Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Girls (2016)

  Did her stupid exercises so she would look beautiful to him without any clothes on. She was groomed and oiled, her face eager for love. It was a painful thought, my mother needing anything, and I looked over at her, wanting to smile, to show her how we were fine, the two of us. But she wasn’t watching me. She was alert to Frank instead, waiting to receive whatever he wanted to give her. I balled my hands tight under the table. “What about your wife?” I asked. “Evie,” my mother hissed. “That’s all right,” Frank said, holding up his hands. “That’s a fair question.” He rubbed his eyes hard, then put down his fork. “It’s complicated stuff.” “It’s not that complicated,” I said. “You’re a rude girl,” my mother said. Frank put his hand on her shoulder, but she’d already stood up to clear the plates, a grim busyness fixed on her face, and Frank handed over his plate with a concerned smile. Wiping his dry hands on his jeans. I didn’t look at her or him. I was picking at the skin around my fingernail, tugging until there was a satisfying tear. When my mother left the room, Frank cleared his throat. “You shouldn’t make your mom so mad,” he said. “She’s a nice lady.” “None of your business.” My cuticle was bleeding a little: I pressed to feel the sting. “Hey,” he said, his voice easy, like he was trying to be my friend. “I get it. You wanna be out of the house. Tired of living with ol’ mom, huh?” “Pathetic,” I mouthed. He didn’t understand what I had said, only that I hadn’t responded how he wanted. “Biting your nails is an ugly habit,” he said hotly. “An ugly, dirty habit for dirty people. Are you an ugly person?” My mother reappeared in the doorway. I was sure she had overheard, and now she knew that Frank wasn’t a nice man. She would be disappointed, but I resolved to be kinder, to help more around the house. But my mother just wrinkled her face. “What’s happening?” “I was just telling Evie she shouldn’t bite her nails.” “I tell her that, too,” my mother said. Her voice rattled, her lips twitching. “She could get sick, ingesting germs.” I cycled through the possibilities. My mother was simply stalling. She was taking a moment to figure out how best to drive Frank from our lives, to tell him I was no one else’s business. But when she sat down and allowed Frank to rub her arm, even leaning toward him, I understood how it would go. When Frank went to the bathroom, I figured there would be some kind of an apology from her. “That shirt is too tight,” she whispered harshly. “It’s inappropriate, at your age.” I opened my mouth to speak. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” she said.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  232 Lecture 32: Papal Revolution o Gregory’s intemperate language led Henry to summon a synod at Worms in 1076 that sought, in turn, to depose Gregory from the papacy. Gregory then excommunicated Henry, divested him of his royal authority, and released his subjects of their fealty. o Lacking support from his nobles to effectively depose Gregory in turn, Henry went through an elaborate repentance at Canossa, but the actual issue of investiture remained unresolved. o When conflict again flared, Gregory sought to excommunicate and depose Henry a second time, but the German princes rallied to Henry. Henry entered Italy with an army in 1084, and Gregory was forced into exile. o The Concordat of Worms in 1122 subsequently agreed that appointments should be in the power of the church but stated that rulers could advise during the process. • Gregory VII’s internal reforms of the church also moved in the direction of greater centralized control by the papacy. o In all ecclesiastical disputes—say, between bishops—Gregory insisted that appeal was to be made to the pope rather than to synods of bishops, an initiative that bishops in some regions understandably resented. o The moral standards of local clergy were addressed through the imposition of compulsory celibacy; Gregory wrote an encyclical in 1074 that absolved Christians of obedience to bishops who allowed married priests. Similarly, simony— the practice of buying ecclesiastical positions—was strictly forbidden. o It was Gregory VII who demanded that Berengar, the theologian who had offered a minimalist “symbolic” understanding of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, perform a confession of faith with respect to the “real presence” of Christ, thus presumably stimulating greater reverence for the Eucharist.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And because of those eyes with their constant menace, Ste- phen must play her conciliatory rôle; and this she must do in spite of his rudeness, for now he was openly rude and hostile. And he bullied. It was almost as though he took pleasure in bullying his wife when Stephen was present; her presence seemed to arouse in the man everything that was ill-bred, petty and cruel. He would make thinly-veiled allusions to the past, glancing sideways at Stephen the while he did so; and one day when she flushed to the roots of her hair with rage to see Angela humble and fearful, he laughed loudly: ‘Im just a plain tradesman, you know; if you don’t like my ways, then you’d better not come here.’ Catch- ing Angela’s eye, Stephen tried to laugh too. A soul-sickening business. She would feel degraded; she would feel herself gradually losing all sense of pride, of common decency even, so that when she returned in the evening to Morton she would not want to look the old house in the eyes. She would not want to face those pictures of Gordons that hung in its hall, and must turn away, lest they by their very silence rebuke this descendant of theirs who was so unworthy. Yet sometimes it seemed to her that she loved more intensely because she had lost so much — there was nothing left now but Angela Crossby. THE WELL OF LONELINESS 207 2 Wazcuinc this deadly decay that threatened all that was fine in her erstwhile pupil, Puddle must sometimes groan loudly in spirit; she must even argue with God about it. Yes, she must actually argue with God like Job; and remembering his words in affliction, she must speak those words on behalf of Stephen: ‘ Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about; yet Thou dost destroy me.’ For now in addition to every- thing else, she had learnt of the advent of Roger Antrim. Not that Stephen had confided in her, far from it, but gossip has a way of travelling quickly. Roger spent most of his leisure at The Grange. She had heard that he was always going over from Worcester. So now Puddle, who had not been much given to prayer in the past, must argue with God, like Job. And perhaps, since God probably listens to the heart rather than to the lips, He forgave her. 3

