Something lively:
BEATRICE PALMATO
by
Edith Wharton
… “I have been, you see,” he added gently, “so perfectly patient—”
The room was warm, and softly lit by one or two pink-shaded lamps. A little fire sparkled on the hearth, and a lustrous black bearskin run, on which a few purple velvet cushions had been flung, was spread out before
it.
“And now, darling,” Mr. Palmato said, drawing her to the deep divan, “let me show you what you what only you and I have the right to show each other.” He caught her wrists as he spoke, and looking straight into her eyes, repeated in a penetrating whisper: “Only you and I”. But his touch had never been tenderer. Already she felt every fibre vibrating under it, as of old, only now with the more passionate eagerness bred of privation, and of the dull misery of her marriage. She let herself sink backward among the pillows, and already Mr. Palmato was on his knees at her side, his face close to hers. Again her burning lips were parted by his tongue, and she felt it insinuate itself between her teeth, and plunge into the depths of her mouth in a long searching caress, while at the same moment his hands softly parted the thin folds of her wrapper.
One by one they gained her bosom, and she felt her two breasts pointing up to them, the nipples hard as coral, but sensitive as lips to his approaching touch. And now his warm palms were holding each breast as if in a cup, clasping it, modeling it, softly kneading it, as he whispered to her, “like the bread of the angels”.
An instant more, and his tongue had left her fainting mouth, and was twisting like a soft pink snake about each breast in turn, passing from one to the other till his lips closed hard on the nipples, sucking them with a tender gluttony.
Then suddenly he drew back her wrapper entirely, whispered: “I want you all, so that my eyes can see all that my lips can’t cover,” and in a moment she was free, lying before him in her fresh young nakedness, and feeling that indeed his eyes were covering it with fiery kisses. But Mr. Palmato was never idle, and while this sensation flashed through her one of his arms had slipped under her back and wound itself around her so that his hand again enclosed her left breast. At the same moment the other hand softly separated her legs, and began to slip up the old path it had so often traveled in darkness. But now it was light, she was uncovered, and looking downward, beyond his dark silver-sprinkled head, she could see her own parted knees and outstretched ankles and feet. Suddenly she remembered Austin’s rough advances, and shuddered.
The mounting hand paused, the dark head was instantly raised. “What is it, my own?”
“I was—remembering—last week—” she faltered, below her breath. “Yes, darling. That experience was a cruel one—but it has to come once in all women’s lives. Now we shall reap its fruit.”
But she hardly heard him, for the old swooning sweetness was creeping over her. As his hand stole higher she felt the secret bud of her body swelling, yearning, quivering hotly to burst into bloom. Ah, here was his subtle forefinger pressing it, forcing its tight petals softly apart, and laying on their sensitive edges a circular touch so soft and yet so fiery that already lightnings of heat shot from that palpitating centre all over her surrendered body, to the tips of her fingers, and the ends of her loosened hair.
The sensation was so exquisite that she could have asked to have it indefinitely prolonged; but suddenly his head bent lower, and with a deeper thrill she felt his lips pressed upon that quivering invisible bud, and then the delicate firm thrust of his tongue, so full and yet so infinitely subtle, pressing apart those close petals, and forcing itself in deeper and deeper through the passage that glowed and seemed to become illuminated as its approach
“Ah—” she gasped, pressing her hands against her sharp nipples, and flinging her legs apart.
Instantly, one of her hands was caught, and while Mr. Palmato, rising, bent over her, his lips on hers again, she felt his firm fingers pressing into her hand that strong fiery muscle that they used, in their old joke, to call his third hand.
“My little girl,” he breathed, sinking down beside her, his muscular trunk bare, and the third hand quivering and thrusting upward between them, a drop of moisture pearling at its tip.
She instantly understood the reminder that his words conveyed, letting herself downward along the divan till her head was in line with his middle she flung herself upon the swelling member, and began to caress it insinuatingly with her tongue. It was the first time she had ever seen it actually exposed to her eyes, and her heart swelled excitedly: to have her touch confirmed by sight enriched the sensation that was communicating itself through her ardent twisting tongue. With panting breath she wound her caress deeper and deeper into the firm thick folds, till at length the member, thrusting her lips open, held her gasping, as if at its mercy; then, in a trice, it was withdrawn, her knees were pressed apart, and she saw it before her, above her, like a crimson flash, and at last, sinking backward into new abysses of bliss, felt it descend on her, press open the secret gates, and plunge into the deepest depths of her thirsting body…
“Was it … like this … last week?” he whispered.

