Henry Barreras

“The first time I was in bed with a woman it was also in the morning light and so was the first time Christine had her head between my legs. I was running my tongue along the lips of the cunt of the first woman I had ever had my clothes off with and this is what love felt like. One thing, not two. That was it. With a woman I felt whole, not different. For instance if I wanted to put a finger inside her vagina and she said not that, then I knew that maybe the new room wasn't as big as it felt and it went on from there, being diminished though never ultimately losing its glamour but being bound nonetheless by what each woman told me lesbians don't do. So Mary started fucking me. One finger two finger three fingers. And her face all that strong part coming out, dissolving her prettiness and pale freckles and celtic distance into force. I had really liked the thrusting presence of a man's dick inside of me. What I didn't know what to do with was men. Who would rub their beards against my cunt and up and down my clit for hours and I wondered what was wrong with me it was such a dirty thing. I couldn't get off. Only once or twice. The last man being such a pig that I couldn't believe I was letting him eat my pussy. I had a tremendous orgasm. He laughed. The first woman put her head between my legs and the complete sin, the absolute moment of sex came back and I was all in one piece coming apart. I was willing to sacrifice all for that moment. Even I guess my vagina, that jar. I thought I had to give that up but there was nothing like that at all.”
― Eileen Myles, Chelsea Girls

“My case is not unique : I am afraid of dying and distressed at being in this world. I haven’t worked, I haven’t studied. I have wept, I have cried out in protest. These tears and cries have taken up a great deal of my time. I am tortured by all the time lost whenever I think about it. I cannot think about things for long, but I can find pleasure in a withered lettuce leaf offering me nothing but regrets to chew over. There is no sustenance in the past. I shall depart as I arrived. Intact, loaded down with the defects that have tormented me. I wish I had been born a statue : I am a slug under my dunghill. Virtues, good qualities, courage, meditation, culture. With arms crossed on my breast I have broken myself against those words.”
― Violette Leduc, La Bâtarde

“Quite solemnly I told myself: "even though I'm still undecided at present and appear to be an idle pleasure-seeker par excellence, this is no reason to doubt that perhaps soon a time will come when I'll be firm resolution itself and ready to take on the full harshness, the utter nakedness, of life just as bravely as the next fellow."
I was not a little proud of this monologue.”
― Robert Walser, Masquerade and Other Stories

“You're not my sweetheart, you're myself. My heart or my sex. A branch of me.”
― Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers