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Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell
One of O Magazine's Must-Read Books for June 2013
A provocative and personal meditation on sex, power, and female desire
Today's women, we're told, have more options in exercising their desire than ever before in history. And yet the way we talk about desire is virtually as constrained as it was for the Victorians. There's an essential paradox at the heart of female What we demand in our public lives is often in direct contrast to what we crave in our intimate lives.
In the tradition of Susan Sontag and Virginia Woolf, Katherine Angel has forged a path through cliché, convention, and secrecy, and the result is Unmastered , a searching and idiosyncratic account of her studies in sex as an academic and of her experiences of sex as a woman.
Unmastered isn't merely personal confession; it is also a powerful reckoning with our contradictory and deeply entrenched notions of sexuality. Angel embraces the highly charged oppositions—dominance versus submission, liberation versus dependence—and probes the porousness between masculine and feminine, thought and sensation, self and culture, power and pliancy, always reveling in the elusiveness of easy answers.
With remarkable candor, Angel reflects on the history of her encounters and beliefs, and shows how our lives are shaped by the words we use and the stories we tell. The result is a revelatory book that examines and then explodes our most deeply rooted assumptions. Lyrical, brave, and sometimes disarmingly funny, Unmastered will start a thousand debates.
A provocative and personal meditation on sex, power, and female desire
Today's women, we're told, have more options in exercising their desire than ever before in history. And yet the way we talk about desire is virtually as constrained as it was for the Victorians. There's an essential paradox at the heart of female What we demand in our public lives is often in direct contrast to what we crave in our intimate lives.
In the tradition of Susan Sontag and Virginia Woolf, Katherine Angel has forged a path through cliché, convention, and secrecy, and the result is Unmastered , a searching and idiosyncratic account of her studies in sex as an academic and of her experiences of sex as a woman.
Unmastered isn't merely personal confession; it is also a powerful reckoning with our contradictory and deeply entrenched notions of sexuality. Angel embraces the highly charged oppositions—dominance versus submission, liberation versus dependence—and probes the porousness between masculine and feminine, thought and sensation, self and culture, power and pliancy, always reveling in the elusiveness of easy answers.
With remarkable candor, Angel reflects on the history of her encounters and beliefs, and shows how our lives are shaped by the words we use and the stories we tell. The result is a revelatory book that examines and then explodes our most deeply rooted assumptions. Lyrical, brave, and sometimes disarmingly funny, Unmastered will start a thousand debates.
369 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 2012
34 people are currently reading
2112 people want to read
About the author
Katherine Angel
7 books185 followersKatherine Angel is the author of Unmastered, Most Difficult to Tell and Daddy Issues. She directs the MA in Creative and Critical Writing at Birkbeck, University of London, and has a PhD from the University of Cambridge.
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January 7, 2015
AN EXCURSION
1. Years ago when Hannah and I moved house, we decided to throw out all our porn. There was a remarkable quantity of it, considering how often we talked about how unsatisfactory it was. We piled it all in a big bin-bag and took it, with a whole carload of other rubbish, to the local dump. Hannah's parents came with us to help unload the bags. Luckily you couldn't see anything through the black bin-bags.
2. At the dump, as we were unloading old furniture and other detritus, we realised that the men who worked there were routinely opening every bag that was given to them, and going through the contents in case there was anything that should be put into the recycling areas.
3. Hannah panicked. She left the porn bag till last, threw it at the guy in his fluorescent jacket, and sprinted back to our Nissan Micra yelling, ‘Start the car! Start the car!’ Her parents, in the back seat, looked alarmed. ‘We're not in a hurry,’ her mum said. ‘Oh no!’ Hannah kept saying. ‘Drive!’
4. I drove off. In the rear-view mirror, I could see the man from the council pulling a fistful of Rocco Siffredi DVDs out of the bag, open-mouthed.
5. I like how honest and even-handed Katherine Angel is about porn (and about everything else in this rather remarkable essay).
But misogynistic, coercive, tacky porn isn't necessarily unerotic – it just depends what you mean by erotic. These butch, taciturn men and shiny tottering women, in their bleakly naff trysts – they make me uncomfortable. They make me squirm with laughter, they make me cover my eyes, sometimes they offend me. There is something deathly, joyless in their performances. They leave me feeling vaguely deflated, slightly melancholic – a feeling akin, perhaps, to the desolation, the intense pang of aloneness, that male friends and lovers have sometimes described experiencing after orgasm alone or with someone they do not love.
And yet these trysts, these dead-eyed unions – they make me wet. They irritate me, if rather joylessly, into action. The lubricious body has run ahead, has jumped through the hoops, and got what it wanted.
It looks back over its shoulder and laughs.
6. I wonder if this disassociation, this feeling that the body will react how it likes regardless of what you think, is something men are more used to than women.
YOUR LAWS DO NOT APPLY TO ME
1. What turns you on is out of your hands. Sex is not politically correct. Your libido does not give a fuck about your social convictions.
2. The problem is that this means you may be sharing a bed – metaphorically, that is – with people who are stupid, or even dangerous. But what are women supposed to do, then? Shut up about it? Only admit to enjoying things that further the feminist project? Some people think so. I think Paul Bryant has suggested as much in a couple of reviews, if I'm not misinterpreting him.
3. There's a somewhat notorious sex blog on tumblr by a woman who calls herself ‘feminist-rapebait’. The title is not even the most problematic thing about her blog, which features the extremer end of BDSM gifs and images along with occasional captions explaining her responses to them. Recently she posted, and replied to, a message that someone called ‘fucknodoms’ had written about her:
Truthfully, I think everything that feminist-rapebait posts, has posted, and will ever post is harmful. She has a rape kink and encourages violence and misogyny. Many of her posts encourage women to believe that they are beneath men and should be degraded, raped, abused, and used, and that they should enjoy it. I have multiple examples after I came across her blog, here, here, here, and here.[links removed…sorry] She literally calls herself a rapedoll and spouts about how women are only good to be used for men’s pleasure…The posts are damaging…she posts a lot of gross stuff and has obviously internalized a lot of misogyny.
how low is your opinion of women that you believe my blog encourages women who choose to read this blog to do anything, besides finding an outlet for their sexuality that has been shamed and persecuted and condescended to by alarmists like you.
I especially like that enjoy it highlight. The outrage that I want people to consent to the sexual activities they involve themselves in!! God forbid women enjoy the choices they make with their body. How dare they engage in sex that you, fucknodoms, have not personally approved of. How dare women be multifaceted human beings with complexity, and contradictions. How dare women dare to be anything that makes fucknodoms uncomfortable.
4. I have not the slightest idea how this argument should be settled. In fact I get a bit annoyed with people who think this is a simple question.
5. Katherine Angel worries about this a lot. She is very aware that women are often socialised to want what other people want them to want. ‘I should be accommodating. I should be good. I should not leave the party when I want to.’ Nevertheless; wherever it comes from, we do want what we want. Whatever that is.
What I remember is that an image inserts itself, suddenly, of him hitting me. Of him, yes, hitting me. It remains unclear; what do I mean? Being slapped? I don't think so. Punched? Surely not. Somewhere between the two, perhaps. The content has blurred edges, but the feeling is precise.
I want him to do something like hitting. Something – something – that would stop me in my tracks.