• From The Girls (2016)

  Suzanne had shrugged a little, that day, before walking down the grassy slope and disappearing into the bus. The queer reminder in her smile. Like we had a meeting, she and I, at some appointed time and place, and she knew I would forget. —I wanted to believe Suzanne kicked me out of the car because she’d seen a difference between us. That it was obvious to her that I could not kill anyone, Suzanne still lucid enough to understand that she was the reason I was in the car. She wanted to protect me from what was going to happen. That was the easy explanation. But there was a complicating fact. The hatred she must have felt to do what she’d done, to slam the knife over and over again like she was trying to rid herself of a frenzied sickness: hatred like that was not unfamiliar to me. Hatred was easy. The permutations constant over the years: a stranger at a fair who palmed my crotch through my shorts. A man on the sidewalk who lunged at me, then laughed when I flinched. The night an older man took me to a fancy restaurant when I wasn’t even old enough to like oysters. Not yet twenty. The owner joined our table, and so did a famous filmmaker. The men fell into a heated discussion with no entry point for me: I fidgeted with my heavy cloth napkin, drank water. Staring at the wall. “Eat your vegetables,” the filmmaker suddenly snapped at me. “You’re a growing girl.” The filmmaker wanted me to know what I already knew: I had no power. He saw my need and used it against me. My hatred for him was immediate. Like the first swallow of milk that’s already gone off—rot strafing the nostrils, flooding the entire skull. The filmmaker laughed at me, and so did the others, the older man who would later place my hand on his dick while he drove me home. None of this was rare. Things like this happened hundreds of times. Maybe more. The hatred that vibrated beneath the surface of my girl’s face—I think Suzanne recognized it. Of course my hand would anticipate the weight of a knife. The particular give of a human body. There was so much to destroy. Suzanne stopped me from doing what I might be capable of. And so she set me loose into the world like an avatar for the girl she would not be. She would never go to boarding school, but I still could, and she sent me spinning from her like a messenger for her alternate self. Suzanne gave me that: the poster of Hawaii on the wall, the beach and blue sky like the lowest common denominator of fantasy. The chance to attend poetry class, to leave bags of laundry outside my door and eat steaks on parents’ visiting days, sopping with salt and blood. It was a gift. What did I do with it?

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Lucky tossed his bag to Flame. With one had she caught it, kept the gun aimed at Power with the other. “Pull your pants down, nigga!” she demanded. “And shove this powder up yo ass.” “What?” Power answered through bloody lips. “Put it up yo ass and then thank me for numbing you first.” She turned to Enrique. “You got a man that swings both ways?” “Aw, hell no,” Power gurgled. Enrique laughed. “No, mami. But’chu know I can make any mu’fucka in here do what I want, right?” he said, signaling to Crazy Lucky. “Go find me someone.” Power broke down pleading. “C’mon, Flame. You ain’t gots to—” Flame kicked him in his grill, kept the burner to his dome while she pulled his pants down. Crazy Lucky pushed a tall, butterscotch-complected ho through the door. With low lids, her glazed eyes fluttered. Chick was as high as Mount Everest, and her flawless skin, perfect teeth, and tits and ass for days couldn’t mask the heroin fix Flame knew she’d had. Crazy Lucky must be loony and deaf. “What the fuck you doing? I said bring me a man, bro!” Enrique yelled, spit flying from his mouth. Crazy Lucky smiled. “Transsexual, Enrique. A chick with a dick? You know, still a man.” Flame took pity on the boy-girl despite her highness reminding her of her own heroin-addicted mother. “You ain’t fuckin’ for free. I can promise you that.” Power squirmed on the floor, enlarging his own bloodstain below him. “Don’t do this—” A kick to his groin shut him up. “Handle it,” Flame said, handing the baggie of powder to the girl and deciding to let Power ride it out raw dog. The chick inhaled almost the whole bag of cocaine like it was just a pinch. Wobbling, she stepped out of her dress and her panties, carefully removed the tape that had kept her dick tucked back. Licking her hand, she wet her soft penis and rubbed some of the potent powder on it. It stiffened, growing into a long pole. She spoke for the first time, her voice a hint of a baritone hidden under softness. “Can you hold him? I don’t wanna get kicked.” Enrique nodded. Crazy Lucky and one of his workers spread Power’s legs in a V while Enrique and Flame held guns to his dome. Flame watched intently as the he-she mounted Power from behind, spit between his cheeks, then went in for the kill. Power screamed out like a bitch, causing every man in the room to flinch and Flame to giggle. “Flame, I can’t believe . . .” he grunted, tears plummeting from his eyes “. . . you did me dirty.” “You fucked me in my ass with no Vaseline. You bounced on a bitch, leaving me for dead. So don’t blame me, baby. Charge that shit to the game!” ME, HE, AND SHE Aretha Temple

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Fearing she would be killed, the girl broke her promise to Pietro and made a clean breast of everything that had passed between them, whereupon the knight raved and stormed like a madman, and barely managed to restrain himself from putting her to death. However, after speaking his mind in no uncertain terms, he remounted his horse and rode off to Trapani, where he lodged a complaint with the Viceroy,7 a certain Messer Currado, about the injury Pietro had done him. Since he was unprepared for this turn of events, Pietro was promptly taken into custody, and on being put to the torture, he made a full confession. A few days later the Viceroy sentenced him to be whipped through the town and then hanged by the neck. And in order to ensure that the two lovers and their child should all perish at the same time, Messer Amerigo, whose anger was by no means appeased by the destruction of Pietro, mixed some poison with wine in a goblet and handed it to one of his servants together with an unsheathed dagger, saying: ‘Go with this goblet and this dagger to Violante, and tell her in my name that she is to die forthwith by whichever of the two means she prefers, the poison or the steel. Tell her she is to do it at once, otherwise I shall see that she is burnt alive, as she deserves, in the presence of every man and woman in the town. This done, you are to take the child which was born to her the other day, dash its head against a wall, and cast it away to be devoured by the dogs.’ As soon as the cruel father had passed this savage sentence on his daughter and grandchild, the servant, who was more disposed to evil than to good, took his leave. Meanwhile Pietro, having been condemned to die, was being whipped along to the gallows by a troop of soldiers, when the leaders of the procession took it into their heads to pass in front of an inn where three Armenian noblemen were staying. These latter were ambassadors from the King of Armenia,8 on their way to Rome in order to negotiate with the Pope on very important matters connected with a crusade that was about to be launched. Having broken their journey at Trapani for a few days’ rest and relaxation, they had been lavishly entertained by the noblemen of the town, and by Messer Amerigo in particular. And on hearing Pietro’s escort passing the inn, they came to a window and peered out.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘The devil take you if you have such a low opinion of me as to suppose that, had I wanted to comport myself as scandalously as you claim to have seen, I should do it before your very eyes. You may rest assured that if I should ever feel the urge to do it, I shouldn’t do it out here in the garden. On the contrary, I’d find myself a nice, comfortable bed, and arrange the whole thing so discreetly that if you ever got to know about it I should be very much surprised.’ Nicostratos now felt that they must both be speaking the truth, and that they could never have brought themselves to do such a thing in his presence. So he ceased his shouting and raving, and began to talk about the strangeness of the thing, and about the miraculous way in which a man’s eyesight could be affected by climbing a tree. But the lady pretended to be angry because of the aspersions that Nicostratos seemed to have cast on her character and intelligence, and she said: ‘This pear-tree will certainly never bring shame upon me or any other woman again if I can help it. Run and fetch an axe, Pyrrhus, and, at one and the same time, avenge us both by chopping it down, though in point of fact it would be much better to cleave Nicostratos’ skull with the axe for allowing the eyes of his intellect to be blinded so easily. For however much your eyes may have borne out what you were saying, Nicostratos, you should never have allowed your mind to accept it, or even to entertain the idea for a moment.’ So Pyrrhus very quickly went to fetch the axe, and chopped the pear-tree down. And no sooner was it felled than the lady turned to Nicostratos, saying: ‘Now that I have seen the fall of my honour’s adversary, all my anger has departed.’ Then, as Nicostratos was pleading with her to forgive him, she graciously consented to do so, bidding him never again to harbour such ignoble thoughts about his lady, who loved him more dearly than herself. And so the poor deluded husband returned with her and her lover to the palace, within whose walls it thenceforth became easier for Pyrrhus and Lydia to meet, at regular intervals, for their common delight and pleasure. May God grant that we enjoy a similar fate! TENTH STORYTwo Sienese fall in love with a woman of whose child one of them is the godfather. This man dies, returns to his companion from the afterworld in fulfilment of a promise he had given him, and describes what people do there. All that now remained was for the king to tell his story, and as soon as he perceived that the ladies had stopped mourning over the fate of the innocent pear-tree, he began:

• From Carmina (-50)

