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 Bad Behavior (1988)

  She seemed to consider the question earnestly. “No,” she said. “Not really. I mean, I can lie, but I usually don’t about important things. Why do you ask?” “Why did you tell me you were a masochist?” “What makes you think I’m not?” “You don’t act like one.” “Well, I don’t know how you can say that. You hardly know me. We’ve hardly done anything yet.” “What do you want to do?” “I can’t just come out and tell you. It would ruin it.” He picked up his cigarette lighter and flicked it, picked up her shirt and stuck the lighter underneath. She didn’t move fast enough. She screamed and leapt to her feet. “Don’t do that! That’s awful!” He rolled over on his stomach. “See. I told you. You’re not a masochist.” “Shit! That wasn’t erotic in the least. I don’t come when I stub my toe either.” In the ensuing silence it occurred to her that she was angry, and had been for some time. “I’m tired,” she said. “I want to go to bed.” She walked out of the room. He sat up. “Well, we’re making decisions, aren’t we?” She reentered the room. “Where are we supposed to sleep, anyway?” He showed her the guest room and the fold-out couch. She immediately began dismantling the couch with stiff, angry movements. Her body seemed full of unnatural energy and purpose. She had, he decided, ruined the weekend, not only for him but for herself. Her willful, masculine, stupid somethingness had obstructed their mutual pleasure and satisfaction. The only course of action left was hostility. He opened his grandmother’s writing desk and took out a piece of paper and a Magic Marker. He wrote the word “stupid” in thick black letters. He held it first near her chest, like a placard, and then above her crotch. She ignored him. “Where are the sheets?” she asked. “How’d you get so tough all of a sudden?” He threw the paper on the desk and took a sheet from a dresser drawer. “We’ll need a blanket too, if we open the window. And I want to open the window.” He regarded her sarcastically. “You’re just keeping yourself from getting what you want by acting like this.” “You obviously don’t know what I want.” They got undressed. He contemptuously took in the mascular, energetic look of her body. She looked more like a boy than a girl, in spite of her pronounced hips and round breasts. Her short, spiky red hair was more than enough to render her masculine. Even the dark bruise he had inflicted on her breast and the slight burn from his lighter failed to lend her a more feminine quality. She opened the window. They got under the blanket on the fold-out couch and lay there, not touching, as though they really were about to sleep. Of course, neither one of them could. “Why is this happening?” she asked. “You tell me.” “I don’t know.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  I agreed to take part in a New York University Institute for the Humanities conference a year ago, with the understanding that I would be commenting upon papers dealing with the role of difference within the lives of american women: difference of race, sexuality, class, and age. The absence of these considerations weakens any feminist discussion of the personal and the political. It is a particular academic arrogance to assume any discussion of feminist theory without examining our many differences, and without a significant input from poor women, Black and Third World women, and lesbians. And yet, I stand here as a Black lesbian feminist, having been invited to comment within the only panel at this conference where the input of Black feminists and lesbians is represented. What this says about the vision of this conference is sad, in a country where racism, sexism, and homophobia are inseparable. To read this program is to assume that lesbian and Black women have nothing to say about existentialism, the erotic, women’s culture and silence, developing feminist theory, or heterosexuality and power. And what does it mean in personal and political terms when even the two Black women who did present here were literally found at the last hour? What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy? It means that only the most narrow perimeters of change are possible and allowable. The absence of any consideration of lesbian consciousness or the consciousness of Third World women leaves a serious gap within this conference and within the papers presented here. For example, in a paper on material relationships between women, I was conscious of an either/or model of nurturing which totally dismissed my knowledge as a Black lesbian. In this paper there was no examination of mutuality between women, no systems of shared support, no interdependence as exists between lesbians and women-identified women. Yet it is only in the patriarchal model of nurturance that women “who attempt to emancipate themselves pay perhaps too high a price for the results,” as this paper states. For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered. It is this real connection which is so feared by a patriarchal world. Only within a patriarchal structure is maternity the only social power open to women. Interdependency between women is the way to a freedom which allows the I to be, not in order to be used, but in order to be creative. This is a difference between the passive be and the active being.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Now I am sure there are still some Black men who marry white women because they feel a white woman can better fit the model of “femininity” set forth in this country. But for Staples to justify that act using the reason it occurs, and take Black women to task for it, is not only another error in reasoning; it is like justifying the actions of a lemming who follows its companions over the cliff to sure death. Because it happens does not mean it should happen, nor that it is functional for the well-being of the individual nor the group. It is not the destiny of Black america to repeat white america’s mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life. If Black men continue to define “femininity” instead of their own desires, and to do it in archaic european terms, they restrict our access to each other’s energies. Freedom and future for Blacks does not mean absorbing the dominant white male disease of sexism. As Black women and men, we cannot hope to begin dialogue by denying the oppressive nature of male privilege. And if Black males choose to assume that privilege for whatever reason—raping, brutalizing, and killing Black women—then ignoring these acts of Black male oppression within our communities can only serve our destroyers. One