Delta of Venus

by Anais Nin

  ‘I looked out of the window most of the time, not at the man sketching. After a while I did not hear the pencil working any longer and I turned slightly towards him, not wanting to lose the pose. He was sitting there behind his drawing board staring at me. Then I realized that he had his penis out and that he was in a kind of trance.

  ‘Thinking this would mean trouble for me since we were alone in the office, I started to go behind the screen and dress.

  ‘He said, “Don’t go. I won’t touch you. I just love to see women in lovely underwear. I won’t move from here. And if you want me to pay you more, all you have to do is wear my favorite piece of underwear and pose for fifteen minutes. I will give you five dollars more. You can reach for it yourself. It is right above your head on the shelf there.”

  ‘Well, I did reach for the package. It was the loveliest piece of underwear you ever saw – the finest black lace, like a spider web really, and the panties were slit back and front, slit and edged with fine lace. The brassière was cut in such a way as to expose the nipples through triangles. I hesitated because I was wondering if this would not excite the man too much, if he would attack me.

  ‘He said, “Don’t worry. I don’t really like women. I never touch them. I like only underwear. I just like to see women in lovely underwear. If I tried to touch you I would immediately become impotent. I won’t move from here.”

  ‘He put aside the drawing board and sat there with his penis out. Now and then it shook. But he did not move from his chair.

  ‘I decided to put on the underwear. The five dollars tempted me. He was not very strong and I felt that I could defend myself. So I stood there in the slit panties, turning around for him to see me on all sides.

  ‘Then he said, “That’s enough.” He seemed unsettled and his face was congested. He told me to dress quickly and leave. He handed me the money in a great hurry, and I left. I had a feeling that he was only waiting for me to leave to masturbate.

  ‘I have known men like this, who steal a shoe from someone, from an attractive woman, so they can hold it and masturbate while looking at it.’

  Everyone was laughing at her story. ‘I think,’ said Brown, ‘that when we are children we are much more inclined to be fetishists of one kind or another. I remember hiding inside my mother’s closet and feeling ecstasy at smelling her clothes and feeling them. Even today I cannot resist a woman who is wearing a veil or tulle or feathers, because it awakens the strange feelings I had in that closet.’

  As he said this I remembered how I hid in the closet of a young man when I was only thirteen, for the same reason. He was twenty-five and he treated me like a little girl. I was in love with him. Sitting next to him in a car in which he took all of us for long rides, I was ecstatic just feeling his leg alongside mine. At night I would get into bed and, after turning out the light, take out a can of condensed milk in which I had punctured a little hole. I would sit in the dark sucking at the sweet milk with a voluptuous feeling all over my body that I could not explain. I thought then that being in love and sucking at the sweet milk were related. Much later I remembered this when I tasted sperm for the first time.

  Mollie remembered that at the same age she liked to eat ginger while she smelled camphor balls. The ginger made her body feel warm and languid and the camphor balls made her a little dizzy. She would get herself in a sort of drugged state this way, lying there for hours.

  Ethel turned to me and said, ‘I hope you never marry a man you don’t love sexually. That is what I have done. I love everything about him, the way he behaves, his face, his body, the way he works, treats me, his thoughts, his way of smiling, talking, everything except the sexual man in him. I thought I did, before we married. There is absolutely nothing wrong with him. He is a perfect lover. He is emotional and romantic, he shows great feeling and great enjoyment. He is sensitive and adoring. Last night while I was asleep he came into my bed. I was half-asleep so I could not control myself, as I usually do, because I do not want to hurt his feelings. He got in beside me and began to take me very slowly and lingeringly. Usually it is all over quickly, which makes it possible to bear. I do not even let him kiss me if I can help it. I hate his mouth on mine. I usually turn my face away, which is what I did last night. Well, there he was, and what do you think I did? I suddenly began to strike him with my closed fists, on the shoulder, while he was enjoying himself, to dig my nails into him, and he took it as a sign that I was enjoying it, growing rather wild with pleasure, and he went on. Then I whispered as low as I could, “I hate you.” And then I asked myself if he had heard me. What would he think? Was he hurt? As he was himself partly asleep, he merely kissed me good night when it was over and went back to his bed. The next morning I was waiting for what he would say. I still thought perhaps he had heard me say, “I hate you.” But no, I must have formed the words without saying them. And all he said was, “You got quite wild last night, you know,” and smiled, as if it pleased him.’