  Furi et Aureli, comites Catulli, siue in extremos penetrabit Indos, litus ut longe resonante Eoa tunditur unda, siue in Hyrcanos Arabesque molles, 5 seu Sacas sagittiferosue Parthos, siue quae septemgeminus colorat aequora Nilus, siue trans altas gradietur Alpes, Caesaris uisens monimenta magni, 10 Gallicum Rhenum [+]horribilesque ulti- mosque[+] Britannos, omnia haec, quaecunque feret uoluntas caelitum, temptare simul parati, pauca nuntiate meae puellae 15 non bona dicta. cum suis uiuat ualeatque moechis, quos simul complexa tenet trecentos, nullum amans uere, sed identidem omnium ilia rumpens: 20 nec meum respectet, ut ante, amorem, qui illius culpa cecidit uelut prati ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam tactus aratro est. XII Marrucine Asini, manu sinistra non belle uteris in ioco atque uino: tollis lintea neglegentiorum. hoc salsum esse putas? fugit te, inepte: quamuis sordida res et inuenusta est. 5 non credis mihi? crede Pollioni fratri, qui tua furta uel talento mutari uelit: est enim leporum disertus puer ac facetiarum. quare aut hendecasyllabos trecentos 10 exspecta, aut mihi linteum remitte, quod me non mouet aestimatione, uerum est mnemosynum mei sodalis. nam sudaria Saetaba ex Hiberis miserunt mihi muneri Fabullus 15 et Veranius: haec amem necesse est ut Veraniolum meum et Fabullum. XIII Cenabis bene, mi Fabulle, apud me paucis, si tibi di fauent, diebus, si tecum attuleris bonam atque magnam cenam, non sine candida puella et uino et sale et omnibus cachinnis. 5 haec si, inquam, attuleris, uenuste noster, cenabis bene: nam tui Catulli plenus sacculus est aranearum. sed contra accipies meros amores seu quid suauius elegantiusue est: 10 nam unguentum dabo, quod meae puellae donarunt Veneres Cupidinesque, quod tu cum olfacies, deos rogabis, totum ut te faciant, Fabulle, nasum. XIV Nei te plus oculis meis amarem, iucundissime Calue, munere isto odissem te odio Vatiniano: nam quid feci ego quidue sum locutus, cur me tot male perderes poetis? 5 isti di mala multa dent clienti, qui tantum tibi misit impiorum. quod si, ut suspicor, hoc nouum ac repertum munus dat tibi Sulla litterator, non est mi male, sed bene ac beate, 10 quod non dispereunt tui labores. di magni, horribilem et sacrum libellum! quem tu scilicet ad tuum Catullum misti, continuo ut die periret, Saturnalibus, optimo dierum! 15 non non hoc tibi, salse, sic abibit. nam, si luxerit, ad librariorum curram scrinia, Caesios, Aquinos, Suffenum, omnia colligam uenena, ac te his suppliciis remunerabor. 20 uos hinc interea ualete abite illuc, unde malum pedem attulistis, saecli incommoda, pessimi poetae. XIV{b} Si qui forte mearum ineptiarum lectores eritis manusque uestras non horrebitis admouere nobis, * * * XV

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  In May 1841 a sheriff’s posse managed to surprise the prophet outside of Nauvoo, arrested him, and had almost hauled him across the border into Missouri before Joseph managed to finagle his release with a writ of habeas corpus. It was a very close scrape, and the harassment provoked Joseph’s ire. During a public speech soon after his 1841 arrest, he vented his anger by prophesying that retired governor of Missouri Lilburn Boggs—the Saints’ despised nemesis—would “die by violent hands within one year.” On the evening of May 6, 1842, Boggs was reading a newspaper in the study of his Independence home when a gunman lurking outside shot him four times through a window. Two balls hit Boggs in the neck; the other two pierced his skull and lodged in the left lobe of his brain. Everyone assumed that he would die, and Boggs’s demise was reported in newspapers across the country. Most of these papers speculated that the assassin had been a Mormon bent on fulfilling Joseph Smith’s prophecy. The handgun used to shoot the ex-governor was discovered outside Boggs’s study, where it had been tossed into a puddle. An investigation quickly determined that the pistol had recently been stolen from a local store. The storekeeper told the sheriff, “I thought the niggers had taken it, but that hired man of Ward’s—the one who used to work with the stallion—he came in to look at it just before it turned up missing!” The “hired man of Ward’s” was an accomplished horseman from Nauvoo named Orrin Porter Rockwell. He had arrived in Independence a couple of months earlier, then quietly slipped out of town immediately after Boggs was shot. As it turned out, the reports of Boggs’s death were premature. Somehow he recovered from his severe brain injuries. The papers were right about the would-be killer, though: Rockwell was almost certainly the would-be assassin, and he was a Mormon. Afraid of nothing, and fiercely devoted to the prophet, Rockwell was already becoming legendary for his willingness to spill the blood of those who had wronged the church, thereby giving them an opportunity to atone for their sins—a career that would become his life’s work and inspire admiring Mormons to christen him the “Destroying Angel” and the “Mormon Samson.” Although Joseph may not have ordered Rockwell to shoot Boggs, it was commonly understood by the faithful that it was a Saint’s sacred duty to assist in the fulfilling of prophecies when the opportunity arose. Once Boggs’s death had been foretold by the prophet, nobody needed to tell Porter Rockwell what to do. Few inhabitants of Missouri (and perhaps even fewer Saints up the river in Nauvoo) doubted that the attempted assassination was the work of Mormondom’s Destroying Angel, but Rockwell had no difficulty eluding arrest. Neither he nor any other Saint was ever brought to justice for the deed. Life in Nauvoo, meanwhile, continued apace. The city of the Saints was booming.