oppression does not justify another. It has been said that Black men cannot be denied their personal choice of the woman who meets their need to dominate. In that case, Black women also cannot be denied our personal choices, and those choices are becomingly increasingly self-assertive and female-oriented. As a people, we most certainly must work together. It would be shortsighted to believe that Black men alone are to blame for the above situations in a society dominated by white male privilege. But the Black male consciousness must be raised to the realization that sexism and woman-hating are critically dysfunctional to his liberation as a Black man because they arise out of the same constellation that engenders racism and homophobia. Until that consciousness is developed, Black men will view sexism and the destruction of Black women as tangential to Black liberation rather than as central to that struggle. So long as this occurs, we will never be able to embark upon that dialogue between Black women and Black men that is so essential to our survival as a people. This continued blindness between us can only serve the oppressive system within which we live. Men avoid women’s observations by accusing us of being too “visceral.” But no amount of understanding the roots of Black woman-hating will bring back Patricia Cowan, nor mute her family’s loss. Pain is very visceral, particularly to the people who are hurting. As the poet Mary McAnally said, “Pain teaches us to take our fingers OUT the fucking fire.”*

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  W. L. George in “A Novelist on Novels” writes: “If a novelist were to develop his characters evenly the three hundred page novel might extend to five hundred, the additional two hundred pages would be made up entirely of the sex preoccupations of the characters. There would be as many scenes in the bedroom as in the drawing-room, probably more, as more time is passed in the sleeping apartment. The additional two hundred pages would offer pictures of the sex side of the characters and would compel them to become alive: at present they often fail to come to life because they only develop, say five sides out of six.... Our literary characters are lop-sided because their ordinary traits are fully portrayed while their sex-life is cloaked, minimized or left out.... Therefore the characters in modern novels are all false. They are megalocephalous and emasculate. English women speak a great deal about sex.... It is a cruel position for the English novel. The novelist may discuss anything but the main preoccupation of life.... we are compelled to pad out with murder, theft and arson which as everybody knows, are perfectly moral things to write about.” Pure is the snow—till mixed with mire— But never half so pure as fire. There are graver reasons than any I have yet given why the truth should be told boldly. The time has come when those who are, as Shakespeare called them, “God’s Spies” having learned the mystery of things, should be called to counsel, for the ordinary political guides have led mankind to disaster: blind leaders of the blind! Over Niagara we have plunged, as Carlyle predicted, and as every one with vision must have foreseen and now like driftwood we move round and round the whirlpool impotently without knowing whither or why. One thing certain: we deserve the misery into which we have fallen. The laws of this world are inexorable and don’t cheat! Where, when, how have we gone astray? The malady is as wide as civilization which fortunately narrows the enquiry to time. Ever since our conquest of natural forces began, towards the end of the eighteenth century, and material wealth increased by leaps and bounds, our conduct has deteriorated. Up to that time we had done the gospel of Christ mouth-honor at least; and had to some slight extent shown consideration if not love to our fellowmen: we did not give tithes to charity; but we did give petty doles till suddenly science appeared to reinforce our selfishness with a new message: progress comes through the blotting out of the unfit, we were told, and self-assertion was preached as a duty: the idea of the Superman came into life and the Will to Power and thereby Christ’s teaching of love and pity and gentleness was thrust into the background. At once we men gave ourselves over to wrong doing and our iniquity took monstrous forms.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  For, with his pleasure taken, and while Gio- vanni still lies suffocating, Guillaume becomes a business man once more and, walking up and down, gives excellent reasons why Giovanni cannot work for him anymore. Beneath what- ever reasons Guillaume invents, the real one lies hidden, and they both, dimly, in their different fashions, see it: Giovanni, like a falling movie star, has lost his drawing power. Everything is known about htm, his secrecy has been dis- covered. Giovanni certainly feels this and the rage which has been building in him for many months begins to be swollen now wdth the mem- ory of Guillaume's hands and mouth. He stares at Guillaume in silence for a moment and then begins to shout. And Guillaume answers him. With every word exchanged Giovanni's head begins to roar and a blackness comes and goes before his eyes. And Guillaume is in seventh heaven and begtns to prance about the room he has scarcely ever gotten so much for so little before. He plays this scene for all it's worth, deeply rejoictng in the fact that Giovanni's face grows scarlet, and his voice thick, watching with pure deUght the bone-hard muscles in his neck. And he says something, for he thinks the tables have been turned; he says something, one phrase, one insult, one mockery too many; and in a spUt second, in his own shocked si- GIOVANNI'S ROOM 207 lence, in Giovannfs eyes, he realizes that he has unleashed something he cannot turn back. Giovanni certainly did not mean to do it. But he grabbed him, he struck him. And with that touch, and with each blow, the intolerable weight at the bottom of his heart began to lift: now it was Giovanni's turn to be delighted. The room was overturned, the fabrics were shredded, the odor of perfume was thick. Guillaume strug- gled to get out of the room, but Giovanni fol- lowed him everywhere: now it was Guillaume's turn to be surrounded. And perhaps at the very moment Guillaume thought he had broken free, when he had reached the door perhaps, Gio- vanni lunged after him and caught him by the sash of the dressing gown and wrapped the sash around his neck. Then he simply held on, sob- bing, becoming lighter every moment as Guil- laume grew heavier, tightening the sash and cursing. Then Guillaume fell. And Giovanni fell—back into the room, the streets, the world, into the presence and the shadow of death. By the time we found this great house it was clear that I had no right to come here. By the time we found it, I did not even want to see it. But by this time, also, there was nothing else to do. There was nothing else I wanted to do. I thought, it is true, of remaining in Paris in order to be close to the trial, perhaps to visit him in prison. But I knew there was no reason to do

