we want to be naughty too. cows. Maia pointed to the

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  The surprise box-office hit of 2005 was a film called March of the Penguins. The second-biggest money-making documentary to date, viewers were touched by its depiction of the extreme dedication penguin couples showed in nurturing their adorable penguin chicks. Many viewers saw their own marriages reflected in the penguins’ sacrifice for their offspring and for each other. As one reviewer put it, “It’s impossible to watch the thousands of penguins huddled together against the icy Antarctic blasts…without feeling a tug of anthropomorphic kinship.” Churches across the United States reserved cinemas for private screenings for their congregations. Rich Lowry, editor of The National Review, told a conference of young Republicans, “Penguins are the really ideal example of monogamy. The dedication of these birds is amazing.” Adam Leipzig, president of National Geographic Feature Films, declared the penguins “model parents,” continuing, “What they go through to look after their children is phenomenal, and no parent who sees it will ever complain about the school run. There are parallels with human nature and it’s moving to see.”18 But unlike the birds themselves, penguin sexuality is not all black and white. That perfect penguin pair, that “ideal example of monogamy,” those “model parents” are monogamous only as long as it takes to get their little one out of the egg, off the ice, and into the frigid Antarctic water—a little less than a year. If you’ve seen the film, you know that with all the trekking back and forth across the windswept ice and huddling against raging Antarctic blizzards, there’s not much in the way of extramarital temptation anyway. Once Junior is swimming with the other eleven-month-olds—the penguin equivalent of kindergarten—fidelity is quickly forgotten, divorce is quick, automatic, and painless, and Mom and Dad are back on the penguin prowl. With a breeding adult typically living thirty years or more, these “model parents” have at least two dozen “families” in a lifetime. Did someone say “ideal example of monogamy”? Whether you found the film to be cloyingly sweet or refreshingly so, a bold, if somewhat perverse, double feature would pair The March of the Penguins with Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World. Herzog’s documentary of the Antarctic is a masterpiece of photography and interviews with a range of surprising characters, including Dr. David Ainley, an almost comically reserved marine ecologist who has been studying penguins in Antarctica for two decades. Under Herzog’s wry questioning, Ainley reports having witnessed cases of penguin ménages-à-trois, in which two males take turns caring for a particular female’s egg, as well as “penguin prostitution,” where females receive prime nest-building pebbles in exchange for a bit of penguin poontang.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  lover. Saltykov had entered her spirit. and ask you in truth to cat and drink with me, and to When you mirror people, you focus intense attention on them. They he my companion as long will sense the effort you are making, and will find it flattering. Obviously as I live. " • Then the old you have chosen them, separating them out from the rest. There seems to man ordered his attendants be nothing else in your life but them—their moods, their tastes, their spirit. to serve all the dishes which they had consumed The more you focus on them, the deeper the spell you produce, and the in-in fancy, and when he and toxicating effect you have on their vanity. my brother had eaten their Many of us have difficulty reconciling the person we are right now fill they repaired to the drinking chamber, where with the person we want to be. We are disappointed that we have compro-beautiful young women mised our youthful ideals, and we still imagine ourselves as that person sang and made music. The who had so much promise, but whom circumstances prevented from real-old Barmecide gave Shakashik a robe of honor izing it. When you are mirroring someone, do not stop at the person they and made him his constant have become; enter the spirit of that ideal person they wanted to be. This companion. is how the French writer Chateaubriand managed to become a great se- — " T H E TALE OF SHAKASHIK, ducer, despite his physical ugliness. When he was growing up, in the latter THE BARBER'S SIXTH BROTHER," eighteenth century, romanticism was coming into fashion, and many TALES FROM THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, TRANSLATED young women felt deeply oppressed by the lack of romance in their lives. BY N.J. DAWOOD Chateaubriand would reawaken the fantasy they had had as young girls of being swept off their feet, of fulfilling romantic ideals. This form of