• From Trash (1988)

  “Goddamn it!” I shout, and my voice echoes back to me off the building. I see myself again, my mouth open like any screaming woman, the dizzy images of window after window reflecting figure after figure. I watch myself, the way I saw myself last night in the bathroom at the Overpass, reflected in the ammonia-stained tiles in the bathroom, my wrists coming up to face-punch the mirror. The morning sunlight was brighter than the fluorescent lights in the bathroom had been. I had been wavy and indistinct in the tiles. Now I was crisp and sharp in the mirrored windows. There were dozens of me up there, all open-mouthed and sunlit, bleached nails in the ground, not rising up, being hammered down. I lean over, seeing myself lean over, and remember Roxanne at the concert, the way she kept dropping her head so her hair fell across her face, the same posture I have in every picture I’ve got from high school. “Maybe you an’t so bad,” Roxanne had told me when we’d gone off to the bathroom together at the concert. “But you really ought to think about using a little makeup. Cass is known for taking up with good-looking women—women who know how to present themselves, you know?” I’d just nodded and said nothing. I could touch Roxanne’s shoulder, share a sip of whiskey with her, but I didn’t know how to begin to talk to her, how to say I wasn’t looking to hold on to Cass the way she wanted to cling to Billy. But then I hadn’t known how to talk to Liz last night either, to tell her what to do. I don’t want to be poor myself. At bottom maybe it’s all about what you can stand and what you can’t. Certainly I wouldn’t be able to stand living with Richard any more than I could Billy, but I can imagine things that might help Liz—starting with a decent income, day care for Mikey and Janine, work that wouldn’t leave her exhausted and crazy—all the things none of us can give her. What would help Billy and Cass, or Roxanne, or even me? I stretch up again, start the kata over, watching my form in the mirrored windows, the pattern of my body twisting, rising, kicking, and coming back around to start again. I start again, finish the form, and start a third time. Sweat runs into my eyes, and my muscles go loose and fluid. The magic starts in my belly, and the kata becomes smooth, the feel of it more like sex than anything else. My fear goes out of me, my grief. What did I imagine was wrong with me anyway? The first night I’d slept with Cass, I’d rolled over and laughed out loud when we’d finished making love. “Goddamn!” I’d yelled. “I love my life.” Cass had laughed back into my face, pulling me down to start all over again.

• From Trash (1988)