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  According to Dr. Jud, over time negative behaviors create addictive habits that gloss over the cause of our suffering and create more problems in our lives. Enter the usual suspects: overeating, drinking, drugs, endless social media scrolling, procrastination, stress-shopping, sex with randos, and anything else you can think of to make the discomfort stop. In these patterns, it’s easy to see how anxiety can be similar to an addictive habit. The more we fuel it, the more anxious we get, and the more we turn to unhealthy behaviors to reduce our anxiety. It’s a never-ending cycle that wears us down, shrinks our resilience, and makes our lives way smaller than they need to be. Now for the good news: habits aren’t fixed; they’re fluid—just like our brains. In fact, our beautiful brains have the ability to change and form new patterns and connections throughout our lives—no matter how old we are. (That means you can teach old dogs new tricks. Lucky us!) If we can understand how our brains work and what they do when we’re stressed-out, scared, and worried, we can help them calm down, come back online, and create new neural pathways that lead to better resilience. BRAIN BASICS 101 Our busy brains fire off tens of thousands of thoughts each day. As such, many of us believe that we’re thinking creatures who happen to feel. Best- selling author and neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor argues that the opposite is true. “We are feeling creatures who think,” she says. That’s because information enters the emotional system of our brains first. As you may remember from biology class, your brain is divided into a left and right hemisphere. Within those hemispheres, you have thinking tissue (your cerebral cortex) and emotional tissue (your limbic system). Information streams into your limbic system through your senses and then hits your amygdala—the part of your brain responsible for keeping you safe. Your amygdala does lots of helpful things, but its most important function lies in processing fear and anxiety. When you’re exposed to a dangerous situation, it immediately signals your nervous system to turn on your fight-flight-freeze response. This alarm kicks off a chain reaction of chemicals and impulses to help prepare you for combat, or to scurry, or to get really small and quiet so the (real or perceived) predator doesn’t see you. (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished that the Harry Potter invisibility cloak were real.) Because your amygdala is guided by your feelings, it’s able to bypass the part of your brain in charge of planning and reason. In doing so, you’re able to swiftly take action without even having to think about it. In fact, your amygdala senses danger faster than any other area of your brain, which has the advantage of allowing you more time to react. Chemicals flood your system as if preparing you for battle.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  For that he got a box in the ears. That made him wag his tongue some more, whereupon he got such a wallop that his teeth flew down his throat and his jawbone was broken in three places. Still he didn’t know enough to hold his trap. Like the damned fool that he was he goes to the police station and registers a complaint. A week later, while he’s sitting on a bench snoozing, a gang of roughnecks break into the place and beat him to a pulp. His head was so battered that his brains looked like an omelette. For good measure they emptied the safe and turned it upside down. Dave died on the way to the hospital. They found five hundred dollars hidden away in the toe of his sock. . . . Then there was Clausen and his wife Lena. They came in together when he applied for the job. Lena had a baby in her arms and he had two little ones by the hand. They were sent to me by some relief agency. I put him on as a night messenger so that he’d have a fixed salary. In a few days I had a letter from him, a batty letter in which he asked me to excuse him for being absent as he had to report to his parole officer. Then another letter saying that his wife had refused to sleep with him because she didn’t want any more babies and would I please come to see them and try to persuade her to sleep with him. I went to his home—a cellar in the Italian quarter. It looked like a bughouse. Lena was pregnant again, about seven months under way, and on the verge of idiocy. She had taken to sleeping on the roof because it was too hot in the cellar, also because she didn’t want him to touch her any more. When I said it wouldn’t make any difference now she just looked at me and grinned. Clausen had been in the war and maybe the gas had made him a bit goofy—at any rate he was foaming at the mouth. He said he would brain her if she didn’t stay off that roof. He insinuated that she was sleeping up there in order to carry on with the coal man who lived in the attic. At this Lena smiled again with that mirthless batrachian grin. Clausen lost his temper and gave her a swift kick in the ass. She went out in a huff taking the brats with her. He told her to stay out for good. Then he opened a drawer and pulled out a big Colt. He was keeping it in case he needed it some time, he said. He showed me a few knives, too, and a sort of blackjack which he had made himself. Then he began to weep. He said his wife was making a fool of him.