I want to say crazy stuff, I whisper. He says, Tell me.
But I don't; I hold back.
6. She and her boyfriend are worried about the same thing – finding themselves sharing some opinion, some spark of arousal, with the sort of people who do this in seriousness. People for whom it reflects deeply-held beliefs about men and women and their relative worth. ‘He too knows the fears, the risks; the symbol that becomes real, the real that becomes symbol. The metaphors we love by.’
7. I keep thinking of a moment in Alan Moore's Lost Girls, where a woman in the middle of an orgy finds herself disturbed by the content of the Victorian incest erotica she's been looking at. ‘It's an…unngh…exciting story, but the children, doing things with…ungh…with their own Mother! I mean, I have…unngh…a son myself, and I'd never dream…unngh…never dream of—’
‘But of course you would not, dear Madam,’ interrupts her partner. ‘Your child is real.’
TO THE WHOREHOUSE
1. The moving spirits behind this book are Virginia Woolf and Susan Sontag. They are quoted often to great effect. Foucault, inevitably, is there as well, in mercifully small doses.
2. What Angel is looking for, I think, is some feminist theory of sexual desire that does not leave people feeling guilty.
Well…join the queue.
We are all in the same lulling, lurching boat, fashioning our beliefs to resolve our feelings.
3. There is something essentialist about desire. I am someone who likes fruity cocktails, cries at adverts, does yoga. I have always disliked set gender roles and I usually feel comfortably fluid about them. But when I'm with Hannah, I feel completely polarised into masculinity. She kisses me and my hands go to her wrists, her hair, her neck. Almost this gender polarisation has started to be what desire means, to me.
4. Not everyone is like this. I have friends who feel exactly the opposite: they like the fact that their partner makes them feel (in the words of one friend) ‘genderqueer’. So I guess everyone's different. ‘It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple,’ Angel says.
5. This book is a shortish essay that has been spread out over a 350-page paperback using the expedient of a large font and a lot of white space. It can be read in a couple of hours. This didn't bother me, but it has bothered some people. The writing sometimes teeters on the edge of pretentiousness, but Angel's Englishness reassured me (unreasonably) that she was just about staying grounded.
6. I loved it. I love that people are writing seriously and intelligently about this, and that the debate is not being abandoned to the margins of Fifty Shades of Grey. It's a little sui-generis gem that deserves a lot more readers than it will get.
June 20, 2013
He was clad in a white bath robe and sitting in the mid-morning autumn sun at the wrought iron table where we had first made love, studying me as I bounded onto the terrace. I grinned at him and he smiled slightly, his long fingers brushing the glass top surface in tempo with Wagner’s Das Rheingold, his eyes teal flecked with dark amber, the pupils pits of non-light, and he continued to observe me as I stretched out my arms, wrists, legs. I bent from my hips to hang head down, palms flat on the red-brick paving, eyes closed as I luxuriated in the endorphins inoculating my brain and the warmth of the sun drying the perspiration on my skin. I sensed him move behind me and ignored him, until my head was yanked up by my ponytail and he slammed me across the surface of the table, my ribs and hips smashing against the glass.
“Teo! Ma che fa—” I flung out my arms to brace myself and arch up and away from the table top, and he kicked my legs apart, lifting my ankle off the bricks and pushing his knees into the backs of mine. He grasped my wrists, clamping my arms down, and shoved his pelvis against my buttocks, my shorts a flimsy half-barrier until he brought my hands together and grappled both, freeing his own hand and reefing the fabric away, his penis cudgelling my vagina, his teeth pincering my earlobe. I turned my face towards him, lifting my chin to protest and his breath, fruit sweet and espresso acrid, filled my nostrils. “Stop it, Teo! You’re hu—” His mouth drowned my words and his tongue lashed mine, one hand sliding under the cotton of my T-shirt and dragging my sports bra over and off my breasts. He pinched each nipple and I slid helpless under the onslaught of his mouth and fingers and penis into desire failing to be revolted by his callous assumption and disregard for my consent, by my submission to the familiarity of his touch, and by my frantic compulsion to sublimate myself in him and assimilate him into me.
“If you stand there stretching like that . . . what do you expect? You know you want it, Claudia, that’s why you move like that, to tease me. You want me to fuck you.” He punctuated each word with a grind against my buttocks. “You’re already wet. You want my prick in you.” He could not have penetrated me more easily if he had lathered himself in ylang ylang and rose-perfumed oil; whatever affront my emotions and sense of self suffered, my body delighted as a vassal.
He released my hands and gripped my shoulders to raise me towards him, before slipping his hands under my arms and around onto my ribs to crush my breasts savagely against my chest and gouge my skin with his fingernails. “This is what you need, mia furia amorosa. A good fuck, you want it right inside you, I’m going to split you in half.” He supported my weight and continued to drive himself into me, thrusting so hard my feet lost contact with the ground, and my senses exploded in complete and utter exculpation of his words; I drowned receptive to and helpless against the tsunami of lust swamping my awareness to the exclusion of anything but the sensation of his desperate invasion and my coerced and conflicted capitulation. That he had not the slightest interest in my pleasure as I defined it impacted upon me not at all, that our coupling was at his instigation irrespective of my agreement made no impression, and seconds later, as he groaned and shouted my name at his orgasm, his ejaculation splashing my cervix was a ridiculous and primitive vindication of my effect on him, my dominion over him and his dedition to me. The possible aftermath was not even the embryo of an idea.
He put his hands on my hips and pushed himself away from me and I leant on my elbows, his semen a warm trickle snail-trailing down my leg while I watched him slouch silently into the winter garden to slump onto the couch, his legs sprawled straight in front of him, one hand aimlessly scratching his crotch, his elbow propped on the side table and his chin heeling his palm. He returned my perusal with one eyebrow raised, his mouth twisting. My groin gnawed at me with the heaviness of unfulfilled tension, arousal still demanding a release despite its abrupt abandon. I rocked back onto my heels and strode through the glass doors to the breakfast table. The espresso was cold and thus ruined, the fruit a sugary, tangy fizzle in my mouth; quarters of peach, plum, and apricot, and late season slivers of melon sprinkled with freshly hacked mint. I drank some water and regarded him coolly, one hand on my hip, Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries rioting in the background.
“What the hell was that about, Teo? And I’m not your 'lust-filled fury'.”
He smirked, snorting, and shrugged his shoulders. “Next time don’t wave your pussy in my face if you don’t want me to fuck you.”
I set the glass on the table and walked across to him, kicking off my running shoes and kneeling on the couch with my thighs around his, my ankles hugging his knees, and thumbed his chin upwards, locking his eyes with my own. “Next time fuck me properly.” I pulled aside the seam of my shorts and took his hand to guide his finger onto my clitoris, slippery and swollen and ripe for climax.
“Why don’t you learn how to come properly from me fucking you? Isn’t this enough prick for you?” He twitched aside his robe and his penis bounced long and thick up from his abdomen. His finger slid desultorily across my clitoris and already spasms were crowding my flesh, insisting on the rhythm that crescendoed towards orgasm. I angled his penis into my vagina, encasing his glans with my labia resting around the folds of his foreskin. He lifted his hips and I jerked away. “Wait for me, please?” I laid one finger over his to conduct the orchestra of pressure and pace.
