The Tides of Lust is a powerful, erotic and violent encounter with the voices
and experiences of characters who linger in a small American seaport. Here is an
insatiable African-American ship's captain, a dangerously young slave mistress,
an aimless drifter and a supreme artist of the perverse. Written by acclaimed
and award-winning author Samuel R. Delany, The Tides of Lust, first published in 1973, is a wild ride
along the oceans of unleashed sexuality at its most exuberant. A true modern
classic.
******** EXCERPT *********
The color of bell
metal: Longer than a big man's foot; thick as a small girl's wrist. Veins made
low relief like vines beneath the wrinkled hood. His fingers climbed the shaft,
dropped to hair tight as wire, moved under the canvas flaps to gouge the sac,
black as an over-ripe avocado: spilled his palm (it is a big hand); climbed the
shaft again.
There is little
light.
What's here bars the
shutters in gold. Water lisps and whispers outside. The cabin sways, rises.
There
is a wind out to sea,
that means. That means here at port it is clear evening. The dog on the floor
claws the planks.
The captain's toes
spread the footboard. His chin went back and his belly made black ridges. The
long
head rolled on the
pillow, brass ring at his ear a-flash.
The hood slipped from
the punctured helmet. The knuckles, like knots in weathered cable,
flexed
on him. The rhythm
started with the boat's sway. Increase: his hand and the boat syncopate. The
doubled pace pulled his buttocks from the blanket. The rirn of his fist beat the
tenderer rim ( one color with his palm). His breath got loud. It halted, and
halted, and halted. Stop action film: a white orchid from bud to
bloom.
Breath
regular.
Mucus drips his
knuckles. Still stiff, the shaft glistens.
Pearls on black
wire.
"Kirsten?"
He swung his feet over
the edge, his shoulders hunched (dull as cannon shot); his dirty shirt was
sleeveless. Buttons: copper.
"Kirsten!"
His voice: maroons,
purples, a nap between velvet and suede.
"Come down
here!"
When the door cracked,
he laughed.
Her hair was yellow,
paler than the light. Her smock, torn at her neck, hung between her breasts. One
dull aureole rose on the blue horizon. Her face moved with its laughter before
she saw, "Captain, you . . . ?" saw, and smothered it, to have it break again.
Blue eyes widened in the half dark. "What do you want?"
She stepped on to the
rug. A copper anklet sloped beneath the knob of her ankle, crossed low on her
calloused heel. (Uneven hem brushes smudged knees. ) A print sash bound her
belly.
"Where is your brother?"
"In the wheelhouse,
asleep."
"Where were
you?"
"On deck. I was
sitting in the sun."
"With the men on the
docks all coming by to stare? How many with their hands in their
pockets?"
"Oh . . .
!"
"None of them with
what I got." He leaned back.
His fingers tracked
his stomach. "Come here. Tell me what's for supper."
"Your thoughts have
gone as high as your gut, now?"
"How do you and the
boy get chores done if you sleep and sun all the time?"
"But what is there to
do in port?" She stepped across the rug, laughing.
He grabbed her wrist.
She stumbled and he caught: "How many times!"
She pushed his chest.
Her wrist turned under slippery fingers.
"Five times? Six? I'll say seven—"
"But see, you've
already—"
"Once already. Six
more now." He kneaded her inner thigh.
"Captain . . . !" She
tried to pull away.
His hand went beneath
the hem.
She shrieked and bit
the sound off. What spilled after was a giggle.
"How many years have I
had you two, now?" His forearm shifted like bunched blacksnakes. She tried to
push his hand from under her skirt. Stopped trying.
She opened her lips
and caressed his arm.
"How many years?
Seven. Now, once for each year you've worked on my boat." He looked down at
himself.
She touched where he
looked: she took it, slipping the loose skin from the head. When she fingered
beneath the twice full bag, he arched his back.
"Pig. Sit on it.
Little white pig . . ." Three calloused fingers were knuckle deep in her. She
bent; her hair swept his face. He caught it in his yellow teeth, twisted his
head. Kirsten grabbed at her hair, and made an ugly sound. His teeth opened on
laughter; it and her hair spilled black lips mottled with
cerise.
*****
SAMUEL R DELANY, born 1942, grew up in New York City's
Harlem. His novels Babel-17 and The Einstein Intersection both won Nebula Awards from the Science
Fiction Writers of America, as have his short fictions, Eye, and
Gomorrah and Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious
Stones (which also took a
Hugo Award during the World Science Fiction Convention at Heidelberg). His books
include The Jewels of Aptor, The Fall of the Towers, Nova,
Driftglass (short
stories), Tales of Neveryon, Triton and Dhalgren, the million-selling odyssey of modern youth. With his wife,
National Book Award-winning poetess Marilyn Hacker, he co-edited the speculative
fiction quarterly Quark.He also wrote, directed and edited the half-hour
film The Orchid. His essays
in literary criticism are collected in The Jewel-Hinged
Jaw (1977). In 1975 he was
visiting Butler Chair Professor of English at the State University of New York
at Buffalo. For the last half dozen years Delany and Hacker have lived between
New York, San Fransisco and London. They have one
daughter.
*****
Other Modern Erotic Classics available:
The Houdini Girl by Martyn Bedford
Lie to Me by Tamara Faith Berger
The Phallus of Osiris by Valentina Cilescu
Kiss of Death by Valentina Cilescu
The Flesh Constrained by Cleo Cordell
The Flesh Endures by Cleo Cordell
Hogg by Samuel R. Delany
The Tides of Lust by Samuel R. Delany
Sad Sister by Florence Dugas
The Ties That Bind by Vanessa Duriés
Dark Ride by Kent Harrington
3 by Julie Hilden
Neptune & Surf by Marilyn Jaye Lewis
Violent Silence by Paul Mayersberg
Homme Fatale by Paul Mayersberg
The Agency by David Meltzer
Burn by Michael Perkins
Dark Matter by Michael Perkins
Evil Companions by Michael Perkins
Beautiful Losers by Remittance Girl
Meeting the Master by Elissa Wald
No comments:
Post a Comment