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  Andrew ran behind and jumped into the passenger seat next to her. Just as she turned the ignition, Andrew heard one last gunshot, and the windshield went red. Abel had fired from behind the car. The bullet went into the back of her head and exited through the front of her face, and blood sprayed everywhere. Her body slumped over the steering wheel. Andrew, reacting without thinking, pulled my mom to the passenger side, flipped over her, jumped into the driver’s seat, slammed the car into gear, and raced to the hospital in Linksfield. I asked Andrew what happened to Abel. He didn’t know. I was filled with rage, but there was nothing I could do. I felt completely impotent, but I still felt I had to do something. So I took out my phone and I called him—I called the man who’d just shot my mom, and he actually picked up. “Trevor.” “You killed my mom.” “Yes, I did.” “You killed my mom!” “Yes. And if I could find you, I would kill you as well.” Then he hung up. It was the most chilling moment. It was terrifying. Whatever nerve I’d worked up to call him I immediately lost. To this day I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t know what I expected to happen. I was just enraged. I kept asking Andrew questions, trying to get more details. Then, as we were talking, a nurse came outside looking for me. “Are you the family?” she asked. “Yes.” “Sir, there’s a problem. Your mother was speaking a bit at first. She’s stopped now, but from what we’ve gathered she doesn’t have health insurance.” “What? No, no. That can’t be true. I know my mom has health insurance.” She didn’t. As it turned out, a few months prior, she’d decided, “This health insurance is a scam. I never get sick. I’m going to cancel it.” So now she had no health insurance. “We can’t treat your mother here,” the nurse said. “If she doesn’t have insurance we have to send her to a state hospital.” “State hospital?! What—no! You can’t. My mom’s been shot in the head. You’re going to put her back on a gurney? Send her out in an ambulance? She’ll die. You need to treat her right now.” “Sir, we can’t. We need a form of payment.” “I’m your form of payment. I’ll pay.” “Yes, people say that, but without a guarantee—” I pulled out my credit card. “Here,” I said. “Take this. I’ll pay. I’ll pay for everything.” “Sir, hospital can be very expensive.” “I don’t care.” “Sir, I don’t think you understand. Hospital can be really expensive.” “Lady, I have money. I’ll pay anything. Just help us.” “Sir, you don’t understand. We have to do so many tests. One test alone could cost two, three thousand rand.” “Three thousan—what? Lady, this is my mother’s life we’re talking about. I’ll pay.”

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  “Well, you’ve indicted someone for perjury for contradicting the state’s case. Do you intend to prosecute everyone who challenges the evidence in this case?” My voice was now rising in exactly the way I wanted to avoid, but I was provoked by his attitude. “Alabama case law is clear that a perjury charge can’t be filed in the absence of clear and convincing evidence that a false statement has been made,” I went on. “A perjury indictment seems like a tactic designed to intimidate and discourage people from coming forward with evidence that contradicts the State’s case. The charge against Mr. Houston seems really inappropriate, Mr. Chapman, and legally indefensible.” I knew I was lecturing him and knew he didn’t like it, but I wanted him to know that we were going to defend Walter in a serious way. “Are you representing Darnell Houston now, too?” “Yes, I am.” “Well, I’m not sure you can do that, Mr. Stevenson. I think you might have a conflict there,” he said, and then his voice shifted from argumentative to blandly matter-of-fact. “But don’t worry, I may drop the perjury charges against Houston. Now that the judge has denied your motion to reopen the case, I don’t have any interest in pursuing charges against Darnell Houston. But I do want people to know that if they make false statements concerning this case, they are going to be held accountable.” I was confused and a little stunned. “What are you talking about? The motion to reconsider has been denied?” “Yes, the judge has already denied your motion. You must not have gotten your copy of his order. He’s down in Mobile now, so sometimes there are mail issues.” I tried to conceal my surprise about the court’s ruling on the motion without even permitting a hearing. I asked, “So you have no interest in investigating what Darnell Houston is saying about the possibility that the State’s main witness may be lying?” “Ralph Myers is the State’s main witness.” It was clear that Chapman had looked more deeply into the case than he had initially claimed. “Without Hooks’s testimony, the conviction wouldn’t be valid,” I said, leveling my voice. “Under the State’s theory, Myers is an accomplice, and state law requires confirmation of accomplice testimony, which can only come from Hooks. Mr. Houston says that Hooks is lying, which makes his testimony a critical issue that should be heard in court.” I knew I was right. The law was as clear as it possibly could be on this question. But I also knew that I was talking to someone who didn’t care what the law said. I knew that what I was saying wouldn’t persuade Chapman, but I felt the need to say it anyway.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Years later, rumors surfaced that a white man from a prominent family confessed on his deathbed to killing the girls. Recently, an effort has been launched to exonerate George Stinney. The Stinney execution was horrific and heartbreaking, but it reflected the racial politics of the South more than the way children accused of crimes were generally treated. It was an example of how policies and norms once directed exclusively at controlling and punishing the black population have filtered their way into our general criminal justice system. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the politics of fear and anger sweeping the country and fueling mass incarceration was turning its attention to children. Influential criminologists predicted a coming wave of “super-predators” with whom the juvenile justice system would be unable to cope. Sometimes expressly focusing on black and brown children, theorists suggested that America would soon be overcome by “elementary school youngsters who pack guns instead of lunches” and who “have absolutely no respect for human life.” Panic over the impending crime wave expected from these “radically impulsive, brutally remorseless” children led nearly every state to enact legislation that increased the exposure of children to adult prosecution. Many states lowered or eliminated the minimum age for trying children as adults, leaving children as young as eight vulnerable to adult prosecution and imprisonment. Some states also initiated mandatory transfer rules, which took away any discretion from prosecutors and judges over whether a child should be kept in the juvenile system. Tens of thousands of children who had previously been managed by the juvenile justice system, with its well-developed protections and requirements for children, were now thrown into an increasingly overcrowded, violent, and desperate adult prison system. The predictions of “super-predators” proved wildly inaccurate. The juvenile population in America increased from 1994 to 2000, but the juvenile crime rate declined, leading academics who had originally supported the “super-predator” theory to disclaim it. In 2001, the surgeon general of the United States released a report labeling the “super-predator” theory a myth and stated that “[t]here is no evidence that young people involved in violence during the peak years of the early 1990s were more frequent or more vicious offenders than youths in earlier years.” This admission came too late for kids like Trina, Ian, and Antonio. Their death-in-prison sentences were insulated from legal challenges or appeals by a maze of procedural rules, statutes of limitations, and legal barricades designed to make successful postconviction challenges almost impossible. — When I met Trina, Ian, and Antonio years later, they had each been broken by years of hopeless confinement.