  She and I were sitting alone waiting for the doctor to come back. They were giving her IV fluids and oral medicines to help her with the nausea, but she was sick to her stomach all the time and trying hard not to show it. “Come on, tell me,” she said. I looked at Mama’s temples where the skin had begun to sink in. A fine gray shadow was slowly widening and deepening. Her closed eyes were like marbles under a sheet. I rubbed my neck. I was too tired to lie to her. “You close your eyes,” I said. “Then you open them, start over.” “God!” Mama shuddered. “I hope not.” Jo was a breeder, Ridgebacks and Rottweilers. A third of every litter had to be put down. Jo always had it done at the vet’s office, while she held them in her arms and sobbed. She kept their birth dates and names in lists under the glass top of her coffee table, christening them all for rock-and-rollers, even the ones she had to kill. “Axl is getting kind of old,” she told me on the phone before I came last spring. “But you should see Bon Jovi the Third. We’re gonna get a dynasty out of her.” After her daughter Beth was born, Jo had her own tubes tied. Still she hated to fix her bitches, and found homes for every dog born on her place. “Only humans should be stopped from breeding,” she told me once. “Dogs know when to eat their runts. Humans don’t know shit.” Four years ago Jo was arrested for breaking into a greyhound puppy farm up near Apopka. Mama was healthy back then, but didn’t have a dime to spare. Jaybird called me to help them find a lawyer and get Jo out on bail. It was expensive. Jo had blown up the incinerator at the farm. The police insisted she had used stolen dynamite, but Jo refused to talk about that. What she wanted to talk about was what she had heard, that hundreds of dogs had been burned in that cinder-block firepit. “Alive. Alive,” she told the judge. “Three different people told me. Those monsters get drunk, stoke up the fire, and throw in all the puppies they can’t sell. Alive, the sonsabitches! Don’t even care if anyone hears them scream.” From the back of the court-room, I could hear the hysteria in her voice. “Imagine it. Little puppies, starved in cages and then caught up and tossed in the fire.” Jo shook her head. Gray streaks shone against the black. The judge grimaced.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  “I’m up here, baby,” I called down in my sweetest voice. Pressing myself against the door, I listened for the sound of her footsteps on the stairs. That bitch must’ve been outta her mind to think that she could put the move on me. I was Chocolate muthafucking Burton. This bitch would recognize like all the others. I waited patiently for Keita to make it to the second floor and down the hall to the bedroom. She was the first bitch to ever run game on me, and she’d damn sure be the last. It was my fucking show, and my fucking way. And when she crossed the threshold, I gave her my warmest smile before pulling the trigger. Show’s over. My way. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As always, all props go to the Father above for blessing me with the ink that flows from my pen. I’m also thankful for my sense of humor and my patience because I wouldn’t have survived the knife wounds without them. Thanks to Missy, Jay, Ty, Nisaa, Black, Man, and my girl Aretha Temple for having my back and brushing the dirt off my shoulders. To those of you who stay hungry for my original urban erotic tales and send me mad e-mails full of love, I love the hell outta y’all right back. You might have crowned me the Queen of Urban Erotic Tales, but it is me who bows down to you. STAY BLACK. NOIRE Noire’s URBAN EROTIC RIDERS Noire is the number one Essence, Black Expressions, Black Issues Book Review, and Borders bestselling author of the urban erotic tales G-Spot, Candy Licker, Thug-A-Licious, Baby Brother (with 50 Cent), Thong on Fire, and Hood. With the publication of G-Spot: An Urban Erotic Tale, Noire burst onto the literary scene with fire and street credibility, and caused the tongues of veteran authors to wag in a million different directions. Noire’s debut novel quickly became a nationally bestselling title with over 100,000 copies in print, and that number continues to climb. Noire’s short story “That Bitch Juicy” is the first in the series of “G-Spot Teasers,” which are short stories to be published in future urban erotic quickie anthologies. Noire promises that each “teaser” will bring the reader closer and closer to the explosive climax they’ve been waiting for: G-Spot 2: Juicy’s Revenge.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  The hair on Ivan’s head began to crawl with the tension. ‘Wolf?’ some woman cried pitifully. Ivan became angry. ‘Fool!’ he cried, seeking the woman with his eyes. ‘What has Wolf got to do with it? Wolf’s not to blame for anything! Wo, wa . . . No, I’ll never remember this way! Here’s what, citizens: call the police at once, let them send out five motor cycles with machine-guns to catch the professor. And don’t forget to tell them that there are two others with him: a long checkered one, cracked pince-nez, and a cat, black and fat . . . And meanwhile I’ll search Griboedov’s, I sense that he’s here!’ Ivan became anxious, pushed away the people around him, started waving the candle, pouring wax on himself, and looking under the tables. Here someone said: ‘Call a doctor!’ and someone’s benign, fleshy face, clean shaven and well nourished, in horn-rimmed glasses, appeared before Ivan. ‘Comrade Homeless,’ the face began in a guest speaker’s voice, ‘calm down! You’re upset at the death of our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich . . . no, say just Misha Berlioz. We all understand that perfectly well. You need rest. The comrades will take you home to bed right now, you’ll forget . . .’ ‘You,’ Ivan interrupted, baring his teeth, ‘but don’t you understand that the professor has to be caught? And you come at me with your foolishness! Cretin!’ ‘Pardon me, Comrade Homeless! . . .’ the face replied, blushing, retreating, and already repentant at having got mixed up in this affair. ‘No, anyone else, but you I will not pardon,’ Ivan Nikolaevich said with quiet hatred. A spasm distorted his face, he quickly shifted the candle from his right hand to his left, swung roundly and hit the compassionate face on the ear. Here it occurred to them to fall upon Ivan—and so they did. The candle went out, and the glasses that had fallen from the face were instantly trampled. Ivan let out a terrible war cry, heard, to the temptation of all, even on the boulevard, and set about defending himself.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Flame tensed. “Cunt” irked the hell out of her. Got on her last damn nerve along with having a white man call her any kind of ho. Rolling her eyes, she went along with his game. Had no choice because she needed the paper, but she swore it would be the last time. She was a Harlem girl and hustla by nature, had worked many a brotha over for his cream. But she wasn’t a ho—’til life gave her no wins. “Give me that sweet chocolate,” Robert urged. Flame rolled over onto her back, widely parted her legs, then made her lower lips smack like they were kissing at him. Inching away as he crawled toward her, she slowly slipped her finger inside her heated tunnel, grinded against it until she became moist enough for him to hear it, then carefully removed it and sucked her juices until her hand was bone dry. Scissoring her thighs closed, then open, her pussy played peekaboo, teasing him. If she was putting on a show, Robert had to put on one too. He had to beg for it. She couldn’t settle for him just wanting the pussy, she had to make him foam at the mouth for a taste. Without words, she talked to him. Wrapping her ankles around his head, she thrust her hips upward, making her clit ring brush his nose, then released herself back onto the floor when he attempted to lick her. Five separate times she seesawed her midsection to his mouth, causing his patience to weaken and her wetness to overflow. She didn’t give a damn that Robert was just a vic or how pink he was, with the blaze that was burning between her legs and no Power around to satisfy her fire, Robert was getting fucked today. And so was she. Getting herself off was the only way she could live with fucking for a dollar, because when it came down to it, that’s exactly what her hustle had become. Selling dreams and ass for cash—and her life. So she saw no reason not to get her nut off too especially because it could be her last one. Just the thought of her breath being snatched away twisted her up, made her work her middle even though Robert’s dick was little. Flame wasn’t gonna half-ass nothing, she was goin’ hard to make the scam phatten her and Enrique’s pockets. “Come here.” Robert gripped her dancer’s waist and slid her toward him. “Why are you running away from me? You know I want you,” he whispered, on the verge of exploding thick in his voice. Flame ran her fingers through her fire-engine-red hair. “I know, baby. I know,” she cooed. “But you’ve got to give me more than that if you want some more of this puddin’. Don’t you want . . .” she dipped two fingers inside her twat, rubbed her milk on his lips “. . . this?”

