That I ought to know it. I do not now love that fifty-year-old though still good-looking man, and he, for his part, does not love this woman that I am. What he has said to me with his phrase and his smile and his eyes of clear honey is that within him goes on existing a young man of twenty that loved, briefly but intensely, a young woman of nineteen who I was and who also goes on existing within me.
I turn my face away because I am on the verge of crying and I answer him the only way I can answer him, You opened me to eroticism. And he says to me, And you, me. What I felt with you and for you was and goes on being the most intense feeling, for me still without equal. And I say to him that the same happens to me. I tell him, It was a madness, thanks to you I knew I could feel that madness.
And he says to me, No, it was not thanks to me, it was thanks to you, you had that madness, you gave it to me, you knew much more. And I tell him no, I knew nothing before meeting you. Me neither, he tells me, how was I going to know if you taught me? But no, I could not teach you because I did not know. I learned it with you.
In any case it was incredible, he says, marvelous. I tell him, Yes. And it is true. The years pass and the memory of those afternoons remain. Afternoons of strolling, of talking. And among them, two special afternoons. We have never talked of that, I say.
No, we never speak of it, I tell him, and the intensity of what happened thirty and so many years ago returns to place itself between us. Right in the middle. Because it has not been lost. It has not gone away. It is not going away. It is, after all, the substrate on which we erect or unfurl the rest of our lives, it is the foundation on which we have been able to build intimacy and lasting love with other people. Then I break any inhibition that I had brought with me and I tell him, I am going to use two strong words [1] — it was climactic , it was intimate , it was the most intimate, most climactic experience of my life, I have had experiences just as powerful and of course longer and more satisfying, but never more climactic than that one with you.
And he tells me that it is exactly the same for him. And I tell him, smiling, And we never made love. And he says to me, No, unfortunately. And then he says, It is very strange, true, it is extraordinary and we carry its imprint but never did we get around to making love. And I shrug my shoulders and think that thirty years have passed and it appears that he still has not understood. I am thinking that probably what he gave me, he gave me by chance, by a fluke, if we had stayed together he would have ruined it.
The way in which one remembers hours, days, weeks, in only seconds. The intensity of time. Because in a few minutes I go back thirty years and relive days, hours, weeks. He was so handsome. I liked his eyes. I liked his body, tall but not too tall, delicate and muscular. But above all I liked his intelligence. I met him because we took the same history class. He knew that I liked him. And that I attracted him.
And that the attraction that he felt was moving through the same channels. And then it occurred. An afternoon when I came from the gym and had bathed and put on loose clothes to go around the house with damp hair, barefoot, I was enjoying my privacy, and he decided to stop by and visit me that day. Never had he touched me and that afternoon it occurred to him to slide his fingers along my neckline and he found no resistance, there were no undergarments.
Only to tell me something, only to talk. It began with a kiss at the end of summer in a wooded pasture. Fue como caerme, hundirme en la delicia. Entonces vuelvo a tomar papel y pluma para escribir este ensayo sobre sexualidad. He asked me to come by. In the hospital, the mother gazes at the shattered genitals of her child, those tender organs that the child never had time to use. Nunca le dije nada, ni lo bueno ni lo malo.
Without thinking about it, his hands covered my breasts with caresses as fine as silk, as gentle and devastating as the love that we now had for each other but were ignorant of. His hands entering through the neckline unleashed in me a chemical and spiritual transformation. I am remembering that, and I want to say it, now that he is seated behind his desk, silent.
I can only remember. Remember that my body responded to his fingers, to his hands, in a way so complete that I was frightened. I could not move anymore. Parts of my body that were not being caressed responded as if they were, as if they had received thousands of caresses. A wave rolled through me from head to toe. All my tissues s uffered—or took pleasure from—a kind of swelling. I was really frightened. My body was offering itself without consulting me? I closed my eyes. But I was caught up in a whirlwind and could not speak. I could only feel. And the tiny part of me that still kept control could not speak, either, because it was frightened.
I did not know where I was going. Where it was going to end up. I felt it inside, like bells ringing. Then the tiny part of me that still had control took his hands and drew them away from my neckline, and in a voice hoarse and almost inaudible asked that he leave.
And he, respectful, amorous, gave me a kiss on my cheek and went. The next week when we saw each other, we did not speak of what had happened because we were too young, we did not know what it was, and we were not accustomed to speaking of such things. We had suddenly taken hold of a great intimacy without knowing it, and we could not name it.
Then there was the other afternoon. And it was the last one. It began with a kiss at the end of summer in a wooded pasture. He kissed me and began to tremble. I remember that in that moment I thought I loved him. I remember feeling his legs against mine, the excitement of feeling his strong thighs that I touched and they went out of control like runaway horses. He was kissing me and he was beside himself. His whole body trembling, he laid me down under a mango tree. It was like falling, drowning in delight.
It was hard to breath.
Eroticism is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality and romantic. These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'eroticism.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Medical Definition of eroticism.