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  14The History of Christianity II in order to worship Christ and learn his teachings. By contrast, the reformers wanted the Bible to be printed and widely distributed in the local languages of Christian communities. õProtestants disagreed about how to solve these problems. We can map their points of disagreement on a spectrum that runs roughly from the conservatives, who wanted to keep many structures and doctrines of Catholicism intact, to the radical, who wanted to throw almost everything away and start over. MARTIN LUTHER õThe Protestant spectrum begins with Martin Luther, a German monk on the conservative side. Cloistered away in an austere monastery, he found himself frustrated; the more he tried to live by God’s law, the more he just thought about his own failings. He couldn’t stop thinking about what a sinner he was. This paradox of his holy outer life and his inner selfishness drove him nearly mad. õHe was also horrified by the corruption and greed he saw in the church, like the sale of indulgences to pay off local bishops’ debts and to fund the rebuilding of a new St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Indulgences gave Catholics partial remission of punishment in Purgatory, a place of purification between heaven and hell where the soul goes after death to be purged of the lingering effects of sins committed on earth. õIn October of 1517 Luther’s anger moved him to scribble down 95 complaints about the church—the 95 Theses. Tradition says that he nailed these theses to the Wittenberg church door, but this is probably a myth. It is certain, though, that he sent his theses to his archbishop. This set in motion a series of events that would have an extraordinary impact on Western history and faith. 15Lecture 2—Luther and the Dawn of Protestantism õThe 95 Theses criticized abuses of indulgences, but this was a fairly conservative document. Luther did not call for abolishing indulgences altogether, and while he revised the doctrine of Purgatory, he still allowed for the idea of a transition place between death and heaven where people could to atone for sins in life.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  There was a long, long silence. Gloria’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “You leave my children alone. Do you hear me?” The phone went dead in my hand. I stared at the receiver, stunned. Slowly I began to realize that Gloria held the power to keep me from finding the kids. I called back. She hung up on me Stone Butch Blues 305 again. I slapped the glass wall of the phone booth with my open hand over and over until it stung and burned. Then I kicked the glass as hard as I could. A police cruiser pulled over to the curb. “What’s going on?” a cop called out to me. I took a deep breath. “Sorry. I just lost some money in it.” “Let’s take it easy, son. It’s just a quarter.” He waved and drove off. When he was out of sight I kicked the glass over and over again. I told myself ’d find Kim and Scotty, even if I couldn’t figure out how at the moment. The operator gave me the address and phone number for Butch Jan’s store on Elmwood Avenue. Brass bells tinkled as I opened the door to her flower shop. I could smell the perfume of roses and lilies. “Can I help you?” A familiar face looked up at me. We both stood transfixed. “Edna.” I whispered her name out loud. Her face froze. I couldn’t figure out what she was doing there, working behind the counter. And then I remembered she was Butch Jan’s ex-lover. They must be together again. It wasn’t fair! I could understand if Edna left me because she couldn’t be with anyone. But then how could she be with Jan? Questions made my face burn: Does she touch Jan? Was it just me she didn’t want? 306 = Leslie Feinberg How come everybody else is getting a happily-ever- after? It hurt so much to see her standing there I wanted to run outside and get back in the car and go. But I discovered an important piece of my dignity in the way I held my body and in the soft strength in my voice as I whispered, “Hello, Edna.” She came out from behind the counter and started toward me. I stiffened my body involuntarily. She paused, “Jess. ’'ve thought about you so many times.” I felt my anger rise up to block her words from penetrating my defenses. “I came to see Jan. Is she here?” Edna chewed her lower lip. “She’s in the greenhouse out back.” The phone rang, I took the opportunity to leave while Edna answered it. I leaned against the cool brick outside the door. I’d thought the pain might splatter me all over the walls of the shop, but it hadn’t. It just hurt, a lot. Did Jan know Edna and I had been lovers? ’'d soon find out.