“Take off your top.” I half-lifted my T-shirt and halted, robbed of any ability to focus as my awareness collapsed inwards to the black hole of the self in absentia. Teo skated the head of his shaft over my clitoris in the same, unbroken rhythm and pulled my T-shirt over my head, unclipping my bra, before grazing his teeth over each areola. Tormented as he intended, my fingers searched my mons to regain and prolong the last instant before oblivion, and he bit and sucked my breasts until I quivered and cried out and he rocked my hips down hard to swallow his penis with the contractions of my orgasm. I fell forward onto his neck, mindless, lost in the concentration of my senses and the extinguishing of myself as he held me immobile and impaled me with a blind, unassailable, ferocity.
“Dio mio, Claudia.” He sank his teeth into the cord of muscle at the base of my neck. “Voglio,” he paused and groaned, biting me again, smashing my pelvis onto him as the hammer onto the anvil of his words, “scoparti . . . fuck you, and . . . fuck—” His lips sought mine, his tongue diving into my mouth in the moment of his release, and he crushed me against him while my pelvis flooded with fire that devoured and demanded.
When his body no longer spasmed and he had relaxed back into the lounge we stopped kissing and rested, expended and wounded warriors, until my stomach growled and prompted movement. I slithered from his lap and brought the platter of fruit to the side table. He speared a piece of melon and sucked on it, the juice beading at the corners of his lips. I caught a drop with my finger and he pulled me to sit beside him, one arm draped over my shoulders, his other hand pronging the fruit with a fork.
“You’re too hung up on a clitoral orgasm, Claudia.” He offered me a plump segment of peach, poking the piece between my lips. “You’re holding us back from connecting on the spiritual level. It was different with Lisbeth – she could climax with a finger-fuck. Stop focussing on coming with your clit and instead concentrate on coming with your cunt.”
I swallowed, choking myself on words foaming with vituperation, mobbing my mouth to vomit forth jealousy at the sound of her name and outrage at his careless and colossal dismissal of my sexuality. Instead I breathed slowly and shrugged an insouciant answer, my tone derisive, my smile disdainful. “The one doesn’t exclude the other, Teo, assuming vaginal orgasms aren’t just a male fantasy absolving the effort to pay attention to what a girl likes. Anyway, I’m going for a shower.”
***
We ordered primi piatti of cannelloni di ricotta for me, gnocchi al pomodoro for Teo, and tortellini in brodo for Teo's father, Massimo, Anja, his mother, eschewing a starter, and secondi piatti of rabbit prepared hunter’s style for her, Massimo opting for carpaccio, and Teo and I sharing a plate of fritti misti di verdure. While Massimo perused the wine menu, Anja leaned across to Teo and tapped his wrist smartly, her lips squashed together as if her first sip of mineral water had consisted purely of bitter lemons.
“Are you still following this idiocy? Crazy vegetarian diet! No wonder you look like a drug addict! So thin.” She pinched his cheek and Teo jerked back, sighing heavily. The waiters waltzed expertly around us, laying white squares of linen on laps and bread rolls on side plates.
“Figurati, Mama.” He broke open his roll and dipped it in the oil. “It has a pedigree. Some very famous people have been vegetar—”
“Ah, yes.” She selected a carrot stick and dunked it in the bagna cauda. “Buddha – and Gandhi. And this Osho char—”
“And Da Vinci. And Kafka. And Virgil.”
“No women. Too sensible, naturally. And how would that work, carrying a baby to term?” She tossed her hair back from her shoulders and drummed the fingers of one hand on the damask white tablecloth. “Hmm, Claudia? Che ne pensi?”
Carrying a baby to term was the last thing about which I was thinking, irrespective of diet. I took a segment of finocchio before replying, my tone neutral. “Martina Navratilova is vegetarian. As a sports—”
“And gay! You see where that leads?” Anja stabbed a brilliant red peperoni with her fork and the eyes of the waiter nearest her, pouring out the local Sangiovesi wine Massimo had chosen, widened.
“Mama, ma che dici!” Teo pinched his upwards-pointing fingertips against his thumb, shaking his hand at her. “Non c’entra niente. Non si puo—”
“Anzi! Navratilova could hardly have had a baby, could she? There’s only ever been one concepimento verginale!”
We chimed glasses and chanted “Salute!”, and after sharing appreciative comments about the wine, I suggested, “Mary Shelley was vegetarian and a parent.”
“Cristo Santo! And wrote books about monsters!” Anja spiralled her fingertip against her temple and arched an eyebrow at me, as if to confirm I had vindicated her argument.
“Vegetarian monsters, Mama.” Teo smirked. “Frankenstein’s creation didn’t eat meat, either.”
Anja sniffed. “So you’ve converted her or she’s brain-washing you?” She leaned forward in her chair and rested her chin against her knuckles, her eyes flickering back and forth between us, as the first courses were served, pepper proffered, and more water poured.
“We’ve made a pact, Mama.” Teo forked gnocchi into his mouth and chewed studiously for a few moments, three pairs of eyes trained on him. “Whichever one of us breaks it first foregoes the right to name the baby. Dammi il parmigiano, Claudia, per piacere?”
I choked on my wine, no longer Claudia Maini but a character in a Woody Allen film.
“Baby?” Anja snapped the carrot stick she was holding. “Bist Du verrückt? Ist sie schwanger?”
“—Teo? Intendevi ‘in caso che’, no?” Massimo raised an eyebrow, a vague frown forming across his forehead, his voice indicating knowing disbelief.
“Mama! Calmati!” Teo touched his napkin to his lips and reached across to Anja, patting her shoulder while winking at his father. “Of course Claudia isn’t pregnant. But we haven’t ruled out adoption.”
Fortunately my forkful of cannelloni fell onto my plate and not in my lap and saved me from near asphyxiation a second time.
“E beh! You have enough projects on your plate without starting another, Teo. Particularly since you have no means to support a family.” The threat in her voice was not in the least veiled.
Massimo spooned soup, smiling at me as though the topic of conversation was no more controversial than the weather, and I asked, in the vacant silence, “How are your tortell—”
“Tja! Kommt immer wieder zurück, dieses Thema: Geld. Was machst Du, wenn ich endlich nicht mehr von Dir abhängig bin?” Teo locked eyes with Anja, his voice equally hostile. The few words I had understood concerned the topic money. “Mi dispiace, Mama. Penso che non mi capivi. If Claudia was pregnant, naturally we’d put the baby up for adoption, since we don’t have jobs and haven’t finished our degrees. Yet.”
Massimo raised his hand to gesture at a passing waiter, who immediately refilled water and wine glasses. We had both finished our first courses, Teo sliding gnocchi in desultory trails around his plate.
“Nein, Theodor. Du würdest deinem Großvater nicht eine solche Schmach zufügen.” Anja lightened her voice, her dulcet tones returning, while her fingers ripped a bread roll. “Carino mio, naturally I make a fuss at how easily my son can be influenced. Sono la tua mama! Come non posso mi preoccupare? Forgive me.” She dropped the bits of ravaged roll on her side plate and clasped his hand, bringing it to her cheek and kissing his palm. Teo smiled and resumed eating; I felt revolted.