  Brown started the phonograph and we began to dance. The little alcohol I had taken had gone to my head. I felt a dilation of the whole universe. Everything seemed very smooth and simple. Everything, in fact, ran downward like a snowy hill on which I could slide without effort. I felt a great friendliness, as if I knew all these people intimately. But I chose the most timid of the painters to dance with. I felt that he was pretending somewhat, as I was, to be very familiar with all of this. I felt that deep down he was a little uneasy. The other painters were caressing Ethel and Mollie as they danced. This one did not dare. I was laughing to myself at having discovered him. Brown saw that my painter was not making any advances, and he cut in for a dance. He was making sly remarks about virgins. I wondered whether he was alluding to me. How could he know? He pressed against me, and I drew away from him. I went back to the timid young painter. A woman illustrator was flirting with him, teasing him. He was equally glad that I came back to him. So we danced together, retreating into our own timidity. All around us people were kissing now, embracing.

  The woman illustrator had thrown off her blouse and was dancing in her slip. The timid painter said, ‘If we stay here we will soon have to lie on the floor and make love. Do you want to leave?’

  ‘Yes, I want to leave,’ I said.

  We went out. Instead of making love, he was talking, talking. I was listening to him in a daze. He had a plan for a picture of me. He wanted to paint me as an undersea woman, nebulous, transparent, green, watery except for the very red mouth and the very red flower I was wearing in my hair. Would I pose for him? I did not respond very quickly because of the effects of the liquor, and he said apologetically, ‘Are you sorry that I was not brutal?’

  ‘No, I’m not sorry. I chose you myself because I knew you would not be.’

  ‘It’s my first party,’ he said humbly, ‘and you’re not the kind of woman one can treat – that way. How did you ever become a model? What did you do before this? A model does not have to be a prostitute, I know, but she has to bear a lot of handling and attempts.’

  ‘I manage quite well,’ I said, not enjoying this conversation at all.

  ‘I will be worrying about you. I know some artists are objective while they work, I know all that. I feel that way myself. But there is always a moment before and after, when the model is undressing and dressing, that does disturb me. It’s the first surprise of seeing the body. What did you feel the first time?’

  ‘Nothing at all. I felt as if I were a painting already. Or a statue. I looked down at my own body like some object, some impersonal object.’

  I was growing sad, sad with restlessness and hunger. I felt that nothing would happen to me. I felt desperate with desire to be a woman, to plunge into living. Why was I enslaved by this need of being in love first? Where would my life begin? I would enter each studio expecting a miracle which did not take place. It seemed to me that a great current was passing all around me and that I was left out. I would have to find someone who felt as I did. But where? Where?


  The sculptor was watched by his wife, I could see that. She came into the studio so often, unexpectedly. And he was frightened. I did not know what frightened him. They invited me to spend two weeks at their country house where I would continue to pose – or rather, she invited me. She said that her husband did not like to stop work during vacations. But as soon as she left he turned to me and said, ‘You must find an excuse not to go. She will make you miserable. She is not well – she has obsessions. She thinks that every woman who poses for me is my mistress.’

  There were hectic days of running from studio to studio with very little time for lunch, posing for magazine covers, illustrations for magazine stories, and advertisements. I could see my face everywhere, even in the subway. I wondered if people recognized me.

  The sculptor had become my best friend. I was anxiously watching his statuette coming to a finish. Then one morning when I arrived I saw that he had ruined it. He said that he had tried to work on it without me. But he did not seem unhappy or worried. I was quite sad, and to me it looked very much like sabotage, because it seemed spoiled with such awkwardness. I saw that he was happy to be beginning it all over again.