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  And why the hell should one want to go on breathing forever? Anything that would have to be done interminably would be torture. The poor human bastards that we are, we ought to be glad that somebody devised a way out. We don’t quibble about going to sleep. A third of our lives we snore away like drunken rats. What about that? Is that tragic? Well then, say three-thirds of drunken ratlike sleep. Jesus, if we had any sense we’d be dancing with glee at the thought of it! We could all die in bed tomorrow, without pain, without suffering—if we had the sense to take advantage of our remedies. We don’t want to die, that’s the trouble with us. That’s why God and the whole shooting match upstairs in our crazy dustbins. General Ivolgin! That got a cackle out of him . . . and a few dry sobs. I might as well have said limburger cheese. But General Ivolgin means something to him . . . something crazy. Limburger cheese would be too sober, too banal. It’s all limburger cheese, however, including General Ivolgin, the poor drunken sap. General Ivolgin was evolved out of Dostoevski’s limburger cheese, his own private brand. That means a certain flavor, a certain label. So people recognize it when they smell it, taste it. But what made this General Ivolgin limburger cheese? Why, whatever made limburger cheese, which is x and therefore unknowable. And so therefore? Therefore nothing . . . nothing at all. Full stop— or else a leap in the dark and no coming back. As I was taking my pants off I suddenly remembered what the bastard had told me. I looked at my cock and it looked just as innocent as ever. “Don’t tell me you’ve got the syph,” I said, holding it in my hand and squeezing it a bit as though I might see a bit of pus squirting out. No, I didn’t think there was much chance of having the syph. I wasn’t born under that kind of star. The clap, yes, that was possible. Everybody had the clap sometime or other. But not syph! I knew he’d wish it on me if he could, just to make me realize what suffering was. But I couldn’t be bothered obliging him. I was born a dumb but lucky goy. I yawned. It was all so much goddamned limburger cheese that syph or no syph, I thought to myself, if she’s up to it I’ll tear off another piece and call it a day. But evidently she wasn’t up to it. She was for turning her ass on me.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  The little brown brothers of the Philippines may bloom again one day and the murdered Indians of America north and south may also come alive one day to ride the plains where now the cities stand belching fire and pestilence. Who has the last say? Man! The earth is his because he is the earth, its fire, its water, its air, its mineral and vegetable matter, its spirit which is cosmic, which is imperishable, which is the spirit of all the planets, which transforms itself through him, through endless signs and symbols, through endless manifestations. Wait, you cosmococcic telegraphic shits, you demons on high waiting for the plumbing to be repaired, wait, you dirty white conquerors who have sullied the earth with your cloven hoofs, your instruments, your weapons, your disease germs, wait, all you who are sitting in clover and counting your coppers, it is not the end. The last man will have his say before it is finished. Down to the last sentient molecule justice must be done —and will be done! Nobody is getting away with anything, least of all the cosmococcic shits of North America. When it came time for my vacation—I hadn’t taken one for three years, I was so eager to make the company a success!—I took three weeks instead of two and I wrote the book about the twelve little men. I wrote it straight off, five, seven, sometimes eight thousand words a day. I thought that a man, to be a writer, must do at least five thousand words a day. I thought he must say everything all at once—in one book—and collapse afterwards. I didn’t know a thing about writing. I was scared shitless. But I was determined to wipe Horatio Alger out of the North American consciousness. I suppose it was the worst book any man has ever written. It was a colossal tome and faulty from start to finish. But it was my first book and I was in love with it. If I had had the money, as Gide had, I would have published it at my own expense. If I had had the courage that Whitman had, I would have peddled it from door to door. Everybody I showed it to said it was terrible. I was urged to give up the idea of writing. I had to learn, as Balzac did, that one must write volumes before signing one’s own name. I had to learn, as I soon did, that one must give up everything and not do anything else but write, that one must write and write and write, even if everybody in the world advises you against it, even if nobody believes in you.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  In 1975, a Congressional committee, led by Senator Frank Church, decided to investigate. The Church Committee set out to unearth the full scope of the research but, at its hearings, it became clear that it had not been able to go beyond the discoveries made by private researchers. The committee was derailed by the same two CIA strategies, leaving the public in the dark. First, the CIA leaked information about its attempted assassinations of world leaders, which sent the Committee—and the media—running after that story. It then claimed that the MK-ULTRA was a “rogue elephant”—the brainchild of a few overzealous agents who worked on it, without the knowledge of their higher-ups. Members of the committee bought these explanations, thereby missing the fact, stated explicitly in Dulles’s 1953 speech, that knowledge of—and responsibility for—the program went all the way to the very top of the CIA. Thousands of people were experimented on, which makes it impossible to believe that this was not a significant program. It is also true that at that time almost all social psychological research was actually funded by the U.S. government. Thankfully, Milgram and Zimbardo published their results.198 I knew first-hand that techniques for mind control were real—I had lived in a mind control environment and practiced it on others. I had researched the subject of mind control, and had the great fortune to speak with top experts on the subject, such as Robert Jay Lifton and Margaret Singer. I knew that no self-respecting psychologist would deny that there was useful information in mind control research—information that could be used to affect people, for better or worse. But the revelations about the MK-ULTRA—and its cover up—forced me to confront another set of questions that demanded answers. Why wasn’t the federal government informing the American people about the dangers of mind control? Why was the issue continually shuffled into a discussion of religious liberty and the First Amendment? To this day, there has been no official government statement on the existence—let alone the dangers—of mind control. European countries, including Germany, France and Belgium, have recently recognized the dangers posed by mind control cults and have created task forces to investigate them. There is apparently no such initiative on the part of the U.S. government—not by the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, or any other intelligence-gathering agency—despite the threat that they have posed to our national safety. It’s about time the Surgeon General, or some other high-ranking government official, made such a statement. Perhaps there are other political explanations for why the government does not admit to any knowledge of mind control techniques. Whatever the reasons, there is now little doubt that, during those decades, the American people unwittingly spent millions of dollars on mind control research. That money would have been far better spent investigating the devastating effects of mind control in cult groups. Former members present a tremendous opportunity for researchers, but there is no political will for such an investigation.