***
The colour stained the strip slowly; the spectrum from blue, paused at purple, and despite my incredulity, my refusal to acknowledge the evidence of my eyes and the voice chattering in my brain with a blithe insistence that this was all unreal, that I was dreaming, that I would shake myself from what was surely the reality belonging to someone else, and not me, continued to uninterrupted until red. I was pregnant. Teo had invoked destiny and I had no will, no choice, drowned as I was in well of our mutual peonage, to act in any way other than what was already pre-determined.
I closed the door to the ensuite bathroom and sat down beside him on the bed, handing him the strip wordlessly. He looked at it, looked at me, looked away, before standing up.
"There's a mistake. You'd better go to the doctor. We . . . you can't be . . . this wasn't meant to happen."
***
Afterwards, we never talked about it. But then the nightmares commenced, and I couldn't see past prams and parents and babies giggling in the arms of people I hated, like I began to hate him, and myself, until finally I was leaving him pictures of homunculi and descriptions of pregnancies, how a foetus develops hourly, daily, weekly, the changes from month to month. We somehow survived although what we had created had not, it was a canker between us that metastased into cancer - he loathed me for my own cowardice and once threw me to the floor, yelling, "You didn't have to do it, Claudia!"
It ended, the dreams, the sense of crushing loss, as Sabrina had predicted it would, only after we dissolved all that had been between us, and he returned to Johannesburg. One day, long after, when I realised I had been spellbound by what had never been, that we had constructed simulacra of each other and poured what was missing in ourselves into those, I breathed air untainted by memories of him, fresh as sunshine after a summer storm, floating free as the butterflies my sister had always loved.
“Teo! Ma che fa—” I flung out my arms to brace myself and arch up and away from the table top, and he kicked my legs apart, lifting my ankle off the bricks and pushing his knees into the backs of mine. He grasped my wrists, clamping my arms down, and shoved his pelvis against my buttocks, my shorts a flimsy half-barrier until he brought my hands together and grappled both, freeing his own hand and reefing the fabric away, his penis cudgelling my vagina, his teeth pincering my earlobe. I turned my face towards him, lifting my chin to protest and his breath, fruit sweet and espresso acrid, filled my nostrils. “Stop it, Teo! You’re hu—” His mouth drowned my words and his tongue lashed mine, one hand sliding under the cotton of my T-shirt and dragging my sports bra over and off my breasts. He pinched each nipple and I slid helpless under the onslaught of his mouth and fingers and penis into desire failing to be revolted by his callous assumption and disregard for my consent, by my submission to the familiarity of his touch, and by my frantic compulsion to sublimate myself in him and assimilate him into me.
“If you stand there stretching like that . . . what do you expect? You know you want it, Claudia, that’s why you move like that, to tease me. You want me to fuck you.” He punctuated each word with a grind against my buttocks. “You’re already wet. You want my prick in you.” He could not have penetrated me more easily if he had lathered himself in ylang ylang and rose-perfumed oil; whatever affront my emotions and sense of self suffered, my body delighted as a vassal.
He released my hands and gripped my shoulders to raise me towards him, before slipping his hands under my arms and around onto my ribs to crush my breasts savagely against my chest and gouge my skin with his fingernails. “This is what you need, mia furia amorosa. A good fuck, you want it right inside you, I’m going to split you in half.” He supported my weight and continued to drive himself into me, thrusting so hard my feet lost contact with the ground, and my senses exploded in complete and utter exculpation of his words; I drowned receptive to and helpless against the tsunami of lust swamping my awareness to the exclusion of anything but the sensation of his desperate invasion and my coerced and conflicted capitulation. That he had not the slightest interest in my pleasure as I defined it impacted upon me not at all, that our coupling was at his instigation irrespective of my agreement made no impression, and seconds later, as he groaned and shouted my name at his orgasm, his ejaculation splashing my cervix was a ridiculous and primitive vindication of my effect on him, my dominion over him and his dedition to me. The possible aftermath was not even the embryo of an idea.
He put his hands on my hips and pushed himself away from me and I leant on my elbows, his semen a warm trickle snail-trailing down my leg while I watched him slouch silently into the winter garden to slump onto the couch, his legs sprawled straight in front of him, one hand aimlessly scratching his crotch, his elbow propped on the side table and his chin heeling his palm. He returned my perusal with one eyebrow raised, his mouth twisting. My groin gnawed at me with the heaviness of unfulfilled tension, arousal still demanding a release despite its abrupt abandon. I rocked back onto my heels and strode through the glass doors to the breakfast table. The espresso was cold and thus ruined, the fruit a sugary, tangy fizzle in my mouth; quarters of peach, plum, and apricot, and late season slivers of melon sprinkled with freshly hacked mint. I drank some water and regarded him coolly, one hand on my hip, Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries rioting in the background.
“What the hell was that about, Teo? And I’m not your 'lust-filled fury'.”
He smirked, snorting, and shrugged his shoulders. “Next time don’t wave your pussy in my face if you don’t want me to fuck you.”
I set the glass on the table and walked across to him, kicking off my running shoes and kneeling on the couch with my thighs around his, my ankles hugging his knees, and thumbed his chin upwards, locking his eyes with my own. “Next time fuck me properly.” I pulled aside the seam of my shorts and took his hand to guide his finger onto my clitoris, slippery and swollen and ripe for climax.
“Why don’t you learn how to come properly from me fucking you? Isn’t this enough prick for you?” He twitched aside his robe and his penis bounced long and thick up from his abdomen. His finger slid desultorily across my clitoris and already spasms were crowding my flesh, insisting on the rhythm that crescendoed towards orgasm. I angled his penis into my vagina, encasing his glans with my labia resting around the folds of his foreskin. He lifted his hips and I jerked away. “Wait for me, please?” I laid one finger over his to conduct the orchestra of pressure and pace.
“Take off your top.” I half-lifted my T-shirt and halted, robbed of any ability to focus as my awareness collapsed inwards to the black hole of the self in absentia. Teo skated the head of his shaft over my clitoris in the same, unbroken rhythm and pulled my T-shirt over my head, unclipping my bra, before grazing his teeth over each areola. Tormented as he intended, my fingers searched my mons to regain and prolong the last instant before oblivion, and he bit and sucked my breasts until I quivered and cried out and he rocked my hips down hard to swallow his penis with the contractions of my orgasm. I fell forward onto his neck, mindless, lost in the concentration of my senses and the extinguishing of myself as he held me immobile and impaled me with a blind, unassailable, ferocity.
“Dio mio, Claudia.” He sank his teeth into the cord of muscle at the base of my neck. “Voglio,” he paused and groaned, biting me again, smashing my pelvis onto him as the hammer onto the anvil of his words, “scoparti . . . fuck you, and . . . fuck—” His lips sought mine, his tongue diving into my mouth in the moment of his release, and he crushed me against him while my pelvis flooded with fire that devoured and demanded.
When his body no longer spasmed and he had relaxed back into the lounge we stopped kissing and rested, expended and wounded warriors, until my stomach growled and prompted movement. I slithered from his lap and brought the platter of fruit to the side table. He speared a piece of melon and sucked on it, the juice beading at the corners of his lips. I caught a drop with my finger and he pulled me to sit beside him, one arm draped over my shoulders, his other hand pronging the fruit with a fork.
“You’re too hung up on a clitoral orgasm, Claudia.” He offered me a plump segment of peach, poking the piece between my lips. “You’re holding us back from connecting on the spiritual level. It was different with Lisbeth – she could climax with a finger-fuck. Stop focussing on coming with your clit and instead concentrate on coming with your cunt.”
I swallowed, choking myself on words foaming with vituperation, mobbing my mouth to vomit forth jealousy at the sound of her name and outrage at his careless and colossal dismissal of my sexuality. Instead I breathed slowly and shrugged an insouciant answer, my tone derisive, my smile disdainful. “The one doesn’t exclude the other, Teo, assuming vaginal orgasms aren’t just a male fantasy absolving the effort to pay attention to what a girl likes. Anyway, I’m going for a shower.”
***
We ordered primi piatti of cannelloni di ricotta for me, gnocchi al pomodoro for Teo, and tortellini in brodo for Teo's father, Massimo, Anja, his mother, eschewing a starter, and secondi piatti of rabbit prepared hunter’s style for her, Massimo opting for carpaccio, and Teo and I sharing a plate of fritti misti di verdure. While Massimo perused the wine menu, Anja leaned across to Teo and tapped his wrist smartly, her lips squashed together as if her first sip of mineral water had consisted purely of bitter lemons.
“Are you still following this idiocy? Crazy vegetarian diet! No wonder you look like a drug addict! So thin.” She pinched his cheek and Teo jerked back, sighing heavily. The waiters waltzed expertly around us, laying white squares of linen on laps and bread rolls on side plates.
“Figurati, Mama.” He broke open his roll and dipped it in the oil. “It has a pedigree. Some very famous people have been vegetar—”
“Ah, yes.” She selected a carrot stick and dunked it in the bagna cauda. “Buddha – and Gandhi. And this Osho char—”
“And Da Vinci. And Kafka. And Virgil.”
“No women. Too sensible, naturally. And how would that work, carrying a baby to term?” She tossed her hair back from her shoulders and drummed the fingers of one hand on the damask white tablecloth. “Hmm, Claudia? Che ne pensi?”
Carrying a baby to term was the last thing about which I was thinking, irrespective of diet. I took a segment of finocchio before replying, my tone neutral. “Martina Navratilova is vegetarian. As a sports—”
“And gay! You see where that leads?” Anja stabbed a brilliant red peperoni with her fork and the eyes of the waiter nearest her, pouring out the local Sangiovesi wine Massimo had chosen, widened.
“Mama, ma che dici!” Teo pinched his upwards-pointing fingertips against his thumb, shaking his hand at her. “Non c’entra niente. Non si puo—”
“Anzi! Navratilova could hardly have had a baby, could she? There’s only ever been one concepimento verginale!”
We chimed glasses and chanted “Salute!”, and after sharing appreciative comments about the wine, I suggested, “Mary Shelley was vegetarian and a parent.”
“Cristo Santo! And wrote books about monsters!” Anja spiralled her fingertip against her temple and arched an eyebrow at me, as if to confirm I had vindicated her argument.
“Vegetarian monsters, Mama.” Teo smirked. “Frankenstein’s creation didn’t eat meat, either.”
Anja sniffed. “So you’ve converted her or she’s brain-washing you?” She leaned forward in her chair and rested her chin against her knuckles, her eyes flickering back and forth between us, as the first courses were served, pepper proffered, and more water poured.
“We’ve made a pact, Mama.” Teo forked gnocchi into his mouth and chewed studiously for a few moments, three pairs of eyes trained on him. “Whichever one of us breaks it first foregoes the right to name the baby. Dammi il parmigiano, Claudia, per piacere?”
I choked on my wine, no longer Claudia Maini but a character in a Woody Allen film.
“Baby?” Anja snapped the carrot stick she was holding. “Bist Du verrückt? Ist sie schwanger?”
“—Teo? Intendevi ‘in caso che’, no?” Massimo raised an eyebrow, a vague frown forming across his forehead, his voice indicating knowing disbelief.
“Mama! Calmati!” Teo touched his napkin to his lips and reached across to Anja, patting her shoulder while winking at his father. “Of course Claudia isn’t pregnant. But we haven’t ruled out adoption.”
Fortunately my forkful of cannelloni fell onto my plate and not in my lap and saved me from near asphyxiation a second time.
“E beh! You have enough projects on your plate without starting another, Teo. Particularly since you have no means to support a family.” The threat in her voice was not in the least veiled.
Massimo spooned soup, smiling at me as though the topic of conversation was no more controversial than the weather, and I asked, in the vacant silence, “How are your tortell—”
“Tja! Kommt immer wieder zurück, dieses Thema: Geld. Was machst Du, wenn ich endlich nicht mehr von Dir abhängig bin?” Teo locked eyes with Anja, his voice equally hostile. The few words I had understood concerned the topic money. “Mi dispiace, Mama. Penso che non mi capivi. If Claudia was pregnant, naturally we’d put the baby up for adoption, since we don’t have jobs and haven’t finished our degrees. Yet.”
Massimo raised his hand to gesture at a passing waiter, who immediately refilled water and wine glasses. We had both finished our first courses, Teo sliding gnocchi in desultory trails around his plate.
“Nein, Theodor. Du würdest deinem Großvater nicht eine solche Schmach zufügen.” Anja lightened her voice, her dulcet tones returning, while her fingers ripped a bread roll. “Carino mio, naturally I make a fuss at how easily my son can be influenced. Sono la tua mama! Come non posso mi preoccupare? Forgive me.” She dropped the bits of ravaged roll on her side plate and clasped his hand, bringing it to her cheek and kissing his palm. Teo smiled and resumed eating; I felt revolted.
***
The colour stained the strip slowly; the spectrum from blue, paused at purple, and despite my incredulity, my refusal to acknowledge the evidence of my eyes and the voice chattering in my brain with a blithe insistence that this was all unreal, that I was dreaming, that I would shake myself from what was surely the reality belonging to someone else, and not me, continued to uninterrupted until red. I was pregnant. Teo had invoked destiny and I had no will, no choice, drowned as I was in well of our mutual peonage, to act in any way other than what was already pre-determined.
I closed the door to the ensuite bathroom and sat down beside him on the bed, handing him the strip wordlessly. He looked at it, looked at me, looked away, before standing up.
"There's a mistake. You'd better go to the doctor. We . . . you can't be . . . this wasn't meant to happen."
***
Afterwards, we never talked about it. But then the nightmares commenced, and I couldn't see past prams and parents and babies giggling in the arms of people I hated, like I began to hate him, and myself, until finally I was leaving him pictures of homunculi and descriptions of pregnancies, how a foetus develops hourly, daily, weekly, the changes from month to month. We somehow survived although what we had created had not, it was a canker between us that metastased into cancer - he loathed me for my own cowardice and once threw me to the floor, yelling, "You didn't have to do it, Claudia!"
It ended, the dreams, the sense of crushing loss, as Sabrina had predicted it would, only after we dissolved all that had been between us, and he returned to Johannesburg. One day, long after, when I realised I had been spellbound by what had never been, that we had constructed simulacra of each other and poured what was missing in ourselves into those, I breathed air untainted by memories of him, fresh as sunshine after a summer storm, floating free as the butterflies my sister had always loved.
