The
Tides of Lust by Samuel R. Delany
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
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