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  116The History of Christianity II õCopernicus’s Christian interpreters were careful to label his inconvenient discoveries as hypotheses. That way church authorities could let them slide. This sort of equivocation irritated Galileo. Galileo was a pious Catholic, but he also thought the church could not hold a doctrine that contradicted science. õIn 1615, he marched off to Rome to make his case. The pope’s consultants called Galileo’s work “foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical.” It was because of Galileo’s fuss that they decided to put Copernicus’s book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, on the index of prohibited books—more than 60 years after it was published. Inquisitors summoned Galileo and demanded that he recant and promise to quit making trouble, which he did. õBut pretty soon he was back to his old ways, now obsessed with working out a theory to explain the oceanic tides by linking them to the earth’s revolution. In 1632, he published a book called Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World, which was basically one long diatribe against the medieval view of the universe and a vindication of Copernicus. õGalileo was nearly 70 years old at this point, but Rome was sufficiently worried about this ornery old man to summon him again. The inquisitors forbade him from all teaching and publishing and placed him under house arrest for the rest of his life. õEven if Galileo went looking for trouble, the Vatican authorities behaved pretty shamefully. But too often people take the wrong lesson from this episode. They come away thinking that the Catholic Church saw scientific learning as the work of the devil, to be stamped out wherever it appeared. This is not true at all. õIn Galileo’s time, there was no greater sponsor of scientific research than the Catholic Church. Several holy orders, particularly the Jesuits, considered such work part of their vocation. The Jesuits sported among their ranks the notable inventor and polymath Athanasius Kircher. 117Lecture 12—The Church and the Scientific Revolution One scholar examined all the papers contributed by priests to the periodical of the Academy of Sciences in Paris up to the year 1720 and found that most of them concerned math and astronomy. õAs long as scientists paid lip service to the church’s authority and didn’t go out of their way to emphasize discrepancies or errors they found in church teaching, they could do their work without too much trouble, and even use Rome’s money to do it, all in the name of exploring God’s creation.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  After a while I tried again. “Come on, Charlie, what’s going on? You’ve got to talk to me, son.” I started leaning on him somewhat playfully, until he sat forward a bit, and then I finally felt him lean back into me. I took a chance and put my arm around him, and he immediately began to shake. His trembling intensified before he finally leaned completely into me and started crying. I put my head to his and said, “It’s okay, it’s all right.” He was sobbing when he finally spoke. It didn’t take me long to realize that he wasn’t talking about what had happened with George or with his mom but about what had happened at the jail. “There were three men who hurt me on the first night. They touched me and made me do things.” Tears were streaming down his face. His voice was high-pitched and strained with anguish. “They came back the next night and hurt me a lot,” he said, becoming more hysterical with each word. Then he looked in my face for the first time. “There were so many last night. I don’t know how many there were, but they hurt me….” He was crying too hard to finish his sentence. He gripped my jacket with a force I wouldn’t have imagined he was capable of exerting. I held him and told him as gently as I could, “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.” I’d never held anyone who gripped me as tightly as that child or who cried as hard or as long. It seemed like his tears would never end. He would tire and then start again. I just decided to hold him until he stopped. It was almost an hour before he calmed down and the crying stopped. I promised him that I would try to get him out of there right away. He begged me not to leave, but I assured him that I would be back that day. We never talked about the crime. When I left the jail, I was more angry than sad. I kept asking myself, “Who is responsible for this? How could we ever allow this?” I went directly to the sheriff’s office inside the jail and explained to the overweight, middle-aged sheriff what the child had told me, and I insisted that they immediately place him in a protected single cell. The sheriff listened with a distracted look on his face, but when I said I was going to see the judge, he agreed to move the child into a protected area immediately. I then went back across the street to the courthouse and found the judge, who called the prosecutor. When the prosecutor arrived in the judge’s chambers, I told them that the child had been sexually abused and raped.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  It is sordid and disgusting.” Her nostrils dilated. “How dare you?” said Susan. “How dare you judge me?” — Susan opened her eyes and contemplated the maniacal outline of a feathered hat hanging on Bobby’s coatrack. In retrospect she had to admit that part of her anger had come from the element of truth in Leisha’s last accusation. But Stef and Anna had been interesting to her at the time; and anyway, how dare she indeed? Susan turned over in bed. Their fantasies had changed, their tastes in props had diverged, and neither one could satisfy the other’s needs any longer. Since what they were inside didn’t matter, they separated. Susan had ended a chapter in her life, and doubtless it had felt the same to Leisha, who probably saw their friendship as a symbol of bad living and delusion. Leisha had sent Susan the engraved wedding invitation a week after their discussion. (“The honor of your presence is requested at the marriage of...”) Susan had said “How beautiful” to her empty apartment and summarily shredded the