April 17, 2019
This essay was... exasperating.
Part memoir, part poetry, it gestures towards art like it gestures towards argument, always promising and never quite doing. It's a tease.
There were so many moments where I highlighted some phrase or paragraph and thought eagerly, 'Yes, this is so true, what a good insight' but then there was no follow-through, no thesis built upon the observations. When I look back and try to see what it was actually saying - it was nothing more than a series of interesting points, prettified with line breaks and lyrical prose, illustrated with personal anecdotes.
So, a smattering of observations I agree with: It does sometimes feel like we are being coerced by societal expectations to play out gendered roles. But then, sometimes gendered roles are highly erotic. Our lovers live up, and down, to our expectations. Our desires can be wildly independent of what we want to desire. Both pro- and anti- pornography activists can be simplistic and reductive. Abortion is more difficult and complicated than public argument allows for. When a man lowers his head to kiss your body, the view down his back, especially that vulnerable spot between his shoulder blades and his neck, is simply breath-taking.
The title is taken from Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction: 'One goes about telling, with the greatest precision, what is most difficult to tell'. Perhaps, if we are trying our best to be honest and precise, then it is impossible to tie up the erotic in some neat, satisfying theory of everything.
Part memoir, part poetry, it gestures towards art like it gestures towards argument, always promising and never quite doing. It's a tease.
There were so many moments where I highlighted some phrase or paragraph and thought eagerly, 'Yes, this is so true, what a good insight' but then there was no follow-through, no thesis built upon the observations. When I look back and try to see what it was actually saying - it was nothing more than a series of interesting points, prettified with line breaks and lyrical prose, illustrated with personal anecdotes.
So, a smattering of observations I agree with: It does sometimes feel like we are being coerced by societal expectations to play out gendered roles. But then, sometimes gendered roles are highly erotic. Our lovers live up, and down, to our expectations. Our desires can be wildly independent of what we want to desire. Both pro- and anti- pornography activists can be simplistic and reductive. Abortion is more difficult and complicated than public argument allows for. When a man lowers his head to kiss your body, the view down his back, especially that vulnerable spot between his shoulder blades and his neck, is simply breath-taking.
The title is taken from Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction: 'One goes about telling, with the greatest precision, what is most difficult to tell'. Perhaps, if we are trying our best to be honest and precise, then it is impossible to tie up the erotic in some neat, satisfying theory of everything.
March 19, 2013
A really interesting book on sexuality, feminism, femininity and masculinity. Lots to think about throughout. Provocative, sexy, strange, smart.
August 13, 2016
Early on I thought Angel had begun to explore some challenging ideas about female desire, but midway she left them (the ideas, questions) and began describing a past abortion, at which point I lost the thread of how that connected to her sexual desire - I mean, I did not follow/comprehend how this traumatic incident informed her thesis. The link was probably laid out in poetic metaphoric prose but I just missed it since I was impatient with this abortion section (though the entire book was personal, there it became positively insular). Yes, she's studied Sheri Hite and wants to reconsider pornography, but I'm unconvinced that this book could have been the product of much academic research (Angel is a British scholar with a research fellowship). I suppose the final third was meant to be recursive, but I was adrift by that last shift back to the bedroom. Reviews to read at Salon and other online sites that I could respond to here if I were inclined to.
February 23, 2016
Just to be clear, this is white, upper class and very heteronormative desire. Angel repeatedly invokes Sontag and Woolf, claiming for herself a branch on that intellectual family tree. No problem there; desire is personal, inextricable from the social context of the individual inflamed with it. You can take the urchin off the streets, but never the streets out of the urchin, that sort of thing.
Therein the issue. This book, meditative, confessional, occasionally philosophical without ever losing its well mannered tone, is hardly all encompassing of female desire. It's personal. It's a journal of erotic encounters, polished up for public consumption. If points of connection are forged between the reader and its content, they happen in the same psychological space occupied by saying, "I totally get that" when someone confesses a non particularly shocking secret. It is beautifully written. It has capital-P points to make.
But it exists, like an exquisitely cut jewel, firmly embedded in its cold, filigreed setting--a piece that not everyone will like or afford.
Therein the issue. This book, meditative, confessional, occasionally philosophical without ever losing its well mannered tone, is hardly all encompassing of female desire. It's personal. It's a journal of erotic encounters, polished up for public consumption. If points of connection are forged between the reader and its content, they happen in the same psychological space occupied by saying, "I totally get that" when someone confesses a non particularly shocking secret. It is beautifully written. It has capital-P points to make.
But it exists, like an exquisitely cut jewel, firmly embedded in its cold, filigreed setting--a piece that not everyone will like or afford.
November 17, 2021
This was a kind of poetic essay on how sexuality doesn't always gel harmoniously and conveniently with ones ideals and beliefs. It's a book about desire in all its messy complexity. It won't be everyone's cup of tea.
It was an interesting exploration of the clash between how the author feels versus how she/society thinks she should feel.
I'll give it 3 stars because I wished it had gone a bit deeper, really peeled back the layers of desire, pushed the boundaries a bit more. Still, I would consider reading another of her books.
It was an interesting exploration of the clash between how the author feels versus how she/society thinks she should feel.
I'll give it 3 stars because I wished it had gone a bit deeper, really peeled back the layers of desire, pushed the boundaries a bit more. Still, I would consider reading another of her books.
November 11, 2022
From the very beginning of Katherine Angel’s opening sentences, I knew I was in for a delicious treat. Fine writing and such an interesting and important topic. Thanks to Charlotte Shane, elevated author of Prostitute Laundry and the unfailing ex-persona Nightmare Brunette, a book recommendation that finally ensures not to disappoint. And contrary to some negative reviews I absolutely love the book’s format, the larger font and white spaces, and the thoughtful, piercingly direct sentences and insightful quotations scattered liberally throughout. Please read the rest of my review here:
https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/un...
https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/un...
July 10, 2022
Personal, fragmentary, poetic writing that brings together the messiness of the experience of one's desires and sensations, to create a portrait of sexuality. The book also exposes the limits of the emancipatory politics of our times that forces us to choose a side and box our selfhoods into something acceptable for the political ideas we admire and aspire to be a part of.
October 23, 2013
Too many people are complaining about all the white space and how this book should really be only 100 pages, but nevermind all that. This fast, flighty, flashy dissection of love and lust is powerful and daring. Fans of Maggie Nelson would probably love Angel's academic rigor and semi-nostalgic tone.
From pg 70: Sex, said Sontag--"unlike writing a book, making a career, raising a child"--is "not a project."
Sex "consumes itself each day. There are no promises, no goals, nothing promised. It is not an accumulation.
From pg 70: Sex, said Sontag--"unlike writing a book, making a career, raising a child"--is "not a project."
Sex "consumes itself each day. There are no promises, no goals, nothing promised. It is not an accumulation.
October 1, 2015
Very impressed by good use of this prose poetry essay memoir - however you want to call it. I may change rating from 4 to 5 after rereading the end. I felt the book started out stronger than it ended, and final third or quarter seemed to run parallel to the rest (as opposed to coming after). But otherwise, a thought provoking read, with great use of terrific Sontag quotes.