He did not undress me. He did nothing more than put his trembling hand on my waist and touched me farther down. And that light, delicate caress had a very strange effect. It turned me into a fistful of feathers. A force and a delicious tingle hurled me beyond the world. I flew or I drowned. It was like losing consciousness. I was a species of gentle boa that floated below or above everything. It was my first orgasm, Ana, but I could not know it. My body tried to arc, turn, pant, or cry out. I did not get to cry out. I did not know what had happened to us.
It took me a long time to come down or rise up from eternity. To return to my channel. To collect all the water that had poured out, all the rainwater that had overflowed, and return the tissues to their usual size. The frenzy was calming in silence, and then, quiet, we walked toward the road. Still he was trembling a little. I was still sighing.
We never talked about it. My body could not adjust to the shock.
It was frightened, it shrank into itself, it protected itself. And we were so young and so inexperienced that instead of talking about and healing the wounds, we stopped seeing each other. He insisted a little on going out again but not too much. I always rejected the invitation. I never said anything to him, neither good nor bad. And then in that moment, seeing him there at his desk, thirty years later, I tell him, that afternoon when you lifted me from the ground I turned frigid. The sentence is like a bullet.
I shrug my shoulders. I do not know if you damaged me, I tell him. That we had stirred in each other. Without taking our clothes off. He lifts his head and insists, I damaged you.
Yes and no, I answer, the frigidity passed and I recovered the delight and it remained with me for all my life. And he tells me, I also learned, but you, what did you learn? The afternoon wanes and sunlight falls through the office window and into his eyes and makes them clearer.
I learned something very important, I tell him, something transcendent. He laughs at my words, jokes, says, How intense we are. It does not have much to do with penetration. I discovered this that afternoon. He stares at me and tells me, But imagine how it would have been if we had done it. And then I dare to say it. I tell him something that, given the way this culture is, is maybe the worst thing a woman can say to a macho. Is he a macho? I think that someone has to begin to speak the truth. I tell him, You are wrong, men are wrong. And I try to explain to him, I tell him, Look, I say it to you because what happened to us, at least what happened to me, was total.
It involved every centimeter of my body and my soul. He watches me and nods, he agrees with that , he says, Yes, it was also total for me, so much so that it has pursued or accompanied me the rest of my life, he says. And I tell him, for me, too. And I tell him that if we had made love, as he says, it could not have been so total because he would have concentrated on penetration instead of spreading it through all my body as he did, as we did. We spread desire and maybe love throughout our body and soul, like crazy, overwhelmed people, but slowly, gently.
And that is intimacy. How to use a word that literally drives some people nuts. The awkward case of 'his or her'. Identify the word pairs with a common ancestor. Can you spell these 10 commonly misspelled words? Synonyms for eroticism Synonyms ardor , concupiscence , eros , horniness , itch , lust , lustfulness , passion Visit the Thesaurus for More. Examples of eroticism in a Sentence the subtle eroticism of his films an actress known for her smoldering eroticism.
Pub crawls and Vince Young signs autographs," 3 July Her art has thrived, in part, on a physical candor that both shocked people and redrew the boundaries of taste, beauty and eroticism around her masculinity, ebony skin and unrelenting intensity. First Known Use of eroticism , in the meaning defined at sense 1. Learn More about eroticism. Resources for eroticism Time Traveler! Explore the year a word first appeared. Dictionary Entries near eroticism erotes erotic erotica eroticism eroticize erotism erotize.
Time Traveler for eroticism The first known use of eroticism was in See more words from the same year. It may also be found in advertising. The term may also refer to a state of sexual arousal [1] or anticipation of such — an insistent sexual impulse , desire , or pattern of thoughts. Because eroticism is wholly dependent on the viewer's culture and personal tastes pertaining to what, exactly, defines the erotic, [7] [8] critics have often [ how often?
Whereas traditionally eroticism has been dealt with in relation to culture and its pornographic outcomes, current evolutionary psychology shows how eroticism has shaped the evolution of human nature. For a psychoanalytical definition, as early as Freud [12] psychotherapists have turned to the ancient Greek philosophy's "overturning of mythology" [ citation needed ] as a definition to understanding of the heightened aesthetic.
Modern French conceptions of eroticism can be traced to The Enlightenment , [15] when "in the eighteenth century, dictionaries defined the erotic as that which concerned love It presupposes man in conflict with himself". Queer theory and LGBT studies consider the concept from a non-heterosexual perspective, viewing psychoanalytical and modernist views of eroticism as both archaic [20] and heterosexist , [21] written primarily by and for a "handful of elite, heterosexual, bourgeois men" [22] who "mistook their own repressed sexual proclivities" [23] as the norm. Rubin [26] and Marilyn Frye [27] all write extensively about eroticism from a heterosexual, lesbian and separatist point of view, respectively, seeing Eroticism as both a political force [28] and cultural critique [29] for marginalized groups, or as Mario Vargas Llosa summarized: Audre Lorde , a Caribbean-American writer and out-spoken feminist talks of the erotic being a type of power being specific to females.
Rather than enjoying and sharing with one another, it is objectifying, which she says translates into abuse as we attempt to hide and suppress our experiences. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.