Sexy Sunday! Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

DISCLAIMER! The following post contains explicit sexual language and profanity. You’ve been warned!

Welcome to the second installation of Sexy Sunday, my monthly collaboration with fellow blogger The Bookworm Drinketh, in which we read a book infamous for its sex scene or scenes; she writes a review and does her usual cocktail-to-go-with, and I write a review and do a food post inspired by the book. It’s as much fun as it sounds, kids! Here is The Bookworm’s Sexy Sunday take on today’s book.

Today’s book of choice is Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet, which on superficial review is lesbian cross-dressing dance-hall girls in Victorian England. But there’s a lot more to it than that. The heroine of the story, Nan King, works in her father’s oyster shop on the coast in Kent with the rest of her family.  Yes, oysters and lesbians. Well, no one ever accused Sarah Waters of subtlety in her early works.  At least they weren’t full-on fish mongers.

Anyway, Nan has a great attraction to musical theater, and when she meets Kitty Butler, a lovely young singer who is performing at the theater in Nan’s hometown, she is starstruck and uber horny. The two go off together to London, where Nan becomes part of Kitty’s singing act. They dress up as men, though it’s obvious they are both women, and their affair starts. But, in the way of all first loves, Nan and Kitty’s romance goes sour. Kitty realizes that she does not want to be seen as a “tom,” as lesbians were called in those days. She loves Nan but isn’t strong enough to fight against societal expectations, so she has an affair with, and marries Walter, who had been her agent. Nan, of course, is devastated and heartbroken, and so begins her career as a cross-dressing call girl who only gives handjobs and blowjobs to men as she struggles with her grief over Kitty. Then, Nan meets the woman who will totally fuck up her life, but in a really seductive and sexual way.

Nan becomes the “kept girl” of the wealthy Diana, who turns her on to adult pleasures she’s never experienced before. Nan is fully in lustful thrall of Diana, who essentially treats her like a fuck slave. Which she is, really. This is the sexiest part of the book, in my opinion. And I’m not even attracted to women! But damn, this scene was arousing, when Diana instructs Nan to go into a trunk in her room and fetch her…………..something.

It was a kind of harness, made of leather: belt-like and yet not quite a belt, for though it had one wide strap with buckles on, two narrower, shorter bands were fastened to this and they, too were buckled. For one alarming moment I thought it might be a horse’s bridle; then I saw what the straps and buckles supported. It was a cylinder of leather, rather longer than the length of my hand and about as fat, in width, as I could grasp………It was, in short, a dildo. I had never seen one before; I did not know, at that time, that such things existed and had names. “Put it on,” she called – she must have caught the opening of the trunk – “put it on and come to me.”

You so know where this is going, right?

“Come here,” said the lady when she saw me in the doorway, and as I walked to her, the dildo bobbed harder. I lifted my hand to still it; and when she saw me do that she placed her own fingers over mine, and made them grasp the shaft and stroke it. Now the base’s insinuating nudges grew more insinuating still; it was not long before my legs began to tremble and she, sensing my rising pleasure, began to breathe more harshly. She took her hands away…..and gestured for me to undress her.

Oh yes, it’s going there.

With my hands still clasped in hers, she led me to one of the straight-backed chairs and sat me on it, the dildo all the while straining from my lap, rude and rigid as as skittle. I guessed her purpose. With her hands closed-pressed about my head and her legs straddling mine, she gently lowered herself upon me; then proceeded to rise and sink, rise and sink, with an ever speedier motion. At first I held her hips to guide them; then I returned a hand to her drawers and let the fingers of the other creep round to her thigh, to her buttocks. My mouth I fastened now on one nipple, now on the other, sometimes finding the salt of her flesh, sometimes the dampening cotton of her chemise.

And here we go. Takeoff!

Soon her breaths became moans, then cries; soon my own voice joined hers, for the dildo that serviced her also pleasured me – her motions bring with it an ever faster, even harder pressure against just that part of me that cared for pressure best. I had one brief moment of self-consciousness, when I saw myself from a distance, straddled by a stranger in an unknown house, bucked inside that monstrous instrument, panting with pleasure and sweating with lust. Then in another moment I could think nothing, only shudder; and the pleasure – mine and hers – found its aching, arching crisis, and was spent…….At length, she laughed and moved again against my hip. “Oh, you exquisite little tart!” she said.

It’s been said that if you learn something new each day, no day is wasted. Well, while reading this book I learned many interesting things, including the meaning of the phrase “tipping the velvet.” It means cunnilingus, going down on a woman, eating at the Y, any and all of those euphemisms. So the next time you want your lover to do some eating in, ask them if they want to “tip your velvet” and see what response you get.  🙂

Being an oyster girl, Nan inspired me to make a tasty oyster dish. Yes, someone else did the hard work of shucking them. But I cooked them and wolfed them down. So good and definitely capable of making the passions rise. 🙂

INGREDIENTS
12 oysters, shucked, but with the shells kept nearby. Also keep the oyster liquor.
6 tablespoons softened butter
1/2 cup Panko breadcrumbs
1 teaspoon dried thyme
3 cloves of garlic, finely minced
1-2 tablespoons lemon juice
Zest of 1 lemon
Fresh chopped parsley

METHOD
Heat the oven to 400F and line a baking tray with uncooked rice, to keep the oysters steady while baking.

Arrange the oyster shells on the rice, and put each oyster back into its little shell. Add the finely minced garlic.

Pour over the reserved liquor.

Melt the butter, then add the breadcrumbs. Stir around until they are lightly brown.

Add in a squeeze of lemon juice and the lemon zest, and stir again.

Top each oyster with the lemony, buttery breadcrumbs and squeeze over more lemon juice.

Bake for 10 minutes, keeping an eye on them. When the breadcrumbs are a dark golden brown, remove from the oven.

Arrange prettily on a platter and scatter over the chopped parsley. Eat while they’re still hot. They are so tasty and fresh, with that hint of salty sea brine and the sharpness of the parsley offsetting very nicely. YUM! And nary a tip of velvet in sight.