entering another's spirit is perhaps the most effective kind, because it makes people feel better about themselves. In your presence, they live the life of the person they had wanted to be—a great lover, a romantic hero, whatever it is. Discover those crushed ideals and mirror them, bringing them back to life by reflecting them back to your target. Few can resist such a lure. Symbol: The Hunter's Mirror. The lark is a sa- vory bird, but difficult to catch. In the field, the hunter places a mirror on a stand. The lark lands in front of the glass, steps back and forth, entranced by its own moving image and by the imitative mating dance it sees performed before its eyes. Hypnotized, the bird loses all sense of its surroundings, until the hunter's net traps it against the mirror. Enter Their Spirit • 227 Reversal This desire for a double of the other sex that resembles us absolutely while still

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  always done what you have asked, I have never forced myself on you. He enticement of tears. My kept his distance and she slowly relaxed. She no longer left the room when blood was on fire, and I he entered, and she could look at him directly. When he offered to accom- was so little in control of myself that I was tempted pany her on a walk, she did not refuse. They were friends, she said. She to make the most of the even put her arm in his as they strolled, a friendly gesture. occasion. • How weak we One rainy day they could not take their usual walk. He met her in the must be, how strong the dominion of circumstance, hallway as she was entering her room; for the first time, she invited him in. if even I, without a She seemed relaxed, and Valmont sat near her on a sofa. He talked of his thought for my plans, could love for her. She gave the faintest protest. He took her hand; she left it risk losing all the charm of there and leaned against his arm. Her voice trembled. She looked at him, a prolonged struggle, all the fascination of a laboriously and he felt his heart flutter—it was a tender, loving look. She started to administered defeat, by speak—"Well! yes, I . . ."—then suddenly collapsed into his arms, crying. It concluding a premature was a moment of weakness, yet Valmont held himself back. Her crying be- victory; if distracted by the most puerile of desires, I came convulsive; she begged him to help her, to leave the room before could be willing that the something terrible happened. He did so. The following morning he awoke conqueror of Madame de to some surprising news: in the middle of the night, claiming she was feel- Tourvel should take nothing for the fruit of his ing ill, Tourvel had suddenly left the château and returned home. labors but the tasteless Valmont did not follow her to Paris. Instead he began staying up late, distinction of having added and using no powder to hide the peaked looks that soon ensued. He went one more name to the roll. Ah, let her surrender, but to the chapel every day, and dragged himself despondently around the let her fight! Let her be too château. He knew that his hostess would be writing to the Présidente, who weak to prevail but strong would hear of his sad state. Next he wrote to a church father in Paris, and enough to resist; let her asked him to pass along a message to Tourvel: he was ready to change his savor the knowledge of her weakness at her leisure, but life for good. He wanted one last meeting, to say goodbye and to return the let her be unwilling to letters she had written him over the last few months. The father arranged a admit defeat. Leave the 407

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  All the smells and tastes of it, the lines, the hairs, the birthmarks. But Adrian was like a new country. My tongue made an unguided tour of it. I started at his mouth and went downward. His broad neck, which was sunburned. His chest, covered with curly reddish hair. His belly, a bit paunchy— unlike Bennett’s brown leanness. His curled pink penis which tasted faintly of urine and refused to stand up in my mouth. His very pink and hairy balls which I took in my mouth one at a time. His muscular thighs. His sunburned knees. His feet. (Which I did not kiss.) His dirty toenails. (Ditto.) Then I started all over again. At his lovely wet mouth. “Where did you get those little pointed teeth?” “From the stoat who was my mother.” “The what?” “Stoat.” “Oh.” I didn’t know what it meant and I didn’t care. We were tasting each other. We were upside down and his tongue was playing music in my cunt. “You’ve a lovely cunt,” he said, “and the greatest ass I’ve ever seen. Too bad you’ve got no tits.” “Thanks.” I kept sucking away but as soon as he got hard, he’d get soft again. “I don’t really want to fuck you anyway.” “Why?” “Dunno why—I just don’t feel like it.” Adrian wanted to be loved for himself