card. Susan turned over again. Still, she wished she knew where Leisha was. She would like to talk to her. She remembered the time they had gone dancing one summer. They had danced for hours in a hot, damp place, until they collapsed in each other’s arms, Leisha’s small, sweating, palpitating chest pressed against hers. She remembered having the almost tangible sensation that they were creatures with delicate invisible feelers waving between them, sending tenderness and warmth from one to the other. She sat up and turned on the bedside light. She could reach Leisha. She probably still had friends in Manhattan who knew where she was. After a minute’s thought, she remembered the last names of two of Leisha’s friends. Dialing information, she discovered that one of them no longer lived in the city and the other was unlisted. She called the restaurant where Leisha had worked; it was still open, but no one remembered her. The only possibility was the man they had both dated; the last Susan had heard, he was living in New York, but they hadn’t spoken for years and it was after two o’clock in the morning. She had to pace the room for fifteen minutes before she developed the courage to call. When he finally answered he was too surprised to be nasty, until she asked him if he knew where Leisha was. “I really don’t know. I heard that they moved to Los Angeles a couple of years ago, but that might’ve been a rumor. You called me at two-thirty in the morning to ask about Leisha?” She hung up rather gratified that she’d slighted and irritated him.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She was always going into the refrigerator and eating the last piece of pie or cheesecake or whatever dessert was there. She’d say weird things, and when you’d ask her to explain what she meant, she’d say, “Oh, never mind.” She’d sit around looking as if somebody had been beating her with a stick. She’d droop on the wall. She was depressing. — In September, Lily would sit with her books on the floor of the den at night, reading and underlining sentences with fat turquoise lines. Virginia would be on the couch reading the paper, her square brown glasses on the end of her nose. The TV would be on, usually a talk show neither of them wanted to see. On the coffee table there’d be a fat economy-size jar of olives, which they both ate from. They’d talk intermittently, and Virginia liked to think that her silent presence was an encouragement to Lily’s studying. — In September, Lily got good grades on her quizzes. Her art teacher said nice things about her drawings. She got an A-plus on a humanities paper, and the teacher read it aloud to the class. Virginia called Anne and read it to her. During October, Lily stopped studying on the floor of the den. She left her broken-backed books on the couch and went upstairs to her room and shut the door. Virginia could hear the radio playing behind the door for hours. She wondered irritably what Lily was doing in there. On weekends her long-haired friends would come to the door and she’d disappear for the entire day. At night they’d hear the screen door slam, and Lily would pat through the den, her bell-bottoms swishing, her face distantly warm and airy. She’d float down the hall without a word. The second week in October, Mr. Shin, the school disciplinarian, called Virginia. He told her that Lily was rude in the classroom and that she used obscene language. Two weeks later he called again, this time to say that he thought Lily was taking drugs. Virginia thought Mr. Shin had a repulsive voice. She thought he was deliberately persecuting Lily for reasons having nothing to do with obscene language or drugs. Lily once said that Mr. Shin told her that her IQ was below normal, that she belonged in a mental hospital, and that he didn’t blame her parents for not wanting her. At first Virginia was angry. She thought of telling Jarold to call Mr. Shin and tell him to leave Lily alone. But then she realized that Jarold was in agreement with him. Then she felt embarrassed. After all, Mr. Shin was right, Lily did use obscene language, casually and often. She did take drugs. — It was Lily’s birthday.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  But I first saw to it that it cost them a good penny. The whole system was so rotten, so inhuman, so lousy, so hopelessly corrupt and complicated, that it would have taken a genius to put any sense or order into it, to say nothing of human kindness or consideration. I was up against the whole system of American labor, which is rotten at both ends. I was the fifth wheel on the wagon and neither side had any use for me, except to exploit me. In fact, everybody was being exploited—the president and his gang by the unseen powers, the employees by the officials, and so on and around, in and out and through the whole works. From my little perch at Sunset Place I had a bird’s eye view of the whole American society. It was like a page out of the telephone book. Alphabetically, numerically, stastitically, it made sense. But when you looked at it up close, when you examined the pages separately, or the parts separately, when you examined one lone individual and what constituted him, examined the air he breathed, the life he led, the chances he risked, you saw something so foul and degrading, so low, so miserable, so utterly hopeless and senseless, that it was worse than looking into a volcano. You could see the whole American life—economically, politically, morally, spiritually, artistically, statistically, pathologically. It looked like a grand chancre on a worn-out cock. It looked worse than that, really, because you couldn’t even see anything resembling a cock any more. Maybe in the past this thing had life, did produce something, did at least give a moment’s pleasure, a moment’s thrill. But looking at it from where I sat it looked rottener than the wormiest cheese. The wonder was that the stench of it didn’t carry ‘em off. . . . I’m using the past tense all the time, but of course it’s the same now, maybe even a bit worse. At least now we’re getting it full stink. By the time Valeska arrived on the scene I had hired several army corps of messengers. My office at Sunset Place was like an open sewer, and it stank like one. I had dug myself into the first-line trench and I was getting it from all directions at once. To begin with, the man I had ousted died of a broken heart a few weeks after my arrival. He held out just long enough to break me in and then he croaked. Things happened so fast that I didn’t have a chance to feel guilty. From the moment I arrived at the office it was one long uninterrupted pandemonium.