And this makes it just a little livelier:
Appendix:
'Beatrice Palmato'
Edith Wharton left among her papers these notes for a story that she never completed. Cynthia Griffin Wolff, who discovered them at the Bernicke Library at Yale University, calculates that they were written in 1919–20, whereas R. W. B. Lewis dates them around 1935 .
Plot Summary
Beatrice Palmato is the daughter of a rich half-Levantine, half-Portuguese banker living in London, and of his English wife. Palmato, who is very handsome, cultivated and accomplished, has inherited his father's banking and brokering business, but, while leaving his fortune in the business, leads the life of a rich and cultivated man of leisure. He has an agreeable artistic-literary house in London, and a place near Brighton. The wife is handsome, shy, silent, but agreeable. There are two daughters and a son, the youngest. The eldest, Isa, who looks like her mother, commits suicide in mysterious circumstances at seventeen, a few months after returning from the French convent in which she has been educated. The mother has a bad nervous break-down, and is ordered away by the doctors, who forbid her to take little Beatrice (aged 12) with her. After a vain struggle, she leaves the child in the country with an old governess who has brought her up, and whom she can completely trust. The governess is ill, and is obliged to leave, and Beatrice remains in the country with her father. He looks for another governess, but cannot find one to
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― 172 ―
suit him, and during a whole winter takes charge of Beatrice's education. She is a musical and artistic child, full of intellectual curiosity, and at the same time very tender and emotional; a combination of both parents. The boy, whom Mrs. Palmato adores, and whom her husband has never cared for, is a sturdy sensitive English lad. He is at school, and spends his holidays with his tutor. Mrs. Palmato is still abroad, in a sanitorium. The following autumn (after a year's absence) she comes home. At first she seems better, and they return to London, and see a few friends. Beatrice remains with them, as neither parent can bear to be separated from her. They find a charming young governess, and all seems well.
Then suddenly Mrs. Palmato has another nervous breakdown, and grows quite mad. She tries to kill her husband, has to be shut up, and dies in an insane asylum a few months later. The boy is left at school, and Mr. Palmato, utterly shattered, leaves on a long journey with Beatrice and a new maid, whom he engages for her in Paris. After six months he returns, and re-engages the same governess. Eighteen months after his wife's death he marries the governess, who is a young girl of good family, good-looking and agreeable, and to whom Beatrice is devoted.
The intimacy between father and daughter continues to be very close, but at 18 Beatrice meets a young man of good family, a good-looking rather simple-minded country squire with a large property and no artistic or intellectual tastes, who falls deeply in love with her.
She marries him, to every one's surprise, and they live entirely in the country. For some time she does not see her father or the latter's wife; then she and her husband go up to town to stay for a fortnight with the Palmatos, and after that they see each other, though at rather long intervals. Beatrice seems to her friends changed, depressed, overclouded. Her animation and brilliancy have vanished, and she gives up all her artistic interests, and appears to absorb herself in her husband's country tastes. The Palmato group of friends all deplore her having
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― 173 ―
married such a dull man, but admit that he is very kind to her and that she seems happy. Once her father takes her with him on a short trip to Paris, where he goes to buy a picture or some tapestries for his collection, and she comes back brilliant, febrile and restless; but soon settles down again. After 2 1/2 years of marriage she has a boy, and the year after a little girl; and with the birth of her children her attachment to her husband increases, and she seems to her friends perfectly happy. About the time of the birth of the second child, Palmato dies suddenly.
The boy is like his father, the little girl exquisite, gay, original, brilliant, like her mother. The father loves both children, but adores the little girl; and as the latter grows to be five or six years old Beatrice begins to manifest a morbid jealousy of her husband's affection for this child. The household has been so harmonious hitherto that the husband himself cannot understand this state of mind; but he humours his wife, tries to conceal his fondness for his little daughter, and wonders whether his wife is growing 'queer' like her mother.
One day the husband has been away for a week. He returns sooner than was expected, comes in and finds the little girl alone in the drawing-room. She utters a cry of joy, and he clasps her in his arms and kisses her. She has put her little arms around his neck, and is hugging him tightly when Beatrice comes in. She stops on the threshold, screams out: 'Don't kiss my child. Put her down! How dare you kiss her?' and snatches the little girl from his arms.
Husband and wife stand staring at each other. As the husband looks at her, many mysterious things in their married life—the sense of some hidden power controlling her, and perpetually coming between them, and of some strange initiation, some profound moral perversion of which he had always been afraid to face the thought—all these things become suddenly clear to him, lit up in a glare of horror.
He looks at her with his honest eyes, and says: 'Why shouldn't I kiss my child?' and she gives him back a look in
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― 174 ―
which terror, humiliation, remorseful tenderness, and the awful realization of what she has unwittingly betrayed, mingle in one supreme appeal and avowal.
She puts the little girl down, flies from the room, and hurries upstairs. When he follows her, he hears a pistol-shot and finds her lying dead on the floor of her bedroom.
People say: 'Her mother was insane, her sister tried to kill herself; it was a very unfortunate marriage.'
But the brother, Jack Palmato, who has become a wise, level-headed young man, a great friend of Beatrice's husband, comes down on hearing of his sister's death, and he and the husband have a long talk together—about Mr. Palmato.
The End
from: http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft500006kn&chunk.id=d0e...