alone, and not his yellow hair. (Or his pink prick.) It was rather touching, actually. He didn’t want to be a fucking machine. “I can fuck with the best of them when I feel like it,” he said defiantly. “Of course you can.” “Now you’ve got your bloody social worker voice on,” he said. I had been a social worker on a couple of occasions in bed. Once with Brian, after he’d been released from the psycho ward and was too full of Thorazine (and too schizoid) to screw. For a month we’d lain in bed and held hands. “Like Hansel and Gretel,” he said. It was rather sweet. What you’d imagine Dodgson doing with Alice in a boat on the Thames. It was also something of a relief after Brian’s manic phase when he’d come very close to strangling me. And even before he cracked up, Brian’s asexual preferences were somewhat odd. He only liked sucking, not fucking. At the time, I was too inexperienced to realize that all men weren’t that way. I was twenty-one and Brian was twenty-five, and remembering what I’d heard about men reaching their sexual peak at sixteen and women at thirty, I figured that Brian’s age was to blame. He was in decline. Over the hill, I thought. I did get very good at sucking, though.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  visit. Tuperselai ran to greet him. Accompanying her father was a white lover stand. \ Don't blush man, an unusual sight in these parts. He was a twenty-two-year-old Aus- to unbind your hair like tralian from Tasmania, and he was the owner of the plantation. His name some ecstatic maenad \ And tumble long tresses was Errol Flynn. about \ Your uncurved Flynn smiled warmly at Tuperselai, seeming particularly interested in throat. her bare breasts. (As was the custom in New Guinea then, she wore only a —OVID, THE ART OF LOVE, grass skirt.) He said in pidgin English how beautiful she was, and kept re- TRANSLATED BY PETER GREEN peating her name, which he pronounced remarkably well. He did not say 398 • The Art of Seduction "How do you attract a much else, mind you—he did not speak her language—so she said goodbye man," the Paris and walked away with her father. But later that day she discovered, to her correspondent of the dismay, that Mr. Flynn had taken a liking to her and had purchased her Stockholm A f t o n b l a d e t asked La Belle on July 3, from her father for two pigs, some English coins, and some seashell money. 1910. • "Make yourself The family was poor and the father liked the price. Tuperselai had a as feminine as possible; boyfriend in the village whom she did not want to leave, but she did not dress so that the most interesting portions of your dare disobey her father, and she left with Mr. Flynn for the tobacco planta-anatomy are emphasized; tion. On the other hand, she had no intention of being friendly with this and subtly allow the man, from whom she expected the worst kind of treatment. gentleman to know you are In the first few days, Tuperselai missed her village terribly, and felt ner-willing to yield at the proper time. . . ." • "The vous and out of sorts. But Mr. Flynn was polite, and talked in a soothing way to hold a man" Otero voice. She began to relax, and since he kept his distance, she decided it was revealed a little later to a safe to approach him. His white skin was tasty to the mosquitoes, so she be-staff writer from the Johannesburg M o r n i n g gan to wash him every night with scented bush herbs to keep them away. J o u r n a l , "is to keep acting Soon she had a thought: Mr. Flynn was lonely, and wanted a companion. as though every time you That was why he had bought her. At night he usually read; instead, she be-meet him you are overcome

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Still, it will take more than a deeper understanding of ourselves and each other to fully address the many issues raised by a more relaxed and tolerant approach to fidelity. “The people I feel sorry for are the ones who don’t even realize they have any other choices beyond the traditional options society presents,” says Scott, who is a member of a long-term triad relationship with Terisa (a woman) who is also involved with Larry (whom Scott introduced to Terisa). While such three-or four-person committed relationships have, by necessity, flown under the radar until recently, so-called polyamorous families are thought to number about half a million in the United States, according to an article in Newsweek.8 Although Helen Fisher thinks people involved in such configurations are “fighting Mother Nature” by trying to confront their insecurities and jealousy head-on, there is plenty of evidence that, for the right people, such arrangements can work out very well for all concerned—even the kids. As Sarah Hrdy reminds us, conventional couples struggling to raise a family in isolation might be the ones fighting Mother Nature: “Since