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  There is a cordon around the garden, a cordon around the palace, so that a mouse couldn’t get through any crack! Not only a mouse, but even that one, what’s his name . . . from the town of Kiriath, couldn’t get through. Incidentally, High Priest, do you know him? Yes . . . if that one got in here, he’d feel bitterly sorry for himself, in this you will, of course, believe me? Know, then, that from now on, High Priest, you will have no peace! Neither you nor your people’—and Pilate pointed far off to the right, where the temple blazed on high—‘it is I who tell you so, Pontius Pilate, equestrian of the Golden Spear!’ 29 ‘I know, I know!’ the black-bearded Kaifa fearlessly replied, and his eyes flashed. He raised his arm to heaven and went on: ‘The Jewish people know that you hate them with a cruel hatred, and will cause them much suffering, but you will not destroy them utterly! God will protect them! He will hear us, the almighty Caesar will hear, he will protect us from Pilate the destroyer!’ ‘Oh, no!’ Pilate exclaimed, and he felt lighter and lighter with every word: there was no more need to pretend, no more need to choose his words. ‘You have complained about me too much to Caesar, and now my hour has come, Kaifa! Now the message will fly from me, and not to the governor in Antioch, and not to Rome, but directly to Capreae, to the emperor himself, the message of how you in Yershalaim are sheltering known criminals from death. And then it will not be water from Solomon’s Pool that I give Yershalaim to drink, as I wanted to do for your own good! No, not water! Remember how on account of you I had to remove the shields with the emperor’s insignia from the walls, had to transfer troops, had, as you see, to come in person to look into what goes on with you here! Remember my words: it is not just one cohort that you will see here in Yershalaim, High Priest—no! The whole Fulminata legion will come under the city walls, the Arabian cavalry will arrive, and then you will hear bitter weeping and wailing! You will remember Bar-Rabban then, whom you saved, and you will regret having sent to his death a philosopher with his peaceful preaching!’ The high priest’s face became covered with blotches, his eyes burned. Like the procurator, he smiled, baring his teeth, and replied: ‘Do you yourself believe what you are saying now, Procurator?

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  I put it on because I was hurrying to Griboedov’s restaurant.’ The doctor glanced questioningly at Riukhin, who muttered glumly: ‘The name of the restaurant.’ ‘Aha,’ said the doctor, ‘and why were you in such a hurry? Some business meeting?’ ‘I’m trying to catch the consultant,’ Ivan Nikolaevich said and looked around anxiously. ‘What consultant?’ ‘Do you know Berlioz?’ Ivan asked significantly. ‘The . . . composer?’ Ivan got upset. ‘What composer? Ah, yes . . . Ah, no. The composer has the same name as Misha Berlioz.’ Riukhin had no wish to say anything, but was forced to explain: ‘The secretary of Massolit, Berlioz, was run over by a tram-car tonight at the Patriarch’s Ponds.’ ‘Don’t blab about what you don’t know!’ Ivan got angry with Riukhin. ‘I was there, not you! He got him under the tram-car on purpose!’ ‘Pushed him?’ ‘ “Pushed him”, nothing!’ Ivan exclaimed, angered by the general obtuseness. ‘His kind don’t need to push! He can perform such stunts—hold on to your hat! He knew beforehand that Berlioz would get under the tram-car!’ ‘And did anyone besides you see this consultant?’ ‘That’s the trouble, it was just Berlioz and me.’ ‘So. And what measures did you take to catch this murderer?’ Here the doctor turned and sent a glance towards a woman in a white coat, who was sitting at a table to one side. She took out a sheet of paper and began filling in the blank spaces in its columns. ‘Here’s what measures: I took a little candle from the kitchen . . .’ ‘That one?’ asked the doctor, pointing to the broken candle lying on the table in front of the woman, next to the icon. ‘That very one, and . . .’ ‘And why the icon?’ ‘Ah, yes, the icon . . .’ Ivan blushed. ‘It was the icon that frightened them most of all.’ He again jabbed his finger in the direction of Riukhin. ‘But the thing is that he, the consultant, he . . . let’s speak directly . . . is mixed up with the unclean powers . . . and you won’t catch him so easily.’ The orderlies for some reason snapped to attention and fastened their eyes on Ivan. ‘Yes, sirs,’ Ivan went on, ‘mixed up with them! An absolute fact. He spoke personally with Pontius Pilate. And there’s no need to stare at me like that. I’m telling the truth! He saw everything—the balcony and the palm trees. In short, he was at Pontius Pilate’s, I can vouch for it.’ ‘Come, come . . .’ ‘Well, so I pinned the icon on my chest and ran . . .’ Here the clock suddenly struck twice. ‘Oh-oh!’ Ivan exclaimed and got up from the couch. ‘It’s two o’clock, and I’m wasting time with you!

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  That night they checked into a phat hotel in midtown Manhattan and fucked like rabbits, then ordered room service and filled each other in on the details that had caused their world to go dark. “It was Jimmy,” Pluto told her. “That niggah capped G, then did himself. Fucked my head up. That fool little niggah popped himself.” Monique lay there crying quietly inside. Not for Jimmy, and not for G’s ass neither! She was crying for her damn self, and for what Juicy and Jimmy, that retarded-ass sister-and-brother team, had cost her. “G didn’t deserve that shit,” Pluto went on, and Monique could hear the pain that was still in his voice. “He was my niggah, straight up. A real motherfucker who was out there handlin’ a real fuckin’ world. None of us saw that shit coming. All of us slept that night and it cost us our boss. And that’s fucked up.” Monique sat up and rubbed Pluto’s fat stomach. The funk coming off him told her he probably hadn’t washed his ass the whole time he was on Rikers. But so what. She let her hand wander down between his legs and started to jack his gummy dick anyway. “Yeah,” Pluto repeated sadly, ignoring her fingers. “That shit was fucked up.” No, Monique thought. What was fucked up was the fact that Juicy got away. That bitch had dipped outta New York with that niggah Gino and all of G’s money too. Ace said he had gone by G’s crib to get a key outta the safe, only to discover the key was gone and so was all the bank in G’s crib and in all his other stashes too. “What’s fucked up, baby,” Monique went ahead and spoke her thoughts out loud, “is how that bitch Juicy got away. We got left hanging while she got to roll outta here with her life intact and all of G’s money too. That trick shoulda got popped for real. Right along with her brother in the G-Spot.” Pluto nodded, and Monique could tell he was thinking real deep because his dick wouldn’t even get hard. “Don’t worry. I got this. Me and Ace gonna find that bitch and get her back to New York. And when we do, she ain’t never gonna leave again.” “Yeah,” Monique said, excitement surging through her at the thought of getting her some revenge on the bitch she hated the most. “I know just how to make that happen too, Papa. Remember, she’s real tight with that trick named Rita who tried to get my brother Maurice locked up. We can use that bitch and her little sisters as bait. Get next to them, and we can get next to Juicy. I guarantee it.”

