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.
Available from:
~ * ~
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
DuriƩs
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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