Darwin,” she writes, “we have assumed that humans evolved in families where a mother relied on one male to help her rear her young in a nuclear family; yet…the diversity of human family arrangements…is better predicted by assuming that our ancestors evolved as cooperative breeders.”9 From our perspective, people like Scott, Larry, and Terisa appear to be trying to replicate ancient human socio-sexual configurations. As we’ve seen, from a child’s perspective, having more than two stable, loving adults around can be enriching, whether in Africa, the Amazon, China, or suburban Colorado. Laird Harrison recently wrote about his experience growing up in a house his biological parents shared with another couple and their children. He recalled, “The communal household enjoyed a kind of camaraderie I have never felt since…. I swapped books with my stepsisters, listened in awe to their stories of crushes, exchanged tips on teachers. Their father imparted his love of great music and their mother her passion for cooking. A sort of bond formed among the 10 of us.”10 Everybody Out of the Closet An era can be considered over when its basic illusions have been exhausted. ARTHUR MILLER Much of recent history can be seen as waves of tolerance and acceptance breaking against the rocky headlands of rigid social structures. Though it can seem to take almost forever, the waves always win in the end, reducing immobile rock to shifting sand. The twentieth century saw the headlands beginning to crumble under surges of anti-slavery movements, women’s rights, racial equality, and, more recently, the steadily growing acceptance of the rights of gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual people.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I simply can’t tell you how gentle, how touching my poor wife was. At breakfast, in the depressingly bright kitchen, with its chrome glitter and Hardware and Co. Calendar and cute breakfast nook (simulating that Coffee Shoppe where in their college days Charlotte and Humbert used to coo together), she would sit, robed in red, her elbow on the plastic-topped table, her cheek propped on her fist, and stare at me with intolerable tenderness as I consumed my ham and eggs. Humbert’s face might twitch with neuralgia, but in her eyes it vied in beauty and animation with the sun and shadows of leaves rippling on the white refrigerator. My solemn exasperation was to her the silence of love. My small income added to her even smaller one impressed her as a brilliant fortune; not because the resulting sum now sufficed for most middle-class needs, but because even my money shone in her eyes with the magic of my manliness, and she saw our joint account as one of those southern boulevards at midday that have solid shade on one side and smooth sunshine on the other, all the way to the end of a prospect, where pink mountains loom.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  In the course of showing us our landscape in all its natural beauty, Humber satirizes American songs, ads, movies, magazines, brand names, tourist attractions, summer camps, Dude Ranches, hotels, and motels, as well as the Good-Housekeeping Syndrome ( Your Home Is You is one of Charlotte Haze’s essential volumes) and the cant of progressive educationist and child-guidance pontificators. 25 Nabokov offers us a grotesque parody of a “good relationship,” for Humbert and Lo are “pals” with a vengeance; Know Your Own Daughter is one of the books which Humbert consults (the title exists). Yet Humbert’s terrible demands notwithstanding, she is as insensitive as children are to their parents; sexuality aside, she demands anxious parental placation in a too typically American way, and, since it is Lolita “ to whom ads were dedicated: the ideal consumer, the subject and object of every foul poster ” she affords Nabokov an ideal opportunity to comment on the Teen and Sub-teen Tyranny. “ Tristram in Movielove ,” remarks Humbert, and Nabokov has responded to those various travesties of behavior which too many Americans recognize as tenable examples of reality. A gloss on this aspect of Lolita is provided by “Ode to a Model,” a poem which Nabokov published the same year as the Olympia Press edition of Lolita (1955): I have followed you, model, in magazine ads through all seasons, from dead leaf on the sod to red leaf on the breeze, from your lily-white armpit to the tip of your butterfly eyelash, charming and pitiful, silly and stylish. Or in kneesocks and tartan standing there like some fabulous symbol, parted feet pointed outward —pedal form of akimbo. On a lawn, in a parody of Spring and its cherry-tree, near a vase and a parapet, virgin practising archery. Ballerina, black-masked, near a parapet of alabaster. “Can one”—somebody asked— “rhyme ‘star’ and ‘disaster’?” Can one picture a blackbird as the