Yep, that's a good one. Wharton's Summer has an incest theme too, although far subtler.
Speaking of Abysmal sex, I just finished Eco's The Prague Cemetery today, and the scene of the orgy following the black mass at the end is short but very well done.

I mean some day to get to her collection of ghost stories. There is a nice sketch of orgiastic infernal communion in Là-bas as well. And in The Fiery Angel, I think. I'm in a mood to check Peter Krassnoff's novel, Black Mass, for the same (it has the standard naughty-deviant illustrations).

On a more lighter note, November by Flaubert A short little whisp of a novel about a young man's love affair with a prostitute. Granted, the plot sounds like something out of the Brooding High School Poet Template, but it's Flaubert, so every sentence is gorgeous.
'The Night of Ten Thousand Rods' by Apollonaire is great. Like an over-the-top parody of a Sade novel.

Isn't La Fanfarlo about a young sensitive type's infatuation with a doxie-of-the-way? A drazel of supine disposition? Yep, it's about that time....

#4
L'abbé Boullan is one of the characters (and star of the black mass-cum-orgy); Huysmans is mentioned as his later champion.

The Baphomet by Klossowski has undead Templars in an orgy. Not sure if there are any gnostic dwarfs in the novel. On my TBR list.
Speaking of sex, Men and Women by Verlaine and the Collected Poems of Bataille are two collections of very dirty poems.

Yeeees, well, just don't expect too many jollies from Klossowski... ;)
I probably said it before, but I'll say it again--I can't recommend highly enough Jean-Jacques Pauvert's Anthologie historique des lectures érotiques in five volumes--nearly 5000 pages of most exhaustive notable erotic lit reference in existence. I started collecting titles in volumes one through two as a teenager--my literary libido gave out before the table of contents did. But other, younger explorers and conquistadores shall come! And come! And... so forth.

Burgo Partridge's A History of Orgies is a fine, if all too brief, study of the pleasures and horrors of erotic adventure throughout western history.

1
I'll bet that passage gave 'ol Henry James the vapours!

Who knew the Vatican was like Fire Island?
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/pope-benedicts-resignation-tied-to-vatican-gay-...

Finished Gynecocracy by Viscount Ladywood, about a fine English gentleman subject to 'petticoat-government,' a stern mistress, and plenty of birching.

Just found this little gem from Isaac Bashevis Singer, a novel called Scum:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/01/25/home/singer-scum.html

The eccentric transvestite paradises of Malcolm McKesson:
http://www.cclapcenter.com/2014/05/the_nsfw_files_matriarchy_free.html

I am an S&M Writer film based on:
Season of Infidelity: BDSM Tales from the Classic Master by Oniroku Dan
Not your standard erotic novel, more of a cautionary tale of sexual obsession.

The novel is a quite a troubling experience, and certainly one for the abyss. Will have to track down the movie, and indeed the movies referred to within the novel.

I am an S&M Writer is available from netflix.

Almost done with Alan Moore's controversial graphic (pun intended) novel, Lost Girls It takes place in an Austrian hotel as the dark clouds of the Great War approach. Wendy, Alice, and Dorothy trade erotic tales while engaging in ever-inceasing acts of perversity. While it is firmly in the smut category, the book is also an elaborate intellectual meta-commentary on the nature of narrative. The hotel proprietor also possesses a book called The White Book, a collection of illustrated erotic tales by Beardsley, Apollonaire, Mucha, Schiele, Oscar Wilde, etc., each story more depraved than the last.

Forget about love ...
Nymphomaniac by Lars von Trier
https://www.librarything.com/work/15253287/111691545

Started reading 120 Days of Sodom by DAF Sade. Plunging headlong into the abyss. Finished his novella Florville and Courval, which reads like a pitch-black parody of Samuel Richardson or Henry Fielding

>20 tros:
tros: What are your opinions on 'Nymphomaniac'? I've seen sketchy mentions in the press, but with this sort of subject reviewers tend to avoid any comments that might offend the offendable. LT is a lot more broad-minded than the press, particularly in this 'abysmal' group, and your thoughts would be appreciated. My apologies if you wish to invoke the 'fifth amendment' on this topic.

I saw part 1, 2 is on the way. It's excellent, a lot more than an excuse to do a porn film. Sex and love are the main themes, obviously, but von Trier throws in music and the golden section from art theory as well. Highly recommended.