September 16, 2012
A fascinating read of delicate language which gives a glimpse of the greatest desire of mankind. An amazing portrait of the struggle of feminist and masculinity- a match but also a symphony.A quick read but scent in every word is long-lasting.
July 25, 2013
Strange....
Read
October 19, 2021it's slippery. it's wet. a book on desire, most difficult to tell.
December 20, 2025
angels approach to desire i love, but the writing style oh my god, if ur gonna write about desire and sex, please dont refer to penises as coccyx
Read
April 8, 20213.5
A good companion piece to Angel’s recent essay collection.
A good companion piece to Angel’s recent essay collection.
July 8, 2023
The structure and subject of and tone of Unmastered—prose in numbered sections, sex, the mix of the personal with semi-academic meditations—made me think of Maggie Nelson's Bluets, though I am not as in love with this book as I am with that one. Which isn't to say this book is bad, just that it didn't hit me quite like Nelson's did. Unmastered was a quick read for me (there's a lot of white space) and I read it twice over the course of a week, finding myself struck by different bits each time.
The book is, as the subtitle says, about desire: about Angel's own desires and experiences with desire, and also about sexual desire more generally, women's and also men's. Though Angel quotes Virginia Woolf on the androgynous mind— "'It is fatal,' wrote Woolf, 'to be a man or woman pure and simple'" (95)—this book looks at and thinks about desire in very gendered terms. "I am proof of your masculinity," Angel writes (30). And "I lock him into his masculinity. I am anxious to protect it, for it pains me, it pains my femininity, to see it fragmented" (109). And "he puts down anchor in me, and finds his masculinity there. I put down anchor in him, in his masculinity, and find my femininity there" (112). All of which is interesting to me, but feels very removed from my own experiences. (My gender identity is basically "tomboy," and I've dated both men and women, and I'm more comfortable with the idea of gender as a spectrum than a binary thing.) When Angel writes about things like pornography, or domination and submission, it's mostly in a gendered way—even when she flips things and talks about a woman being dominant, it's still in relation to the idea of a dominant man and a submissive woman, which isn't really how I think about these things. Angel writes about women's experiences in contrast to men's experiences: she writes about the entitlement men may have, while women may find it harder to know/voice/own desire. She writes about the way society, women included, can work to contain women's sexuality, to contain women's bodies and wants. She writes about the "unruly, lustful body," and how we react to things like unplanned pregnancy and abortion (264).
I think I like this book best not when Angel is quoting Virginia Woolf or Susan Sontag (this book's other guiding spirit, in a way), but when she's writing about her own experiences, in and out of the bedroom. "I have become a body," she writes, and "I have sounds, but I have fewer words" (42). "When he grabs my hair, when he presses my throat, when he holds my hands down, I know—because I feel—that this is pitch-perfect" (90). I like writing that captures the experience of feeling open, feeling awake to the possibilities of pleasure, and when Angel does this, she does it really well, as in this, one of my favorite passages in the book:
The book is, as the subtitle says, about desire: about Angel's own desires and experiences with desire, and also about sexual desire more generally, women's and also men's. Though Angel quotes Virginia Woolf on the androgynous mind— "'It is fatal,' wrote Woolf, 'to be a man or woman pure and simple'" (95)—this book looks at and thinks about desire in very gendered terms. "I am proof of your masculinity," Angel writes (30). And "I lock him into his masculinity. I am anxious to protect it, for it pains me, it pains my femininity, to see it fragmented" (109). And "he puts down anchor in me, and finds his masculinity there. I put down anchor in him, in his masculinity, and find my femininity there" (112). All of which is interesting to me, but feels very removed from my own experiences. (My gender identity is basically "tomboy," and I've dated both men and women, and I'm more comfortable with the idea of gender as a spectrum than a binary thing.) When Angel writes about things like pornography, or domination and submission, it's mostly in a gendered way—even when she flips things and talks about a woman being dominant, it's still in relation to the idea of a dominant man and a submissive woman, which isn't really how I think about these things. Angel writes about women's experiences in contrast to men's experiences: she writes about the entitlement men may have, while women may find it harder to know/voice/own desire. She writes about the way society, women included, can work to contain women's sexuality, to contain women's bodies and wants. She writes about the "unruly, lustful body," and how we react to things like unplanned pregnancy and abortion (264).
I think I like this book best not when Angel is quoting Virginia Woolf or Susan Sontag (this book's other guiding spirit, in a way), but when she's writing about her own experiences, in and out of the bedroom. "I have become a body," she writes, and "I have sounds, but I have fewer words" (42). "When he grabs my hair, when he presses my throat, when he holds my hands down, I know—because I feel—that this is pitch-perfect" (90). I like writing that captures the experience of feeling open, feeling awake to the possibilities of pleasure, and when Angel does this, she does it really well, as in this, one of my favorite passages in the book:
Crossing Waterloo Bridge, that spritely spring, that razor-sharp spring, looking over at St. Paul's, I sniffed pleasure—openness—light—in the air.
I could feel it in my hips. (332)
August 26, 2013
This is an interesting book. I started it not quite sure what it was - poetry, prose, short stories, non-fiction - and I suppose it is all of those things.
Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell is just that - a book about desire. Told by Katherine Angel and informed by her own experiences and knowledge. I found myself folding over the bottom corners - something I do when there's something to go back to, there's plenty of that.
The book is broken into sections with semi-cryptic names such as 'To Spend Oneself, To Gamble Oneself' and 'More Gone' and, in these, she covers a range of topics - including her own desire, communication, pornography and abortion. I'll be honest the abortion chapter threw me a bit, it didn't seem to fit with the rest of the book, but it was clearly something so personal to the author and so tied in with her ideas of desire that she felt it relevant to include it.
As the book is personal it's very heteronormative - mentioning lesbians once (in the section about pornography) and brushing over gay men and bisexuality entirely however because this isn't an academic book I found that okay/acceptable though lacking.
The book isn't trying to offer answers, it does ask some questions, and it brings some up, especially in terms of male-female relationships - for example in her chapter on communication Angel writes:
"I am proof of your masculinity, of your endless potency.
I must reassure you. This is what I must do."
Other passages aren't trying to ask you anything - they just are. They're about her desire, the way she feels when she is desired, how she feels when she comes.
The style of writing is quick to read - it's almost a stream of consciousness- and whilst I doubt I'll read the whole thing again there are definitely passages I'll return to.
Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell is just that - a book about desire. Told by Katherine Angel and informed by her own experiences and knowledge. I found myself folding over the bottom corners - something I do when there's something to go back to, there's plenty of that.
The book is broken into sections with semi-cryptic names such as 'To Spend Oneself, To Gamble Oneself' and 'More Gone' and, in these, she covers a range of topics - including her own desire, communication, pornography and abortion. I'll be honest the abortion chapter threw me a bit, it didn't seem to fit with the rest of the book, but it was clearly something so personal to the author and so tied in with her ideas of desire that she felt it relevant to include it.
As the book is personal it's very heteronormative - mentioning lesbians once (in the section about pornography) and brushing over gay men and bisexuality entirely however because this isn't an academic book I found that okay/acceptable though lacking.