negative of a small firebird? Can a record, run backward, turn ‘repaid’ into ‘diaper’? Can one marry a model? Kill your past, make you real, raise a family, by removing you bodily from back numbers of Sham? Although Nabokov called attention to the elements of parody in his work, he repeatedly denied the relevance of satire. One can understand why he said, “I have neither the intent nor the temperament of a moral or social satirist” ( Playboy interview), for he eschewed the overtly moral stance of the satirist who offers “to mend the world.” Humbert’s “satires” are too often effected with an almost loving care. Lolita is indeed an “ideal consumer,” but she herself is consumed, pitifully, and there is, as Nabokov said, “a queer, tender charm about that mythical nymphet.” Moreover, since Humbert’s desperate tourism is undertaken in order to distract and amuse Lolita and to outdistance his enemies, real and imagined, the “invented” American landscape also serves a quite functional thematic purpose in helping to dramatize Humbert’s total and terrible isolation.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The conspirators convinced Villiers to break off his engagement to a young lady; the king was single-minded in his affections, and could not stand competition. Soon James wanted to be around Villiers all the time, for he had the qualities the king admired: innocence and a lighthearted spirit. The king appointed Villiers gentleman of the bedchamber, making it possible for them to be alone together. What particularly charmed James was that Villiers never asked for anything, which made it all the more delightful to spoil him. By 1616, Villiers had completely supplanted the former favorite. He was now the Earl of Buckingham, and a member of the king's privy council. To the conspirators' dismay, however, he quickly accumulated even more privileges than the Earl of Somerset had done. The king would call him sweetheart in public, fix his doublets, comb his hair. James zealously protected his favorite, anxious to preserve the young man's innocence. He tended to the youth's every whim, in effect became his slave. In fact the king seemed to regress; whenever Steenie, his nickname for Villiers, entered the room, he started to act like a child. The two were inseparable until the king's death, in 1625. Interpretation. We are most definitely stamped forever by our parents, in ways we can never fully understand. But the parents are equally influenced and seduced by the child. They may play the role of the protector, but in the process they absorb the child's spirit and energy, relive a part of their own childhood. And just as the child struggles against sexual feelings toward the parent, the parent must repress comparable erotic feelings that lie just beneath the tenderness they feel. The best and most insidious way to seduce people is often to position yourself as the child. Imagining themselves stronger, more in control, they will be lured into your web. They will feel they have nothing to fear. Emphasize your immaturity, your weakness, and you let them indulge in fantasies of protecting and parenting you—a strong desire as people get older. What they do not realize is that you are getting under their skin, insinuating yourself—it is the child who is controlling the adult. Your innocence makes them want to protect you, but it is also sexually charged. Innocence is highly seductive; some people even long to play the corrupter of innocence. Stir up their latent sexual feelings and 348 • The Art of Seduction you can lead them astray with the hope of fulfilling a strong yet repressed fantasy: sleeping with the child figure. In your presence, too, they will begin to regress as well, infected by your childish, playful spirit.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Still, it will take more than a deeper understanding of ourselves and each other to fully address the many issues raised by a more relaxed and tolerant approach to fidelity. “The people I feel sorry for are the ones who don’t even realize they have any other choices beyond the traditional options society presents,” says Scott, who is a member of a long-term triad relationship with Terisa (a woman) who is also involved with Larry (whom Scott introduced to Terisa). While such three-or four-person committed relationships have, by necessity, flown under the radar until recently, so-called polyamorous families are thought to number about half a million in the United States, according to an article in Newsweek.8 Although Helen Fisher thinks people involved in such configurations are “fighting Mother Nature” by trying to confront their insecurities and jealousy head-on, there is plenty of evidence that, for the right people, such arrangements can work out very well for all concerned—even the kids. As Sarah Hrdy reminds us, conventional