23: Although, to be fair, short form pornography has been improving. Their is some high quality stuff out there. Just got to know where to look. Like 'legitimate cinema,' it is a vast field and it tends to get stereotyped by the Michael Bays of the industry. (I would recommend x-art.com with the caveat that it's still, ya know, porn.)

Nothing wrong with porn except when it's boring, or expensive, a 100 bucks a year is too steep for me.
I'd recommend a newsreader and usenet.

My point of view: most porn is boring. But, agreed, not going to be judgmental about it. To each their own.

Started part 2 of Nymphomaniac and bailed out when it got into violent s&m, not my thing. Can't recommend it.

25: Nothing wrong with porn except when it's boring, or expensive, a 100 bucks a year is too steep for me.
There's also YouTube websites out there, so one doesn't have to cough up 100 bucks a year. Nothin' beats free!

Mozart anyone?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDXUDehUgIQ

Neither eine nor kleine.

Perhaps 3/4s of this assembly might find something dear to them in Twisted Clay: http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2009/07/twisted-clay.html

Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/oct/23/outsider-art-tennessee-will...
The subtitle says it all.

A couple of interesting titles from the tbr pile(s):
No Bed of Her Own
and
The Devil's Brand, originally The Devil's Advocate

The planet Sextillion from the comic Saga by Brian K. Vaughan:
http://img.gawkerassets.com/post/8/2012/08/saga5.jpg

**Shameless plug**
My new book, The NSFW Files, has been released on January 19th by the good folks at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography.
The runaway success of Fifty Shades of Grey made erotica mainstream, but can erotica really be written off as derivative fiction read by suburban moms for titillation? As Karl Wolff investigates in his new collection of essays, erotica belongs in a vast literary landscape, a genre that hides hidden treasures and rare delights. He covers erotica from The Song of Songs to Nic Kelman's girls: A Paean; from Gynecocracy to Matriarchy: Freedom in Bondage; from City of Night to Naked Lunch; Story of the Eye to Story of O; and a bawdy bouquet of graphic novels. The NSFW Files includes essays on erotica written by a Nobel laureate, an outsider artist, a surrealist, and a French prisoner, among many more. Most important, the essay collection offers an answer to the question, 'What dirty book should I read next?'
http://www.cclapcenter.com/nsfwfiles/

'...derivative fiction read by suburban moms for titillation' - I fetched one of my own from that sentence. Off to check up on this book. Congrats!

Jeremy Reed, poet, biographer, libertine, and modern-day fop:
http://www.jeremyreed.co.uk/
Also wrote about my favorite musicians like Marc Almond and Lou Reed

I read Reed's Here Comes the Nice two or three years back and found it to be a fantastically entertaining (semi-?)autobiographical tale of growing up in the middle of London's 'swinging' sixties, with great insight into the formative years of the The Pretty Things, The Rolling Stones, etc. Just finished Nothing But a Star (containing poetry, a couple of rock essays, and a retelling of the Picture of Dorian Gray) and found it electric. Reed's writing is fueled by a kaleidoscope of polyamorous sexuality, drugs (lots), and the history of rock & roll...and reads like an enchiridion of modern decadence.
On a less ecstatic note, I've also read the erotic Pleasure Chateau trilogy and found it to be an uninspired, albeit deliciously decadent modern attempt to update the Marquis De Sade.

Picked up a copy of Hell by Henri Barbusse:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_%28novel%29
One of the earliest literary depictions of voyeurism. Written in 1908.

There is an analysis of that book (which the author, if I recall correctly, mistranslates as 'Under Fire' - the title of Barbusse's WWI novel) in The Outsider, by English occult thriller author, Colin Wilson.

Found a copy of Amok Journal: Sensurround Edition by Stuart Swezey. Not for the faint of heart, what with the chapter on auto-erotic asphyxiation deaths. An exploration of the more extreme aspects of human experience.

My take on Matthew Barney's epic Cremaster Cycle:
http://www.cclapcenter.com/2015/06/american_odd_matthew_barneys_c.html

Rictor Norton on Aleister Crowley's White Stains:
http://rictornorton.co.uk/crowley.htm

Horizontal Collaboration by Mel Gordon, for those who enjoyed Voluptuous Panic:
http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/horizontal-collaboration

Vintage Sleaze ... enjoy!
http://www.vintagesleaze.com/vs%20main.html

Jamie Gillis, anyone? I'm reading Pure Filth right now, selected scripts from his gonzo excursions like Back on the Prowl lovingly transcribed and introduced by everyone's favorite underground prose stylist, Peter Sotos.

Who knew Mark Twain wrote hardcore pornography?
https://humorinamerica.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/in-the-archives-mark-twain-date-...

The New York Review of Books about the new biography, On Henry Miller:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/02/21/henry-miller-mens-lib/