  It was at the theater that I met John and discovered the power of a voice. It rolled over me like the tones of a pipe organ, making me vibrate. When he repeated my name and mispronounced it, it sounded to me like a caress. It was the deepest, richest voice I had ever heard. I could scarcely look at him. I knew that his eyes were big, of an intense, magnetic blue, that he was large, rather restless. His foot moved nervously like that of a racehorse. I felt his presence blurring everything else – the theater, the friend sitting at my right. And he behaved as if I had enchanted him, hypnotized him. He talked on, looking at me, but I was not listening. In one moment I was no longer a young girl. Every time he spoke, I felt myself falling into some dizzy spiral, falling into the meshes of a beautiful voice. It was truly a drug. When he had finally ‘stolen’ me, as he said, he hailed a taxi.

  We did not say another word until we reached his apartment. He had not touched me. He did not need to. His presence had affected me in such a way that I felt as if he had caressed me for a long time.

  He merely said my name twice, as if he thought it sufficiently beautiful to repeat. He was tall, glowing. His eyes were so intensely blue that when they blinked, for a second it was like some tiny flash of lightning, giving one a sense of fear, a fear of a storm that would completely engulf one.

  Then he kissed me. His tongue went around mine, around and around, and then it stopped to touch the tip only. As he kissed me he slowly lifted my skirt. He unrolled my garters, my stockings. Then he lifted me up and carried me to the bed. I was so dissolved that I felt he had already penetrated me. It seemed to me that his voice had opened me, opened my whole body to him. He sensed this, and so he was amazed by the resistance to his penis that he felt.

  He stopped to look at my face. He saw the great emotional receptiveness, and then he pressed harder. I felt the tear and the pain, but the warmth melted everything, the warmth of his voice in my ear saying, ‘Do you want me as I want you?’

  Then his pleasure made him groan. His whole weight upon me, pressing against my body, the shaft of pain vanished. I felt the joy of being opened. I lay there in a semidream.

  John said, ‘I hurt you. You did not enjoy it.’ I could not say, ‘I want it again.’ My hand touched his penis. I caressed it. It sprung up, so hard. He kissed me until I felt a new wave of desire, a desire to respond completely. But he said, ‘It will hurt now. Wait a little while. Can you stay with me, all night? Will you stay?’

  I saw that there was blood on my leg. I went to wash it off. I felt that I had not been taken yet, that this was only a small part of the breaking through. I wanted to be possessed and know blinding joys. I walked unsteadily and fell on the bed again.

  John was asleep, his big body still curved as when he was lying against me, his arm thrown out where my head had been resting. I slipped in at his side and fell half-asleep. I wanted to touch his penis again. I did so gently, not wanting to wake him. Then I slept and was awakened by his kisses. We were floating in a dark world of flesh, feeling only the soft flesh vibrating, and every touch was a joy. He gripped my hips tautly against him. He was afraid to wound me. I parted my legs. When he inserted his penis it hurt, but the pleasure was greater. There was a little outer rim of pain and, deeper in, a pleasure at the presence of his penis moving there. I pressed forwards, to meet it.

  This time he was passive. He said, ‘You move, you enjoy it now.’ So as not to feel the pain, I moved gently around his penis. I put my closed fists under my backside to raise myself toward him. He placed my legs on his shoulders. Then the pain grew greater and he withdrew.

  I left him in the morning, dazed, but with a new joy of feeling that I was growing nearer to passion. I went home and slept until he telephoned.

  ‘When are you coming?’ he said. ‘I must see you again. Soon. Are you posing today?’

  ‘Yes, I must. I’ll come after the pose.’

  ‘Please don’t pose,’ he said, ‘please don’t pose. It makes me desperate to think of it. Come and see me first. I want to talk to you. Please come and see me first.’

  I went to him. ‘Oh,’ he said, burning my face with the breath of his desire. ‘I can’t bear to think of you posing now, exposing yourself. You can’t do that anymore. You must let me take care of you. I cannot marry you because I have a wife and children. Let me take care of you until we know how we can escape. Let me get a little place where I can come and see you. You should not be posing. You belong to me.’