The book isn't trying to offer answers, it does ask some questions, and it brings some up, especially in terms of male-female relationships - for example in her chapter on communication Angel writes:
"I am proof of your masculinity, of your endless potency.
I must reassure you. This is what I must do."
Other passages aren't trying to ask you anything - they just are. They're about her desire, the way she feels when she is desired, how she feels when she comes.
The style of writing is quick to read - it's almost a stream of consciousness- and whilst I doubt I'll read the whole thing again there are definitely passages I'll return to.
January 17, 2021
reread, 17 January 2021:
I was deciding what to donate from my bookshelves and this is absolutely leaving. I reread it, I went in thinking maybe it would mean more this time, I wanted to like it - but it's just not the book for me. I don't know who it is the book for, in all honesty. I don't feel like she actually really writes about desire properly at any point, anything more than vague platitudes or literary references. There must be better examples of women being horny and conflicted; thinking like this can't be the only way!!
original review, 24 August 2017 (3*)
I think if my friend, lately obsessed and madly in love with a new boyfriend, read this book instead of me, she'd have loved it. But I read it, and I didn't love it.
I think if you'd told me about the idea of it, or if I'd read it at another point (before, when I was in love, or maybe in the future, when I am again) I'd have underlined passages, texted them to friends, reread pages feeling understood. But I just felt really underwhelmingly disconnected from this whole book.
It felt - god, the only word I can think to use is masturbation, isn't that typical? - it felt like a fun project for the writer, maybe not much fun for anyone else. There's some well-written bits, some interesting thoughts, but I think it's just mostly not for me, not right now.
I was deciding what to donate from my bookshelves and this is absolutely leaving. I reread it, I went in thinking maybe it would mean more this time, I wanted to like it - but it's just not the book for me. I don't know who it is the book for, in all honesty. I don't feel like she actually really writes about desire properly at any point, anything more than vague platitudes or literary references. There must be better examples of women being horny and conflicted; thinking like this can't be the only way!!
original review, 24 August 2017 (3*)
I think if my friend, lately obsessed and madly in love with a new boyfriend, read this book instead of me, she'd have loved it. But I read it, and I didn't love it.
I think if you'd told me about the idea of it, or if I'd read it at another point (before, when I was in love, or maybe in the future, when I am again) I'd have underlined passages, texted them to friends, reread pages feeling understood. But I just felt really underwhelmingly disconnected from this whole book.
It felt - god, the only word I can think to use is masturbation, isn't that typical? - it felt like a fun project for the writer, maybe not much fun for anyone else. There's some well-written bits, some interesting thoughts, but I think it's just mostly not for me, not right now.
Read
April 3, 2015A slender book with a firm heart, seeking to shift around easy categorisation or arguments. Desire, the politics of desire, the desire taken in a crisp sunny day -
I loved the author's smart resistance while in lectures of one sort or another, her urge to question, dispute, to break the cosy bubble around certain discussions.
As a note to other readers - the focus is on heterosexual love and desire (and without shame on the desiring of the self). Also provides a leaping off point for writings on sex in the form of a reading list notation at the back of the book.
I loved the author's smart resistance while in lectures of one sort or another, her urge to question, dispute, to break the cosy bubble around certain discussions.
As a note to other readers - the focus is on heterosexual love and desire (and without shame on the desiring of the self). Also provides a leaping off point for writings on sex in the form of a reading list notation at the back of the book.
December 8, 2016
Through her personal experiences and scholarly work, Katherine Angel explores desire, femininity, masculinity, power, choice, love, grief, and culture from a modern feminist perspective, with appropriate nods to Woolf, Sontag, Foucault, and others. Part memoir, part cultural criticism, it's written in snippets of lyrical prose that connect to create a moving, erotic, funny, critical, honest essay about that thing "most difficult to tell" (especially for women who are disproportionately conditioned to feel ashamed, be submissive, and expect exploitation), even though we all do and love it.
Read
December 16, 2013Reviewed here.
June 20, 2021
I very much appreciated about 2/3s of this book. I'm writing about my own teenage self, and many of Angel's observations about the slippery nature of desire and the way it resists definition ring true. Many of her observations about gender ring true--for 17-year-old me living in the 90s. Some of the gender stuff feels distinctly out of date, but that it is the nature of books: they age. I don't know why the abortion is in this book. Or, like, I do, but it just deflates the whole thing and then I don't know what happens next because all the tension was gone. I'm sure this is somewhat the point, but it was still an odd fit and I question it as a craft choice and as a thematic choice. (Though, again, this probably felt more relevant 10 years ago than it does today.)
December 20, 2022
an interesting read, although i did want more out of it. it lined up a lot of salient ideas: how either sides of the pro/anti porn and the pro/anti choice movement tend to flatten the discourse and fall into being reductive, the erotics of playing into (and finding comfort in) gendered roles and expectations in a romantic/sexual relationship, and crafting a personal kind of feminism that is able to envelop (femme) sexual desire especially when directed towards men… or sexual desires that have been deemed problematic or gauche at least in the eyes of mainstream feminism that tends to reject masculinity and/or male sexual desire.
poetic, romantic, and erotic, though i did want it to dig deeper and expound. but it was a good read to get a short taste of the points it was trying to make
poetic, romantic, and erotic, though i did want it to dig deeper and expound. but it was a good read to get a short taste of the points it was trying to make
May 28, 2021
Het hele boek voelt als een braindump, later genummerd per paragraaf waardoor het overzicht krijgt. Net als in ieders hersens worden er gedachtensprongen gemaakt, en wordt er weer teruggegrepen naar een eerder onderwerp.
Dat gezegd hebbende is het erg knap dat iemand zijn volledige gedachtengang zo durft te delen, helemaal over een gevoelig onderwerp als seksualiteit en verlangen. Met vlagen herkenbaar, en dan spreekt het ook aan, maar verder onsamenhangend.
Dat gezegd hebbende is het erg knap dat iemand zijn volledige gedachtengang zo durft te delen, helemaal over een gevoelig onderwerp als seksualiteit en verlangen. Met vlagen herkenbaar, en dan spreekt het ook aan, maar verder onsamenhangend.
June 25, 2025
It’s a shame this book and Angel’s writing in general has been labelled ‘controversial’ and ‘bold’. It seems all (even some feminist) sides want to control women’s desire. Our sexuality is never ours, it belongs to external structures, a direct result of something outside of our control. It needs to be placed neatly into a box, inspected, examined. This collection of vignettes reminds us that women’s desire is, and has always been ours, untethered and unbound.
February 20, 2022
An incredibly smart, staccato, emotionally raw narrative that looks at desire and its uncomfortable complexities and takes issue with all of the dominant narratives around women's desire. Short, erudite, and really made me think.
July 15, 2025
Cheeky cheeky Nia giving me this to read on the train (thank you).
[Reckless abandon and coming into to dock safely. The warmth of embrace and the all-encompassing surrender of bodies. Hunger. Sea air. All very interesting.]
[Reckless abandon and coming into to dock safely. The warmth of embrace and the all-encompassing surrender of bodies. Hunger. Sea air. All very interesting.]
February 22, 2026
This was beautifully crafted. The fragments of essays, poetry and dialogue piece together a picture of the authors exploration and attempt to break free from the societal shackles on female desire (including the need to protect the masculine ego which I felt particularly called out on)
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