couples struggling to raise a family in isolation might be the ones fighting Mother Nature: “Since Darwin,” she writes, “we have assumed that humans evolved in families where a mother relied on one male to help her rear her young in a nuclear family; yet…the diversity of human family arrangements…is better predicted by assuming that our ancestors evolved as cooperative breeders.”9 From our perspective, people like Scott, Larry, and Terisa appear to be trying to replicate ancient human socio-sexual configurations. As we’ve seen, from a child’s perspective, having more than two stable, loving adults around can be enriching, whether in Africa, the Amazon, China, or suburban Colorado. Laird Harrison recently wrote about his experience growing up in a house his biological parents shared with another couple and their children. He recalled, “The communal household enjoyed a kind of camaraderie I have never felt since…. I swapped books with my stepsisters, listened in awe to their stories of crushes, exchanged tips on teachers. Their father imparted his love of great music and their mother her passion for cooking. A sort of bond formed among the 10 of us.”10 Everybody Out of the Closet An era can be considered over when its basic illusions have been exhausted. ARTHUR MILLER Much of recent history can be seen as waves of tolerance and acceptance breaking against the rocky headlands of rigid social structures. Though it can seem to take almost forever, the waves always win in the end, reducing immobile rock to shifting sand. The twentieth century saw the headlands beginning to crumble under surges of anti-slavery movements, women’s rights, racial equality, and, more recently, the steadily growing acceptance of the rights of gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual people.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Recalling his childhood among the Dagara, in Burkina Faso, author and psychologist Malidoma Patrice Somé remembers how freely children wandered into houses throughout the village. Somé explains that this “gives the child a very broad sense of belonging,” and that “everybody chips in to help raise the child.” Apart from the many obvious benefits to parents, Somé sees distinct psychological advantages for the children, saying, “It’s very rare that a child feels isolated or develops psychological problems; everyone is very aware of where he or she belongs.”2 Though Somé’s account may sound like idealized memory, what he describes is still standard village life in most of rural Africa, where children are welcome to wander in and out of the homes of unrelated adults in villages. Though a mother’s love is no doubt unique, women (and some men) the world over are eager to coo over unrelated babies, not just their own—an eagerness common to other social primates, none of whom, by the way, are monogamous. This deeply felt, broadly shared willingness to care for unrelated children lives on in the modern world: the bureaucratic ordeal of adoption rivals or exceeds the stress and expense of childbirth, yet millions of couples eagerly pursue its uncertain rewards. Scientists focused only on the nuclear family miss the central role of alloparenting in our species.* Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, author of Mothers and Others, laments, “Infant-sharing in other primates and in various tribal societies has never been accorded center stage in the anthropological literature. Many people don’t even realize it goes on. Yet…the consequences of cooperative care—in terms of survival and biological fitness of mother and infant—turn out to be all to the good.”3 Darwin entertained the radical possibility that the mother-child bond may have been less important to “barbarous” individuals than their bond with the greater group. Commenting on the customary use of familial terms like mother, father, son, and daughter in reference to all group members, he suggested, “The terms employed express a connection with the tribe alone, to the exclusion of the mother. It seems possible that the connection between the related members of the same barbarous tribe, exposed to all sorts of danger, might be so much more important, owing to the need of mutual protection and aid, than that between the mother and her child….”4 When seventeenth-century Jesuit missionary Paul Le Jeune lectured a Montagnais Indian man about the dangers of the rampant infidelity he’d witnessed, Le Jeune received a lesson on proper parenthood in response. The missionary recalled, “I told him that it was not honorable for a woman to love any one else except her husband, and that this evil being among them, he himself was not sure that his son, who was there present, was his son. He replied, ‘Thou hast no sense. You French people love only your own children; but we all love all the children of our tribe.’”5