We all remember, don’t we, that Sampson fell in love with Delilah, who was bribed by Sampson’s enemies to find his weakness. Wary of her questions, he said first that if he were bound with bowstrings he would lose his supernatural strength. (Had you forgotten than he was into bondage?) So Delilah, clever girl that she is, waits for him to fall asleep and ties him up. He wakens and breaks the bindings. She asks again – uh, Sampson, think anything’s going on here? – and he says new ropes will do the trick. Again, she waits until he slumbers and practices a bit of bondage, and again he wakes, and breaks the ropes. Ever persistent, patient, and greedy for those thousand pieces of silver promised her by the Philistines, Delilah once again asks the question. Sampson, by now, weakened by his own love and lust for the Delilah, moves closer to the truth – that he will lose his strength if his hair, which truly is the source of his strength, is woven together. As he sleeps that night, she gives him a hair weave and ties him up, and the next morning, he awakes and unbraids his hair.

Not to be dissuaded from her potentially profitable enterprise, Delilah yet again asks Sampson the source of his strength. And poor, simple Sampson (he’s male, after all, and clearly had forgotten the story of Eve and the serpent), says that if his hair is shorn he will lose his strength. Sure enough, Delilah waits until he is asleep, and then with his head resting in her lap, she has a servant cut off his hair. His strength removed, Sampson is captured by the Philistines, turned into a slave, and, after his hair has grown back, brings down their temple and kills all those inside.

That Sampson. That Delilah. No photographers were there at the time to record the events and post them to Twitter, so artists – mostly men, of course – used their imaginations. But for the visually inclined, there are a couple of points of interest.
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It depends on who you ask, really. Take Caravaggio, for instance. When he showed the Biblical scene of Judith beheading Holofernes – the Syrian general who was about to attack her town – the expression on her face is most, well, expressive. “Nasty piece of business, this,” she seems to be thinking. Furrowed brow. The firm set of her lips. Yet she’s not grabbing his hair or slicing the sword through his neck at arm’s distance, is she? No, she’s stepped up and seems to be embracing the task. Grabbing his hair and pulling him towards the breast that he so desired.  And then – speaking of nasty – there are the – oops – jutting breasts-the femme weapon of subterfuge. And certainly don’t focus on his expression. Or his exquisitely erect nipples. Surely, Caravaggio meant no connection between power and powerlessness, between desire and death. It’s not like she talked her way into his tent because he found her so fetching. Oops, again. Yes, that’s exactly how she – a Jewish woman from the town about to be laid to waste – gets into his tent. We won’t go into the perils of letting desire into your tent at the
moment since it’s so nicely illustrated here.

Then there’s Franz Stuck.
Where Caravaggio told the story in restrained, subtle ways, not so our boy Franz. Holofernes is prone, asleep, his arms raised as if in surrender after a rather, um, depleting intimacy with our girl Judith. (Go Judith!!!). She stands above him, a rather – rather – large sword as upright as a fully-fluffed, viagraed star of the slimy silver screen.
As she stands there, what on earth could she be thinking? Of the sweet little lambs and piglets who will be spared because of the blow she is about to deliver? Her husband? Father, sister, mother, neighbor? The righteousness of her preemptive strike?
Hardly likely, little puppy. Her head tilted slightly back, eyes narrowed to serpentine slits (there’s that darned snake again; I wonder if she belongs to Slytherin), she is most clearly enjoying this tender, quite empowering moment in which his desire has left him not just weak but unconscious (a small death in itself). There’s not a shred of anger or rage or resentment to her expression. No. It’s just a satisfied calm and sense of entitled purpose. Or maybe she’s musing on something. What she might say to the about to be expired Holofernes. “She who thrusts last thrusts best.”

This last doesn’t require much comment.  the Act completed,   Judith’s fingers as if in a death grip on the severed head of Mr. H, her dress half open, glittered, dazzling, and so very, very clearly in an extended erotic state. The nipple now soft and at rest as if acknowledging the trance-like state of Judith.
It’s all a bit gory, isn’t it. Though I must say, I do enjoy a good conquest, whether in the end he’s kept his head or not.

We all know history is written by men. And you know men. Those beings that are afraid of their own desires.

Think about our good friends Adam and Eve. Eve, of course, is the bitch. She didn’t listen. Not that Adam did, either. Or Eve did listen, but to the wrong being. Snake. That darned serpent. Adam listened. To Eve. To the snake.

Question: what’s skinny, longer than it is wide, and can move in unexpected ways?

If you answered a penis, you have a keen understanding of profound issues.

What was Adam listening to? Eve? The serpent? His desire for Eve, a.k.a. his penis?

Whatever the answer is, he opened his mouth, as if to receive sustenance, as an infant does from his mother’s breast. And he consumed. And became consumed.

The moral of the story: don’t be consumed by your own desires.

Ah. But you’re here now. Aren’t you. you’ve taken a bite. you’ve consumed. you know pleasure.

And it knows you. Does it ever.

I luxuriate in men’s desires, and the passions of sissies and baby boys who get all knotted up over something that seems – that seems at times – just out of reach.

I call that seduction.

Don’t get me wrong. Eve was seduced, too. By the serpent. By the thing that’s skinny, longer than it is wide, and can move in unexpected ways.

The difference between Me and Eve? I know what I’m doing.

I enjoy the company of men who are too weak to resist, with no thought of the consequences attached. Adam was innocent, and without knowledge. Not something you can claim. Remember that. As I lead you to places you desire and fear.