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  She watched with her mouth hanging open as Juicy ran barefoot through the ice and snow with a sheet around her waist, then staggered over to the curb and flagged down a bootleg taxi and disappeared into the night. Monique cut her lights on, then pulled out into traffic and headed in the same direction. She knew exactly where that skank bitch was probably going. Straight to that Puerto Rican bitch Rita. The same bitch who had threatened to get one of Monique’s brothers locked up over her hot-in-the-ass little sister last summer. She followed the cab down the slippery streets and a few minutes later Monique sat boiling outside of Rita’s house. She sucked on her burnt thumb and watched as Rita opened her front door and Juicy jumped outta the cab and ran her ass inside the apartment. That bitch is gonna get hers, Monique promised. She didn’t need to know all the little details in order to know what time it was. G was gone and so was all of Pluto’s front money, his muscle, and his pull. Every ounce of their bad fortune was tied to that bitch Juicy, and that burned Monique up worse than the hot stove. If it’s the last fuckin’ thing I do in this world, Monique swore to herself again, I’m gonna get her ass back. And if Rita and her ho-ass fuckin’ little sisters wasn’t careful, they could end up getting some too. • • • Shit was hot all over Harlem for weeks. The po-po was outta control, and hustlers was getting knocked every day. As soon as word hit the streets that G had got took down, Harlem was on fire with chaos and turmoil. Moonie did the fuckin’ bird and nobody knew where he had gone. Some young hustler named Flex called himself taking over G’s project operation and got popped with a quickness. Ace and Pluto both got bum-rushed by the police. They caught Ace coming outta his grandmother’s crib and when he pulled out his tool and started firing, they shot out every window in the joint, catching Grandma with a bullet through her forehead as she sat in her rocker. They got Pluto about four o’clock one morning when they kicked the door down and maced him and Monique right in their bed. About twenty cops rushed in and beat the hell outta Pluto, cracking him down to the floor with their nightsticks and digging their boot heels all up in his soft stomach.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty… what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing. I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse. … To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing. It is to you, Tania, that I am singing. I wish that I could sing better, more melodiously, but then perhaps you would never have consented to listen to me. You have heard the others sing and they have left you cold. They sang too beautifully, or not beautifully enough. It is the twenty-somethingth of October. I no longer keep track of the date. Would you say—my dream of the 14th November last? There are intervals, but they are between dreams, and there is no consciousness of them left. The world around me is dissolving, leaving here and there spots of time. The world is a cancer eating itself away. … I am thinking that when the great silence descends upon all and everywhere music will at last triumph. When into the womb of time everything is again withdrawn chaos will be restored and chaos is the score upon which reality is written. You, Tania, are my chaos. It is why I sing. It is not even I, it is the world dying, shedding the skin of time. I am still alive, kicking in your womb, a reality to write upon.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  245 acknowledging that authority. In 1303, he died as a prisoner in the Vatican. o In 1309, the French pope Clement V took up residence in Avignon, a town in the southern region of France, beginning what’s known as the “Babylonian Captivity of the Church,” a period of more than a century when the popes resided outside of Rome. o The death of Gregory XI in 1378 resulted in a divided papacy, with Clement VII reigning at Avignon and Urban VI in Rome. The “Great Schism” of pope and antipope continued until the Council of Constance in 1414 and was not completely resolved until 1417. Extreme Responses • Such extreme circumstances generated and seemed (at least to some) to justify extreme behavior, even beyond that generated by the sheer need to survive in famine and plague. Christians seemed to have lost their moral bearings. • Until the 12 th century, bishops had followed the advice of Bernard of Clairvaux with respect to heretics: “Faith should come through persuasion rather than force,” but that reasonable position changed with the decree Ad abolendam of Pope Lucius III in 1184. The initiative is all the more severe when we remember that heresy was not nearly the threat to the church in the 14 th century that it had been in the 2 nd and 3 rd , when only rhetoric was used as a weapon. o Lucius declared that bishops were to make inquisition for heresy in their dioceses and hand heretics over to secular authority for punishment. o When this local process proved ineffective, Pope Gregory IX took control of the inquisition around 1233, using members of the new mendicant orders as inquisitors. The mendicant inquisitors were answerable only to the papacy, not to local