  So I entered a secret life, and when I was supposed to be posing for everyone else in the world, I was really waiting in a beautiful room for John. Each time he came, he brought a gift, a book, colored stationery for me to write on. I was restless, waiting.

  The only one who was taken into the secret was the sculptor because he sensed what was happening. He would not let me stop posing, and he questioned me. He had predicted how my life would be.

  The first time I felt an orgasm with John, I wept because it was so strong and so marvelous that I did not believe it could happen over and over again. The only painful moments were the ones spent waiting. I would bathe myself, spread polish on my nails, perfume myself, rouge my nipples, brush my hair, put on a negligée, and all the preparations would turn my imagination to the scenes to come.

  I wanted him to find me in the bath. He would say he was on his way. But he would not arrive. He was often detained. By the time he arrived I would be cold, resentful. The waiting wore out my feelings. I would rebel. Once I would not answer when he rang the doorbell. Then he knocked gently, humbly, and that touched me, so I opened the door. But I was angry and wanted to hurt him. I did not respond to his kiss. He was hurt until his hand slipped under my negligée and he found that I was wet, in spite of the fact that I kept my legs tightly closed. He was joyous again and he forced his way.

  Then I punished him by not responding sexually and he was hurt again, for he enjoyed my pleasure. He knew by the violent heartbeats, by the changes in the voice, by the contraction of my legs, how I had enjoyed him. And this time I lay like a whore. That really hurt him.

  We could never go out together. He was too well known, as was his wife. He was a producer. His wife was a playwright.

  When John discovered how angry it would make me to wait for him, he did not try to remedy it. He came later and later. He would say that he was arriving at ten o’clock and then come at midnight. So one day he found that I was not there when he came. This put him in a frenzy. He thought I would not come back. I felt that he was doing this deliberately, that he liked my being angry. After two days he pleaded with me and I returned. We were both very keyed up and angry.

  He said, ‘You’ve gone back to pose. You like it. You like to show yourself.’

  ‘Why do you make me wait so long? You know that it kills my desire for you. I feel cold when you come late.’

/>   ‘Not so very cold,’ he said.

  I closed my legs tightly against him, he could not even touch me. But then he slipped in quickly from behind and caressed me. ‘Not so cold,’ he said.

  On the bed he pushed his knee between my legs and forced them open. ‘When you are angry,’ he said, ‘I feel that I am raping you. I feel then that you love me so much you cannot resist me, I see that you are wet, and I like your resistance and your defeat too.’

  ‘John, you will make me so angry that I will leave you.’

  Then he was frightened. He kissed me. He promised not to repeat this.

  What I could not understand was that, despite our quarrels, being made love to by John made me only more sensitive. He had awakened my body. Now I had even a greater desire to abandon myself to all whims. He must have known this because the more he caressed me, awakened me, the more he feared that I would return to posing. Slowly, I did return. I had too much time to myself, I was too much alone with my thoughts of John.

  Millard particularly was happy to see me. He must have spoiled the statuette again, purposely I knew now, so he could keep me in the pose he liked.

  The night before, he had smoked marijuana with friends. He said, ‘Did you know that very often it gives people the feeling that they are transformed into animals? Last night there was a woman who was completely taken by this transformation. She fell on her hands and knees and walked around like a dog. We took her clothes off. She wanted to give milk. She wanted us to act like puppies, sprawl on the floor and suckle at her breasts. She kept on her hands and knees and offered her breasts to all of us. She wanted us to walk like dogs – after her. She insisted on our taking her in this position, from behind, and I did, but then I was terribly tempted to bite her as I crouched over her. I bit into her shoulder harder than I have ever bitten anyone. The woman did not get frightened. I did. It sobered me. I stood up and then saw that a friend of mine was following her on his hands and knees, not caressing her or taking her, but merely smelling exactly as a dog would do, and this reminded me so much of my first sexual impression that it gave me a painful hard-on.